Author: Jan Olšan

Asetek in trouble. A patent war looms in the AIO cooler market?

Cooling, News | | Jan Olšan

A small drama seems to be brewing in the computer cooling world, liquid type to be precise. It has seen a boom thanks to closed-loop AIOs which are easy to maintain and install. Their popularisation can be largly attributed to Asetek, but exactly this company now appears to be in trouble. Its sales have dropped and the company has allegedly escalated patent disputes with other AIO producers, which might impact the whole market. Read more “Asetek in trouble. A patent war looms in the AIO cooler market?” »

SSDs more reliable than HDDs? Study shows similar failure rate

HDDs, News, SSDs, Storages | | Jan Olšan

In May, we had reported on a study by Backblaze, which publishes statistics on the failure rate of hard drives operated by its service. Backblaze also started reporting failure statistics for the SSDs it uses as system drives and the results at first seemed to be orders of magnitude better. But their new data now shows a picture much less promising, it looks like SSD fatality rates might not eventually be so different from HDDs. Read more “SSDs more reliable than HDDs? Study shows similar failure rate” »

Nvidia shares experimental new DLSS models for public testing

Graphics, News, Technology | | Jan Olšan

The version of Nvidia DLSS integrated in games can be upgraded manually by replacing DLL files by newer and better ones from another game. TPU has an archive for various versions extracted from games, but there’s an even better opportunity to tweak the upscaling quality in games now: Nvidia will offer development DLSS models for testing directly, this will allow you to try even the newest pre-release experimental versions. Read more “Nvidia shares experimental new DLSS models for public testing” »

GPU Intel Arc graphic cards produced by Asus, MSI and Gigabyte

Graphics, News | | Jan Olšan

As you probably know, graphic cards come in reference editions with Nvidia or AMD-designed coolers, or in so-called non-reference versions with cooler and PCB designed by the producers (e.g. Evga or Sapphire) themselves. Such designs are often quieter and faster (overclocked). According to recent news you can look forward to the same with the upcoming Intel Arc, which will be produced by multiple well-known companies. Read more “GPU Intel Arc graphic cards produced by Asus, MSI and Gigabyte” »

Kioxia PCI Express SSD will have speeds up to 14 000 MB/s

News, SSDs, Storages | | Jan Olšan

PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs have been on the market for more than 2 years, and the newer ones are even able utilize most of its potential. But PCI Express 5.0 will soon be introduced by Intel Alder Lake processors, though only for GPUs for now (×16 slot). But SSD manufacturers are already preparing PCIe 5.0 storage. Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) has shown a prototype NVMe SSD that uses PCI Express 5.0 and can already get speeds up to 14 GB/s. Read more “Kioxia PCI Express SSD will have speeds up to 14 000 MB/s” »

Can you run Windows 11? App tells you what’s blocking upgrade

Computers, News, Processors | | Jan Olšan

The “popular” topic of HW requirements of Windows 11 is back. Microsoft’s initial draconian position has softened a bit, but uncertainty remains (for example, there are rumours that officially unsupported hardware might not get updates). If you’re planning to upgrade, you may find Microsoft’s new diagnostic app helpful: it clearly tells you which requirements are met by your hardware and which not, requiring upgrades or changes. Read more “Can you run Windows 11? App tells you what’s blocking upgrade” »

There’s plenty of DDR4 Alder Lake mobos. DDR5 only in high end?

Motherboards, News | | Jan Olšan

On Monday we have had an Alder Lake CPU benchmark, based on which, the support for DDR5 memory might pose a dilemma: it has high bandwidth, but might worsen latency, threatening gaming performance. But Alder Lake can also use DDR4. We now have information on the selection of DDR5 and DDR4 mainboards. Apparently getting a quality mainboard for DDR4 should not be a problem, such mainboards might even be in the majority. Read more “There’s plenty of DDR4 Alder Lake mobos. DDR5 only in high end?” »

DDR5-6400 and Alder Lake test: top bandwidth but high latency

Memory, News, Processors | | Jan Olšan

We have the first benchmark showing what could DDR5 memory be good for. Appearing first with Alder Lake processors and Intel Z690 in November, DDR5 will officialy start at 4800MHz effective clock speed, but a leaked AIDA64 benchmark has already appeared showing the performance at DDR5-6400. It looks like we can expect great bandwidth, but it’s possible that the latency will disappoint, because AIDA shows a scary high value. Read more “DDR5-6400 and Alder Lake test: top bandwidth but high latency” »

Intel Z690 chipset for Alder Lake detailed: Gear 4 and other news

Motherboards, News | | Jan Olšan

Alder Lake, a new and significantly improved CPU generation by Intel will be released in a few months (reportedly on 19th of November). The CPUs will be released together with new motherboards using the Z690 chipset and the new LGA 1700 socket. A document leak now shares insight into the features and innovations of this platform. For example we learn that Alder Lake’s memory controller will also use Gear 2 and now even Gear 4. Read more “Intel Z690 chipset for Alder Lake detailed: Gear 4 and other news” »

OptiNAND: WD adds flash memory to HDDs, but not in the SSHD way

HDDs, News, Technology | | Jan Olšan

Lately (actually for several years now) we’ve seldom had news about hard disks. An opportunity to write about a new innovation in this area has come now though. Western Digital has introduced OptiNAND technology, which improves the performance of mechanical drives by integrating NAND Flash memory – but not in the way of SSHDs, which only used it for caching. OptiNAND serves other purposes, and it could be much more useful. Read more “OptiNAND: WD adds flash memory to HDDs, but not in the SSHD way” »

Radeon RX 6600 leaked: still 8 GB, release in a month?

Graphics, News | | Jan Olšan

Last month, the cheapest Radeon graphics card with the RDNA 2 architecture, the RX 6600 XT was released with the Navi 23 GPU. But an even cheaper model could be joining it very soon: the vanilla Radeon RX 6600. Official images of the Eagle Edition graphics card have surfaced on the web, which means that presumably, the release date is getting closer. The leak also confirmed that the cards will still have 8 GB of memory. Read more “Radeon RX 6600 leaked: still 8 GB, release in a month?” »

Gracemont, the (not so) little Alder Lake core (µarch analysis)

Analysis, Processors | | Jan Olšan

Intel has revealed the Alder Lake CPU architecture, or actually two architectures this time. The CPUs are hybrid and besides the main „big“ ones, there are „little“ cores called Gracemont. These are not just for marketing or for low-power idle tasks like in mobile ARM SoCs, however. Gracemont should significantly add to the overall performance, the architecture is actually surprisingly beefy. Our analysis will show you more. Read more “Gracemont, the (not so) little Alder Lake core (µarch analysis)” »

MS allows Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, with caveats

Computers, News, Processors | | Jan Olšan

Since June, hardware requirements of Windows 11 have been a hot topic—the necessity of having TPM 2.0 and the supported CPU list that leaves out some PCs mere three years old. Fortunately, it looks like the hopes that Microsoft will get more pragmatic about this have come true and the company will allow the new OS to be run on older PCs that do not make the cut officially. But it is going to take an extra bit of work. Read more “MS allows Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, with caveats” »

Intel Alder Lake/Golden Cove CPU core unveiled (µarch analysis)

Analysis, Processors | | Jan Olšan

Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs are poised to be the biggest hardware event this year. Intel has unveiled the core architecture of these CPUs and we have analysed the details and new improvements inside. There’s promise of huge performance and one of the biggest architectural leaps in x86 processors, for the first time with six parallel decoders and further IPC increases, showing Intel taking the same path as Apple’s highly effective cores. Read more “Intel Alder Lake/Golden Cove CPU core unveiled (µarch analysis)” »

Intel Arrow Lake processors – high performance iGPU with 320 EU

News, Processors | | Jan Olšan

Last week we’ve covered a leaked Intel processor roadmap showing Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake and Nova Lake processors that are to arrive after Alder Lake, Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake. We said to take it with a grain of salt, as that was the first time the Arrow and Nova codenames have shown up. But shorty after, more information on Arrow Lake has come up that could prove its existence. Looks like the mobile will pack a very fast iGPU. Read more “Intel Arrow Lake processors – high performance iGPU with 320 EU” »

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