Mr. Fox

The 3 FPS is probably within a margin of error. Considering the loss of workload processing abilities it's probably nice that it did not lose more than 3 FPS. What bothers me way more that that is their misguided focus and that they are chirping about the fact that the CPU uses less power. As if that is some kind of admirable quality or special feature. It's all a bunch of smoke and mirror nonsense designed to titilate the nonsensical tree-hugger types. Fewer cores/threads and no hyperthreading... of course it uses less power. Like, duh! 1+1=2. But, so what... who gives a rat's butt? I think the people in charge of technology development must have been the babies that got dropped on their heads during birth. They're all, collectively, the world's super-idiots.

It's amazing how many people speak so boldly about things that they are totally ignorant about. It happens a lot. Many of them just repeat what they hear others saying and they have no idea how full of baloney and misinformed about things they are. It was not unheard of to see 1.800V on VDIMM with DDR3 overclocking.

Totally agree. You could even do up to 1.600V. The biggest problem is keeping the memory cool enough to not error out. Once the memory temps go above about 45°C you start to lose stability.

I think they were right to be critical when they said that in 2017. It was a bad approach then and it is still a bad approach now. So, Intel is guilty of the same mistake they were once critical of AMD for making. The passage of time didn't make it OK to bring a "glued together" abortion to market. That leaves us with nothing good to choose from now. Stupid wins again. Through the process of elimination we must identify what we believe sucks the least and overlook the poor judgment.

The demand for pathetic rubbish like "gaming handhelds" contributes greatly to things turning to crap. When the sheeple love eating doo-doo and gobble it up like candy, that's what the rest of us get for dinner. Lowest common denominators often determine what the rest of us are left with.

Totally expected. When you do something super-stupid, like no hyperthreading, it's going to perform like a CPU with fewer cores. The CPU isn't playing with a full deck, just like the idiots that decided hyperthreading needed to go. Stupidity of that magnitude should not be tolerated. They need to be fired, shot and thrown in a dumpster. Single-core "performance enthusiasts" deserve a similar fate. They helped create the problem. I was going to suggest that as well. Thermal Grizzly offers this now as well in their product line. This is a good option for anything with a poorly engineered thermal solution. It won't fix product defects, but it helps when fit is a little sloppier than it should have been. And, pump-out is a problem for most GPUs even when the coolers do fit. You need to use something that stops or reduces that. Expensive: https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Performance-electrically-Electronics/dp/B0DB84CQW6 Less Expensive: https://www.amazon.com/PTM7950-Heatsink-80x80x0-2mm-Conductive-Silicone/dp/B0BX42N9SZ

The better solution would be for them to just stop making 4-DIMM motherboards for gamers and overclocking enthusiasts. They should not even exist. Then they would not need to develop this new slot design. If they were doing things right, it would be extremely rare, or not at all, to find a 4-DIMM "enthusiast" motherboard. It is almost an oxymoron to say "4 DIMM enthusiast motherboard" LOL.

Did you see @tps3443 has his Z790 Apex motherboard for sale at oc.net for a VERY good price? https://www.overclock.net/threads/z790-apex-a04-motherboard.1812302/ He is in good company with a fellow dumb-dumb Gordon Mydung at his side. Both silly boys and both prone to telling lies when it is to their advantage. Congratulations. It's unfortunate that you had to sell the 3090 to float the house, but you ended up mostly recovered and nearly in as good shape as you started. Who would trade at 6900 XT for a 7900 XTX? That is great for you, but puzzling that someone would do that. Are they nuts?

That weirdo is just too disgusting and creepy for words.

I think that is an abbreviation for boxed 3-year warranty, but I like how "war box" sounds. 🤣 Having run the 7960X and 7980XE at 5.0 GHz all core I would not at all be surprised if you could overclock it stable to between 5.7 and 6.0GHz all core depending on the silicon quality.

If and when there is a next upgrade for me I am probably going that route. Some of the most fun I have had with overclocking was the X299 Dark with 7960X and 7980XE. Time will tell. I could probably sell two of my four desktops and cover a big chunk of the cost of the CPU, mobo and extra DDR5 modules. But probably won't. I am incurring a lot of unexpected medical expenses, so now is definitely not the time.

OK, I have tightened this up enough to not burn any more calories on the memory for now. I think I am going to lock this down and call it good enough for now. May try 8800 stable soon.

Got the 14900KS from @tps3443. Just starting with the tuning now. Not delidded and bare die yet, so Cinebench R23 is a little toasty without the chiller in my 78°F office.

Those are rare and I am still skeptical and do not believe that a 4-DIMM motherboard will ever match the memory overclocking abilities of a same-generation 2-DIMM motherboard. So, even it is does better and improves from what it does on Z790, I believe it will still end up being inferior to a same-generation 2-DIMM motherboard, which will make it undesirable. It would need to match the 2-DIMM speed, read/write/copy and latency in the same chipset/generation before I would say that 4-DIMM is an acceptable option for a new high-end overclocking motherboard. Matching the performance of an older generation 2-DIMM motherboard won't be good enough. In other words, your memory overclocking limits and performance would need be the same if you moved your CPU from a 2-DIMM motherboard to a 4-DIMM, with no loss of overclocking abilities.

💯 Yeah, totally agree. I think old habits die hard and it is a common myth among noobs that don't know much that having 4 slots is better than 2 "for RAM upgrades" but hardly anybody actually needs that. I can't remember ever needing to add more RAM to one of my overclocking rigs. I've only needed to do that on an old turdbook that didn't have enough from the factory, and generally that involves replacing low capacity modules with higher capacity, not adding extra low capacity modules. The motherboard manufacturers cater to the lowest common denominators, which makes sense to a degree. But, it makes NO SENSE on a high-end part that is targeted for overclocking.

You might be right, but I am skeptical and won't believe that until I see it. I believe it will be slower and have higher latency than 2-DIMM. If you are correct, then the 2-DIMM boards should easily hit DDR5-10000. And, that would make the 4-DIMM option unacceptable in the next gen for the same reason it is in current gen: inferiority. I honestly expect to see little or no improvement whatsoever in 4-DIMM memory overclocking. If anything, I expect 8000 to be a stretch and only with a better than average CPU IMC. Traces are too long and there is too much EMI/noise with the extra slots.

The Godlike board is a joke IMHO. The price is a joke and couple that with the effectively worthless for memory overclocking 4-DIMM configuration, it is a board made for stupid suckers with e-peen/self-worth issues, not enthusiasts. So, what are they all going to offer this go-round? Just one overpriced option for each brand that will sell out and be hard to find and everything else is trash? Yeah... sounds about par for the course.

The new Apex is actually pretty ugly. Not because it is white, but it looks cheap overall. I have no intention of upgrading but out of these I am favoring the Tachyon. I wish it were black though. I like the horizontal memory and CPU socket placement like the EVGA Dark motherboards and it looks like it has all of the necessary overclocking features, some of which it looks like maybe the ASRock and Unify-X might be missing.

ASUS is just a scummy company. I do really like both Apex motherboards, but I really hate that I own anything made by these money-grabbing vampire monkeys. I don't see any upgrades in my future, but if and when that happens I am going out of my way to avoid buying anything from their brand. If this cheap ASRock motherboard wasn't ruined by having 4 memory slots it would be close to perfect in that it was dirt cheap, (now that it is obsolete... it was overpriced badly at launch) has a robust power delivery system and onboard debug LCD, power and reset. Its areas of weakness (besides the sucky 4-DIMM configuration) are single BIOS, no safe boot button and chintzy plastic I/O shroud. I'd put up with most of those flaws to avoid ASUS if it were 2 DIMM slots and I was shopping for a legit upgrade.

Built for idiots (4-DIMM feces) and priced for idiots willing to pay extra for engineering defects. So, the upgrade is a CPU with fewer cores, no hyperthreading and you drop it in a grossly overpriced motherboard that stands a good chance that it probably can't even run DDR5-7400. They can kiss my hind end before I wipe it clean and then eat a bowl full of rat droppings. I'm not interested in downgrading to a newer platform.

Yup, wait and see approach is always best for everything. Early adoption is not very smart when you stop and think about it. It is a leap of faith driven by emotion rather than intelligence and logic. Having faith in God, knowing He has your best interest in mind, is different than having faith in a company that doesn't give a rat's butt about you or what matters to you. They just want your money. If I am not going to benefit in ways I want to benefit then any money spent is a total waste and a foolish thing to do. I'm thinking this kind of half-assed launch is exactly the kind of nudge I need to get me to start losing interest at a more accelerated pace, which will be a good thing at a personal level. I think that everything relating to high performance PC and overclocking enthusiast pursuits is on a path for a major downturn. The final nails in our coffins might be driven in soon. Nothing awesome in life ever lasts forever. Only the sucky things do.

It's a downgrade. It's missing 8 cores/threads. Even E-cores add to multi-threaded performance. You'd have to overclock it to the moon to get the same results with 8 missing cores. No point in buying new tech that is a downgrade if your goal is an upgrade. Not much different than gamerboys buying a newer GPU and calling it an upgrade when the new GPU has less VRAM and a smaller bus width. Newer is always better newer, but it isn't always an upgrade. The fact that it is not sucks. One step forward, two steps backward. Unless they release a CPU with 16 hyperthreaded P-cores or 32 non-hypterthreaded P-cores there is nothing to see here. If it is $150 cheaper than 14900KS then it might be worth considering for a new standalone build, but not an upgrade/replacement build.

Sorry that happened, brother.

Thank you. I think is looks pretty good overall. I like it, but it would obviously be even better had they gone with a 2 DIMM design. Totally worth what I paid for it, but I can tell you it would have been an RMA had I paid the original MSRP. This is absolutely not even a little bit worth the original MSRP, which was a pretty massive rip-off. This is a $150 motherboard in terms of build quality, and no way it is worth $500 by any stretch of the imagination. They were nuts thinking smart people would pay that for it. The sad part is I think it is better than the Z690 Apex was. Even being 4 DIMM it performs as well or better than the Z690 Apex abortion. Or you can do both and leave the beast turned off except when you want to have fun with crazy overclocking. I am working on weaning myself of hardware addiction and I think one of the only ways I will get there is by force. The semi-crappy Asrock build is a baby step in making myself do something I don't want to do, but I am tired of giving up large sums of money for awesome stuff that is only partially awesome and doesn't live up to the pricetag. If something is going to be kind of chintzy, then it needs to have a chintzy pricetag.