The Timeline 4810T feels sturdy while remaining fairly thin as Acer managed to squeeze in an optical drive, something not found on many notebooks of this size or price range. Compared to the aforementioned Averatec laptop which is marketed as a lightweight 13-inch notebook, the back of the Timeline 4810T is raised up slightly more, while the front is raised equally on both systems. Out of the box, I was less than thrilled about the amount of bloatware installed on the Timeline....

The base model Ryos MK doesn’t feature any LED backlit keys, but as you might expect, the MK Glow does and this is its only upgrade. The MK Pro takes things one step further by offering per-key illumination along with a full range of Cherry MX switch options as well as USB and audio passthrough. The Ryos MK has an MSRP of just $75 while the MK Glow is considerably more expensive at $144 – that’s a lot more to pay for some blue lighting....

CPUs with four or more cores need not apply – Alien: Isolation is seeking an affordable dual-core Core i3 processor but will also accept lowly Celeron, FX or Phenom II chips. Of course, that could change when running either SLI or Crossfire, but throwing that kind of GPU power at Alien: Isolation is a waste. Given how well the Alien: Isolation benchmark ran on a Celeron G1820, we aren’t at all surprised to find that there is no difference in performance between the Core i7-4770K clocked at 2....

I found the choice of a 15W U-series CPU to be a little strange for a gaming laptop, where we typically see more powerful M-series Core i7s. The thickness of the Alienware 13 and its cooling solution would suggest it wouldn’t be too hard to support a 37W M-series i7, preferably a quad-core part, or even one of the higher-clocked 28W U-series chips. The extra performance you’d get from an M-series CPU wouldn’t be as necessary when the system is running as a standard laptop, and the U-series chip will provide better battery life....

Since the release of DLSS 2.0 over two years ago, it’s steadily become a key selling point for Nvidia’s RTX GPUs, lots of gamers have been buying GeForce GPUs specifically for this feature, and AMD has been working on something to counter that for their Radeon customers. AMD’s first attempt, now called FSR 1.0 was released about a year ago and while we found that FSR 1.0 was effective in some situations, particularly at 4K using the Ultra Quality mode, it ultimately wasn’t as good as DLSS overall....

Fast forward to Trinity’s release this month, and the Piledriver-based A10-5800K gave about the same performance clock for clock as 2011’s A8-3850 Llano APU (not to be confused with the FX-3850 we’re reviewing today). However, the A8-3850 doesn’t use Bulldozer cores. It’s based on the AMD Family 10h, or as it is commonly referred to, the K10 architecture, most popularly employed by the company’s Phenom II processors. So, from what we knew by comparing Trinity (Piledriver) to Llano (K10), it would’ve been be safe to assume that the Piledriver-based FX processors wouldn’t be any faster than their Bulldozer counterparts....

Suffice to say, there’s a laundry list. However, we took a couple of AMD’s most popular chips for a test drive and found that things aren’t anywhere near as bad as benchmarks might lead you to believe. Quite the opposite. Sitting in our test bed today is AMD’s most popular chip, the FX-8350, as well as their true mainstream champion, the $100 FX-6300. As we’ve done recently with Intel’s Haswell-E and Devil’s Canyon parts, today we’re doing a power-to-performance test to see just how much power an AMD FX-8350 and FX-6300 consume when faced with gaming and multimedia tasks....

On Thursday, AMD posted a video on YouTube detailing a new functionality called AMD Noise Suppression. The company quickly set the video to private, but not before someone saved a low-resolution copy, reposting it on the AMD subreddit before being removed again. AMD apparently isn’t ready to talk about the new feature, but it sounds much like RTX Voice. Released in 2020, Nvidia’s RTX Voice cancels all sound except for a speaker’s voice during a call or voice chat, integrating with many gaming and productivity apps....

Considering what we have seen from the Phenom II X4 so far, we were not entirely keen to see how power hungry an AMD hexa-core processor would be, however the results are very impressive. The Phenom II X6 1090T and 1055T processors were less power hungry compared to the Phenom II X4 965 both at idle and under load. The Phenom II X6 1090T consumed 16% less power than the Phenom II X4 965 at idle and 8% less than the Core i5 750, which beats any expectations we had at this point....

In terms of value, AMD has nailed the sweet spot of performance vs. price with the Radeon HD 6870. The Radeon HD 5870 currently retails for roughly $380, making the Radeon HD 6870 almost 40% cheaper and only 4% slower in the games we tested. Although the 6870 may not be a successor to the 5870, it has unquestionably eliminated last year’s contender. Speaking of soon-to-be-extinct graphics cards, the Radeon HD 5850 costs 20% more than the 6870, while the latter is 11% faster on average....

The Radeon HD 7990 spat out 140fps at 2560x1600 in DiRT 3, allowing it to match the performance of the 7970 GHz Edition Crossfire cards. This then meant that the 7990 was 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 690 and 50% faster than the GTX Titan. The DiRT 3 frame time performance of the Radeon HD 7990 wasn’t bad either and although the GeForce GTX 690 did sneak ahead there wasn’t much in it....

This time the GTX 780 SLI combo defeated the R9 295X2 when testing with Tomb Raider. At 2560x1600, the R9 295X2 was just 4% slower with an average of 86fps, though this meant that it was still 48% faster than the GTX 780 Ti and 87% faster than the R9 290X. Compared to the HD 7990 though, the R9 295X2 was 46% faster and 39% faster than the GTX 690....

However, one thing is list pricing and the supposed role a given GPU will have in the market, and another in the current (abnormally inflated) GPU market. And so, the Radeon 6600 XT ended up being a decent option thanks to decent availability, among the best we’ve seen for a new graphics card in the last year or so. Our GPU pricing update last month saw the 6600 XT selling on eBay for $640 on average, while the slightly slower RTX 3060 typically sold for $710....

Battlefield 1 reveals some interesting results. Out of the box the Ryzen 3 CPUs did great, particularly when looking at the minimum frame rate which is considerably better than that of Intel’s dual-core, Hyper-threaded G4560 and 7350K. After being overclocked, the Ryzen 3 CPUs managed to match the Core i5-7500. Again we see strong gaming performance for Ryzen 3, this time in Hitman. Here both the 1200 and 1300X easily beat the G4560 while they are roughly on par with the i5-7500....

Those of you who want more information, feel free to read on. Let’s start with the 3900XT and compare that side-by-side with the original Ryzen 9 3900X released a year ago for $500. It’s a great CPU that sold for around that MSRP throughout 2019. In January 2020 it dropped to $470 and by March it was hitting $420 (see our price tracker here). Pricing will of course vary, but around $420-430 appears to be a common asking price right now, which means the 3900XT is coming in at a 16% price premium, pushing back up to the original $500 asking price....

Battlefield 1 is probably one of the more important titles in this list and here the R5 1600 was able to match the 7800X out of the box. We find much the same once both CPUs are overclocked as they allowed the GTX 1080 Ti to spit out no less than 160fps. So while the 7700K might be a little faster, the 1600 is certainly suitable for 144Hz gamers in this title....

I have to admit, this just seems wrong. I still can’t get used to seeing AMD CPUs consuming less power than their Intel counterpart. It feels unnatural. Those power-hungry FX chips sat atop our power charts for so long and I’m glad we can finally move on from them. For what seemed like a similar level of performance (we’ll get to that in a moment), the R5 1600 consumed quite a lot less power compared to the 7800X....

Overclocking only increased the power draw for the second-gen Ryzen CPUs by a small margin, 6% for the 2700X for example. The 8700K saw total system consumption increase by 18% making it less efficient once overclocked. The 2700X and 2600X once again consumed a similar amount of power, this time when testing with Far Cry 5. They were basically on par with the 8700K but used less power than the Skylake-X parts....

Earlier this month, we heard that AMD’s much-awaited Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU would not support manual overclocking as the company asked motherboard manufacturers to disable the functionality in their BIOS/UEFI. Fast forward to this week, and we now have official confirmation from Team Red that its newest Ryzen 7 series processor for gamers isn’t overclocking friendly. Apparently, the main reason for this limitation is AMD’s 3D V-Cache, the technology that’s supposed to make this CPU up to 15 percent faster in games when compared with the Ryzen 9 5900X....