Mr. Fox

Nice! I look forward to seeing before/after results. That's a sweet IHS replacement. In concept the installation is similar to my IceMan direct die block. It replaces the ILM. In this example it replaces the ILM and IHS. I like it. I had not seen it before. I did not know Roman had produced that. It is certainly not one I would choose, but it is (very sadly) what I have concluded based on the undesirable facts. But, I do agree with keeping a positive outlook. That's important. We also want our kids to be eyes-open and keen to the wiles of the wicked. We can't fix stupid and we can't cure evil, but there is always hope for the possibility of extermination. At the very least, we can reject what is stupid and evil and teach our kids to identify both and do the same. In the end it's all gonna burn and better things await us when we shed our mortal coil. 😉

At the end of the day it just doesn't matter. None of it does. Law-makers are stupid and worthless. Governments are corrupt and the media liars are all in on whatever the scam du jour happens to be. China will steal whatever they want. No need to buy it. And, either way, they'll still use whatever happens as a lame excuse to jack up the prices. Nothing that happens anymore is based on truth or reality. Everything that happens now is mostly just a bunch of fabricated crap to manipulate things as needed to achieve the outcome desired by the self-anointed puppeteers.

Not surprising. Elect a clown, expect a circus.

Dude is a lunatic. He is a jerk on top of that. His potty mouth ranting really is annoying. Maybe he thinks it is cute, or makes him feel like a big boy. Probably all reflective of a deep-seated sense of personal inadequacy or an inferiority complex. Sometimes the only way for a person like that to feel important or valued is to be an obnoxious blowhard and a braggard. Hopefully this is only an internet persona and façade. If he is like that normally it would be a really horrible environment for a spouse or children. Very good info. Thanks for sharing it.

I think you nailed it right there...

Joofus the Doofus is such a belligerent douche bag... sheesh. Although I agree with his conclusions, I can think of better ways of approaching the subject. I guess he likes stirring the pot and making people have a dim view of him.

When you combine those with apathy it becomes deadly. As I have said many times, they don't care about the products they sell, or the people that buy them. All they care about is making money. Having to care requires too much effort and costs money.

OK, there's no turning back on these now. As usual, the heating blankets come off with no effort after soaking in lacquer thinner for 20-30 minutes.

That worked well. So weird that setting them to auto works better than manual tuning. Thanks for sharing. Reliable 8800 memory overclock is pretty sweet.

Thanks. What are they called in the BIOS? Maybe snap a photo/F12 screenshot. He is right about many things quite often, but it is really unfortunate that his presentation and demeanor deprive him of the respect he would otherwise deserve. It is hard to judge if his arrogance and haughtiness reflect a person that is so self-absorbed that they do not care what others think of them, or if he has deep-seated feelings of inadequacy that are only mitigated by being harshly and unreasonably critical of other people (like Jay, Gordon and Wendell in this example, and recently with his commentary about LTT's mess) present in his social media space. More often than not I agree with him and think his material is technically accurate, often superior, but it is difficult to show respect to someone that is so obnoxious, unprofessional and disrespectful. Thanks. It performs better than expected. I am really pleased with it. I'm sure I will find something off sooner or later, but so far nothing found "not to like" about it. I really want to see them excel. NVIDIA has been king of the hill for so long that they have lost touch with reality, and their pricing is downright evil/dishonest. And, I don't need to say what I think about the other option other than "it's not an option" for me.

I am looking forward to seeing how Battlemage performs. I hope it is a strong contender with at least 4080, if not better. I may have a custom block made for it. I'm thinking about it. Nobody makes a normal production block for it. The A770 falls between 3060 and 3060 Ti performance, so it's actually very respectable in terms of gaming ability. It has some content creation features that it does better at than NVIDIA or AMD.

The ARC A770 runs Modern Warfare III (2023) at 1440p flawlessly. Looks and plays excellent. Solid 100+ FPS. I've bumped the power limits to 452W and locked the GPU core at 2700MHz and a fixed 1.160V. Runs fast and cool. No regrets... excellent value for a $300 GPU.

@tps3443it's doing OK. It will run stable with the 8400 profile I am using with the G.SKILL 8000 kit on the Apex. I don't like how much voltage it needs though. Trying to decide if I want to keep it. I'm not dead set on sending it back like I was, but I am still not seeing a huge benefit to having it. (Probably because there is not a huge benefit, LOL.)

Indeed, those where the days, and my... how things have changed. Not for the better, especially in turdbook land. RTX 3000 would likely work fine, but may need a BIOS update.

Zombie gaming at its best, LOL. If the screenshot is representative of that virtual 4080's image quality I'm thinking not very good. But, I have also no experience with it.. Nor do I want to. I don't like the idea of "subscribing" to most things. I prefer to buy once, own it forever and never spend another dime on that software product.

I may give this 48GB kit one more go before I send it back. I have noticed it is more difficult to get my memory OC stable than it used to be and I don't know if it is the IMC on the 13900KS is that much weaker than the 13900K or if I am wearing out the generic A-die modules from overclocking the crap out of them for so long. These memory modules have really been run through the wringer during my overclocked benching tirades. They may be fatigued, which is why I decided to try one of these 48GB kits. If I do send it back, I may try dropping the 13900K back into the Dark to rule out the weaker IMC. I won't be able to tell for certain with the 48GB kit running on air and if I pull off the heating blankets and put them on water I have to be committed to keeping them even if I don't want to. I cannot return them in good conscience having done that to them. It would be wrong for the person that buys them as an open box return. I know I would be really upset if I was that customer.

Indeed. Leaving the VDDQ TX voltage on auto seems to increase latency. I totally forgot about that. I can run it like 1.275V on the Dark, but if I bump it to 1.400V my latency drops to ~50ns and the L2 and L3 cache speeds increase. I keep forgetting this for some reason. I discovered it months ago when you made the comment to me about how low it was (before I purchased the Z790 Apex). As you can see, at only 8200 this is within strking distance to 8600 on the Apex and look how high the write and copy speeds are, with 50.3 ns latency. And, that is less than 1.500V memory voltage. The 48GB 8000 kits won't boot with timings this tight. You have to loosen up a lot of them with the 48GB A-die.

There are many things I have always believed, and with a few things it is less of a belief now and more of an observation of fact. A belief is something you expect to be true that may not be supported by tangible evidence. It may be 100% true and accurate, but you cannot always produce tangible evidence that establishes it as being an indisputable fact that remains in the absence of belief or acceptance. Two things, in particular, I no longer need to believe because the evidence dispels any element of doubt or uncertainty. The human race is characterized by two natural traits that are only overcome by a desire or compulsion to do what is unnatural. Human beings are born evil and stupid, and will perfect both of those character flaws to the point of severity unless they are trained to be the exact opposite. The answer to your question is "because they are evil and stupid" and the surplus of stupidity among those accepting of them yields the outcome they seek. Amen to that. And, very much in alignment with the above. It does not matter if anyone disagrees or does not believe it is true because the evidence demands a verdict in spite of anything a fanboy may want to believe to the contrary. Optimism in what they want to believe when faced with facts to the contrary highlights their abject and unforgivable stupidity. It is not open to debate and it cannot be fixed. The only thing left to decide is how long you are going to tolerate it before you drive a wooden stake through its chest.

With the 24GB modules, EVGA released one BIOS update to accommodate them before "getting out of the business" and letting their firmware team go. I doubt there will be any more firmware updates and I think I might be seeing the firmware not being optimized for the new 24GB modules. So, no on the CPU and motherboard, but probably yes on the firmware. The 13900KS in the Dark came out of the Apex and it has a stronger IMC than the one in the Apex. The 13900K (sitting on a shelf) is not as good on the P and E core bin, but the IMC on that CPU is stronger than both of the 13900KS. CPU overclocking on all three CPUs is very noticably better on the Dark using the 16GB A-die than it is on the Apex, but the memory overclocking is better on the Apex with the 24GB A-die modules. The 16GB A-die modules overclock better on the Dark than they do on the Apex. It is difficult to get them stable on the Apex using recent firmware. This is the older A-die (16GB generic modules). Doing this with the newer 24GB A-die modules (G.SKILL or TG) is more difficult and finicky with the newer modules, and I believe that is due to firmware not being optimized for them. The opposite is true for the Apex. It is optimized for the 24GB modules and not the 16GB. It takes less to upset the apple cart with the 16GB modules and the timings can be run much tighter. As a result of the tighter timings, the read/write/copy speeds and latency are better with the 16GB modules at a couple hundred MHz less compared to the Apex.

No, I have decided that it was very silly for me to spend money on something that technically isn't an upgrade. I dont need the extra 16GB so I am not going to burn any more calories tuning something I have no real use for. These sticks seem to work pretty much the same as the G.SKILL and I don't want to mess with the Apex. It's working as I want it to work and if I start messing with it that could change. I think I am going to use the money for something actually useful instead of the memory kit that I don't need.

That is a very "NVIDIA" move on Intel's part.

Nah... slept on it and do not need to think longer. No overclocking benefit over what I already have. The looser timings and higher voltage are worth mentioning. I don't need the extra 16GB. Sending it back for a refund makes the most sense. It deserves mention that the T-Create modules have dual XMP profiles; the mediocre 7200 and an even more mediocre 6000.

Well, not a bad kit. Quality is fine. The advertisement (even on the box) of a "one piece design" on the heatsink is just straight-up false. It is two pieces. The seam is not obvious at a glance and it looks like one piece. Not sure I am going to keep it because it is not remarkably better than the RAM I took out of the Dark. It runs the same memory overclock as the G.SKILL kit on the Apex. I will think about it for a day or two. Not really gaining anything for the money spent. The 16GB*2 generic green A-die sticks are basically just as good. The only measurable benefit, which may not even matter in the grand scheme of things, is the extra 16GB of memory capacity. The extra capacity is worth something, but I am not sure that is a good enough basis for keeping versus RMA/refund. Here is the XMP default. Here is the memory overclock matching the Apex. If I keep it then, of course, it will have the heating blankets removed and the water-cooling kit on the generic A-die sticks will be installed on them. Just a matter of whether or not I decide it is worth the extra money and associated hassle. I'm kind of leaning toward "no" but we will see if I change my mind in a few days. I gained nothing on overclocking capacity, but also didn't lose anything except the slightly tighter timings possible with the 16GB first-generation A-die modules.

I hope the latter is true. If they want to be taken as seriously as EVGA was by enthusisasts, they'll need to not waste a lot of time and energy with mainstream consumer garbage, at least in the enthusiast space products if they plan to dominate there. And, they'll need to provide a warranty as good as EVGA provided for those products. The three to 6+ weeks turn-around time on warranty service, with outbound shipping paid by the victim, as we have come to expect from ASUS, is totally unacceptable. Taking a wait-and-see approach and only building/selling what is popular and sells well, as smart as it might be, is not very likely. It would be difficult to find fault with it, though.

Man, dude is really ripping on AMD here, but if it's true, it's true. I don't know and don't intend to find out.