Category - Practice

Tester in danger: How many watts can the 12-pin Micro-Fit connector of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 survive without melting?

The discussions about what current flow various 6-, 8- or now even 12-pin sockets can survive are as old as these sockets themselves. But while over the years one could see the odd experiment or two, the 12-pin Micro-Fit 3.0 connector is new. This in turn naturally aroused human curiosity and this is exactly where my longtime friend Aris [...]


Miracle Drivers? How NVIDIA solved the crashes of the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 while keeping also the power supplies alive | Analysis

With the revision 456.55 NVIDIA wants to fix most of the problems of the new GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 and solved it. In addition to the power supply shutdowns that repeatedly occurred at the beginning with power supplies that seemed to be nominally sufficient, it was mainly the crashes of certain cards within the 3D environment that caused a [...]


NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 and the crashes – Why capacitors are so important and what’s behind them

After my article about the capacitors on the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 has made a lot of waves, I have to criticize myself in two respects. I had underestimated that the readers might be interested in a somewhat longer and more technical explanation of the circumstances or background and that secondly, the (thoughtless) adoption of the terms [...]


The possible reason for crashes and instabilities of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 | Investigative

Not only the editors and testers were surprised by sudden instabilities of the new GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, but also the first customers who were able to get board partner cards from the first wave. An interesting pattern of behavior emerged that did not affect all cards or manufacturers and the problems only occurred at certain boost clock [...]


NVIDIA LDAT – Latency Display Analysis Tool introduced and tested

The fact that you generally use the FPS, i.e. the rendered frames per second, as a benchmark for the gaming performance, is common but actually anything but target-oriented. If you know my metrics in the graphics card tests, you will have noticed that for some years now, I have been using the frame time, i.e. the real render time of each [...]


With NVIDIA and DLSS 2.0 on the eco-trip from Turing to Ampere? Saving power against the trend is more than a nice gimmick!

Today’s article is actually more of a random product, because during the preparations for the Ampere launch I not only renewed and significantly expanded the test system, but also all the metrics and graphics for the evaluation. this is exactly where the whole test starts, because the depth of the evaluation was not possible in this form [...]


Notebook self-assembly kit: an XMG Apex 15 from Schenker as a barebone with my own CPUs from Ryzen 3 3300X to Ryzen 9 3950X in a test | Part 1 – Assembly

The German notebook manufacturer Schenker had already presented the XMG Apex 15 some time ago, so I am not presenting a world first here, of course. Since one can fall back on socketed CPUs from AMD with the Apex 15, because a B450 board with socket AM4 is used, this notebook makes it quite interesting for me. Except for the built-in graphic unit [...]


NVIDIA NvEnc vs. CPU encoding: Can the video encoder of the Turing cards be used for twitch streaming and keep up with a CPU? Analysis with Netflix VMAF

For some time now, a separate encoding chip, which Nvidia NvEnc has christened Nvidia NvEnc, has been used in many NVIDIA graphics cards. This is a real hardware solution that can convert videos quite efficiently. Currently the common codecs H.264 and H.265 as well as resolutions up to 8K are supported. The Turing generation now promises video [...]


CrankzWare RainPOW! 2.0 Review – RGB controller, intelligent fan control, image controlled monitor backlight and much more

One for all and all on one? it’s perfectly possible if you use the right hardware. With RainPOW! 2.0 the German startup CrankzWare has combined pretty much everything that can be read and controlled into one unit, as long as it has RGB and connectors. The advantage of the RainPOW! 2.0, which is completely manufactured in Germany, is however [...]


Challenge: Optimizing AMD Ryzen 7 3800X with Boxed Cooler and Radeon RX 5700 in reference design? That’s how it works! | Tutorial

Our forum user casi30 has created an optimization guide for us, which should make the impossible possible, especially since the combination as CPU and GPU is already quite sporty. He cools an AMD Ryzen R7 3800X with the included Wraith Prism, runs a reference model of the Radeon RX 5700 for this purpose and finally optimized the whole thing [...]