If you haven’t checked out the rewards section of the Nvidia app in a while, you might want to do that, especially if you’ve been wanting to try the whole Adobe tool stack without spending a penny. As part of Nvidia’s collaboration with Adobe, the company is giving specific RTX GPU owners access to Adobe Creative Cloud for free, which includes popular photo and video editing tools like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and more.

The offer is currently live in the Nvidia App Rewards section, and to be eligible, you must have an RTX series GPU from any of the last three generations. However, there’s a difference: with a GeForce RTX 30 or 40 series card, you’ll get one free month of Adobe Creative Cloud. Meanwhile, if you own an RTX 50 GPU, Nvidia will treat you to two free months instead.

On top of that, one benefit exclusive to RTX 50 series GPUs is the Substance 3D reward, which gives you access to five different Adobe apps along with a massive asset library for your games, including tools like 3D Sampler, 3D Designer, and 3D Painter. It’s a fairly solid deal overall, even if you consider Adobe Creative Cloud alone, which normally costs $69 per month.

Don’t forget to cancel on time

The classic Tetris game has been packaged into a PDF and dubbed Pdftris. The classic falling blocks puzzler is claimed to be playable in most desktop browsers and, indeed, we successfully loaded and played the game in Firefox on PC simply by clicking the above link. A security analyst named Thomas Rinsma is the brains behind this new PDF-based browser game.

Background details on the project aren't extensive, as the GitHub project page ReadMe entry is empty. However, Rinsma was happy to chat with users on the Hacker News feed about the development project.

Rinsma indicates that he was inspired to port a game to run in a PDF after he "realized that the PDF engines of modern desktop browsers (PDFium and PDF.js) support JavaScript with enough I/O primitives to make a basic game like Tetris."

The security analyst and self-confessed aficionado of "strange loops and weird machines" also explained that it wasn't that easy to get his Tetris game to run correctly in both engines. However, he discovered that "showing/hiding annotation 'fields' works well to make monochrome pixels." Moreover, if you try the game with the on-screen buttons and would prefer to use keys, then Rinsma made it so that keyboard control can be achieved by typing in a text input box below the game area.

Rinsma humbly admits that his Tetris in PDF code is "quite janky." However, he suggests it at least serves as a reminder of the power and flexibility of PDF scripting.

Those interested in prying inside the Pdftris code don't need specialist or esoteric development tools. Just choose to download the 60KB PDF, and open it in a text editor and you will find the file is "all ASCII."

There is some source code available, too, with greater readability and comments inserted. You can see that on the aforementioned GitHub project page, specifically here.

Rinsma noted that Pdftris isn't working on Adobe's Reader "likely because it's not compliant in several ways." Other non-browser Pdftris possibilities like Foxit Reader might work, he mused, as he believes it supports the necessary scripting for the gaming action.

It would be great to get some color, shading, and sound in a future release of Pdftris but we don't know if this project will be developed much further. In some ways, it is basically a proof of concept.

While Pdftris is certainly an eyebrow-raising mashup of the gaming and document rendering worlds, developers have dragged far duller apps into the gaming realm, particularly Microsoft Excel. Microsoft's spreadsheet can even host a 3D raytracing gaming engine (with the help of VBA).

Logitech is getting into the macro pad game with its new MX Creative Console, facing off against established players like Elgato, Razer, and Cooler Master. The Swiss firm's two-piece device is marketed towards Adobe Creative Cloud users, especially those who spend hours on Photoshop, Premiere Pro, or Lightroom Classic daily. According to Logitech MX General Manager Anatoliy Polyanker (via Business Wire), “The MX Creative Console is designed to help people redefine their workflow, enabling them to work smarter and faster.”

The MX Creative Console has two primary parts — a wired keypad with nine primary LED display keys and two arrow keys for navigating between pages, plus a dial pad that has a massive knob, a jog wheel, and four extra buttons. You can pretty much program all the buttons to suit your particular needs, but the company has worked closely with Adobe so that it will work straight out of the box with apps like Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro.

At $200, the MX Creative Console is quite an expensive device, especially as you can get a Stream Deck starting at just $60. There are also other options in that price range, like the Razer Stream Controller or the Elgato Stream Deck Plus. However, Logitech is the only one of these big-name firms to offer the dial pad and keypad combination, which makes it highly suitable for creatives working with Adobe apps. The other competitors are more focused on live streaming and audio production, so you’ll have to spend a lot of time configuring them to make them suitable for visual creative workflows.

The Cooler Master MasterHUB is the nearest competitor to the MX Creative Console, but the complete modular kit costs double at $399 and it’s still in the Kickstarter stage at the time of writing (although we expect shipments to begin this month). Furthermore, since it’s not explicitly made for Adobe app workflows, you may have to spend a good amount of time discovering how to program the shortcuts for each app.

While this MX Creative Console is perfect for Adobe users, you might find it lacking if you prefer other apps. You’ll have to customize the console yourself if you want to use it with non-Adobe programs, like DaVinci Resolve or GIMP. Alternatively, you could download plugins via the Plugin Marketplace in Logitech Options+ app to make the MX Creative Console work more seamlessly with select apps like Spotify, Capture One, and Zoom. However, you’ll have to wait for Logitech to see if and when it will release plugins for popular Adobe alternatives.

Adobe PDF files are one of the leading file types for documents around. These proprietary file types work mainly with Adobe software but can be easily converted to other file types, as well, like Word Docs or JPGs. And sometimes you’ll find yourself needing to edit a PDF. If you’ve already got access to Adobe Acrobat, this is easy to do. However, those without Acrobat may be wondering how they can edit a PDF. Thankfully, Adobe provides a free tool that anyone can use to edit PDFs online for free. The only caveat is that you will need to make an account with Adobe to use it.

 How to Edit a PDF in Acrobat 

If you’ve got a copy of Adobe Acrobat, editing a PDF is fairly easy. But if you’re not sure how to enable editing mode, here’s what you have to do.

1.  Open the PDF you want to edit in Adobe Acrobat.

2. Go to the Tools tab in the upper left-hand corner. 

3. Click `Edit PDF`.

4. Edit the PDF using the tools provided.

Don't forget to save your changes when you are done.

How to Edit a PDF for Free

If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat, it’s still possible to edit PDFs. Adobe provides a free online tool that has plenty of features to enable basic changes to most PDF documents. You can change the order of pages, add or remove elements, and even digitally sign documents.

1. Go to https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/acrobat/add-comment. 

2. Create an Adobe account if you don’t already have one. Even though you’re prompted to create an account, it’s free to use the online editing tool.

3. Drag and drop the PDF into the window.

4. Click ‘Edit’ in the upper left corner.

5. Edit the PDF using the tools provided.

These steps should work for anyone whether they’ve got access to Adobe Acrobat or not. The online tool is free for anyone to use but an account with Adobe is required to gain access to it. 

TIP: Even if you’ve got a copy of Acrobat, it’s handy to keep the free online editing tool on hand in case you’re at a machine that doesn’t have access to the full Acrobat suite.

4. Edit the PDF using the tools provided. Save when done.

Adobe’s PDF file is one of the most commonly used file types for documents but what if you need it converted into an image? Thankfully, you’ve got a few options available when it comes to converting a PDF to a JPG or converting a JPG to a PDF. It helps to have Adobe Acrobat but you don’t need it at all to convert files as there are free tools available that convert these files both ways.

How to Convert a PDF File to a JPG

This method requires a copy of Adobe Acrobat. If you do not have Acrobat, you can use the free steps below for an browser-based solution.

1. Open the PDF you want to convert in Adobe Acrobat. 

2. Click File in the upper left corner and go to ‘Export To’ then ‘Image’ and choose ‘JPEG’. 

3. Click ‘Save’ once you choose a location for your new JPG file. 

4. Open the file in an image viewer to make sure it works. 

 How to Convert a PDF file to a JPG for Free 

If you don’t have Acrobat, you can use Adobe’s free online conversion tool to make a JPG from your PDF for free.

1. Go to https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/pdf-to-jpg.html. 

2. Drag and drop the PDF onto the browser window 

3. Choose the JPG quality for your new file using the drop down menu. 

4. Click ‘Convert to JPG’ in the bottom right 

5. Click ‘Download File’. The JPG file will save as a .zip file to your PC. 

6. Extract the JPG from the ZIP file. 

If you’re unfamiliar with using ZIP files, check out our guide on how to add and remove content from ZIP files in Windows.

 How to Convert a JPG to a PDF File 

You can convert JPG images into PDF files easily using Acrobat but if you don’t have a copy, you can always use the free steps below to do so using Adobe’s online converter tool.

1. Open the JPG you want to convert in Adobe Acrobat. By default, it will be converted to a PDF file. 

2. Click ‘Save’ after you choose a location for the new file.

 How to Convert a JPG to a PDF File for Free 

Adobe provides a free browser-based tool that will convert JPGs to PDFs for free. This is a great option for those who don’t have Adobe Acrobat.

1. Go to https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/acrobat/jpg-to-pdf.

2. Drag and drop the JPG file you want to convert into the browser window.

3. Click ‘Download’ in the upper right corner and choose a location to save the file.

Adobe makes the conversion process very easy using the integrated conversion tools in Acrobat as well as the online converters. So whether you own Acrobat or not, you can still convert their PDF as needed to the most common file types.

3D video has been a roller coaster ride for fans of the format. Remember those red and blue glasses? They represented the origin of 3D film in cinemas and on television. Then we had active shutter glasses linked with the display to create a stereoscopic image. The common thread is that glasses and 3D formats usually live and die by their quality. Ultimately, users don’t want to wear them.

Glasses-free 3D nearly achieves unicorn status, but it does exist. Using some very clever technology that includes head and eye tracking, it is possible for a display to show a 3D image without glasses. Acer partnered with SpatialLabs to offer the View 15.6-inch portable glasses-free 3D monitor.

Acer SpatialLabs View Specs

The recipe starts with a 15.6-inch IPS panel sporting a 3840x2160 resolution. That’s important because, like every 3D format, the View has to create two images per frame to deliver the stereoscopic effect. This means the two images are slightly offset from one another. Flashing them quickly fools the eyes into seeing a three-dimensional image. That also means that in 3D mode, the View is displaying 1920x1080 pixels.

The panel has two sensors in the top bezel that locate and track your head movements to keep the phasing between images synchronized. The View is strictly a one-person experience. Someone looking over your shoulder will not see a 3D picture. However, sit in the center and you will see a profound and convincing effect. The screen has an optical layer in front that splits the image for each eye, which is a bit like the frame packing used in 3D televisions and projectors. The image is then refracted digitally utilizing the sensor data and directed to the user’s eyes

Of course, you need the proper software and 3D-enabled content to make it happen. But there are games and other apps like modeling software designed to use the technology. Acer was kind enough to send me a Predator laptop loaded with God of War and other titles that play in 3D. You can also convert full-screen video to 3D using the SpatialLabs Experience app.

Taken just as a computer monitor, the View is very capable. The color gamut is Adobe RGB which isn’t quite the same as DCI-P3 in that it emphasizes green rather than red, though the two gamuts have roughly the same color volume. The View is very accurate as well, with no need for calibration. And I discovered extremely high (for IPS) contrast during testing. So, it will deliver a solid image for non-3D content as well.

Aside from software support, you must connect the View via HDMI and USB to present 3D images. The monitor also doesn’t come cheap; it’s currently priced at $1,099. And I’ll state up front that the View is not a gaming monitor, at least not if you plan to play twitchy shooters. Its refresh rate maxes at 60 Hz, and there’s no Adaptive-Sync or HDR. But if you like to explore a gaming environment or view rendered objects in a virtual 3D space, the View is a compelling choice. Let’s take a look.

Assembly and Accessories

The View ships in a slick box with premium packaging and all the necessary cabling. A small external power supply plugs into a side port, and you get HDMI and USB-A/C cables. A stand folds out from the back to prop it up at various angles.

Product 360

The View is a simple and elegant design with no extra trim or features other than what’s needed for function. The front bezel is narrow at the sides and wider at the top and bottom. The top contains two sensors to track the user’s head movements, and the bottom just has Acer and SpatialLabs logos silk screened in place.

A component bulge in the back has inputs on the left side. There is one each of HDMI 2.0, USB-C and USB-A. The round one is the power plug and a tiny blue LED shows the power status. On the right side is an SD card slot and two control keys. One of them is also a rocker switch used to navigate the OSD.

The stand runs the full width of the View and has a firmly damped hinge to keep it from sliding away from the desired position. You can adjust the screen’s angle over a wide range or fold it flat with the monitor in your lap. There is no touch screen capability here, so you can’t use the View as a tablet.

OSD Features

The View’s OSD looks just like the one you’ll find in any Acer monitor. Pressing the control button brings it up; then you can navigate and select using the rocker switch.

Basic picture controls include brightness & contrast, a blue light mode, a black boost for enhanced shadow detail, ACM (dynamic contrast) and super sharpness edge enhancement. It is recommended to max brightness when viewing 3D images, which is good advice. If the picture is too dark, it can compromise the 3D effect.

The Color menu offers a grayscale mode (black & white image) and five color temp options. The user mode has a two-point gain/bias adjustment. On the second page are five picture modes and a color space control. Its two choices, Standard and Adobe RGB, both render the same Adobe RGB gamut, but the latter has more accurate gamma. In Standard mode, you can calibrate the color temp and a 6-axis hue/saturate color system. In 3D mode, this menu is grayed out, but you can still adjust the brightness.

You’ve already noticed the brevity of the OSD. No gaming options like overdrive or Adaptive-Sync exist, and 60 Hz is the max refresh rate. 3D settings are controlled by software, so you won’t need to dig through the OSD to make those adjustments. I’ll explore how one accesses 3D gaming and other features in the Hands-on section below.

Acer SpatialLabs View Calibration Settings

Out of the box, the View is accurate enough that calibration is not required. But I found gamma too dark, and it is not adjustable. Fortunately, when I selected the Adobe RGB option in Color Space, it improved dramatically without affecting other image parameters. I’ll show you those test results later. If you want to calibrate, leave Color Space in Standard and adjust the RGB sliders. My instrumented settings are below, and note that Standard retains the full Adobe RGB gamut; there is no sRGB mode.

Gaming and Hands-on

To fully experience the SpatialLabs View, you’ll need to connect it to a PC or laptop with both HDMI and USB cables, which are provided. The monitor has an internal battery good for about five hours of use, or you can plug in the small power brick.

Seeing 3D images on the View is simple once you have the appropriate software installed. You’ll need the SpatialLabs Experience app and TrueGame, which is the launching point for 3D-enabled titles. Acer recommends an 8th Gen Intel Core i7 and a GeForce RTX 3060 for desktop PCs and an RTX 3070 for notebooks. I received a Predator Triton 500 SE laptop with my View sample. It’s equipped with an Intel Core i9 and a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.

There are two 3D game types supported by the View, 3D+ and 3D Ultra. 3D+ looks like the effect one would see from a 3D Blu-ray, but 3D Ultra takes it to another level. It simulates two cameras to create geometric 3D objects that seemingly occupy the space in front of the viewer, irrespective of the monitor’s boundaries. At this writing, there are nine games with 3D Ultra support, and I checked out God of War, Kena: Bridge of Spirits and Psychonauts 2. 3D+ currently supports 65 games.

You can tell when 3D is activated because the effect is truly a “wow” moment, and resolution is cut in half. Initially, I was put off by the visibility of the pixel structure, but after a few minutes, that distraction faded to the background as I explored a blacksmith shop in God of War. A tiny menu in the upper left of the screen allowed me to adjust the depth of the 3D effect easily. I could move my head a little without affecting the 3D image, but turning more than 15 degrees created a crosstalk artifact. However, with such a small screen, this isn’t an issue.

Walking around dark caves in Kena: Bridge of Spirits was also a satisfying experience. Shadow detail was a little murky, and I could not change the color mode to Adobe RGB for a better gamma. Following Acer’s recommendation, I turned up the brightness to maximum, and it was a little better. But this is a minor point; the image is amazing. And only when small text messages popped up did I notice the FHD resolution. The graphics are just gorgeous, with solid detail and saturated color.

The View is not a gaming monitor for competition or fast-paced shooters like Doom Eternal. Though the image is excellent with deep contrast and vivid color, motion blur is a factor. Any movement above a walking pace reduces resolution and detail considerably. And input lag is something I could perceive, though that may be because I’m used to playing on super-fast monitors.

The SpatialLabs Experience app has an emulation function to convert 2D video into 3D using an on-screen button. I tried this with a few YouTube selections and saw varying results. Thanks to compression, YouTube quality is all over the map, even when matching resolutions. The quality of the 3D effect is tied to the quality of the original video. Hi-res examples with low compression and no fast movement convert to 3D effectively. It doesn’t have the depth of 3D Ultra, but it is as good as anything I’ve seen on a 3D television or projector. The app also has a Model Viewer function, which can import CAD and DCC files and convert them to 3D. This is a great way to represent an object design visually.

The View is a very qualified 4K monitor with excellent contrast and color for daily use. The image is razor sharp due to the pixel density of 282ppi. In the Standard Color Space mode, some black detail is hard to see, thanks to the dark gamma. But relief is as easy as switching to Adobe RGB. Color stays the same, but gamma is much lighter, making all parts of the picture well-rendered.

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I’ve never reviewed anything like the View, so rather than comparison charts, I’ll just post the test results and comment on them. I ran the same benchmarks I would for any monitor using the 2D mode exclusively.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

·  Response Time – 27ms

·  Absolute Input Lag – 61ms

The View is a 60 Hz monitor with fixed refresh and no overdrive. It draws the screen a tad faster than Acer’s claim of 30ms and has relatively low input lag for a 60 Hz display. This is not a panel for twitchy gaming or fast-paced shooters. Motion above a walking pace shows considerable blur, which is exacerbated in 3D by the 1920x1080 resolution. 2D images are 3840 x 2160 so blur is less noticeable there. But gaming with the View is better when the environment is one you’ll want to take time to explore rather than ripping through hordes of enemies in a frantic battle.

Viewing Angles

The View is an excellent example of IPS viewing angles with less than 10% light falloff to the sides and almost no color shift. If you stare at the photo above long enough, you’ll perceive a slight coolness in the horizontal shot. But gamma remains stable with all detail clearly visible at every brightness level. The vertical view goes red and dims by around 50% but retains good detail rendering. Note that these photos were taken in 2D mode.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

·  Screen Uniformity – Deviation From Center: 7.00%

The View has a high-quality panel with no visible glow or bleed in all-black test patterns. The extra optical layer added for 3D imagery does not affect 2D pictures. You’d never know the View differs from any premium IPS panel.

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To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

·  Maximum White Luminance – 362.5095 nits

·  Maximum Black Luminance – 0.2301 nit

·  Maximum Contrast Ratio – 1575.2:1

The View delivers plenty of light output, which is needed for the best 3D effect. Acer recommends turning up the brightness all the way in 3D mode, and I echo that suggestion. Though 362 nits is bright, it never produces a harsh image. Black levels are quite low, and the View has superb contrast, more than any other IPS panel I’ve tested.

After Calibration to 200 nits

·  Black Luminance - 0.1312 nit

·  Contrast Ratio – 1535.4:1

·  16-point ANSI Contrast Ratio – 1386.3:1

Calibration reduces contrast slightly though I could not see a difference thanks to the dark gamma. I’ll talk about that later because you have some choices to make there. Black levels are still very low, which enhances image depth and quality. It’s an asset in 3D mode too.

ANSI contrast is only slightly lower than static, which further speaks to the View’s quality control and premium componentry. It is expensive but exceptionally well made.

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The View has several picture modes, but I confined my tests to just User and Standard. They both employ the Adobe RGB gamut, there is no sRGB mode.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

There’s certainly nothing to complain about here with regard to grayscale tracking. The slightly elevated green level at 100% in the default chart can be fixed with a one-click reduction to the contrast slider. I calibrated the User color temp and got even better results.

The only issue here is gamma which is dark in tone. There are no gamma presets, but if you engage the Adobe RGB setting in Color Space, gamma drops to a more linear 2.11 average. While this is a tad light, it makes the picture look better. And you can still adjust the brightness if you wish.

· Grayscale Error Default – 1.64dE

· Grayscale Error Calibrated – 0.83dE

· Grayscale Error Adobe RGB – 1.64dE

· Gamma Value Range Standard – 0.24

· Gamma Value Range Adobe RGB – 0.12

· Average Gamma, Deviation From 2.2 Standard – 10.00% (2.42 actual value)

· Average Gamma, Deviation From 2.2 Adobe RGB – 4.09% (2.11 actual value)

Grayscale tracking is about the same in either Standard or Adobe RGB modes, but gamma is closer to the mark in the latter.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

Regardless of picture mode or Color Space option, the View is an Adobe RGB monitor. That wide gamut emphasizes green rather than the extra red found in DCI-P3. This is not to say that it pushes green, far from it. The View is very accurate and right out of the box; it hits the color targets with just a bit of over-saturation. 2.38dE average is an invisible error.

With calibration, the error only drops by 0.01dE, infinitesimal. But you can get even better color in the Adobe RGB mode, which has a reference-level 1.36dE average error. Add to that its superior gamma and the choice is clear.

Comparisons

· Color Gamut Error – 2.37dE (User, calibrated), 1.36dE (Adobe RGB)

· Color Gamut Volume – 100.89% DCI-P3, 149.58% sRGB, 102.56% Adobe RGB

Color errors are below the visible threshold no matter how you set the View up, which is excellent performance. Gamut volume is about the same for both Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 but don’t be fooled; a P3 monitor will have deeper reds. The View is still very colorful, but it excels in green, making things like grass and trees look lusher.

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The history of 3D video shows the industry's and enthusiasts' real effort to elevate it beyond gimmick status. Modern formats like Imax and frame-packed Blu-ray can create a convincing 3D image that immerses the viewer. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Avatar in a premium Imax theater. It was and still is a formative experience. I didn’t mind wearing the glasses then, but the idea of glasses-free 3D is always attractive.

The Acer SpatialLabs View is more than a few steps in the right direction. Not only can it mimic the look of a 3D TV for video and games, but the 3D Ultra feature also goes way beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, only nine games currently support it, but it is undeniably one of the coolest things in the gaming world.

As a gaming monitor, the View is not something you’ll want for fast-motion titles like Doom Eternal. Leave those to the fast refresh Adaptive-Sync models. The View tops out at a fixed 60 Hz. But in 2D, adventure games are a lot of fun thanks to the 4K screen with 282ppi pixel density, excellent contrast and very saturated & accurate color. 3D reduces that resolution to FHD, but that truly doesn’t matter. The suspension of disbelief is something you must experience to appreciate.

As a workday display, it is one of the best portables I’ve reviewed, thanks to accurate Adobe RGB color and greater contrast than nearly any IPS panel out there. Plenty of brightness means you can use it just about anywhere. And a five-hour battery life means it’s qualified for a spot in the road warrior’s tech bag.

The Acer SpatialLabs View is a special display and at this writing, is unique. It’s a premium purchase at $1,099, but that number is relative since nothing else can do what it does. If you’re a fan of 3D imagery, the View is a monitor you should keep in mind.

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When it comes to macro keyboards, Elgato’s Stream Decks usually come to mind. For many streamers, the highly-customizable input devices, complete with full-color screens under each key, are critical tools that allow them to perform complex actions in OBS  in just one step.

Loupedeck’s line of macro devices take the user well beyond streaming. Don’t get me wrong: Any macro keyboard, even a home-made Raspberry Pi one, can be used for other purposes than streaming — but how many have features integrated for video, photo, or even animation editing? Loupedeck’s consoles are built to work with Twitch, Adobe Suite, Ableton, Twitter, OBS, and music software such as Spotify right out of the box. 

I took a look at the three consoles in Loupedeck’s current lineup: the Loupedeck Live ($269), the Loupedeck+ ($279), and the Loupedeck CT ($549). Loupedeck also recently announced the upcoming Loupedeck S ($180), which is currently fully-funded on Indiegogo and is set to start shipping in the fall. Razer also recently announced its own branded version of the Loupedeck Live which is identical to the original but has Razer branding. 

Loupedeck Live

The Loupedeck Live ($269) is the smallest of Loupedeck’s current lineup and is geared toward streamers and content creators. It has 12 programmable touchscreen buttons, six tactile knobs, and eight tactile buttons (one of which is the dedicated home/back button). I don't know what it is about this black matte finish but dust LOVES it. Luckily there is a lock mode that turns off the touch screen and button functions so you can wipe off the console.

Just like the Loupedeck Live has a lock mode there is something called a Dynamic Mode where the buttons on the touchscreen will switch depending on the application running. I can have Photoshop and Premiere open at the same time, which is kind of overkill but sometimes necessary. My touchscreen buttons will change from photo editing to video editing just by clicking on Premiere. 

The Live has integrations with Twitch that can start a commercial break, welcome a new subscriber with a special sound effect, or simply stop and start your stream. Lined with three knobs on each side and eight round buttons at the bottom, the Live is suited to control volume, skip songs, and scrub through a video. 

It’s great for keyboard shortcuts in any program. For example, buttons can be created for copy and paste or activating full screen. The knobs on the side are called Rotating Dials. They have two functions, rotating infinitely with built-in notches and pressing in. This creates 12 functions out of these six knobs. The eight round buttons at the bottom are called the Workspace buttons, with the first one being the Home or Back button. These buttons help navigate between Workspaces or pages - which are a list of buttons that show on the face of the Loupedeck. There are two ways to move between pages; swiping or by pressing the round buttons to move on to the next page. 

This is the smallest of the Loupedeck consoles but still packs a lot of configuration power. With over 70 native programs supported in software, the  Live is great for any level of streamer, producer, programmer, or computer user — novice to intermediate. This is a piece of hardware that can grow with you if you’re just starting out. As an advanced streamer, I enjoy using the Loupedeck Live to try out new commands, engage viewers, and help streamline the process of streaming. It doesn’t take up too much room on your desk, measuring 5.9 inches wide by 4.3 inches deep, and 1.18 inches thick. It weighs about half a pound. 

The Loupedeck Live really helped me to get organized and categorize my movements and the processes I use to run one of my game streams. I can create one page, or a set of buttons,  for the beginning of my stream, swipe to the next page for the middle of my stream, and then go to a third page to wrap up my stream. And I can create duplicate buttons so I don’t have to switch back and forth between pages.

Once a live stream is over I can move on to post-stream activities, such as opening Adobe Premiere to start working on editing the footage. With the help of the Loupedeck Live’s Dynamic Mode, my pages or workspace change when I open up different applications. If I’d rather wind down instead of getting right to work, I can set up a page for that. I can create different profiles and call them things such as “Stream Junae Profile,” “Post-Stream Junae Profile,” or “Leisure Junae Profile.” And have everything I need within those profiles such as Spotify controls and buttons to launch my favorite games or open productivity apps such as Microsoft Word to write articles — it’s very intuitive.

Loupedeck CT

The $549 Loupedeck CT is made for creative professionals who do serious video or audio editing. The Loupedeck CT is the largest of the Loupedeck consoles (as opposed to the Loupedeck+, which is more of a deck than a console), measuring 6.2 inches wide by 5.9 inches deep and 1.18 inches thick. The Loupedeck CT has the same buttons and knobs as the Loupedeck Live, and adds a bottom section which features a large dial and 12 square tactile buttons.

The Loupedeck CT is bulkier than the Live, tipping the scales at 0.8 pounds, but I wouldn’t change a thing. The black matte finish attracts quite a bit of dust, but is also very easy to clean. The separation of the touchscreen buttons and tactile buttons so I don’t click a function I didn’t intend to use is a great design.

The dial is definitely an upgrade. Every button on the Loupedeck CT has some kind of feedback — haptic or tactile — except for the dial. Baby, when I tell you turning this dial is like spreading whipped butter on a piece of bread with sugar and cinnamon, believe it! It’s so smooth! The dial makes scrolling through web pages, scrubbing through editing timelines, selecting colors, and adjusting highlights and shadows a very smooth, enjoyable process.

The dial and buttons — like everything on Loupedeck’s consoles — are customizable. Adding these buttons relieves the need to create a shortcut function. The 12 buttons include inputs from a keypad, such as up/down, Fn, and Ctrl — no more pressing Ctrl +Z like a caveman! The buttons also include shortcuts such as Undo and Save.

Every button, knob, and dial on the Loupedeck CT is customizable and works fabulously in Dynamic Mode. Dynamic Mode allows you to switch seamlessly between programs and continue to use the Loupedeck CT without interrupting your workflow. For example, I can be using OBS and switch to Ableton, and the buttons and functions on the Loupedeck CT will change with me. If there are multiple people using the Loupedeck CT, you can create individual profiles for each person — or you can create profiles for different work and lifestyle modes.

Some macro keypads limit you to three pages of buttons, but the Loupedeck CT lets you create up to 10 pages of buttons (12 buttons per page). That’s over 100 button functions available on one profile.

It doesn’t matter how many (or few) buttons you have, the Loupedeck CT’s dial is definitely its stand-out feature. I use the dial in photo and video editing to get precise measurements that are easily overshot on a mouse, or that take too long on a keyboard. For example, if I want to turn up an effect to an exact number — such as turning the vignette to 62 — it’s difficult on a mouse, but I can use the dial to get there without having to make precise mouse movements.

The Loupedeck CT does everything the Loupedeck Live does — it’s easy to program it to work with streaming platforms such as OBS and Twitch, and to get it to play SFX for streaming without having to program them in StreamElements. I especially like that the Fn buttons can be placed on the keyboard, as this means less programming.

The Loupedeck CT lets me do all the things I need to do during a stream, and easily integrates with Twitch, Streamlabs, and OBS. But it’s in post-stream content editing where the Loupedeck CT’s jog dial really stands out. Because the Loupedeck CT is larger, heavier, and has a dial — which is potentially easier to damage — I wouldn’t feel comfortable traveling with this bulkier console. But if you can afford it the Loupedeck CT’s versatility makes it a powerful streaming companion.

Loupedeck+

If you want the feel of a professional editing deck like the ones they use in studios, get a Loupedeck+. With more than 40 buttons, knobs, and switches, the Loupedeck+ is largest in the series, measuring 17.8 inches wide, 8.2 inches deep, and 1.9 inches thick, and weighing about 1.5 pounds — it’s roughly the size of a typical PC keyboard.

Unlike the Loupedeck Live and Loupedeck CT consoles, the Loupedeck+ doesn’t have a screen. Instead, it’s got buttons on buttons on buttons, mixed with knobs, dials, and switches — this is an editing machine that editors and producers will love! The Loupedeck+ is advanced enough to do all of the intricate things you need to do in photo, video, and audio editing, and it’s simple enough for a beginner to use.

The press in functions on dials reset their values back to zero — useful if you’re trying to take something such as color saturation back to its default. The color switches make it easier to adjust the greens, blues, and reds for photo and video color correction. The dials make it easier to accurately control the levels of functions rather than trying to guess by looking at sliding bars.

Thanks to notches in each knob, values don’t increase too quickly. Although the buttons on the Loupedeck+ have printed labels such as Temperature, Tint, and Saturation, they’re still customizable — you can overwrite the default functions to perform whatever functions you like, though you’ll have to remember what you changed them to (or, I suppose, you could re-label them).

The Loupedeck+ has built-in level buttons that you can use for different levels of editing. For example, Level 1 could be the default settings button, Level 2 could be all color gradients, and Level 3 could be for adding extra effects. Again, each button is still completely customizable.

If you’re new to editing photos and videos, the Loupedeck+ might be overwhelming at first. I’m not new to editing, but I don’t think the Loupedeck+ is an ideal console for me because while I like to edit, I also like to stream and have shortcuts on my console that open up regular applications such as email. The Loupedeck+ is highly programmable, just like the other Loupedeck consoles, but it’s definitely designed for editing photos and videos. It’s the cheapest of the three Loupedeck consoles, but it’s still $249 — so you should only choose this console if you really like the layout (and don’t mind skipping a screen).

Which Loupedeck is the Best Choice for You?

If you do any streaming or want the deck for general productivity work, the Loupedeck Live and CT are for you. The Loupedeck+ is mainly for professional photo and video editors who will use its dials for the purposes they have printed on them.

The Loupedeck Live and the Loupedeck CT integrate with with Twitch, Adobe Suite, OBS, Spotify, and about 70 other programs, while the Loupedeck+ supports Lightroom Classic, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop with Camera Raw, After Effects, Audition, and Aurora HDR. They’re all highly customizable and can control volume and launch any shortcuts you want. If you want to create a shortcut that a program doesn't have, you can use the Loupedeck software to create a custom command.

The consoles also have the ability to save various profiles, either for different use cases or different users. The touch screen ability on the Loupedeck Live and CT allow you to swipe between screens or select actions, such as opening OBS. All models have Dynamic Mode, which means they can switch button functions and screens automatically as you move between different programs (e.g. OBS and Photoshop).

Another satisfying feature of the Loupedeck consoles is the haptic feedback you get as you touch the screen, rotate the buttons, or press in the buttons. The dial on the CT rotates smoothly, with no notches, no feedback, and no push in feature. The dial also has a mini LED screen so it’s unexpected to have multiple functions. Even the Control Dial on the Loupedeck+ has notches and pushes in creating another button function. On both the Loupedeck CT and Loupedeck+ the square buttons seem to contain blue switches.

For streamers and general productivity users, the Loupedeck Live is the best choice, while the Loupedeck CT is best for streamers who also do some video editing. The Loupedeck+ is for heavy video and photo editors.

I prefer the Loupedeck CT, as a content creator who streams and also dabbles in video editing. I’m mainly a writer, so I can setup profiles to streamline my writing process — the same goes for video editing. I’m an intermediate-level video editor, so the programmable Loupedeck shortcuts help a lot as I don’t yet have my video editing app’s menu and keyboard shortcuts memorized.

The Loupedeck consoles don’t cut my writing time in half, but they do cut down on how much time I spend digging through software menus, which is very nice. The Loupedeck+ is a different beast that’s somewhat above me — I don’t consistently edit photos or videos at that level, but it’s nice to know the options are there if I ever want to go deeper.

Despite their status as premium and often expensive displays, the 4K category is red hot if you can take the sheer number of product introductions as an indicator. 32-inch monitors are especially popular, with multiple models landing on shelves and desks from every major manufacturer.

Corsair has been around for nearly 30 years, but it's only recent delved into the display market. I’ve already reviewed the Xeneon 32QHD165 and found it fulfilled its promise as a premium gaming monitor, so I went into this review with high expectations.

The Xeneon 32UHD144, as the name indicates shockingly clearly, is a 32-inch 4K monitor that runs at 144 Hz. The Fast IPS Quantum Dot panel sports Adaptive-Sync, HDR600 and a wide color gamut. It also accepts a line of addons like webcams and peripheral controllers that integrate into the stand to create a hardware ecosystem. Let’s take deep dive into its features and tested performance to see if the Xeneon 32UHD144 is a worthy addition to our best 4K gaming monitors list. 

 Corsair Xeneon 32UHD144  Specs

Corsair hasn’t cut any corners with the 32UHD144. It's high-end in every respect. The Fast IPS Quantum Dot panel has a huge color gamut that qualifies as a Rec.2020 display. It covers over 83% of that gamut, which means it exceeds DCI-P3 by a healthy margin. I measured just shy of 117%. This is one colorful monitor.

Accuracy is provided in equal amountse. There are preset modes for Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and sRGB, all of which aced my color gamut tests. I recorded numbers that rival the best and most expensive professional screens. There’s also plenty of flexibility, as you can calibrate each mode with its own custom color temp settings. That’s something I rarely see in any display.

Picture quality is further enhanced with an edge backlight with 16 dimming zones. You can use the dynamic contrast feature for both SDR and HDR content and see contrast ratios over 10,000:1. The 32UHD144 is also DisplayHDR 600 certified, which I confirmed in my tests.

Of course, gaming performance is important as well. To that end, Corsair provides a dynamic overdrive that varies its operation based on frame rate for more effective blur reduction. You get Adaptive-Sync with both FreeSync and G-Sync operation confirmed in my tests. The 32UHD144 has not been certified by Nvidia. A backlight strobe feature is also included that can be used instead of Adaptive-Sync.

Corsair has kept the same hardware ecosystem I saw in my review of the 32QHD165. The stand has a threaded fitting called Multi Mount that can accept peripherals like webcams or lights using parts from Elgato. Controllers like Stream Deck and iCue Nexus can be used to quickly change settings without visiting the OSD. It also features the latest video interfaces like DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1 and USB-C. 

Assembly and Accessories

The Xeneon 32UHD144 comes in a generous box with plenty of crumbly foam to protect its contents. You’ll have to reach for a Phillips-head screwdriver to attach the panel to the upright. It then mates to the substantial metal base with a captive fastener. The cable management clips are already in place and slide up and down to keep the wiring tidy. The cable bundle includes a large external power supply plus USB-C-to-C and A-to-C, HDMI and DisplayPort. 

Product 360

You’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 32QHD165 and a 32UHD144 when there is no image on the screen. The two monitors are physically identical, both panel and stand. The bezel is a thin, flush-mounted affair with a narrow 9mm frame around the top and sides and 20mm on the bottom. A small Corsair logo, the familiar sail graphic, and the name Corsair on the base are the only visible branding.

The 32UHD144’s stand is one of the best I’ve seen. The base is solid aluminum with a gray satin finish. The upright is mostly metal and rock solid. The entire chassis is monolithic in both look and feel with firm adjustments. You get 110mm of height along with 5/20 degrees tilt and 30 degrees swivel. There is no portrait mode. The panel has a 100mm VESA mount in back if you prefer to use your own hardware. Corsair will sell you the monitor without a stand for a $100 discount.

Peripheral options are something unique to the Xeneon line of Corsair displays. At the top of the stand is a threaded fitting that accepts arms from Elgato, which are sold on Corsair’s website. You can attach anything with a standard tripod thread like webcams, lights or microphones. You can also hook up a Stream Deck or iCue Nexus and create macro buttons to change monitor settings on the fly.

In the back, you’ll find a set of cable clips on the upright that slide up and down to help manage the wiring. Here too, you can see the power button and joystick, which controls all monitor functions. There is no LED lighting, nor are there integrated speakers.

The input panel has all the latest interfaces. Video can feed through a DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.1, or a USB-C connection. A second USB-C upstream port is provided for peripherals, for which there are also two downstream Type-A ports. A 3.5mm headphone jack is provided as well.

OSD Features

The 32UHD144’s OSD is all business with a text-based system divided into six sub-menus. The only graphic is Corsair’s sail logo at the top. It’s summoned with a press of the joystick.

The first menu, Picture, has everything needed for image control and calibration. Standard mode is the default and out of the gate, it’s very accurate. It uses the 32UHD144’s full color gamut, which covers over 116% of DCI-P3. There are eight total modes which include gamut-specific settings for DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and sRGB. They are also extremely accurate.

The Color Temp menu has three presets plus a Custom mode specific to each picture mode. The 32UHD144 is a rare monitor with separate memories for each picture mode. That means you can create a custom calibration for each mode. I’ll explain this in more detail later, but it’s something that even some professional screens don’t offer. You also get three gamma options ranging from 2.0 to 2.4.

The overdrive has three speeds plus a dynamic option which is very effective. It varies the amount of overshoot based on frame rate. I found it cleaned up blur nicely without any ghosting. The fixed settings do create ghosting, so I avoided them. You also get MPRT which is a backlight strobe option. It operates instead of Adaptive-Sync and cuts brightness by around 30%.

The 32UHD144’s backlight is an edge array with 16 dimming zones. You can turn on the dimming for both SDR and HDR content and up the static contrast ratio to around 10,000:1.

Gaming enhancements include a frame rate counter and a set of aiming points that come in red or green with cross, dot or angle shapes.

My only nitpick with the OSD is that to turn on MPRT, you have to go into System Setting and turn off Adaptive-Sync first. This seems like a needless extra step when the AS toggle could have been added to the picture menu. The final Info screen shows resolution, refresh, HDR and Adaptive-Sync status along with the active input and the firmware version. 

Corsair Xeneon 32UHD144 Calibration Settings

There are a number of ways to optimize the 32UHD144’s picture for maximum accuracy. Out of the box, color is very close to the Rec.2020 spec, but grayscale runs slightly warm in tone. Gamma is super tight no matter what options you choose. If you switch to one of the specific gamut modes, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 or sRGB, you get very high accuracy. The best part is the custom color temp sliders can be set independently for each mode. I’ve done this for you, and my settings are in the table below.

HDR signals lock out all picture controls, but that mode is super precise with excellent grayscale and EOTF tracking. You can see those test results on page five.

Gaming and Hands-on

The Xeneon 32UHD144 is a supremely useful display that serves equally well for work or play. As a productivity tool, it has all the attributes to help power through documents or do research, or do both simultaneously. Or you can keep a news crawl going in a corner while you watch a video. Big monitors like this can be used in a multitude of ways, and the flat panel means no image distortion. 32-inches in the 16:9 aspect is large but not overwhelming. Anything larger like a 43-inch, or wider like a 38-inch 21:9 screen and you’ll have to make some decisions about desktop space.

The picture is razor sharp like any premium 4K screen, but the color stands out. There are a few other 32-inch 4K monitors that have similarly large color gamuts, which I’ll cover in the test comparisons but suffice to say that the 32UHD144 is very colorful. You won’t find a larger gamut in this price range or in the very expensive area occupied by FALD and Mini LED panels.

I saw no benefit to running HDR for Windows productivity apps. Things like Word or Excel don’t look any different. If you want to edit HDR graphics though, it’s an easy switch in Control Panel. Though this is an HDR600 panel and thus very bright, it isn’t too harsh to show pictures in Photoshop or a graphics viewer. HDR streams from Netflix and Paramount+ shine with bright highlights, deep blacks and vibrant color. If you want to watch TV on the 32UHD144, it is more than up to the task.

There is no weakness in gaming performance here. Adaptive-Sync worked perfectly on my FreeSync and G-Sync testbeds with HDR and dynamic overdrive. This feature is one of the things worth buying the 32UHD144 for, and it is not available on many other screens. However, I didn’t see any benefit to the backlight strobe. I had to turn off Adaptive Sync, which at 100-120fps isn’t ideal, and it caused some ringing around moving objects. There were no artifacts when playing with G-Sync and dynamic overdrive, with speeds in Doom Eternal hovering around 120fps.

The 32UHD144’s low input lag definitely made a difference in my personal play experience. I play the same set of games for each review to make fair comparisons between displays and in this case, I had greater success in Doom Eternal’s Horde mode. I also had an easier time dispatching enemies in Call of Duty WWI and Tomb Raider. This is a very addicting display. I expect console gamers will be equally enamored since it’s ready for the 120 Hz VRR with HDR coming from the latest Xbox and PlayStation systems.

The rendered HDR image is stunning. I tweaked Doom’s internal picture controls and was rewarded with a foreboding and hellish landscape that burst with texture. The difference between artificial and natural surfaces was clear. This is an area where 4K is distinctly better than QHD, as long as you don’t move the mouse too quickly. Once the action speeds up, QHD at 165 Hz will look as good or better. However, knowing this did not reduce my enjoyment of the 32UHD144. It is a very capable and amazing-looking gaming screen. 

The comparison group for the Xeneon 32UHD144 is all 32-inch 4K IPS screens running at 144 Hz. We have Philips’ 329M1RV, Dell’s G3223Q, MSI’s MPG321UR-QDX, BenQ’s EX3210U and the Mini LED ViewSonic XG321UG. That last one costs around twice as much as the others. It’s here to provide a frame of reference for what you get when you buy a top-of-the-line 4K monitor. 

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

144 Hz means a 7ms screen draw time in all cases but the MSI. That one has a tiny advantage with slightly less motion blur at full speed. The 32UHD144 is in line with the others for sheer speed. It is the only one with variable overdrive, which helps up motion resolution a bit over a monitor with fixed overdrive.

It is also one of the quickest overall 4K screens I’ve measured. 30ms isn’t too far behind the capabilities of a QHD/165 Hz monitor. Though the 165 Hz screen will have smoother motion, control response and feel will be similar. The 32UHD144 is a very worthy gaming monitor that will satisfy a player’s wish for high pixel density and low input lag.

Viewing Angles

The 32UHD144 has an off-axis image typical of IPS monitors. At 45 degrees to the side, you’ll see a 30% light reduction and a shift to reddish green. The detail in shadow areas will be a little harder to make out. You can see that the 0 and 10% steps look the same in the photos. The top view is washed out with a blue tint and a 40% reduction in brightness. 

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

The 32UHD144 does well in the uniformity test with no visible glow or bleed. The light meter detected a little extra light in the lower left corner, but this wasn’t enough to be seen with the naked eye. This is clearly a quality panel built to a high standard.

To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The 32UHD144 has no trouble exceeding its brightness spec of 400 nits in SDR mode. There is plenty of light here for any environment, including outdoors. The downside of this is a relatively narrow output range. I couldn’t get the backlight down to 50 nits for dark room gameplay. The minimum is 81 nits which is a little fatiguing if you plan to play for hours in the dark. Native contrast is an IPS average 1,050.3:1. This increases to around 10,000:1 when using the local dimming option in SDR mode.

After Calibration to 200 nits

After calibrating the Standard picture mode, contrast drops slightly to 963:1. There is no visible reduction in picture quality. There is so much color that you almost don’t notice the black levels. The image is richly saturated and detailed.

ANSI contrast is around the same level at 935.5:1. The 32UHD144 is a well-engineered and carefully built monitor with premium components and quality control. 

The 32UHD144 can be optimized in many ways using the preset color gamut modes. Standard uses the full native color space, which is close to Rec.2020. Alternately, you can select Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 or sRGB and calibrate them individually. 

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

Grayscale tracking is very consistent across all picture modes. Out of the box, the 32UHD144 runs a little warm in tone, but the errors are slight and only visible above 60% brightness. Gamma tracking is about as close to perfect as a monitor can get.

Calibrating the custom color temp removes all visible errors and takes the 32UHD144 to a reference level of accuracy. Gamma gets slightly lighter on the chart, but this change cannot be seen with the naked eye. I was able to achieve the same results in every gamut mode, so I’ve only included a single before and after chart here.

Comparisons

With a default grayscale error of 3.23dE, the 32UHD144 can be enjoyed without calibration. But since there is such upward potential, it makes sense to tweak a bit. I got the average error below 1dE in all gamut modes using independent RGB settings. You’ll find them in the table back on page one. The post-calibration errors for the other modes are DCI-P3 – 0.63dE, Adobe RGB – 0.58dE and sRGB – 1.06dE.

Gamma tracking is among the best in class. The range of values is super tight at only 0.06 from lowest to highest. The average value is 2.16 for a 1.82% deviation, which is also excellent. This holds true in all gamut modes.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

I’ve included charts showing all the 32UHD144’s gamut modes. The default measurements for Standard mode, which are set against the Rec.2020 standard, show some hue errors in red and magenta and slight under-saturation overall. Note that this is under-saturation in the Rec.2020 realm, DCI-P3 would show a general over-saturation.

If you pick a specific gamut mode, the 32UHD144 hits the marks right on the nose. You can see that every point is on target for DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and sRGB. It doesn’t get better than this.

Comparisons

I’ve charted the error for Standard mode, which uses the 32UHD144’s full native gamut. The other color modes have even lower values. Adobe RGB is 1.70dE, DCI-P3 is 1.32dE and sRGB is 1.33dE. That result exceeds many professional monitors that cost substantially more.

The 32UHD144’s near-117% coverage of DCI-P3 should be no surprise, given that it covers 83.36% of Rec.2020. That makes it one of the most colorful monitors I’ve tested. You can get similar coverage from the BenQ, MSI and ViewSonic screens with comparable levels of accuracy.

Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

The 32UHD144 is a very capable HDR monitor with a zone dimming edge backlight. It has 16 dimming zones, which enhance contrast significantly. An HDR10 signal switches modes automatically. 

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The 32UHD144 is rated for 600 nits in HDR mode, and my sample beat that handily with nearly 700 nits of total output measured using a full-field white pattern. That’s seriously bright. In practice, you’ll only see this level in small highlight areas. Thanks to the effective zone dimming feature, black levels are relatively low, and contrast is above average at 10,875.2:1. The Mini LED ViewSonic achieves high values thanks to its incredibly bright backlight and super low black levels. But that level of performance will cost you about double the price of the Corsair and the other screens.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

I was surprised to see a lack of image control in HDR mode. There is only a single picture mode and no means of changing color. But obviously, that isn’t a problem given the results shown above. The 32UHD144 is one of the most color-accurate HDR monitors I’ve tested. Grayscale tracking is visually perfect. The only flaw is some lightness at the lowest level. This is likely due to the speed in which the zone dimming backlight reacts to changes in picture levels. In practice, the HDR image is very deep with true blacks and very bright highlights.

In the color test, the 32UHD144 is clearly using the Rec.2020 reference for all content, even when mastered to DCI-P3. You can see in the DCI chart how green tracks toward the Rec.2020 points, which means it’s a tad bluer. This will be hard to spot in actual content, but a firmware update might be in order to ensure that color tracks correctly for the content’s reference gamut. Saturation points are linear in progression with slight over-saturation overall, not a bad thing.

In the HDR monitor category, there are three distinct tiers of image quality. Budget screens make do with no dynamic contrast and therefore have images that look much the same whether they’re SDR or HDR. At the high end where prices can top $2,000, we have full-array local dimming backlights, some with Mini LEDs, and potentially over 1,000 dimming zones. They look stunning but their prices are high.

In the middle, for $800-1,000, are monitors like the Corsair Xeneon 32UHD144. They deliver plenty of brightness and zone dimming edge backlights to get HDR contrast over 10,000:1. That’s a significant difference from the IPS typical 1,000:1. And those monitors have color gamuts just as large, if not larger, than their more expensive cousins. They are in the sweet spot of the price/performance ratio.

The 32UHD144 checks all the boxes for a premium 4K screen. Its video processing is excellent thanks to dynamic overdrive, something very few gaming monitors offer. The image is stunning thanks to that Quantum Dot film and the resulting huge color gamut. With nearly 117% coverage of DCI-P3, it qualifies as a Rec.2020 panel. Again, only a few other screens have this much color.

Corsair also heads the class in color accuracy. With preset picture modes for Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and sRGB that are all spot-on, you can use it for the same color-critical work normally taken on by a much more expensive professional display. The 32UHD144 is a reference-level monitor.

While the price at this writing is $999 ($899 without the stand), it doesn’t cost much more than other comparable products. And its color accuracy, build quality and ability to anchor a hardware ecosystem make it stand out. The Corsair Xeneon 32UHD144 is a monitor anyone looking to go 4K should strongly consider.

Although there are several 16-inch creator laptops on the market, including Apple’s latest MacBook Pro, Asus’ Vivobook Pro 16X serves as the first with a 16:10, 16-inch OLED display, allowing for a serious pop of color. Starting at $1,449 (price TBD as tested), the Vivobook Pro 16X is available with up to a Ryzen 7 5800H or Intel Core i7-11370H CPU and RTX 3050 Ti graphics, making it ideal for video editing, 3D rendering or photoshopping. In its attempt to build the best ultrabook for creatives, the company also added a dial function within the touchpad, which is great for applications like Adobe Photoshop or Premiere. 

However, the star of the show is the Vivobook Pro’s 16-inch 4K OLED display with HDR support and 16:10 aspect ratio. The display is Pantone validated, and according to Asus, offers low blue-light emissions. The Vivobook also has a lightweight design fit for portability and several port connections for when you’re mobile. 

Although the Vivobook Pro's display and lightweight design stand out in a good way, the laptop compromises a bit too much on its webcam and audio output. It’s also slightly larger than some competitors.

Design of the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

The Asus Vivobook Pro 16X sports a colorful display, but the laptop's body is all about being discreet. The dark gray chassis, which Asus refers to as "zero degree black," feels smooth and cool to the touch. (So much so, my cat took a nap on it.) Its sleek finish attracts dust, specs, and fingerprints very quickly, so you'll want to wipe it down often.

The Vivobook Pro 16X’s flair and personality are reserved for its keyboard. When you flip the lid open, the first thing you notice is its red escape button and stylized enter key, which provides a cool factor to its otherwise low-key design. Folks will also see phrases written near the display like “own the universe” above the F keys, which is pretty goofy. Luckily, they’re pretty small and hardly noticeable. The keyboard itself is color-coded with gray and black caps for different groups of keys. Command keys like Shift, Windows, Tab, and Enter are gray, while letter, space, and number keys are black.

There are two USB Type-A ports on the left side of the laptop. Everything else is on the right, including another USB Type-A port, USB Type-C (though that didn't work for charging), HDMI, a microSD card slot and a headphone jack.

The design is also thin and light given its hardware. The chassis weighs 4.3 pounds and is only 0.74-inches thick, which is excellent. However, it’s the heaviest device when compared to the Dell XPS 15 (9510), Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 4. Each comes in at 4.3, 4 , and 3.4 pounds, respectively, though the XPS 15 and Surface Laptop have smaller displays, and the Surface doesn't have discrete graphics. The Vivobook Pro 16 has a 14.19 x 10.2 x 0.74-inch footprint, the largest dimensions of the systems we compared, but it’s only slightly larger than the 16-inch ThinkPad X1 Extreme, which comes in at 14.13 x 9.99 x 0.70 inches.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X Specifications

Productivity Performance of the Asus Vivobook Pro

Our review unit of the Asus Vivobook Pro came configured with an AMD Ryzen 9 59000H with 32GB of RAM and 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, which provide for strong productivity performance.

During our Geekbench 5.4 test, our Vivobook Pro achieved a single-core score 1,522 and 8,191 on multi-core. It bested its competitors in multi-core performance but fell short in single-core, beating only the Surface Laptop 4’s 1,173 score, which utilizes an AMD Ryzen 7 4980U processor. Meanwhile, the Dell XPS 15 (9510) scored 1,559 single-core and 7,477 multi-core next to the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4’s 1,530 single-core and 7,477 multi-core scores. The XPS and ThinkPad were tested with an Intel Core i7-11800H processor.

During our file transfer test, which consists of copying 25GB of files, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 took the lead at 1,308.58 MBps, with the Vivobook Pro coming in second at 1,042.63 MBps. In comparison, the Dell XPS 15 (9510) and Microsoft Surface Laptop we tested against were the slowest at 825.57 and 372.49 MBps, respectively.

On our Handbrake test in which we had the laptops transcode a 4K video to 1080p,  the Vivobook Pro finished the fastest with a time of  6 minutes and 41seconds, ahead of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme’s  mark of 7:37. This completely shattered the times produced by the Dell XPS 15 (9510) and Surface Laptop 4, which came in at 8:10 and 8:21. 

To stress the Vivobook Pro 16X, we ran Cinebench R23 on a loop twenty times. It scored an average of 11,347.8. The first test started at 11.966.87 before steadily declining to its lowest point halfway through the run at a score of 11.000.44 — otherwise, it ran quite stable.. Additionally, CPU speeds came at an average of 3,418.62 with a temperature of 87.9 degrees Celsius. 

With the RTX 3050 Ti,  the laptop can handle some light gaming in between heavy productivity workloads. I was able to play Grand Theft Auto V at 1080p on very high settings with no hiccups or screen tears and the frame rate hovered around 60 fps the entire time. However, on the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark test, it scored 40 fps at 1080p on the highest setting using DX12.

Display on the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

The 16-inch, 4K OLED display from Samsung, in a 16:10 aspect ratio offers a wide array of colors . It has a display resolution of 3840 x 2400, much more generous than other laptops in the market. For example, the Dell XPS 15 (9510) and Lenovo ThinkPad Extreme Gen 4 have  resolutions of 3456 x 2160 and 2560 x 1600, respectively. The Vivobook also boasts up to a 120 Hz refresh rate.

We watched a short film in 4K called Tears of Steel, a visually striking sci-fi movie that uses vivid colors, deep blacks and immense detail. The neon colors on the inside of a floating vessel popped immensely and made those scenes all the more vivid when the next scene showed the dark gray skies and dystopian landscape outside. There was a scene where a man slid down a rope, and if I wanted to, I could count every ridge in the rope, which is an impressive amount of detail.

Asus' Samsung-made display edges out rival laptops with its 89.2% coverage of the DCI-P3 and 126% of the sRGB Color Gamut.  Its closest competitor, the Dell XPS 15 (9510), which also has an OLED panel, hit only   85% of the DCI-P3 gamut and 120% of sRGB.

On our lightmeter, the Vivobook's screen measured 393 nits of brightness. The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 got brighter, and the Dell XPS 15's OLED screen was only a few nits behind it.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

Though I prefer mechanical switches – something you don’t see on non-gaming laptops – I appreciated the Vivobook keyboard’s ability to deliver quiet, professional strokes. Keystrokes felt responsive and the backlit keys themselves are comfortable enough, if not a bit stiff at times due to the slight curves on the ends of each keycap.

The inclusion of a number pad ultimately hindered my typing ability because the keyboard is a bit left of center. As a result, I had to look down as I typed to make sure I hit the appropriate keys, because they aren’t where I am used to. If you need a number pad, this is probably something you can get used to. Since I don't use one, I would have preferred a layout without it. My usual score on the 10fastfingers.com typing test is 57 words per minute, but on this keyboard, I dropped to 45 wpm because of all the typos I made.

The touchpad is generously large at 5.1 x 3.9 inches, That may be partly due to the Asus Dialpad technology it utilizes. This tech is a cross between the physical Asus Dial found on ProArt StudioBooks and its ZenBook’s Virtual DialPad. 

The feature is enabled on the Vivobook Pro by making a diagonal swipe gesture in the top right corner of the touchpad. By default, it can adjust the display brightness or change the volume. However, in certain apps like Adobe Photoshop, functionality includes changing brush sizes, saturations, adjusting color opacity, undoing actions, and more.

Audio on the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

The speakers, made by Harman Kardon, are weak. For one, I’d prefer if it got louder; the maximum volume leaves more to be desired.  I listened to “Deep Down” by Josh Gabriel and Winter Kills, and none of what makes the song pop could be produced by these speakers. Snares are not crisp and  dynamic range is lost because the max volume is so low.   There is no audible bass to be heard, but at least I could make out the vocals well enough.

Upgradeability of the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

There’s not much opportunity to upgrade this laptop. The bottom panel of the Vivobook Pro 16X is bolted in by 11 Torx screws alongside the edges and middle, some of which were a bit of trouble taking off. The parts inside can’t be upgraded, the memory comes soldered, rather than slotted. It appears the SSD can be upgraded, but there is only a single slot available, so you'll have to replace the existing drive.

Battery Life on the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

Asus’ VivobookPro 16x has excellent battery life, lasting over 11 hours on our battery test, which involves browsing the web, streaming video and running OpenGL tests at 150 nits of brightness.

It came only second to the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4, which squeezed in an extra hour of endurance . Otherwise, Asus’s laptop blows competitors out of the water, including the Dell XPS 15, and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4, which offered 6.5 and 7.5 hours of battery life respectively.

Heat on the Vivobook Pro 16X

The Vivobook Pro 16X warmed up a bit while firing on all  cylinders during our benchmark testing. The keyboard reached temperatures of 33.5 degrees Celsius (92 degrees Fahrenheit) halfway through our 20 consecutive runs of Cinebench R23 and 35.4 degrees Celsius (94 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of it. The trackpad remained reasonably cool, only heating up to 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) and 29.8 Celsius degrees (85 degrees Fahrenheit) toward the end.

The center of the underside is where it was the hottest, coming in at 43.4 Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit).

Webcam on the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

The 720p webcam on the Vivobook Pro 16X is functional at best, but produces grainy pictures and video footage. I first used the webcam in an area that wasn’t well lit and it resulted in a blurry mess. When I took a picture in a well-lit area, it washed out my skin tone and there was a ton of detail missing from my beard.

No amount of perfect lighting will fix this either. From my dark dwelling to the clinical lights of a work office, nothing made a meaningful visual difference in our testing. At least it includes a built-in privacy shutter. 

We would have strongly preferred a sharper, 1080p camera. The sensor is color accurate, but that doesn't necessarily help when you're blurry.

Software and Warranty on the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

The Vivobook Pro 16X comes with several preloaded, first-party utilities  One is MyAsus, a central hub that allows users to run diagnostics and customize the keyboard backlight, fan speeds, AI-noise cancellation features, and more. It also provides access to Asus OLED Care, which enables a pixel-shifting/refresh feature needed to keep the display healthy. 

There’s also a feature called TaskFirst which helps prioritize which apps get the most bandwidth. Options extend from productivity and communication, multimedia streaming, games to its Glidex screen extend cross display feature. It’s by far the most useful preinstalled app available.

Asus says every Vivobook Pro 16x comes with three months free of Adobe Creative Cloud, which is nice if you don't have it already. There’s also the usual Windows bloatware like Skype, Spotify, Cortona, TikTok, and a trial of Microsoft Office 365. Asus sells the Vivobook Pro 16X with a 1-year limited warranty.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X Configurations

The configuration of the Vivobook Pro 16X  we tested included an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H (8-core/16-thread 4.4GHz max boost) CPU, Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti graphics, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB M.2 NVMe of storage.  Asus told Tom's Hardware that this  SKU should be available by the end of the year but didn't have an exact price. We do know that the price for a configuration with the same CPU, GPU and SSD, but just 16GB of RAM, will cost $1,449.99. 

Asus offers an 11th Generation Intel version of this Vivobook. It comes with an i7-11370H processor (4-core/8-thread 3.3GHZ max boost), Nvidia RTX 3050 16GB or 32GB DDR4, and 1TB M.2 NVMe of storage.

Bottom Line

Overall, the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X is a good productivity laptop, and its OLED display is excellent for photo and video editing as well as content consumption. For a 16-inch laptop, it’s easy enough to lug around if you can find a decent bag capable of holding it. There are also many ports, which is excellent when you’re on the go and don’t want to bring a slew of dongles with you.

Despite its relatively light weight and slim design, this 16-incher is still a bit larger than the 16-inch ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4, so that's worth keeping in mind if size is an issue. And for all its ports, there could have been more contemporary options, like USB-C power delivery support or more than one 3.2 USB Type-A port. Considering that this is a premium laptop many people would use for video conferencing, we expected a better webcam and speakers. 

If you don’t need the high resolution and vibrant colors that come with this display, you may be better off with a Dell XPS 15 (9510) or Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4, which had comparable performance to the Vivobook Pro 16X, though they may be a bit more expensive based on the starting price we do know.

For those who want strong, Ryzen-based performance and value a big 16-inch OLED screen, the VivobookPro 16X is a strong choice. However, you'll have to live with a mediocre conferencing experience.

Today, in an Xbox news post, Microsoft announced a new image-enhancing feature coming to the Edge browser called Clarity Boost. The feature adds clarity to games streamed from Microsoft's own Xbox Cloud Gaming Servers. The service will be exclusive to Xbox's streaming service alone, with no word on Microsoft if the feature will extend to other platforms as well.

The feature is available to try now through the Microsoft Edge Canary Channel, which you can check out here. Clarity Boost will arrive officially to Edge sometime in 2022.

To demonstrate the feature, Microsoft has provided an image with both Clarity Boost on and off. The feature works very similarly to the clarity sliders you might find in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, in that it adds a bit of contrast to areas of the image with sharp edges. This makes the image sharper and reduces blurring for an overall cleaner image.

Microsoft seems to have tuned the Clarity Boost option very well, it's neither too low nor too high, and it really does make the image look a bit better. In addition, the adjustment is available as a toggle when you start streaming Xbox games from the Edge canary browser.

But strangely, the feature will be exclusive to the Edge browser and it doesn't appear to be making its way into the Xbox app for PC, which is another way you can stream Xbox games from PCs. We're not sure why this is the case, but possibly Microsoft is testing this feature out before it makes its way into the Xbox app or even Xbox consoles.

For full details on Xbox's Cloud Gaming streaming service, check our coverage here, and if you want to try streaming Xbox games from a Rasberry Pi, we have a tutorial you can check out here as well.

Hardware detective Tum_Apisak has dug up new benchmarks for Intel's forthcoming Core i5-12400.  It's an unreleased chip, but a eBay seller recently put the hexa-core Alder Lake processor up for purchase for $364.77.

It's not the first time that the Core i5-12400 is making rounds in the hardware circles. Last month, a Bilibili user shared some Core i5-12400 benchmarks where the chip was putting up some very strong performance. On this occasion, we get to see the Core i5-12400 go up against the Ryzen 5 5600X in Adobe Premiere Pro from the PugetBench benchmark suite.

If we put all the small leaks together, the Core i5-12400 reportedly comes equipped with six Golden Cove cores at 2.5 GHz that can boost up to 4.4 GHz. The Alder Lake processor also sports 18MB of L3 cache and a 65W PBP (Processor Base Power). The Ryzen 5 5600X, on the other hand, wields six of AMD's Zen 3 cores that operate with a 3.7 GHz base clock and 4.6 GHz boost clock. The chip has 32MB of L3 cache and a 65W TDP. The Ryzen 5 5600X lacks integrated graphics so the Core i5-12400F is a more fair comparison. However, it doesn't matter since Intel's F-series SKUs have the same level of performance as their non-F counterparts.

Intel Core i5-12400 Benchmarks

As with all benchmark leaks, it's useful to sprinkle some salt over them. Although Intel has likely already shipped the Core i5-12400 to OEMs, there's no way to know whether the Core i5-12400 from the benchmark is a retail sample or not. There are some details that may affect the Core i5-12400's numbers, though. For starters the Core i5-12400 was paired with DDR4-2400 memory whereas the Ryzen 5 5600X had access to faster DDR4-4000 memory. Both systems use the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and Windows 10 21H1 (19043).

Windows 11 does give Alder Lake a nice performance boost in some workloads. Our Alder Lake review shows that Alder Lake and Ryzen 5000 perform similarly in Premiere Pro regardless if it's Windows 10 or Windows 11. Therefore, we don't expect the operating system to have hindered the Core i5-12400's performance.

Overall, the Ryzen 5 5600X delivered just 1.4% more performance than the Core i5-12400. The delta is so small that it's within the margin of error. Heck, you could even argue that the Core i5-12400 might actually be faster if was running with the same DDR4-4000 memory. Unfortunately, that's something we won't know until Intel officially launches its Alder Lake non-K series processors.

When considering speed versus resolution in the best gaming monitors, there is only one sure thing: A higher resolution means less speed. The fastest panels run at 360 Hz and FHD resolution. Ultra HD (UHD) displays, the highest pixel count generally available, are currently stuck at 144 Hz. While this is by no means slow, modern video cards can easily wring 200 fps or more from FHD and QHD screens. Does that matter? Oh yes, it does. Even casual gamers can easily see that difference.

But gamers looking for high resolution shouldn’t go below UHD. To that end, we’re seeing a new crop of high-res screens in 27 to 32-inch sizes. These are undoubtedly inspired by the latest consoles from Microsoft and Sony, which feature UHD output at 120 Hz with FreeSync. Some new televisions can support this format, but many more monitors can. MSI’s latest offering is the Optix MPG321UR-QD. It’s a 32-inch IPS panel with 144 Hz, Adaptive-Sync, HDMI 2.1, KVM, extended color and selectable gamuts that include sRGB, Adobe RGB and a native palette that approaches Rec.2020. Let’s take a look.

MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD Specs

Color output is the MPG321UR-QD’s most prominent feature. We’ve termed its gamut “DCI-P3+” because it covers over 117% of that spec. That’s a lot, a whole lot. You’ll see in our tests that it completely covers the DCI green primary and over-achieves in red. Rec.2020 coverage? That’s just over 78%. Only the very expensive Asus PG32UQX plays in that league.

Accuracy is a priority as well. You can select DCI-P3, Adobe RGB or sRGB gamuts in the OSD, and they render correctly. You can also skip the calibration step. The MPG321UR-QD is pretty close to perfect right out of the box.

MSI hasn’t left out any gaming features here. In addition to 144 Hz over HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 inputs, there’s Display Stream Compression (DSC), 10-bit color and both flavors of Adaptive-Sync. FreeSync is the native tech, and the MPG321UR-QD is G-Sync compatible, as confirmed in our tests (although it has not been certified by Nvidia at this time). Also included is MPRT, which is MSI’s version of blur reduction via backlight strobe. There are also aiming points and a frame rate counter to help gamers.

In addition to an LED lighting feature, a front-mounted light sensor can manipulate brightness and color temperature to balance ambient lighting. And there are low blue light modes to help combat eye fatigue.

You also get a plethora of USB options. A USB-C input supports peripherals and video signals. Three additional USB-B inputs and six downstream ports support a KVM feature that’s completely configurable in the OSD. To say this monitor is versatile would be an understatement. It can manage multiple PCs and/or consoles with ease.

Assembly and Accessories

The MPG321UR-QD ships in three pieces which assemble easily. After attaching the base to the upright with a captive bolt, you’ll need a Phillip’s-head screwdriver to bolt the panel to the stand with its included fasteners. You’ll find DisplayPort, HDMI, two USB cables, and an IEC power cord in the accessory bundle. You also get a spring-loaded cable management dongle and bolt adapters for a monitor arm.

Product 360

The MPG321UR-QD is large but not too large for the average desktop. In our experience, 32-inch monitors are the biggest screens that can easily integrate into a typical workspace. Though not as broad as 21:9 ultrawides, they have a height advantage that some users prefer.

The bezel is flush and thin at 8mm on the top and sides. Multiple MPG321UR-QDs won’t show a super-obvious dividing line if you go that route. Around the back, the finish takes on the look of brushed metal, with a nicely integrated LED strip that angles up across the centerline. The lighting effects and colors can be controlled in the OSD or by MSI’s desktop app. An Optix logo is also prominently displayed at the left. In the lower corner, you can just see the OSD joystick. It’s the only control besides a large power button on the bottom-right edge of the panel that doubles as a status light: white for power, amber for standby.

The stand is quite substantial and the overall package exudes premium build quality. It features a four-inch height adjustment, along with 30 degrees swivel to either side and 5/30 degrees tilt, but portrait mode is not available with the MPG321UR-QD. Movements are firm and true, with no slop or wobble which contribute to the solid feel.

The MPG321UR-QD’s input complement is tremendous. On the left side are two USB downstream ports, along with headphone and microphone jacks. The mic input includes noise cancellation, which makes your voice much clearer and free of background clutter. On the bottom are four additional USB downstream ports plus three upstream type-B inputs. For video, there’s DisplayPort 1.4a, two HDMI 2.1 and USB-C which supports both video and peripheral functions. All four USB inputs can be assigned using the OSD’s KVM functions.

OSD Features

The MPG321UR-QD has a huge OSD with every conceivable option for gaming, calibration, color gamut selection, KVM and control of the bezel’s room light sensor. It’s divided into eight submenus.

The first two menus deal with game-specific options along with KVM functions and the ambient light sensor. The latter can vary brightness and/or color temperature according to room lighting conditions.

Smart Crosshair is something relatively unique. Not only do you get six different reticles, but their color can also be set to an Auto mode that ensures they are always in contrast with the image. The change is instantaneous and seamless. This is a very cool and useful feature.

Optix Scope can magnify the center of the screen using three different sized windows and 1.5x, 2x and 4x magnifications. It’s also a beneficial gaming aid that you won’t find on many other monitors.

In the Gaming menu, you’ll find video processing and picture options. Here, things get a bit confusing. There are five image presets, but you’ll also find more presets in the Professional menu. Our suggestion is to set User (the default) in the Game Mode menu, then make changes in color from the Professional menu. Night Vision is an option that raises black levels to improve shadow detail. It has three presets and an auto mode. There’s also a three-level overdrive which is almost flawless in operation. You can use it on its fastest setting with no ghosting and almost no motion blur. MPRT Sync is a backlight that takes out Adaptive-Sync. It doesn’t reduce brightness too much, but it introduces phasing artifacts that we found distracting. Also here is a refresh rate indicator and an alarm clock.

In Professional, there are eight color modes. The ones labeled sRGB, Adobe RGB and Display P3 accurately display those gamuts. They are the best way to control the MPG321UR-QD’s color gamut volume. HDCR is a dynamic contrast option that effectively broadens the dynamic range, but it makes some content very bright. We used it for gaming but in Windows, it’s too harsh.

If you want to calibrate, there are color temp controls in the Image menu but no gamma presets. We found after much trial and error that calibration offers no benefit and has the side effect of reducing both light output and contrast when the Customization color temp is used. Luckily, the Normal preset is very good.

MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD Calibration Settings

Though you can achieve very good grayscale tracking by calibrating the MPG321UR-QD, we don’t recommend it. The Customization color temp setting limits brightness to just 160 nits and reduces the native contrast ratio to around 360:1. The Normal color temp preset is very close to D65 with no visible errors. The native color gamut appears when you select User in the Pro Mode submenu. It covers over 117% of DCI-P3. You can get closer to an exact rendering of DCI by choosing Display P3. If you want sRGB or Adobe RGB, those presets are available and very accurate as well. We’ll show you all those test results on page four. We recommend setting Pro Mode to Display P3 or User, color temp Normal, then setting brightness to taste for general use and SDR gaming. For 200 nits, the Brightness slider should be on 22. The minimum level is 131 nits.

Gaming and Hands-on

The first thing we noticed when booting up Windows was the MPG321UR-QD bursting with color. Our desktop background photos took on a whole new look with vibrant primary shades and deep secondaries. Though we wished for a bit more contrast, it didn’t matter with most content. Color is so rich and forward that it’s easy to overlook blacks that aren’t super dark. Highlights and white areas were neutral and smooth with no distracting artifacts. Small text was sharp and easy to read. 139 ppi pixel density means you’ll have to practically touch your nose to the screen before you see a jagged line or any pixels whatsoever. This is one sharp monitor.

HDR in Windows works well at default settings and it doesn’t make the picture harsh or overly bright. Though it can be used all the time, we thought most productivity apps were easier to manage in SDR mode. It was nice to have sRGB, Adobe RGB and Display P3 color modes when needed in Photoshop or video editing apps. They are accurate enough for critical work.

We knew gaming would be something special the moment we loaded Doom Eternal. The opening menu screen drew stares right away with its deep contrast and insane color. Playing the game proved exciting as the MPG321UR-QD’s superb overdrive made it one of the smoothest Ultra HD screens we’ve seen yet. Its gaming performance is easily equal to premium screens like Asus’ PG27UQ or Acer’s X27. And its game HDR isn’t far behind those monitors either. Though MSI makes do with an edge backlight, it effectively dims vertical zones to broaden the dynamic range. The effect is well done and there is no image pumping or obvious modulation of the backlight.

Tomb Raider also benefitted from the MPG321UR-QD’s large color gamut. Though we could choose sRGB mode for strict accuracy, it was more fun to go native in User with its 117% coverage of DCI-P3. Some monitors can look overblown when applying big color to SDR games but MSI manages its palette well. Content looks great in natural textures like stone, grass and rock. Man-made objects have the proper metallic hues with sharply rendered reflections when appropriate.

Dark scenes in the HDR version of Call of Duty WWII, were a much deeper black than their SDR counterparts. Shadow detail was easy to make out with no need to use the Night Vision feature. We had fun with the adaptive crosshairs and the Optix Scope which clearly magnified the center of the screen. This made sniping attacks much more successful.

We tried out the room light sensor for a few gaming sessions. It subtly manipulates brightness and color temp to balance the image with ambient light. It takes a few seconds to settle into a consistent state and in our office environment, it produced a decent picture. If you have a sunny window like we do, it can be effective. The color temp was sometimes too cool for our liking, but brightness always seemed ideal.

Plugging in our Philips BDP-7501 Ultra HD Blu-ray player demonstrated the MPG321UR-QD’s ability to process 24p film cadence which is a huge plus. The monitor is perfectly capable of serving as a television for disc or streamed content. 32 inches may seem like a small TV but in an office or small living area, it works fine. There’s no Dolby Vision here but HDR10 content from Amazon and Netflix streamed with an Apple TV looks fantastic.

We’ve rounded up a collection of QHD and UHD monitors to compare the MPG321UR-QD’s performance. For QHD, we have Samsung’s C32G75T, Corsair’s 32QHD165 and Pixio’s PXC327. UHD screens are the Aorus FI32U and Asus PG32UQX.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

All the monitors refresh in the expected time except the Pixio which is a tad slower than 165 Hz Corsair. The MPG321UR-QD is right where it should be at 7ms. Coupled with a spectacular overdrive, it’s one of the smoothest Ultra HD monitors we’ve reviewed. Motion blur is minimal, and you won’t find any improvement from the MPRT backlight strobe feature. As we said initially, speed and resolution are mutually exclusive, at least at this point. The top two QHD screens are visibly smoother.

Input lag scores shuffle the field a bit, but the Samsung is still the quickest 32-inch monitor by far. The MPG321UR-QD is respectably fast with a 30ms total score. Only the most skilled players will need a faster monitor than this. There is nothing to complain about here.

Viewing Angles

The MPG321UR-QD is definitely an IPS screen but its red color shift almost suggests a VA panel. If it had 3,000:1 contrast, it would be, but it does not. Though brightness and detail change little as you move from on axis to 45 degrees, the red tint is unmistakable. The top view is a bit blue with lower brightness and less defined detail. One could share this monitor with another user, but it wouldn’t be an ideal experience. It’s best enjoyed alone.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

Our MPG321UR-QD sample showed a slight edge glow at the bottom of the screen. The center zone was also a bit hot. However, these artifacts were hard to spot in actual content and dark gaming environments rendered well. There were no color uniformity issues and brighter field patterns showed no problems either.

To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The MPG321UR-QD wisely limits its SDR brightness peak to 424 nits. Therefore, there is no need for greater output in SDR mode. It’s better to save that brightness for HDR where we measured over 700 nits. Black levels are just average among IPS panels and result in a native contrast ratio of 955.5:1.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Calibration in this case consisted of setting output to 200 nits. We didn’t employ the custom color temp because it limited brightness to 160 nits, too low for a fair comparison. The Normal color temp was accurate enough and it allowed us greater flexibility in setting the backlight to a proper and comfortable level. There is no visible change in black levels or contrast. They remain average for the IPS category.

ANSI contrast was slightly disappointing thanks to the brighter areas at the bottom of the screen. They lowered the score a bit from the static value, but the real-world image is still a good one, mainly thanks to the MPG321UR-QD’s extreme color saturation. We’ll talk about that on the next page.

We saw excellent out-of-box results when testing the MPG321UR-QD’s grayscale and color gamut accuracy. Gamma was OK but with a bit of room for improvement. We’ll get into the details now.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

Starting with the default modes, the MPG321UR-QD shows excellent grayscale tracking with no visible errors. Though green levels fall a little as brightness rises, there is no value above 3dE. Gamma is a tad light from 40-90% which isn’t a major problem, but some additional presets would be welcome here.

The best way to control the MPG321UR-QD’s color is by changing options in the Pro Mode submenu. You can select the desired gamut by name. User represents the native DCI-P3+ color space (that grayscale result is the first chart). Moving along, the next three measurement runs are sRGB, Adobe RGB and Display P3 which is a little closer to the DCI-P3 spec than User. All have minimal grayscale errors and the same gamma tracking which favors bright highlights.

Comparisons

With no prior calibration performed on the MPG321UR-QD, we posted the same result for both charts, 1.68dE. This is a great out-of-box result and an average calibrated result. But since it’s an invisible error, there is no issue here. The MSI is a very color-accurate monitor.

The light gamma trace we recorded puts the MPG321UR-QD mid-pack in the range of values test and last in the deviation comparison. With an actual average of 2.08, it’s a little light in the mid-tone and bright areas of the screen. Its saturated color somewhat offsets this, but better gamma tracking could make the MSI look more vibrant.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The MPG321UR-QD’s default color gamut is very large. You can see that it exceeds DCI-P3 in both red and green. What is interesting is the green hue error. It’s tracking towards a Rec.2020 green which is why it angles toward cyan. You won’t perceive this in content but if you want a better representation of DCI-P3, go for the Display P3 mode in the Pro Mode menu.

If you need sRGB or Adobe RGB, those modes are fairly accurate as well. Adobe has slightly under-saturated red and magenta but comes close enough to its targets to average just 2.30dE. sRGB exhibits similar behavior and averages 2.28dE. This is excellent performance for a multi-gamut monitor that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars. It’s the reason we dub the MPG321UR-QD a gaming screen with professional aspirations. It is entirely qualified for that task.

Comparisons

The MPG321UR-QD’s 2.04dE score puts it on par with all the other monitors except the PG32UQX which costs around $3,000. That represents the Display P3 mode. Other values are 2.28dE for sRGB, 3.63dE for User and 2.30dE for Adobe RGB. These are all excellent results for an uncalibrated screen.

The MPG321UR-QD’s color volume is prodigious at over 117% of DCI-P3, or 78% of Rec.2020 if you’re keeping score. The sRGB mode is a little under-saturated in red, resulting in 92% coverage. Adobe RGB covers 96% and Display P3 hits 91%. So, if you want the greatest possible color saturation, go for full native in the User mode. In any case, a software profile is recommended for critical work. You can rein in the native gamut to any desired standard that way.

Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

The MPG321UR-QD switches automatically to HDR mode upon detection of an HDR10 signal. Though the Pro modes are left unlocked, changing them has no effect. But the Game modes will alter the color. To obtain accurate rendering, keep Game Mode set to User. All other image controls are grayed out. Dynamic contrast is active, and brightness is maxed.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The MPG321UR-QD is one of the brighter HDR monitors we’ve tested at over 715 nits peak. This is impressive for an edge-lit panel. Dynamic contrast delivers a very low black level, and we measured a solid 16,474.6:1 HDR contrast ratio. Only the Asus and its FALD backlight can do better in this group. This is one of the few monitors we classify as better for HDR than SDR. HDR content really pops here thanks to wide dynamic range, a quick changing backlight and super-saturated color.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

The MPG321UR-QD’s HDR grayscale tracking runs a little warm in the brighter steps but it had no impact on picture quality. The actual content looked very good with neutral black, gray and white tones. The luminance curve favors greater contrast by making the dark steps very dark and the mid tones lighter. The tone-map transition point is at 70% which is a good thing for this bright monitor.

There is a lot of punch and color available here; so much that we’re showing you both DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 charts. DCI-P3 over-achieves with bonus red and green. Rec.2020 comes up only slightly short in those colors. The takeaway is that the MPG321UR-QD is one of the best-looking HDR monitors we’ve seen for less than $1,000.

If resolution is your top priority, only an Ultra HD gaming monitor will do. Though you can get smoother play from a faster QHD or FHD screen, UHD still offers the tightest pixel structure and the sharpest rendering of static and slow-moving images.

Now that consoles have added UHD, 120 Hz and FreeSync to their feature lists, we’re seeing a new surge of 4K monitors hitting the market. That surge is driving prices down and the MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD is a great example. It delivers a lot of features with high performance and a stunning picture for an attractive price.

With its 715-nit capable backlight, massive color gamut that covers 117% of DCI-P3 and excellent HDR, it’s a great choice for playing the latest titles while enjoying realistic graphics and phenomenal contrast. Accurate color modes mean you can use it for any color standard from sRGB to Adobe RGB and DCI-P3, and the monitor even approaches Rec.2020.  This is one of the most colorful monitors we’ve tested to date, equaling premium screens like Asus’ PG32UQX. Our only wish is for gamma presets and a calibration mode that doesn't limit brightness and contrast.

Though it runs at the same 144 Hz as other Ultra HD gaming screens, MSI's monitor has one of the best overdrives we’ve seen. This ensures the smoothest possible play south of a 240 Hz panel. You will need a powerful PC to keep frame rates high, but if you can sustain over 100 fps, the experience is much closer to reality.

We also loved MSI’s well-thought-out features. The room light sensor is useful for those who play in changing light environments. The adaptive crosshair and sniper magnification are also a great enhancement to your favorite shooters.

The MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD currently sells for around $900. That’s a bargain when you consider that it performs on par with the top Ultra HD screens that cost anywhere from two to three times as much. Even professionals can consider it for post-production use. If you want to jump into Ultra HD gaming on a console or PC, the MPG321UR-QD is definitely worth checking out.

The very first benchmark results of Apple's M1 Max system-on-chip in a professional application have arrived. While performance of the new M1 Max-based MacBook Pro in Adobe Premiere Pro looks very good compared to the previous-generation MBP with discrete graphics, it doesn't look that good compared to x86 workstation platforms with standalone graphics processors.

On Thursday an M1 Max-based MacBook Pro user posted performance numbers obtained in Adobe Premiere Pro to the PugetBench database. Benchmark results were obtained using PugetBench for Premiere Pro 0.95.1 and Premiere Pro 15.4.1, so it is possible to compare them to results obtained on other high-performance systems and find out how the new MBP stacks up against machines based on x86 CPUs and discrete GPUs.

Adobe's Premiere Pro 15.4.1 video editor is one of the programs that can take advantage of virtually all kinds of processing units, including general-purpose CPU cores, GPU cores, and media playback engines. Therefore, the application can demonstrate capabilities of a platform from different aspects. PugetBench for Premiere Pro measures both live playback and export performance with a wide range of codecs at 4K and 8K resolutions. Furthermore, there are dedicated "Heavy GPU Effects" and "Heavy CPU Effects" sequences in Export tests designed to stress appropriate hardware. 

Overall

Apple's MacBook Pro 16 based on the M1 Max SoC achieved a 1168 standard overall score and 1000 extended overall score in PugetBench for Premiere Pro 0.95.1. Significantly higher when compared to high-end laptops. Furthermore, Apple's scores are close to those of advanced desktops. 

For obvious reasons, PugetBench for Premiere Pro 0.95.1 (which uses Premiere Pro 15.4.1) calculates its overall score based on various kinds of workloads, therefore it makes sense to take a look at detailed results and see where exactly Apple's new SoC excels. 

Live Playback

Apple's M1 Max clearly has an excellent media playback engine that outperforms not only standalone mobile GPUs, but even Nvidia's top-of-the-range GeForce RTX 3090. Those who edit video will certainly appreciate Apple's M1 Max since based on PugetBench for Premiere Pro 0.95.1, the new MacBook Pro systems promise a very smooth experience that will be even better than that on beefy desktops.

Export

The new MacBook Pro 16 clearly outperforms its predecessor in Export workloads, but is somewhat behind other high-end laptops and is drastically behind advanced desktops.  

It is necessary to point out that PugetBench for Premiere Pro's Export workloads include heavy CPU effects and heavy GPU effects sequences, so overall score is somewhat mixed. It still makes a lot of sense because real-world workflows may require different types of effects.  

We suspect that Apple's M1 Max outshines the competition in heavy CPU effects sequences, but falls behind in heavy GPU effects sequences, so it really depends on the exact workload whether the new MBPs provide a better experience than other platforms or cannot keep up with the rivals.

GPU Score

Adobe's Premiere Pro is one of those professional applications that can take advantage of GPU compute capabilities, so it is not surprising that the new MacBook Pro with its 32-cluster custom GPU with 4096 ALUs annihilates AMD's Radeon Pro 5500M used in previous-generation MacBook Pro workstations. 

The new M1 Max SoC can also compete very well against standalone mobile GPUs, namely the GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 3080 (which seems strangely slow in this benchmark), in Premier Pro while consuming much less power. But Apple's new integrated GPU cannot get close to performance levels offered by desktop discrete graphics cards, something that Apple needs for its Mac Pro workstations.

Some Thoughts

When Apple introduced its M1 Pro and M1 Max earlier this week, it did not demonstrate their performance in any specific workstation application, but focused on performance and power consumption in a host of programs and compared its CPU and GPU performance to that of other notebooks. While we can expect the new SoCs to offer a good balance between performance and power consumption, just like M1, specifics are important. Since Apple has not provided them, we have to fetch such information from other sources, which is not 100% accurate, but this is all we have at this point.

Apple clearly positions its M1 Pro and M1 Max system-on-chips for workstation applications, so while it is fun to see how the M1 Max SoC compares to CPUs and discrete GPUs in things like GFXBench 5 or Geekbench 5, these are certainly not workloads that this chip was designed for. 

Adobe's Premiere Pro 15.4.1 is one of the programs that will be used on the new MacBook Pro laptops and performance in this program shows that Apple's latest M1 Max SoC has an industry-leading media playback engine, state-of-the-art general-purpose CPU cores, and a GPU that can outrival standalone mobile GPUs from Nvidia in Premiere Pro. Nonetheless, Apple yet has to develop a GPU that will offer performance on par with discrete desktop GPUs from Nvidia.

Like all computer components, monitors are designed to fulfill specific roles and perform particular tasks. Gamers need a responsive panel with a rugged build, good contrast and accurate color. Professionals need pinpoint accuracy and versatility. Rarely can one monitor serve equally well as a pro screen and a gaming tool.

If you’re prepared to spend $5,000 on a computer monitor, the Asus ProArt PA32UCG is that display. Not only does it compete effectively with the best gaming monitors, but it also serves as a reference tool for professionals in need of multiple color gamut modes, support for every HDR format, and perfect accuracy right out of the box. It also adds the latest bleeding-edge technology with 1600 nits peak output, near-total coverage of Rec.2020 and a Mini-LED backlight with 1152 dimming zones. Let’s take a look.

Asus PA32UCG Specs

Asus has literally taken every innovation in LCD display technology and packed it into the Asus ProArt PA32UCG’s chunky chassis. This is nearly the same panel we saw in our reviews of the PA32UCX and the PG32UQX. It has a Mini-LED backlight with 1152 dimming zones; almost triple the number of a typical Full Array Local Dimming (FALD) monitor. The color gamut is extended with a Quantum Dot film that delivers almost 78% of the Rec.2020 color space and nearly 100% of DCI-P3. It also covers every gamut from Rec.709 to Adobe RGB with pinpoint accuracy. Peak HDR output is 1600 nits, and, in our tests, we measured over 1700 nits from a full white field pattern. It’s the brightest monitor we’ve ever tested.

Though calibration is not required in any of the gamut modes, Asus has included extensive OSD controls for gamma, color temp and gamut. The PA32UCG also includes an i1 Display Pro color meter which can interface with Asus’ calibration software or Portrait Displays’ Calman. A rigid light-blocking hood comes in the box ready to ensure even better image quality for gamers and professional video editors alike.

Lest you think this is simply a rehash of the PA32UCX, let us set the record straight. The Asus ProArt PA32UCG combines the professional features of the UCX with the gaming cred of the PG32UQX. That means it serves in equal capacity as a reference display and a gaming monitor.

The published refresh rate is 120 Hz at Ultra HD (3840x2160) resolution. But we discovered that over DisplayPort, in a special Rendering Mode, it will run at 144 Hz if you turn off HDR. This equals the top speed currently available in UHD monitors. Of course, Adaptive-Sync is supported on Nvidia and AMD platforms. The PA32UCG has not been certified by Nvidia. The panel has a native 10-bit color depth, and it covers HDR10 and HLG signal formats. It is also slated to support Dolby Vision with a firmware update coming in September, or around the time you’re reading this. At this time, very few computer monitors support Dolby Vision. Though it is not common in games, it is seen in a lot of Ultra HD Blu-ray and streamed content. A professional screen should not be without it.

The Asus ProArt PA32UCG’s price will certainly become a talking point. As of this writing, it sells for $5,000. That is certainly a lot for a gaming monitor but in professional circles, it’s something of a bargain. One could easily spend $13,000 on a 32-inch Sony studio monitor and get none of the Asus’ gaming features. This is a top-of-the-line product that puts everything in a single package. If content creation is your game, the PA32UCG aims to be your go-to tool.

Assembly and Accessories of the Asus ProArt PA32UCG

Our Asus ProArt PA32UCG sample arrived in an oversized carton with a large bundle of accessories. In addition to a rigid screen hood, we got an i1 Display color meter. This can interface with Asus ProArt software or Calman for both display calibration and ambient light measurement.

The light hood bolts to the panel over the top and sides and is 8.5 inches deep. Blocking out reflections like this helps to increase perceived contrast and improves color vibrancy and saturation. The panel snaps onto a very solid and heavy stand. A full packet of calibration data sheets comes with every PA32UCG showing gamut, grayscale and gamma measurements along with screen uniformity. Every monitor is individually adjusted and verified. Cables include HDMI, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt and USB. An IEC power cord feeds the internal power supply.

Product 360: Asus ProArt PA32UCG

The PA32UCG is styled with function foremost. The panel is almost four inches thick and sits on a stand that’s heavier than most monitors. The front layer reduces the effects of reflected light and is further aided by the light-blocking hood which includes convenient holes for the color meter’s wire. The bezel is relatively thin at 8mm around the top and sides and 19mm on the bottom. On top is a tiny room light sensor that can adjust brightness according to ambient conditions. It’s controlled from the OSD and can be shut off if desired.

The stand is more than able to support the panel’s weight with an upright made from a metal tube that tapers gently into a large base. Only a major earthquake could upset the PA32UCG. It’s not going anywhere. Adjustments are smooth and firm with no play. You get -5/23 degrees tilt, 60 degrees swivel to either side, a 90-degree portrait mode and 5.1 inches of height range.

The input panel is packed with all the latest interfaces. There are three HDMI ports, one of which is version 2.1 that supports 120 Hz signals up to 3840x2160 with HDR. A single DisplayPort supports version 1.4 with Display Stream Compression. A Thunderbolt 3 port is also included for Mac users. USB is covered by a type-C upstream and three v3.1 downstream ports. Headphone users can plug into a 3.5mm audio jack. Once you’ve made your connections, a cover snaps on to hide the wires.

OSD Features on Asus ProArt PA32UCG

The PA32UCG’s OSD is enormous as one would expect from a monitor like this. It’s divided into nine sub-menus that cover all aspects of calibration and gaming performance. Control is via joystick and five keys found around the back right of the panel. Pressing any key brings up a quick menu with access to input selection, quick fit, brightness and HDR modes.

There are 14 picture modes in total, seven for SDR, five HDR and two user memories. Nearly all allow full access to calibration controls and can be individually adjusted. The HDR modes can be engaged with SDR signals to provide a simulation if desired. HDR10 and HLG modes allow either Rec.2020 or DCI-P3 gamuts to be selected. This is helpful for content creation, so the user knows up front what the color reference is.

In the ProArt Palette menu, you’ll find luminance controls along with overall color saturation and hue sliders. Color temp is set by Kelvin value and each label is spot on. Set 6500K and you get 6500K. The same is true of the gamma presets. They range from 1.8 to 2.6. A separate color submenu offers individual color saturation and hue sliders as well as gain and offset controls for color temperature. Though these controls are all very precise, we quickly discovered that the PA32UCG was nearly perfect right out of the box.

The Image and System Setup menus have a range of gaming and video processing options available. Trace Free is Asus’ term for overdrive and it has five settings. 60 does a good job of reducing motion blur without ghosting. Uniformity Compensation is included but we found no need for it. Our PA32UCG sample broke our test record with the feature turned off. Also included is a special Rendering Mode which allows for 144 Hz operation over DisplayPort. The only caveat is that you can’t use HDR with it. For HDR signals, the monitor tops out at 120 Hz. Rendering mode also grays out the extra gamut modes. The monitor only runs in Standard mode which covers around 95% of DCI-P3.

In System Setup, you’ll find the Adaptive-Sync toggle along with an FPS counter and Dynamic Dimming, the controls for the PA32UCG’s FALD backlight. It has three speeds which vary the response to changes in overall picture brightness. Fast worked well in our tests to increase contrast without any image pumping or flickering. We used it for both SDR and HDR content and observed no downsides. Highlight and shadow detail was always crisp and legible.

Calibration Settings on Asus ProArt PA32UCG

After measuring every gamut mode, we concluded that our Asus ProArt PA32UCG sample could not be improved by a manual calibration. Setting it up then becomes a matter of selecting the desired combination of color gamut, color temperature and gamma. The sRGB mode grays out nearly all image adjustments so we picked Rec.709 for SDR content instead. With the 6500K color temp and 2.2 gamma options, it rendered that material perfectly.

DCI-P3 mode defaults to a theater option which includes a very green color temp and a 2.6 gamma. This is fine for film production but for gaming, it’s better to choose 6500K and 2.2. Photographers will enjoy a perfectly accurate Adobe RGB mode. If you want maximum color, Rec.2020 mode covers about 78% of that gamut. In all cases, color temp and gamma are visually perfect. Below, we’ve indicated the brightness settings for commonly used white levels.

Gaming, Video and Hands-on

The PA32UCG is built to excel at all tasks, both work and play. With modes for every signal type, it can play the latest games, show cutting edge video content and serve as a jack-of-all-trades monitor for film post production, game creation and photo editing. In practice, it leaves almost nothing on the table.

We verified the accuracy of the Rec.709, DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and Rec.2020 modes before spending some time playing games, browsing the web, watching video and working on graphics. No calibration was necessary, but we found the DCI-P3 mode was set up by default to a theater configuration which meant a 6300K white point and 2.6 gamma. Since we weren’t planning to work on any Hollywood CGI for the next Avengers release, we changed to a 6500K color temp and 2.2 gamma. This turned out to be a good all-around picture mode with bold color, solid contrast and a sharp image. Contrast was boosted by the Dynamic Dimming feature which we set to Fast.

Windows apps work best in SDR mode unless HDR is called for in a content creation scenario. We tried out the HDR simulation mode which does a passable job at faking HDR with SDR content. How it looks depends on the material you’re viewing. Some videos were enhanced, and some looked too garish and overblown. It’s an easy switch in the OSD if you want to try it. Beware though, the default brightness setting is the maximum and it is painfully bright. 1600 nits is no joke, if enough white is on the screen, your eyes will hurt. Luckily, you can set the peak to 1000, 600 or 300 nits with the Brightness slider.

Gaming is a joy with the Asus ProArt PA32UCG. Though it costs a lot, it is one of the finest Ultra HD gaming monitors we’ve played on. Your money is buying one of the best-looking screens available. SDR titles like Tomb Raider look rich and saturated when played in DCI-P3 mode. If you want perfectly-accurate color for SDR, choose Rec.709. Contrast with Dynamic Dimming engaged is superb, on par with an OLED panel. Mini-LED is a very effective technology for increasing dynamic range.

The PA32UCG is at its best with HDR games like Doom Eternal and Call of Duty WWII. Both games have their own adjustments for white and black point and overall brightness. Doom’s defaults are just fine, but we had to tweak Call of Duty for the best picture. The result is worth the effort. Color is a level above every other monitor we’ve reviewed. The positive impact of perfect accuracy and full gamut coverage cannot be overstated. And the deep HDR contrast is another element that puts this monitor in a class by itself or, more accurately, in a class with the PG32UQX which is nearly identical to this monitor.

Video processing was never an issue. Adaptive-Sync worked perfectly on both Nvidia and AMD platforms and always delivered a rock-solid 120 fps with G-Sync. That’s no small feat for a PC so you’ll need something like our GeForce RTX 3090 to achieve this. The Radeon RX 5700 XT in our FreeSync test machine kept the action at around 100 fps. It is possible to play at 144 Hz in Rendering Mode over DisplayPort, but we didn’t want to give up HDR.

To really give the PA32UCG an HDR workout, we ran our Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark demo video from a Panasonic DP-UB9000 Ultra HD Blu-ray player. When compared to any other LCD panel we’ve reviewed except the PA32UCX and the PG32UQX, HDR playback is more than a little above the rest. Only a premium OLED panel can approach the contrast, black levels and color saturation we observed. Highlight areas were incredibly bright, never harsh, and filled with detail. Shadows were a deep black and rich with fine shades. The 1152-zone Mini-LED backlight coupled with peaks of over 1700 nits made for a stunning image.

The PA32UCG is one of the only FALD monitors we’ve seen that doesn’t show any halo artifacts. The demo clips included several pictures of brightly lit objects against inky black backgrounds. The transition between light and dark was perfect.

We were glad to see the PA32UCG’s support for different video frame rates. Content played correctly at 24p, 50p and 60p. Many computer monitors fail to get this right, but Asus has done its homework here. Matching video frame rates is a must for any professional screen.

To compare the PA32UCG’s performance, we’ve rounded up a group of Ultra HD 144 Hz monitors ranging in size from 27 to 43 inches. At 32 inches is Asus’ PG32UQX, the ROG version of our review subject, and Aorus FI32U. The Aorus FV43U is a 43-inch VA screen. The 27-inch monitors are LG’s 27GN950 and Asus’ XG27UQ. All have extended color and HDR capability

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

We tested the PA32UCG in its Rendering Mode for maximum speed. At 144 Hz, it draws the screen in 7ms. At 120 Hz, it covers it in 8ms. Input lag is typical for an Ultra HD screen at 30ms. At 120 Hz, we measured 31ms of total lag. While there are faster Ultra HD gaming monitors available, the PA32UCG holds its own and when matched with our casual gaming skills, provides snappy response and instant reaction when the mouse is moved. Of course, its big advantage is image quality and there, it is only matched by the PG32UQX. For gaming, only the most skilled players will need a faster monitor than this.

Viewing Angles

The PA32UCG has better off-axis image quality than most IPS panels we’ve photographed. At 45 degrees to the side, light output only falls by 10% and color shifts slightly to red/green. Detail remains visible in both highlight and shadow areas. From the top, light is reduced by 30% and color becomes slightly blue. Detail is still visible in all areas, but the image looks a bit washed out.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

The PA32UCG has a uniformity compensation feature but it provided no benefit to our sample. 1.05% is the lowest value we’ve ever recorded in this test. It’s lower than results we’ve seen from monitors with compensation engaged. It just doesn’t get better than this. Asus includes test results for uniformity in its data sheet packet, so we know it has been tweaked at the factory. Needless to say, it looks perfect in every respect.

To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

For SDR signals, the PA32UCG is limited to a measured 441 nits. This is plenty of light for any environment and will provide a bright and saturated image. With the light hood installed, you won’t want to set more than 200 nits.

The black level is impressively low for an IPS panel and we were impressed by the resulting 1429.8:1 contrast ratio. This is a native figure with no help from the local dimming feature. The PA32UCG is the first IPS panel to deliver native contrast ratio over 1400:1. With local dimming engaged, the backlight shuts off completely so we couldn’t measure the dynamic contrast ratio.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Our calibration consisted of simply setting the backlight to 200 nits. No other adjustments were made to any of the SDR picture modes. In all cases, the black level remained the best of the IPS panels and contrast stayed over 1400:1. This is a real step forward for IPS technology Though you’ll still get more contrast from a VA panel, IPS is making strides. With local dimming engaged, the PA32UCG easily beats the perceived contrast of any VA monitor.

With near-perfect screen uniformity, the PA32UCG rocked our ANSI contrast test. 1362.8:1 is another record for IPS monitors. Of course, at this price point, we expect only the best quality control and component selection. Asus certainly delivers on that.

To test the PA32UCG’s grayscale, gamma and color accuracy, we focused on the four modes most used in today’s gaming, photography and video content – Rec.709, DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and Rec.2020. Each mode was set to different gamma and color temp standards and the results were averaged for comparison.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

The PA32UCG has both sRGB and Rec.709 presets. sRGB locks out most image controls including brightness, so we measured Rec.709 which has the same color gamut. Color temp was set to 6500K and gamma was 2.4. As you can see, it hits the marks almost perfectly. There are no visible errors.

Rec.2020 mode also came with a 6500K color temp and 2.4 gamma. It too measures perfectly out of the box.

For photographers, Adobe RGB is a useful mode that adds a lot of extra red to the gamut. The PA32UCG defaults to 6500K and 2.2 here as well. Our test run is right in line with the standard.

The DCI-P3 mode defaults to a theater setting. That means a color temp of 6300K which is slightly green. This is done to compensate for the Xenon bulbs used in digital cinema projectors. Gamma is set to 2.6, Asus calls it P3 Theater in the menu. For film post production, the PA32UCG is ready for work with no tweaking necessary. The only flaw is a bump in gamma at the 10% level. This translates to shadow detail that’s a little too dark.

The consumer version of DCI-P3 uses a 6500K color temp and 2.2 gamma. It is commonly found in games and video content on Ultra HD Blu-ray and streaming platforms. To set this option, choose the DCI-P3 picture mode and change the gamma to 2.2 and the color temp to 6500K.

As you can see in all the charts, the PA32UCG is properly calibrated and set up at the factory, very impressive.

Comparisons

To derive a single number for comparison to the other monitors, we averaged the grayscale error, gamma deviation and gamma value range of the five modes shown in our Calman charts. 1.53dE is an excellent default grayscale value and indicates there are no visible errors. Nearly all the values are under 2dE in all modes. Gamma also tracks true to its standards no matter what the setting. You can be sure that if you set a value, you get that value with no visible errors.

Color Gamut Accuracy

For the PA32UCG’s color test, we averaged the error levels for the same five picture modes, Rec.709, DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and Rec.2020. Each chart is rendered with the intended gamma standard for that mode, 2.4 for Rec.709 and Rec.2020, 2.2 for Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 Consumer, and 2.6 for DCI-P3 Theater.

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

These test results are nothing short of amazing. In every case, the PA32UCG measures right on target. The only exception is Rec.2020 where the monitor runs out of color just short of the 100% saturation points. The error stays low because every other point is correct.

You can see just how low all the errors are in each chart. Remember that the average value we report is calculated from 31 measurements, five saturation levels for each color plus the white point. To achieve less than 1dE in this test requires a very precise and accurate display.

Comparisons

We doubt there is another computer monitor available that can match overall color accuracy with the PA32UCG. The 1.06dE result charted above is the average of five picture modes, each derived from 31 measurements. That’s 155 color measurements that average just 1.06dE. Remember that we have not performed a calibration here. These are out-of-box results.

In the gamut volume test, we measured the PA32UCG at 95% coverage of DCI-P3. This is higher than nearly every monitor we’ve reviewed. Given its native gamut, it could cover 100% by increasing its saturation for green and blue. But the measured error is not visible to the naked eye. We calculated the Rec.2020 coverage at 77.82%. This is also a record for us.

Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

To test the PA32UCG’s HDR performance, we used an HDR10 signal from our test rig. Each HDR signal type can be rendered in either DCI-P3 or Rec.2020 color. Most gaming and video content uses the DCI gamut since it more closely matches the bulk of available consumer displays.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The PA32UCG breaks our maximum brightness record with over 1719 nits recorded in HDR mode. This was achieved with both window and full screen patterns. That’s a serious achievement. With a full white field on the screen, we couldn’t look at it directly. In practice, it means very bright highlights against a deep and saturated background. The 1152-zone Mini-LED backlight delivers incredible black levels as well. To get a measurement, we had to display a small info bug at the bottom of the screen. Otherwise, a full field black pattern registers zero nits because the backlight is completely shut off. Resulting contrast is almost 208,000:1, another record. Only an OLED panel can produce a higher perceived contrast ratio. And when viewed side by side, it’s hard to tell the PA32UCG from an OLED; it’s that good.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

For each HDR mode, you can choose either DCI-P3 or Rec.2020 color. Additionally, you can pick from three EOTF response curves. Optimized is the default and produces the closest adherence to standard. We tested both color gamuts. Grayscale and EOTF tracking are virtually identical as they should be. The PA32UCG’s high brightness means it doesn’t start tone-mapping until 80%. Most HDR content is mastered to 1000 nits so this monitor has a lot of headroom with which to extend dynamic range even further.

For the color tests, we ran a DCI-P3 and a Rec.2020 reference sweep in each HDR color mode. When set to Rec.2020, the PA32UCG over-saturates the inner targets whether the input signal is DCI or 2020. When set to DCI-P3, the measurements are closer to the mark. The takeaway is that you should set the PA32UCG to the correct reference gamut for the material you’re viewing. Most games and videos are mastered in DCI-P3. If you encounter something mastered to Rec.2020, only then should you choose that gamut from the monitor’s OSD. For general entertainment use, DCI-P3 is the right play.

There are many different display technologies available that seek to improve the basic elements of image quality. Some widen dynamic range; others extend the color gamut. And video processing advancements have brought us high frame rates, low motion blur and the elimination of frame tearing. And of course, we’ve seen a major advancement in resolution. 1080p was the standard just a few years ago. Now, we have four times that with today’s Ultra HD monitors.

Rarely can one find all these things in a single display, but Asus has gone all in with the ProArt PA32UCG. It combines the highest number of dimming zones, 1152, in its full-array Mini-LED backlight. With a quantum dot film, it covers a huge color gamut, almost 78% of Rec.2020. And it is the brightest monitor we’ve ever tested at over 1700 nits peak. To that, it adds precise out-of-box accuracy for every color mode in use today – Rec.709, DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and Rec.2020. Though it includes many calibration options and a bundled colorimeter, it’s ready for work or play with no tweaking necessary.

For well-heeled players or game designers & creators, it brings in the latest gaming monitor tech with FreeSync and G-Sync compatibility along with a 120 Hz refresh rate. If you need 144 Hz, you can do it over DisplayPort in the PA32UCG’s Rendering Mode. And its HDR support is complete as well. Lots of monitors deliver HDR10 but the ProArt is one of a very few to add Dolby Vision though it was a bummer that our early production sample lacked the appropriate firmware to use it.

The PA32UCG’s price tag is extreme but this is an extreme monitor. In professional circles, there are more expensive screens that can’t do as much. What you’re getting here is a versatile display that’s ready to go with no adjustment required. And rugged build quality ensures you’ll be using it for the long haul.

We’ve already been blown away by Asus’ other Mini-LED screens, the ProArt PA32UCX and the ROG Swift PG32UQX. The ProArt PA32UCG combines those two monitors into a technological tour de force. Its price tag is certainly high, but so is its performance. If you need the ultimate computer monitor, we can’t think of one that looks better than this.

The end has finally come for Adobe Flash on the Raspberry Pi. What once powered many memes and early Internet games is no more. With the latest update to Raspberry Pi OS, Adobe Flash has been removed from the official Raspberry Pi operating system but this brings about an issue of its own.

Adobe Flash was once the darling of the late 1990s and early 2000s web. Embedded games, interactive interfaces and full blown applications were built with Flash, but over time it became bloated, buggy and a security risk. The removal of Flash from Raspberry Pi OS has been on the cards for quite some time and with the January 11 update they have finally removed it. The removal of Flash does have one impact on Raspberry Pi OS. The popular Scratch 2 programming application will now no longer work as it relies upon Flash. So before you update your Raspberry Pi to the latest OS, ensure that your projects work with the Scratch online editor.

Looking through the release notes, the other changes to Raspberry Pi OS in this release are largely bug fixes for the new PulseAudio configurations introduced in the December 2020 update. There are a few fixes for the Chromium web browser, notably removal of artifacts in Google Maps 3D view.  An updated Linux Kernel, now 5.4.83 and updated Raspberry Pi firmware keeps your Pi securely up to date. 

Raspberry Pi OS is available from the Raspberry Pi website, where it can be downloaded as a disk image, or via the Raspberry Pi Imager tool.

Microsoft this week finally released a version of Windows 10 on Arm that supports x86-64 (x64) emulation to members of the Windows Insider program. The software giant says that the preview version of Windows 10 on Arm supports any x64 app whether they come from the Microsoft Store or any other source. 

Members of Microsoft's Windows Insider program with PCs powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon (or any other) ARM64/Armv8 system-on-chips (SoCs) who want to try the new version of Windows on Arm with x64 emulation should download the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21277 (RS_PRERELEASE) from the Dev Channel.  

To get decent app performance, users will also need to install a proper x64 driver for their Qualcomm Adreno GPUs, which is currently available only for Samsung's Galaxy Book S, Lenovo's Flex 5G, and Microsoft's Surface Pro X (more information and links here). Also, to support running both ARM64 and x64 C++ applications simultaneously, Microsoft advises installing a preview version of the ARM64 C++ redistributable. 

Microsoft does not reveal any information about its x64 emulator's expected performance for Armv8 processors, so it is unclear whether the software is good enough for demanding applications like Adobe's Photoshop, or is mostly aimed at things like browsers. It is also unclear how stable the emulator is. Meanwhile, the software giant recommends developers support their apps natively on ARM64 and has been providing appropriate tools — Windows SDK and Visual Studio — since 2017.  

Microsoft has been actively trying to bring Arm SoCs to the Windows PC space for almost a decade. Initially, the company wanted to offer an alternative to Apple's iPad. It released its Windows RT operating system in 2012, but the platform has never been popular, and Microsoft essentially canned the project in 2015 by axing its own Windows RT devices. The second attempt — sometimes called always-connected personal computers (ACPS) — was unveiled by Microsoft and Qualcomm in 2017. Instead of bringing an alternative to something on the market already, the two companies focused on a unique value proposition that Snapdragon SoCs can provide: long battery life and always-on connectivity. 

In addition to launching an x64 emulator for Armv8 SoCs, Microsoft also plans to release a number of its programs, including Microsoft Teams, compiled and optimized specifically for Arm SoCs. Furthermore, Microsoft is also expanding its App Assure program to include Windows 10 on Arm 64-bit devices to guarantee that custom software designed for particular customers would work on all Windows 10 platforms no matter which processor or SoC they use. 

Today, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced an end of year update to its 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS, formerly Raspbian. This update sees improvements to Chromium, PulseAudio becoming the default audio server, and printing is made much easier. The update also provides configuration options for the Raspberry Pi 400 and the new Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan.

Starting with improvements to the Chromium web browser (now version 84), thanks to the Raspberry Pi team's work, we finally see hardware-accelerated video playback for YouTube videos and streaming media services. The team also improved video conferencing clients such as Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, a welcome addition given the world that we now live in. The final note for Chromium is that version 84 of the browser will be the last to come with Adobe Flash Player. Adobe will retire the player at the end of 2020.  

The PulseAudio audio server replaces the long-standing ALSA server. With PulseAudio, we see the ability to play audio from multiple sources at once and native support for Bluetooth audio (unlike ALSA, which uses a third party bluez-alsa package to achieve this). 

Simon Long, Senior Principal Software Engineer, explains that the transition to PulseAudio should be seamless for the end user, "The good news for Raspberry Pi users is that, if we’ve got it right, you shouldn’t even notice the change. PulseAudio now runs by default, and while the volume control and audio input/output selector on the taskbar looks almost identical to the one in previous releases of the OS, it is now controlling PulseAudio rather than ALSA. You can use it just as before: select your output and input devices, adjust the volume, and you’re good to go."

Printing in Linux is handled via CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. With this latest update, we see CUPS pre-installed along with a printer config GUI tool to configure your printer over USB or a network connection easily.

Raspberry Pi 400 and Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan Updates

The Raspberry Pi 400 was quite a surprise, and we loved the new form factor, but one issue that it shares with the Raspberry Pi Zero range of boards is a single status LED to show power and "drive" activity. With the latest Raspberry Pi OS update, we see an option in the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool that allows users to choose between a simple power LED or to have the LED show drive activity.

A further update to the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool also sees an extra option in Performance for the new Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan. With this option, we can set the temperature at which the fan is triggered and set the GPIO pin used to control the fan.

The latest version of Raspberry Pi OS can be downloaded directly from the Raspberry Pi website. If you have the Raspberry Pi Imager tool, you already have the update ready to download and flash to a micro SD card. If you would like to update an existing install, there are full instructions on the Raspberry Pi website.

With the Ryzen 5000 series, it's fair to say that AMD has finally, and fully, eclipsed Intel's performance dominance in desktop PCs. AMD’s flagship $799 Ryzen 9 5950X has landed in our labs, boasting 16 cores and 32 threads bristling with the potent new Zen 3 microarchitecture. AMD’s new halo part expands Ryzen 9’s dominating lead in productivity applications and beats Intel’s competing processors in every other metric, including 1080p gaming performance, by surprising margins. Our 5950X sample even breaks the 5 GHz barrier at stock settings (at least sporadically), outstripping its spec and making it an easy choice for our list of Best CPUs, all while radically altering our CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy.  

But the Ryzen 9 5950X is just the tip of the Zen 3 spear. We also have the more amenable $549 Ryzen 9 5900X that comes with 12 cores and 24 threads. Aside from its bruising performance in applications, it’s even faster than the 5950X in gaming, even beating out Intel's overclocked flagships at 1080p, too. 

Much of Ryzen’s early success stemmed from industry-leading core counts and plenty of freebies for enthusiasts, like bundled coolers and unrestricted overclockability paired with broad compatibility. Still, AMD was long relegated to the role of a value alternative. 

AMD’s clockwork execution on new Zen architectures has slowly whittled away Intel’s performance superiority with each new launch, though, leaving Intel an ever-shrinking cross-section of advantages. To counter, Intel added more cores and features of its own, but AMD’s relentless innovation left Intel clinging to the life raft of its single-threaded performance advantage.

AMD narrowed the gap when it transitioned to the denser 7nm process and Zen 2 architecture for the Ryzen 3000 chips, which largely reduced Intel’s gaming advantage to the imperceptible level – particularly in the mid-range of the market. With sales surging, AMD has begun to capitalize by repositioning itself as a premium brand. The first signs of that shift began with the company’s recent Ryzen XT lineup, which found the company largely discarding some of the freebies we’ve become accustomed to and tacking on a higher price tag to its almost imperceptibly-faster chips.

Ryzen 5000 changes the game entirely, though. The chips come with the same refined 7nm process found in the Ryzen XT processors, but AMD paired the node with a ground-up redesign of the Zen core microarchitecture. AMD says the new Zen 3 microarchitecture provides a 19% average increase in instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput, erasing the last vestiges of Intel’s performance advantages while delivering a new level of power efficiency. 

According to our tests, the Ryzen 5000 processors deliver, beating Intel in nearly all metrics that matter, including performance, power consumption, and thermals, and largely remove Intel’s performance lead after overclocking. And yes, that includes in 1080p gaming. AMD is also leveraging its position as the only CPU maker that also makes discrete GPUs by rolling out its new Smart Memory Access feature. This new tech boosts gaming performance by enhancing data transfer performance between the CPU and GPU, but it only works if you have a Radeon RX 6000 graphics card, Ryzen 5000 processor, and a 500-series motherboard. We won’t know the full implications of this new tech until the Radeon RX 6000 “Big Navi” launch later this month, but it looks promising. 

Now that Ryzen 5000 firmly establishes AMD as the performance leader, the company has hiked up prices by $50 across its entire lineup and left a noticeable gap in its product stack – you'll have to take a steep $150 step up the pricing ladder to get above the entry-level six-core twelve-thread Ryzen 5 5600X. AMD's premium pricing could be an Achilles heel, but it's hard to determine the final pricing story given that AMD's suggested selling prices almost never manifest at retail. 

Meanwhile, Intel is left without a response until the first quarter of 2021 when its Rocket Lake chips blast off, bringing a new back-ported Cypress Cove architecture that grants a “double-digit” IPC increase paired with Intel's never-ending 14nm process. 

Until then, this is how the high-performance chip market stacks up. To put AMD’s gaming performance claims to the test, we’ve switched over to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 for game testing and also put the company’s new silicon through the paces in a wide range of expanded tests, including several SPEC and Adobe benchmark suites.

Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X Specifications and Pricing

The Ryzen 5000 series processors come as four models that span from six cores and twelve threads up to 16 cores and 32 threads. AMD increased its Precision Boost clock rates across the board, with a peak of 4.9 GHz for the Ryzen 9 5950X. However, AMD’s unique boosting algorithms can stretch beyond the advertised speeds if you pair the chips with a quality cooler and a motherboard with robust power circuitry. In fact, our Ryzen 9 5950X sample peaked at 5 GHz at stock settings, albeit sporadically, and reached 5.125 GHz when we engaged the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature, which we'll cover on the following pages. 

AMD increased the boost clock speeds, but it also reduced base frequencies compared to the previous-gen processors. AMD says that if you top the chip with an adequate cooler, it will rarely (if ever) drop to the base frequency, which we confirmed with our testing.

The $799 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X comes with a 3.4 GHz base frequency, a 300 MHz reduction compared to the 3950X, and a 4.9 GHz Precision Boost frequency. Intel doesn't really have an answer for the 5950X; the Comet Lake series tops out at ten cores for $488. You can find the 18-core 36-thread Core i9-10980XE for $815 at several retailers, though it comes with all of the normal drawbacks of a high end desktop chip, like the need for a pricey motherboard and quad-channel memory kit. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 5950X drops into mainstream motherboards with ease.

The 12-core 24-thread $549 Ryzen 9 5900X comes with a $50 markup over the previous-gen 3900XT. The chips' base frequency declines 200 MHz compared to the 3900XT, but boosts reach 4.8 GHz (a 100 MHz increase). Intel's 10-core 20-thread Core i9-10900K slots in for $60 less than the 5900X ($77 less if you choose to go with the graphics-less F-series model).

If all you care about is gaming, Intel's $453 Core i9-10850K also falls into this bracket. The 10850K offers essentially the same performance as the pricier 10900K in gaming, but is $96 less than the 5900X.

The $449 Ryzen 7 5800X comes with eight cores and 16 threads, just like its previous-gen Ryzen 7 3800XT counterpart, but again comes with a $50 markup. The chip sees a 100 MHz lower base clock than the 3800XT but has the same 4.7 GHz boost. Given the price point, the Core i9-10850K also competes here with similar pricing to the 5800X, while the Core i7-10700K is ~$100 less. 

Finally, the 6-core 12-thread $299 Ryzen 5 5600X's base clocks come in at 100 MHz less than the previous-gen 3600XT, while boosts are 100 MHz higher at 4.6 GHz. AMD's 6C/12T Ryzen 5 3600XT had a 95W TDP, but AMD dialed that back to 65W with the 5600X, showing that Zen 3's improved IPC affords lots of advantages. 

AMD does have a glaring hole in its product stack: You'll have to shell out an extra $150 to step up from the 6C/12T Ryzen 5 5600X to the 8C/16T Ryzen 7 5800X, which is a steep jump. Based upon product naming alone, it appears there is a missing Ryzen 7 5700X in the stack, but it remains to be seen if AMD will actually bring such a product to market. 

As before, AMD only guarantees its boost frequencies on a single core, and all-core boosts will vary based on the cooling solution, power delivery, and motherboard BIOS. You’ll need your own cooler for any Ryzen 5000 chip that exceeds a 65W TDP: The Ryzen 5 5600X is the only Ryzen 5000 chip that comes with a bundled cooler. AMD said it decided to skip bundled coolers in higher-TDP models largely because it believes most enthusiasts looking for high-performance CPUs use custom cooling. AMD recommends a 280mm (or greater) AIO liquid cooler (or equivalent air cooling) for the Ryzen 9 and 7 CPUs if you want to reach the advertised speeds, significantly adding to the overall platform costs.  

The Ryzen chips continue to expose 20 lanes of PCIe 4.0 to the user and stick with DDR4-3200 memory as the base spec. However, if the silicon lottery shines upon you, we found that the chips offer much better memory overclocking due to improved fabric overclocking capabilities, which we'll cover on the following pages. 

These chips drop into existing AM4 motherboards with 500-series chipsets, like X570, B550, and A520 models. You'll need an AGESA 1.0.8.0 (or newer) BIOS to boot a Zen 3 processor. Still, while the early BIOS revisions ensure the processors will work on the most basic level, you'll have to update to an AGESA 1.1.0.0 (or better) BIOS for the best performance. AMD will also add support for 400-series motherboards starting in Q1, 2021, but that comes with a few restrictions.

Let's see how the Ryzen 5000 series stacks up against Intel's finest. 

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 Series Microarchitecture — The Quick Take

AMD's 19% IPC increase is the big headline feature of the Zen 3 microarchitecture, but it is especially impressive considering that it leveraged its existing Ryzen SoC to accomplish the feat. In fact, the base SoC is identical to the Ryzen 3000 processors: Zen 3 uses the same 12nm I/O Die (IOD) paired with either one or two 8-core chiplets (CCD) in an MCM (Multi-Chip Module) configuration. The IOD still contains the same memory controllers, PCIe, and other interfaces that connect the SoC to the outside world. Just like with the Matisse chips, the IOD measures ~125mm^2 and has 2.09 billion transistors. 

The chiplets have been redesigned, however, and now measure ~80.7mm^2 and have 4.15 billion transistors. That's slightly larger than Zen 2's CCDs with ~74mm^2 of silicon and 3.9 billion transistors.  

Just like the previous-gen Ryzen CPUs, processors with six or eight cores come with one compute chiplet, while CPUs with 12 or 16 cores come with two chiplets. AMD also used all of the existing SoC wire routing and packaging to maintain compatibility with the AM4 socket. As shown in the album above, the Infinity Fabric connections between the IOD and compute chiplets (CCD) remain the same and communicate at 32 Bytes-per-cycle for reads and 16B/cycle for writes. Even though these connections remain at the same speed as the previous-gen chips, the redesigned compute chiplets significantly reduce the amount of traffic that flows over the interface. 

In the Zen 2 architecture (left), each Zen compute chiplet (CCD) contained two four-core clusters (CCXes) with access to an isolated 16MB slice of L3 cache. So, while the entire chiplet contained 32MB of cache, not all cores had direct access to all of the cache in the chiplet.

To access an adjacent slice of L3 cache, a core had to communicate with the other quad-core cluster by traversing the Infinity Fabric to the I/O die. The I/O die then routed the communication to the cache in the second quad-core cluster, even though it was contained within the same chiplet. To complete the transfer, the data had to travel back over the fabric to the I/O die, and then back into the adjacent quad-core cluster.

Each chiplet now contains one large unified 32MB slice of L3 cache, and all eight cores within the chiplet have full access to the shared cache. This improves not only core-to-cache latency but also core-to-core latency within the chiplet. AMD has also updated the CCD's core-to-core and cache interconnect to a ring topology.

While all eight cores can access the L3 cache within a single compute chiplet, in a dual-chiplet Zen 3 chip, there will be times that the cores will have to communicate with the other chiplet and its L3 cache. In those cases, the communications will still have to traverse the Infinity Fabric via signals routed through the I/O die.

Still, because an entire layer of external communication between the two four-core clusters inside each chiplet has been removed (as seen in the center of the chart above), the Infinity Fabric will naturally have far less traffic. This results in less contention on the fabric, thus simplifying scheduling and routing, and it could also increase the amount of available bandwidth for this type of traffic. All of these factors will result in faster transfers (i.e., lower latency) communication between the two eight-core chiplets, and it possibly removes some of the overhead on the I/O die, too.  

These enhancements are important because games rely heavily on the memory subsystem, both on-die cache and main memory (DDR4). A larger pool of cache resources keeps more data closer to the cores, thus requiring fewer high-latency accesses to the main memory. Additionally, lower cache latency can reduce the amount of time a core communicates with the L3 cache. This new design will tremendously benefit latency-sensitive applications, like games — particularly if they have a dominant thread that accesses cache heavily (which is common). 

However, the larger L3 cache does come with an increase in L3 latency to the tune of seven additional cycles. 

Here's AMD's high-level bullet point list of improvements to the Zen 3 microarchitecture: 

• Front-end enhancements:
• Major Design Goal: Faster fetching, especially for branchy and large-footprint code
• L1 branch target buffer (BTB) doubled to 1024 entries for better prediction latency
• Improved branch predictor bandwidth
• Faster recovery from misprediction
• "No Bubble" prediction to make back-to-back predictions faster and better handle branchy code
• Faster sequencing of op-cache fetches
• Finer granularity in switching of op-cache pipes
• Execution Engines:
• Major Design Goal: Reduce latency and enlarge to extract higher instruction-level parallelism (ILP)
• New dedicated branch and st-pickers for integer, now at 10 issues per cycle (+3 vs. Zen 2)
• Larger integer window at +32 vs Zen 2
• Reduced latency for select float and integer operations
• Floating point has increased bandwidth by +2 for a total of 6-wide dispatch and issue
• Floating point FMAC is now one cycle faster
• Load/Store:
• Major Design Goal: Larger structures and better prefetching — enhance execution engine bandwidth
• Overall higher bandwidth to feed larger/faster execution resources
• Higher load and store bandwidth vs. Zen 2 by +1
• More flexibility in load/store operations
• Improved memory dependence detection
• +4 table walkers in the Translation Look-aside Buffer (TLB)

Notably, AMD also added support for memory protection keys, added AVX2 support for VAES/VPCLMULQD instructions, and made a just-in-time update to the Zen 3 microarchitecture to provide in-silicon mitigation for the Spectre vulnerability. 

Naturally, performance and power efficiency will improve as a function of architectural improvements. The reduced traffic on the Infinity Fabric also contributes (it always requires more energy to move data than to process it). Which brings us to IPC. 

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 IPC Measurements

AMD chalks its 19% IPC improvement, which is the largest the company has seen in the post-Zen era, up to a number of Zen 3's architectural improvements. The company calculated its IPC improvements from 25 different workloads, including gaming, which seems a curious addition due to possible graphics-imposed bottlenecks, and some multi-threaded workloads. AMD's results show that the IPC improvements vary based on workloads, with up to a 39% improvement on the high end of the spectrum and a 9% improvement on the lower end. 

We tested a limited subset of single-threaded workloads to see the clock-for-clock improvements, locking all chips to a static 3.8 GHz all-core clock with the memory dialed into the officially supported transfer rate (AMD used DDR4-3600 for its tests, which is technically an overclocked configuration). 

AMD's generational march forward is clear as we move from the left to the right of each chart. Overall, AMD's gen-on-gen IPC increases are exceptional, and Zen 3's IPC obviously beats Intel's Comet Lake chips with ease.

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AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Boost Frequency Testing

Before we jump right into the game tests (we have the particulars of our test configurations at the end of the article), we want to highlight the vastly improved clock speeds of the Ryzen 5000 processors we've tested — with the caveat that the silicon lottery applies, so your mileage may vary. 

It appears that AMD has under-spec'd its clock rates to avoid another controversy. As per our normal routine, we put AMD's boost clocks to the test in both single- and multi-threaded workloads (methodology here). The lightly-threaded test regimen is designed to extract the highest boost clock rates possible as we step through ten iterations of the LAME encoder, then single-threaded POV-Ray and Cinebench runs, PCMark 10, and GeekBench. To keep the charts 'clean,' we only plot the maximum frequency recorded on any one core during the test. 

We ran this series of tests at stock settings and charted the results in the first slide in the above album. Here we can see that the chip peaked at 5.05 GHz, and unlike with the Ryzen 3000 series processors, the unused cores (plotted in black) dropped to a much lower 2.2 GHz frequency (previous-gen chips tended to bottom out at 3.8 GHz). This is a vast improvement: AMD added the ability for individual idle cores to drop into sleep states quickly, which then reduces power consumption and heat generation. This ultimately allows the active cores to boost to higher frequencies, and for longer durations. 

Things got interesting when we kicked on the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature with the 'advanced motherboard' setting. In the second slide, we can see the chip boosted to a peak of 5.125 GHz a few times, but reached 5.0 GHz on a more consistent basis. That's incredibly impressive given the rated spec of a 4.9 GHz boost clock.  

The third slide plots our custom multi-threaded stress test that consists of multiple iterations of HandBrake, POV-Ray, Cinebench, v-ray, y-cruncher, and blender renders. This is basically throwing the heaviest real-world workloads we have in our arsenal at the chip to see if we can push any active cores below the 5950X's 3.4 GHz base clock. As you can see, the lowest clock frequency we measured on fully active cores weighed in at 3.6 GHz, which is an encouraging sign. Temperatures were also acceptable with the Corsair H115i cooler, peaking at 78C for short durations, albeit with the fans cranking away at high speed. Power consumption peaked right at the 142W PPT limit for brief periods. 

AMD has issued guidance on expected frequencies and temperatures for the Ryzen 5000 processors, which we'll include right after this series of identical tests on the Ryzen 9 5900X. 

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Boost Frequency Testing

Here we can see that the Ryzen 9 5900X peaks at 4.95 GHz (frequently) at stock settings, but we didn't receive as much uplift when we engaged the PBO feature. In fact, we didn't measure as many peaks during the overclocked test run, but the chip still easily exceeds its rated 4.8 GHz boost clock. 

Naturally, lesser coolers at more mundane settings will peak at higher temperatures. To help align expectations, AMD issued the above guidelines for expected temperatures for various kinds of coolers and the expected voltage ranges for various workloads. We have plenty of our own power testing after the gaming and application benchmarks. 

Ryzen 5000 5950X and 5900X Overclocking and Test Setup

We've included our test system breakdowns below. For this round of testing, we updated to Windows 10 Pro version 2004 (build 19041.450), the most recent build available at the time of testing, and all of the benchmarks you see below were generated within the last ten days. We also updated all of our drivers, firmwares, and testing programs to the newest available versions and transitioned from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti to the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 Eagle to reduce graphics-imposed bottlenecks. 

We didn't have time to fully explore all-core overclocking with the Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X, but we weren't able to dial in overclocks that exceeded the all-core boost frequency. As such, we stuck with AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), which boosts performance in multi-core workloads while maintaining the high single-core boost clocks. 

We had great results with memory overclocking with the Ryzen 9 5900X — we dialed in a 2000 MHz fabric and DDR4-4000 at a 1:1:1 fclk/uclk/mclk ratio, beating the best results we've reached with the previous-gen Matisse processors due to the general limit of a 1900 MHz fabric with the previous-gen chips. Just dial up the CCD and IOD voltage to 1.15V (not higher than 1.2V), and you should be good to go to increase the fabric clock to 2000 MHz. 

We weren't quite as lucky with the Ryzen 9 5950X, though, and settled for DDR4-3600 for our overclocked configurations below. We only ceded to the DDR4-3600 due to time constraints, though — I'm sure we can get DDR4-4000 stable with a bit more tuning. 

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Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X Power Consumption, Efficiency, Thermals

Notably, AMD's decision to stick with the AM4 socket still constrains its maximum power consumption to 142W, which means that the company could not increase power consumption for the new flagship models. However, Zen 3's IPC gains allow the Ryzen 5000 chips to stay within the same TDP thermal and electrical ranges as the Ryzen 3000 series CPUs while delivering more performance.

But there's a bit of nuance to the power story, though. As we can see in the AIDA power measurements, both the 5900X and 5950X draw slightly more power under load than their previous-gen counterparts. However, flipping to the 'renders per day per watt' charts shows that the chips are considerably more power-efficient than the Ryzen 3000 processors, meaning they deliver considerably more performance per watt. 

Intel's chips are rather inefficient in comparison, which is a natural byproduct of using the older and less-dense 14nm node. Intel has also turned the dial up on the voltage/frequency curve to remain competitive, which also throws efficiency out the window in exchange for higher performance. 

The net-net is that the Ryzen 5000 processors will draw far less power per unit of work than any of Intel's 14nm chips, thus resulting in a cooler and quieter system.  

Here, we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative amount of energy required to perform an x264 and x265 HandBrake workload, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart. Bear in mind that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. 

This measure really separates the wheat from the chaff, and the best results fall to the lower left-hand corner of the chart. The Intel chips populate the less-desirable upper right-hand side. Although the Core i9-10980XE makes a valiant attempt to get down to Ryzen territory, it still can't match the previous-gen Ryzen 3000 processors in terms of efficiency. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5000 series leverages the Zen 3 architecture to great effect and falls further inside the performance-per-watt sweet spot, marking a new level of efficiency for a modern desktop chip. 

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Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X Gaming Performance — The TLDR 

Here you can see the geometric mean of our gaming tests at 1080p and 1440p, with each resolution split into its own chart (overclocked results are shaded in grey). 

For those accustomed to seeing Intel lead the gaming charts, these cumulative measurements might be a shock to your system: AMD's stock Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X lead Intel's heavily-overclocked Core i9-10900K and Core i7-10700K in our 1080p gaming suite, at least in terms of average frame rates (Intel's overclocked chips hold a slight lead in 99th-percentile measurements). We also see solid uplift with the Ryzen 9 5900X from overclocking (PBO and memory). 

To put things in perspective, take a glance at the delta in 1080p gaming between the previous-gen Ryzen 9 3900XT, which basically runs overclocked right out of the box, compared to the Ryzen 9 5950X. That's a massive generational leap. 

Flipping over to the 1440p chart brightens things up a bit for Intel, but only slightly — the overclocked Core i9-10900K returns to its normal spot at the top of the chart, and it still enjoys better 99th percentile frame rates after overclocking. However, AMD still beats Intel in both average and 99th-percentiles at stock settings, cementing the company's commanding lead.       

3D Mark, VRMark, Stockfish Chess Engine on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

We run these synthetic gaming tests as part of our main application test script. We use an RTX 2080 Ti for these tests to facilitate faster testing, but we use the RTX 3090 for all other gaming benchmarks (we don't include these tests in the geometric mean listed above). 

As we've come to expect, AMD's core-heavy processors dominate in threaded synthetic tests, like the Stockfish chess engine and 3DMark's DX11 and DX12 CPU tests, but perhaps Ryzen 5000 is most impressive in VRMark. This benchmark leans heavily on per-core performance (a mixture of IPC and frequency), and as you can see from the previous-gen Ryzen processors, AMD has traditionally trailed in this benchmark. Zen 3 rectifies that issue. 

Borderlands 3 on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

AMD says that the Ryzen 5000 processors offer leading performance in a large number of titles, but there will likely still be a period of time before we see targeted game updates to expose the best of Ryzen 5000, just like we saw with previous-gen Zen chips. Here Intel takes a clear lead in the 1440p benchmarks, with the Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X trailing, albeit not by large margins. AMD's latest chips are much more competitive in the 1080p series of tests.  

Far Cry 5 on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

Far Cry 5 finds the overclocked Ryzen 9 5900X trading blows with the tuned Core i9-10900K running at 5.1 GHz at 1080p, which is quite the feat in itself. At stock settings, both Ryzen 5000 chips run neck-and-neck with the 10900K. We see similar trends with the 1440p benchmarks, but the Core i7-10700K reminds us that it has plenty of chops after overclocking, too. 

Hitman 2 on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

Hitman 2 doesn't seem to scale well from 1080p to 1440p, at least not at the heightened fidelity settings we use for the benchmark, so we stuck with the 1080p test for this title because the same trends carry over to 1440p. Here we see the Ryzen 5000 processors take big strides, while the Ryzen 7 1800X reminds us just how far AMD has come in three short years. 

Microsoft Flight Simulator on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

We're just as excited as anyone else about Microsoft's long long-overdue release of Flight Simulator, and we're sure that serious flight sim fans will want to crank up the resolution on this title. Here we can see that Intel holds a relatively slim lead after overclocking, but the stock Ryzen 5950X beats the 10900K while the 5900X pulls off a tie.  

Project CARS 3 on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

Project CARS 3 scales well with additional host compute, and the title obviously responds well to the Zen 3 architecture. Here we see the 5950X take a step back when we engage the auto-overclocking PBO feature, but that isn't entirely uncommon with AMD's auto-overclocking software. In either case, both Ryzen 5000 processors take a healthy lead over the stock 10900K and 10700K. 

Red Dead Redemption 2 on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

A glance at the bottom of these charts shows the clear progression of AMD's architectures as it iterated on the Zen design, but in most of the titles we tested, the Ryzen 5000 series represents AMD's biggest generational leap by far. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

AMD's chips take a sizeable lead at 1080p, but Intel's overclocked chips deliver better 99th-percentile measurements. Flipping over to 1440p, Intel's 10900K reaches the top of the chart, but it took quite a bit of voltage for it to surpass the stock Ryzen 5000 chips. 

The Division 2 on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The Division 2 ends up looking mostly GPU limited, even with the RTX 3090 — at least on the fastest processors. Intel remains competitive when overclocked, but at stock the Ryzen 5000 chips lead by a decent margin at 1080p. Not that anyone is likely to notice the difference between 180 and 195 fps in practice.

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Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X Application Benchmarks 

The TLDR

The geometric mean of both the most lightly- and heavily-threaded tests in our application suite speak volumes. We're quite accustomed to seeing AMD's chips lead in the multi-threaded rankings while trailing, sometimes by sizeable margins, in the single-threaded performance ranking. That isn't the case anymore, as Zen 3 easily leads both rankings. 

Some lightly-threaded workloads, like Cinebench and LAME, respond so well to the Zen 3 architecture that it grants AMD a massive lead in the overall rankings. But as you'll see, while the Zen 3 chips excel tremendously at some applications, they also don't suffer from terrible performance in others as we see with Threadripper. 

Rendering Benchmarks on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

Cinebench has long been AMD's favorite benchmark for a simple reason; the Zen microarchitecture has always performed extremely well in the threaded benchmark. However, AMD has steadily improved its performance in the single-threaded benchmark as well, slowly working its way up the chart. 

Apparently those days of small jumps are over, as the Ryzen 9 5950X notches a 20% lead over the 3900XT. That's an incredible gen-on-gen improvement in single-threaded performance. The 5950X also takes a 13% lead over the previous-gen 3950X in the multi-threaded test, which is equally impressive given that both chips have the same 142W power limitation. 

Intel's chips take the lead in the single-threaded POV-Ray test, but the remainder of these tests favor the Zen 3 processors by significant margins. 

Encoding Benchmarks on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

Our encoding tests include benchmarks that respond best to single-threaded performance, like the quintessential examples LAME and FLAC, but the SVT-AV1 and SVT-HEVC tests represent a newer class of threaded encoders. Regardless of the type of encoder, though, AMD's Zen 3 chips impress. 

Web Browsing on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

A glance at the bottom of these charts is like a trip down memory lane — that's the traditional position for AMD's chips in web browser benchmarks. These benchmarks are almost exclusively lightly-threaded, so Intel has long held the top of the charts. This series of benchmarks makes a powerful statement about Zen 3's improved single-threaded performance.  

Office and Productivity on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

If you're looking to build a screaming-fast computer, you're probably not doing it to run office applications like Word at breakneck speeds. However, these types of applications are ubiquitous the world over, so snappy performance is important for daily tasks. This is another area that AMD has long offered middling performance, but Zen 3 climbs the ranks in impressive fashion. 

Compilation, Compression, AVX Performance on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The LLVM compilation benchmark stresses the cores heavily, and here we see that the Ryzen 9 5950X doesn't offer much uplift over the previous-gen Ryzen 9 3950X. The same can be said about the Ryzen 9 5900X compared to its previous-gen counterpart, the Ryzen 9 3900X/T. These muted gains imply that the bottleneck lies elsewhere.

The threaded y-cruncher benchmark again shows limited scaling for the 5950X over the 3950X, and given the memory-heavy nature of this workload, we theorize this boils down to the same limitation on both chips — a dual-channel memory controller that restricts feeding the 16 hungry cores. 

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Workstation CPU Benchmarks Test Notes

Some of these applications also make an appearance in our standard test suite, but those test configurations and benchmarks are focused on a typical desktop-class environment. In contrast, the following tests are configured to stress the systems with workstation-class workloads, which is a particular strength for the Ryzen 9 processors given their hefty core counts. 

We loaded down our test platforms with 64GB of DDR4 memory spread across four modules to accommodate the expanded memory capacity required for several of these workstation-focused tasks. We also outfitted the test systems with PCIe 4.0 SSDs to factor in the platform-level advantage of AMD's support for the faster interface.

Puget Systems Adobe Benchmarks on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

Puget Systems is a boutique vendor that caters to professional users with custom-designed systems targeted at specific workloads. The company has developed a series of acclaimed benchmarks for Adobe software, which you can find here.

Adobe After Effects CC Render Node Benchmark on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The After Effects render node benchmark leverages the in-built aerender application that splits the render engine across multiple threads to maximize CPU and GPU performance. This test is memory-intensive, so RAM capacity and throughput are important and can be a limiting factor.

The Ryzen 5000 chips take a step forward in this benchmark over the previous-gen counterparts, but Intel's processors are impressive in light of their lesser core counts. Much of this could boil down to having more available memory bandwidth per core. 

Adobe Premier Pro CC Benchmark on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

This benchmark measures live playback and export performance with several codecs at 4K and 8K resolutions. It also incorporates 'Heavy GPU' and 'Heavy CPU' effects that stress the system beyond a typical workload. Storage throughput also heavily impacts the score. As such, it isn't surprising to see the Ryzen 5950X and 5900X outstrip the Intel processors in the overall score, but again, the 5950X's gain over the 3950X is relatively slim.

Adobe Photoshop CC Benchmark on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The Photoshop benchmark measures performance in a diverse range of tasks, measuring the amount of time taken to complete general tasks and apply filters. This test leans heavily on GPU acceleration, and the Ryzen 5000 processors offer stellar performance in the GPU subtest. Here they outstrip their previous-gen counterparts by large margins and leave Intel's chips by the wayside, too.  

SPECworkstation 3 Benchmarks on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications split among seven categories, but we've winnowed down the list to tests that largely focus specifically on CPU performance. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so be aware these are not official benchmarks. We've upgraded to the new 3.0.4 revision that supports spanning the tests across processor groups and sockets, unlocking the utmost parallelism. 

Product Development and Energy, NAMD on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The earth’s subsurface structure can be determined via seismic processing. One of the four basic steps in this process is the Kirchhoff Migration, which is used to generate an image based on the available data using mathematical operations. The Ryzen 5000 series processors take the lead in this benchmark over the Intel comparables, but the 24-core Threadripper 3960X unsurprisingly takes a commanding lead due to its hefty core counts. 

Flipping over to the Calculix workload tells a different story, though. This test is based on the finite element method for three-dimensional structural computations, and it typically responds well to higher core counts. However, as we've seen often with the Threadripper processors, they can offer overwhelming performance in some workloads, but suffer in others. Here we can see the Ryzen 5000 chips take an easy lead over the rest of the test pool, and it's exciting to think of how the Zen 3 architecture will perform in Threadripper processors. 

NAMD is a parallel molecular dynamics code designed to scale well with additional compute resources and is one of the premier benchmarks used to quantify performance with simulation code. The Ryzen 9 5950X puts up a strong showing in this test, but again, we see relatively muted performance scaling over the previous-gen 3950X. However, we have to keep this in context: both chips have to adhere to the same 142W power limit, so the additional performance is impressive in its own right. 

Other workloads, like the Fast Fourier Transforms, tell a much more impressive story for the Ryzen 5000 processors, though.  

Rodinia LifeSciences on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

SPECworkstation 3's Rodinia LifeSciences benchmark steps through four tests that include medical imaging, particle movements in a 3D space, a thermal simulation, and image-enhancing programs. These workloads respond well to increased core counts, and as you might've guessed, that bodes well for Ryzen 5000. We even see the Zen 3 chips pull off a few wins against the Threadripper 3960X here, too. 

Financial and General on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The Python benchmark conducts a series of math operations, including numpy and scipy math libraries, with Python 3.6. This test also includes multithreaded matrix tests that obviously benefit from more cores. These benchmarks have long been a sore spot for AMD's processors, but the Ryzen 5000 chips rectify that issue. 

SPECviewperf 2020 on Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X

The SPECviewperf 2020 benchmarks are hot off the press from the SPEC committee, so we decided to give it a spin with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 to see how well the Ryzen 5000 processors can push along a GPU in professional rendering applications, which has long been a weakness of previous-gen Ryzen processors.

The Intel processors took the lead in many of the workloads, but it is important to note that AMD has shrunk the performance deltas tremendously. 

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To the world of enthusiasts that have long been pining for a huge gen-on-gen upgrade, AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X deliver an almost unbelievable amount of performance improvement over not only AMD’s previous-gen Ryzen processors, but also over Intel’s Comet Lake flagships. The fact that the Ryzen 9 chips regularly break the 5GHz barrier, even at stock settings, is simply icing on the cake.

AMD’s clever re-use of the proven Ryzen SoC design and I/O Die, not to mention the now-mature 7nm TSMC process, allowed the company to focus its resources on delivering a massively redesigned core architecture that takes a big step forward on IPC throughput, which in turn yields higher performance and more power efficiency. 

AMD’s decision to unify the L3 cache pays big dividends in applications that profit from low-latency memory access, with gaming being the perfect example. Meanwhile, more nuanced improvements to the branch predictor and front end expose faster performance across the board, yielding big gains in both single- and multi-threaded workloads. 

As we can see in our cumulative gaming and application measurements above, AMD has finally scored a clean sweep in 1080p gaming along with performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. That single-threaded ranking above isn't 'just' Cinebench, either — it's a cumulative measure of several different types of workloads. Perhaps most telling, the stock Ryzen 9 processors beat Intel's highly-overclocked flagships not only in gaming, but also in single-threaded performance. 

We certainly couldn't have imagined this possibility when AMD launched the Ryzen series a mere three years ago. We test the fastest chips on the planet, and these types of massive generational performance increases are amazing, even to us. 

AMD's path from the bottom of the performance charts to the top was a hard-fought win, but while the company now holds the performance crown, it has left Intel a sliver of room to operate as the budget alternative. 

The Ryzen 5000 series processors land at significantly higher recommended price points than the previous-gen models, and you'll have to bring your own cooler. The price for entry on the low end is also higher than we're accustomed to, not to mention that you'll have to drop an extra $150 to move up from the six-core Ryzen 5 5600X to the eight-core Ryzen 7 3800X. At least 500-series motherboards are plentiful, and we now have B550 motherboards for budget platforms. 

Zen 3’s gaming performance is nothing short of spectacular. However, as we've noted with previous AMD CPU reviews, many of those gains won’t be noticeable to users with lesser graphics cards. The tables have turned, and now Intel CPUs are the ones that are "basically just as fast as AMD" with anything short of the RTX 3080. On the other hand, AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 6800 XT could offer additional gaming benefits over Intel, thanks to Smart Memory Access.

Unfortunately, AMD’s suggested retail pricing rarely has any relation to reality at the checkout lane, so it’s hard to project where pricing will land in a few months. This much is certain, though: AMD will have no problem selling its pricey new silicon to enthusiasts looking for every last bit of performance on a modern platform.  

For now, there’s no reason to recommend an Intel Comet Lake processor on the high end unless you need integrated graphics, so we’ll have to wait until Intel slashes pricing to reflect the reality that it is now the budget alternative. Meanwhile, AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X is incredibly potent in the mid-range, beating even Intel's beastly Core i9-10900K in 1080p gaming, which you can read about in our Ryzen 5 5600X review. We have yet to test the Ryzen 7 5800X, so there could be at least some competition in the mid-range — but there is certainly no competition at the top.

Intel does have Rocket Lake waiting in the wings, but those chips won't land until next year and will top out at a mere eight cores. We don't foresee enough of a performance increase from Intel's new architecture etched onto the 14nm process to really tip the scales against AMD's core-heavy models, meaning AMD could reside at the top of the desktop PC game for at least a year, if not longer. 

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Creative professionals need a monitor with a wide variety of color modes to ensure compliance with the myriad of standards used by today’s content. From sRGB to Rec.2020 with Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 in between, it’s important to be able to call up the needed gamut when the work demands. 1080p material needs Rec.709, and 4K resolution streams require DCI-P3 and Rec.2020. Photographers, meanwhile, use Adobe RGB to match signals with cameras and other color critical gear.

A monitor that can quickly switch between all these gamuts is something of a rarity and usually comes with a large price tag. This spring, we published our Acer ConceptD CP7271K.The flagship monitor broke several records in our color volume tests, with over 100% coverage of DCI-P3. It also has a $2,300 MSRP, landing it firmly in the high-end category.

Today, we’re looking at a much less expensive alternative, the Acer ConceptD CM3271K ($650 MSRP). It’s also a 27-inch IPS monitor but trades the 1,000-nit FALD backlight spec found in some of the best HDR monitors for a DisplayHDR 400-compliant part while still including multiple color gamut options, 4K resolution and, though it’s not meant to be one of the best 4K gaming monitors, Adaptive-Sync.

Acer ConceptD CM3271K Specifications

The Acer ConceptD CM3271K starts with an edge-lit IPS panel rated for 400 max brightness nits in HDR mode. It also has a massive native color gamut; nearly 75% of Rec.2020. In Adobe RGB and DCI modes, it's a hair shy of 100%. There's also a completely usable sRGB mode that is equally accurate. Native color depth is 10 bits.

Even though it’s not made to compete with the best gaming monitors , this value-oriented ConceptD includes FreeSync is the native tech and our tests show it to be G-Sync compatible though it is not certified by Nvidia (see our How to Run G-Sync on a FreeSync Monitor tutorial). The only thing holding it back from competition status is a 60 Hz max refresh rate. The Acer ConceptD CM3271K will be fine for casual gamers, but those seeking higher frame rates will need to look elsewhere.

Assembly and Accessories of Acer ConceptD CM3271K 

At the top of the carton is a rigid light-blocking hood that comes in three pieces. You’ll need a Phillips-head screwdriver to install it with the included hardware. Once fastened, the sides can be hinged out of the way. 

The top panel has a little door through which one can drop a meter for calibration. The panel, upright and base are already assembled and just need to be lifted out. Once you’ve made cable connections, a cover snaps over the input panel. 

Included cables are HDMI, USB-C and DisplayPort, along with an external power supply.

Product 360 

Like all of Acer’s ConceptD displays, build quality is at the premium level with high-end components used throughout.

With the light hood in place on the Acer ConceptD CM3271K , the image looks supremely saturated with excellent depth and pop. The hood is lined with light absorbing material and has a positive effect on picture quality. Though not the most stylish addition to a monitor, a hood like this can improve the quality of any desktop display. 

The anti-glare layer is typical of nearly all computer monitors with good light rejection and no visible grain. Only the Acer logo and a tiny power LED are visible on the bezel which is just over 0.5 inch wide.

On the side are two USB ports, which is something we rarely see on new monitors. There are two more underneath along with an upstream port, all version 3.0. Video inputs include two HDMI 2.0 and a DisplayPort 1.2. A second DisplayPort comes in the form of a USB-C jack. It’s listed in the on-screen display (OSD) as DP Alt.

The stand sits on a round base with a woodgrain applique finish. A small hook at the bottom is there to keep cables tidy. The upright is an aluminum tube with a very smooth 7.1-inch height adjustment. The base swivels 360 degrees, and you get 5/35 degrees of tilt. Everything feels high-end with firm movements and no play or wobble.

OSD Features of Acer ConceptD CM3271K 

The Acer ConceptD CM3271K’s OSD is controlled by a tiny joystick located in back, along with three control keys. A fourth button serves as the power toggle. The menu is quite extensive and includes many picture and gamut modes. 

In the Picture sub-menu, you’ll find luminance sliders, along with Black Boost (shadow detail boost), Blue Light for reading, ACM (dynamic contrast), HDR (off, on or Aato), a toggle for the built-in light sensor and a sharpness option, which adds edge enhancement. The light sensor can alter screen brightness automatically when your room’s lighting changes. It’s unavailable when ACM is engaged.

Though we thought the correct setting for HDR was Auto, it turned out that the Acer ConceptD CM3271K would stay in HDR mode even when an SDR signal was present. You’ll have to manually turn it on and off when switching modes. HDR grays out all image options and cannot be calibrated.

There's a catch to the otherwise extensive calibration options. You can only calibrate in the General color gamut, which measures closest to Rec.2020. Choosing another gamut, like Adobe RGB or DCI-P3, locks out the RGB sliders and hue/saturation controls. Fortunately, the various gamut modes are accurate enough not to require calibration, though we noted some grayscale errors that couldn’t be corrected. 

In the Color menu’s second screen, you can choose from 10 picture modes and nine different gamuts, ranging from General (Rec.2020) to SMPTE-C with everything in between. There’s even a DCI mode that sets the green color temp used in cinema-grade digital projection. This will be a boon to creative pros that need exotic color spaces for video post-production. If you want to work in black and white, there’s even a grayscale mode available. 

Here you can see the picture modes. Calibration 1 and 2 can be set to any gamut desired for easy switching. Adobe RGB is included for photography tasks. The other modes are task-specific. User allows for calibration but is limited to the General color gamut, which covers almost 75% of Rec.2020. 

Recommended Calibration Settings of Acer ConceptD CM3271K 

Though the Acer ConceptD CM3271K has many image and color modes, its calibration options are limited. Only the User mode unlocks all image controls, but it doesn’t allow one to select a color gamut. The only choice is General, which comes closest to Rec.2020, according to our measurements. 

Selecting another gamut grays out the color temp and gamma options. For general use, we opted for User so we could dial in grayscale tracking. This made  the monitor VERY colorful, so if you like bright saturated hues; this is the mode for you. Try our settings below if that is your preference. 

HDR signals cannot be calibrated, as all image controls, including Brightness, are unavailable.

Hands-on and Gaming With Acer ConceptD CM3271K  

Booting up Windows, we couldn’t help but be taken by the tremendous color saturation in the Acer ConceptD CM3271K’s User mode. It uses the monitor’s full native gamut, which is almost 75% of Rec.2020. Though SDR content is quite over-saturated when compared to the sRGB spec, the look is striking. Working in Office apps at Ultra HD resolution is always a pleasure because fonts and small objects are rendered without visible jaggies or pixilation. Contrast was good enough to make black text pop out cleanly against white backgrounds. Photos and videos had good depth and dimension

When greater color accuracy was needed, we employed the various gamut options. Adobe RGB is great to have for photo editing. Most monitors with that color space are much more expensive than the Acer ConceptD CM3271K. 

We also appreciated the DCI-P3 mode for streaming movies. That’s where HDR is a benefit. Contrast-wise, the image didn't look any different from an SDR one, but 4K and extended color add a real impact to 4K Blu-rays and 4K content streamed from services like Netflix.

Gaming was a mixed bag for us. Strictly speaking, the Acer ConceptD CM3271K isn’t a gaming monito, but since it has Adaptive-Sync, a good experience can be had in most first-person shooters. HDR, however, is essentially a non-starter in games because it takes out the option to use Adaptive-Sync. At 60 frames per second (fps), you cannot forego Adaptive-Sync. 

HDR mode added nothing to the look of Call of Duty: WWII, and without Adaptive-Sync, there were too many distracting artifacts during intense firefights. HDR is best left to static graphic tasks and movie watching.

Another downside is that overdrive is not available with Adaptive-Sync. If you move the mouse too quickly, or the action pans rapidly, there is visible blur though we never saw a frame tear or stutter.

Tomb Raider was fun to play when exploring, but fast-moving battle scenes had some smearing due to the lack of overdrive. Surface textures were richly detailed and saturated with vivid color. Contrast was good too, especially when we turned on ACM (dynamic contrast). It isn’t too aggressive which means shadow and highlight detail are always visible. We recommend using ACM for gaming and videos but it’s too bright when working in apps like Word and Excel.

As a post-production and workday monitor, the Acer ConceptD CM3271K is well-qualified, thanks to its many color options and superb image quality. If you were hoping to get more bank for your buck and also use it for gaming though, it isn’t as well suited.

To read about our monitor tests in-depth, check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The CM3271K is a value-oriented display, so we’ve included similarly priced monitors in the comparison group. Note that all these monitors are geared for gaming, howeve. There's the ViewSonic Elite XG270QC, Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ, Viotek GFI27QXA and Gigabyte G27QC. Additionally, we've also added Acer’s flagship CP7271K, which is geared toward professionals. 

The CM3271K is rated for 350 nits in SDR mode but manages to deliver its full output in our test. 457 nits is plenty bright for any indoor or outdoor environment. The only drawback to this approach is that minimum output is still quite high at 93 nits. This will make it a bit fatiguing to use in dark rooms such as video editing bays. A lower minimum of 50 nits would be more useful.

The black level is typical of an IPS panel running at over 450 nits peak so resulting contrast is a class-average 1,005.3:1. You can increase this to around 2,000:1 by turning on the ACM dynamic contrast option in the OSD.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Calibration (see our recommended settings on page 1) in the User mode doesn’t affect contrast, thanks to very precise RGB sliders that start at center-range. The CM3271K is typical of most IPS panels in its black levels and overall image depth.

Our review sample showed some slight uniformity issues that lowered the intra-image contrast score. The bottom right zone is a little brighter than the rest. Had it been more uniform, the ANSI result would likely have been closer to 1,000:1.

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We performed all calibration tests in the CM3271K’s User mode. We also measured the gamut presets corresponding to the most commonly used standards, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and sRGB.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

Regardless of the chosen gamut, default grayscale tracking was the same. We could see a slight purple tint from 30% on up and the average error was around 5.8 Delta E (dE). Gamma stays close to the 2.2 mark in every case with a slight drop at 70-90%. This means higher brightness levels are a tiny bit too high. The error is hard to spot in actual content.

Calibration in the User mode produces excellent grayscale tracking with no visible errors. Gamma remains the same. The CM3271K includes other gamma presets, all of which measure correctly. If you set 2.4, you get 2.4.

Comparisons

Though the CM3271K is aimed at creative professionals, its out-of-box grayscale accuracy is a little below par. We would expect default numbers to be around 3dE or less. The 5.89dE value shown above represents the User mode though all other gamut modes measured within 0.2dE of that. Calibration in the User mode makes a visible improvement but then you are restricted to the General gamut which is nearest to Rec.2020.

Gamma accuracy is good with a tight range of values and tracking that averages 2.11, 4.09% off the 2.2 spec. This is solid performance.

Color Gamut Accuracy

For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The CM3271K’s native color gamut is best measured against the Rec.2020 standard. You can see in the first chart that it is on or close to most targets with a linear rise in saturation. It only comes up a little short of the full gamut which is impressive. This is a seriously colorful display. When viewed next to a typical sRGB screen, the difference is quite obvious.

Calibration lowers the average error to 2.48dE when compared to Rec.2020. Other gamut modes measure very close to their targets as well with average errors around 3.1dE and full coverage. We’ve measured Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and sRGB for today’s tests.

Comparisons

The CM3271K’s 2.48dE score represents the calibrated User mode with the General (Rec.2020) color gamut in place. Other gamut modes have average errors around 3.1dE so it’s safe to say that color performance is similar in all presets. We wish there were more calibration options in the various gamut modes to correct grayscale tracking. But at this monitor’s price point, it delivers solid accuracy. One could correct the grayscale flaws with a software solution like CalMAN and a software lookup table.

We’ve charted the gamut volumes for sRGB (97.59%) and DCI-P3 (89.49%). These are measured in their respective color modes. Adobe RGB volume was calculated at 98.21% while Rec.2020 coverage is an impressive 74.9%. The CM3271K is qualified for color-critical work when a software profile is used. If you’re working in Rec.2020, you can calibrate in the OSD and forgo the need for additional lookup tables.

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To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

To switch the CM3271K into HDR mode, we applied an appropriate signal and toggled the manual control in the OSD. It won’t change over automatically despite an HDR option labeled “Auto”. Once Auto is engaged, all image controls are locked out.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The CM3271K has plenty of brightness available for HDR content with a peak of over 464 nits. There is no dynamic contrast in play here, so the black level is about the same as it is for SDR. Contrast is therefore just 1,009.4:1 in HDR mode. Though the EOTF luminance curve is accurately rendered, this monitor doesn’t provide any more impact with HDR content. It’s displayed correctly, but there is no visual benefit to running HDR mode.

Grayscale, EOTF & Color

Despite the lack of extra contrast in HDR mode, the CM3271K does display HDR content accurately. Grayscale errors are minor with a slight purple tint visible from 40% and higher. The luminance curve is close to spec with a soft transition to tone-mapping at 65%.

There is plenty of color available for the CM3271K to cover both DCI-P3 and a large portion of Rec.2020. When measured against the DCI standard, only red and green come up slightly short. Inner targets are a bit over-saturated which is fine since it makes the image look more vivid. Rec.2020 is the same story with inner targets nearly spot-on and only a little less saturation at the triangle’s perimeter. This is some of the best HDR color performance we’ve seen to date.

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Viewing Angles

The CM3271K shows typical IPS viewing angles when photographed at 45 degrees to the sides. A green tint is visible and peak output drops about 30% brightness. Detail is visible down to the darkest steps. In the vertical plane, the image looks more washed out with a blue tint and a 50% drop in brightness. 

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

Our CM3271K sample had slight hotspots in the corners with the bottom right showing a barely visible glow. That hurt its uniformity score though 13.10% isn’t too bad. This is a sample-specific issue, so not all CM3271Ks will exhibit this behavior. Color uniformity was exemplary at every brightness level and field patterns above 10% brightness had no issues. 

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

Among 60Hz monitors, the CM3271K has a tad less input delay. Of course, compared to faster screens, it lags behind. 61ms is fine for casual gaming, but more skilled players will need a speedier monitor to rack up the frags. The 22ms draw time can be mitigated with overdrive, but when Adaptive-Sync is engaged, overdrive is unavailable. This means rapid movements on screen will show visible motion blur and a reduction in resolution. 

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There are many color standards referenced in today’s gaming and video content. Creative pros need a monitor that can cover them all, and that usually means a high price tag. The Acer ConceptD CM3271K aims to deliver maximum flexibility and usefulness to video editing and graphics work for substantially less money. 

With a huge native color gamut that covers nearly 75% of Rec.2020, the CM3271K can easily deliver DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and sRGB. Acer has also included support for EBU and SMPTE-C and even a grayscale mode. There's no content that can't be viewed accurately on this monitor.

We wish there were more calibration flexibility here. The User mode allows for two-point grayscale adjustments with accurate gamma presets but is limited to the monitor’s full native gamut, which is near Rec.2020. When you select another gamut, grayscale controls are locked out, and we noted some slightly visible white point errors that couldn't be corrected.

If you want it to do double-duty as a gaming monitor, the CM3271K is fine for casual play, but with a 60 Hz refresh rate limit, hardcore players will be left wanting. Though Adaptive-Sync is included, activating it locks out overdrive. This produced some blur when the action became intense.

But for creative tasks like video and photo editing,or game production; the CM3271K is a great tool that sells for far less than most professional monitors. Its flagship counterpart, the CP7271K, boasts a higher refresh rate and a FALD backlight but costs nearly three times as much.

Though there are a few flaws, the CM3271K’s greatest asset is its price/performance ratio. For $650 at this writing, it doesn’t cost any more than other 27-inch 4K monitors that lack its many color gamut options. For creatives seeking a budget display, it’s worth a serious look.

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Logitech is showing Mac workhorses some love. Today, it released a version of the Logitech MX Master 3, our favorite productivity mouse ever, that works with Apple computers and tablets. That means the mouse can control and share files among three Mac desktops, laptops or an iPad and launch profiles catered to software made for Apple products. 

We asked Logitech if the MX Master 3 for Mac, as well as the MX Master Keys for Mac keyboard would still work with full functionality once software comes out that is redesigned for Apple Silicon, Apple’s homegrown CPUs that will start taking over for Intel chips starting at the end of this year. However, the vendor told Tom’s Hardware that it didn’t have any information on that yet, since the announcement is very new. 

Logitech MX Master 3 for Mac

The Logitech MX Master 3 for Mac is available today for $99.99, the same price as the Windows version, but optimized for MacOS and iPadOS. The wireless mouse comes in a “Space Gray” meant to mimic the hues of Apple devices, although it seems a little dark from our perspective.  

This is a Bluetooth wireless mouse that’s supposed to last for up to 70 days without a charge. While the PC version of the MX Master 3 includes a dongle, Logitech ditched the dongle connection with the Mac version because it believes Mac users are more likely to use a Bluetooth connection than a dongle.  

The Logitech MX Master 3 for Mac works with free Logitech Options software, which comes with preset profiles that have the 6 programmable buttons set with functions for popular apps, like Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and Google Chrome. But for the Mac version, Logitech fine-tuned for the Mac versions of these apps and included programs like Safari. The mouse is programmed to appeal to advanced content creators, but you can also edit and create your own profiles in Logitech Options. 

As we detailed in our Logitech MX Master 3 review, the mouse is a multi-PC productivity machine, allowing you to control and share files, text and photos across up to three PCs. That’s thanks to Logitech’s Flow feature that works similarly to Windows 10’s Nearby Sharing.

What really stands out with this mouse is its scroll wheel, dubbed MagSpeed. It’s a different wheel than what’s in the MX Master 2S and MX Master. The reinvented wheel uses two electromagnets that allow you to switch between smooth, super-fast scrolling or more precise ratchet movements. Unlike its predecessors, the MX Master 3 does each type of scroll silently, and its free spin is as good as it gets when it comes to speed. 

Logitech designed the mouse for palm grippers, and you get a side thumb wheel that’s actually accessible and comfortable. 

With this mouse still being my go-to productivity mouse after reviewing it in November, it’s only fair that Mac users can now consider it too. With a Logitech Darkfield laser sensor sporting 4,000 CPI (counts per inch), it’s not meant to be the best gaming mouse, but instead a reliable and sturdy mouse for your toughest workloads. 

Logitech MX Keys for Mac 

Today also brought the arrival of the Logitech MX Keys for Mac. This is an Apple-friendly version of the Logitech MX Master Keys that also offers wireless connection (Bluetooth or dongle) and control and file sharing among three PCs. You can also program the function row to perform different actions with different Apple software.

But since it targets Mac users, Logitech updated the keyboard with a Mac layout. And while the eject button is only functionable on its own with an iPad (it shows or hides the keyboard), Logitech added hot keys to make the button work with others to make your system go to sleep, restart, turn off or put a display to sleep while the Mac is awake. 

The Mac version of this keyboard also comes with a USB-C to USB-C charging cable, instead of the USB-C to USB-A one that comes with the Windows version. Logitech said that this is because the latest version of Macs boast as many as four USB-C ports.

With its low-profile membrane keys and build, this won’t make the best gaming keyboard. When we went hands-on with the Logitech MX Master Keys, it was hard to get used to its shallow experience compared to a mechanical keyboard. But in a press briefing, Logitech said that the MX Keys for Mac is meant to remind users of their experience using a Mac keyboard, with a slightly more premium experience than the Apple Magic Keyboard. 

Its backlighting also uses a proximity sensor, so it’ll only light up when you’re near it. And there’s an ambient light sensor, so the MX Keys for Mac can adjust brightness based on the lighting in your room’s environment. 

With Logitech’s MX line of productivity gear finally being fine-tuned for Macs and iPads, Apple fans will have no excuse not to get their work done.  

AMD's new Ryzen XT lineup comes as a refresh that's designed to tackle Intel's new Comet Lake processors. The XT family brings three new flagships to bear: The Ryzen 9 3900XT, the Ryzen 7 3800XT, and the Ryzen 5 3600XT that will all vie for a spot on our list of Best CPUs. Surprisingly, on the surface, the XT lineup looks a lot like what we've seen in the past from Intel: An iterative lineup of chips with small differentiation from their predecessors in terms of features and clock speeds, not to mention the same number of cores, same process node/density (albeit with some refinements), and the same microarchitecture as their predecessors.

AMD even eliminated bundled coolers from two of its three new models, which runs counter to its standard value proposition of throwing in all the goods with each chip. Overall, the Ryzen XT series doesn't appear to have the explosive gains like we're used to with AMD's gen-on-gen improvements, but there's a lot more nuance to the XT story than what we see on the spec sheet. 

A quick glance at the spec sheet shows most of the key specifications remain unchanged, with the most substantial change being that the 12-core 3900XT comes with a 100 MHz higher boost, the 8-core Ryzen 7 3800X gains 200 MHz, and the 6-core Ryzen 5 3600XT gains 100 MHz.

Due to refinements to the 7nm node, AMD says it improved boost frequencies by 2-4%, but it also improved boost residency, or how long the processor remains at its boost frequency, by up to 80%. Combined with the incrementally higher clock speeds, AMD says the improved boost residency improves lightly-threaded performance by 4-5%.

As we'll cover below, the minor increases to boost frequencies that we see on the spec sheet don't take into account that the processors now have more room to boost higher in mid-threaded workloads (those that don't fully saturate all of the cores). That capability delivers up to 10% more performance in some workloads, but we found those are pretty rare. AMD wrung out this extra performance while leaving key power limitations unchanged, meaning you get more performance within the same maximum power envelope. 

We also see some gains in gaming performance, albeit not of the explosive sort. AMD says you can expect about a 2% improvement with the 3900XT and a 4-5% improvement with the 3800XT, depending on the title. We didn't see as much uplift, though. As expected, games that respond to lightly-threaded performance benefit the most, so gains can be scattered. 

AMD advises that these processors aren't meant to be a direct upgrade path from existing Ryzen 3000 processors. Instead, the existing chips will still be available at retail. The new XT-branded chips will serve as another choice for customers if they're upgrading to a Ryzen processor for the first time, or refreshing an older rig. 

You'll need to bring your own 280mm (or greater) AIO liquid cooler for Ryzen XT 9 and 7 chips, though, which adds to the pricing significantly. We did record slightly improved performance from the auto-overclocking PBO feature over prior-gen models, but AMD also says you shouldn't expect higher manual overclocking frequencies from the new chips. 

Overall the Ryzen XT processors offer incremental performance increases in gaming that aren't worth a direct upgrade, and most gamers are better suited with either AMD's existing models or Intel's competing chips – The Ryzen XT series doesn't change the gaming landscape much. If gaming is your primary focus, you'll be better served with less expensive Ryzen alternatives, like the Ryzen 7 3700X or the Ryzen 5 3600X. The Core i5-10600K is another solid choice that leads our list of Best CPUs.

Due to the performance characteristics of the XT models, they're a decent step up over the standard models if you frequently use productivity applications that aren't exclusively heavily-threaded. The Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 7 3800XT, in particular, deliver great gains in a few productivity apps, like Photoshop and Adobe Premier, so paying a bit extra for the chip only makes sense if you already plan on using an aftermarket cooler and use those types of apps almost exclusively. 

AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 5 3600XT

The Ryzen XT processors come with a familiar piece of branding - the 'XT' moniker from AMD's Radeon Technology Group (RTG). AMD brought the XT branding to its CPUs to denote they are refresh chips with higher performance potential than their X-series counterparts. That works well for the company from a 'cross-branding' standpoint, and we could see more XT-branded chips in the future, too. AMD says it didn't add a 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X "XT" model to the stack because it already has the performance crown on the mainstream desktop. 

Like the other Ryzen 3000 series chips, the XT models are drop-in compatible with any existing motherboard with a Ryzen 3000-ready BIOS and all 500-series motherboards. As before, the chips support up to DDR4-3200, but official support varies based on the type of DIMM and number of populated channels. 

The $499 Ryzen 9 3900XT, $399 Ryzen 7 3800XT, and $249 Ryzen 5 3600XT land with the same suggested pricing as the existing Matisse models, meaning the XT models aren't a price-reducing update. Both lineups will coexist in the market.

AMD's SEP (Suggested Etailer Pricing) has little connection with the reality you see at retail, so you can already find the existing Ryzen 3000 series processors far below the SEP. We could see the already-solid pricing on X-series Ryzen chips get even better in the wake of the XT models, too.

Given the volatile pricing we see with existing AMD chips, the new XT models will probably retail below MSRP in due time, too, muddying the competitive landscape. For now, the Ryzen XT 9, 7, and 5 processors square up with Intel's flagship Core i9, i7, and i5 chips, particularly the -KF models that, like the XT chips, come without integrated graphics.  

AMD didn't improve the base frequencies because the company says the processors rarely operate in these low frequency ranges, even during heavily-threaded workloads that fully stress the processor and trip power governors. That's a fair argument, and unlike Intel, AMD doesn't spec Ryzen 3000's TDP metrics solely at the base frequency, so the base frequency specification isn't as important.

The XT processors adhere to the same 105W and 95W TDP ratings as their predecessors, but more importantly, feature the same PPT (Package Power Tracking) variable that defines the upper limit of power delivered to the socket. That means the Ryzen 9 and 7 models can peg the needle at 142W of maximum power draw, while the Ryzen 5 3600XT tops out at 88W. 

AMD's boost frequency improvements also apply when the processor is under load, so multi-core boosts are also improved. However, that comes with a caveat: The core-heavy 3900XT can hit its PPT limit before all of its cores are stressed, which restricts possible performance gains. AMD also enforces its other existing power limits, like the TDC (sustained current) and EDT (spontaneous current) variables, at the same levels as previous-gen models. As a result, most of the 3900XT's enhanced boosting capability occurs during light- to mid-threaded workloads where those limits aren't a factor. 

Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 3800XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT have fewer cores, and thus don't encounter the limits as easily. That means we should see higher performance gains with the Ryzen XT 7 and 5 models in threaded workloads.

AMD claims the 3900XT now holds the single-threaded performance crown, wresting it from Intel's aging Skylake architecture, but it's noteworthy that distinction appears to be based specifically on Cinebench benchmarks. Our testing found that Intel still holds the overall single-threaded crown when we look at a broader spate of workloads and data types. However, as you'll see on the following page, AMD has significantly increased both its boost speed and boost duration with the XT models.

What? No Cooler with Ryzen XT Processors?

AMD's unrestrained feature sets have earned it plenty of cachet with enthusiasts and casual users alike. Things like multi-threading and overclockability come standard with nearly every model, and the company used to provide bundled coolers with all SKUs. However, the Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 7 3800XT models both come without a bundled cooler: You'll need to provide your own 280mm (or greater) AIO liquid cooler (or equivalent air cooler), which adds to platform costs. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 3600XT comes with a bundled Wraith Spire cooler like its X-series counterpart, the 3600X. 

This isn't entirely without precedent – AMD also doesn't provide a cooler with the 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X, and for many of the same reasons. AMD defines important characteristics of chip performance based upon the bundled coolers' ability to dissipate thermal load, so the company uses the bundled cooler to define the frequency, power, and performance targets. (Intel also takes the same approach with its chips that come with bundled coolers.) 

Due to AMD's adaptive Precision Boost 2 algorithms, much of the Ryzen 3000 series processors' performance relies upon the capabilities of your motherboard and cooling, with the latter having a big impact on peak frequencies and boost duration/residency. By requiring a larger cooler, AMD can spec the processor and define performance targets based on the improved thermal dissipation capability, thus ensuring that you realize longer and higher boost frequencies. Given that the cooler plays a big role in the performance uplift we see with the new chips, it's hard to say how much of the performance gains stem from cooling or the enhancements to the 7nm node, but it's probably a mix of the two. However, given like-for-like AIO cooling, the XT models have proved to be faster than the previous-gen models in our testing.  

AMD also says that 60% of enthusiasts don't use the bundled cooler, but the company didn't cite a source for that prediction. As such, the company feels that these performance-oriented models will most likely be paired with an aftermarket cooler. In contrast, the Ryzen 5 3600XT comes with a bundled Wraith Spire cooler because AMD feels that enthusiasts shopping in this price range are more likely to use the bundled cooler. 

AMD Ryzen XT Architecture and 7nm Process Node

The Ryzen XT models come with the same Zen 2 microarchitecture as their predecessors, so transistor density, CCD alignments, and other particulars are the same. AMD says it uses a 'better recipe' for the same 7nm node, so it "contain(s) materially better transistors than those found in prior third-gen AMD processors."

AMD cites reduced voltage and leakage along with improved operating frequencies as a result of node enhancements, but the company will not share details of the specific optimizations. We do know the XT models use the same node as the original 3000-series processors, though. According to monitoring utilities, the XT models even come with the same B0 stepping die as the preceding X-series models.  

TSMC has three 7nm options. N7 is the DUV node largely thought to be used in Ryzen 3000 series processors. N7P (Performance Enhanced) is a second-gen version of N7 that comes with up to 7% more performance at iso-power (or 10% lower power at iso-speed) but remains on DUV manufacturing. Finally, N7+ comes with EUV lithography and is ~1.2X denser and isn't IP-compatible with the preceding two nodes, meaning it requires a significant amount of design work and validation to port over an architecture.

AMD hasn't specifically said which flavor of the 7nm process it uses for the 3000-series, but given that N7P only debuted in 2019, it's logical to expect the company uses N7.

AMD's first Zen 3 processors will land later this year with the 7nm process, which AMD previously marked as 7nm+ on its roadmap. AMD later altered the Zen 3 listing on its roadmap to "7nm" to align with TSMC's changing nomenclature. That means we could see either N7P or N7+ come with the Zen 3 processors, though the former seems more likely.

Regardless, the improvements with the XT series aren't as impressive as we saw from the second-gen Ryzen processors, which moved from the 14nm GPP process with Ryzen 1000 to the 12nm LP process. That transition wasn't an optical shrink, so it also didn't impact die area or transistor density, but it also resulted in improved transistor performance.

The move to 12nm LP netted 300 MHz higher clock rates or a 50 mV core voltage reduction at any given frequency compared to 14nm, and AMD also used higher-performance libraries in critical pathways, which resulted in lower cache and memory latencies. The Ryzen 2000 series also brought improved Precision Boost 2 and XFR2 algorithms, which helped push performance further. 

AMD isn't as forthcoming to the changes with the Ryzen XT series, so we aren't sure if the company has made significant changes to the libraries, or the nature of its other tweaks. 

Caching Up With StorMi V2 and Ryzen Master

AMD updated its Ryzen Master software, which you can use to monitor and adjust critical parameters of Ryzen processors (including overclocking). The new version has a new basic view for novices. This reduces the complexity of the full-featured program by only displaying the parameters in the screenshot below. 

StoreMI, which comes free with AMD processors, is a storage acceleration technology that combines an SSD and HDD into one volume, with the most frequently-accessed files being stored on the faster SSD. This approach blends the speed of flash with the capacity and pricing of an HDD.

The original StoreMI operated in a tiering implementation that expanded the capacity of the hard drive, so the technique moved data from the HDD to the SSD for acceleration. As a result, the system only maintained one copy of the data. That exposes users to potential data loss in the event of a power failure or BSOD, but it gives you more usable capacity than caching. For instance, if you combine a 1TB SSD and a 1TB HDD, you get 2TB of addressable storage. 

AMD's new StoreMI version 2.0 uses a caching implementation, so combining the 1TB SSD and 1TB will only yield 1TB of addressable storage. With caching, the capacity of the SSD basically vanishes when you use it to accelerate an HDD. That's because caching stores a copy of the data on both the SSD and the HDD.

The new approach also only caches read-only data on the SSD, while the previous version also absorbed incoming write traffic on the SSD to speed random write workloads. That, too, left users potentially exposed to data loss, and often for slim gains in real-world workloads. In effect, read caching gives you the lion's share of accelerated performance that you would get with a tiering implementation, but with far less risk. 

Caching is a safer path to storage acceleration, but it comes at the cost of usable capacity. Now AMD lets you mix and match SSDs and HDDs of any capacity, though, while the previous version of StorMI had limits of a 256GB SSD and 2TB HDD. 

AMD says the new approach speeds up boot times by 31% and decreases game load times by 13% compared to an HDD, but didn't provide performance comparisons to the previous StoreMI version. StoreMI also has a simplified user interface, and although NVMe storage is cheap enough that most enthusiasts will opt for a new SSD-only boot volume, StorMI is essentially free for the more value-conscious among us.

StorMI V2 debuts on the X570 platform first. Updates for existing Ryzen platforms, like X470, B450, B550, TRX40, and X300, will release on a rolling schedule throughout Q3 2020. 

AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT Boost, Power and Thermals

We ran our standard frequency test for lightly-threaded workloads (methodology here). This lightly-threaded test regimen is designed to extract the highest boost clock rates possible as we step through five iterations of the LAME encoder, then single-threaded POV-Ray and Cinebench runs, PCMark 10, GeekBench, and finally the VRMark Orange Room test. To keep the charts 'clean,' we only plot the maximum frequency recorded on any one core during the test. 

The first slide tells the story pretty clearly - the Ryzen 9 3900XT holds its boost clock of 4.7 GHz consistently throughout the first series of tests. The chip even exceeds the maximum rated 4.7 GHz clock rate and pegs the needle at 4.775 GHz for short bursts. That shows just how well the Precision Boost 2 algorithms can extract more performance from better cooling solutions, but we also have to keep in mind that silicon quality plays a role, so your mileage may vary. 

In contrast, the Ryzen 7 3900X peaks at 4.65 GHz, and boost duration is both less frequent and of shorter duration. The voltage, power consumption, and temperature charts show that the 3900XT accomplished this feat with slightly lower voltages (silicon quality could weigh in here) and drew slightly more power during the test. Note that you can use these temperature measurements, and those in the following tests, as a measure of what to expect with Ryzen XT processors in both lightly- and heavily-threaded workloads. 

We tested multi-core workloads with a string of real-world stress tests that include multiple instances of the Corona ray-tracing benchmark, x265 HandBrake rendering tests, POV-Ray multi-threaded benchmarks, Cinebench R20 runs, and finally five iterations of the AVX-intensive threaded y-cruncher. 

Here we can see the 3900XT boost higher during some idle portions of the test, but both chips reach similar peak clocks during the heavily-threaded portions of the test. Here the Ryzen 9 3900XT is largely bumping against AMD's power limits, just like the 3900X, so it consumes a similar amount of power and generates a similar amount of heat. Performance is very similar in these heavily-threaded workloads, too. 

We see a bit of a different picture with the Ryzen 7 3800XT below. 

AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT Boost, Power and Thermals

The goal of the Ryzen 7 3800XT single-threaded tests is to kick the tires and see if the 200 MHz increase to the boost clock is real. It is – the chip exceeds its rated boost frequency and peaks at 5.75 GHz. Like the 3900XT, boost duration is longer, and the boosts happen more frequently, too.

Again, the 3800XT runs at a slightly lower voltage than its X-series counterpart, but the increased power draw, especially during the opening stages of the benchmark, is more pronounced than the deltas we recorded between the 3900XT and 3900X. Of course, we're looking at the 3800XT's ~200 MHz clock rate increase as opposed to the 3900XT's ~100 MHz, so that's expected.

The 3800XT's increased clock rates over the 3800X also equates to higher heat output than the 3800X. That's acceptable, though, given the higher performance.

The Ryzen 7 3800X has four fewer cores than the Ryzen 9 3900XT, but it has the same power governor (PPT, EDC, EDT) limitations as the 3900XT. Due to the lower power consumption of its eight-core design, it has more available power consumption headroom before it trips the power limits, which provides more opportunities to boost performance. 

As a result, the 3800XT hits higher clock rates and provides more performance than the 3800X during the tests, but it also has notably higher power draw and heat output. That's an acceptable tradeoff. 

These results show that we should expect more uplift for the 3800XT over the 3800X in heavily-threaded applications than we'll see with the 3900XT over the 3900X. That's because the 3900XT's hefty core count, by default, chews through more of the available power budget, causing it to hit the socket power limits before it can provide more performance.

AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT Power Consumption and Efficiency

AMD's reviewer guide states that the Ryzen XT processors offer more performance within the same power thresholds, meaning they'll provide more performance before they hit the power limits. However, AMD doesn't claim the chips are more power efficient (more performance-per-watt), and our testing generally reflected the trend of more performance in tandem with a commensurate increase in overall power consumption. 

At stock settings, we logged an average of 117W of power consumption for the Ryzen 9 3900XT during the AVX-intensive multi-threaded y-cruncher workload, which is 3W higher than the Ryzen 9 3900XT. That isn't surprising because this heavy workload causes the 3900XT to hit the power limits. We also logged similar deltas in the other applications we use to measure power consumption, all of which load the processors heavily. 

Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 3800X consumed 85W during the y-cruncher test, but the 3800XT jumped to 101W. That shows again that, due to its lower core count, the 3800X still has plenty of room to consume the extra available power budget before triggering power restrictions. We see a similar result during the x264 Handbrake test - the 3800XT consumes 11W more than the 3800X. 

The Ryzen 5 3600XT is also free to consume more power within the power limits defined by its TDP rating, so it also pulls more juice at stock settings than the 3600X. 

In terms of power efficiency, the renders-per-hour charts show that the XT models all produce fewer renders per watt of power consumption. That shows that the Ryzen 3000 processors are more efficient when they operate further down the voltage/frequency curve, much like we see with the company's Eco Mode. These are AVX-heavy workloads, though, so you could see less of a delta with different workloads. 

Despite the increased power draw, the Ryzen processors still dominate the comparable Intel processors in power consumption and efficiency metrics. 

Here, we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative amount of energy required to perform an x264 and x265 HandBrake workload, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart. Bear in mind that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are best.

These charts reveal the relatively slim performance gains, and the slightly higher power draw that comes as a result, of the Ryzen 7 3800X and the Ryzen 5 3600XT. However, due to the ever-present power restrictions, we don't see much of a change for the 3900XT in these heavily threaded tests. 

Still, the 7nm Ryzen 3000 processors continue to exhibit lower power draw and superior power efficiency compared to Intel's Core chips with the hyper-optimized 14nm process. 

Test Setup and Ryzen 9 3900XT Overclocking

AMD says you shouldn't expect any extra manual overclocking headroom with the Ryzen XT processors, but we did notice slightly better performance from the auto-overclocking PBO feature with the XT chips. That comes largely as a benefit of the higher boost capabilities. Given the slightly lower voltages we've seen with our sample, it's logical to expect you may be able to attain similar manual overclock ceilings to the X-series processors, but at a slightly lower voltage. 

We haven't had time to test manual overclocking with the XT series processors fully yet, and it would be impossible to make a definitive measure with a sample size of one processor. Especially given the vagaries of the silicon lottery. However, we don't expect explosive performance improvements from manual overclocking. 

Overclocking headroom is extremely limited on the Ryzen 3000 processors, and exceeding the boost clocks, or even meeting them, typically isn't possible for all-core overclocking with conventional cooling. We stuck with AMD's auto-overclocking PBO feature as it offers improved multi-threaded performance while maintaining most of the single-threaded performance that comes from the default boosting mechanism. We tuned the memory in tandem with the PBO feature by using the XMP profile to enable DDR4-3600 with 16-16-16-36 timings. 

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All test results marked with "PBO" reflect configurations tested with AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature. For overclocking, we tuned our memory to DDR4-3600 for both Intel and AMD platforms.

We do have a limitation of 15 processors per chart (which we're addressing), so we only included the Ryzen 5 3600XT and the competing Core i5-10600K at stock settings. We'll post a separate Ryzen 5 3600XT review soon and further explore its performance with the stock cooler (we use the Corsair H115i for this testing).

The TLDR

Given the nature of the Ryzen XT refresh, we didn't expect to see large gains in gaming performance in most of the titles we tested below, and we didn't. The charts above provide the geometric mean of our gaming suite (minus the synthetic results in the first and second albums below) so we can easily identify broad trends. We can see that the Ryzen XT models are faster than their predecessors - but not by much. 

In terms of average frame rates across the breadth of our test suite, the stock Ryzen 5 3600XT is 2.5% faster than the 3600X, while the Ryzen 7 3800XT and 3900XT are roughly 1% faster than their X-series counterparts. These aggregate numbers aren't impressive, but it's noteworthy that you'll see more noticeable gains in specific titles that respond best to higher clock rates. Hence, a test suite weighted more towards single-threaded performance could yield larger deltas.

As a general statement, the XT models tend to perform like their overclocked X-series counterparts. We also noticed slight performance gains over the X-series chips when we overclocked the XT models, too, but overclocked Ryzen processors generally don't yield big performance increases in gaming. We included all of our standard game testing below, but given the small performance deltas between the XT- and X-series, we won't provide too much commentary in the individual game results below (aside from identifying a few broad trends). We see more substantial performance gains in the application testing on the following pages – particularly with workstation-class applications.

We include a broader gaming breakdown with other Ryzen models added on the final page of the review, but the Ryzen XT series doesn't change AMD's standing much in the gaming landscape.

VRMark and 3DMark on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Synthetic gaming benchmarks often aren't generally indicative of real-world performance, but the 3DMark DX11 and DX12 tests are interesting because they measure the amount of raw computational horsepower exposed to the game engine. For now, most of today's game engines don't scale as linearly with additional compute resources, but these tests help us gauge how games could exploit processing resources as the engines become more sophisticated.

As expected, the DX11 and DX12 tests don't produce more performance from the 3900XT over the 3900X because the chip reaches its power limit under full load, which then keeps performance consistent with the X-series model. The Ryzen 7 3800XT has a bit more room to roam within the 144W power limit, so it gains 5% over the 3800X in the DX11 test. The Ryzen 5 3600XT also gains 4% in the test, but the uplift is smaller during the DX12 test.

VRMark's test values per-core performance (a mixture of frequency and IPC), and it obviously prefers physical cores and lots of L3 cache. The Ryzen 5 3600XT notches a 5% increase over its X-series counterpart, while the 3900XT gains a mere 1%. Meanwhile, we see a slight reduction for the 3800XT, but that could be due to a testing anomaly. 

Civilization VI AI and Stockfish on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Stockfish, an open-source chess engine, is designed to extract the utmost performance from many-core chips by scaling well up to 512 cores. Here we can see the Ryzen 9 3900XT lose a bit of steam with the PBO feature engaged, but the same is true of the Ryzen 9 3900X. Regardless, the 3900XT's twelve cores and 24 threads take the lead. 

Civilization VI's AI engine values per-core performance, which benefits from Intel's higher clock rates. Except for the 3600XT, the XT models are faster than the X-series models in this benchmark. However, we do see slightly lower performance with overclocking for the 3800XT and 3900XT, but that isn't uncommon for the Ryzen 3000 series in these types of lightly-threaded tests.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation loves cores and threads, but clock rates also play a role. At stock settings, the Ryzen XT models experience minimal uplift over the Ryzen "X" chips. AMD says most of the performance advantages occur in lightly-threaded games that respond most to higher frequencies. This title is largely the polar opposite of that description.

In fact, the stock Ryzen 3900XT and X model tie, and the same essentially applies to the Ryzen 7 3800XT. The Ryzen 5 3600XT gains 1.2 fps over the 1600X, but that's a fairly minor increase in performance for what should be a significantly higher street price than the 3600X (we won't know actual pricing until the chips come to market).

We also see some XT-over-X gains when we engage the auto-overclocking PBO, but these are slight and could vary based upon silicon quality.

Dawn of War III on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

The Warhammer 40,000 benchmark responds well to threading, but it's clear that clock speed and IPC also matter. We see the same trend emerge in this benchmark, with small but measurable gains across the board for the Ryzen 9 and 7 XT chips. The 3800XT picks up 3.2 fps while the 3600XT jumps 4.1 fps over the 3600X. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 3900XT essentially ties itself at both stock and overclocked settings. We also don't see any overly-impressive increases in 99th percentile measurements, either. 

Far Cry 5 on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Far Cry 5 tends to run well on Intel architectures, which is a tendency we see as the Intel processors all beat the Ryzen competition. This is still an Intel-friendly chart, but we do see more performance from the Ryzen XT models over their predecessors. The 3800XT, for instance, provides slightly more performance than the overclocked 3800X, opening up a 6.3 fps gap between it and the 3800X. That's a pretty significant increase given the relatively small deltas between the AMD chips in this benchmark. The 3900XT notches a 3.9 fps increase over the 3900X, while the 3600XT gains 2.6 fps. 

Final Fantasy XV on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

We run this test with the standard quality preset to sidestep the impact of a bug that causes the game engine to render off-screen objects with the higher-resolution setting. 

Grand Theft Auto V on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Hitman 2 on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Project Cars 2 on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Although Project CARS 2 is purportedly optimized for threading, clock rates obviously affect this title's frame rates. 

World of Tanks enCore on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

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The TLDR

The charts above provide the geometric mean of several of our application tests (listed in the chart title) that are representative of broader trends in lightly- and multi-threaded applications. Notably, these charts don't include the workstation-class application tests on the following page. You'll see more meaningful performance improvements there. 

We included all of our standard application testing below. Given the small performance deltas between the XT- and X-series, aside from identifying notable outliers, we won't provide too much commentary in the individual results - some of them even fall within the margin of error. 

Rendering on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

We don't see much of a gain for the Ryzen 9 3900XT in the threaded Cinebench workload, but that's expected because the all-core load triggers the socket power limits. However, removing those limits via the PBO feature also yields similar performance to the Ryzen 9 3900X. The Ryzen 7 3800XT gains a mere 1% over the X-series model, while the Ryzen 5 3600XT gains nearly 4%. 

The XT-series' also notches gains in the single-core test, with the 3900XT, 3800XT, and 3600XT improving by 2%, 3%, and 5%, respectively, though the first two aren't quite as impressive given the benchmark's margin of error. 

A similar tale plays out through the rest of the rendering tests, with the Ryzen 5 3600XT posting the most substantial gains. Meanwhile, the 3900XT and 3800XT eke out small but measurable and repeatable gains.

Encoding on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

The single-threaded LAME and FLAC encoding tests respond well to per-core performance, which benefits Intel's chips. AMD has shortened the gap between it and the Intel competition in these tests, but the overall performance hierarchy remains unchanged. 

The threaded HandBrake x264 and x265 tests show the same general trend - some slight gains for the Ryzen 9 3900XT and 3800XT, though it's noteworthy that the 3800XT passes the 10700K in the x264 render test. 

Web Browsing on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Single-threaded performance reigns supreme in most web browsers. The Ryzen 7 3800XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT take impressive steps forward over the X-series models, but improvements are more muted with the Ryzen 9 3900XT, even falling within the margin of error in a few tests.  

Office and Productivity on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Clock rates benefit the majority of the GIMP image processing and Microsoft Office tests, both of which benefit from the faster clock rates that come with the Ryzen XT series. 

Compression and AVX on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

The 7zip and Zlib compression/decompression benchmarks rely heavily upon threading and work directly from system memory, thus avoiding the traditional storage bottleneck in these types of tasks. As we've come to expect, the Ryzen processors dominate in 7zip compression tasks, but the performance hierarchy is largely unchanged.  

Overall we don't see any big changes in these benchmarks, either, though we had more luck the Adobe suite on the following page. 

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We recorded some of the largest performance gains for the Ryzen XT processors in the Adobe suite of benchmarks. We generally don't include processors with fewer than six cores in these benchmarks, but in light of the substantial performance gains we see in these tests, we'll add these tests for the Ryzen 5 3600XT and comparable chips in our forthcoming review. 

Some of these applications also make an appearance in our standard test suite, but those test configurations and benchmarks are focused on a typical desktop-class environment. In contrast, these tests are configured to stress the systems with workstation-class workloads, which is a particular strength for the Ryzen 9 3900XT given its hefty core counts. 

We loaded down our test platforms with 64GB of DDR4 memory spread across four modules to accommodate the expanded memory capacity required for several of these workstation-focused tasks. We also outfitted the test systems with PCIe 4.0 SSDs to factor in the platform-level advantage of AMD's support for the faster interface.

Puget Systems Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

Puget Systems is a boutique vendor that caters to professional users with custom-designed systems targeted at specific workloads. The company has developed a series of acclaimed benchmarks for Adobe software, which you can find here.

Adobe After Effects CC Render Node Benchmark

The After Effects render node benchmark leverages the in-built aerender application that splits the render engine across multiple threads to maximize CPU and GPU performance. This test is memory-intensive, so RAM capacity and throughput are important and can be a limiting factor.

Ryzen XT's enhanced "mid-threaded" performance pays off in the Adobe tests. The Ryzen 9 3900XT gains 13.6% percent over the 3900X in the render node test, which is an impressive feat that unseats the Core i7-10700K. The 3900XT also benefits more from the auto-overclocking PBO feature, allowing it to surpass the stock 10900K. However, the Core i9-10900K is still impressive after overclocking, so it takes the leadership position. 

We also see a similarly impressive jump for the 3800XT, which notches an 11.8% increase in performance. That doesn't change it's ranking relative to the 10700K, but it does reduce the performance disparity. 

Adobe Premier Pro CC Benchmark

This benchmark measures live playback and export performance with several codecs at 4K and 8K resolutions. It also incorporates 'Heavy GPU' and 'Heavy CPU' effects that stress the system beyond a typical workload. Storage throughput also heavily impacts the score. 

The PCIe 4.0 interface benefits the Ryzen processors, but sheer brute computational force is the name of the game here. That plays well to the Ryzen 9 3900XT's 12-core design as it provides 6% more performance than the 3900X. Meanwhile, the 3800XT improves its standing with a 9% increase in performance over the 3800X. 

Adobe Photoshop CC Benchmark

The Photoshop benchmark measures performance in a diverse range of tasks, measuring the amount of time taken to complete general tasks and apply filters. 

The Ryzen 9 3900XT picks up a 10% win over the 3900X, nearly matching the Core i9-10900K, while the 3800XT gains 15% over the 3800X.

GPU acceleration is here to stay in professional applications, and the overclocked 10900K's high clock rates help push it to the lead in the GPU score, contributing to its overall lead. 

SPECworkstation 3 Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT

The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications split among seven categories, but we've winnowed down the list to tests that largely focus specifically on CPU performance. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so be aware these are not official benchmarks. We've upgraded to the new 3.0.4 revision that supports spanning the tests across processor groups and sockets.

Media and Entertainment

We run the new Blender Benchmark in our regular suite of tests on the preceding page, but different render jobs can stress processors in unique ways. Here we can see a breakout of several industry-standard benchmark renders that largely favor chips with hefty core counts. 

We see some jockeying back and forth between the 3900XT and the 3900X in some of the renders, which clearly shows which scenes are heavily threaded. The 3BMWs render, however, obviously doesn't load the cores fully, giving the 3900XT some room to scrape out a few wins over its X-series counterpart.  

The 7zip, Luxrender, and Handbrake workloads exercise all of the CPU cores, so we don't see any large performance gains with the XT models. Again, we see the 3900X and 3900XT swap positions in a few of those heavily-threaded tests. 

NAMD and Rodinia LifeSciences

NAMD is a parallel molecular dynamics code designed to scale well with additional compute resources, and here we can see performance scale well largely based on core and thread counts. The 3800XT picks up a few slight gains over the 3800X, but the 3900XT is obviously constrained by its power limits in this all-core workload. It still exhibits Intel-beating performance, though. 

SPECworkstation 3's Rodinia LifeSciences benchmark steps through four tests that include medical imaging, particle movements in a 3D space, a thermal simulation, and image-enhancing programs. These are heavily-threaded tests, so we're largely lost in a sea of power limits and run-to-run variance that doesn't show any meaningful performance differences between the 3900XT and 3900X. The 3800XT again takes a few steps forward from the 3800X, with the hotpsot and srad tests standing out as a significant improvement. 

Product Development and Energy, Financial Workloads

The earth’s subsurface structure can be determined via seismic processing. One of the four basic steps in this process is the Kirchhoff Migration, which is used to generate an image based on the available data using mathematical operations. The Ryzen 9 3900XT maintains AMD's spot at the top of the chart, but it's nearly identical to the 3900X in this test.

Calculix is based on the finite element method for three-dimensional structural computations. This benchmark performs well on the Intel processors and the strength of the 10900K's high clock rates comes into play here, lending it the pole position among the stock processors, and the overall lead after tuning. 

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The Ryzen XT lineup arrives to do battle with Intel's Comet Lake, but while the new chips do provide measurable performance gains over their predecessors, you'll need to run very specific workloads to justify the increased costs associated with the cooler-less Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 7 3800XT. That's complicated by the fact that the existing X-series models already retail at great price points, giving AMD plenty of competition from within its own ranks.

The Ryzen 5 3600XT looks promising if it falls to a lower price point, especially in light of its bundled cooler, but we'll follow up with more targeted testing in a separate review.

There are places where the 3900XT and 3800XT might make sense despite their higher pricing, but for the majority of enthusiasts, gaming isn't one of them. In the chart below, we plot gaming performance using average frame rates and a geometric mean of the 99th percentile frame times (a good indicator of smoothness), which we then convert into a frames-per-second measurement. Bear in mind that we tested with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at 1920x1080 to alleviate graphics-imposed bottlenecks. Differences between our test subjects shrink at higher resolutions.

The 3900XT and 3800XT do little to meaningfully improve gaming performance over the X-series. Admittedly, our test suite isn't weighted heavily towards games that respond best to higher frequencies. AMD also cites DirectX 9 titles as particularly apt to see performance gains, but that isn't a very frequently-used API in 2020, so we don't have any DX9 titles in our suite.

AMD predicts a 2% increase in gaming performance over the X-series models for the 3900XT and 4% for the 3800XT, but we measured roughly 1% for both chips across the breadth of our test suite. We recorded slightly larger gains of 2.5% for the Ryzen 5 3600XT over the 3600X, but that delta might be impacted by our testing with the H115i cooler for both chips, so we'll follow up with targeted testing with the stock coolers. 

If you're specifically looking for gaming performance, skip the $499 3900XT and $339 3800XT unless they drop to a much lower price point that's comparable to the X-series. AMD's recommended pricing rarely lasts at retail, particularly after a few months, so it's hard to determine where final pricing will land. Conversely, the X-series models carry the same MSRP but rarely command those prices at check out, and they could see further discounts, too. That muddies the waters in terms of firm recommendations. 

If gaming is your primary focus, you'll be better served with less expensive Ryzen alternatives, like the Ryzen 7 3700X or the Ryzen 5 3600X that currently retail for $270 and $249, respectively. Those chips come with bundled coolers that can save you money on an aftermarket cooler, and they offer the lion's share of XT's performance at far lower price points. Intel's ~$275 Core i5-10600K is also a solid gaming option that currently leads our list of Best CPUs. 

We run a broad spate of applications that span from the mundane to the professional. Still, we didn't record many outstanding performance gains that justify the 3900XT and 3800XT's pricing (or lack of bundled coolers) for most day-to-day desktop PC applications. The chips are measurably faster in some tests, but in many cases, the deltas are slight and fall close to the standard deviation of the benchmarks. 

Our frequency measurements exposed strong potential with the 3900XT and 3800XT's single-threaded boost clocks, but real-world testing didn't register as much of a benefit. Motherboard and firmware differences can have an impact, but the X570 platform is fairly mature, and any big advances on the optimization front will likely benefit the X-series models, too. 

We did see slightly improved performance with the auto-overclocking PBO feature, but gains remain small and AMD says we shouldn't expect higher frequencies from manual overclocking, either. 

Performance in the Puget Sound Adobe benchmark suite was by far the highlight of our testing, and it's clear that XT's performance optimizations benefit those types of mid-threaded workloads. If you're already planning on buying an aftermarket cooler, the Ryzen 3900XT and 3800XT make a good fit for those types of applications. Time is money for professionals and semi-pro creators alike, and those users will benefit most from the advantages the XT series bring to the table. 

Overall, the Ryzen XT series does provide another option for discerning shoppers that know their workload, particularly those that frequently use applications that benefit. Still, most will be better served with AMD X-series processors or Intel alternatives.

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Intel's Comet Lake has cratered into the market, bringing more threads to the company's Core i5 and i7 lineups along with more cores for the halo Core i9 family. In response to AMD's unrelenting pressure, Intel's revamped lineup offers more threads for the same pricing as previous-gen models. The Core i7-10700K slots in with eight cores and 16 threads for and MSRP of $374 / $349 (without GPU), though current street prices are higher. In fact, the 10700K offers the same number of cores and threads as the previous-gen Core i9-9900K, but for $114 less, making it a contender for our list of Best CPUs and a top-performer on our CPU Benchmark Hierarchy.

As expected, Intel reserved the best features for its halo Core i9-10900K, like support for its Thermal Velocity Boost that triggers higher boost speeds if the chip runs below a certain temperature. However, the Core i7-10700K still marks the debut of Turbo Max 3.0 to the Core i7 family. This tech targets the 10700K's two fastest cores, which peak at 5.1 GHz, with lightly threaded workloads to improve snappiness. That results in a surprisingly close competition for gaming supremacy between the Core i7-10700K and the Core i9-10900K. 

The Intel Core i7-10700K also comes with a 3.8-GHz base clock that, paired with its 16 threads, improves its standing against price-comparable Ryzen processors in threaded desktop PC applications, while the snappy single-threaded performance gives it an outright win in lightly-threaded apps. The Core i7-10700K also proves to be a nimble overclocker that doesn't generate an untenable amount of excess heat, so off-the-shelf water coolers can unlock big gains. 

Overall, the Core i7-10700K gives you nearly the same gaming performance as the Core i9-10900K, but for $110 less, and overclocking eliminates any meaningful difference in gaming performance between the chips. You also get extremely competitive single-threaded performance at stock settings. 

AMD isn't sitting still, though. The company recently announced a new line of Ryzen XT processors that should bring slight performance improvements over the existing chips. Still, more importantly, the pending chips have resulted in lower pricing on the existing processors. The competing $300 Ryzen 7 3700X isn't as adept in gaming and only holds a slight edge in creativity applications, so it slots in as a lower-cost alternative. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 3900X retails for a fantastic $415, and its 12 cores offer far more performance in threaded workloads, making it the go-to productivity chip. 

The Core i7-10700K leads in gaming, but cost-conscious shoppers may prefer Intel's own Core i5-1600K, which is a better value for lower-cost gaming rigs. This leaves the Core i7-10700K as a good choice for high-end gaming machines, and it definitely takes the shine off Intel's Core i9-10900K (and its egregious power consumption) for overclocking enthusiasts and the frame-rate obsessed. 

Intel Core i7-10700K Specifications and Pricing

The Comet Lake architecture, which comes with the 14nm++ process, is yet another Skylake derivative, meaning most performance gains come from added features and clock rate improvements. We've covered the finer details here. 

The biggest change to the Core i7 series comes in the form of more threads at the same price points as previous-gen i7 models, which equates to a lower price-per-thread. Intel's graphics-less F-series 10700K also stands out with a $25 discount. 

The 10700K doesn't have a direct Ryzen 3000 competitor on the pricing front yet, with the ~$415 Ryzen 9 3900X serving as a step up with 12 cores and 24 threads, while the $329 Ryzen 7 3800X lands at a lower price point. We expect that to change when AMD releases its Radeon XT models, with the $399 Ryzen 7 3800XT serving as the 10700K's direct competitor. 

In many respects, the Core i7-10700K is similar, if not better, than the previous-gen Core i9-9900K. Both chips come with eight cores and 16 threads, but the 10700K has higher 3.8 / 5.1 GHz base/boost clocks, while the Core i9-9900K tops out at 3.6 / 5.0 GHz. Both chips have the same 4.7 GHz all-core boost. 

The Core i7-10700K gains the extra 100 MHz in boost frequency over the 9900K via Intel's Turbo Boost Max 3.0 tech, which targets the two fastest physical cores (identified during the binning process) and targets them with lightly-threaded applications.

Intel fabs both the Core i9-9900K and Core i7-10700K with a similar process and architecture, but the 10700K consists of the ten-core die with two cores fused off to create an eight-core part. Intel gives the 10700K a 125W TDP rating, which is a substantial increase over the 9900K's 95W. Intel specs the TDP rating at base clocks, so the company made a few alterations, including pairing a thinner die and copper integrated heat spreader (IHS) with solder TIM to help accommodate the higher heat output. Intel also bumped up the PL2 (Power Limit 2) rating that reflects power draw during boost activity to 229W, which is a big jump over the 9900K's 119W rating. 

Intel bumped up its memory support over the previous-gen models from DDR4-2666 to DDR4-2933, a minor improvement, and you'll need a Z490 motherboard with the LGA1200 socket to accommodate the chip. Luckily, all 115x cooling solutions are compatible.  As with the chip's other ratio multipliers, Intel fully enables memory overclocking on Z-series motherboards, but you'll lose that functionality on the B- and H-series. Be sure to price in a Z-series board and a cooling solution, preferably liquid, if you're off to the overclocking races. Meanwhile, AMD allows overclocking on all but its A-Series motherboards. 

The Core i7-10700K doesn't come with a boxed cooler like the competing Ryzen chips, but mid-range air coolers should be sufficient for stock operation, and even some overclocking. Serious overclockers should plan on a 240mm or greater all-in-one cooler, but the overclocking results we'll outline on the following pages are pretty impressive. 

Intel Core i7-10700K Overclocking Settings, Power and Thermals

We dialed in a 5.1-GHz overclock with a 1.36V vCore and left the motherboard to its own devices for LLC control (auto), giving us a steady 1.38V under heavy load. As we did with the Core i9-10900K, we dialed the ring bus multiplier to 48 to improve stability and performance, but that's an optional tweak. We also ran our overclocked configuration with memory at DDR4-3600 with 18-18-18-36 timings. 

The Core i7-10700K proved to be fairly easy to cool with a Corsair H115i 280mm AIO cooler. The chip peaked at 85C during a string of y-cruncher multi-threaded tests, and power peaked at slightly over 250W. That's a new high for Core i7, but you could get away with bulky air coolers if you reign in your maximum frequency targets. 

SIlicon Lottery, a boutique vendor that pre-bins chips, reports that 20% of its samples reached 5.1 GHz on all cores, and more than half can hit 5.0 GHz. However, Silicon Lottery pairs those multi-core boosts with higher four-core boosts of 5.2 and 5.1 GHz, respectively. That means a bit more tuning would likely extract higher clocks with our sample, which we bought at retail.  

There really isn't too much to talk about with our overclocking efforts: The Core i7-10700K is an easy overclocker, and we have little doubt that a bit more tuning could unlock more performance. 

Intel Core i7-10700K Turbo Boost and Thermals

As per normal for any of our testing of stock settings, we disabled the MCE (Multi-Core Enhancement) feature that amounts to automatic overclocking (Enhanced Multi-Core Performance in Gigabyte's parlance). 

We ran our standard frequency test for lightly-threaded workloads (methodology here). Here we see frequent boost activity to 5.1 GHz during the PCMark 10 tests, and power consumption and thermals weren't really an issue, though we did record a spike to 178W. 

As you can see above, thermals were good with the Corsair H115i, albeit with the fans cranking at full speed, during a string of real-world stress tests that includes multiple instances of the Corona ray-tracing benchmark, x265 HandBrake rendering tests, POV-Ray multi-threaded benchmarks, Cinebench R20 runs, and finally five iterations of the AVX-intensive threaded y-cruncher. 

The Intel Core i7-10700K ran at 4.7 GHz during heavy all-core loads, and temperatures spiked to 76C with the Corsair H115i cooler. Power consumption peaked at 190W, which is well under the PL2 rating of 229W.

Intel Core i7-10700K Power Consumption and Efficiency

At stock settings, we logged an average of 147W of power consumption for the Core i7-10700K during the AVX-intensive multi-threaded y-cruncher workload, which is 9% less power than the similarly-equipped Core i9-9900K. That's impressive given that both chips run at 4.7 GHz on all cores during the test. As you'll see in the application testing later, the 10700K delivers faster performance, meaning that, compared to its spiritual predecessor, it yields a comparatively solid increase in power efficiency in SIMD workloads. The Core i7-10700K also draws less power than the 9700K, which has the same core count but doesn't come with Hyper-Threading.

We logged similar power consumption during our overclocking efforts, with the 10700K's fixed 5.1 GHz clock rate yielding a maximum of 211W under load, compared to the 9900K's 5.0 GHz overclock that pulled down 206W. As always, take power readings during overclocking with a grain of salt, as fine-tuning and motherboard firmwares have a huge impact here.

As expected, the Core i7-10700K consumes much more power than the Ryzen 3000 chips, but that isn't surprising given their denser and more power-efficient 7nm node. That advantage really shines through when we take a look at power consumption during our HandBrake x264 and x265 workloads. Still, basic power consumption measurements never tell the full story – the Ryzen processors also dominate the renders-per-day efficiency metrics.

Here, we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative amount of energy required to perform an x264 and x265 HandBrake workload, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart. Bear in mind that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are best.

Intel's hyper-optimized 14nm++ process can't beat the Ryzen processors in these measurements of power consumed during AVX-accelerated encoding tasks. The 10700K represents a decent step forward from the 9900K, but it's clear there's still a large disparity between the AMD and Intel camps. 

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All test results marked with "PBO" reflect configurations tested with AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature. For overclocking, we tuned our memory to DDR4-3600 for both Intel and AMD platforms.

This set of tests focuses narrowly on the Core i7-10700K's price band, but we have comparisons to the Core i5-10600K and other modern processors in gaming and application work on the final page of the review. 

VRMark and 3DMark on Intel Core i7-10700K

Synthetic gaming benchmarks often aren't generally indicative of real-world performance, but the 3DMark DX11 and DX12 tests are interesting because they measure the amount of raw computational horsepower exposed to the game engine. For now, most of today's game engines don't scale as linearly with additional compute resources, but these tests help us gauge how games could exploit processing resources as the engines become more sophisticated.

The $387 (MSRP, current street prices higher) Core i7-10700K falls into the bottom portion of the Fire Strike test results, grappling with the $300 Ryzen 7 3700X. Surprisingly, the ever-so-slightly-faster $329 Ryzen 7 3800X trails both of those contenders by roughly 500 points. Meanwhile, the 10700K's sixteen threads respond more readily in the Time Spy benchmark as it distances itself from the Ryzen 7 models, and overclocking expands the lead. However, the Ryzen 9 3900X steps in with a lead in both tests, even beating the overclocked 10700K. That's important to keep in mind, as recent deep price cuts find the 3990X hovering at the ~$410 price point. 

VRMark's test values per-core performance (a mixture of frequency and IPC), and it obviously prefers physical cores and lots of L3 cache. The Core i7-10700K's high clock speeds pay dividends in this benchmark, and we see what will become a familiar trend: The Core i7-10700K is faster than the Core i9-9900K that retails for $488 (MSRP, current street prices higher). Given the Core i7-10700K's similar eight-core 16-thread design and much lower pricing, it's clear Intel has moved quite a bit forward on the value front as a response to the Ryzen 3000 series processors. 

Civilization VI AI and Stockfish on Intel Core i7-10700K

Stockfish, an open-source chess engine, is designed to extract the utmost performance from many-core chips by scaling well up to 512 cores. It isn't surprising to see the Ryzen 9 3950X take the lead, but its 16 cores and 32 threads set the benchmark for the highest-end of the mainstream X570 platform, and also the highest pricing at $740. The Core i7-10700K lands near the bottom of the chart but beats the Core i9-9900K at stock settings. Overclocking gives the 10700K the lead. The Ryzen 9 3900X is also impressive in this test, especially in light of its new lower pricing at retail. 

Civilization VI's AI engine values per-core performance, which benefits Intel's higher clock rates. Chips without hyper-threading usually fare the best in this title, but the 10700K's 5.1 GHz boost clock propels it above the 9700K's 4.9 GHz. The Core i7-10700K lands behind the 9900K running at 5.0 GHz despite its dual-core 5.1 GHz boost at stock settings. The disparity likely comes as a result of the time taken to transition to the boost clock and the efficacy of Turbo Boost Max 3.0 thread scheduling, which can vary based on its ability to identify and schedule threads to the fastest cores. Overclocking rights that slight disparity, though, as the 10700K takes second to the 10900K. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation on Intel Core i7-10700K

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation loves cores and threads, but clock rates also play a role. Intel's addition of threading to the Core i7 series pays off as the 10700K edges past the 9700K and 9900K at stock settings, but this title still plays exceedingly well with the Zen 2 architecture, granting the stock Ryzen models an across-the-board lead. That changes when we kick up the voltage on the 10700k, which, after overclocking, trails only the 10900K. 

Dawn of War III on Intel Core i7-10700K

The Warhammer 40,000 benchmark responds well to threading, but it's clear that clock speed and IPC also matter. The stock Ryzen processors fall down the charts in this title, though the Ryzen 3 3700X carves out a win against the 9900K. The 10700K beats the Ryzen competition at stock settings and takes the overall lead after tuning. 

Far Cry 5 on Intel Core i7-10700K

Far Cry 5 tends to run well on Intel architectures, which is a tendency we see as the Intel processors all beat the Ryzen competition. The 10700K carves out a substantial lead over the the 9700K again and marks a nice step forward over the 9900K. The 10900K is impressive in this title in both stock and overclocked settings, though it only leads the overclocked 10700K by a slim margin. 

Final Fantasy XV on Intel Core i7-10700K

We run this test with the standard quality preset to sidestep the impact of a bug that causes the game engine to render off-screen objects with the higher-resolution setting. We're clearly approaching a graphics limitation with these core-heavy chips, but this title obviously prefers to run on physical cores, lending the 9700K the overall win. The overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X also puts up a tough fight as it outpaces all of the stock Intel processors except the 9700K. 

Grand Theft Auto V on Intel Core i7-10700K

The overclocked 10700K essentially ties the 10900K in this benchmark. It's clear that enthusiasts who aren't afraid to overclock and are primarily focused on gaming can save some money by going with the 10700K if they're after that last bit of performance advantage. After overclocking, the deltas between the 10900K and the 10700K aren't worth the premium for the i9 model. Instead, spend that money on a better cooler or graphics card. 

Hitman 2 on Intel Core i7-10700K

The Core i7-9700K remains impressive as it edges out the 10700K at both stock and overclocked settings. Meanwhile, the Ryzen processors populate the bottom of the chart in the company of the stock 9900K. 

Project Cars 2 on Intel Core i7-10700K

Although Project CARS 2 is purportedly optimized for threading, clock rates obviously affect this title's frame rates. The 10700K beats out the overclocked 9900K here, which is an impressive achievement. 

World of Tanks enCore on Intel Core i7-10700K

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Rendering on Intel Core i7-10700K

Intel can't contest AMD's commanding lead in rendering applications on mainstream desktop platforms, or any other platform for that matter, but it can compete on price and reduce performance disparities. 

The Core i7-10700K beats or matches the 9900K across the full spate of our rendering tests, both at stock and overclocked settings, but the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X is a potent foe. That chip retails for roughly $415, which is a worthy $28 premium over Intel's MSRP if you're focused on productivity work. The 3900X's bundled cooler also sweetens the deal. 

The Ryzen 7 3800X carves out a few wins, but the disparity between the two chips is slim at stock settings, and the Core i7-10700K leads after overclocking. 

Moving on to the single-core rendering workloads, the Intel processors maintain a solid lead, particularly after overclocking. 

Encoding on Intel Core i7-10700K

The single-threaded LAME and FLAC encoding tests respond well to per-core performance, giving the overclocked 10700K a convincing position in the performance charts. 

AMD's Ryzen can't match Intel's single-threaded performance in those lightly-threaded encoding workloads, but the chips are more competitive in the threaded SVT-AV1 encoder built by Intel and Netflix. Again, the 3800X and 3700X take the lead over the 10700K at stock settings, but those deltas are slight. After overclocking, the 10700K regains the lead. 

The threaded HandBrake x264 and x265 tests really speak to the AVX performance improvements AMD made to the Zen 2 architecture. The stock 10700K lags the Ryzen 7 3800X and 3700X in the x264 test, but surpasses the chips in the AVX-heavy x265 benchmark. Overclocking helps separate the 10700K from the pack, but the Ryzen 9 3900X again asserts itself with leading performance. 

Web Browsing on Intel Core i7-10700K

Browsers tend to be impacted more by the recent security mitigations than other types of applications, so Intel has generally taken a haircut in these benchmarks on fully-patched systems.

Single-threaded performance still reigns supreme in these tests, so it isn't surprising to see the Comet Lake chips largely take the lead at stock settings, and completely separate themselves from the pack after tuning. The Ryzen chips fare better in the Microsoft Edge benchmark because it uses the copious helping of threads more effectively. 

Office and Productivity on Intel Core i7-10700K

Clock rates benefit the majority of the GIMP image processing and Microsoft Office tests, both of which benefit from the Core i7-10700K's high boost clocks. 

Compilation, Compression and AVX on Intel Core i7-10700K

At stock settings, the Ryzen 3800X and 3700X outperform the Core i7-10700K, and even the 9900K, in the LLVM compilation benchmark. Overclocking swings the lead in the 10700K's favor, but not by a large margin. The Ryzen 9 3900X again proves its mettle in this threaded task, easily sweeping the Intel processors.  

The 7zip and Zlib compression/decompression benchmarks rely heavily upon threading and work directly from system memory, thus avoiding the traditional storage bottleneck in these types of tasks. As we've come to expect, the Ryzen processors dominate in 7zip compression tasks. The 10900K is a bit more competitive in the decompression test, but even overclocking the 10700K doesn't give it an edge over any Ryzen processor. 

The heavily-threaded y-cruncher benchmark, which computes pi using the taxing AVX instruction set, finds the 10700K notching minor gains over the 9900K while trailing the Ryzen 3000 series at stock settings in the threaded test. Overclocking boosts the 10700K up the charts, but the Ryzen 3800X and 3900X still lead. Clock rates come into play during the single-threaded y-cruncher test, so the Intel processors take the top of the chart. 

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Intel's Core i9-9900K is a hit with some professionals due to its high clock rates, and because of the similarities between the chips, we ran an extra series of tests to measure the Core i7-10700K's performance in workstation-class Adobe workloads.

We loaded down our test platforms with 64GB of DDR4 memory spread across four modules to accommodate the expanded memory capacity required for several of these workstation-focused tasks. We also outfitted the test systems with PCIe 4.0 SSDs to factor in the platform-level advantage of AMD's support for the faster interface.

Puget Systems Benchmarks

Puget Systems is a boutique vendor that caters to professional users with custom-designed systems targeted at specific workloads. The company has developed a series of acclaimed benchmarks for Adobe software, which you can find here.

Adobe After Effects CC Render Node Benchmark

The After Effects render node benchmark leverages the in-built aerender application that splits the render engine across multiple threads to maximize CPU and GPU performance. This test is memory-intensive, so RAM capacity and throughput are important and can be a limiting factor.

The Intel Core i9-10900K and 10700K may be at a disadvantage due to their lesser core counts compared to the Ryzen 3900X and 3950X, but they carve out fairly impressive wins at stock settings due to their higher per-core performance. The Ryzen 9 3900X and 3800X challenge the stock 10700K after overclocking, but a bit of tuning goes a long way to push the 10700K up the standings to second place. 

Adobe Premier Pro CC Benchmark

This benchmark measures live playback and export performance with several codecs at 4K and 8K resolutions. It also incorporates 'Heavy GPU' and 'Heavy CPU' effects that stress the system beyond a typical workload. Storage throughput also heavily impacts the score. 

The stock Ryzen 9 3900X beats the 10700K in the overall Premier Pro standard score due to its 12 cores and 24 threads, and the 3700X and 3800X also prove impressive at stock settings. Overclocking brings the 10700K within striking distance of the Ryzen 9 3900X, but the 3900X stretches its legs after overclocking. The 3700X takes a small step backward after tuning, but that isn't entirely uncommon when using AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature, particularly in applications that prize per-core performance. 

Adobe Photoshop CC Benchmark

The Photoshop benchmark measures performance in a diverse range of tasks, measuring the amount of time taken to complete general tasks and apply filters. 

The stock ten-core Core i9-10900K is incredibly strong in this benchmark at both stock and overclocked settings, but overclocking the Core i7-10700K brings it into competitive range. GPU acceleration is here to stay in professional applications, and the 10700K's high clock rates help push it to a lead over the Ryzen processors in the GPU score. 

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The $387 (MSRP, current street price higher) Core i7-10700K offers more performance than the previous-gen Core i9-9900K, and it comes at a significant gen-on-gen price reduction of $114 that's useful for other additives, like a better GPU, motherboard, or SSD. The Core i7-10700K also provides shockingly-good performance in gaming, particularly after overclocking, which takes some of the shine off the $488 (MSRP) Core i9-10900K. 

On the surface, the 10700K looks like the go-to chip for enthusiasts chasing the best gaming performance possible within a limited budget, but AMD's reduced pricing, not to mention Intel's own competition from the Core i5-10600K, muddies the waters. 

In the chart below, we plot gaming performance using average frame rates and a geometric mean of the 99th percentile frame times (a good indicator of smoothness), which we then convert into a frames-per-second measurement. Bear in mind that we tested with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at 1920x1080 to alleviate graphics-imposed bottlenecks. Differences between our test subjects shrink at higher resolutions.

At stock settings, the Core i7-10700K is roughly 5% faster than the Core i5-10600K in our test suite, and that delta shrinks to 3% after overclocking. That slim lead comes at a $124 (32%) premium, though, which isn't worth it for all but the performance-obsessed. 

Conversely, the 10700K only trails the 10900K by 4% at stock settings and less than 1% after overclocking, taking the shine off the 10900K's leading gaming performance. If you're focused on gaming, those slim deltas don't justify the 10900K's $101 premium, but the 10900K's extra two cores do come in handy for productivity applications. 

The Ryzen 7 3700X offers the best mix of price and gaming performance in this bracket, but it trails the 10700K by 6% at stock settings and 14% after overclocking. That means you won't have as much room to grow on the gaming front as newer, faster GPUs come to market. You'll have to buy your own cooler for the 10700K, but the Ryzen 7 3700X comes with a bundled cooler and costs $87 less, so it's a worthy lower-cost alternative if you're not after bleeding-edge gaming performance. 

The 3900X offers essentially the same level of gaming performance as the Ryzen 7 3700X, so, if you choose to go with an AMD processor, the latter is the better bang-for-your-buck choice for gaming-focused builds.

The Ryzen 9 3900X offers 35% more performance than the stock 10700K in threaded productivity applications and slots in at a solid $415 price point. The 3900X was still 27% faster even after we tapped into the 10700K's overclocking potential, making it a no-brainer for productivity work. The Ryzen 9 3900X also comes with a bundled cooler that's fine for stock operation, which improves the value proposition over the Core i7-10700K for threaded productivity work. 

The Core i7-10700K is a stellar overclocker that yields big performance gains with reasonable conventional cooling solutions, like high-end air coolers or mid-range AIOs. In contrast, the Core i9-10900K essentially comes overclocked out of the box, so performance gains are slim. It also sucks a prodigious amount of power, thus requiring expensive cooling solutions. 

Overall, the Intel Core i5-10600K is the best value for gaming-focused builds, while the Ryzen 9 3900X is obviously the best choice for threaded productivity work. Conversely, the 10700K is a far better value for gamers than the 10900K, particularly if they're not afraid to overclock and therefore gain access to essentially the same level of gaming performance. 

AMD has left a pricing gap in its Ryzen 3000 series that it will fill soon with the Ryzen 7 3800XT, but despite that pricing advantage, the Core i7-10700K appeals to a limited cross-section of users. If you're primarily interested in gaming and overclocking is on the menu, the Core i7-10700K offers the best performance in its price range and leaves more room in the budget than the Core i9-10900K. For productivity work, the Ryzen 9 3900X is a far better deal, though, and it's no slouch on gaming, either, making it the better all-around CPU. 

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Apple is transitioning its Mac computers to its own custom chip designs based on Arm. The company is detailing its transition away from Intel's processors at its annual WWDC  (Worldwide Developers Conference). Apple calls the new chip 'Apple Silicon.'

Apple's Johny Srouji, head of the company's chip design, said Apple's CPUs are often more powerful than PC laptops. He said he wants Apple Silicon to be more powerful while consuming less power.

Srouji said the GPU and battery life would be better, and privacy would be paramount. CEO Tim Cook said the company will launch the first Mac with an Apple CPU by the end of the year, while there are still more Intel Macs in the pipeline. He suggested the entire transition will take roughly two years.

The first silicon will be on Macs with macOS 10.16, Big Sur. Apple made every app it has produced to operate natively with the new chips, and developers will merely have to recompile in xCode. Universal 2, a new binary that works on Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs, can use the binary for all of their users. Apple's Craig Federighi said Microsoft and Adobe are already working on apps. Those include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Lightroom and Photoshop.

Federighi said all demos during WWDC ran on a development system using Apple's 12Z Bionic chip.

A new version of Rosetta, Rosetta 2, will let you run apps made for Intel Macs on Apple's own systems. It translates code when apps are installed, but can also do it while you use apps. Apple also showed gaming, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider, working through Rosetta 2 at 1080p with emulation.

Big Sur will have virtualization for Linux and Docker. You'll also be able to run iPhone and iPad apps natively on new Macs, all without developers changing anything.

There will be a Quick Start program for developers, including forums, sample code and access to Apple support. There will also be a hardware developer kit: a Mac Mini with A12Z, 16GB of RAM and a beta of macOS Big Sur.

Analysts have often estimated that Apple's computers make up between 5 to 7% of Intel's client computing business.

"Apple is a customer across several areas of business, and we will continue to support them," an Intel spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Intel remains focused on delivering the most advanced PC experiences and a wide range of technology choices that redefine computing. We believe Intel-powered PCs—like those based on our forthcoming Tiger Lake mobile platform—provide global customers the best experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers, both today and into the future."

Apple developing its own chips in-house will allow it further control of its ecosystem, including not tying new computer releases to Intel's schedule. Apple already uses its own processors in the iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch. Its own T2 chip has already taken over some security and SSD controlling processes in its Macs alongside Intel processors, and the company has also made its own GPUs for the iPhone and iPad. Srouji said Apple had shipped over 2 billion SoCs on those devices.

This isn't the first time that Apple has transitioned between processor architectures on the Mac. It moved from the Motorola 68000 series to PowerPC, and then announced a transition from PowerPC to Intel at WWDC in 2005.

Updated June 22 at 3:15 p.m. ET with Intel's response.

Adobe announced three years ago that the company planned to retire Adobe Flash on December 21, 2020. The plan still stands with Adobe making all the necessary preparations for the multimedia software platform's retirement.

During its lifetime, Adobe Flash had been an important part of website, application and game designs. However, it's way past its prime, and Adobe also acknowledges that there are now better alternatives out there, such as HTML5, WebGL or WebAssembly.

Adobe has committed to supporting Adobe Flash with bug fixes, new features and security patches until the end of the year. After that, the company will wheel it into the retirement home and pull all Flash Player download pages from its website. Artists, developers and businesses that didn't plan ahead and replace Flash content will ultimately be left with unusable websites.

You might be tempted to acquire Flash Player from a third-party provider, but Adobe advises against doing so since the company cannot guarantee the authenticity of unauthorized downloads of Flash Player. The best course of action is to just uninstall Flash Player before the EOL (end-of-life) date and move on with life. Adobe will also prompt its users to remove Flash Player from their systems later this year although the company didn't delve into specifics.

We're a little over six months from the end of an era. Let's take this time to appreciate and enjoy what is left of Adobe Flash.

Intel dialed up the power for its new halo $488 Comet Lake-S Core i9-10900K, quite literally, to bulk up its mainstream desktop flagship with two extra cores for a total of ten cores and 20 threads. Aside from the promise of world-leading gaming performance, Intel also lowered gen-on-gen pricing to help fend off AMD's Ryzen processors that currently hold sway over our list of best gaming processors and dominate our CPU Benchmark Hierarchy. 

Once again, Intel aims its flagship chip squarely at enthusiasts and power users, touting the Core i9-10900K as the fastest gaming processor in the world. That performance comes mostly via the processor's extra cores and the fact that it basically comes pre-overclocked to an all-core 4.9 GHz, not to mention the peak 5.3 GHz speeds.  

Intel's Core i9-10900K still doesn't match AMD's halo 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X in terms of threaded performance. Instead, the 10900K competes with the 12-core 24-thread Ryzen 9 3900X in terms of both performance and price, but Intel's chip has the highest power consumption we've seen recently on the mainstream desktop. Intel pushes the 10900K's TDP envelope up to 125W (a 30W gen-on-gen increase), but that's only a measure of base power consumption. Intel rates the processor for 250W at peak performance, and we even measured peaks as high as 325W at out-of-the-box settings. Naturally, that results in a lot of heat. 

Intel does have a few tricks to deal with the resulting heat and improve overclocking, like thinning the die and using a thicker heat spreader, but cooling is still a significant challenge. The 10900K's high power consumption even overwhelmed our 280mm watercooler during some tasks, so you'll need a brawny cooler to handle the increased heat output. 

Intel also added a few new features to its halo product to satiate enthusiasts, like per-core hyper-threading adjustments and reworked overclocking software, among other new tunable knobs. However, because the Core i9-10900K is basically an overclocked processor right out of the box, there is precious little overclocking headroom with conventional cooling.

However, provided you have adequate cooling, the Core i9-10900K is unquestionably the fastest gaming processor on the market. It also offers incredibly snappy performance in lightly-threaded apps, and solid performance in heavily-threaded workloads. Despite its insatiable power consumption and high heat output, the 10900K will be sure to find some uptake from performance enthusiasts that are prepared to splurge on a robust motherboard, power supply, and cooler, but most users would be better served with cheaper AMD alternatives, like the Ryzen 9 3900X. 

Intel Comet Lake-S Core Specifications and Pricing

The Comet Lake-S lineup shores up the Core family with more cores or threads at every price point that equate to deep price cuts, which we recently covered in depth. Intel reduced its gen-on-gen Core i9 pricing by 20% per core and cut pricing up to 50% per thread on other downstream models. For the downstream models, Intel finally enables hyper-threading on its Core i7, i5, and i3 lineups. That creates some surprisingly strong value plays in the mid-range, at least on paper. 

For the Core i9-10900K, Intel essentially stretched out its existing 14nm++ die and the Skylake architecture's ring bus interconnect. The integrated UHD Graphics 630 engine remains unchanged and is available on all models, but you also have the option to buy graphics-less F-series variants to save some cash (you can shave off $16 the Core i9-10900KF). 

Intel Core i9-10900K Specifications and Pricing

The real story comes in the form of higher clock rates, extra cores, more performance, and all of the power consumption pain that entails. Intel has brought support for its Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology from the high end desktop to its mainstream platforms, and also roped in its Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) mechanism from its mobile chips. This creates a multi-tiered boost implementation that can be incredibly confusing, so here is a short summation of each boost and what it entails:

• Turbo Boost 2.0: Increased frequency if chip operates below power, current, and temperature specifications.
• Turbo Boost Max 3.0: Fastest cores are identified during binning, then the Windows scheduler targets the fastest two active cores (favored cores) with lightly-threaded applications. Chip must be below power, current, and temperature specifications.
• Single-Core Thermal Velocity Boost: Fastest active favored core can boost higher than Turbo Boost Max 3.0 if below a pre-defined temperature threshold (70C) and all other factors adhere to TB 3.0 conditions. 
• All-Core Thermal Velocity Boost: Increases all-core frequency when all cores are active and the chip is under 70C. 

The Core i9-10900K's ten cores and 20 threads operate at a 3.7 GHz base frequency when all cores are loaded, but that can improve to 4.8 GHz via the normal Turbo Boost, and up to 4.9 GHz via Intel's Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) feature. TVB is yet another layer to Intel's boost mechanism, but according to Intel, it only engages if the processor remains below 70C. However, we found that the all-core TVB frequency routinely engages regardless of chip temperature, which means motherboard vendors are still free to largely ignore Intel's power recommendations (functionality will vary by board). These vastly improved all-core boosts give the 10-core 10900K a fighting chance to match the 3900X's twelve cores in threaded applications, but as we'll see, that comes with a heavy power burden. 

TVB also applies to single-core boosts, too. Intel touts a 5.3 GHz single-core boost if the chip remains under 70C and meets all of the other normal requirements for boost activity. The chip downshifts to a dual-core 5.2 GHz via Turbo Boost Max 3.0 if the workload spreads across two cores, and then falls to 5.1 GHz if the workload lands in a single 'normal' core. Intel's goal is to provide the utmost in single-core performance, which remains its key advantage against AMD's Ryzen processors in lightly-threaded tasks like gaming and standard desktop PC applications.

All of this means that, given appropriate cooling and power delivery, you can hit 5.3 GHz in lightly-threaded work and up to 4.9 GHz in demanding all-core workloads. Intel assigned the 10900K a 125W TDP envelope, but that only applies when the chip operates at its base frequency - remember, Intel doesn't guarantee that you'll ever see Turbo Boost frequencies during normal operation. The chip is free to jump to 250W during boost activity, and motherboard vendors can ignore those limits.

Unlike the competing Ryzen 9 3900X, the Core i9-1900K doesn't come with a cooler, but at least the requisite motherboards are compatible with existing 115x coolers. Surprisingly, Intel only recommends a cooler that meets the PCG 2015D specification, meaning a cheap cooler that comes as either a 120mm AIO or a standard heat sink and fan, both of which can only dissipate 130W of waste heat. While this may technically meet Intel's specification for the base TDP rating, you would likely would see little to no Turbo Boost activity with a cooler of that class. 

We tested with the beefier Noctua NH-D15 and could mostly satisfy cooling requirements in standard desktop PC applications, but you will lose out on performance in workloads that push the boundaries with AVX instructions. As such, you'll need a greater-than-280mm AIO cooler or a custom loop to unlock the best of the 10900K. You'll also need an enthusiast-class motherboard with beefy power circuitry, and also plan on some form of active cooling for the motherboard's power delivery subsystem. 

Intel's Core i9-10900K comes with a few other tweaks, like improved memory support that jumps from DDR4-2666 to DDR4-2933, but still lags AMD's standard DDR4-3200 support. Intel also increased the L3 cache to 20MB. As before, Intel supports the PCIe 3.0 interface, while AMD has long since moved on to PCIe 4.0 and its doubled bandwidth. 

You'll need to upgrade to an LGA1200 motherboard for the new Comet Lake chips, and many Z490 models do support the PCIe 4.0 interface, albeit at the cost of increased pricing. However, that feature exists for as-yet-officially-unnamed future chips (read; Rocket Lake), so you'll pay extra for flagship motherboards that come with a feature you won't be able to use unless you upgrade your processor in the future.   

We also see generally higher pricing due to the bulky power delivery subsystems needed to feed Comet Lake with enough clean current. AMD's X570 platform is also pricey, but you can opt to use older, more cost-conscious X470 motherboards instead. You don't have the option of using older motherboards with Intel's lineup, and B-series and H-series boards haven't arrived yet, so you'll have to budget in a new board. We covered the Z490 motherboard ecosystem in more detail in our accompanying article.

Intel Core i9-10900K All-Core Turbo Boost and Power Consumption

With AMD nipping at its heels, Intel decided to basically overclock its Core i9-10900K right out of the box. The resulting power consumption measurements are surprising, even for us jaded folks that test the world's fastest and hottest x86 processors for a living. 

Intel uncorked its peak power consumption limits, know as PL2 (Power Level 2), by discarding its old limit of 1.25x of the base TDP rating (PL1 - Power Level 1). This exposes more performance while maintaining a 'controllable' amount of thermal output, but it also conjures up images of AMD's infamous FX-9590 processor – especially when we see the impact. 

Intel set its official new PL2 watermark at a 250W TDP, which is double the 125W PL1 rating, and recommends that motherboard makers keep boost activity limited to 56 second bursts (Tau). However, motherboard vendors are free to exceed all of these limits at stock settings if they feel their product can handle the increased voltages, current, and heat.

While Intel designed its 250W limit to keep thermals 'manageable' with a wide variety of cooling solutions, most motherboard vendors feed the chip up to ~330W of power at stock settings, leading to hideous power consumption metrics during AVX stress tests. Feeding 330W to a stock processor on a mainstream motherboard is a bit nuts, but it enables higher all-core frequencies for longer durations, provided the motherboard and power supply can feed the chip enough current, and your cooler can extract enough heat. 

To find the power limit associated with our chip paired with the Gigabyte Aorus Z490 Master motherboard, we ran a few Prime95 tests with AVX enabled (small FFT). During those tests, we recorded up to 332W of power consumption when paired with either the Corsair H115i 280mm AIO watercooler or a Noctua NH-D15S air cooler. Yes, that's with the processor configured at stock settings. For perspective, our 18-core Core i9-10980XE drew 'only' 256W during an identical Prime95 test. 

As you can see in our chart above, which measures the maximum frequency and temperature from any given core at a per-second granularity (100ms polling), temperatures (thick red line, right axis) quickly accelerated to 100C during the Prime95 test, and stayed there. Meanwhile, the frequencies (left axis) of the hottest cores dropped from the all-core 4.9 GHz down to 4.7 or 4.8 GHz as the processor engaged its throttling mechanisms to protect itself. Naturally, the air cooled configuration suffered more.

It's noteworthy that Intel positions its all-core 4.9 GHz frequency as a new Thermal Velocity Boost that only engages if the processor is below 70C, but as we can see here, the motherboard completely ignores that temperature limit. In fact, even though we're only showing the highest measurement from each of the eight cores, our logs indicate that individual cores still boosted to 4.9 GHz even when they were at 99C. At times, they also remained at 5.0 GHz when the core reached 100C, too, albeit for very short periods. That's right at the Intel-specified temperature limit. 

It's surprising to see the sheer amount of power consumed (and heat generated) by the Core i9-10900K, but it's important to keep perspective. There's a stark difference between the power consumed during stress testing applications that serve as a power virus, like the Prime95 test we ran above, and the power consumption you'll see during everyday use with the majority of 'normal' applications. Those workloads include stressful multi-threaded applications like Blender and AVX-powered HandBrake distributions. 

In fact, we often don't include Prime95 power measurements in our standard CPU reviews, largely because there is a massive disconnect between this extremely rigorous stress test and the power consumption and thermal load generated by most real-world applications, as we'll show below. 

Here we ran two series of tests to measure power consumption, thermal output, and clock rates during heavy real-world all-core loads. First, we kicked off ten multi-threaded Cinebench R20 benchmarks in rapid succession. In the first two charts, we can see both the Corsair H115i and the Noctua NH-D15 handle the workload with no throttling (the downward spikes occur during idle periods between runs), and temps hover in the 85C range when the processor is under full load. These workloads consume ~250W (right at Intel's recommended PL2 value) during operation. That's about 80W lower than the Prime95 stress test. The underlying R20 engine supports AVX, AVX2, and AVX-512, but this benchmark doesn't hit the chip quite like other AVX-equipped applications, so we moved on to more demanding work. 

We swapped over to our 'stress suite,' which is an extended string of heavier applications that stress the chip more fully. Again, we topped the chip with the H115i and NH-D15, but stepped through multiple instances of the corona ray-tracing benchmark, x265 HandBrake rendering tests, POV-Ray multi-threaded benchmarks, Cinebench R20 runs, and finally five iterations of the AVX-intensive threaded y-cruncher. 

Overall, these are among the more demanding threaded tests in our suite, and temperatures peaked at ~92C with the H115i, and ~85C with the Noctua air cooler. Surprisingly, because of its lower overall temperatures, the air cooler appears to perform better in this test. That would be quite the feat considering that we recorded peak power consumption at ~280W during the test run. 

However, we plotted power over the course of the run (slides five and six) and noticed that the chip drew more power when paired with the H115i cooler (~293W peak), particularly during the five y-cruncher tests at the end of the test. That's despite the fact that neither setup reached the 100C temperature limit. We also recorded better y-cruncher scores with the H115i cooler (~20% delta), but it was the lone test that suffered from performance degradation.

Aside from swapping the coolers, all other configurable parameters remained consistent for these tests., including clock rates. That clearly shows the importance of using an extremely strong cooler to unlock the full performance of the chip. We're not sure if this condition will present itself when we test with other motherboards, but we'll dive deeper in the coming days. 

In the meantime, we ran another extended y-cruncher session with the DH-15, this time calculating more digits per run (last slide). Again, the chip remained comfortably below the throttle point, indicating that an air cooler could be somewhat feasible for the chip, provided you select an expensive and rather bulky model. However, you could pay the price of reduced performance in some workloads. We did run our suite of application benchmarks and games with the air cooler, and y-cruncher was the only benchmark that suffered significantly reduced performance. We're following up with more testing, stay tuned. 

Intel Core i9-10900K Lightly-Threaded Turbo Boost and Thermals

Intel's new Thermal Velocity Boost brings the promise of single-core 5.3 GHz boosts, so we ran our standard frequency test for lightly-threaded workloads (methodology here). We recorded several spikes to 5.3 GHz during the tail end of the test during the VRMark benchmark. These boosts only occured when the processor was under 70C, so it appears that while the 70C limit is ignored for all-core workloads, the feature works correctly for single-core boosts. 

Intel Core i9-10900K Power Consumption and Efficiency

In a surprise to absolutely no one, the Core i9-10900K notched high power consumption measurements and poor efficiency metrics. 

As we can see, the stock 10900K draws nearly the same amount of power as the overclocked 9900K during the multi-threaded y-cruncher test, and exceeds its predecessor during the HandBrake workloads. We actually don't see too much of an increase in power due to overclocking, largely because the Core i9-10900K is already overclocked at its stock settings. 

Ryzen's stellar power consumption and efficiency, especially given their high core counts relative to competing Intel models, is impressive. That's simply the benefit of having a smaller, denser 7nm TSMC node. In terms of efficiency, it's clear that Intel's Core i9-10900K isn't nearly as efficient as any of the Ryzen 3000 series processors. 

Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative amount of energy required to perform an x264 and x265 HandBrake workload, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart. 

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart. 

Bear in mind that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are best. As we can see, Intel's bevy of 14nm chips ring the upper right (ie, undesirable) corner of the chart while the AMD processors distance themselves from all but the Core i9-10980XE.

Pay close attention to the Core i9-10980XE, though. That's what a 14nm chip dialed into the efficiency sweet spot of the voltage/frequency curve looks like in operation, while the Core i9-10900K represents the exact opposite - performance at all costs, regardless of power consumption. 

Overall, the Ryzen processors are faster at this test and consume much less cumulative power to complete the tasks. That speaks to the efficiency of the 7nm process, and one can only imagine how much more efficient the chips would be if the central 12nm I/O die were fabbed on the 7nm process, too. 

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Multi-Core Enhancement (MCE) Testing

This tech goes by many different names, but most motherboards have a default Multi-Core Enhancement (MCE) feature that allows overclockable processors to run at their maximum Turbo Boost bin on all cores, at all times. This setting modifies the CPU's clock rate and voltage to deliver higher performance, which is basically factory-sanctioned overclocking. Performance, power consumption, and heat are all affected, naturally. Unfortunately, the mechanisms have to account for the lowest common denominator in terms of chip quality, and that often requires excessive amounts of voltage to attain higher clock speeds. As we can see in the image above, that can lead to thermal throttling. 

We manually disable this feature for our stock CPU testing to best reflect Intel's specifications, but we did run a few tests with the feature (Enhanced Multi-Core Performance in Gigabyte's parlance) on the Z490 Aorus Master. With the MCE feature enabled, the cores operated at 5.1 GHz and hit 100C during our HandBrake test, which triggered throttling. As we outlined on the previous page, this same stress test ran at 4.9 GHz with normal stock settings and didn't exceed 92C.

Our CPU's vCore hit 1.42V during these tests, which feels excessive, but we did a bit better with manual tuning.

Intel Core i9-10900K Overclocking Settings

Our tests reinforced our feeling that our 280mm AIO watercooler is wholly insufficient for any serious overclocking attempts, so we switched over to a custom 720mm loop that is, admittedly, extreme. 

As with all overclocking, the silicon lottery applies. But Intel is obviously already pushing the Core i9-10900K to its limits at stock settings, particularly with the 5.3 GHz boost frequency. Much like the situation we find with AMD's Ryzen 3000 series processors, our overclocking efforts found that we couldn't sustain an all-core overclock that matches the single-core boost watermark, and feedback from several motherboard vendors indicates you would have to be extremely lucky to find a chip that can sustain 5.3 GHz on all cores and still run normal applications. 

The 10900K did boot with an all-core 5.2 GHz overclock, though, but the requisite 1.4V vCore didn't prove stable unless we engaged aggressive load line calibration settings that pushed the chip over 1.5V during heavy workloads. That obviously wouldn't be good for processor longevity, so we settled with dialing in an all-core 5.1 GHz overclock paired with a 1.3V vCore. 

We experimented with the Z490 Aorus Master's Load Line Calibration settings, but found that the auto setting provided the most stability. After a tremendous amount of trial and error, we settled for the LLC-imposed 1.4 voltage for our tests. We also dialed up the ring bus multiplier to 48 to improve stability and performance, but this is an optional tweak. Finally, we dialed the memory to DDR4-3600 with 16-18-18-36 timings. 

Unfortunately our 5.1 GHz all-core overclock resulted in reduced performance in some lightly-threaded workloads, just like we see with Ryzen processors, but provided extra performance in threaded workloads. 

Comet Lake Architecture and Overclocking Features

Intel made significant changes to enable stuffing more transistors into the same package. As you can see in the picture of the die, which WikiChip predicts measures ~199mm2 (Intel no longer shares die measurements), the new 10-core die is essentially an extended version of the eight-core die found on the previous-gen Core i9-9900K (~174mm2). 

With up to ten cores now cooking away under the integrated heat spreader (IHS), Intel decided to further refine its approach by thinning the die for K-series CPUs. Intel reduced the processor die z-height (thickness) by 300 micro millimeters (from 800 to 500) to improve thermal transfer efficiency. Think of this technique as similar to lapping the die itself, thus shaving away a thin layer of silicon that rests between the heat-generating transistors and the Solder TIM. 

Intel also bulked up the copper IHS. The company says copper is three times more efficient at transferring heat than silicon (which can actually act as an insulator), so more copper is better than more silicon. The thicker IHS also assures adherence to existing socket z-height dimensions, thus enabling compatibility between LGA 115x coolers and the LGA 1200 interface.    

Instead of pTIM (polymer TIM - a.k.a. thermal grease), the Core i9-10900K comes with Solder TIM (STIM) that improves heat transfer between the die and heat spreader, thus lowering temperatures and often unlocking higher overclocks. Lower temperatures also help during stock operation by enabling longer (and more frequent) turbo boost durations and reduced cooling requirements. 

Now you can also enable or disable hyper-threading (HT) on a per-core basis. This granular control could be useful for any number of scenarios, with overclockers benefitting the most. Tuners could identify 'weaker' cores in the system during overclocking and then selectively disable HT on those cores. Paired with targeted per-core overclocking, that could be a promising feature. You trigger the HT feature via Intel's eXtreme Tuning Utility (XTU) or in the motherboard firmware, but it requires a reboot before threads are enabled/disabled. 

Intel has also enabled fine-grained voltage/frequency (VF) curve adjustments in the motherboard firmware, XTU software, and third-party applications, which allows you to adjust the various points in the curve. Some of these points on the curve were not previously available (including idle, which makes this feature appealing to undervolters). Intel won't describe the various points in detail because they are proprietary, but the company says you can see the changes in XTU. 

Intel has also bulked up its PCIe overclocking functionality by creating a system that allows motherboard vendors to connect an external clock generator to the PCH, thus bypassing the fixed 100 MHz clock. Intel says this enables speeds (up to) ~104 to ~108 MHz, thus boosting PCIe and DMI throughput slightly. Intel positions this feature for extreme/professional overclockers. 

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All test results marked with "PBO" reflect configurations tested with AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature. We tested the stock Core i9-10900K with the Corsair H115i cooler for all of the following tests, but switched over to a custom watercooling loop for testing performance with a 5.1 GHz overclock. 

VRMark and 3DMark on Intel Core i9-10900K 

Synthetic gaming benchmarks often aren't generally indicative of real-world performance, but the 3DMark DX11 and DX12 tests are interesting because they measure the amount of raw computational horsepower exposed to the game engine. For now, most of today's game engines don't scale as linearly with additional compute resources, but these tests help us gauge how games could exploit processing resources as the engines become more sophisticated.

In the synthetic world of the Fire Strike benchmark, the ten-core Core i9-10900K can only match the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X if we bump up the frequency to 5.1 GHz, but we see a limited gain from overclocking. In either case, the stock 10900K easily beats the overclocked previous-gen Core i9-9900K. That's impressive given that both processors command a $488 tray price. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 3950X takes a healthy lead over the field of Intel stock processors.

Flipping over to Time Spy finds the Core i9-10900K taking a lead over the Ryzen 9 3900X at 'stock' settings, and the 5.1 GHz overclock takes the top of the chart. 

VRMark test values per-core performance (a mixture of frequency and IPC), and it obviously prefers physical cores and lots of L3 cache. The $979 Core i9-10980XE's 4.8 GHz overclock goes a long way, but the 10900K's higher stock clock frequencies result in a resounding win at both stock and overclocked settings. 

Civilization VI AI and Stockfish on Intel Core i9-10900K

Civilization VI's AI engine values per-core performance, seemingly placing it firmly in the 10900K's crosshairs. The stock Core i9-10900K lands in the middle of the pack at stock settings, beaten by its HEDT and non-hyperthreaded counterparts, but tuning grants Intel's latest a big win over the competing chips. 

Stockfish, an open-source chess engine, is designed to extract the utmost performance from many-core chips by scaling well up to 512 cores. The chips stack up based on core count, so the Core i9-10900K is at a disadvantage in this test compared to the 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X and 12-core 24-thread Ryzen 9 3900X. However, the Core i9-10900K notches a considerable win over its heavily overclocked predecessor, the 9900K.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation on Intel Core i9-10900K

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation loves cores and threads, but clock rates also play a role. The stock Core i9-10900K effectively ties the overclocked Ryzen 9 3950X, but the AMD processor doesn't benefit much from the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature in this benchmark. 

Civilization VI Graphics Test on Intel Core i9-10900K

Most gaming software is still optimized for low thread counts and high clock rates, and some game engines even prefer single-threaded cores. The Ryzen 9 3950X is plenty impressive in this test, but the 10900K is a brutal competitor with its high single-core boost frequencies. Once again, the 10900K beats all the competing stock processors before we applied our overclock, and tuning extends the lead further. 

Given that the 10900K can boost to 5.3 GHz under the right conditions, you might be surprised to see the 5.1 GHz all-core overclock take the lead once again. This could be due to erratic or less impactful boost activity, but the fixed frequency also reduces dynamic clock adjustments that can hamper performance. We've also tuned the memory and ring bus frequencies, too, which also yields advantages. 

Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 3900X lags the 10900K by 5.3 fps, which isn't noticeable at these lowered resolutions, and it actually yields a better 99th-percentile frame rate measurement, denoting a smoother gaming experience.

Dawn of War III on Intel Core i9-10900K

The Warhammer 40,000 benchmark responds well to threading, but it's clear that clock speed and IPC also matter. In what is becoming a repetitive theme, the stock 10900K edges past the heavily-overclocked Core i9-9900K on its way to a lead over the rest of the test pool. The Ryzen 9 3900X lags by 14.6 fps in this title, which generally isn't favorable to Ryzen processors. 

Far Cry 5 on Intel Core i9-10900K

Far Cry 5 also tends to run well on Intel architectures, and once again the 10900K takes a convincing lead. 

Final Fantasy XV on Intel Core i9-10900K

We run this test with the standard quality preset to sidestep the impact of a bug that causes the game engine to render off-screen objects with the higher-resolution setting. Final Fantasy XV finds the Ryzen 9 3900X scoring its lone tie with the stock Core i9-10900K.  

Grand Theft Auto V on Intel Core i9-10900K

The Intel processors continue to lead in nearly every title, but if we strip out the overclocked configurations, you'll notice the stock 10900K separates itself from the pack by a decent margin. That does come with quite a bit of power consumption and our fans cranking away at high speed, but the 10900K is undeniably a powerful gaming chip. 

Hitman 2 on Intel Core i9-10900K

The $374 Core i7-9700K reminds us that while the halo parts are beastly performers, they come at much higher pricing and require more exotic accommodations than the decidedly more mainstream i7 series. The -9700K currently tops our list of Best Gaming CPUs, and we expect the new Core i7-10700K, which comes with twice the threads for the same recommended pricing, will be just as impressive. 

Project Cars 2 on Intel Core i9-10900K

Although Project CARS 2 is purportedly optimized for threading, clock rates obviously affect this title's frame rates. 

World of Tanks enCore on Intel Core i9-10900K

The World of Tanks benchmark caps our test suite with yet another win for the Core i9-10900K over the other stock processors.

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Intel's Core i9-9900K is a hit with some professionals due to its high clock rates, so we ran an extra series of tests to measure the Core i9-10900K's performance in workstation-class workloads. Some of these applications also make an appearance in our standard test suite, but those test configurations and benchmarks are focused on a typical desktop-class environment. In contrast, these tests are configured to stress the systems with workstation-class workloads. 

We loaded down our test platforms with 64GB of DDR4 memory spread across four modules to accommodate the expanded memory capacity required for several of these workstation-focused tasks. We also outfitted the test systems with PCIe 4.0 SSDs to factor in the platform-level advantage of AMD's support for the faster interface.

Puget Systems Benchmarks

Puget Systems is a boutique vendor that caters to professional users with custom-designed systems targeted at specific workloads. The company has developed a series of acclaimed benchmarks for Adobe software, which you can find here.

Adobe After Effects CC Render Node Benchmark

The After Effects render node benchmark leverages the in-built aerender application that splits the render engine across multiple threads to maximize CPU and GPU performance. This test is memory-intensive, so RAM capacity and throughput are important and can be a limiting factor.

The Core i9-1080XE takes the overall lead in this test, followed closely by the Core i9-10900K. Notably, the auto-overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X effectively ties the stock 10900K. 

We encountered persistent application errors when testing the Ryzen 9 3950X in this benchmark (and this benchmark only), so it isn't listed in the results. We'll add the chip as soon as we can diagnose and fix the issue. 

Adobe Premier Pro CC Benchmark

This benchmark measures live playback and export performance with several codecs at 4K and 8K resolutions. It also incorporates 'Heavy GPU' and 'Heavy CPU' effects that stress the system beyond a typical workload. Storage throughput also heavily impacts the score. 

The PCIe 4.0 interface benefits the Ryzen processors, but sheer brute computational force appears to be the name of the game here: The overclocked Core i9-10980XE takes a comfortable lead despite its PCIe 3.0 interface. The Ryzen 9 3950X is very impressive in this series of tests, especially given its palatable price point and mainstream platform. Meanwhile, the 10900K matches the Ryzen 9 3900X at stock settings, but trails after overclocking.

Adobe Photoshop CC Benchmark

The Photoshop benchmark measures performance in a diverse range of tasks, measuring the amount of time taken to complete general tasks and apply filters. 

The stock Core i9-10900K is incredibly strong in this benchmark as it matches the overclocked Ryzen 9 3950X and it nearly matches the Core i9-10980XE after we dialed in the 5.1 GHz all-core overclock. GPU acceleration is here to stay in professional applications, and the 10900K's high clock rates help push it to the lead in the GPU score, contributing to its overall lead. 

SPECworkstation 3 Benchmarks

The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications split among seven categories, but we've winnowed down the list to tests that largely focus specifically on CPU performance. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so be aware these are not official benchmarks. We've upgraded to the new 3.0.4 revision that supports spanning the tests across processor groups and sockets.

Media and Entertainment

We run the new Blender Benchmark beta in our regular suite of tests on the following page, but different render jobs can stress processors in unique ways. Here we can see a breakout of several industry-standard benchmark renders that largely favor chips with hefty core counts. As such, it's no surprise to find the Ryzen 9 3900X,  Ryzen 9 3950X, and Core i9-10980XE lead in three of the renders, but the Core i9-10900K scraped out leads over the 3900X in the Island and 3BMWs workloads. 

The Ryzen 9 3900X also beats the 10900K in the HandBrake tests, but Intel's new chip turns the tables in the LuxRender benchmark. 

NAMD and Rodinia LifeSciences

NAMD is a parallel molecular dynamics code designed to scale well with additional compute resources, and here we can see performance scale well largely based on core and thread counts. That benefits the Ryzen 9 3900X, which unsurprisingly sweeps this round of tests. 

SPECworkstation 3's Rodinia LifeSciences benchmark steps through four tests that include medical imaging, particle movements in a 3D space, a thermal simulation, and image-enhancing programs. Again, the Ryzen 9 3900X's two extra cores and four extra threads help it sweep the 10900K. 

Product Development and Energy, Financial Workloads

The earth’s subsurface structure can be determined via seismic processing. One of the four basic steps in this process is the Kirchhoff Migration, which is used to generate an image based on the available data using mathematical operations. Core counts reign supreme in this test, again granting the Ryzen 9 3900X a win over the 10900K. 

Calculix is based on the finite element method for three-dimensional structural computations. This benchmark performs well on the Intel processors, with the -10980XE typically taking the overall lead in our tests. The strength of the 10900K's high clock rates comes into play here, lending it the pole position among the stock processors and the overall lead after tuning. 

SRMP algorithms are used for discrete energy minimization. AMD processors have traditionally struggled with these tests, suggesting the benchmark might be latency-sensitive, but Ryzen 3000 reversed that trend in astonishing fashion. You'll notice the stock Ryzen 9 3950X is faster than its own overclocked configuration, but this is a repeatable phenomena. We also see the same trend with the Ryzen 9 3900X as it notches another win over the 10900K. 

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Rendering on Intel Core i9-10900K

Ryzen processors are apex predators in the realm of threaded workloads, and despite the 10900K's additional two cores, the Ryzen 9 3900X continues that trend as it leads in all of the threaded tests. The 3900X also scrapes out a lead in the single-core Cinebench test, but the 10900K leads in the single-threaded POV-Ray benchmark. The stock 10900K is faster than the 5.1GHz overclocked configuration in both of these single-threaded tests, indicating the workload was correctly assigned to 5.3 GHz-capable core. 

That highlights that our all-core overclock, while faster in multi-threaded tasks, involves sacrificing single-threaded performance in other applications. We've seen this situation plenty of time with Ryzen processors in the past, particularly with manual overclocks, but it's certainly new to Intel's chips. 

Encoding on Intel Core i9-10900K

The single-threaded LAME and FLAC encoding tests lend themselves well to the strengths of the 10900K, which takes a pronounced lead in both tests. Again, the Core i9-10900K's stock configuration beats out its own overclocked configuration.

While most encoders are inherently single-threaded, the new Intel/Netflix-designed SVT-AV1 leverages multi-threading to great effect. As such, the Ryzen 9 3900X and 3950X take the lead over the 10900K.  

The threaded HandBrake x264 and x265 tests really speak to the AVX performance improvements AMD made to the Zen 2 architecture. Naturally, the chips with higher thread counts enjoy a lead here. 

Web Browsing on Intel Core i9-10900K

Browsers tend to be impacted more by the recent security mitigations than other types of applications, so Intel has generally taken a haircut in these benchmarks on fully-patched systems.

We sure hope you're not considering buying a fire-breathing Core i9-10900K just to browse the web, but this type of workload is universal. Single-threaded performance still reigns supreme in these tests, so the 10900K sweeps the field. Notably, the overclocked 10900K rig beats out the stock configuration, highlighting the fact that the CCPC2 drivers responsible for pinning threads into the fastest core aren't 100% accurate. 

Office and Productivity on Intel Core i9-10900K

Compilation, Compression, AVX on Intel Core i9-10900K

Once again leveraging its 12 cores and 24 threads to great effect, the Ryzen 9 3900X scores another win against the 10900K in the LLVM compilation benchmark. Meanwhile, the 7zip and Zlib compression/decompression benchmarks also rely heavily upon threading and work directly from system memory, thus avoiding the traditional storage bottleneck in these types of tasks. The Ryzen processors sweep the Intel competitors on the 7zip compression side of these tests, and nearly pull off the same feat in the 7zip decompression test.  

The heavily-threaded y-cruncher benchmark, which computes pi using the taxing AVX instruction set, reveals what we consider to be erroneous test results based upon our previous experience with Intel chips based on the never-ending Skylake architecture. We expect better scaling in this test given the 10900K's extra two cores, but the eight-core 9900K and 9700K beat Intel's new part at stock settings, and widen the gap after overclocking. We've scrutinized these test results heavily, especially to determine if the overclocked Core i9-10900K throttles during the workload, but we can't find signs of enough heat generation to trigger the throttling algorithms. Given this Intel launch follows the standard trend of late-arriving firmwares, it's possible that the problem resides with the motherboard. In either case, we're following up with Intel on the matter.   

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Spurred by AMD's unending Ryzen onslaught and its own inability to move forward to a smaller process node and more efficient architecture for the desktop, Intel went for broke with the Core i9-10900K to retain its gaming performance crown. 

In fact, the Core i9-10900K is exactly what we would expect from an overclocked 10-core 14nm Skylake derivative: Exceptional performance in gaming and lightly-threaded workloads, competitive performance in multi-threaded work, and downright ugly power consumption and thermal output. 

And that's pretty much what you get with the Core i9-10900K – an overclocked 14nm processor right out of the box. However, Intel did throw in what equates to a 20% price cut (provided that the processors land at retail anywhere near tray pricing). That makes the processor at least somewhat more attractive for extreme performance enthusiasts that are willing to put up with the less-desirable aspects of the chip in exchange for leading-edge gaming performance. 

In the chart below, we plot gaming performance using average frame rates and a geometric mean of the 99th percentile frame times (a good indicator of smoothness), which we then convert into a frames-per-second measurement. Bear in mind that we tested with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at 1920x1080 to alleviate graphics-imposed bottlenecks. Differences between our test subjects shrink at higher resolutions.

The Core i9-10900K is the fastest gaming chip available, but not by much considering the cost and platform trade-offs. Intel's own $370 Core i7-9700K is plenty for most gamers. However, performance addicts with high refresh rate panels, particularly if they plan to update to next-gen GPUs like AMD's Big Navi and Nvidia's Ampere, would be able to expose larger performance deltas with the pending GPUs. Streamers and multi-taskers might also find the chip attractive, but the requisite supporting components will add a lot of additional cost.

Intel's previous-gen Core i9-9900K has enjoyed some uptake with semi-professionals due to its performance in single-threaded workloads, and the third chart in the album above shows that, based on a geomean of the listed single-threaded workloads in our test suite, the 10900K builds on that lead. Flipping over to the multi-threaded chart, we can see the 10900K's sizeable step forward over the 9900K in threaded workloads, but it still trails the Ryzen 9 3900X that retails for ~$50 less and comes with a stock cooler.

If you choose to go the extreme performance route with the 10900K, you'll need to invest in a capable watercooling solution and a premium motherboard to unlock the full performance. The intense power consumption, which topped 320W during stress tests at stock settings, will limit performance tremendously if not adequately cooled, not to mention potentially reduce processor longevity. That makes for a pricey build.

In contrast, the Ryzen 9 3900X comes with a bundled cooler and can be overclocked on less-expensive platforms, while Intel still restricts overclocking to pricey Z-series motherboards. Speaking of which, overclocking the Core i9-10900K is extremely limited with conventional cooling and can result in less performance in some lightly-threaded applications, making it a dubious pursuit.

If you are dead set on the best single-threaded and gaming performance available, regardless of power consumption, heat, and cost, the Core i9-10900K is your chip. However, despite the Core i9-10900K's excellent performance, the slim leads in several key areas won't be perceptible to most users.

Considering the excessive power consumption, heat generation, requirement for pricey supporting components, and lack of PCIe 4.0, most enthusiasts are better served with less exotic alternatives.

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We’ve looked at a number of the best 4K gaming monitors, like the Acer Predator X27 and Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ. These screens offer everything, including the kitchen sink, for the ultimate gaming experience: full-array backlights with local dimming (FALD), support for HDR content and extended color to go along with it, up to 1,000 nits brightness and G-Sync Ultimate. In our tests, they proved color-accurate too, but didn’t provide that reference-level color needed in a professional setting, namely video post production and photo editing. If you’re looking for a high-end monitor that can serve as a reference display and even double as a gaming monitor, the Acer ConceptD CP7271K  is just the thing.

The CP7271K delivers all the features of the X27 and PG27UQ, plus factory-certified accuracy for the sRGB color space and Pantone validation. The CP7271K hails form Acer's ConceptD creative professionals line, and when viewing 4K material, the color saturation is stunning.

Acer ConceptD CP7271K Specs

The CP7271K has a 384-zone FALD backlight and 1,000 nits peak output. This is currently the best way to render HDR content, and with SDR signals, you can expect a lot of extra contrast and image depth.

According to Nvidia, G-Sync Ultimate produces a more dynamic tone map than standard G-Sync, so in theory, it should provide better HDR, (but you don't need G-Sync Ultimate to use G-Sync with HDR content). And that Adaptive-Sync works down to a low 30 Hz, meaning you’ll be hard-pressed to produce any frame tears. Of course, the CP7271K’s 3840 x 2160 resolution means you’ll need a good amount of graphics card horsepower to keep frame rates up.

Unpacking and Accessories

The CP7271K ships with a high-quality rigid light hood that attaches to threaded fittings in the bezel and feels like a single piece once assembled. You also get USB and DisplayPort cables, along with a small power supply brick. A stamped steel bracket interfaces with 100mm VESA mount accessories, like arms and wall mount hardware. The stand and base are already attached, so all one needs to do is lift the entire package out of the box.

Product 360

Acer opted for some unique styling with the CP7271K. It has a simulated wood grain base with a satin-finish aluminum upright. The panel sits on a slender tube that has nary a hint of play. The bezel is textured to prevent light reflection and runs relatively thin at 0.6-0.9 inches (15-22mm). There's an in-set anti-glare layer, and once you attach the hood is attached, you won’t have any issues with light unless you face the screen directly into the sun. The image is razor-sharp with no grain or other artifacts to spoil the goodness.

On the left side are two downstream USB 3.1 ports with two more and  an upstream port in back conveniently facing outwards rather than down. The remaining inputs are one each of HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4. You also get a 3.5mm audio output for headphones or power speakers. If you resort to the monitor’s speakers, you’ll get 4 watts and reasonable volume that’s focused on the middle and upper frequency range.

In back, the chassis is textured with a brush-like finish broken only by the Acer logo, an-screen display (OSD) joystick and a set of control buttons. One on the buttons toggles power, while the remaining three access input selection, picture modes and brightness. The bottom of the upright has a small hook to help tidy up cabling.

Ergonomic adjustments include a generous 7.1-inch height movement, along with 180-degree swivel to both sides and 35-degree back tilt. Surprisingly, there is no portrait mode.

OSD Features

The OSD looks almost identical to the one found in the Predator X27. The Picture menu has several important controls besides peak white (brightness) and contrast. SDR Variable Backlight toggles the zone dimming feature. For calibration, you’ll want to turn it off, but once adjustments are complete, turn it on for maximum contrast. The SDR Variable Backlight has three backlight response options, and Gaming strikes the best balance between contrast and detail. Auto Brightness and Auto Black Level employ a sensor mounted at the top of the bezel to adjust the image based on room lighting. Again, you should turn this off for calibration.

The Color menu has everything needed for image adjustment. Any changes made here will set the CP7271K to its User mode. Once you’ve finished tweaking, scroll down to Save Settings, and use one of the three available memories to save your settings. Gamma is adjustable in 0.3 increments, which seems a bit coarse but the labels are accurate.

If you want to retain sRGB color for SDR content, turn on the SDR Colors sRGB option as we did. The color temp has three presets, plus a precise user mode, which we used to achieve excellent results for SDR content. These adjustments are not available for HDR signals.

The Performance menu is where you adjust the overdrive and overclock settings, which may come in handy if you use this monitor for gaming. The CP7271K runs at 120 Hz natively but its 144 Hz overclock worked reliably for us. Additionally, shooter newbies can engage an aiming point to make fragging easier.

Setup and Calibration

The CP7271K doesn’t need calibration, but a few tweaks brought it to the highest possible standard of accuracy. First, we engaged SDR Colors sRGB, then adjusted the RGB sliders to achieve excellent grayscale tracking. Experimenting with the different Backlight Response options proved that Gaming was the best one. The other two clipped highlight and shadow detail. All three settings shut off the backlight when a full black field (0% brightness signal) is displayed. If you want the monitor’s full native color gamut available for SDR content, just turn SDR Colors sRGB off. Then, you’ll get 110% of DCI-P3 and 112% of Adobe RGB (more on that later).

Below are our recommended color temp settings and brightness values for commonly used output levels.

Hands-on

Regardless of task, the CP7271K excelled. Its color accuracy and flexibility made it ideally suited for any productivity task, from document and photo editing to high-end video post production. It also proved to be a world-class gaming monitor.

As a professional monitor, the CP7271K is a little different from screens like the Asus ProArt PA32UCX. One thing we missed was selectable color gamuts. Though the Acer has enough picture modes and settings memories to create the different specs, there isn’t a simple menu where one can select between Rec.709, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and Rec.2020. It is then up to the user to calibrate for each color space and save those settings to one of the memory slots.

By turning SDR colors sRGB on, you’ll get sRGB/Rec.709 with SDR signals and the monitor’s full gamut with HDR. That eliminates the need to calibrate for those two specs. Since the native gamut has enough volume for every gamut up to DCI and Adobe RGB, calibration is a simple task and can be accomplished either in the OSD or with a software profile. The latter option is the easier and more precise one.**

With SDR signals, you can choose to retain sRGB color or utilize the CP7271K’s full native gamut, which is 110% of DCI. In Windows, the difference was easy to see. If you are looking for one of the most colorful monitors available, the ConceptD is it. In fact, some might find it a bit too colorful. Our desktop background photo is a beach scene dominated by a blue sky nearing sunset. With sRGB turned off, the blue tones were almost cartoonish. For most tasks, we preferred using sRGB. In either case, contrast was superb with the zone dimming used to full effect. After trying the three backlight response options, we settled on Gaming as our favorite. To adjust overall brightness, we had to resort to the slider included in the Windows control panel. The monitor grays out its backlight adjustment for all HDR signals.

Although a creative monitor, the CP7271K is clearly specced for gaming too. HDR games like Call of Duty: WWII looked amazing with incredible color, punchy highlights and rich shadow detail. After a few hours, it was hard to go back to SDR. Of the two overdrive settings, Normal produced the best blur reduction without ghosting. Extreme caused a few artifacts that manifested as white outlines around moving objects. Playing this game at its max detail settings rendered frame rates between 80 and 100 frames per second (fps) with our Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. G-Sync never failed to keep things together. With this combination of technologies, motion resolution remained sharp no matter how fast the action was.

Playing Tomb Raider in SDR mode again presented the choice of which color gamut to use. sRGB is the correct one, and the game looked fantastic with amazing shadow detail and bright highlights. Turning off sRGB mode and entering DCI was a benefit in this case, since most of the game’s palette is muted. Your gamut choice will depend on the content; some games and videos will benefit from greater color saturation and others will look unnatural and gaudy. Luckily, it’s an easy matter to change this setting in the OSD.

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To read about our monitor tests in-depth, check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test Monitors and TVs. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The CP7271K belongs to the elite group of monitors with FALD backlights that can deliver up to 1,000 nits brightness. To compare the ConceptD, we’ve rounded up monitors with the same backlight, the Asus ProArt PA32UCX with mini-LED, the Acer Predator X35, Acer Predator X27 and Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ. The sixth screen is Acer’s Predator CG437K, which has an edge backlight instead of a FALD one but meets the VESA DisplayHDR 1000 standard like the others.

There is no great need for massive brightness with SDR content. Nonetheless, all the monitors here save the PG27UQ can hit 500 nits in SDR mode, with the CG437K exceeding 900. While this produces impressively bright highlights, the overall image will be quite intense. If you have an excessively sunny room, a 500 nit peak will be helpful but, in most environments, 200 nits is more suitable. The CP7271K is right in the middle with a healthy 523 nits.

Black levels are fairly high at the maximum backlight setting, as expected for an IPS screen. The top two displays are VA, putting them in a different league contrast-wise. In the end, the CP7271K shows dynamic range typical of an IPS monitor. Remember that these values are measured with local dimming turned off. When it’s engaged, contrast is impossible to measure because the backlight shuts off completely when a full black field (zero signal level) is displayed.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Calibration too 200 nits brightness (see our recommended settings) didn’t change the CP7271K’s contrast numbers much. Contrast took a slight hit due to our adjustments, but again, this is with local dimming off. Turning it on produced a superb image with excellent black levels and deep contrast. All the FALD screens here share that trait. The two VA monitors again topped the group. Note that the winner of the contrast contest is the CG437K, despite its edge array backlight; VA is still king.

Our CP7271K had a slight hotspot in the upper left corner, which reduced ANSI contrast slightly. It also contributed to a below average uniformity score, which we’ll talk about later. Overall though, this performance is typical of IPS-based screens with zone-dimming backlights. The ConceptD is neither better nor worse than other high-end monitors in this regard.

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Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

To ensure consistent results with SDR signals, we turned SDR Colors sRGB on before taking the default grayscale readings. We recommend leaving that option engaged so that SDR content will look as its creators intended.

We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

Before calibration, all grayscale errors are invisible except at 100% brightness which just cracks the 3 Delta E (dE) threshold. We were hard-pressed to see an issue either in test patterns or in actual content. Gamma ran almost perfectly at the 2.2 standard except for at the 10% brightness step, which is a tad light. That’s a minor issue.

Our calibration (see our recommended settings) rendered grayscale tracking to near-perfection with all errors below 1dE except at 100% brightness, where it barely passes 1dE. 

Gamma became slightly lighter as a result of our adjustments, but it’s a worthwhile and tiny sacrifice to make for white point accuracy. Remember that these changes affect secondary color hue, which helps balance overall color more precisely. This is reference-level performance.

Comparisons

The CP7271K’s out-of-box grayscale error puts it mid-pack in this group of premium displays. As the second most expensive monitor here, we’d prefer it were a little better before calibration.

With simple OSD adjustments (see our recommended settings), the ConceptD achieved a high level of grayscale accuracy. It’s right on par with the other screens here, though we should give kudos to the CG437K, which offers the best number of all while costing the least.

Gamma performance isn’t as perfect as it could be. The slight dip at the 10% brightness step is the spoiler, but ultimately, the tracking is tight and fairly close to the 2.2 average value with a 2.13 result.

Color Gamut Accuracy

For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

There’s quite a bit to look at here. The CP7271K has an enormous native color gamut that exceeds the volume of both DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB. When sRGB mode was on for SDR content, it followed that spec very well both before and after calibration. Our adjustments cut the average error from 1.64 to .81dE, a nice gain.

When the full gamut is in play, the ConceptD exceeds the maximum saturations for DCI-P3 by at least 5% in all three primaries. The resulting image was vibrant and saturated, to say the least. The extra color means one can easily rein things in with a software profile. We recommend using something like ICC or CalMAN LUT if you plan to use the CP7271K in a reference environment.

We also compared the measurements to Adobe RGB and found the monitor tracked perfectly in green, yellow and cyan but oversaturated blue, magenta and red. A software profile would fix this behavior. Many professional monitors have gamut presets that address this, but the CP7271K leaves that up to individual’s software preferences.

Measuring against Rec.2020 shows near-perfect tracking in blue, magenta and yellow, while green, cyan and red fall a bit short. This is impressive performance, and the CP7271K has one of the largest color gamuts we’ve measured to date.

Comparisons

Checking the numbers showed the CP7271K’s excellent conformity to the sRGB standard but the over-saturations we mentioned earlier reduce the CP7271K’s performance with Adobe RGB and DCI-P3. The errors are fairly minor, and we aren’t too concerned given that the gamuts are larger than the specs. Remember, you can always reduce over-saturated color with a software look-up table, but there’s no way to add color that isn’t there in the first place.

Gamut volume is quite impressive with over 110% coverage for DCI-P3 and over 112% for Adobe RGB. Rec.2020 measured out to 73.7%, which is slightly short of our record-holding Asus PA32UCX (82.96%).

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Feeding the CP7271K an HDR signal automatically put the monitor in HDR mode and grayed out most image controls. One option that remained available is the zone-dimming response, which has three options. We found Gaming to come closest to spec and provide the best image, with no detail clipping and deep contrast.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

Since the zone dimming feature is dynamic, we waited a few seconds for our 100% white pattern to stabilize before recording an impressive 1,180.5381 nits. Black levels are difficult to measure, but we were able to record a 0.0268 value, which results in an HDR contrast ratio of 44,095.2:1. While impressive, it’s surprisingly low in this comparison. Will you actually spot the difference between 44,000:1 and 60,000:1? Probably not. The PA32UCX, however, is on another level, and you’ll see that difference for sure. It remains our benchmark for 4K image quality.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

The CP7271K’s grayscale and color accuracy in HDR mode is quite good. The tone-mapping point determined by white and black level measurements is at 75%, which the monitor reached a bit early due to its zone dimming feature. We measured all three response options, and Gaming proved closest to correct. What our measured EOTF shows is that some highlight details may be slightly obscured in rare circumstances. We didn’t see any issues during hands-on testing. Grayscale tracking was also right on the mark.

Color tracking in HDR mode is very good with only slight oversaturations in all six colors. Ultra HD material looked very well-saturated with natural and accurate hues throughout the brightness range. Rec.2020 also tracks well up to the point, where the CP7271K runs out of color. This is as it should be. Monitors will have full 2020 coverage someday, but today is not that day. Acer’s ConceptD provides reference-level HDR accuracy and performance.

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Viewing Angles

In our viewing angle photo, the CP7271K looks like any other premium IPS monitor. The side angle shows a green shift and a 40% reduction in brightness, while the vertical plane reduces gamma and brightness with only a slight change in color. Off-axis image quality is better than a VA or TN screen, but ultimately, only an OLED will improve upon this aspect of monitor performance.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

Our CP7271K showed a slight hotspot in its upper-left corner, spoiling an otherwise good result. The issue was barely visible and didn’t affect the remaining zones. At 12.87% it’s a bit over our preferred 10% threshold. As always with this test, results will vary from sample to sample.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

With all our talk about the CP7271K’s accuracy and reference-level performance, it’s easy to forget that it is also specced to be a premium gaming monitor. Only a handful of Ultra HD screens can run at 120 or 144 Hz. Acer has not skimped in this area. The 7ms draw time is typical of 144 Hz displays regardless of resolution. And its 31ms lag score bests the X27 and PG27UQ by a bit. Will 5 or 8ms make a difference? To casual players no, but those with greater skill might want to pay for that slight boost in speed. To average users, though, the ConceptD will lend to a smooth and addictive gaming experience.

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Rarely do we see the realm of high-end professional and gaming monitors merge into a single product,  but the Acer ConceptD CP7271K is that display. For pros, its spec sheet boasts terms like Adobe RGB and Pantone validation that carry a lot of credibility with those seeking tools for video post production and photo editing. Meanwhile, gamers get G-Sync Compatibility, a speedy refresh rate, plus extended color and HDR with a FALD backlight that can hit 1,000 nits. 

The CP7271K conforms almost perfectly with the sRGB standard and delivers a tremendous color gamut across DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB in a level that surpasses the Acer Predator X27 gaming monitor that impressed us last year. With so much color available, it’s easy to apply the appropriate software lookup table for whatever graphics task you wish to perform. Only one monitor, the Asus ProArt PA32UCX mini-LED, can beat the CP7271K for Rec.2020 coverage. However, we had to dock the CP7271K for a lack of easily selectable color gamuts. 

Though priced more as professional monitor than a gaming one, the CP7271K is nonetheless a world-class gaming monitor as well, with HDR featuring more color than most know what to do with. Our gameplay experience was a mesmerizing one, thanks to phenomenal contrast and color saturation 

The CP7271K doesn’t come cheap, but if you’re looking for the ultimate in image quality with gaming performance to match, nothing else can touch it.

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AMD says its $3,990 Threadripper 3990X offers more performance than two of Intel’s $10,009 Xeon 8280’s, but in one 64-core package for specialized applications, like Hollywood VFX rendering. Surprisingly, the new chip slots into the familiar high end desktop platform and has enthusiast-class features, like overclockability, that offer a unique value proposition. 

We’re breaking out the firepower today, unleashing some of the fastest data center processors in the world to put AMD’s claims to the test, including head-to-head comparisons with a dual-socket Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 server (56C/112T), and both single- and dual-socket AMD EPYC Rome server platforms (128C/256T). We also include the relevant mainstream and HEDT competitors, too. 

The first- and second-gen Ryzen chips spurred a slow shift for mainstream desktop PCs, but AMD’s fast move to the 7nm process and Zen 2 with the Ryzen 3000 chips opened up a new level of performance that caught its rival Intel flat-footed, particularly in the high-end desktop market. As a result, Intel recently ceded the upper echelons of the HEDT market to the Threadripper 3000 series and resigned itself to slashing gen-on-gen pricing on its new Cascade Lake-X models to slow AMD’s advance.

But as impressive as AMD’s inaugural third-gen Threadripper processors are, the record-setting 32-core 64-thread 3970X doesn’t represent AMD’s best effort: Today, AMD presses its advantage with the 64-core 128-thread Threadripper 3990X. The 3990X, which is based on the same design of the company’s EPYC Rome data center processors, represents AMD’s crowning achievement on the high end desktop as the company pushes core counts 3.5 times higher than Intel’s finest HEDT silicon.

But even though AMD's first 64-core x86 processor comes packing an amazing amount of horsepower, it isn’t an enthusiast-focused product. AMD’s goal is to fuse the high core counts of the EPYC Rome processors, which have the lower clock frequencies expected of a server chip, with the relatively high frequencies and enthusiast feature set, like overclockability, of high end desktop (HEDT) parts. AMD made a few other strategic adjustments to the new chips to reduce cost and keep the 3990X from encroaching on its server parts, but the end result is a threaded beast that can manhandle the toughest workloads at a comparatively attractive price point.

However, as we learned from AMD’s journey with the Ryzen processors, today’s software and operating systems still aren’t designed to fully exploit massively parallel x86 architectures, and we'll see plenty of examples of that in our testing today. 

With time and effort, AMD has pushed the industry forward to more fully utilize its silicon, but that effort enters a new stage with the 3990X. As a result of multiple architectural factors, combined with the reluctant software ecosystem, the Threadripper 3990X finds itself as a specialized workhorse for the most demanding of customers in a very narrow field: the visual effects and rendering world. AMD also expects other use-cases to emerge in time, particularly as software evolves to take advantage of the chips' resources, but the 3990X already represents the best value in what is arguably a new market segment.

Threadripper 3990X Specifications and Pricing

Like the other Threadripper 3000 processors, the 3990X is drop-in compatible with existing TRX40 motherboards, but you'll need to update the BIOS to unlock the best performance. 

AMD laid the groundwork for the 3990X during TRX40’s design phase, so all existing motherboards can provide enough power to satiate the 280W TDP chip. As you would expect given the TDP, cooling will play a major role in how well the chip performs. AMD says you can use existing watercoolers for the 3990X, but as we'll show on the next page, you should invest in a beefy model if you want the best performance. 

The 3990X is based on the EPYC Rome 7702P that is designed for single-socket servers, so it comes with the same 64 cores and 128 threads paired with an amazing 256MB of L3 and 32MB of L2 cache. 

The two processors have plenty of similarities, but the difference between the two largely boils down to clock rates, memory channels, and the number of PCIe 4.0 lanes.   

As we can see, the Threadripper 3990X is significantly faster with up to a 2.9 GHz base and 4.3GHz boost than the EPYC 7702P, an improvement of 900 MHz and ~1 GHz, respectively. 

We typically wouldn’t expect boost clock rates to reach that high with such a core-heavy processor, but the jump comes courtesy of AMD’s innovative boost mechanism that extract the most out of the varying maximum frequencies capabilities of each core. 

The 3990X's higher clock rate is a key differentiator over the EPYC Rome processors because it benefits rendering, VFX, and compilation workloads, among others. AMD is very clear that the 3990X is best suited for intense long-duration workloads, like VFX workloads that require 24-36 hours just to render one second of footage. If your render jobs typically finish in a few hours and you aren't running them 24/7, AMD recommends going with the Threadripper 3970X or 3960X.

There's a ~$2,000 price gap between the 32-core 3970X and the 64-core 3990X, not to mention the obvious gap of 32 cores. That leaves a middle ground where a 48-core model could make sense, but AMD says it has no plans for a 48-core model at this time. 

Like its HEDT counterparts, the 3990X supports up to 256GB of quad-channel DDR4-3200 memory, which is a step back from EPYC's eight channels of memory support. The memory frequency support matrix varies by DIMM population and rank, and while the processor supports ECC memory, qualification is left to the motherboard vendor. 

The Threadripper processors feature the same memory controllers as the Ryzen 3000 chips, so memory overclocking is simple. As per normal, you will encounter limitations with higher-capacity kits. 

AMD recommends 1GB to 2GB of memory capacity per thread for optimal performance, particularly for Hollywood VFX artists, and overclocking the memory doesn't have a big impact on most target workloads, like rendering. In either case, professionals will need to make room in the budget for a capacious memory kit - 256GB is ideal. AMD recommends the eight-channel EPYC Rome platform for workloads that benefit from higher memory throughput, like computational fluid dynamics or brain neuron simulations.

The 3990X also supports 64 lanes of PCIe 4.0, which provides twice the throughput per lane of the PCIe 3.0 interface on Intel processors. Additionally, the TRX40 chipset provides 16 GB/s of throughput between the processor and the chipset, which comes courtesy of eight PCIe 4.0 lanes. In contrast, Intel supports 4 GB/s of throughput over its DMI link through the PCIe 3.0 interface. 

TRX40's extra bandwidth will benefit multiple devices that hang off the TRX40 chipset, like large PCIe SSD arrays, which is also attractive to the professional crowd that often uses separate storage devices for read, write, and scratch operations. 

Threadripper 3990X Architecture 

The Threadripper 3990X comes packing AMD's Zen 2 microarchitecture, but AMD spreads the design across 8 eight-core 'core chiplet die' (CCD), as opposed to four CCD with the 3970X and 3960X and two with the mainstream Ryzen chips. 

AMD ties the compute chiplets together via the Infinity Fabric to a large central 12nm I/O die (IOD) that houses two 32x PCIe Gen4 controllers and two dual-channel DDR4 memory controllers. However, this IOD is significantly different than the one present in the EPYC Rome 7702P, largely because AMD culled support for eight-channel memory and halved PCIe 4.0 support to 64 lanes.

The 3990X's IOD is the same as the one in the 3970X and 3960X, but AMD fused off the four additional Infinity Fabric On-Package (IFOP) units, which are used to communicate with the CCDs, on those models because they weren't needed. As with the previous models, each of the 3990X's die has its own IFOP connection to the IOD. 

Each 7nm compute chiplet features ~3.9 billion transistors, while the 12nm I/O die has ~8.34 billion transistors. For the eight-CCD 3990X that yields a total of ~39.54 billion transistors spread out over an amazing ~1008 square millimeters of silicon. 

The first image in the album above outlines the 3990X SoC, the second image represents the 3970X and 3960X, the third image shows the previous-gen Threadripper design, and the fourth image is of the EPYC Rome SoC design.   

Memory throughput per core is a concern with only four channels of memory to spread out among 64 cores, but AMD made architectural accommodations in the Zen 2 microarchitecture to keep data on-chip, like an almost unthinkable 288MB of total cache on the 3990X, a third AGU (Address Generation Unit), and larger opcaches, among other changes, that help keep data close to the execution cores to help overcome memory bandwidth challenges.

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Threadripper 3990X Boost Frequency

The Threadripper 3990X has an impressively high base and boost clock specification given its core count, so we ran a few tests to measure the chip's ability to hit its rated speeds. 

Generally, stock coolers that worked with the previous-gen Threadripper models should suffice for most users, but beefier coolers can unlock more performance. AMD ships all Threadripper CPUs with an Asetek bracket that provides partial coverage of the massive heat spreader using supported closed-loop liquid coolers. According to AMD, this partial coverage is fine for stock operation, but we prefer full-coverage coolers. 

For this round of testing, we used the partial-coverage Corsair H115i and a full-coverage block with our custom loop with two 360mm radiators to compare performance at stock settings. We also used the custom loop for overclocking testing.

We begin by recording the frequencies of each core during a series of commonly-used tests that should expose the peak frequencies. The first two tests are LAME and Cinebench in single-core test mode. These programs only execute on one core of the processor, which typically allows the chip to reach its peak boost frequency within its power, current, and thermal envelope. We also ran PCMark 10, Geekbench, and VRMark in rapid succession to measure frequencies during intermittent "bursty" workloads. 

The per-core frequency recordings create unintelligible charts with 64 cores in action, so the album above only includes the maximum and minimum frequencies recorded during each 1-second measurement interval (100ms sampling). That means these measurements could come from any one core, but it makes the charts easier to digest. We also plotted chip temperature on the right axis (the dark red line).

At stock settings with the AIO cooler, we reached 4.35 GHz frequently, which exceeds the 4.3 GHz rating. That's pretty impressive for a partial-coverage cooler on a 280W chip, but we followed up with testing at stock settings with our custom loop. We recorded more frequent boosts to 4.35GHz, which results in faster performance, and also noticed a gain in minimum clock rates. This highlights that a better cooler offers more performance, even at stock settings.   

Finally, we engaged the auto-overclocking PBO feature. The chip still boosted up to 4.35 GHz, but the boosts were of shorter duration, which explains why this feature often results in slightly lower performance in lightly-threaded work. However, you'll notice that the processor has a much higher minimum boost than either stock configuration, and after examining the performance logs, we noticed much higher multi-core boosts, which explains the big performance gains in threaded applications. 

Threadripper 3990X Overclocking

AMD's Ryzen 3000 processors have drastically improved single-threaded performance, but you'll lose that benefit if you manually overclock. That's because the 7nm chips can't be manually overclocked on all cores to reach the same frequency as the single-core boost frequency. In fact, the all-core overclock ceiling is often 200 to 300 MHz lower than the single-core boost speeds. 

Given the already-prodigious power draw of these 280W TDP chips, temperatures are a concern for manual overclocking, though the solder thermal interface material (sTIM) between the heatspreader and dies does help thermal dissipation. Brute-force manual overclocking may not be the best path forward with conventional cooling, but newer BIOS revisions support per-CCX overclocking, which opens up a new pathway for more fine-grained optimizations. 

We turned to AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature for our battery of tests. This auto-overclocking algorithm preserves most of the benefits of the single core boost, as seen in our boost testing above, while massively speeding up threaded workloads. We paired our PBO-enabled configurations with our custom watercooling loop and a Phanteks full-coverage Glacier C399A TR4 wateblock. 

We reached temperature peaks as high as 90C during some tests, but mostly hovered in the ~84C range during extended threaded workloads. 

Test Notes

Even though we have plenty of exciting results to share, our testing is full of caveats, but that's largely due to poor software support. You can configure the Threadripper 3990X to present itself as multiple NUMA nodes that the operating system sees as separate entities with their own banks of memory (deeper explanation here). 

That brings about a whole slew of problems with many applications, but you can also assign the processor to appear as one NUMA node, which we did for our testing. However, due to the vagaries of the Windows scheduler, the operating system still sees the first 64 threads as one 'processor group,' while anything above that number of threads appears as a second group. In the case of the 3990X, that means threads 65-128 appear as their own processing group to the operating system, as shown in the image below.

Some applications can span across both groups, but many cannot, and we have the added complexity of multiple NUMA nodes. That means we experience sub-par scaling in some workloads with both the 3990X and our server platforms. We ran a limited subset of tests with the server platforms due to concerns of the impact of dissimilar memory and graphics, but be aware that some of these results suffer from processor grouping and/or application scaling issues. The results are still relevant, as it highlights applications where the 3990X may or may not be a better choice than a server platform. We also tested the 3990X with the 32GB memory kit recommended by AMD, but the company says some applications could benefit from more memory capacity. 

Due to these disparities, be aware that further tuning and optimizations could wring more performance out of some applications, particularly on the server side of our testing. Linux doesn't use processor grouping, and we're told that can result in better performance in some applications. In either case, the target market for this processor trends towards the Windows environment and its suite of productivity tools, so we're using it for our first look at performance. 

Threadripper 3990X Power Consumption

Like the Threadripper 3970X and 3960X, the 3990X peaks around the 280W stock package power limit in both AVX and non-AVX flavors of the AIDA stress test. That’s impressive given its solid performance in some of the heavy workloads we’ll see on the following pages. The power efficiency gains of TSMC’s 7nm process are nothing short of incredible when we kick up the power, too. Engaging the auto-overclocking PBO feature pushed the chip to ~470W under full load. That’s amazing for 64 overclocked cores compared to the overclocked W-3175X’s ‘mere’ 28 cores sucking down ~760W. It will be interesting to test the 3990X’s power/performance ratio in eco mode.

Switching over to the y-cruncher power results finds the overclocked Threadripper 3990X pulling down 391W, which is nearly the same amount of power as the overclocked 12nm 32-core 2990WX. Finally, a quick look at the HandBrake efficiency metrics, which quantify the number of renders you can accomplish (given our workload) per day per watt of power consumed, reveals that the Core i9-10980XE is also very power efficient. However, considering that the 3990X consists of eight 7nm compute die and one 12nm I/O die, while the 10980XE uses a single monolithic die, these metrics are more than acceptable. AMD ties the 3990X’s nine die together with the Infinity Fabric but tuned the fabric to be incredibly power efficient and claims a 27% reduction in IFOP power consumption. The Ryzen 9 3950X takes the crown as the most efficient processor in our test pool, and it’s noteworthy that the massive 3990X is more power-efficient than the eight-core Core i9-9900K in our HandBrake tests.

Test Setup

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Be sure to check out the test notes on the previous page for important testing particulars. Be aware that further optimizations could unlock more performance from our server platforms, and all three servers come in 1U chassis that can have an impact on cooling, and thus performance. Also, the servers have varying memory capacities, but that's an unavoidable consequence of the unique platforms.

All AMD entries with "PBO" indicate an auto-overclocked configuration paired with with DDR4-3600. Intel's overclocked configurations also use DDR4-3600. 

It's also noteworthy that while we did experience many odd performance characteristics that disadvantage some platforms, this testing represents the current state of the software ecosystem.

As a reminder, here is a quick breakout of each server entry in the charts:

Encoding

Starting off with the LAME encoder, which is the quintessential example of a single-threaded test, may seem a bit...lame, but this series of tests helps explain some of the results you'll see throughout the rest of the review.  

Both AMD and Intel have made great strides with per-core performance in their HEDT lineups over the last few years. In the case of the 3990X, that improved performance in light workloads also spans out to multiple cores when the chip is under load, which benefits many of our rendering tests.

The Threadripper 3990X's faster clock speed over competing server chips is a big advantage for some applications, like the single-threaded LAME and FLAC encoding tests, and some of our rendering tests below.

Remember, Windows breaks processors up into groups of 64 cores, and some applications can't scale past those boundaries. Additionally, the server platforms are broken into several NUMA nodes. Zooming out to the threaded Handbrake tests, we see the advantage of the 3990X's clock speed take hold as it takes the top of the chart, even beating out the other Threadripper processors – but not by much. That's largely because the x264 test doesn't fully saturate the cores in both 64-core processor groups, meaning the bottleneck resides elsewhere, and the x265 test only scales across the cores in one processor group. That's particularly painful for the dual-EPYC and Xeon platforms because they suffer from disparate NUMA nodes. 

The SVT-AV1 test is designed to scale well across multiple cores, but the relatively short workload doesn't scale to the second processor group, and the higher clock speeds of the 3970X and overclocked Xeon W-3175X. 

Now let's look at a few workloads that scale well. 

Rendering

Cinebench R20.06 scales exceedingly well across both processor groups, and surprisingly, the overclocked 3990X even beats out the dual-EPYC server by a slim margin. Frankly, that's astounding. The 3990X also beats the dual-Xeon 8280 server by a whopping 62%. We can see the impact of the 7702P's lower clock speeds here, as that processor with the same number of cores and threads lags far behind the 3990X, even at stock settings. However, it almost matches the dual-Xeon server, highlighting the power of AMD's single-socket server platforms in these types of workloads.  

For reference, the overclocked Threadripper 3990X pulled a peak of 589W (package power) during the multi-core Cinebench run, compared to roughly 480W from both Xeon processors. 

Our POV-Ray charts are a bit of an eyesore, but that's because this application requires a new extension (to the existing 3.7 engine) so it can run across both processor groups. This highlights some of the challenges AMD will face with the software ecosystem as it works to unlock the full performance in threaded workloads, but also how the company is already moving forward on that front. We also included the pre-patch test results for all impacted platforms to highlight the advantages. 

Again, the overclocked 3990X delivers devastating performance that ekes by the dual-EPYC platform and provides more than twice the performance of the patched dual-Xeon 8280 system, but there's a catch: While the workload scaled perfectly across all 128 threads of the 3990X and 256 threads for the dual-EPYC server, the patch doesn't appear to work on more than one NUMA node with Intel processors, which is a separate issue from processor grouping.

We extrapolated the performance of the benchmark if it were to run on both of the Xeon server's NUMA nodes, and will follow up to see if we can get a new version.  

The Threadripper 3990X pulled a peak of 639W during this test compared to the dual-Xeon's extrapolated value of 800W. 

V-Ray scales across both processor groups/NUMA nodes for both Intel and AMD platforms, which gives the 3990X a nice lead over the dual-Xeon system and all other single-chip competitors at stock settings, though it did take PBO to beat the dual-EPYC system. The Corona ray tracing benchmark also spanned both groups and handed the 3990X a convincing win. 

We couldn't run some of our benchmarks on the server platforms, but the Blender benchmark marks another strong win for the 3990X over the competing consumer processors.

The Cinebench single-threaded test finds the 3990X falling behind processors with higher frequencies, but still beating the server competition. Meanwhile, the 3990X puts up an impressive across-the-board win in the single-threaded POV-Ray test. 

A few of our other tests, like rendering and visualization, photo editing, and LuxMark, respond better to higher clock rates, so the 3990X struggles to keep pace with other consumer chips.  

Compression, Decompression, Encryption, AVX

The 7-zip workload works directly from the memory, removing storage bottlenecks from the equation, but it only executes across one processor group/NUMA node. That disadvantages the 3990X and server platforms (particularly the EPYC server) compared to the consumer processors, at least in terms of performance scaling. Despite the restriction, the 3990X posts incredibly impressive results in the compression tests, but clock rates play a big role in the decompression test. That gives the 3970X the win. 

The multi-core y-cruncher test pounds the processor with a threaded AVX workload that spans across both processor groups and NUMA nodes. Here the dual-Xeon 8280 exerts its AVX prowess, but the EPYC 7702P takes the lead. The 3990X falls a bit further down the pecking order, and given that this test works directly from memory, its quad-channel memory subsystem serves as its achilles heel. In either case, it still beats out all other HEDT processors at stock settings. 

The AIDA suite of tests, which includes the Zlib compression/decompression test, AES, SHA3, and HASH tests, scales perfectly across NUMA nodes and processor groups, which gives the dual-EPYC system a commanding lead in all of the tests. The dual-Xeon server is also very competitive, and the Threadripper 3990X easily beats all of the consumer-class silicon. 

Office and Productivity

These tests find us back in the realm of mainstream and HEDT platforms. The Threadripper 3990X isn't the best solution for many of the mundane workloads in PCMark 10 and the Microsoft Office suite, but it does deliver acceptable levels of performance. Naturally, these workloads aren't optimized for a behemoth like the 3990X, so these results aren't surprising, and this certainly isn't the target market.  

Web Browser

Browsers tend to be impacted more by the recent security mitigations than other types of applications, so Intel has generally taken a haircut in these benchmarks of fully-patched systems. While the mitigations have chipped away at Intel's lead in these tests, Intel processors still largely outperform competing AMD chips in these types of strictly single-threaded applications. 

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Test Notes

All right, all right, we get it: The Threadripper 3990X is in no way intended for gaming. 

But here we are on a page full of gaming tests. Regardless of the Threadripper 3990X's intended purpose, we couldn't resist the temptation to see how it fares when we pair it with a high-end GPU. And we know most of you want to see it, too. Our only regret is that we can't throw our 1U servers into the mix due to the form factor constraints of our Nvidia GeForce 2080 Ti. 

Bear in mind that you absolutely should not base your purchasing decision on these gaming results: The overwhelming majority of enthusiasts should opt for mainstream chips for the best gaming performance, not to mention the best value. The Threadripper 3990X doesn't have an impact on competitive positioning in the gaming market, so consider this round of tests an exhibition. 

Given Threadripper 3000's high-priced nature, we fully expect these processors to be paired with high-resolution QHD (and beyond) displays. However, in keeping with our standard practice, we test at the FHD resolution to eliminate graphics-imposed bottlenecks. Be aware: These deltas will shrink at higher gaming resolutions. 

VRMark and 3DMark

The 3DMark DX12 and DX11 tests measure the amount of raw horsepower exposed by the processor to game engines, but most game engines don't scale as linearly with additional compute resources. 

The DX12 tests expose the huge step forward with the other Threadripper 3000 processors as the chips easily outpace their predecessors, but the 3990X trails behind the 24-core 3960X, just like the 32-core 3970X.  

The DX11 tests also don't scale as well with the additional cores, though we do see the expected gains with overclocking. The 3990X is surprisingly agile in the VRMark test, which prizes per-core performance, as it beats out the lesser Threadripper models.

Civilization VI AI and Stockfish

The Civilization VI AI test measures AI performance in a turn-based strategy game and is heavily influenced by high clock rates and instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput. The 3990X posts surprisingly good performance after we engage the auto-overclocking feature, but the overclocked Core i9-10980XE and W-3175X take the lead by virtue of their drastically higher clock speeds. 

The open-source Stockfish AI chess engine, which runs entirely on the CPU cores, is the polar opposite of the Civilization VI engine. This engine is designed specifically for many-core chips and scales well up to 512 cores, which is music to Threadripper and EPYC's ears. The dual-socket EPYC server takes a monstrous win, but the 3990X also dishes out impressive performance that easily beats the dual-Xeon server. This result again highlights the impact of the 3990X's higher clock rates compared to the EPYC 7720P. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation responds well to extra cores and threads, which benefits AMD's lineup. The Threadripper 3990X takes a commanding lead in these tests by virtue of its 64 cores and 128 threads, but given the high cost of stepping up to the expensive chip, the gain wouldn't be worth the extra cash even if you're particularly obsessed with this title. 

Civilization VI Graphics Test

Dawn of War III

It isn't surprising to see the overclocked Intel HEDT chips take the top of the Dawn of War III chart due to their per-core performance advantage. 

Intel's HEDT chips can suffer from their unique mesh architecture in some game titles, but that same trend applies to the Threadripper processors, too. AMD's first- and second-gen Threadripper models were known for their erratic performance that stems from unoptimized game engines, necessitating a game mode that effectively removes cores and threads to boost performance. That trend doesn't plague Threadripper 3000 models as much, but there are exceptions. As a result, we tested the third-gen Threadripper processors in game mode for this title.

Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5's unoptimized code incurs a big performance penalty when all cores and threads are exposed to the operating system (creator mode), so we also tested this title in game mode. 

It's noteworthy that similar adjustments might also benefit Intel's high core-count processors, but the company hasn't made an easy-to-use tool to reduce core counts. AMD has instituted the ability to switch between game mode and creator mode in its Ryzen Master software, but it requires a reboot, so we still think it is an inconvenient band-aid.

Final Fantasy XV

We run this test with the standard quality preset to sidestep the impact of a bug that causes the game engine to render off-screen objects with the higher-resolution setting.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V continues to be popular six long years after its release. This title favors Intel architectures and, more generally, multi-core designs with high clock rates.

Hitman 2

The Threadripper 3990X climbs the ranks in Hitman 2, trailing only the overclocked Xeon W-3175X and Core i9-10980XE. 

Project Cars 2

Project Cars 2 is optimized for threading, but high clock rates pay off. 

World of Tanks enCore 

AMD has addressed the lion's share of the erratic gaming performance we observed with previous-gen models, but Intel's chips are beastly overclockers. 

As we said at the top, the Threadripper 3990X isn't for gaming. However, if a developer decided to unwind with a few games at work, it delivers strong enough performance to deliver a smooth gaming experience. 

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SPEC Workstation and Adobe Performance Test Notes

We ran an extra series of tests to reflect performance in workstation-class workloads. Some of these applications make an appearance in our standard test suite, but those test configurations and benchmarks are focused on a typical desktop-class environment. In contrast, these tests are configured to stress the systems with workstation-class workloads. 

With the exception of the W-3175X system, we loaded down our test platforms with 64GB of DDR4 memory spread across four modules to accommodate the expanded memory capacity required for several of these workstation-focused tasks. Due to the W-3175X's six channel memory controller and our limited stock of high-capacity DIMMs, we used six 8GB DIMMs for a total capacity of 48GB. All systems were tested at the vendor-specified supported memory data transfer rates for their respective stock configurations, and DDR4-3600 for the overclocked settings. 

Puget Systems Benchmarks

Puget Systems is a boutique vendor that caters to professional users with custom-designed systems targeted at specific workloads. The company developed a series of acclaimed benchmarks for Adobe software, which you can find here. We use several of the benchmarks for our first round of workstation testing, followed by SPECworkstation 3 benchmarks.

Adobe After Effects CC Render Node Benchmark

The After Effects render node benchmark leverages the in-built aerender application that splits the render engine across multiple threads to maximize CPU and GPU performance. This test is memory-intensive, so capacity and throughput are important and can be a limiting factor. 

We're surprised that the 3990X didn't perform as well in this workload as we expected, especially given that it seems to scale correctly across all cores and threads. However, we did test with the 64GB memory kit recommended by AMD, but the company officially recommends 128GB or 256GB of memory capacity, which benefits some workloads. Given that this test leans heavily on the memory subsystem, we suspect that it will respond better to more memory capacity. 

Unfortunately, we only have a 64GB kit on hand, and we encountered issues getting our 128GB ECC memory kits up and running with the current BIOS revision. We'll circle back on this test if we can work out the kinks. 

Adobe Premier Pro CC Benchmark

This benchmark measures live playback and export performance with several codecs at 4K and 8K resolutions. It also incorporates 'Heavy GPU' and 'Heavy CPU' effects that stress the system beyond a typical workload. Storage throughput also heavily impacts the score. 

The Threadripper 3990X trails the overclocked Xeon, along with the 32-core 3970X, in this round of tests. This test works through an entire video editing workflow, so some portions are heavily threaded, while other portions aren't nearly as intense. The combination of the two types of workloads throughout the test likely impact the 3990X's score, as it is most impressive during sustained heavily-threaded workloads. 

Adobe Photoshop CC Benchmark

The Photoshop benchmark measures performance in a diverse range of tasks, measuring the amount of time taken to complete general tasks, create panoramas (photomerge results), and apply filters. 

Much like the Premiere Pro benchmark, this suite encompasses a wide range of tasks that doesn't include many extended heavily-threaded workloads.

Based on the results of this test, it's clear why AMD specifically recommends the 3990X for rendering workloads. 

SPECworkstation 3 Benchmarks

The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications split among seven categories, but we've winnowed down the list to tests that largely focus specifically on CPU performance for our standard benchmarking suite. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so these are not official benchmarks.

Media and Entertainment

We run the new Blender Benchmark beta in our regular suite of tests, but different types of render jobs can stress processors in unique ways. Here we can see a breakout of several industry-standard benchmark renders that largely favor the Zen 2 architecture. You'll notice that the Threadripper 3990X tends to be more competitive in the longer-duration render workloads, which falls right in line with the company's guidance that workload intensity has a big impact on performance. We verified that this portion of the benchmark suite runs across both processor groups.

Rodinia LifeSciences

SPECworkstation 3's Rodinia LifeSciences benchmark steps through four tests that include medical imaging, particle movements in a 3D space, a thermal simulation, and image-enhancing programs. The 32-core 3970X outperforms the 3990X throughout this suite of tests, but we found that the workloads don't execute across both processor groups. That means the workload executes on 64 threads for both processors, giving the 3970X's higher clock speeds the upper hand.  

We usually include the NAMD benchmark in both our regular suite and in the SPECWorkstation 3 lineup, but we encountered unexplained errors with the 3990X in both suites. We're working to troubleshoot the problem.

Financial and General Workloads

The Monte Carlo simulation is used to project risk and uncertainty in financial forecasting models. Again, we found that these SPECWorkstation 3 tests don't scale across processor groups. 

These benchmarks are used by many organizations to quantify performance during competitive bake-offs, so the suite is badly in need of an update to support the 3990X's thread count. 

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The Threadripper 3990X is pretty much exactly what AMD says it is: A highly specialized processor that provides incredible performance in a narrow cross-section of workloads, but at an extremely attractive price point given its capabilities. 

AMD's decision to pair 64 cores and 128 threads with higher boost frequencies pays big dividends in VFX, 3D animation, and ray tracing workloads with more performance than you would expect from any comparable workstation-class solution, not to mention even some dual-socket servers. The higher boost frequencies provide snappy performance in everyday lightly-threaded applications and devastating threaded performance in workloads that scale well. You also get access to 64 lanes of PCIe 4.0, which is useful for powerful SSD RAID arrays and other high-performance additives.

It's hard to imagine that a single chip could beat a dual-socket Xeon or EPYC server outfitted with class-leading data center processors, but that's exactly what the Threadripper 3990X did in most of our rendering tests. The processor also readily drops into enthusiast-class motherboards, making it an easy upgrade for professionals that already have other third-gen Ryzen models.

On the surface, the $3,990 price tag is eye-watering, but given the level of performance, it's more than acceptable in professional settings where time equates to money. You'll need to pair the chip with an expensive high-capacity memory kit, capable watercooling, and a bulky power supply to extract the most performance, but those costs pale in comparison to a dual-socket server platform.

That said, the chip does have a limited customer base due to its specialized nature, and users that need more memory throughput or PCIe lanes will benefit from moving up to datacenter-class processors. Hopefully the 3990X gains traction in the OEM market, as validated workstations based on these processors would broaden the user base.

We've done our best to show you the best of the Threadripper 3990X's performance, but we can't tell the whole performance story due to spotty software support for a processor of this class. Outside of AMD's targeted workloads, most software can't extract the best performance from this processor. We also encountered plenty of difficulties finding workloads that would scale in Windows on our server test platforms, largely due to the difficulties associated with NUMA. However, those challenges explain perfectly why this processor could find a profitable niche: A large number of applications don't scale well with NUMA architectures, particularly with Windows, which is the operating system of choice for visual effects artists.

AMD has plenty of experience in pushing the software ecosystem forward to support heavily threaded chips, and the company is already working with several companies to improve processor grouping support, and hopefully, industry-standard benchmarks like SPECWorkstation 3 will also get an upgrade.

In either case, the Threadripper 3990X is an incredibly impressive chip. Just three years ago, an eight-core $1,000 chip represented the best the industry had to offer on an HEDT platform, but now we have up to 64 cores and 128 threads at our disposal, and AMD says it won't slow down as it shrinks to smaller process nodes. As crazy as it sounds, we'll see higher core counts in the future. Hopefully the software and operating system ecosystems respond with performance-boosting optimizations so this kind of incredible performance benefits more types of workloads.

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Because there are so many RGB components and accessories, there are just a ton of RGB control panel applications that let you customize your light patterns. However, Thermaltake's new NeonMaker software is something different, because it allows you to create and edit lighting animations in much the same way you'd piece together a video clip.

Available for download right now on Thermaltake's website. NeonMaker allows you to build and save animations that are up to 45 seconds long, using any components that are part of the company's RGB Plus ecosystem. We had a chance to use NeonMaker at Thermaltake's CES 2020 suite and were impressed with its capabilities. 

In the application, all the eligible components appear as icons at the top of the screen and you can drag them around to represent their position in the case.  The setup in our demo was simply a series of Riing Quad case fans so all the icons were the same, but a Thermaltake rep said that other types of coolers such as AIOs would have icons that looked like the products do in real life. 

You can then click on each icon and set its colors. Each RGB device the has its own row in the overall timeline just like each video or audio clip has its own timeline when  you're crafting videos in editors like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. 

Once you're done with your animation, you can save it to a file, which you can share with friends or reload the next time you want to use it. NeonMaker does not replace Thermaltake's regular RGB Plus lighting control software; it just adds another way to express yourself through your PC's lighting. 

The Clop ransomware has been around since last February, but it's recently evolved into a more advanced and effective piece of software, with Bleeping Computer reporting that it now terminates up to 663 processes before encrypting any files.

Clop terminates processes to prevent a target system from accessing certain files. Disabling more processes means the ransomware can encrypt more files, which should make people even more desperate to pay up so they can regain access to their systems. (Assuming the ransomware operators actually unlock those files.)

Some of the affected processes include Microsoft Office applications, WinRAR, notepad and notepad++, calculator, Adobe Acrobat and far more. In November, Clop was coded to  attempt to disable Windows Defender wherever possible, too. Disabling those processes should allow Clop to encrypt many popular file types.

Just after its debut in February, Clop evolved to attack not only individual systems, but also bigger computer infrastructures. Last month this led to a successful attack on the computer system at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, which is still recovering from the attack. The attack disabled almost all Windows systems, and the university is investigating whether the attackers  gained access to any of its scientific data. Russian hacker group TA505 is suspected to be behind the attack.

The best way to defend against Clop--as well as other forms of ransomware--is to run regular backups on external hard drives that aren't used while connected to the internet. Making sure a system's operating system and apps are kept up-to-date should also help to keep it safe from known threats like Clop.

In an incredible alignment of the silicon stars, AMD's third-gen Threadripper 3970X and 3960X launch today alongside Intel's new Cascade Lake-X Core i9-10980XE, giving us a look at the future of the high end desktop all in one go. 

Intel surely has its work cut out for it. Earlier this month, AMD showcased the advantages of its Zen 2 microarchitecture and 7nm process by cramming the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X into its mainstream platforms, doubling the core count of Intel's competing chips. That created a new tier of threaded performance for mainstream motherboards, one Intel simply can't match, and upset Intel's pricing structure for its high-end desktop lineup in the process. 

But that wasn't the full extent of the damage: Intel preemptively slashed the gen-on-gen pricing of its forthcoming Cascade Lake-X chips in half as it braced for the impact of AMD's Threadripper 3000. 

Now they're here: AMD's 32-core 64-thread Threadripper 3970X and 24-core 48-thread 3960X have landed in our labs with the same core counts as their predecessors, but instead of a headline achievement like a doubling of core counts, Threadripper's new architecture serves as the star of the show. The 'Castle Peak' design brings a new design that does away with many of the previous-gen Threadrippers' eccentricities, which equates to massive performance gains across the board. Add in support for PCIe 4.0, and the Threadripper 3000 series looks like a winner.

Of course, with much more real estate available in the massive sTRX4 socket on TRX40 motherboards (), we also fully expect AMD to bring the density advantages of its 7nm process to bear, and soon it will: The company confirmed it would bring a beastly 64-core 128-thread Threadripper 3990X with an amazing 288MB of total cache and 280W TDP to market in 2020. 

But while we await that ludicrously-appointed chip, we have plenty of excitement with the Threadripper 3970X and 3960X. These chips promise a new level of performance for prosumers and creators, and they deliver. 

We've been busy in our labs testing the processors through our standard test suite of games and applications, but also added an expansive set of workstation tests that expose the benefits of the TRX40 platform, like AMD's leading support of PCIe 4.0. We also have Intel's new Core i9-10980XE on the roster, along with the Ryzen 9 3950X, to give you a view of the entire high-end battlefield. 

Threadripper 3970X and 3960X Specifications and Pricing

AMD's Threadripper 3000 processors debut with much higher pricing than the previous-gen models: At $1,999, the 32-core 3970X debuts for $200 more than its predecessor, and AMD tacked on an extra $100 for the $1,399 24-core 3960X. AMD attributes the increased pricing to the new level of performance and access to Threadripper's leading-edge support for the PCIe 4.0 interface. 

AMD gears the Threadripper 3000 processors for content creators and prosumers, like 3D artists, filmmakers, and software developers. For professionals, any extra time spent completing a task equates to lost revenue, making the higher price a justifiable expense if the premium matches the performance.

You'll also need a new TRX40 motherboard to support the chips. We've tested a couple around the launch of these chips, and our current favorite is ASRock's TRX40 Taichi. Due to the higher pricing of Threadripper 3000 models and the requirement for a new motherboard, AMD is leaving the existing second-gen Threadripper processors on the market for the foreseeable future as a 'value HEDT' offering for content creators. You can regularly find the 32-core Threadripper 2990WX for  roughly $1,700 and the 24-core 2970WX for about $925, and we expect those prices will fall soon. 

The Threadripper 3970X weighs in with 32 cores and 64 threads that operate at a 3.7 GHz base and 4.5 GHz boost paired with 144 MB of total cache (128MB L3), while the Threadripper 3960X has 24 cores and 48 threads that run at a 3.8 GHz base and 4.5 GHz boost with 140 MB of total cache. 

Both chips expose 88 PCIe 4.0 lanes, but the TRX40 chipset consumes some of those lanes, leaving 64 exposed to the user. The PCIe 4.0 interface is a notable advantage of AMD's Ryzen desktop lineup, but it is more important in the HEDT space where high-speed storage and networking devices are more likely to find their way into powerful systems. 

Both processors support four channels of DDR4-3200 memory, but data transfer rates differ based on DIMM population. The chips support up to eight DIMMs of 32GB memory, totalling 256GB. The processors also support ECC memory, but implementation varies by motherboard. The Threadripper processors feature the same memory controllers as the Ryzen 3000 chips, so memory overclocking is a rather straightforward affair.