Although Intel’s A770 drivers installed easily and we set up our Valve Index, SteamVR refused to recognize the Index and Intel confirmed lack of Arc driver support. Fortunately, we were able to set up a Reverb G2, a WMR (Windows Mixed Reality) headset, and charted A770 performance versus the RTX 3060 using FCAT VR.

The Reverb G2 is a much more demanding headset than the Valve Index. We do not recommend using entry level VR cards like the A770 or RTX 3060 to drive it any more than we would for 4K pancake gaming, but the G2 is our only WMR headset. Fortunately, despite many crashes to desktop, we were able to benchmark six VR games on generally the lowest settings using FCAT VR.

VR Games & Settings

We benchmark using FCAT VR on Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900KF, and 32GB of T-Force Delta RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard with fast SSD storage. All VR games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use Intel’s most recent drivers.

For this review, we benchmarked the Reverb G2 using FCAT VR and allowed the default SteamVR 100% render resolution (3168×3096). It uses a factor of ~1.4X (the native resolution is 2160×2160) to compensate for lens distortion and to increase clarity. We are going to compare the performance of the A770 with the RTX 3060, generally at each game’s in-game lowest VR settings.

Here are the six VR games we tested.

VR Games

• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Moss: Book II
• Project CARS 2
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” – measuring only one important performance metric – which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, faster is better.

In addition, FCAT VR does not distinguish between dropped and synthesized frames using the G2.

Let’s individually look at our 6 VR games’ performance using FCAT VR.

First up, Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Lowest settings but we left the Field of View on its maximum.

Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The A770 managed 69.73 unconstrained FPS with 3301 (40%) synthesized or dropped frames but no Warp misses.

The RTX 3060 delivered 77.41 unconstrained FPS with 4667 (50%) synthesized or dropped frames and no Warp misses.

Although the A770 delivers only ~10% less unconstrained frames per second, the Elite Dangerous VR experience is much better using the RX 3060. The A770 framerate delivery is uneven leading to visible stutters which break immersion.

Let’s look at F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The A770 managed 38.58 unconstrained FPS with 5935 (61%) synthesized or dropped frames but no Warp misses.

The RTX 3060 delivered 59.13 unconstrained FPS with 6202 (54%) synthesized or dropped frames and no reported Warp misses.

The A770 falls way behind the RX 3060 in raw performance. The A770 framerate delivery is fairly even due to Motion Smoothing, but the artifacting is very annoying and there are immersion breaking stutters.

Stay tuned. Rodrigo has two not-to-be-missed in-depth major video card reviews coming shortly.

A personal note from BTR’s now retired E-I-C, Mark Poppin

After a great 15 years since ABT and then BTR were established, I am retiring from my duties as Editor-in-Chief and lead reviewer as of today, January 1, 2023. BTR’s has been acquired by JPR (Jon Peddie Research) splitting ownership with Mario who is now BTR’s manager, and Rodrigo is now the lead reviewer. I’ll continue to contribute some VR reviews regularly.

Thanks to all of our loyal readers who turn to BTR for the best reviews – It will get even better!

Happy New Year & Happy Gaming!

We received an Intel Arc A770 from JPR and were eager to put it through its paces. The drivers installed easily and we set up our Valve Index hoping that we could play VR games and also test performance against competing AMD and Nvidia video cards.

Unfortunately, we were greeted by the above image. Resetting the headset, cables, and moving to different USB ports, as well as trying SteamVR Beta and non-Beta plus installing Intel WHQL and Beta drivers made no difference.

Our next step was to contact Intel customer support. After a very brief waiting time on chat, we got connected with a Support agent who asked for a PC log file which we uploaded.

“Please know that Intel Arc graphics support for VR headsets continues to evolve as we ramp our products and add updates to our software stack”.

Contacting Intel’s representatives in charge of Arc gave us the same canned response with no ETA for VR support:

Intel Arc graphics support for VR headsets continues to evolve as we ramp our products and add updates to our software stack.

Although the A770 launched more than two months ago, there is still no proper SteamVR support from Intel. So if you are doing your last minute holiday shopping and want an Intel Arc video card to play your VR games using a native SteamVR headset like the Valve Index, you are probably out of luck.

However, BTR also tried the Reverb G2 which is a Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headset, and it set up and works to get into VR, including into several SteamVR games we launched. BTR will test performance and give our experiences with the A770 and the G2 after the New Year.

Happy Holidays and Happy VR gaming!!

The $999 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX arrived at BTR for evaluation last week from PowerColor. We have been comparing it against Nvidia’s new $1199 RTX 4080 Founders Edition (FE) and $1599 RTX 4090 FE plus five additional top cards. We focus on raw performance by benchmarking 42 PC and 10 VR games, GPGPU, workstation, SPEC, and synthetic benchmarks.

We will also compare the performance of these three new competing cards with the RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT reference editions and their competitors, the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3080 FE.

Features & Specifications

Although launched at reference $999 XTX pricing, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX has its factory Game Clock set 30MHz higher than the reference version’s 2300MHz. According to PowerColor specifications, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX can boost its Game Clock to 2330MHz (2270MHz Silent) with the OC BIOS. The Game Clock is the expected GPU clock while running average high-load gaming scenarios with a regular non-overclocked total graphics usage situation. However, the GPU Boost Clock can reach as high as 2525MHz – 25MHz higher than reference – by using the OC BIOS and we will test this.

Here are the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX features.

Additional Information from PowerColor

• The Hellhound has 2 modes, OC and Silent with a BIOS switch on the side of the card. Even on performance mode it’s said to be considerably quieter than reference board and the silent mode is indeed very quiet.
• The 14 layer high TG PCB board has 12+3+2+2+1 Phase VRM design. Hellhounds are over-spec’d in order to deliver the best stability and overclocking headroom. By having high quality VRMs, it will run cooler and last longer.
• DrMos and high-polymer Caps are used without compromise.
• The cooler features three 9-blade ball bearing fans with 8 heat pipes (8X6?) across a high density heatsink with a copper base. The PCB is shorter than the cooler.
• It uses mute fan technology and the fans stop under 60C.
• The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX includes card stands for supporting it so as to not put extra strain on the PCIe slot.

The RX 7900 XTX is AMD’s brand new RDNA 3 flagship card, and the Hellhound represents one of the best choices for a mildly factory overclocked $999 card by virtue of its high-quality components and carefully selected GPUs coupled with good support and great warranty service.

The Test Bed

We benchmark using FCAT VR and FrameView on Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900KF, and 32GB of T-Force Delta RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard with fast SSD storage. All games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use recent drivers.

First, let’s take a closer look at the new PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX.

A Closer Look at the PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX

Although the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX advertises itself as a premium 24GB card which features ray tracing, Radeon Boost, and Anti-Lag, the cover of the box uses almost no text in favor of stylized imagery.

The back of the box touts key features which include ray tracing, Anti-Lag, DisplayPort 2.1, RDNA 3, FidelityFX, Infinity Cache, streaming aids, and Boost, as well as states its 800W power and system requirements. There is no mention of VR Ready Premium. Also highlighted are PowerColor’s custom cooling solution, Dual-BIOSes, fan improvements, and output LEDs. The default LED color is an eye-pleasing amethyst.

We open the box and note there are parts for a card stand.

The complete package contents except for the anti-static bag are pictured above together with the card holder parts. Above the stand is fully assembled. Although the Hellhound is relatively heavy, it is not 4090-heavy, and we didn’t feel a need for it.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a large tri-fan card in a three slot design which is quite handsome with PowerColor’s neutral colors and even more striking with the LED on.

Turning it over we see a sturdy backplate featuring the Hellhound logo which also lights up with amethyst being the default color.

Looking at either long edge, we see the entire PCB is covered by heatpipes and heatsink fins. Additional power is provided by the PSU’s 2 x 8-pin Molex cables to the card connectors. There is also a switch to choose between the default overclock (OC) BIOS and the Silent BIOS. We didn’t bother using the Silent BIOS as the card is really quiet anyway, but it is good to have in case a flash goes bad.

The card should perhaps be locked down with two thumbscrews instead of one because it is heavy or the stand can be used.

The Hellhound’s IO panel connectors include 3 DisplayPorts and 1 HDMI connection.

Below is the other end which is very plain.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX looks great inside a case.

The specifications look good and the card itself looks solid. Now let’s check out its performance after we look over our test configuration and more on the next page.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-13900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)
• ASUS Prime-A Z790 LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z790 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz / 100% SteamVR Render Resolution
• Hellhound RX 7900 XTX, 24GB, factory clocks, supplied by PowerColor
• RTX 4080 16GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24 GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, 16GB, factory clocks
• RX 6800 XT Reference 16GB, factory clocks, supplied by AMD
• RTX 3080 Ti 12GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 3080 10 GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x 2TB T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440 (5,000/4,400MB/s) PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSDs (one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C external SSD (2,000x2000B/s), supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan & 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz
• LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 526.98 drivers for the RTX 4090/4080 and 527.27 for the RTX 3080/3080 Ti. Adrenalin 22.11.2 for the RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT, and press drivers for the RTX 7900 XTX.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• VR charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom; higher is better)
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 recent clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards using separate but identical NVMe SSDs.
• Latest DirectX
• SteamVR latest beta

Games

Vulkan

• Sniper Elite
• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow Six: Siege

DX12

• A Plague Tale: Requiem
• Spiderman: Remastered
• F1 2022
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• God of War
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• DEATHLOOP
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legions
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Overwatch 2
• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Grand Theft Auto V

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Moss: Book II
• No Man’s Sky
• Project CARS 2
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Synthetic

• Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• FCAT VR benching tool
• OpenVR Benchmark tool

Adrenalin Control Panel settings

Here are the Adrenalin Control Panel settings.

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Overclocking, temperatures and noise

We spent little time overclocking the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX for this review as we encountered some unexpected results that require further investigation. The card is very quiet and its fans never spin up even under a heavy load so as to be irritating or even noticeable. It’s quieter than the Gigabyte 6900 XT or the RTX 3080 Ti.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is factory clocked 30MHz higher than the reference version at 2330MHz using the OC BIOS. According to its specifications, the Hellhound boost can clock up to 2565MHz out of the box. From our benching, we generally see it boosting even higher and it generally settles in above 2750MHz with peaks above 2780MHz.

The Hellhound temperatures stay in the low to mid-60s C with the fans quietly running well below 50% even using the OC BIOS under a full gaming load. It is an exceptionally well-cooled and quiet card.

Let’s head to the performance charts to compare the performance of the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX with six other cards.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX vs. the RTX 4080 FE and 5 other cards benchmarked with 42 games

Here are the performance results of 42 games and 3 synthetic tests. The highest settings are used and are listed on the charts. The benches were run at 2560×1440 and 3840×2160. Click on each chart to open in a pop-up for best viewing. Gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font which represent a game’s average 1% lows (99th percentiles).

The first set of charts show the seven main competing cards. Column two represents the $999 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX performance in between the $1599 RTX 4090 FE in column one and the RTX 4080 FE, its $1199 primary competitor, in the third column. The RTX 3080 Ti results are in the fourth column next to Gigabyte RX 6900 XT OC version performance results in the fifth column, followed up by the RTX 3080 in the sixth and the RX 6800 XT in the seventh column.

“Wins” between the RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080 are denoted by yellow text. If there is a tie, both values are in yellow.

Playing with the RX 7900 XTX, Elden Ring locked up the PC even after verifying files and reinstalling Adrenaline drivers and it appears a driver issue prevented ray traced Guardians of the Galaxy running on the RX 6800 XT.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are cards that are primarily suited for 4K and high-FPS 1440P gaming and they stand out from the other four cards. The RX 7900 XTX trades blows with the RTX 4080 in rasterized games – they are equivalent cards if ray tracing is not considered.

Although RX 7900 XTX ray tracing has greatly improved over the RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT, it now appears to perform similarly to the RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti but far behind the RTX 4080. FSR 2.0, although still not on the same image quality level as Nvidia’s DLSS 2, will almost double framerates for a very minor IQ hit and will make most of the games quite playable at Ultra/4K in this 52 game benching suite. Gamers who are not so impressed with ray tracing or who are not picky about image quality perfection may well prefer to save $200 on a $1000 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX over buying a $1200 RTX 4080.

Let’s look at synthetic benches.

Synthetic benches

We hold synthetic benches to be meaningless for predicting real world gaming performance versus competing cards with different architectures although they have other practical uses like overclocking and ranking. The RX 7900 XTX performs better in the synthetic tests than in gaming.

Let’s see how the Hellhound performs in ten popular VR (Virtual Reality) games next.

10 VR Games

For this review, we benchmarked the Valve Index using FCAT VR and set the SteamVR render resolution to 100% (2016×2240) which uses a factor of 1.4X (the native resolution is 1440×1600) to compensate for lens distortion and to increase clarity. We are going to compare the performance of the RX 7900 XTX with the RX 4080 and versus the RX 4090 at each game’s Ultra/Highest settings.

Unfortunately, FCAT VR still doesn’t work with MS Flight Simulator 2020 or with Star Wars Squadrons. Here are the ten VR games we tested.

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Moss: Book II
• No Man’s Sky
• Project CARS 2
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Synthetic

• Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, measuring just one important performance metric, faster is better.

Let’s individually look at our 10 sim-heavy VR games’ performance using FCAT VR.

First up, Assetto Corsa: Competizione.

Assetto Corsa: Competizione (ACC)

BTR’s sim/racing editor, Sean Kaldahl created the replay benchmark run that we use for both the pancake game and the VR game. It is run at night with 20 cars, lots of geometry, and the lighting effects of the headlights, tail lights, and everything around the track looks spectacular.

Just like with Project CARS, you can save a replay after a race. Fortunately, the CPU usage is the same between a race and its replay so it is a reasonably accurate benchmark using the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. iRacing may be more accurate or realistic, but Assetto Corsa: Competizione has some appeal because it feels more real than many other racing sims. It delivers the sensation of handling a highly-tuned racing machine driven to its edge.

Here are the ACC FCAT VR frametimes using VR Ultra using the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX, the RTX 4080 FE, and the RTX 4090 FE.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 7900 XTX managed 85.77 unconstrained FPS with 6339 (50%) synthesized frames with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 118.42 unconstrained FPS with 207 (2%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 164.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The ACC racing experience is best with the RTX 4090 although the RTX 4080 delivers a nearly constant 90 FPS on the Epic VR preset unlike the RX 7900 XTX which requires one-half of its frames to be synthesized.

Next, we check out Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Ultra Preset and we set the Field of View to its maximum.

Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 7900 XTX managed 185.21 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames with no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 230.98 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized frame and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 brings 296.16 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frames but with 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

Although the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX has the lowest performance, the experience playing Elite Dangerous at Ultra settings is not perceptibly different on any tested video card. However, the RTX 4090 has a lot more performance headroom to increase the render resolution or to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2.

Let’s look at our newest VR sim, F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 156.57 unconstrained FPS with 6 synthesized but no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 200.24 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 254.72 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus with 3 dropped frames and 3 Warp misses.

The experience playing F1 2022 using the Ultra preset is not very different on any of these video cards but the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have considerably more performance headroom than the RX 7900 XTX to use 120Hz/144Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Kayak VR: Mirage

The outstanding near-photorealistic visual fidelity really sets Kayak VR: Mirage apart from other simulators. It boasts a wide range of locales with day/night/sunset options offering tropical, icy, desert, and even stormy scenarios with trips to Costa Rica, Antarctica, Norway, and Australia and occasional interactions with wildlife. It can be played as a relaxing sim or as a strenuous workout with competitive time trials which offer asynchronous multiplayer and ranking on global leaderboards.

We benchmark at 100% resolution with the highest “Cinematic” in-game settings but do not use DLSS or FSR.

Here is the frametime plot for Kayak VR: Mirage.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 198.98 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 257.16 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 got 329.35 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame and 1 dropped frame plus 1 Warp miss.

Kayak VR: Mirage looks fantastic at 100% resolution with maximum settings and would be well-suited for play on the Reverb G2 with any of our test cards.

Next, we look at Moss: Book II.

Moss: Book II

Moss: Book II is an amazing VR experience with much better graphics than the original game. It’s a 3rd person puzzle adventure game played seated that offers a direct physical interaction between you (the Reader) and your avatar, Quill, a mouse that bring real depth to the story. Extreme attention has been paid to the tiniest details with overall great art composition and outstanding lighting that make this game a must-play for gamers of all ages.

Moss II boasts very good visuals and we use the in-game highest settings.

Here are the frametimes plots of our four cards.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 189.29 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 308.44 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 436.34 unconstrained FPS no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

Unfortunately, the experience playing Moss II on the Valve Index using the RX 7900 XTX is marred by visual issues including artifacting and shimmering.

Next, we will check out another demanding VR game, No Man’s Sky.

No Man’s Sky (NMS)

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival single and multiplayer game that emphasizes survival, exploration, fighting, and trading. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine.

The player takes the role of a Traveller in an uncharted universe by starting on a random planet with a damaged spacecraft equipped with only a jetpack-equipped exosuit and a versatile multi-tool that can also be used for defense. The player is encouraged to find resources to repair his spacecraft allowing for intra- and inter-planetary travel, and to interact with other players.

Here is the No Man’s Sky frametime plot. We set the settings to Maximum which is a step over Ultra including setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X and upgrading to FXAA. We did not use any upscaling method.

Here are the FCAT-VR details of our comparative runs.

The RX 7900 XTX brought 108.17 unconstrained FPS with 3536 (50%) synthesized frames but no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 159.10 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 201.96 unconstrained FPS together with 17 synthetic frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

RX 7900 XTX gamers may want to lower some individual settings to remain above 90 FPS. The RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 have enough performance headroom to increase the refresh rate, render resolution, or to perhaps use a higher resolution headset.

Let’s continue with another VR game, Project CARS 2, that we still like better than its successor even though it is no longer available for online play.

Project CARS 2 (PC2)

There is still a sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. It uses its in-house Madness engine, and the physics implementation is outstanding.

Project CARS 2 offers many performance options and settings.

We used maximum settings including for Motion Blur but picked SMAA Ultra instead of MSAA.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 194.77 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized nor dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 got 200.88 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames nor dropped frames and no Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 253.50 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The experience playing Project CARS 2 using maximum settings is similar for all three video cards.

Next we will check out a classic VR game, Skyrim VR.

Skyrim VR

Skyrim VR is an older game that is no longer supported by Bethesda, but fortunately the modding community has adopted it. It is not as demanding as many of the newer VR ports so its performance is still very good on maxed-out settings using its Creation engine.

We benchmarked vanilla Skyrim using its highest settings plus we increased the in-game Supersample option to maximum.

Here are the frametime results.

Here are the details of our comparative runs as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 7900 XTX provided 218.2 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 239.08 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 337.76 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frame and with 2 dropped frames plus 1 Warp miss.

All cards deliver an identical vanilla Skyrim VR experience with a ton of extra performance headroom to add mods and, in addition, to raise the render resolution using the two faster cards.

Next we check out Sniper Elite VR.

Sniper Elite VR

Sniper Elite VR’s visuals are decent with good texture work that is well-realized. The building architecture and panoramas look good, explosions are convincing and the weapons convey a sense of weight, although not achieving realism. It is primarily an arcade style sniping game featuring its signature X-Ray kill cam, but it offers multiple ways to achieve goals including with explosives and by using three other main weapon choices besides your rifle.

We benchmarked using the Highest settings.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the details:

The RX 6900 XT delivered 197.98 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 223.33 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 brought 318.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

All three cards deliver a similar playing experience on High with the RTX cards offering more performance headroom. We recommend that any performance headroom be used for increasing the SteamVR render resolution.

Last up, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinner is the last of BTR’s 10 VR game benching suite. It is a first person survival horror adventure RPG with a strong emphasis on crafting. Its visuals using the Unreal 4 engine are very good and it makes good use of physics for interactions.

We benchmarked Saints and Sinners using its High preset and we left the Pixel Density at 100%. Here is the frametime chart.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 198.93 unconstrained FPS with no synthetic nor dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 got 260.94 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 366.41 unconstrained FPS together with 6 synthetic frames and with 4 dropped frames and 4 Warp misses.

The RX 7900 XTX experience was marred by artifacting and shimmering.

Let’s check out synthetic VR tests and unconstrained framerates.

Unconstrained Framerates & Synthetic VR Benchmarks

The following chart summarizes the overall Unconstrained Framerates (the performance headroom) of our three cards using our 10 VR test games. In addition, we added recent RTX 3080 Ti and 6900 XT results for comparison. The preset is listed on the chart and higher is better. In addition, we present three synthetic VR benchmarks.

Although synthetic VR benches (except for OpenVR benchmark) predicted good VR performance, we were disappointed with our 7900 XTX VR experience, unlike with pancake games. In at least two games, we experienced distracting visual artifacting and texture shimmering. The 7900 series may benefit from some attention to VR from the Radeon driver team as in many cases it even falls behind the RX 6900 XT.

At AMD’s press event in Las Vegas, the presenters noted that AMD drivers continue to improve for the entire life of the architecture – generally with an up to 10% performance gain – often compared to “fine wine” aging well. However, for VR enthusiasts today, the RX 7900 XTX is disappointing and it performs well behind the RTX 4080 not logging a single performance win.

We next look at creative, pro, GPGPU, and workstation apps.

Creative, Pro & Workstation Apps

Let’s look at non-gaming applications next to see if the RX 7900 XTX is a good upgrade from the other video cards that we tested starting with Blender.

Blender 3.3.0 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

We benchmarked three Blender 3.3.0 benchmarks which measure GPU performance by timing how long it takes to render production files. We tested seven of our comparison cards using CUDA, Optix, and OpenCL.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in samples per minute.

The RX 7900 XTX sits well ahead of the RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT but well behind the GeForce cards.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64 v6.80

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days. CPU results are also shown for comparison with both the RTX 3070 and GTX 2080 Ti GPGPU benchmarks.

Here are the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX AIDA64 GPGPU results compared with an overclocked i9-13900KF.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with seven of our competing cards side-by-side.

The RX 7900 XTX is a fast GPGPU card and it compares favorably with the competing cards being weaker in some areas and stronger in others. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. Sandra 2020 R10 is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

We ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them.

In Sandra GPGPU benchmarks, since the architectures are different, each card exhibits different characteristics with different strengths and weaknesses. However, we see some very solid solid improvement of the RX 7900 XTX over the RX 6900 XT and the RX 6800 XT.

SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our SPECworkstation 3.0.4 raw scores for the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX. RTX 4080 raw scores are displayed below the XTX results for a detailed performance comparison.

Here are our RTX 4080 SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores:

Here are the Hellhound XTX SPECworkstation3 results summarized in a chart along with six competing cards. Higher is better.

Using SPEC benchmarks, since the architectures are different, the cards each exhibit different characteristics with different strengths and weaknesses.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a new 2020 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark recently that features updated viewsets, new models, support for both 2K and 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management.

We benchmarked at 4K and here are the summary results for the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX benchmarks summarized in a chart together with six other cards.

Again we see different architectures with different strengths and weaknesses. After seeing these benches, some creative users may upgrade their existing systems with a new card based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require.

The question to buy a new video card should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as their budget. Time is money depending on how these apps are used. However, the target demographic for the reference and Hellhound RX 7900 XTXs are primarily gaming for gamers.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

The Conclusion

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX improves significantly over the last generation RX 6900 XT, easily exceeds RX 6800 XT performance, and it trades blows with the $200 more expensive RTX 4080 FE in rasterized games although overall it is slightly slower using our 42-game benching suite. The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX beats all of the last generation cards including the RTX 3080 Ti although it still struggles with ray traced games compared with RTX cards.

For Radeon gamers, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a good alternative to GeForce Ada Lovelace cards for the vast majority of modern PC games that use rasterization. The RX 7900 XTX offers 24GB of GDDR6 to the 16GB of GDDR6X that the RTX 4080s are equipped with, but that 8GB of vRAM shouldn’t make any practical difference to game performance in the near future.

At its suggested price of $999, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX costs about $200 less than the RTX 4080 FE and offers a good value for Radeon gamers. Unlike with the RTX 4080 which increased from $700 for the RTX 3080 to $1200, the RX 7900 XTX is priced the same $999 as AMD’s last generation RX 6900 XT. For Radeon buyers, what makes the Hellhound XTX particularly attractive is that there is no price premium for this mildly overclocked PowerColor card.

The only real issue that we see with Radeon 7000 series cards is that AMD’s FSR solution is still inferior to Nvidia’s DLSS AI upscaling that delivers similar performance but with better image quality. On the flip side, there are still relatively few ray traced games released every year in comparison to thousands of rasterized games where the RTX 7900 XTX trades blows with the much more expensive RTX 4080.

One major issue although affecting relatively few gamers is poor VR RX 7900 XTX performance compared with the RTX 4080. It’s going to need some attention from AMD’s driver team before we can recommend the RX 7900 XTX for the best VR gaming.

We recommend the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX as a great choice out of multiple good choices, especially for any AMD PC gamer looking for good looks with LED lighting, an exceptional cooler, great performance for 2560×1440 or 4K, PowerColor’s excellent support, and overall better value compared with the slower RX 7900 XTX reference version.

Let’s sum it up:

Hellhound RX 7900 XTX Pros

• The PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is much faster than the last generation RX 6900 XT by virtue of new RDNA 3 architecture. It trades blows in the majority of rasterized games with the RTX 4080 FE for significantly less money ($200 less)
• The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX has excellent cooling with very little noise and has a very good power delivery and a 3-fan custom cooling design that is very quiet when overclocked even using the OC mode
• Dual-BIOS give the user a choice of quiet with less overclocking, or a bit louder with more power-unlimited and higher overclocks
• FidelityFX 2.0 allows for upscaling and improved sharpness with almost no performance penalty, and there is a low latency mode for competitive gamers
• LED lighting and a neutral color allow the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX to fit into any color scheme
• 24GB vRAM compared with 16GB for the RTX 4080

Hellhound XTX Cons

• Cost. It’s still very expensive at $999
• VR performance is subpar
• Weaker ray tracing performance than the RTX 4080

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a good Radeon card choice for those who game at 2560×1440 or at 4K and want the best that AMD has to offer. It represents a good gaming alternative to the RTX 4080 albeit with weaker ray tracing performance. It is offered especially for those who prefer AMD cards and FreeSync2 enabled displays which are generally less expensive than Gsync displays. And if a gamer is looking for something extra above the reference version, the PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a very well-made and good-looking card that will overclock better.

We are giving the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX BTR’s Recommended Award.

The Verdict:

• PowerColor’s Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a solidly-built handsome card with higher clocks out of the box than the same-priced reference version. It trades blows with the RTX 4080 in rasterized games. I t is a kick ass RX 7900 XTX.

Stay tuned, there is much more coming from BTR. We will soon return to VR with a mega performance evaluation to test the role of the CPU for VR performance. And we’ll retest the RX 7900 XTX using higher resolution headsets after AMD’s driver team has a chance to address it’s VR issues. We also plan to test Intel ARC video cards in VR.

Happy Gaming!

Although the $1199 RTX 4080 Founders Edition has been out for nearly a month, a lingering bad case of COVID-19 caused BTR’s Part 1 VR review to be a week late and we were then unable to conclude if the card is a good value. This Part 2 RTX 4080 review concludes BTR’s 53 game performance analysis versus the RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti, the RTX 4090, and the RX 6900 XT. Although the RTX 4080 is not a workstation card, we have also summarized VR, workstation SPEC benches and selected popular creative and synthetic apps.

It may be that the RTX 4080 Founders Edition at $1199 delivers a good value as an upgrade from the last generation Ampere RTX 3080 Ti which also launched at $1199 but a $400 launch price increase over the $799 RTX 3080 may be very difficult to accept. We benchmark using FCAT VR and Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900KF, and 32GB of T-FORCE DELTA RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard. All games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use recent drivers.

Let’s check out our test configuration.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-13900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)
• ASUS Prime-A Z790 LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z790 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz / 100% SteamVR Render Resolution
• RTX 4080 16GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD 16GB, factory clocks
• AMD reference RX 6800 XT 16GB, stock clocks, supplied by AMD
• RTX 3090 24GB Founders Edition, factory clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440; 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSDs (5,000/4,400MB/s – one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C external SSD (2,000/2000MB/s – supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan & 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz
• LG C1 48? 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 526.98 drivers for RTX 4080/4090 and 527.37 for RTX 3080/3080 Ti, and Adrenalin 22.11.1 for the RX 6900 XT.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used except for the nine DLSS games tested using the Quality preset.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• VR charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom; higher is better)
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards using separate identical NVMe SSDs.
• Latest DirectX
• SteamVR latest beta

Games

Vulkan

• Sniper Elite
• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow Six: Siege

DX12

• A Plague Tale: Requiem
• Spiderman: Remastered
• F1 2022
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• God of War
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• DEATHLOOP
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legions
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Overwatch 2
• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Grand Theft Auto V

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Moss: Book II
• No Man’s Sky
• Project CARS 2
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Synthetic

• Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• Octanebench
• FCAT VR benching tool
• OpenVR Benchmark tool

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings. Let’s check out performance using 41 pancake and 5 VR games plus Workstation and creative benches on the next page.

BTR received a $1199 RTX 4080 Founders Edition (FE) from Nvidia but are late because we got a bad case of COVID-19 after the AMD Event in Las Vegas over two weeks ago. This Part 1 RTX 4080 review is a 10-VR game performance analysis versus the RTX 3080 Ti, the RTX 4090, and the RX 6900 XT using the Valve Index. Although the RTX 4080 is not a workstation card, we have included workstation SPEC benches and selected popular creative and synthetic apps. Next week, Part 2 will feature the performance of more than 40 games and we will include DLSS 3.0 results.

We will focus on raw VR performance to consider whether the new RTX 4080 Founders Edition at $1199 delivers a good value as a compelling upgrade from the last generation Ampere RTX 3080 Ti which also launched at $1199. We will also compare performance with Nvidia’s current flagship, the $1599 RTX 4090, and the former AMD flagship, the RX 6900 XT, which launched at $999. In addition to gaming, VR, and SPECworkstation3 GPU results, we have added creative results using Geekbench, the Blender 3.3.0 benchmark, and complete Sandra 2020 and AIDA64 GPGPU benchmark results plus some pro applications including Blender rendering and OTOY OctaneRender.

We benchmark using FCAT VR and Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900K that we just upgraded from i9-12900K, and 32GB of T-FORCE DELTA RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard. All games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use GeForce Game Ready 526.98 drivers for GeForce cards and Adrenalin 22.11.1 for the RX 6900 XT.

Let’s first take a quick look at the RTX 4080 Founders Edition before we go to the test configuration

The RTX 4080 FE

The RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are externally physically identical twin cards. Refer to the RTX 4090 unboxing as the features and sizes are the same.

The primary differences lie inside in the RTX 4080’s cut down GPU chip capabilities with about 40% fewer CUDA cores and its lesser power draw requirements. Nvidia recommends a 850W minimum PSU for the 450W TDP RTX 4090 and includes a 4X Molex cable adapter while the 320W TDP RTX 4080 only needs a 750W minimum PSU and a 3X Molex cable adapter is included in that box.

Newer PSUs may offer the new PCIe Gen5 single cable connector instead of using a bulky quad or tri cable adapter. Nvidia advises that the adapter should be firmly inserted into the card before installing it in the PC as an improperly seated connection may cause overheating and melting of the connector.

Both the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 Founders Edition cards are beautifully designed using a very unique industrial style, and they are each much larger than the RTX 3080 Ti which is itself an imposing card. However, these new 40×0 FE cards tend not to heat up like the smaller last gen cards and they are also much quieter under full load. Either card looks great installed inside a case.

Disassembly appears to be difficult and should give pause to any enthusiast who may have custom watercooling in mind. In fact, we think that watercooling is a waste for the RTX 4080 Founders Edition as it doesn’t have any thermal issues.

Let’s check out our test configuration.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-13900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)
• ASUS Prime-A Z790 LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z790 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz / 100% SteamVR Render Resolution
• RTX 4080 16GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD 16GB, factory clocks
• RTX 3090 24GB Founders Edition, factory clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440; 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSDs (one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C external SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan & 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz
• LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 526.98 drivers for Nvidia cards, and Adrenalin 22.11.1 for the RX 6900 XT.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used except for five DLSS games tested using the Quality preset.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• VR charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom; higher is better)
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards using separate identical NVMe SSDs.
• Latest DirectX
• SteamVR latest beta

Games

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Moss: Book II
• No Man’s Sky
• Project CARS 2
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Synthetic

• Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• Octanebench
• FCAT VR benching tool
• OpenVR Benchmark tool

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Unfortunately, we also did not have time to check out overclocking, but temperatures and noise levels are much lower than the RTX 3090 or RTX 3080 Ti FEs. We plan to follow up with a 40-plus pancake gaming review including DLSS 3.

Let’s check out performance using 10 VR games plus Workstation and creative benches.

First, we look at VR performance.

10 VR Games

For this review, we benchmarked the Valve Index using FCAT VR and set the SteamVR render resolution to 100% (2016×2240) which uses a factor of 1.4X (the native resolution is 1440×1600) to compensate for lens distortion and to increase clarity. The Index is still considered one of the best overall headsets due to its outstanding tracking and solid feature set, and we are going to compare the performance of the RX 4080 versus the RX 4090, the RX 3080 Ti, and against the RX 6900 XT at each game’s Ultra/Highest settings.

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, measuring just one important performance metric, faster is better.

We had planned to include Star Wars: Squadrons and MS Flight Simulator 2020, but neither game records properly with FCAT VR. So let’s individually look at our 10 sim-heavy VR games’ performance using FCAT VR.

First up, Assetto Corsa: Competizione.

Assetto Corsa: Competizione (ACC)

BTR’s sim/racing editor, Sean Kaldahl created the replay benchmark run that we use for both the pancake game and the VR game. It is run at night with 20 cars, lots of geometry, and the lighting effects of the headlights, tail lights, and everything around the track looks spectacular.

Just like with Project CARS, you can save a replay after a race. Fortunately, the CPU usage is the same between a race and its replay so it is a reasonably accurate benchmark using the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

iRacing may be more accurate or realistic, but Assetto Corsa: Competizione has some appeal because it feels more real than many other racing sims. It delivers the sensation of handling a highly-tuned racing machine driven to its edge.

Here are the ACC FCAT VR frametimes using VR Ultra using the RTX 3080 Ti, the RTX 4080, and the RTX 4090. Unfortunately, the latest ACC patch made it impossible to bench the RTX 6900 XT.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 91.83 unconstrained FPS with 4649 (36%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 118.42 unconstrained FPS with 207 (2%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 164.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The ACC racing experience is best with the RTX 4090 although the RTX 4080 delivers a nearly constant 90 FPS on the Epic VR preset unlike the RTX 3080 Ti which requires more than one-third of its frames to be synthesized. Only the RTX 4090 has the performance headroom to increase the render resolution to above 100% or use the Index’ faster refresh rate (120Hz/144Hz) or even to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2.

Next, we check out Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Ultra Preset and we set the Field of View to its maximum. The RX 6900 XT wouldn’t run with the latest driver according to the error message.

Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 182.93 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames plus 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 230.98 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized frame and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 brings 296.16 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frames but with 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The experience playing Elite Dangerous at Ultra settings is not perceptibly different on any tested video card but the RTX 4090 has a lot more performance headroom to increase the render resolution or to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2.

Let’s look at our newest VR sim, F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 132.21 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 152.67 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 200.24 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 254.72 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus with 3 dropped frames and 3 Warp misses.

The experience playing F1 2022 using the Ultra preset is not very different on any of these video cards but the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have considerably more performance headroom to use 120Hz/144Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Kayak VR: Mirage

The outstanding near-photorealistic visual fidelity really sets Kayak VR: Mirage apart from other simulators. It boasts a wide range of locales with day/night/sunset options offering tropical, icy, desert, and even stormy scenarios with trips to Costa Rica, Antarctica, Norway, and Australia and occasional interactions with wildlife. It can be played as a relaxing sim or as a strenous workout with competitive time trials which offer asynchronous multiplayer and ranking on global leaderboards.

We benchmark at 100% resolution with the highest “Cinematic” in-game settings but do not use DLSS or FSR.

Here is the frametime plot for Kayak VR: Mirage.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 189.78 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 201.89 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frame plus 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 257.16 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 got 329.35 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame and 1 dropped frame plus 1 Warp miss.

Kayak VR: Mirage looks fantastic at 100% resolution with maximum settings and would be well-suited for play on the Reverb G2 with any of our test cards.

Next, we look at Moss: Book II.

Moss: Book II

Moss: Book II is an amazing VR experience with much better graphics than the original game. It’s a 3rd person puzzle adventure game played seated that offers a direct physical interaction between you (the Reader) and your avatar, Quill, a mouse that bring real depth to the story. Extreme attention has been paid to the tiniest details with overall great art composition and outstanding lighting that make this game a must-play for gamers of all ages.

Moss II boasts very good visuals and we use the in-game highest settings.

Here are the frametimes plots of our four cards.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 6900 XT delivered 260.40 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 242.83 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 308.44 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 436.34 unconstrained FPS no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Moss II on the Valve Index is identical between cards. It is not demanding so it can be played on a high resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2 and supersampling may also be used.

Next, we will check out another demanding VR game, No Man’s Sky.

No Man’s Sky (NMS)

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival single and multiplayer game that emphasizes survival, exploration, fighting, and trading. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine.

The player takes the role of a Traveller in an uncharted universe by starting on a random planet with a damaged spacecraft equipped with only a jetpack-equipped exosuit and a versatile multi-tool that can also be used for defense. The player is encouraged to find resources to repair his spacecraft allowing for intra- and inter-planetary travel, and to interact with other players.

Here is the No Man’s Sky Frametime plot. We set the settings to Maximum which is a step over Ultra including setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X and upgrading to FXAA+TAA. Since DLSS is available for RTX cards and the Quality setting improves performance without impacting image quality, we used it. Updated: We did not use any upscaling method.

Here are the FCAT-VR details of our comparative runs.

The RX 6900 XT brought 104.13 unconstrained FPS with 1601 (23%) synthesized frames plus 9 dropped frames and 9 Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 119.88 unconstrained FPS with 14 synthetic frames and with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 159.10 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames but no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 201.96 unconstrained FPS together with 17 synthetic frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing No Man’s Sky using the highest settings is not very different using the three GeForce video cards but RX 6900 XT gamers may want to lower some individual settings to remain above 90 FPS. The RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 have enough performance headroom to increase the refresh rate, render resolution, or to perhaps use a higher resolution headset.

Let’s continue with another VR game, Project CARS 2, that we still like better than its successor even though it is no longer available for online play.

Project CARS 2 (PC2)

There is still a sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. It uses its in-house Madness engine, and the physics implementation is outstanding.

Project CARS 2 offers many performance options and settings and we prefer playing with SMAA Ultra rather than to use MSAA.

We used maximum settings including for Motion Blur.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 163.67 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized and 1 dropped frames plus 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 142.16 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 got 200.88 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames nor dropped frames and no Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 253.50 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The experience playing Project CARS 2 using maximum settings is similar for all four video cards but the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have far more performance headroom to increase the frequency to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Next we will check out a classic VR game, Skyrim VR.

Skyrim VR

Skyrim VR is an older game that is no longer supported by Bethesda, but fortunately the modding community has adopted it. It is not as demanding as many of the newer VR ports so its performance is still very good on maxed-out settings using its Creation engine.

We benchmarked vanilla Skyrim using its highest settings plus we increased the in-game Supersample option to maximum.

Here are the frametime results.

Here are the details of our comparative runs as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 6900 XT provided 162.13 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 194.63 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 239.08 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 337.76 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frame and with 2 dropped frames plus 1 Warp miss.

All cards deliver an identical vanilla Skyrim VR experience with a ton of extra performance headroom to add mods and, in addition, to raise the render resolution using the two faster cards.

Next we check out Sniper Elite VR.

Sniper Elite VR

Sniper Elite VR’s visuals are decent with good texture work that is well-realized. The building architecture and panoramas look good, explosions are convincing and the weapons convey a sense of weight, although not achieving realism. It is primarily an arcade style sniping game featuring its signature X-Ray kill cam, but it offers multiple ways to achieve goals including with explosives and by using three other main weapon choices besides your rifle.

We benchmarked using the Highest settings.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the details:

The RX 6900 XT delivered 222.93 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti got 239.07 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 223.33 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 brought 318.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

All four cards deliver a similar playing experience on High with the faster two cards offering more performance headroom. We recommend that any performance headroom be used for increasing the SteamVR render resolution. Since the RTX 4080 only matches the RX 6900 XT and is behind the RTX 3080 Ti, we suspect it may be a driver issue.

Last up, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinner is the last of BTR’s 10 VR game benching suite. It is a first person survival horror adventure RPG with a strong emphasis on crafting. Its visuals using the Unreal 4 engine are very good and it makes good use of physics for interactions.

We benchmarked Saints and Sinners using its High preset and we left the Pixel Density at 100%. Here is the frametime chart.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 240.00 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 222.18 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 got 260.94 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 366.41 unconstrained FPS together with 6 synthetic frames and with 4 dropped frames and 4 Warp misses.

Playing The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners using the in-game Ultra preset and 100% Pixel Density is similar for all 4 cards but there is significantly more performance headroom for the RTX 4090 and to a lesser extent the RTX 4080 for increasing the render resolution or using a higher resolution headset.

Let’s check out synthetic VR tests and unconstrained framerates.

Unconstrained Framerates & Synthetic VR Benchmarks

The following chart summarizes the overall Unconstrained Framerates (the performance headroom) of our two cards using our 10 VR test games. The preset is listed on the chart and higher is better. In addition, we present three synthetic VR benchmarks.

The RX 4080 FE averages close to one-third higher unconstrained frames for many VR benchmarks and sits in between the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 4090 FE in this important performance metric. However, unconstrained framerates are just one metric that has to be taken together with the frametime plots to have real meaning.

It is clear that the RTX 4090 and the RTX 4080 are ready for higher resolution headsets than the Valve Index. In many cases, either card may be able to use the higher refresh rates of 120Hz/144Hz for fast-paced and/or sim racing games.

Creative, Pro & Workstation Apps

Let’s look at Creative applications next to see if the RTX 4080 is a good upgrade from the RTX 3080 Ti or RX 6900 XT. We test starting with Geekbench.

GeekBench

GeekBench is an excellent CPU/GPU benchmarking program which runs a series of tests and times how long a GPU (in this case) takes to complete its tasks. It benchmarks OpenCL, Vulkan, and CUDA performance

OpenCL, Vulkan, and CUDA Performance

The RTX 4080 OpenCL, Vulkan, and CUDA performance are charted below.

Next we test the summary charts below show the overall comparative performance scores.

Again, the RTX 4090 performance is outstanding.

Next up, Blender benchmark.

Blender 3.3.0 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in samples per minute.

Blender’s benchmark performance is highest using the RTX 4090, and often the amount of time saved is substantial over using the next fastest card, the RTX 4080.

Next, we look at the OctaneBench.

OTOY Octane Bench

OctaneBench allows you to benchmark your GPU using OctaneRender. The hardware and software requirements to run OctaneBench are the same as for OctaneRender Standalone.

We run OctaneBenc 2020.1.5 for Windows and here are the RTX 4080’s complete results and overall score of 946.30

Here is the summary comparing the three cards that can run this render benchmark.

The RTX 4090 is a beast of a card when used for rendering and the RTX 4080 sits in between, above the RTX 3080 Ti.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with the RTX 4090, the RTX 4080, the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RX 6900 XT side-by-side.

Generally the RTX 4090 is faster at almost all of AIDA64’s GPGPU benchmarks than the other cards with the RTX 4080 in second place. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. 20/21-R16a is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

With the above in mind, we ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them. The performance results of the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are compared with the performance results of the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RX 6900 XT.

Second only to the RTX 4090, the RTX 4080 is faster than the RTX 3080 Ti and it distinguishes itself in every area – Processing, Cryptography, Financial and Scientific Analysis, Image Processing, and Bandwidth.

Next up, SPEC benchmarks.

SPECworkstation3.1 Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation 3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation 3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our RTX 4080 raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores:

Below are the SPECworkstation 3.1 RTX 4090 results summarized in a chart along with the three competing cards, the RTX 4090, the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RTX 6900 XT. Higher is better since we are comparing scores.

The RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, yet it uses brute force to win most of the benches against the other cards with the RTX 4080 in second place.

Finally, we benchmark using SPECviewperfect GPU benches.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a 2020-22 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark that features updated viewsets, new models, support for up to 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use the highest available 3800×2120 display resolution for high end cards.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 GPU RTX 4080 benchmarks summarized in a chart together with our three competing cards.

Although we see three architectures with different strengths and weaknesses, the RTX 4090 is a beast in SPEC benchmarks followed by the RTX 4080 in a solid second place.

After seeing the totality of the benches, creative users may choose to upgrade their existing systems with a new RTX 4080 or 4090 based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require. The question to buy a RTX 4080 should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as budget. Time is money to a professional depending on how these apps are used.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

Besides suffering with COVID-19, this has been an enjoyable exploration evaluating the new Ada Lovelace RTX 4080 FE versus the RTX 4090 FE, the RTX 3080 TI FE, and Gigabyte RTX 6900 XT Gaming OC. The RTX 4080 performed brilliantly performance-wise, blowing away its other two former flagship competitors and slotting in almost one-third slower than the RTX 4090.

The RTX 4080 at $1199 is a decent upgrade from the $1199 RTX 3080 Ti although it is not as impressive as upgrading from a RTX 3090 ($1499) to a RTX 4090 ($1599). If a VR enthusiast wants the very fastest card, then the RTX 4090 is the best choice for high resolution VR headsets and for creative/workstation apps. For $400 less, the RTX 4080 is a solid choice and it will provide a performance uplift over the RTX 3080 Ti, but not as dramatically as the RTX 4090.

In the last Ampere generation, the $699 RTX 3080 provided the best value, but almost unbelievably, the RTX 4090 provides the best performance bang for buck in Nvidia’s new Ada Lovelace lineup so far. We also notice that there is plenty of performance room for a possible future RTX 4080 Ti to slot in between the RTX 4080 and the RTX 4090.

We are very impressed with the RTX 4080 raw performance after testing it over the past few days in VR. It currently stands as the second fastest video card in the world and would be a solid choice for a high resolution VR headset.

The Founders Edition of the RTX 4080 is well-built, solid, good-looking, and it stays cool and quiet even when overclocked – the big card does not get hot like the RTX 3090 and under load it is quieter than the RTX 3080 Ti FE. The RTX 4080 Founders Edition offers a big performance improvement over the previous $1199 RTX 3080 FE for VR and pro apps although it doesn’t give as great a value as when the RTX 3080 FE launched for $699 two years ago.

However, we cannot give any final verdict now as there is a lot more RTX 4080 benchmarking results on the way next week. We will more extensively test the RTX 4080, RTX 4090, RTX 3080 Ti, and RX 6900 XT using 40-plus pancake games including testing DLSS 3 to determine overall value. Future reviews will hopefully test AMD’s upcoming 7000 series cards and we also plan to test the role of the CPU for VR performance. Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

BTR recently received a RTX 4090 Founders Edition (FE) from Nvidia and we have been testing it for the past ten days by using 45 pancake and VR games plus GPGPU benchmarks. In addition, although the RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, we have added workstation SPEC benches and selected popular creative and synthetic apps. Although this new flagship Ada Lovelace card arrives with multiple new features including DLSS 3, this review will focus on testing raw performance, not upscaling.

The RTX 4090 is touted as a beast in every way by Nvidia as the fastest video card for gaming with up to 4X the performance of the Ampere flagship or up to 2X the performance without using DLSS 3. The RTX 4090 boasts 83 Shader-TFLOPS, 191 RT-TFLOPS, and 1.3 Tensor petaFLOPS. It achieves over 1 TB/s memory bandwidth using 24 GB of GDDR6X memory. Its 72 MB L2 cache offers a 12X improvement over the RTX 3090 Ti.

We will focus on RTX 4090 raw performance as well as consider whether the new RTX 4090 Founders Edition at $1599 delivers a good value as a compelling upgrade from the RTX 3090 which launched at $1499 two years ago. We will also compare performance with the RX 6900 XT. In addition to gaming, VR, and SPECworkstation3 GPU results, we have added creative results using Geekbench, the Blender 3.3.0 benchmark, and complete Sandra 2020 and AIDA64 GPGPU benchmark results plus some pro applications including Blender rendering and OTOY OctaneRender.

We benchmark using Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160 using Intel’s Core i9-12900K and 32GB of T-FORCE DELTA RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard. All games and benchmarks are the latest versions, and we use the latest GeForce Game Ready press drivers for games and for testing pro apps, and Adrenalin 22.10.1 for the RX 6900 XT benching.

Let’s first take a quick look at the RTX 4090 Founders Edition before we go to the test configuration

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition Unboxing

Just like as with all RTX 3000 Founders Edition cards, the RTX 4090 comes in a similar “shoebox” style where the card inside lays flat at an slight incline for display. However, the RTX 4090 box is much thicker and probably close to 50% larger.

The system requirements, contents, and warranty information are printed on the bottom of each box. The RTX 4090 requires an 850W power supply unit – 100W more than the RTX 3090 – and the case must have space for a 304mm (L) x 137mm (W) x 61mm (H) three-slot card. However, it easily fits in our Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower. The extra thick packing of the box protects the card. Inside the box and beneath the card are warnings, a quick start guide, and warranty information, plus the PCIe Gen5 power cable adapter to quad PCIe 8-pin cables that will be required to connect the RTX 4090 to most PSUs.

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition exudes a premium and solid feel from its industrial design. It is a very heavy 3-slot card and we use two thumbscrews to lock it down, taking care not to damage our PCIe slot.

The power connector adapter requires three or four molex cables from the PSU to operate; the fourth cable is for overclocking. Newer PSUs may offer the new PCIe Gen5 single cable connector instead of a bulky quad cable.

Turning the card over, we see a similar design of the Ada Lovelace FEs to the Ampere cards with a fan also on the other side.

The IO panel has a very large air vent and four connectors. The connectors are similar to the Founders Edition of the RTX 3090. Three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors are included, and the HDMI 2.1 connector allows for 4K/120Hz or 8K/60Hz over a single HDMI cable.

The other end offers a removable plate for enthusiasts to use a support bracket.

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition is a beautiful card with a very unique industrial style, and it’s larger than the RTX 3090 which is itself an imposing card. However, the larger Ada Lovelace card tends not to heat up like the RTX 3090 and it is also much quieter under full load. It looks great installed inside a case.

Disassembly appears to be very difficult and should give pause to any enthusiast who may have custom watercooling in mind. In fact, we think that watercooling is a waste for the Founders Edition as it doesn’t have any thermal issues.

Let’s check out our test configuration.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD 16GB, factory clocks
• RTX 3090 24GB Founders Edition, factory clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440; 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD (one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Portable SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor
• LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display/TV

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce press drivers for the RTX 3090 and RTX 4090, and Adrenalin 22.10.1 for the RX 6900 XT.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used except for five DLSS games tested using the Quality preset.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. The minimums are expressed by 1% lows (99th-percentile) in FPS
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards on separate identical NVMe SSDs. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are run under DX12, and seven games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

Games

Vulkan

• Sniper Elite
• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade

DX12

• Spiderman: Remastered
• F1 2022
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• God of War
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• DEATHLOOP
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legions
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Overwatch 2
• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Grand Theft Auto V

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• No Man’s Sky
• ProjectCARS 2

Synthetic

• TimeSpy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• Octanebench
• FrameView benching tool
• OCAT benching tool

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Unfortunately, we did not have time to check out overclocking, but temperatures and noise levels are lower than the RTX 3090 FE. We plan to follow this review up with a VR review, an overclocking review, and a DLSS 3 review.

Let’s check out performance using 41 pancake and 5 VR games plus Workstation and creative benches on the next page.

Performance summary charts & graphs

Main Performance Gaming Summary Charts

Here are the summary charts of 41 games and 6 synthetic tests. The highest settings are always chosen, ray tracing is enabled for all games that offer it, and the settings are listed on the chart. The benches were run at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160 as it is pointless to test at 1920×1080 with such a powerful card. In fact, we see CPU bottlenecking at 1440P for certain games.

Three cards are compared and they are listed in order starting with the RTX 4090, the RX 6900 XT, and the RTX 3090. We do not have a RX 6950 XT or a RTX 3090 Ti and no other cards are in this class.

All results, except for synthetic scores, show average framerates, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. Minimum framerates are expressed by the 99th-percentile (1% lows) and higher is better.

The RTX 4090 offers an overall 160% to 180% improvement over the RTX 3090’s baseline performance (at 100%) depending on the resolution and individual game, and in several examples it offers nearly a 200% improvement!

All of the games that we tested ran well on the RTX 4090. Although some games show less of a performance increase than others due to being CPU bound even at 1440P, it is a blowout and the RTX 4090 FE wins every game benchmark over the RTX 3090 and RX 6900 XT – it crushes the former Ampere and RDNA2 flagships. This is achieved with no upscaling whatsoever!

The RTX 4090 is the first single-GPU card that is truly suitable for 4K/60+ FPS using ultra/maxed-out ray traced settings for most modern demanding games without any upscaling, and it’s probably even solid for 4K/120 FPS using Quality DLSS which has equivalent or better visuals than the native image.

Next we look at five RTX/DLSS enabled games, each using maximum ray traced settings and the highest Quality DLSS.

RTX/DLSS Benchmarks

The RTX 4090 FE maintains its performance dominance over the RTX 3090 FE and pulls even further away when Quality DLSS is enabled.

Using Quality DLSS, we can see that the RTX 4090 will take advantage of an LG C1 4K/120Hz panel using the most demanding ray traced modern games. From testing DLSS 2 exhaustively, we note that the Quality setting at 4K is visually equal to or better than the native image.

We only had a little time to check out DLSS 3 which upscales far better than DLSS 2 and looks just as good. We believe that DLSS 3 will prove especially advantageous for the less powerful upcoming Ada Lovelace cards and will devote an upcoming review to it.

Next, we look at VR performance.

VR Games

For this review we benchmarked the Valve Index and set the SteamVR render resolution to 150% (2758×2740) which is considered ideal, if overkill, to compensate for lens distortion, and it’s well above our usual benchmarking render resolution at 100%. This higher render resolution gives the visuals exceptional clarity. The Index is still considered one of the best overall headsets due to its outstanding tracking and solid feature set, and we are going to compare the performance of the RX 4090 versus the RX 3090 at each game’s Ultra/Highest settings.

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, measuring just one important performance metric, faster is better.

Let’s individually look at our 5 sim-heavy VR games’ performance using FCAT VR. All of these games were benchmarked at 150% SteamVR resolution as we compare the stock-clocked RTX 4090 FE with the stock RTX 3090 FE using the Valve Index and FCAT VR.

First up, Assetto Corsa Competizione.

Assetto Corsa: Competizione (ACC)

BTR’s sim/racing editor, Sean Kaldahl created the replay benchmark run that we use for both the pancake game and the VR game. It is run at night with 20 cars, lots of geometry, and the lighting effects of the headlights, tail lights, and everything around the track looks spectacular.

Just like with Project CARS, you can save a replay after a race. Fortunately, the CPU usage is the same between a race and its replay so it is a reasonably accurate benchmark using the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

iRacing may be more accurate or realistic, but Assetto Corsa: Competizione has some appeal because it feels more real than many other racing sims. It delivers the sensation of handling a highly-tuned racing machine driven to its edge. We test the VR Ultra preset.

VR Ultra

Here are the ACC FCAT VR frametimes using VR Ultra.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3090 delivered 46.26 unconstrained FPS with 7884 (62%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 78.63 unconstrained FPS together with 6346 (50%) synthetic frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The ACC racing experience is better with the RTX 4090. However, the only way that the RTX 4090 can play on VR Epic is to lower the SteamVR render resolution to 100% as it is best to have no synthesized frames.

Next, we check out Elite Dangerous next.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Ultra Preset and we set the Field of View to its maximum. Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3090 delivered 137.33 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 236.17 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Elite Dangerous at Ultra settings is not perceptibly different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has a lot more performance headroom to increase the render resolution or to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2.

Let’s look at our newest VR sim, F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RTX 3090 delivered 117.16 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames but no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 192.66 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing F1 2022 using the Ultra preset is not very different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has more performance headroom to increase the framerate to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Next we check out No Man’s Sky.

No Man’s Sky (NMS)

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival single and multiplayer game that emphasizes survival, exploration, fighting, and trading. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine.

The player takes the role of a Traveller in an uncharted universe by starting on a random planet with a damaged spacecraft equipped with only a jetpack-equipped exosuit and a versatile multi-tool that can also be used for defense. The player is encouraged to find resources to repair his spacecraft allowing for intra- and inter-planetary travel, and to interact with other players.

Here is the No Man’s Sky Frametime plot. We set the settings to Maximum which is a step over Ultra including setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X and upgrading to FXAA+TAA. Since DLSS is available for RTX cards and the Quality setting improves performance without impacting image quality, we used it.

Here are the FCAT-VR details of our comparative runs.

The RTX 3090 delivered 109.88 unconstrained FPS with 198 (3%) synthesized frames but no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 183.68 unconstrained FPS together with 4 synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing No Man’s Sky using the highest settings is not very different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has far more performance headroom.

Let’s continue with another VR game, ProjectCARS 2, that we still like better than its successor even though it is no longer available for online play.

Project CARS 2 (PC2)

There is a real sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. It uses its in-house Madness engine, and the physics implementation is outstanding. We are disappointed with Project CARS 3, and will continue to use the older game instead for VR benching.

Project CARS 2 offers many performance options and settings and we prefer playing with SMAA Ultra rather than to use MSAA.

We used maximum settings including for Motion Blur.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RTX 3090 delivered 113.60 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames and no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 209.53 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Project CARS 2 using maximum settings is similar for both video cards but the RTX 4090 has far more performance headroom to increase the framerate to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset like the Vive Pro 2 or Reverb G2.

Amazing. Although all of these maxed out VR benchmarks were run at SteamVR’s 150% render resolution (2758×2740), the RTRX 4090 only broke a sweat playing ACC.

Unconstrained Framerates

The following chart summarizes the overall Unconstrained Framerates (the performance headroom) of our two cards using our 5 VR test games. The preset is listed on the chart and higher is better.

The RX 4090 FE delivers far higher unconstrained frames for all VR benchmarks over the RTX 3090 FE in this important performance metric. However, unconstrained framerates are just one metric that has to be taken together with the frametime plots to have any meaning. It is clear that the RTX 4090 is ready for higher resolution headsets than the Valve Index. We’ll follow up this review with an expanded VR review using the Reverb G2 and Vive Pro.

Creative, Pro & Workstation Apps

Let’s look at Creative applications next to see if the RTX 4090 is a good upgrade from the RTX 3090 or RX 6900 XT. We test starting with Geekbench.

GeekBench

GeekBench is an excellent CPU/GPU benchmarking program which runs a series of tests and times how long a GPU (in this case) takes to complete its tasks. It benchmarks OpenCL, Vulcan, and CUDA performance

OpenCL, Vulcan, and CUDA Performance

RTX 6900 XT

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RTX 6900 XT using Vulcan.

The 6900 XT does not run CUDA, so we move on to RTX 3090 performance.

RX 3090

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RX 3090 using Vulcan.

Finally, RTX 3090 CUDA performance.

We move on to RTX 4090 performance

RX 4090

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RX 4090 using Vulcan.

Finally, RTX 4090 CUDA performance.

The summary charts below show the comparative performance scores.

Again, the RTX 4090 performance is outstanding.

Next up, Blender benchmark.

Blender 3.3.0 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in samples per minute.

Blender’s benchmark performance is highest using the RTX4090, and often the amount of time saved is substantial over using the next fastest card, the RTX 3090.

Next, we look at the OctaneBench.

OTOY Octane Bench

OctaneBench allows you to benchmark your GPU using OctaneRender. The hardware and software requirements to run OctaneBench are the same as for OctaneRender Standalone.

We run OctaneBenc 2020.1.5 for Windows and here are the RTX 3090’s complete results and overall score of 671.17

We compare the score and results for the RTX 4090 – almost double the RTX 3090 score with 1261.64

Here is the summary chart comparing the RTX 4090 with the RTX 3090 overall scores.

The RTX 4090 is a beast of a card when used for rendering.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days. CPU results are also shown for comparison with the RTX 4090 GPGPU benchmarks.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with the RTX 4090, the RTX 3090 and the RX 6900 XT side-by-side.

Generally the RTX 3090 is faster at almost all of AIDA64’s GPGPU benchmarks than the other cards. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. 20/21-R16a is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

With the above in mind, we ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them. The performance results of the RTX 4090 are compared with the performance results of the RTX 3080, and the RX 6900 XT.

In Sandra GPGPU benchmarks, the RTX 4090 is much faster than the RTX 3090 and it distinguishes itself in every area – Processing, Cryptography, Financial and Scientific Analysis, Image Processing, and Bandwidth.

Next up, SPEC benchmarks.

SPECworkstation3.1 Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation 3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation 3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RX 6900 XT:

Here are our raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RTX 3090:

Finally, here are our SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RTX 4090:

Below are the SPECworkstation 3.1 RTX 4090 results summarized in a chart along with the two competing cards, the RTX 3090, and the RTX 6900 XT. Higher is better since we are comparing scores.

The RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, yet it uses brute force to win most of the benches against the other two cards. The Radeon scores unbelievably high in snx-03, however, and we have no explanation for this result.

Finally, we benchmark using SPECviewperfect GPU benches.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a 2020-22 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark that features updated viewsets, new models, support for up to 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use the highest available 3800×2120 display resolution for highend cards.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 GPU RTX 4090 benchmarks summarized in a chart together with our two competing cards.

Although we see different architectures with different strengths and weaknesses, the RTX 4090 is a beast in these SPEC benchmarks.

The RTX 4090 doesn’t offer any certifications for professional applications and it is not expected. It is likely that in workstation specific benchmarks, there will be cases where a Quadro board will outperform the RTX 4090 GeForce card. This is why professionals pay much more for Quadro than for any GeForce with otherwise equivalent raw performance.

After seeing the totality of the benches, many creative users will probably upgrade their existing systems with a new RTX 4090 series card based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require. The question to buy the RTX 4090 or the RTX 3090 should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as budget. Time is money to a professional depending on how these apps are used. Hopefully the benchmarks that we ran may help you decide.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

This has been a very enjoyable exploration evaluating the new Ada Lovelace RTX 4090 FE versus the RTX 3090 FE and Gigabyte RTX 6900 XT Gaming OC. The RTX 4090 performed brilliantly performance-wise. It totally blows away its other competitors as it is much faster. The RTX 4090 at $1599 is the upgrade from the $1499 RTX 3090 since the RTX 4090 gives at least a 160% (1.6X) improvement over its baseline performance. If a gaming enthusiast wants the very fastest card – just as the RTX 3090 was for the past two years (until the up to 10% faster RTX 3090 Ti was released), and doesn’t mind the $100 price increase – then the RTX 4090 is the only choice for intensive gaming and high resolution VR headsets.

The RTX 4090 is the flagship gaming card that can also run intensive creative apps very well, especially by virtue of its huge 24GB framebuffer. But it is still not a Quadro. These cards cost a lot more and are optimized specifically for workstations and also for professional and creative apps.

For RTX 3090 gamers who paid $1499 and who have disposable cash for their hobby, the RTX 4090 Founders Edition which costs $1599 is the card to maximize their upgrade. And for high-end gamers who also use creative apps, this card may become a very good value. Hobbies are very expensive to maintain, and the expense of PC gaming pales in comparison to what golfers, skiers, audiophiles, and many other hobbyists pay for their entertainment.

We cannot call the $1600 RTX 4090 a “good value” generally for gamers as it is a halo card although it provides more than 1.6X the performance of a RTX 3090. Of course, a RTX 3090 can be currently found at many etailers for under $1000 and a RTX 6900 XT for less than $700. Value is in the eye of the beholder, and the RTX 4090 delivers on its raw performance promises.

In addition, DLSS 3 brings a great future value to the new 4000 series as it has already received support from many of the world’s leading game developers, with more than 35 games and applications announcing support including game engines, including Unity, Unreal, and Frostbite Engine. If a game already uses DLSS 2 Super Resolution, upgrading to DLSS 3 is a relatively simple process that will make both Super Resolution and Frame Generation available. DLSS 3 leverages the same integration points as DLSS 2 (color buffer, depth buffer, engine motion vectors, and output buffers) and Nvidia Reflex, making upgrades from these existing SDKs easy for devs using the DLSS 3 Streamline plugin.

We will follow up with a DLSS 3 review since what we have experienced so far is extremely promising especially for upcoming less powerful Ada Lovelace cards.

Conclusion

We are very impressed with the RTX 4090 raw performance after spending more than 100 hours testing it over the past few days. It offers exceptional performance at Ultra 4K and and it even supports smooth playable gaming at 4K/120Hz using Quality DLSS and may be used for 8K gaming. It currently stands alone as the fastest video card in the world.

The Founders Edition of the RTX 4090 is well-built, solid, good-looking, and it stays cool and quiet even when overclocked – the card does not get hot like the RTX 3090 and it is much quieter under load. The RTX 4090 Founders Edition offers a big performance improvement over any previous Founders Editions in every metric.

Pros

• The RTX 4090 is the fastest video card in the world
• The RTX 4090 at $100 more than the RTX 3090 launched at is at least a 1.6X+ jump in raw performance
• The RTX 4090 offers an overall 160% to 180% improvement over the RTX 3090’s baseline performance (at 100%) depending on the resolution and individual game, and in several examples it offers nearly a 200% improvement!
• 24GB of fast vRAM and a fast core allow for 4K/120Hz gaming and it’s also very useful for intensive creative apps
• Ray tracing is a game changer in every way and DLSS 2 is pure magic. DLSS 3 looks to be even more of a game changer
• Ada Lovelace improves over Ampere with AI/deep learning and ray tracing to improve visuals while also increasing performance with DLSS 2 and especially with DLSS 3
• The RTX 4090 Founders Edition design cooling is quiet and efficient; the GPU in a well-ventilated case stays much cooler and quieter than the RTX 3090
• The industrial design is eye-catching and it is solidly built

Con

• Price. At $1600, the RTX 4090 is not a good value for gaming except as a multi-purpose halo card or for bragging rights

The Verdict:

If you are a gamer who also uses creative apps where saving time is important, you may do yourself a favor by upgrading to a RTX 4090. For high-end gamers with disposable income, the RTX 4090 is a true 4K/120Hz video card for most modern games and it offers the highest performance as an upgrade from a RTX 3090 delivering from 160% to nearly 200% improvement in raw performance power.

Stay tuned, there is a lot more on the way from BTR. Next up, we will more extensively test the RTX 4090, RTX 3080, and RX 6900 XT in VR using the Vive Pro 2 and Reverb G2 with an ETA of early next week. We also plan to follow up with an RTX 4090 overclocking review and a DLSS 3 deep dive. Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

UPDATE: I shared my data with John Peddie Research and they posted their own take on the RTX 4090 focusing on averages and easy-to-read charts including their famous Pmark overall comparison.

Video card prices have normalized and most prices of new video cards in the USA have dropped to at or below MSRP, plus there are sales and bundles to be found. This VR review of the Hellhound RX 6650 XT is our follow-up to BTR’s original review in May. We found that the RX 6650 XT beats up on the RTX 3060 but falls short of the RTX 3060 Ti in rasterized pancake gaming. This time, we want to see how the Hellhound performs compared to its faster sibling, the RX 6700 XT, and against the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti to see if it is a good entry level VR value.

The Hellhound RX 6650 XT is currently below MSRP for $369.99 at Newegg which AMD has positioned against entry level RTX 3060s which can be found starting at $380. RX 6700 XTs can be found starting at $430 and the RTX 3060 Ti can be found starting at $470. We have found the RX 6650 XT to be faster than than the RTX 3060 in rasterized pancake games but outclassed by the Ti which is in turn is slightly slower than the RX 6700 XT. For this VR value showdown, we will use the Valve Index and 10 VR games to compare the performance of the RX 6650 XT and the RX 6700 XT versus the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti.

We want to see if the RX 6650 XT is adequate as an entry level mainstream card to power a Valve Index. Although a fast CPU is important for geometry and other processing, smooth VR delivery depends primarily on the video card. An underpowered video card can even cause reprojecting and artifacting for a substandard playing experience that may even lead to VR sickness.We currently benchmark ten VR games using the Valve Index that features 2880×1600 resolution (1440×1600 pixels per eye), and we have changed our benching suite and added three new VR games: F1 2022, Kayak Mirage, and Sniper Elite VR.

BTR’s testing platform is an Intel Core i9-12900K, an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex Z690 motherboard, and 32 GB of T-Force DDR5 at 6400MHz on a recent clean install of Windows 11 Pro Edition.

It is important to be aware of VR performance since poorly delivered frames can make a VR experience unpleasant. It’s also important to understand how we accurately benchmark VR games using FCAT-VR as explained here. But before we benchmark our VR games, check out our Test Configuration below.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA 1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-FORCE DELTA RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz
• Hellhound RX 6650 XT 8GB, factory clocks, on loan from PowerColor
• Red Devil RX 6700 XT 12GB, factory clocks, on loan from PowerColor
• RTX 3060 Black 12GB, factory clocks, on loan from EVGA
• RTX 3060 Ti 8GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 2 x 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD (one for AMD/one for NVIDIA)
• T-FORCE DELTA MAX White 1TBSATA III SSD (Storage), supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• Samsung G7 27? 1440P HDR600, 240Hz FreeSync/Gsync monitor

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 516.79 drivers – Stock settings in the NVIDIA control panel
• Adrenalin 22.6.1 drivers. Stock settings in the AMD control panel
• Windows 11 latest updates
• Latest DirectX
• All 10 VR games are patched to their latest versions at time of publication
• FCAT VR Capture (non-public) Beta
• FCAT VR Beta 18 (non-public)
• SteamVR – at 100% resolution

10 VR Game benchmark suite

SteamVR Games

• Assetto Corsa Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Myst
• No Man’s Sky
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite VR
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

It is important to remember that BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS which measures just one important performance metric, faster is better.

Let’s individually look at our ten VR games’ performance using FCAT VR. All of our games were benchmarked at 100% SteamVR resolution as we benchmark the Hellhound RX 6650 XT to see how it compares with the EVGA RTX 3060 XC Black and against the Red Devil RTX 6700 XT and RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition.

First up, Assetto Corsa Competizione.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim. Best of all, it runs well on the cards we tested.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RTX 3060 struggled with 97.37 unconstrained FPS with 10 dropped frames and 10 Warp misses plus 4565 (46%) synthetic frames generated.

The RX 6650 XT managed to deliver 108.63 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses, but 50 (1%) frames were synthesized.

The RTX 3060 Ti 131.63 delivered unconstrained FPS with 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses plus 14 synthetic frames were generated.

The RX 6700 XT achieved 141.20 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses and no synthetic frames were generated.

The RTX 3060 really struggled with the F1 2022 VR Medium preset unlike the RX 6650 XT, and the RX 6700 XT edged out the RTX 3060 Ti with a bit more performance headroom.

Next we check out Kayak VR: Mirage.

All cards deliver an identical vanilla Skyrim VR experience with a little bit of extra performance headroom for the RX 6650 XT, unlike with the RTX 3060, and a ton of extra headroom to add mods or to Supersample for the two faster cards.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Although The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is an older first generation VR game built on the Unreal 4 engine, it still boasts amazing visuals even on entry-level cards. Although it is considered by some to be a walking simulator, it is also an excellent detective game with great puzzles. However, be aware that its style of locomotion tends to make some of its players VR sick.

There are only a few in-game graphics options available, so we picked the highest 130% resolution with TAA.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RTX 3060 managed 219.82 unconstrained FPS with 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss but no synthetic frames were generated.

The RX 6650 XT achieved 258.13 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames nor Warp misses, and no frames were synthesized.

The RTX 3060 Ti produced 270.97 unconstrained FPS with 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss, but no synthetic frames were generated.

The RX 6700 XT delivered 304.39 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses, and no synthetic frames were generated.

The experience playing The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on our medium VR settings is identical for all cards. The RX 6600 XT is faster than the RTX 3060 as the RX 6700 XT is faster than RTX 3060 Ti, which means there is a lot of performance headroom to increase the SteamVR render resolution.

Last up, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinner is the last of BTR’s 10 VR game benching suite. It is a first person survival horror adventure RPG with a strong emphasis on crafting. Its visuals using the Unreal 4 engine are very good and it makes good use of physics for interactions.

We benchmarked Saints and Sinners using its High preset and we left the Pixel Density at 100%. Here is the frametime chart.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RTX 3060 managed 108.22 unconstrained FPS with 4 dropped frames and 4 Warp misses. In addition, 2565 (33%) synthetic frames were generated.

The RX 6650 XT provided 128.54 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames nor Warp misses, and but 324 (4%) frames were synthesized.

The RTX 3060 Ti delivered 152.75 unconstrained FPS with 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss and 55 (1%) synthetic frames were generated.

The RX 6700 XT achieved 155.17 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses, but 9 synthetic frames were generated.

Playing The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners using the in-game High preset and 100% Pixel Density is too optimistic for both of our lower end cards and some individual setting should be lowered. However, the RX 6700 XT and the RTX 3060 Ti deliver a decent and similar High preset experience.

Let’s check out our conclusion.

Conclusion

It is great to see AMD and NVIDIA delivering two mainstream cards that are both again priced below $400 that are adequate for entry level VR using a Valve Index (or Vive Pro). AMD appears to have addressed the micro stutter VR driver issues we found when we tested the RTX 6600 XT versus the RTX 3060 last August, and the Radeon is now a faster card that offers slightly more VR performance headroom.

Both the RTX 3060 and the RX 6650 XT can max several VR games in our benching suite if the resolution is left at 100% or slightly subsampled, or if the in-game settings are lowered. But if a VR enthusiast is going to spend $1000 for a premium HMD, it makes sense to pair it with a faster video card like the RTX 3060 Ti or the RX 6700 XT. However, one cannot pair a high resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2 with any of our four tested cards without lowering the resolution or settings.

To recap pricing: The Hellhound RX 6650 XT is currently below MSRP for $370 at Newegg versus entry level RTX 3060s which can be found starting at $380. The RX 6700 XT can be found starting at $430 and the RTX 3060 Ti can be found starting at $470. Make sure to check for new game bundles, sales, and promotions as both AMD’s and Nvidia’s promos recently ended. Video card pricing changes almost daily.

The RX 6650 XT offers a stronger VR performance at a slightly lower price than the RTX 3060 while the RTX 3060 Ti offers a similar VR experience to the RX 6700 XT. The advantage the GeForce cards hold over the Radeons is that they offer more DLSS supported VR games.

We did not test DLSS in VR nor did we use FSR and will leave that comparison for future reviews. We are going to take a break this week to play Spiderman: Remastered for PC and will be back with more great reviews next week.

Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy VR Gaming!

BTR recently received a 2TB Rocket 4 Plus SSD from Sabrent which is a very fast 7,000/6850MBps Read/Write PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 drive. Although its thin heatsink is perfect for the PlayStation 5 (PS5) and tight installations, Sabrent recommends using an external NVMe or PS5 heatsink to dissipate the heat generated to avoid thermal throttling and to maximize performance.

We put the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus through its paces against eight other SSDs: (1) a 2TB CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series (7,400/7,000MBps Gen 4 x4), (2) a 1TB CARDEA A440 (7,000/6000MBps Gen 4 x4), (3) a 2TB CARDEA Zero Z440 (5,000/4400MBps Gen 4 x4), (4) a 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000/4400MBps Gen 4 x4), (5) the 1TB CARDEA IOPS SSD (3,400/3000MBps, Gen 4 x3), (6) a midrange TeamGroup 1TB MP33 (1,800/1,500MBps, Gen 3 x4 SSD), (7) a 4TB M200 portable USB 3.2 Type C SSD (2,000/2,000MBps), and (8) a fast 1TB Delta MAX White RGB (560MBps/510MBps) SATA III SSD.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is available from Sabrent for $299 but at the time of writing it’s offered with a 15% off promotion at Newegg for $254.99 (!) The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is priced at Newegg at $359.99 for the 2TB version. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 (vanilla) SSD is at Amazon for $249.99 for 2TB, but it comes with two heatsinks, the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 is priced at $229.99, and the 2TB T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD is available at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version.

For additional price comparisons, the TeamGroup 2TB MP33 NVMe SSD is $145.99, the T-FORCE NVMe CARDEA IOPS is $132.33 and only offered in a 1TB capacity as is the SATA III Delta MAX at Amazon for $89.99 but it offers RGB lighting. The 4TB M200 Portable USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 Type C SSD is $527.99 while the 2TB version is $189.59.

Features & Specifications

Here are the features and specifications of the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB SSD which are taken directly from Sabrent’s website.

Features

• PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, NVMe 1.3 compliant. APST/ASPM/L1.2 support.
• Supports SMART and TRIM functions. Works in an enclosure.
• Wide flash compatibility. Uses TLC with DRAM.
• Advanced endurance features for a long drive lifespan.
• Upgradeable firmware and software support.
• 4.0-capable motherboard and M.2 heatsink are recommended, but the drive is backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 and 2.0 M.2 sockets.
• All Sabrent SSDs come with Sabrent Acronis True Image for Sabrent

Specifications

The 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus specifications, based on CrystalDiskMark, boast up to 7,000 Read MB/s / 6,850 MB/s Write which are excellent for an current Gen 4 x4 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and exceptional for gaming and most applications. The 2TB model is rated for a solid lifespan of 1,400 terabytes written backed by a five year warranty with registration, and it features S.M.A.R.T and Trim support.

Next, we unbox the Rocket 4 Plus and take a closer look at it.

Unboxing, Heatsink installation, and Temperatures Under Load

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus comes in a small box that advertises it as an advanced performance M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe SSD. Sabrent also sent us an aluminum heatsink for the PS5 console as well a copper/aluminum NVMe heatsink for the PC. As it turns out, we don’t have a PS5 nor do we need a NVMe heatsink – although we tested it – since the ASUS ROG Maximus Apex has a heavy duty heatsink integrated into the motherboard.

The back of the Rocket 4 Plus box doesn’t give any further details except to recommend visiting www.sabrent.com/rocket. In contrast, the PS5 heatsink details are spelled out on the back of the box.

Here is the Rocket 4 Plus box again next to the PC heatsink box which spells out its details.

The presentation of the Rocket 4 Plus is outstanding as the SSD comes in an aluminum jewel box style container with the installation instructions.

Pictured below are both sides of the Rocket 4 Plus.

Of course, the end user is not supposed to remove the heatsink or the paper on the back with a warning that the warranty is voided. We did it anyway to show the ICs below the heatsink and under the paper.

ICs are on both sides of the PCB unlike the single-sided Cardea A440 Pro Special Series. A Phison PS5018-E18 controller is coupled with Micron B47R NANAD and SK Hynix DDR4 DRAM to achieve its blazing fast 7,000MB/s specifications.

It is very unwise to operate the Rocket 4 Plus with only the foil heatsink as the heat generated by the ICs will throttle performance as temperatures will easily exceed 80C. The $24.99 Rocket NVMe heatsink – purchased separately – is a complete easy-to-install kit that will securely lock down using an M.2 screw to the motherboard following the simple instructions.

Unfortunately, we were unable to install the Rocket 4 NVMe heatsink into our Apex motherboard as its twist locks could not hold it down. So for the following picture, we installed it in our i9-10900K PC. It’s a very good-looking heatsink and quite effective also.

We benchmarked the Rocket 4 Plus in our Apex motherboard using its included 5.6oz (159g) heatsink. In comparison, the Rocket NVMe heatsink weighs in at 4oz (115g) which also makes it a very solid cooling solution.

Above are the Apex MB and Rocket NVMe heatsinks compared.

If you have a PS5, the Rocket 4 Plus is an ideal fast SSD and a $19.99 heatsink is also available for it.

Temperatures

Do not operate your Rocket 4 Plus SSD without a heatsink unless you are only going to use it for light duty or you will get temperatures approaching 80C with performance throttling.

Using the massive NVMe heatsink included with the ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard, we never saw temperatures rise above 40C. Using the Rocket NVMe heatsink, the highest temperatures we observed was 46C under the most demanding conditions.

After installing the Rocket 4 Plus, the user may need to format it before use. If you are planning to clone it, make sure both disks are GUID or convert one of them first. You can use the free Acronis True Image cloning software for Sabrent included with every Sabrent SSD purchase.

Lets look at our test configuration next.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA 1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-FORCE DELTA RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, supplied by NVIDIA
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by Sabrent
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
• T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 4 x3 NVMe SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
• T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE DELTA MAX White 1TB SATA III SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor

Test Configuration – Software

• Gaming results show loading time in seconds and lower is better
• Windows 11 Professional edition; latest updates/build
• Latest DirectX
• All benchmarking programs are updated to their latest versions
• IOmeter

PC Game & Level Loading Suite

• PCMark 8 (World of Warcraft & Battlefield 3)
• Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• 3DMark Storage Benchmark (Battlefield V, Call of Duty, Overwatch)

Synthetic Benching Tests & Suites

• SiSoft Sandra 2020/2021
• AIDA64
• PCMark 10 Pro version courtesy of UL (Full Storage Benchmark, Express, Extended)
• PCMark 8
• SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• CrystalDiskMark
• TxBENCH Basic
• HD Tune
• AS SSD
• HD Tach
• 100GB File Copy Timed Test

Let’s head to our benching results.

Benchmarking the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSD

Benchmarking SSDs is not an exact science as there is variability between runs, and different benchmarks may show different results depending on how they run their tests and how up-to-date the benchmarks are. However, by using enough real world and synthetic tests, it may be possible to get a good idea of the relative performance across all nine tested drives. For benchmark results, the drives are listed in the following order on the charts:

1. Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
2. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
3. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
4. T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 1TB PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
5. T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
6. T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD
7. TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
8. T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD
9. T-FORCE Delta MAX SATA III 1TB SSD

We did not set up Windows on the Delta MAX SSD, so not all of the benchmarks could be run on it. All of the drives will have their results summarized by multiple charts although we will only show the details for the PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSDs. Let’s start first with UL’s 3DMark storage benchmark.

3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Professional version by UL includes a Storage Benchmark (optional in the Advanced version) which also measures the time it takes to load several popular games. We only show the Gen 4 x4 SSD detailed results but will summarize all of them.

First, the Rocket 4 Plus results with 4167.

Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 3229. Now, the CARDEA A440 results with 3844. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 scores 3009.

Finally, the ZERO 440 results with 2606.Here’s the summary chart of all nine of our tested drives.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the standout as the fastest SSD using the 3DMark Storage benchmark by a wide margin, followed by the CARDEA A440, the A440 Pro Special Series, the C440, the Z440, the IOPS, the MP33, the portable Type C SSD, and the SATA III DELTA MAX.

Next up, another important UL benchmark suite, PCMark 10, including its benching suites – Express, Extended, and the Full System Drive Benchmark.

PCMark 10 Professional

UL (formerly Futuremark) has been a developer and publisher of PC benchmark applications for nearly two decades. Although PCMark benches are synthetic suites, they provide a good measure of system performance. PCMark 10 was primarily developed for Windows 10 and it builds upon the PCMark 8 suite for a package of vendor-neutral home and office benchmarks.

The regular version of PCMark 10 misses several key elements such as detailed storage testing, but the Professional version, which we use courtesy of UL, includes a storage benchmark and a full system drive benchmark. In addition, We use both PCMark 10’s Express and Extended suite.

First up is the Full System Drive Benchmark.

Full System Drive Benchmark

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 3396. Here’s the summary chart of all of our tested drives.

The Rocket 4 Plus is the second fastest SSD after the Cardea A440. On to PCMark 10.

PCMark 10 Express

First, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus scores 7292.

Below are the Rocket 4 Plus online validated score which gives more detailed results.

Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 7468. Below is the CARDEA A440 Express score with 7480. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 Express score is 7188.

The Z440 scores 7324.

The summary chart is presented after the Extended scores.

PCMark 10 Extended

First up, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Extended score with 13459.

Next the Rocket 4 Plus online details.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series Extended score is 13257. Next, the CARDEA A440 Extended score is 13452. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 Extended score is 13384.

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 Extended score is 13154.

Here’s the summary chart.

In the Express suite, the Rocket 4 Plus trails most of the PCIe drives except for the Cardea C440. In the more demanding Extended suite, the Rocket 4 Plus is the fastest SSD. The Delta MAX SATA III SSD could not be tested since Windows is not set up on it.

Let’s check out the older PCMark 8 benchmark suite which also uses dedicated storage tests.

PCMARK 8

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 4973. World of Warcraft loaded in 58.4 seconds and Battlefield 3 loaded in 134.3 seconds.

The individual benchmarks take much longer but they are more accurate. The numbers at the top right of the chart represent the time the test took to complete and they are presented below without comment.

Now the CARDEA A440.

We test the CARDEA Ceramic C440 SSD.

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 detailed results, the last of our PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Below is presented the summary chart.

Let’s check out what is probably the most popular benchmark for ranking SSDs and HDDs, CrystalDiskMark.

CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4

CrystalDiskMark is a HDD benchmark utility for your drives that measure sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

• Measure sequential reads/writes speed
• Measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed
• Results given in IOPS or MB/s

First up is the Rocket 4 Plus and notice that it exceeds its Read speed advertised specifications of 7,000MB/s but falls a bit short of its 6,850MB/s Write spec. It appears that most SSD manufacturers use an empty second drive for their testing whereas BTR does real world testing on primary drives that are in use with Windows 11 installed

Next, we test the T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD which also falls short of its published specifications of 7,400MBps/7,000MBps for the same reasons as above.

Lastly the CARDEA ZERO Z440 results.

Here is the summary chart highlighting the most often quoted Read/Write performance data. Higher is better.

TxBENCH

TxBENCH is similar to CrystalDiskMark but with additional features including secure erase. According to the website, “It not only measures the performance of storage easily but also performs detailed speed measurements based on specified access patterns and long-period speed measurements. It also allows you to see each drive’s supported features, enabled features, and S.M.A.R.T. information.”

First up are the Rocket 4 Plus TxBench results.

Next up, the A440 Pro Special Series SSD. The A440 results are below. Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 results.

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 results. The TxBENCH rankings are summarized by the chart below.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus HD Tune results are below.

HD Tune benchmark results are summarized by the chart below.

Next up are the T-FORCE CARDEA A440 AS SSD results. Below, the T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 AS SSD results.

Last up is the CARDEA ZERO Z440.

Here is the AS SSD summary chart.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the overall highest scoring SSD but it has the slowest game copy speeds.

HD Tach

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices that was developed by Simpli Software. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and low level Windows interfaces to determine the physical performance of the device. It is no longer supported and needs to be run in compatibility mode for Windows 10.

We present the benchmarks first with the Quick benchmark (8MB zones) on the left and the Long benchmark (32MB zones) on the Right.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 gives an average read of 2119.8MB/s for the Quick bench and 2210.3MB/s for the Long bench. Below are the HD Tach Disk benches summarized in a chart comparing our nine drives. For read speeds, higher is better but for access times, lower is better.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus scores fifth in the Quick bench and third in the Long bench.

Next we look at game/level loading speeds.

The Game/Level Loading Timed Results – FFXIV

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely but generally SSDs perform similarly with regard to game loading times and they all load significantly faster than any HDD. Even SSHDs require loading the same level or program over-and-over to get quicker. We accurately tested 5 levels and overall loading times by using the Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer & Endwalker benchmarks.

Shadowbringers Benchmark

The Shadowbringers Benchmark will not only give you accurate framerates averages, it precisely times how long it takes to load each of 5 different levels and the total loading time. We used maximum settings.

Let’s start with the Shadowbringer benchmark using the Rocket 4 Plus. Total Loading times are 7.495 seconds.

Here’s the Shadowbringer summary chart.

Although all the PCIe SSDs are fast, the Rocket 4 Plus SSD is the fastest at loading Shadowbringers. We also use the newer Endwalker benchmark.

Endwalker Benchmark

The Endwalker benchmark is just as detailed as Shadowbringers and is a very accurate test of loading game and level times. We test using the Endwalker benchmark with the Rocket 4 Plus.

Total Loading times are 7.475 seconds.

Here is the Endwalker summary chart.

Although we see a 2-3 second difference between our fastest SSD and our slowest SATA III SSD with an additional second required to load from an external drive, the fastest SSD is the Rocket 4 Plus.

It may make an immersion difference for getting right back into the game. However, until developers start to target SSDs for PC game storage, only then we may see SSDs fully achieve the game loading performance they are capable of on Windows. In the meantime, PS5 gamers can take full advantage of the Rocket 4 Plus fast loading speeds.

Faster is better when a gamer wants to get right back into a game. Lets look at file copy speeds next.

File Copy 104GB

File copy speeds are important to gamers especially when they want to quickly transfer their game files from one location to another. We copy a 104GB folder containing Horizon 5 from its Steam folder to a desktop folder which is something we do regularly when setting up Steam games on multiple PCs. Pay careful attention to the charts (in green) that show the consistency and speed of file copies. They tend to show the ups and downs where each SSD runs out of cache and how long it takes to empty and refill it.

104GB File Copy

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus took 1 minutes and 36.0 seconds to copy 104GB.

The A440 Pro Speciall Series SSD took 1 minutes and 17.0 seconds. to copy 104GB. The A440 took 1 minutes and 44.0 seconds to copy 104GB. The Ceramic C440 took 1 minutes and 59 seconds for the same copy.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 took 1 minutes and 39.0 seconds. to copy 104GB. Let’s summarize our copy times using a chart.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the second fastest SSD after the A440 Pro for copying 104GB. However, even a SATA III SSD is much faster than any HDD or SSHD for copying large files. Consider taking a nap if you are going to copy 104GB using a hard drive.

Finally, let’s revisit game/level loading times plus all of our Summary charts and then reach our conclusion.

Summary Charts and Conclusion

Here are all of the gaming and summary charts again for easy reference followed by our conclusion.

The Game/Level Loading Time Results

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely (such as by using a stopwatch) but our tests are far more consistent. Here are the World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3 loading times again as measured precisely by PCMark 8’s storage test and accurately by Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer/Endwalker’s benchmarks. Lower (quicker/faster) loading times (measured in seconds) are better.

3DMark’s Storage Benchmark also provides precise SSD bandwidth, loading times, game record, install, and save time comparisons.

All nine SSDs load games quickly but the Generation 4 x4 PCIe SSDs are generally faster than Generation 3 x4 and stand out from SATA III and external SSDs. Overall, the Rocket 4 Plus SSD is the fastest SSD for loading the games we benchmarked.

When PC game developers start to target SSDs for game storage, only then may we see SSDs achieve the super-fast game loading performance they are capable of. Until then, PlayStation 5 gamers may take full advantage of the Rocket 4 Plus and other PCIe 4.0 fast SSD loading speeds.

Non-Gaming Summary Charts

Here are all of the summary charts presented again in one place.

A gamer who wishes to have the very fastest PC will choose an internal PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD, and three SSDs stand out as the fastest drives – the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and both CARDEA Ceramic A440 SSDs. All three are faster than the CARDEA C440 and CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSDs. The CARDEA IOPS Gen 4 x3 fits in next well ahead of the TeamGroup MP33 or M200 Portable SSDs, and finally the Delta MAX SATA III SSD is almost always in last place.

For gaming and for regular tasks on current Intel platforms, any SSD will provide decent game and level loading performance well above that of mechanical hard drives or even hybrid (SSHD)drives, but a PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen 4 x4 will provide the highest performance.

Let’s head for our conclusion.

The Conclusion & Verdict

We believe that 1TB is currently the minimum storage capacity for a gamer that includes the operating system since PC games have grown very large and 2TB is probably ideal. It is not yet mandatory to use a SSD for gaming if you have a ton of patience.

Games do not usually perform significantly better on SSDs since most PC developers still target HDDs for game performance. However, games generally take a lot longer to load from a HDD or SSHD than they do from any internal SATA III drive or even from an external USB 3.0 SSD. If a gamer wants to get right back into the game, any SSD will improve immersion and decrease frustration compared with using a HDD or SSHD.

Windows 10/11 have become painful to use when installed on a mechanical or even on a hybrid solid state/hard disk drive. Indexing, Search, or anti-malware Windows programs may saturate the bandwidth of a mechanical drive, and even downloading or updating Steam games will slow your PC to an irritating crawl. This will not happen using a SSD. And for maximum performance with the least frustration, using a PCIe NVMe SSD is the only way to fly.

Let’s recap PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 pricing. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (7,000/6850 MBps) is available from Sabrent for $299 but at the time of writing it’s offered with a 15% off promotion at Newegg for $254.99. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD (7400/7000MBps) is priced at Newegg at $359.99 for the 2TB version. The vanilla T-FORCE CARDEA A440 SSD (7,000/6,900MBps) is at Amazon for $249.99 for 2TB and it comes with two heatsinks, the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000/4,400MBps) is priced at $229.99, and the 2TB T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD (5,000/4,400MBps) is available at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version.

We believe that spending the extra money is worth it for a fast 2TB NVMe Gen 4 x4 SSD over Gen 3 x4 as long as your motherboard supports PCIe 4.0, and the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is a great choice especially at the Newegg sale price of $254.99. If you have an integrated NVMe motherboard heatsink, the Rocket 4 Plus is an especially great choice as the fastest game loading SSD we have tested so far.

Of course, gamers on a budget should also look for sales. Because of today’s close pricing and competition, choosing an SSD is easier than ever. Based on performance and price, we recommend the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus as a competitively-priced blazing-fast SSD. A five year warranty backed by Sabrent insures that a player will enjoy fast performance for years to come as long as you register the product.

Pros

• 5-year warranty (if registered) backed by Sabrent support
• Fastest game/level loading speeds and very fast large file copy speeds
• Fast Write and Read speeds
• The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is priced competitively at $299 and an awesome buy for $259 with the Newegg promotion
• Thin foil heatsink fits under integrated motherboard NVMe heatsinks
• Sabrent Acronis True Image cloning software for Sabrent included

Cons

• The included graphene heatsink is inadequate to prevent throttling under heavy load. Use an aftermarket or integrated MB heatsink
• You have to register the product to get the full 5 year warranty; if not, you get 1 year

Next up, a VR review of the RX 6650 XT and Rodrigo is working on a GeForce driver performance analysis. Stay tuned.

Happy Gaming!

There is a very cool aspect to Small Form Factor (SFF) mini-PCs where a notebook or a desktop just won’t do. Although small book-sized PCs are capable in every area of computing, they have always been weak in gaming. Although it is not advertised for gaming, ECS sent us a LIVA One A300 barebones PC that we equipped with a budget-friendly Ryzen 5 5600G APU, and we benchmarked it with 40 games, workstation, and creative applications to see if it is a capable PC that is also acceptible for entry-level 1080P gaming.

The 205 x 176 x 33 mm (8.07″ x 6.93″ x 1.3″) LIVA One A300 supports AMD Ryzen & Athlon Processors up to 65W with an ECS custom mini-ITX A300 SF110 Socket AM4 motherboard. It will support dual-core Athlons all the way to the 8-core/16 thread Ryzen 5 5700G as well as 2x32GB SO-DIMM DDR4 3200MHz, a 2.5″ SATA HDD/SSD, plus a M.2 2280 SATA/PCIe x 4 Gen 3 SSD.

Since we wanted a budget gaming build, we picked the 6-core/12 thread Ryzen 5 5600G ($169) which uses the same but slightly cut down Radeon Vega 7 integrated graphics. It is only about 5% slower in gaming than the 8-core/16 thread Ryzen 7 5700G thus saving $100 on the APU. We equipped our build with a fast (3,400/3,000MBps) 1TB PCIe T-Force Cardea IOPs NVMe SSD ($99), and 2x8GB Samsung SO-DIMM DDR4 3200MHz ($58.00) which is sufficient for an under $550/$600 1080P gaming build with the LIVA One A300 at $200 ($250 MSR) which was the price at Newegg until it sold out.

Since inflation is pushing prices higher, we want to see if a small form factor PC is a good investment and also if it is capable of entry-level 1080P gaming. The only choice is AMD as Intel’s integrated CPU graphics are unable to deliver an acceptible 1080P gaming experience except for very old or very simple games. However, modern games are becoming more and more demanding and the Vega 7 integrated graphics are rather long in the tooth having been introduced 5 years ago.

LIVA One A300 Features & Specifications

From the ECS Liva One A300 specification page:

• PLATFORM – Support AMD Ryzen & Athlon Processors with Socket AM4
• MEMORY – Support 2 x SO-DIMM DDR4 3200MHz, up to 64GB (vary depending on CPU)
• STORAGE DEVICES
  1 x 2.5″ SATA HDD/ SSD

  1 x M.2 2280 SATA / PCIe x 4 Gen 3 SSD
• AUDIO
  1 x Combo Jack

  1 x MIC-IN
• NETWORKING – 1 x 2.5 Gigabit LAN
• USB
  2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 Type C, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 (FRONT I/O)

  2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1×1, 2 x USB 2.0 (REAR I/O)
• VIDEO OUTPUT
  1 x HDMI, 4K@60Hz
  1 x DisplayPort, 4K@60Hz
  1 x VGA
• WIRELESS
  1 x M.2 2230 WLAN 802.11ac

  1 x M.2 2230 WLAN 802.11ax (Optional)
• POWER
  1 x DC-in

  TDP 35W: 19V / 90W

  TDP 65W: 19V / 120W
• DIMENSIONS (MM) – 205 x 176 x 33 mm
• OS SUPPORT – Windows 10 & Windows 11

The Test Bed

BTR’s test bed consists of 40 games and 5 synthetic game benchmarks at 1920×1080 as well as SPEC, workstation, CPU, memory, and GPGPU benchmarks. Our latest games include Sniper Elite 5, Total War: Warhammer III, God of War, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Elden Ring, Dying Light 2, DEATHLOOP, and CoD: Vanguard.

The platform that we compare the LIVA One A300 with in creative and workstation tasks is the much more powerful and six-times-more-expensive PCGz Blue Elixir desktop using Intel Core i7-12700KF, an EVGA RTX 3080 FTW video card, and 2x16GB G.SKILL Trident Z 3600MHz DDR4 on an ASUS TUF Gaming H670-PRO WIFI D4 motherboard.

We realize that this is a very unfair comparison but we don’t have another CPU platform available – except a 12900K/DDR5 PC. At the least, it will give a baseline comparison that sets relative value in this David versus Goliath contest.

Why Choose a SFF PC?

The main reason to pick a small PC is for its small footprint and minimal energy usage compared with a full-sized desktop PC. Gamers and creators may love gaming and creation but perhaps not the large amount of space a typical desktop PC requires. A large mid-tower tends to take over an entire desk, and moving it to the floor makes it susceptable to damage from being kicked, not to mention its port accessibility becomes problematic. Mini SFF PCs like the A300 take up no more room than a typical book and can even be mounted on the back of a monitor and its ports are always within arm’s reach. It is also much easier to travel with a SFF PC compared with packing a desktop.

When it comes to using a PC to render video, produce audio, create, do workstation tasks, stream, and more, notebooks can’t compare to an SFF PC. A notebook generally uses a small built-in display which is inferior to the many choices afforded by picking from a multitude of desktop monitors. In addition, a notebook is always a compromise between typing on it and screen viewing while the desktop display and the keyboard can each be placed at their ideal height and distance.

All-in-one notebooks are often plagued by poor cooling with accompanying CPU throttling, loud fans, difficult to upgrade components, and poor battery life. On the other hand, a full-size desktop is bulky and lacks mobility but makes up for it with increased performance and its ease of upgrading. A SFF Mini PC can deliver the best of both worlds – CPU performance that is often on par with big desktop PCs and stronger than most notebooks with similar components. Professional content creators generally prefer a desktop over a notebook for higher performance using the best display possible. Quiet noise levels are also important as SFF systems are typically placed at the desk level and are generally quieter than notebooks which are very cramped and run hot.

The issue for a gamer is that the A300 does not have room for a dedicated graphics card, so all of the video performance depends on the Ryzen 5 5600G’s integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics. These are considered insufficient to power modern games at 1080P/Low above 30 FPS for even entry level PC gaming. Fortunately, AMD and Nvidia both offer upscaling options to improve performance without destroying image quality.

FSR and Upscaling to the Rescue?

AMD has recently introduced FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) which is their answer to NVIDIA’s DLSS. For this review, we used Performance mode which uses a scaling factor of 2X. In a few cases, we tested Balanced and Ultra Performance modes.

FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)

Source: AMD

FSR improves performance by first rendering frames at a lower resolution and then by using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm with a sharpening filter in an attempt to make the game look nearly as good as at native resolution. FSR is basically a post-process shader which makes it easy for game developers to implement across all graphics cards and not just for Radeons. So far, there are 110+ available and upcoming games supporting FSR 1.0 and FSR 2.0 and we have tested thirteen games that use FSR for this review.

FSR is far more than a standard Lanczos implementation plus sharpening and it brings good value for higher “free” performance with a small hit to visuals. However, AMD recommends using Quality or Balanced FSR modes and that Performance mode should only be selected in situations where “needing additional performance is critical.” Using an APU for 1080P gaming definitely meets that description, and we were surprised that the Low visuals using Performance FSR were (barely) acceptible but far better than puke-inducing low framerates with higher fidelity.

Recently AMD has released FSR 2.0 which we benchmarked using DEATHLOOP and God of War for this review.

By comparing FSR 2.0 with 1.0, we were pleasantly surprised to see a large IQ improvement of FSR 2.0 over the original. Unfortunately, Performance FSR 2.0 still takes a hit to the visuals but the framerate increase is solid.

Next let’s take a closer look at the LIVA One A300.

A Closer Look – The Unboxing, Build & BIOS

The LIVA One A300 comes in a small box as a barebones system.

The A300 is packed in a sturdy box advertising it as an ultra-powerful mini PC .

The A300’s features and support are listed on a side panel.

Opening the box, we see the case and a quick start guide.

Removing the case, we see the rest of the contents include a 19V/120W power adapter and power cords, an APU cooler, necessary screws, and a choice of using a VESA mount or a stand.

The front of the LIVA One A300 has a power button, two USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 and two Gen 2×1 Type C connections as well as headphone/combo and microphone inputs.

The rear of the A300 has two additional USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 and two USB 2.0 ports plus a VGA/COM, HDMI 2.0, and two DisplayPort connectors (one of which is covered). The power connector and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet connector is also on the back along with a Kensington lock. If you prefer Wi-Fi, you can use a 802.11 ac, 1×1, BT4.2 internal card.

The CPU cooler comes with thermal interface material installed for the APU as well as for the VRMs. You will need to supply your own external storage via USB or use an internal 2.5″ SATA SSD or HDD and/or a M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 SSD.

The top of the case is well ventillated and there is a screen covering the openings.

The bottom of the unit has 4 rubber feet and it can either lay flat or be set up vertically by using a stand.

Building the PC

The LIVA One A300 is extremely easy to build and can be fully assembled in well under 30 minutes.

We picked a Ryzen 5 six core/12 thread 5600G from Amazon for $168.99 (at the time) as the best bang for buck for a budget gaming build. The Liva One A300 supports the eight core/16 thread 5700G for $100 more, but its Radeon 7 Vega graphics is only about 5% faster. Those wishing to use the A300 for creative or workstation purposes will want the fastest APU.

We picked Samsung 2 x 8GB DDR4 3200MHz PC4-25600 SODIMM Laptop RAM Memory Modules for $27.98 each. 16GB is generally enough for 1080P/Low gaming although creators or workstation users may want the full 64GB RAM that the A300 supports.

We picked the memory and the CPU from the ECS QVL (qualified vendor’s list) but decided to use our own NVMe SSDs. We picked the fastest PCIe 3.0 SSD we had using a 1TB NVMe T-Force Cardea IOPS SSD (3400MBps Read/3000MBps Write) for C: Drive as well as a 512MB T-Force Vulcan SATA III SSD for additional storage.

The Ryzen 5 5600G comes with a cooler, but we put it away and used the ECS A300 cooler which also cools the VRAM.

We followed the Quick Guide and opening the cover is a matter of removing a thumbscrew on the back of the case and sliding the motherboard out of it.

Step one is to carefully drop the 5600G APU into the motherboard making sure to align the arrow on the motherboard with the arrow on the APU corner and then to lock down the lever.

We did not use a Wi-Fi card as we prefer to use an Ethernet cable or a USB Wi-Fi adapter.

To install a PCIe NVMe SSD, the hard drive (HDD) tray first needs to be removed.

The NVMe SSD locks down easily with a lever which is very convenient. We used a Cardea Ceramic heatsink for the IOPS SSD since it has superb cooling charactistics. After the SSD is installed, the SSD/HDD tray needs to be reinstalled.

Memory is next and it clips in the same way as a notebook SO-DIMM.

The cooler is next. The VRAM thermal interface plastic coverings need to be removed and then the cooler is carefully placed on over the APU/VRAMs and the four screws are tightened down in the order indicated on the Quick Guide and also on the screws.

It’s time to slide the cover back on.

The ventillation holes are protected from dust intake by a sceen. Now it’s time to tighten down the thumbscrew and add a stand (for vertical builds).

It’s time to plug in the mouse, keyboard, display, and ethernet cable – and turn it on.

Let’s check out the BIOS.

Navigating the BIOS

The ECS BIOS is very easy to navigate but there are few options for performance enhancements.

The BIOS screen gives the PC status and fan control, but the advanced screens are where the options are.

The Main screen gives options for changing the language, date, and time.

Advanced offers few CPU options, and the Chipset screen shows the SATA and NVMe drives status with no real options so we move on to the MBIX screen which surprisingly does offer some memory performance enhancing options.

Unlike the CPU or graphics, the memory can be overclocked. From Auto, we set the memory to 3200MHz and did not try for 3334MHz or higher or attempt to adjust the timings which can yield some extra performance. An enthusiast will probably want to tweak these options. We didn’t see any other performance-enhancing options for gaming such as enabling ResizeableBar.

The final options screen before Exit is the Boot menu.

We used the boot menu to first boot from a flash drive to install Windows 10, and after it was fully set up, we set the A300 to boot from the 1TB NVMe SSD and used the 512GB SATA III drive for storage along with our 4TB external T-Force M.2 Type C SSD.

Let’s check out its performance after we look over our test configuration and more on the next page.

Test Configuration – Hardware

LIVA One A300

• ECS LIVA One A300 barebones with custom mini-itx motherboard (AM4 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0, DDR4)
• Ryzen 5 5600G APU (stock settings/APU Radeon 7 Graphics).
• Samsung 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz PC4-25600 (1.2V 1Rx8 260-Pin SODIMM Laptop RAM Memory Module M471A1K43DB1-CWE)
• T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• ANNE PRO 2, 60% Wired/Wireless Mechanical Keyboard (Gateron Brown Switch/Black Case)
• Starlink Ethernet
• ASUS Chakram Wireless Gaming mouse, supplied by ASUS
• Corsair mousepad

PC Gamerz Hawaii Blue Elixir

• Intel Core i7-12700KF (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On) (All listed Blue Elixir hardware except the portable SSD supplied by PC GamerZ Hawaii)
• ASUS TUF Gaming H670-PRO WIFI D4 (Intel H670 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0/5.0/3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• EVGA RTX 3080 FTW video card
• G.SKILL Trident Z 16GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz)
• Crucial P2 1TB NVMe SSD PCIe 3.0 (2400MBps/1900MBps Read/Write) for C: drive
• The T-FORCE M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Portable SSD (supplied by Team Group for game storage)
• EVGA 850B5, 850W Bronze PSU
• ACER (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27? 1920×1080/165Hz monitor
• Lian-Li Galahad 360 AIO Cooler
• CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh White

Test Configuration – Software

• Adrenalin 22.5.2 / GeForce 512.77
• Stock settings, Vsync off.
• All settings (Low/Lowest/minimum/FSR) enabled as noted in games on the charts
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates (1% lows/99 percentiles) shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better.
• Windows 10 Pro edition; latest updates. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are generally run under DX12, and multiple games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

40 Games

Vulkan

• Sniper Elite 5
• DOOM Eternal
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX12

• God of War
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• DEATHLOOP
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• F1 2021
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Overwatch
• Grand Theft Auto V

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike
• Superposition
• VRMark Orange Room
• Cinebench
• GeekBench
• AIDA64 CPU, cache & memory, and GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.01 benchmark
• Sandra 2021 CPU Benchmarks
• SPECviewperf 2020
• SPEC Workstation

Next we look at overclocking, temperatures, and noise.

Overclocking, temperatures, and noise

Only the memory of the LIVA One A300 may be overclocked although we didn’t test it. Neither the CPU nor the Radeon Graphics could be overclocked. The CPU temperatures generally remained cool hitting 71C during Cinebench and maxing out at 86C during the SpecWorkstation demanding Blender benchmarks.

At no point did the fan noise become obtrusive. The only time we could hear it was at startup for a few seconds when it spins up to 100% before Windows sets up.

Let’s head to the performance charts to see how capable the LIVA One A300 is as a creative/workstation PC and if it is acceptable for 1080P entry level gaming.

Performance Summary Charts

Here are the performance results of 40 games and four synthetic tests using generally the lowest settings at 1080P. All gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates (1% lows/99-percentiles) are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. The thirteen games that use FSR Performance (or Ultra Performance or Balanced as noted) are next to the non-upscaled results.

GTA V, Overwatch, CIV VI, F1 2021, Forza Horizon 5, World War Z, and Rainbow 6 Siege manage to run acceptibly or decently on Low settings at 1080P. A total of seventeen games manage to stay above 30 FPS 1% lows and a couple of others get close. FSR adds another eight or nine games with several more reaching close to the 30FPS minimum. Perhaps a total of 11 games play acceptibly well enough on 1080P/Low enough to consider raising some individual settings.

Performance FSR definitely does its job of improving framerates although it impacts visuals, but it is much better than putting up with sickness-inducing low framerates and lag. In a few games like Tokyo: Ghostwire, it just adds blur to the already low visuals. Some games look better than others, but if we had to game on a 5600G, we’d definitely use FSR.

Let’s look at non-gaming applications next to see if the LIVA One A300 is a solid performer in creative/workstation/pro tasks starting with Blender benchmarks.

Blender 3.01 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

We benchmarked all three Open Data Blender.org benchmarks which combines both CPU and GPU performance by measuring samples per second in rendering production files.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results as samples per second.

The A100’s 5600G APU performs decently in Blender but it is no match for the ultra-powerful RTX 3080 FTW combined with a 12700KF. In any graphics tests where a video card is used, we will see a huge performance disparity. CPU benchmarks should tell a different story.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 CPU, Cache & Memory, and GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64 v6.70

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards while it’s CPU benchmarks compare relative performance of processors.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days.

CPU/FPU Benchmark Results

CPU results are summarized below in two charts for comparison.

GPGPU Benchmark

Here is the comparison summarized between the LIVA One A300 and the Blue Elixir 12700KF/RTX 3080 FTW PC.

Cache & Memory Benchmarks

Here is the summary chart.

For workstation, creative, and professional applications using the CPU or memory, the Ryzen 5600G performs admirably as a solid performer; it’s weakness is its Vega 7 graphics. In many of AIDA64’s CPU benchmarks, the Ryzen 5600G outperformed and outranked the former Intel 6-core flagship, the i7-8700K.

So let’s look at Sandra 2021 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2021

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2021. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. Sandra 2021 is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2021 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

We ran the latest version of Sandra’s intensive Processor benchmarks and summarize the overall results below.

In Sandra’s synthetic CPU benchmarks, the $600 LIVA One A300 scores over half the $3500 PC results which also use CUDA and its discrete GPU. It also ranks the 5600G higher than many older Ryzen and Intel CPUs like the i7-8700K.

So let’s look at Cinebench which is a pure CPU benchmark focusing on single- and mult-core results.

Cinebench

Cinebench is based on MAXON’s professional 3D content creation suite, Cinema 4D. This latest R23 version of Cinebench can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically. It is an excellent tool to compare CPU/memory performance and higher is better.

Cinebench’s Multi-Core benchmark will stress a CPU reasonably well over its 10-minute run and will show any weaknesses in CPU cooling. This is the test where we discovered that the Blue Elixir’s 12700K hit nearly 100C on Core 5 and lead us to conclude that the wrong LGA 1151 backplate was used by the PCGz builders instead of LGA 1700.

Here is the summary chart.

Of course the 12-core/20-thread 12700KF beats the 6-core/12 thread 5600G in Cinebench in the multi-core test. However, the A300 has nothing to be ashamed of turning in a very strong single core and decent multi-core performance. Next we benchmark using GeekBench which measures CPU and GPU performance.

GeekBench

GeekBench is an excellent CPU/GPU benchmarking program which runs a series of tests and times how long the processor takes to complete its tasks.

Single Core Performance

Here is the A300 5600G single core performance.

Next we check multi-core.

Multi Core Performance

Now 5600G CPU multi core performance.

Next we test the A300 using OpenCL and Vulcan using GeekBench graphics-heavy benchmarks.

Open CL and Vulcan

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the LIVA One A300 using Vulcan.

The summary charts below show the comparative performance scores.

Again, the A300 5600G’s single core performance is excellent and the multi-core is also very solid. However, as expected the GPU benches are weak if compared with a fast discrete video card.

Next up, SPECworkstation.

SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except to vendors of computer-related products and/or services. The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads.

SPECworkstation benchmarks are very demanding and all benchmarks were tested in an official run.

Here are the SPECworkstation Raw Scores which give the details.

We see the same thing repeated in all of the synthetic tests – the LIVA One A300 Ryzen 5 5600G performs brilliantly in CPU-heavy benchmarks while falling short in GPU-heavy benching compared with a much more powerful and expensive PC.

Now, let’s look at a GPU-heavy SPEC benching suite, SPECviewperf 2020.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) released a 2020 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark that features updated viewsets, new models, support for up to 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use 1900×1060 display resolution.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 benchmarks summarized in the chart below.

No surprises – the six-times more expensive PC GamerZ PC is faster because of the higher core count of the 12700K but especially because of the RTX 3080 FTW.

The decision to buy a new PC should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as their budget. Time is money depending on how these apps are used. However, the target demographic for the LIVA One A300 mini-PC is creative and workstation uses while the GamerZ Blue Elixir targets 1080P and 1440P gaming. As value goes, the A300 provides far more bang-for-buck except for heavy gaming. It would be ideal for anyone needing a small but powerful PC.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

We were very impressed with the value of the LIVA One A300 using a Ryzen 5 5600G APU for workstation, multi-tasking, and creative use cases. At around $600 for the parts as tested, it provides superb performance bang for buck when compared – admittedly unfairly – with a desktop PC with a powerful video card that costs six times more. The A300 only falls short in gaming or where graphics intensive tasks are needed.

Let’s sum it up:

The Pros

• The LIVA One A300 is an excellent SFF value as a barebones mini-PC that can use any 65W Ryzen or Athlon APU
• Support for up to 2x32GB DDR4 3200MHz
• Good storage options for NVMe and SATA III SSDs
• It excels in multi-tasking, creative, and workstation applications.
• It offers support for 3 displays up to 4K for multasking
• Its small form factor allows for easy placement while taking up a very small footprint and little energy
• It runs cool and very quiet
• Plenty of USB connectors with support for Type C
• It is fast and easy to build
• It can handle some 1080P gaming

Cons

• Gaming and graphics heavy applications are its only weaknesses (and it is not advertised for gaming) but FSR goes a long way to address it

The Verdict:

If a gamer is looking for a solid and handsome SFF barebones mini-PC with a lot of build options, the LIVA One A300 should be considered. It is a solidly-built mini-PC that that can handle heavy CPU workloads for extreme multi-tasking, workstation, and creative needs. It is also suitable for light, eSports, and even some mainstream gaming on Low/1080P.

We really were impressed with the LIVA One A300 and plan to use it as a Plex server. We were also impressed with FSR and especially with FSR 2.0 and the performance increase it provides for games that otherwise could not be played at 1080P.

Stay tuned for Rodrigo’s Adrenalin 22.5.2 Driver Performance Analysis!

Happy Gaming!

BTR recently received a 2TB T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD from TeamGroup which is an older PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 drive that appears to be particularly useful for motherboards with integrated NVMe heatsinks because of its thin graphene foil cooling solution. SSD (Solid State Drive) technology is continually improving and its pricing remains reasonable as speed and capacities increase for gamers who need more storage as games grow larger. CARDEA ZERO Z440 is a fast 5,000MBps/4,400 MBps SSD that we put it through its paces against seven other SSDs. We especially want to see how it compares especially in PC gaming with our other three NVMe Gen 4 x4 SSDs – a 2TB 7,400MBps/7000MBps SSD, a 1TB 7,000MBps/6,000MBps SSD, and another 2TB 5,000 MBps/4,400 MBps SSD.

We will also focus on its performance besides comparing it with five NVMe/PCIe SSDs, a portable USB 3.2 SSD, and a fast SATA III SSD: (1) a 2TB CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series (7,400/7,000MBps Gen 4 x4), (2) a 1TB CARDEA A440 (7,000/6000MBps Gen 4 x4), (3) a 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000/4400MBps Gen 4 x4), (4) the 1TB CARDEA IOPS SSD (3,400/3000MBps, Gen 4 x3), (5) a now midrange TeamGroup 1TB MP33 (1,800/1,500MBps, Gen 3 x4 SSD), (6) a 4TB M200 portable USB 3.2 Type C SSD (2,000/2,000MBps), and (7) a fast 1TB Delta MAX White RGB (560MBps/510MBps) SATA III SSD.

The T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, priced at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version (and at $119.99 for the 1TB version). The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is priced at Newegg at $287.99 for the 2TB version. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 (vanilla) SSD is at Amazon for $299.99 for 2TB, but it comes with two heatsinks, and the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 is priced at $229.99. They are all in similar price ranges to other comparable fast PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSDs currently available.

For additional price comparisons, the TeamGroup 2TB MP33 NVMe SSD is $145.99, the T-FORCE NVMe CARDEA IOPS is $117.82 and only offered in a 1TB capacity as is the SATA III Delta MAX at Amazon for $109.99 but it offers RGB lighting. The 4TB M200 Portable USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 Type C SSD is $659.99 while the 2TB version is $267.99.

Features & Specifications

Here are the features and specifications of the T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD which are taken directly from TeamGroup’s website.

Features

• M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 solid state drive. Supports the latest platform AMD X570
• Excellent performance – Read speed is up to 5,000 MB/s^[1]. Enhances the speed and performance of the overall system
• Three heat dissipation elements – the combination of graphene and copper can provide excellent heat dissipation. 0.2mm ultra-thin and patented cooling module can avoid interference during installation
• Multiple protection, smart management technology – effectively monitors the status of solid state drive and maximizes its performance
• Product warranty – five-year product warranty with free technical support service
• Taiwan Invention Patent (number: I703921)
• China Utility Patent (number: CN 211019739 U)

Specifications

The specifications, based on CrystalDiskMark, boast up to 5,000 Read MB/s / 4,400 MB/s Write for the 2TB version and the same speeds for the 1TB version which are very good for an older Gen 4 x4 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Although it features a SLC cache that will degrade beyond its capacity threshold and isn’t capable of sustaining its write performance until full, it is exceptional for gaming and most applications. The 2TB model is rated for a solid lifespan of 3,600 terabytes written backed by a five year guarantee, and it features S.M.A.R.T and Trim support.

We were curious as to why TeamGroup picked the name, “Cardea“. In Greek and Roman mythology, Cardea was the ‘Goddess of the Hinge’, a family protector who kept evil spirits from entering their homes. Cardea comes from the Latin word ‘cardo’, which means hinge, pole, axis, or juncture with the same root as “cardiology”, which means connected to the heart/center. Cardo was also fundamental to Roman city planning. It appears that a SSD/storage is at the heart of a PC and essential to it.

Next we unbox the T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD and take a closer look at it.

Unboxing, Heatsink installation, and Temperatures Under Load

The T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 comes in a small box that advertises PCIe 4.0 and a copper graphine heatsink as pictured on the front. Here is the back of the box which warns the buyer that the up to 5,000 MB/s / 4,400 MB/s transfer speeds can vary according to hardware/software conditions and are only to be used for basic reference. It offers a 5-year warranty and demonstrates the heatsink – a thin copper-colored Graphene foil – that will allow the SSD to be placed behind a video card, under an integrated motherboard heatsink, or into the PS5. Here is a closer look at the CARDEA ZERO Z440 in its inner packaging with the heatsink on top of the NVMe SSD. The front of the CARDEA ZERO Z440 carries a sticker which warns that the warranty may be void if removed. It’s pretty meaningless as a restriction since there are modules on both sides of the PCB.

The ICs are on both sides of the PCB and the Z440 Pro uses a second-generation 96-layer 3D BiCS4 NAND manufacturing process. It uses Phison’s PS5016-E16 to achieve its rated speeds.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 comes with just one heatsink unlike the regular A440 which comes with a second finned heatsink. The graphene heatsink is covered with a lot of unnecessary text, but it is designed to be thin and hidden behind a video card. It is also ideal for installation in a PlayStation 5.

The graphene heatsink is good-looking and easily attaches to the SSD. Installing the heatsink is simple; remove the plastic covering from the sticky thermal interface material and apply it to the heatsink taking care to cover all the modules. It is important to use a heatsink as temperatures will easily exceed 80C without one. But using the graphene heatsink behind a video card only drops temperatures by about 5C. Stressing the ZERO Z440 by copying 100GB over and over resulted in temps of 80C. The ZERO Z440 is as difficult to cool as CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000MBps/4400MBps) which also has ICs on both sides of its PCB and which also runs too hot to be cooled by its supplied graphene heatsink. A ceramic heatsink would have been a better choice.

We measured the temperatures using Crystal Disk Info and Hardware Info 64 which were in agreement, and the SSD became much too hot to touch. In fact, we saw significant loss of performance as the SSD throttled its speeds in an attempt to cool down. We also tested the CARDEA ZERO Z440 with the finned heatsink the A440 came with, and temperatures stayed well below 70C under the most demanding conditions without throttling.

Just as with the CARDEA A440 Special Series, we didn’t know why TeamGroup decided not to include an additional heatsink with the regular A440 but not with the ZERO Z440, so we let them know that we found the graphene heatsink inadequate. They replied (regarding the A440 Special Series which also applies to the Z440):

“We suggest that you use the NVMe heatsink that comes with ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard, and also please suggest users do it this way also.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is originally designed within the PS5 environment, so when it comes with higher data transfers, the temperature will go higher than expected.”

So the Z440 should be fine with a PS5 but not with a PC. If your motherboard has an integrated NVMe heatsink, you will want to use it. If not, buy an aftermarket NVMe heatsink if you are doing intensive SSD work. They should install easily over the ZERO Z440’s graphene heatsink to keep it cool and it will never throttle due to heat. Using the massive NVMe heatsink included with the ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard (above), we never saw temperatures rise above 50C. After installing the CARDEA ZERO Z440, the user may need to format it before use. If you are planning to clone it, make sure both disks are GUID or convert one of them first. Lets look at our test configuration next.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA 1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-FORCE DELTA RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, supplied by NVIDIA
• T-FORCE T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
• T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 4 x3 NVMe SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
• T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE DELTA MAX White 1TB SATA III SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor

Test Configuration – Software

• Gaming results show loading time in seconds and lower is better
• Windows 11 Professional edition; latest updates/build
• Latest DirectX
• All benchmarking programs are updated to their latest versions
• IOmeter

PC Game & Level Loading Suite

• PCMark 8 (World of Warcraft & Battlefield 3)
• Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• 3DMark Storage Benchmark (Battlefield V, Call of Duty, Overwatch)

Synthetic Benching Tests & Suites

• SiSoft Sandra 2020/2021
• AIDA64
• PCMark 10 Pro version courtesy of UL (Full Storage Benchmark, Express, Extended)
• PCMark 8
• SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• CrystalDiskMark
• TxBENCH Basic
• HD Tune
• AS SSD
• HD Tach
• 100GB File Copy Timed Test

Let’s head to our benching results.

Benchmarking the CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD

Benchmarking SSDs is not an exact science as there is variability between runs, and different benchmarks may show different results depending on how they run their tests and how up-to-date the benchmarks are. However, by using enough real world and synthetic tests, it may be possible to get a good idea of the relative performance across all eight tested drives. For benchmark results, the drives are listed in the following order on the charts:

1. T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
2. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
3. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
4. T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 1TB PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
5. T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD
6. TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
7. T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD
8. T-FORCE Delta MAX SATA III 1TB SSD

We did not set up Windows on the Delta MAX SSD, so not all of the benchmarks could be run on it. All of the drives will have their results summarized by multiple charts although we will only show the details for the PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSDs. Let’s start first with 3DMark’s storage benchmark.

3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Professional version by UL includes a Storage Benchmark (optional in the Advanced version) which also measures the time it takes to load several popular games. We are only to show the Gen 4 x4 SSD detailed results but will summarize all of them.

First, the ZERO 440 results with 2606.Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 3229. Now, the CARDEA A440 results with 3844. Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 scores 3009. Here’s the summary chart of all eight of our tested drives.

The ZERO Z440 is the slowest of the PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x5 SSDs. The CARDEA A440 is a standout as the fastest SSD using this benchmark, followed by the A440 Pro Special Series, the C440, the Z440, the IOPS, the MP33, the portable Type C SSD, and the SATA III DELTA MAX.

Next up, another important UL benchmark suite, PCMark 10 including the full benching suites – Express, Extended, and the Full System Drive Benchmark.

PCMark 10 Professional

UL (formerly Futuremark) has been a developer and publisher of PC benchmark applications for nearly two decades. Although PCMark benches are synthetic suites, they provide a good measure of system performance. PCMark 10 was primarily developed for Windows 10 and it builds upon the PCMark 8 suite for a package of vendor-neutral home and office benchmarks.

The regular version of PCMark 10 misses several key elements such as detailed storage testing, but the Professional version, which we use courtesy of UL, includes a storage benchmark and a full system drive benchmark. In addition, We use both PCMark 10’s Express and Extended suite. First up is the Full System Drive Benchmark.

Full System Drive Benchmark

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 2162.

Here’s the summary chart of all of our tested drives. The CARDEA ZERO Z440 is the slowest of the PCIe 4.0 drives but well ahead of the PCIe 3.0 drives. On to PCMark 10.

PCMark 10 Express

First the CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 7324.

Now the ZERO Z440 online validated score which gives more detailed results.

Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 7468. Below is the CARDEA A440 Express score with 7480. Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 Express score is 7188. The summary chart is presented after the Extended scores.

PCMark 10 Extended

First up, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 Extended score is 13154.

Next, the ZERO Z440 online results.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series Extended scores 13257. Next, the CARDEA A440 Extended score is 13452. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 Extended score is 13384. Here’s the summary chart.

The Delta MAX SATA III SSD could not be tested since Windows is not set up on it. In the Express suite, the A440’s score generally the fastest while the CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores above the CARDEA C440 but is behind the PCIe 3.0 Gen 3 x4 SSDs in the more demanding Extended suite.

Let’s check out the older PCMark 8 benchmark suite which also uses dedicated storage tests.

PCMARK 8

Now the CARDEA A440.

Finally, we test the CARDEA Ceramic C440 SSD, the last of our PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Below is presented the summary chart.

Higher scores denote faster drives and as usual, both CARDEA A440 SSDs both standout, followed by the CARDEA ZERO Z440, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 SSD, and then followed in order by the CARDEA IOPS, the MP33 SSD, the Type C portable, and the SATA III Delta MAX in last place as usual.

TxBENCH

TxBENCH is similar to CrystalDiskMark but with additional features including secure erase. According to the website, “It not only measures the performance of storage easily but also performs detailed speed measurements based on specified access patterns and long-period speed measurements. It also allows you to see each drive’s supported features, enabled features, and S.M.A.R.T. information.”

First, the CARDEA ZERO Z440.

Next up, the A440 Pro Special Series SSD. The A440 results are below.

Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 results.

The results are very similar to the CrystalDiskMark benchmarks but with the CARDEA ZERO Z440 edging out the C440.

Next up are the T-FORCE CARDEA A440 AS SSD results. Finally, the T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440AS SSD results.

Although the CARDEA ZERO Z440 has the fastest game copy time, both of the CARDEA A440 SSDs are first in Read/Write with the CARDEA ZERO Z440 ahead of the CARDEA C440, followed by the IOPS, the MP33, the portable, and finally the Delta MAX.

HD Tach

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices that was developed by Simpli Software. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and low level Windows interfaces to determine the physical performance of the device. It is no longer supported and needs to be run in compatibility mode for Windows 10.

We present the benchmarks first with the Quick benchmark (8MB zones) on the left and the Long benchmark (32MB zones) on the Right.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 gives an average read of 2332.5MB/s for the Quick bench and 2174.1MB/s for the Long bench.

Below are the HD Tach Disk benches summarized in a chart comparing our eight drives. For read speeds, higher is better but for access times, lower is better.

The CARDEA A440 Pro again generally scores the fastest in HD Tach ahead of the A440, although the CARDEA ZERO Z440 is ahead of the CARDEA C440 which trades blows with the vanilla A440, followed by the IOPS, then by the MP33 SSD, the portable SSD, and the SATA III Delta MAX takes last place as usual.

Next we look at game/level loading speeds.

The Game/Level Loading Timed Results – FFXIV

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely but generally SSDs perform similarly with regard to game loading times and they all load significantly faster than any HDD. Even SSHDs require loading the same level or program over-and-over to get quicker. We tested 5 levels and overall loading times accurately by using the Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer & Endwalker benchmarks.

Shadowbringers Benchmark

The Shadowbringers Benchmark will not only give you accurate framerates averages, it precisely times how long it takes to load each of 5 different levels and the total loading time. We used maximum settings.

Let’s start with the Shadowbringer benchmark using the CARDEA ZERO Z440. Total Loading times are 9.5555 seconds. Here’s the Shadowbringer summary chart.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 trades blows with the PCIe 3.0 IOPS and is slightly slower than the C440 which in turn are well behind the A440 SSDs.

We also use the newer Endwalker benchmark.

Endwalker Benchmark

The Endwalker benchmark is just as detailed as Shadowbringers and is a very accurate test of loading game and level times.

We test using the Endwalker benchmark with the CARDEA ZERO Z440. Total Loading times are 9.376 seconds. Here is the Endwalker summary chart..

For all 4 games and from multiple levels tested, both CARDEA A440s stand out, followed generally by the CARDEA ZERO Z440 and C440, the IOPS, the MP33, the Delta MAX, and then the USB 3.2 Type C portable SSD.

We see a 2-3 second difference between our fastest SSD and our slowest SATA III SSD with an additional second required to load from an external drive. It may make an immersion difference for getting right back into the game. However, until developers start to target SSDs for PC game storage, only then we may see SSDs fully achieve the game loading performance they are capable of on Windows. In the meantime, PS5 gamers can take full advantage of either A440’s fast loading speeds. No matter what, faster is better when a gamer wants to get right back into a game.

Lets look at file copy speeds next.

File Copy 104GB

File copy speeds are important to gamers especially when they want to quickly transfer their game files from one location to another. We copy a 104GB folder containing Horizon 5 from its Steam folder to a desktop folder which is something we do regularly when setting up Steam games on multiple PCs. Pay careful attention to the charts (in green) that show the consistency and speed of file copies. They tend to show the ups and downs where each SSD runs out of cache and how long it takes to empty and refill it.

104GB File Copy

CARDEA ZERO Z440 took 1 minutes and 39.0 seconds. to copy 104GB.

The A440 Pro Speciall Series SSD took 1 minutes and 17.0 seconds. to copy 104GB. The A440 took 1 minutes and 44.0 seconds to copy 104GB. The Ceramic C440 took 1 minutes and 59 seconds for the same copy.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD excels at copying well ahead of the three other Gen 4 x4 SSDs with the CARDEA ZERO Z440 beating the vanilla A440 and the C440. The IOPS comes in fourth place well ahead of the MP200 portable and MP33 SSDs which are in turn faster than the Delta MAX SATA III SSD.

Yet no matter how you look at it, even a SATA III SSD is much faster than any HDD or SSHD for copying large files. Consider taking a nap if you are going to copy 104GB using a hard drive.

Finally, let’s revisit game/level loading times plus all of our Summary charts and then reach our conclusion.

Summary Charts and Conclusion

Here are all of the gaming and summary charts again for easy reference followed by our conclusion.

The Game/Level Loading Time Results

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely (such as by using a stopwatch) but our tests are far more consistent. Here are the World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3 loading times again as measured precisely by PCMark 8’s storage test and accurately by Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer/Endwalker’s benchmarks. Lower (quicker/faster) loading times (measured in seconds) are better.

PCMark’s Storage Benchmark also provides precise SSD bandwidth, loading times, game record, install, and save time comparisons.

All eight SSDs load games quickly but the Generation 4 x4 PCIe SSDs are generally faster than Generation 3 x4 and stand out from SATA III and external SSDs. When PC game developers start to target SSDs for game storage, only then may we see SSDs achieve the super-fast game loading performance they are capable of. Until then, PlayStation 5 gamers may take full advantage of the CARDEA ZERO Z440 and other PCIe 4.0 fast SSD loading speeds.

Non-Gaming Summary Charts

Here are all of the summary charts presented again in one place.

A gamer who wishes to have the very fastest PC will choose an internal PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD, and both CARDEA Ceramic A440 SSDs stand out as the fastest drives, and noticeably faster than the CARDEA C440 and CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSDs. The CARDEA IOPS slots into fifth place well ahead of the TeamGroup MP33 or M200 Portable SSDs, and finally the Delta MAX SATA III SSD is almost always in last place.

For gaming and for regular tasks on current Intel platforms, any SSD will provide decent game and level loading performance well above that of mechanical hard drives or even hybrid (SSHD)drives, but a PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen 4 x4 will provide the highest performance. Let’s head for our conclusion.

The Conclusion & Verdict

We would suggest that 1TB has become the minimum storage capacity for a gamer that includes the operating system since PC games have grown very large although 512GB may be acceptable. It is not absolutely mandatory to have a SSD if you only use your PC for gaming and have a ton of patience. Games usually do not perform significantly better on SSDs since most PC developers still target HDDs for game performance optimization. However, games generally take significantly longer to load from a HDD or SSHD than they do from any internal SATA III drive or even from an external USB 3.0 SSD.

If a gamer wants to get right back into the game, any SSD will improve immersion and decrease frustration compared with using a HDD or SSHD. Windows 10/11 have become positively painful to use when installed on a mechanical or even on a hybrid solid state/hard disk drive. Indexing, Search, or Anti-malware Windows programs may saturate the bandwidth of a mechanical drive, and even downloading or updating Steam games will slow your PC to an irritating crawl. This will not happen using a SSD. And for maximum performance with the least frustration, using a PCIe NVMe SSD is the only way to fly.

Let’s recap pricing. The T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, priced at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version (and at $119.99 for the 1TB version). The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is priced at Newegg at $287.99 for the 2TB version. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 (vanilla) SSD is at Amazon for $299.99 for 2TB, but it comes with two heatsinks, and the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 is priced at $229.99.

We believe that spending the extra money is worth it for a fast 2TB NVMe CARDEA ZERO Z440 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD over Gen 3 x4 as long as your motherboard supports PCIe 4.0. If not, the CARDEA IOPs is an excellent choice. The CARDEA ZERO Z440 is priced $60 less than the fastest tested 2TB SSD and is priced $2 less than the CARDEA Ceramic C440 which is in the same 5,000MBps/4,400MBps class but comes with a better heatsink. If you have an integrated NVMe motherboard heatsink, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 is a great choice.

Of course, gamers on a budget should also look for sales. Because of today’s close pricing and competition, choosing an SSD is easier than ever. Based on performance and price, we recommend the T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD as a competitively-priced fast SSD. A five year warranty backed by TeamGroup insures that a player will enjoy fast performance for years to come.

Pros

• • 5-year warranty backed by TeamGroup support

• Fast game/level loading speeds and very fast large file copy speeds
• Fast Write and Read speeds
• The CARDEA ZERO Z440 is priced competitively $60 less than the fastest A440 SSDs, and not too much higher than slower Gen 4 x3 SSDs
• Thin foil copper-graphene heatsink fits under integrated motherboard NVMe heatsinks

Cons

• The included graphene heatsink is inadequate to prevent throttling under heavy load. Use an aftermarket or integrated MB heatsink
• No proprietary disk monitoring utilities. It is necessary to use third-party tools to monitor health and usage

Next up, a VR review of the RX 6650 XT and RX 6700 XT versus the RTX 3060 Ti. It will be followed up by a budget mini-PC (book sized) ECS LIVA A300 review.

Happy Gaming!

This Windows 11 versus Windows 10 performance analysis is a follow-up to this week’s review of PC Gamerz Hawaii premium Blue Elite 12700KF/RTX 3080/DDR4 prebuild. They are still using Windows 10 Pro so we performed all of our detailed benching on that operating system and then did a clean install of Windows 11 Pro using the same settings. We will see if there are any performance advantages or disadvantages for Intel 12th Gen gamers or creators still on Windows 10 who are considering an upgrade.

We benchmarked 20 games with HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling) off between Windows 10 and 11 and then turned on HAGS for all 40 Windows 11 games. Before we head to the performance chart featuring 40 games plus creative, workstation, and professional benchmarks, it’s important to detail the hardware and software configuration used for our for our benchmarking as well as our testing methodology.

Test Configuration – Hardware

PC Gamerz Hawaii Blue Elixir

• Intel Core i7-12700KF (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On) (All listed Blue Elixir hardware except the portable SSD supplied by PC GamerZ Hawaii)
• ASUS TUF Gaming H670-PRO WIFI D4 (Intel H670 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0/5.0/3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• G.SKILL Trident Z 16GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz)
• Crucial P2 1TB NVMe SSD PCIe 3.0 (2400MBps/1900MBps Read/Write) for C: drive
• The T-FORCE M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Portable SSD (supplied by Team Group for game storage)
• EVGA 850B5, 850W Bronze PSU
• ACER (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27? 1920×1080/165Hz monitor
• Lian-Li Galahad 360 AIO Cooler
• CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh White

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 512.77
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the NVIDIA control panel; Vsync off.
• Optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High Quality, and Power management prefer maximum performance
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates (1% lows/99 percentiles) shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better.
• Windows 11 Pro edition clean install and Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are generally run under DX12, and multiple games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

Games

Vulkan

• DOOM Eternal
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX12

• God of War
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• F1 2021
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Overwatch
• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Grand Theft Auto V

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• Cinebench
• GeekBench
• OctaneBench
• AIDA64 CPU, cache & memory, and GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.01 benchmark
• Sandra 2021 CPU Benchmarks
• SPECviewperf 2020
• SPEC Workstation

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Let’s head to the performance charts.

Performance Summary Charts

Here are the performance results of 40 games and 5 synthetic tests comparing the performance of Windows 11 with Windows 10 using PCGz’ Blue Elixir. Click on each chart to open in a pop-up for best viewing.

All gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates (1% lows/99-percentiles) are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. We picked the highest settings as shown on the charts. Wins (or ties) are show by yellow text.

Windows 10 HAGS off vs. Windows 11 HAGS off vs. Windows 11 HAGS on

We first benchmarked 20 games with HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling) off between Windows 10 and 11, and also using Windows 11 with HAGS on vs. off. We did not benchmark Windows 10 with HAGS on. Column 1 shows the Windows 10 results (HAGS off) versus Column 2 which shows Windows 11 results (HAGS off). Performance wins are in yellow text. Column 2 repeats Windows 11 results with HAGS off versus Column 3 with Windows 11 with HAGS on. We use a slightly darker yellow text to show Windows 11 performance wins between HAGS off versus on.

Interestingly, nineteen of twenty average results between HAGS off Windows 10 and Windows 11 are approximately within what is considered the 3% margin of benchmarking error. Civilization VI, a CPU-heavy benchmark, is the only outlier that favors Windows 10. When HAGS is turned on for Windows 11, Civ’s performance normalizes between the OSes. HAGS on for Windows 11 doesn’t appear to give any significant performance disadvantages so we benchmarked all 40 games with HAGS on for Windows 11 in the following set of charts.

Windows 10 HAGS off vs. Windows 11 HAGS on

Column 1 shows the Windows 10 performance results (HAGS off) versus Column 2 which shows Windows 11 results (HAGS on). Performance wins are in yellow text.

Final Thoughts

We can conclude from our benchmarking using the PCGz Hawaii Blue Elite i7-12700KF/DDR4/RTX 3080 FTW PC that there is very little performance difference between Windows 10 and Windows 11. There is no reason not to upgrade to Windows 11 although there appears to be no performance disadvantages to remaining on Windows 10.

As to enabling HAGS or not on Windows 11, we agree with Rodrigo who found some HAGS performance inconsistences but also concluded:

“Anyway, the HAGS feature is still quite promising and can improve performance in some cases, so we also recommend doing your testing to see how it works with your gaming rig and set of favorite games.”

Happy Gaming!

This editor returned from a month-long working vacation in Honolulu last week and was able to review a PC Gamerz (PCGz) Hawaii ‘Blue Elixir‘ prebuild while there. We met the owner, Devin Wolery, last November and were so impressed with his company, we featured it in our article about the state of PC Gaming in Hawaii.

This time, we wanted hands on experience to underdstand what makes PC Gamerz prebuilt PCs different from other boutique and big box builders so that in a few short years their business increased tenfold to become one of the largest independent PC outlets in Hawaii and has attracted a fanbase of loyal customers. Since PC Gamerz is now expanding to the Mainland and internationally, it’s a good time to see if they are competitive enough to compete outside of Hawaii.

We arranged with Devin for a Blue Elixir Core i7-12700KF/DDR4/RTX 3080 FTW prebuilt and spent nearly a month playing games, benchmarking, and testing video cards with it including a review of the Hellhound RX 6650 XT against the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti. Is it worth its $3549 asking price and how does its performance compare with a no-expenses-spared i9-12900KF/DDR5/RTX 3080 Founders Edition (FE) PC?

Why a Prebuilt PC?

This editor’s first and last prebuilt desktop PC was in Hawaii in 1996. We were disappointed with what we got for what we paid and within two months, we learned how to build our own. It was a overclocked Celeron 300A PC with a ATi Rage Fury 32MB video card and it blew away the prebuild for less money. Learning PC building was a major time investment, and we realize that we are the exception, not the rule.

Last week, a friend of ours emailed us to ask us what RAM and NVMe SSD upgrade would breathe life into his aging i7-4790K PC until he could afford a new build. We gave him suggestions and he ordered the parts. Well, the upgrade turned out to be more complex than he liked as he had to update his motherboard’s BIOS to recognize NVMe and he didn’t know anything about SATA lanes and disk management.

PC Gamerz ‘Blue Elixir‘ Features & Specifications

• 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700KF
• ASUS TUF GAMING H670-PRO WIFI D4 motherboard
• Trident Z 32GB 3600Mhz DDR4 with ARGB
• Lian-Li Galahad 360 AIO Cooler
• CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh White case
• EVGA 850W PSU (Bronze)
• Crucial P2 1TB NVMe SSD (2400MBps/1900MBps Read/Write)
• EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 12GB 1800 MHz Boost Clock/12GB 384 bit GDDR6X video card
• Windows 10 Pro with optimizations

We asked why Windows 10 is being used instead of Windows 11. PC Gamerz is currently evaluating Windows 11 and will offer it later on. We are going to compare game and creative benchmarks of the Blue Elixir on Win 10 versus BTR’s flagship on Win 11 for this review. In part two, we will directly compare 40 games and creative benches using the Blue Elixir on Win 10 versus a clean installation we made of Win 11 to see if there are any performance disadvantages or advantages by upgrading.

Additional PCGz Information

• Game Ready builds – Ready to Ship Prebuilt Gaming PCs by PCGz
• Built with the latest high quality components from brands like ASUS, EVGA, Lian Li, Phanteks, Fractal Design and More!
• We tune and optimize all aspects of your build including latest BIOS, Windows updates, registry and startup optimizations, RAM timing, game optimizations, RGB software and more!
• Extensive stress testing and benchmarks, paired with high performance game testing allows us to prepare a PC “Ready to Game”, right out of the box. We analyze the metrics of the processor, graphics cards, RAM, etc. to ensure no component goes without optimization. Once all testing is complete and each PC runs smoothly, without bottlenecks/stability issues, it is ready to be received by our customers.
• Supported with a comprehensive 2 year parts and labor warranty.
• Responsive support that makes customers feel prioritized and understood. Each PC comes with lifetime expert technical support from our tech team with over 30 years of combined experience. We offer remote and telephone support to resolve issues as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The Test Bed

BTR’s test bed consists of 35 games and 5 synthetic game benchmarks at 1920×1080 as well as SPEC, workstation, CPU, memory, and GPGPU benchmarks. Our latest games include Total War: Warhammer III, God of War, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Elden Ring, Dying Light 2 and CoD: Vanguard.

The platform we compare the PCGz Blue Elixir with is BTR’s flagship PC using Windows 11 Professional: Intel Core i9-12900KF, an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex Z690 motherboard with 32GB T-FORCE DELTA 6400MHz CL40 DDR5, an RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition (FE) overclocked +35MHz, and a T-FORCE M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Portable SSD that we used as game storage for both PCs. Please see the test bench configuration page for all of the details.

First, let’s take a closer look at the PCGz Blue Elixir.

A Closer Look

The Blue Elixir can be shipped or picked up at the PCGz retail outlet at the Navy Mall in Salt Lake or at their Aiea warehouse. We used Lyft to transport the Blue Elixir PC and loaner ACER display to our Waikiki condo in the Cooler Master case box.

The Blue Elixir is packed inside the sturdy box, but if you order it shipped, we highly recommend buying shipping insurance. Currently, PCGz is offering a $50 coupon for shipping to the Mainland. You can expect to pay $125-$150 for shipping depending on where you live without the discount coupon.

Opening the case box, we see an accessory box.

All PCGz PCs come with accessories, a quick setup guide, warranty information, and how to contact support.

The powercord, extra video card power cables, and a Wi-Fi antenna are included for the Blue Elixir.

If you pick up the PC, a tech will go over what to expect and a quick tour of its features. Everyone is instructed to turn the box upside down for ease of sliding out the PC instead of trying to lift it out.

We set the Blue Elixir up outside and took pictures of it in natural light. It is a very good looking white case build.

Turing it on we see RGB lighting on the fans, video card, and AIO which may be synched. We like that it is not an overdone RGB unicorn rainbow puke build.

We noticed the 12700KF was running warm even with a Lian Li 360mm cooler and suspected that the wrong backplate was used as all ASUS motherboards have holes for either LGA 1200/1151 or LGA 1700. This was confirmed when we returned the PC. Temperatures running Cinebench approached 100C on Core 5 but did not interfere with our benchmarks.

The fans used in the case are very quiet and they are tuned for performance in the BIOS by PCGz. We found their custom settings to be better than using ASUS Turbo fan settings.

The I/O panel has plenty of connectors and we made full use of the 2000MBps bandwidth provided by Type C Gen 2×2 for our 4TB M200 SSD. The Wi-Fi antennas are decent but we preferred to use a ethernet connection as the condo provided a solid 200Mbps connection for fast downloading of games and programs.

We were amazed at the incredibly neat cable management even behind the MB panel. Our own build cables are not so neat.

Upon returning the PC, we were informed that a new value added feature is being implemented for the Blue Elixir and other pre-built PCs. A screen can be custom programmed for the end user to display graphics or PC stats. Above is the Blue Elixir in black featuring the new screen.

We enjoyed the month we spent with the Blue Elixir playing games and benching which made our Honolulu working vacation even better.

Let’s check out its performance after we look over our test configuration and more on the next page.

Test Configuration – Hardware

PC Gamerz Hawaii Blue Elixir

• Intel Core i7-12700KF (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On) (All listed Blue Elixir hardware except the portable SSD supplied by PC GamerZ Hawaii)
• ASUS TUF Gaming H670-PRO WIFI D4 (Intel H670 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0/5.0/3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• G.SKILL Trident Z 16GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz)
• Crucial P2 1TB NVMe SSD PCIe 3.0 (2400MBps/1900MBps Read/Write) for C: drive
• The T-FORCE M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Portable SSD (supplied by Team Group for game storage)
• EVGA 850B5, 850W Bronze PSU
• ACER (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27? 1920×1080/165Hz monitor
• Lian-Li Galahad 360 AIO Cooler
• CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh White

BTR’s Flagship PC

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings).
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA 1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-FORCE DELTA RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition 10GB (overclocked +35MHz), supplied by NVIDIA
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MEG CoreLiquid S360 – AIO CPU Liquid Cooler – 2.4″ IPS Display – 360mm Radiator – Triple 120mm Silent Gale P12 Fans
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm Noctua fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• ASUS ROG Swift 360Hz PG259QNR 24.5” HDR Gaming Monitor, 1080P Full HD, Fast IPS, 1ms, G-SYNC, supplied by ASUS

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 512.77
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the NVIDIA control panel; Vsync off.
• Optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High Quality, and Power management prefer maximum performance
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates (1% lows/99 percentiles) shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better.
• Windows 11 Pro edition for BTR’s PC and Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition for the Blue Elixir; latest updates. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are generally run under DX12, and multiple games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

Games

Vulkan

• DOOM Eternal
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• World War Z
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX12

• God of War
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• Dying Light 2
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• F1 2021
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Overwatch
• Assetto Corsa: Competizione

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• Cinebench
• GeekBench
• OctaneBench
• AIDA64 CPU, cache & memory, and GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.01 benchmark
• Sandra 2021 CPU Benchmarks
• SPECviewperf 2020
• SPEC Workstation

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Next we look at overclocked performance.

Overclocking, temperatures and noise

Since the PC GamerZ PC ran rather warm, we did not attempt to overclock any hardware (memory or video card), not to mention that the H670 motherboard does not allow CPU overclocking. We think it is a mistake to pair a K or KF CPU with a H670 motherboard. A more logical pairing with be a H670 motherboard and a i7-12700 or i9-12900 (non-K) CPU which would also save money all round.

The other logical choice is to offer a slightly more expensive Z690 motherboard with 12x00K or KF CPUs for overclocking. BTR’s flagship i9-12900KF is able to overclock to 5.3GHz on Cores 0 and 1 and 5.1GHz on the rest of the P-cores but we left it stock for our comparison with the Blue Elixir. However, the RTX 3080 FE is only able to overclock +35MHz on its core while the EVGA RTX 3080 FTW is factory overclocked +80MHz (45MHz higher than the overclocked FE). So the FTW will definitely perform better than the FE by virtue of its higher clocks and 12GB DDR6 compared with the FE’s 10GB.

Let’s head to the performance charts

Performance Summary Charts

Here are the performance results of 35 games and 5 synthetic tests comparing BTR’s flagship with PCGz’ Blue Elixir. Click on each chart to open in a pop-up for best viewing.

All gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates (1% lows/99-percentiles) are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. We picked the highest settings as shown on the charts. Wins are show by yellow text.

The PCGz Blue Elite by virtue of its faster EVGA RTX 3080 FTW trades blows with BTR’s flagship PC in 1080P gaming. Generally, there are very little performance differences. BTR’s PC excels when a faster CPU/DDR5 makes a positive performance difference. We would expect even less of an advantage in CPU-heavy games at 1440P or at 4K when the faster PCGz video card would probably pull ahead. Score a win or at least a tie for the PCGz i7-10700K/DDR4 prebuilt PC at less cost than BTR’s i9-12900KF/DDR5 build.

Let’s look at non-gaming applications next to see if the PC GamerZ Hawaii PC is also a solid performer in creative/workstation/pro tasks starting with Blender benchmarks.

Blender 3.01 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

We benchmarked all three Open Data Blender.org benchmarks which measures both CPU and GPU performance by measuring samples per second by render production files.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results as samples per second.

The 12900KF spanks the 12700KF using Blender’s CPU rendering benchmarks, but the 12700KF/RTX 3080 FTW combination is faster than the 12900KF/RTX 3080 FE equipped PC in the GPU benchmarks.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 CPU, Cache & Memory, and GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64 v6.70

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards while it’s CPU benchmarks compare relative performance of processors.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days.

CPU/FPU Benchmark Results

CPU results are summarized below in two charts for comparison.

GPGPU Benchmark Summary

Here is the comparison summarized between the BTR’s 12900KF/DDR5 flagship PC and the Blue Elixir 12700KF/DDR4 PC.

Cache & Memory Benchmarks

Here is the summary chart.

For workstation, creative, and professional applications using the CPU, the 12900KF/DDR5 combination performs well ahead of the PCGz Blue Elite’s 12700KF/DDR4 PC. So let’s look at Sandra 2021 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2021

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2021. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. Sandra 2021 is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2021 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

We ran the latest version of Sandra’s intensive Processor benchmarks and summarize the overall results below.

In Sandra’s synthetic CPU benchmarks, the i9-12900KF is much stronger than the i7-12700KF.

Cinebench

Cinebench is based on MAXON’s professional 3D content creation suite, Cinema 4D. This latest R23 version of Cinebench can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically. It is an excellent tool to compare CPU/memory performance and higher is better.

Cinebench’s Multi-Core benchmark will stress a CPU reasonably well over its 10-minute run and will show any weaknesses in CPU cooling. This is the test where we discovered that the Blue Elixir’s 12700K hit nearly 100C on Core 5 and lead us to conclude that the wrong LGA 1151 backplate was used by the PCGz builders instead of LGA 1700.

Here is the summary chart.

The 12900KF/DDR5 combination is the faster PC in Cinebench. However, the 12700KF/DDR4 PC has nothing to be ashamed of. Now we benchmark using GeekBench which measures CPU and GPU performance.

GeekBench

GeekBench is an excellent CPU/GPU benchmarking program which runs a series of tests and times how long the processor takes to complete its tasks.

Single Core Performance

First single core performance starting with the 12700KF/DDR4 Blue Elixir.

Now single core performance with the 12900KF/DDR5 PC.

The 12900KF has a stronger single core performance. Next we check multi-core.

Multi Core Performance

First CPU multi core performance starting with the 12700KF/DDR5 Blue Elixir.

Now CPU multi-core performance with BTR’s 12900KF.

Again, the i9-12900KF is stronger than the 12700KF in Multi-core performance benching.

Next we test the two PCs using OpenCL, CUDA, and Vulcan using GeekBench graphics-heavy benchmarks.

Open CL, CUDA, and Vulcan

First, we test the RTX 3080 FTW and the i7-12700KF using OpenCL, CUDA, and Vulcan

Finally, we test BTR’s RTX 3080 FE and the i9-12900KF using OpenCL, CUDA, and Vulcan

The summary charts below show the comparative performance scores.

In Geekbench, the stronger i9-12900KF/DDR5 PC pulls ahead of the i7-12700KF/DDR4 in every CPU test while the 12700KF/DDR5 Blue Elixir paired with the faster RTX 3080 FTW beats the i9-12900KF paired with the slower RTX 3080 FE in GPU compute except for the Vulcan benchmark.

Lets check out Octanebench, another GPU-heavy test

Octanebench

OctaneBench allows you to benchmark GPUs using OctaneRender. The hardware and software requirements to run OctaneBench are the same as for OctaneRender Standalone.

Here is the summary chart:

Again, the combination of the 12700KF with the RTX 3080 FTW is faster than the 12900KF with the RTX 3080 FE. Next up, SPECworkstation.

SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except to vendors of computer-related products and/or services. The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads.

SPECworkstation benchmarks are very demanding and all benchmarks were tested in an official run.

Here are the SPECworkstation Raw Scores which give the details.

We see the same thing repeated in all of the synthetic tests – the i9-12900KF/RTX 3080 FE is generally faster in CPU-heavy benchmarks while the i7-10700KF/RTX 3080 FTW is generally faster in GPU-heavy benching. In addition, storage benchmarks favor the faster Gen 4×4 NVMe SSD in BTR’s flagship.

Now, let’s look at a GPU-heavy SPEC benching suite, SPECviewperf 2020.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) released a 2020 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark that features updated viewsets, new models, support for up to 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use 1900×1060 display resolution.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 benchmarks summarized in the chart below.

Again the PC GamerZ PC is faster in eight of 9 individual benchmarks because of the faster RTX 3080 FTW.

The decision to buy a new CPU, memory, and video card should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as their budget. Time is money depending on how these apps are used. However, the target demographic for the PC GamerZ Blue Elixir is primarily 1080P and 1440P gaming for gamers, and in this area, the Blue Elixir excels and it does not fare badly in the workstation and creative benchmarks.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

Our conclusion depends partly on pricing and partly on convenience. Let’s look at today’s pricing of the individual components on Amazon and on Newegg.

• 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700KF – $363.99 (The 12700 is $342.99 which is a more logical choice for a H670 motherboard.)
• ASUS TUF GAMING H670-PRO WIFI D4 motherboard – $229.99
• Trident Z 32GB 3600Mhz DDR4 with ARGB – $174.99
• Lian-Li Galahad 360 AIO Cooler – $248.99
• CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh White case – $123.99
• EVGA 850W PSU (Bronze) – $99.99
• Crucial P2 1TB NVMe SSD (2400MBps/1900MBps Read/Write) – $84.99
• EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 12GB 1800 MHz Boost Clock/12GB 384 bit GDDR6X video card – $1199.99
• Windows 10 Pro with optimizations – $129.00
• Video screen – You’d have to source, custom build, and probably program it yourself.

If you want to save $150, PCGz’ Blue Elixir offers a EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 12GB (as pictured below) which comes without RGB and is slightly slower (-25MHz) than the FTW but still faster than BTR’s overclocked RTX 3080 Founders Edition.

If you buy the individual parts and source them yourself, before tax and any shipping, it comes to $2655.92 – without any video screen. It also means that when you build it yourself, you get all the joy and headaches that come with building a PC. For BTR’s flagship build, it meant RMA’ing G.SKILL DDR5 6000 which took 10 days, and also replacing a MSI 360R cooler that was inadequate for cooling the 12900K. It also took many hours of work to optimize the build for stability in benchmarking. Any problems or issues that arise in the future are mine and will need to be researched and addressed.

For gamers that don’t have the time or the skill set to build a PC from parts, the PCGz Blue Elixir is a ready made $3500 top PC that you unbox and plug in – and it just works. BTR spent nearly $4000 on its flagship PC and it is basically about as fast in gaming as the Blue Elixir at 1080P – where the 12900KF CPU makes the most difference over a 12700K. Of course, we use it for more than gaming.

PC Gamerz high end Blue Elixir compares favoribly in pricing with the big box and boutique builders with the difference being that they offer a higher level of custom service with a completely tested PC that they will support – parts and labor – for two years plus lifetime tech support.

For example, Alienware offers a similar PC at a similar price to the Blue Elixir. It offers a slightly faster 12900K CPU, but a slower RTX 3080 10GB (instead of 12GB). It offers 64GB (that a gamer doesn’t need) of painfully slow DDR5 (4400MHz), and a very small 120mm AIO that is likely insufficient to properly cool the CPU in a stylish if cramped case that will be hard to upgrade. Included support/warranty lasts for only 1 year which isn’t that great having experienced Dell’s service for a gaming laptop. I would pick PCGz if I didn’t build PCs.

One thing we love about the Blue Elixir – besides its outstanding cable management – is that they chose a decent 850W PSU that will probably power the next generation of video cards – a simple remove and replace will allow for an upgrade unlike many big box PC builders that require the PSU to be upgraded also. Although we can nitpick ‘Bronze’, EVGA sells decent PSUs that deliver the wattage they specify. We spent a ridiculous amount of money on a 1200W Platinum PSU.

PCGz also gives a 1TB NVMe SSD which is generally sufficient for most gamers, and it is very easy to install a second NVMe SSD in the top slot without removing the video card if a gamer decides to expand storage. In addition, if Rocket Lake offers a solid upgrade over Alder Lake’s 12700 this year, it will be easy to drop in the new CPU with a BIOS flash as the Cooler Master case is large and easy to work in. PCGz has left room for expansion and upgrades with minimal fuss. All of the parts they chose are first class.

Let’s sum it up:

The Pros

• The PCGz Blue Elite 12700KF/DDR4/EVGA RTX 3080 12GB PC is a solid PC that competes well in gaming with Intel’s top DDR5 PC
• The case is large for expansion or upgrades and the fans are quiet
• The PSU is of sufficiently high capacity to upgrade video cards
• The cable management is exquisite
• Each PC is individually tested and benchmarked before being shipped out
• PCGz optimizes the BIOS and Win 10 for gamers
• Two years Parts & Labor Warranty and lifetime tech support
• New video screen adds extra value

Cons

• Pricing is high
• QC let the wrong CPU backplate slip by
• Mismatch of KF CPU with H670 MB. Either a non-K CPU should be used with H670 or a Z690 MB should be offered for OC potential with K CPUs

The Verdict:

If a gamer is looking for a very well made, solid and handsome PC that will just work perfectly for gamers with great support, the PC Gamerz Hawaii Blue Elixir should be considered. It is a solidly-built good-looking RGB desktop that trades blows with a top Intel DDR5 desktop in gaming. PCGz support is awesome and they justify their repeat customers and good reviews.

We will not be surprised to see PCGz become popular outside of Hawaii in the months to come.

Stay tuned for Part 2. We were somewhat surprised to see that PC GamerZ was still using Windows 10 so we decided to compare its performance with Win 11. We will post this review next week and then follow it up with a SSD review and then a VR review featuring the Hellhound RX 6650 XT versus the RX 6700 XT and versus the RTX 3060 Ti by next weekend.

We hope to follow up with PC GamerZ Hawaii the next time we visit the Islands, but until then we will say aloha and a hui ho (until we meet again).

Aloha and Happy Gaming!