Topps Blog

Thursday, 7 July 2022

MSI Kombo Strike ‘Overclocking’ BIOS For Ryzen 5800X3D is Promising But Results May Vary

MSI has released a new and mysterious feature for folks running AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. As you may recall, this CPU does not allow overclocking or voltage changes. As AMD’s first chip with on-die L3 cache, the company says it’s not designed to handle varying frequencies and voltages. However, MSI seems to have found a workaround. It’s called Kombo Strike and it’s only available for 500-series motherboards. It’s also only offered as a Beta BIOS, so only the brave should apply. However, before you dive in, so far it’s showing mixed results in different tests. In other words, your mileage may vary.

MSI’s description of what Kombo Strike does is pretty opaque. It just says “Improved CPU performance of Ryzen 7 5800X3D. You can access it in the BIOS and it has four settings: off, 1, 2, 3. There’s no explanation of what the difference is between the numbers. One can assume whatever level one does, level two and three are more of that. Still, that’s not much to go on.

A Redditor became a guinea pig tester for it recently though, and their results are impressive. A user named Mannekino posted a set of benchmarks, showing the results of their testing. They are running an MSI MEG B550 Unify. The BIOS is version 7D13v171 Beta. Their CPU cooling is a bit overkill though; two 360mm rads with a custom loop. The most interesting findings are that using Kombo Strike #3 they found radically lower temps and voltages. This isn’t supposed to be possible on this CPU, mind you. Regardless, they found that in a Cinebench stress test the average temp dropped a shocking 9C. It went from 81.3C with Kombo Strike disabled, to 72.3 with it enabled. Average watts also dropped by 14W total, going from 112.2W to 98.2W.

Despite using less power and running cooler, performance actually increased in some tests. It didn’t increase by much, but eh, it’s free performance. For example, in 3DMark’s Timespy CPU test, performance increased by almost four percent. However, in Red Dead Redemption 2 Kombo Strike had no impact whatsoever. As far as what Kombo Strike is doing, one theory is that’s it’s undervolting the CPU slightly. The Reddit post links to a user on the Overclock.net forums who says authoritatively it’s a “curve optimizer” of some sorts.

(Image: Gamers Nexus)

However, YouTube channel Gamers Nexus has also examined Kombo Strike. Their results are quite different from the ones posted to Reddit. They found it actually applied higher voltages, which allows for higher clocks. For example, the MSI baseline with Kombo Strike off consumed 98W. Enabling level #3 in the software boosted power consumption by 6W though. Enabling level #1 took that all the way up to 12W. They then went to see if clock speeds had increased, and sure enough, they had. They ran a Blender animation stress test and monitored the clock speeds of the chip. They found Kombo Strike #3 ran clock speeds 230MHz higher than with it disabled. Level #1 also ran higher too, around 100Mhz or so. Not too shabby for just clicking one toggle in the BIOS.

Despite these gains, they do come with a small thermal cost. In their testing, they found the MSI board ran at 77C in stock trim. That boosted up to 78.3C for Kombo Strike #3, which is not a huge change. However, level #1 took it all the way up to 82.4C, which is a significant difference. Voltage also jumped in level #1, going from 1.21V stock to 1.24 volts. In actual performance tests he found Kombo Strike offered between one to three percent uplift in content creation programs. For gaming, there was no significant uplift whatsoever. His conclusion was it does make a difference, but not one you’d really notice. And it’s not really worth it given the higher temps and increased voltage.

Obviously, the difference in experience between Gamers Nexus and the poster on reddit are complete opposites of each other. It could be down to the fact that this is beta software, running on different motherboards. For example, the Redditor is running a B550 UNIFY board with BIOS 7D13v171 Beta. We looked up the version for the X570 Godlike and found it to be 7C34v1I1 Beta. So different boards have different versions of the BIOS, but they should have the same version of Kombo Strike. Still, it’s beta software, but at this point it’s hard to understand why there’s such a difference. Regardless, it looks like something that would be fun to test if you have an MSI 500-series motherboard. You might want to wait until it comes out of beta though, just for stability’s sake. For more information on the 5800X3D, check our comparison of the chip as an upgrade option for X370 owners.

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Swiss ‘Water Battery’ Now Online After 14 Years

Emosson Lake, one of the two reservoirs Switzerland’s new water battery sits between. (Photo: Mercvrie/Unsplash) A “water battery” hidden deep in the Swiss Alps is finally ready to begin storing 400,000 electric vehicles’ worth of energy.

The facility, also known as a pumped storage power plant, is a form of hydroelectric energy storage. This one will both generate and store energy for power grids throughout Switzerland. Integral to its design are two large pools of water, which sit at different heights. Pumping water from the lower pool up into the higher pool “charges” the facility’s battery. Reversing the water’s passage rotates a turbine that generates hydroelectric power when energy is in short supply.

Switzerland has been working on the water battery since at least 2008, when it was decided that the facility would be built between two reservoirs at the Canton of Valais. To bring materials to the battery’s site, however, engineers had to dig tunnels totaling 18 kilometers through the Swiss Alps. The team also had the height of the Vieux Emosson dam increased by 20 meters between 2012 and 2016, allowing the reservoirs to store more water and, as a result, generate even more energy.

A pumped water storage plant (AKA “water battery”) in Kyiv. (Photo: uhe.gov.ua/Wikimedia Commons)

Fourteen years and €2 billion later, Switzerland’s massive water battery is finally operational. The completed facility has a storage capacity of 20 million kilowatt hours. Its six turbines can generate up to 900 MW of power. This means that at its peak, the water battery can power up to 900,000 homes at once—all from 600 meters underground.

The concept of using a pumped storage power plant to both generate and store energy isn’t new, even to Switzerland. A similar facility also exists in the Alps, near the tiny town of Linthal. This facility has four GE-made turbines that, when running simultaneously, can power up to one million homes. But as desperation for renewable energy grows, Switzerland and its neighbors need all the help they can get. Switzerland’s newest addition to the power grid will help safeguard the country (as well as other parts of Europe) against power shortages and help to supplement wind power, another one of Switzerland’s domestic sources of renewable energy.

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Report: Intel 4 Process is On Track For Production in 2022

Intel has been hard at work over the last few years trying to recover from its years-long stumble on 10nm. To catch up with its competitors, most notably TSMC, Chipzilla has launched an audacious plan. Catching up and then overtaking TSMC requires Intel to advance five nodes in four years, which is an unprecedented pace of development. Given the company’s recent track record you would be in good company if you were skeptical of its ability to adhere to such a schedule. Intel, however, seems hellbent on following through with it.

To these ends, a new report from Digitimes claims sources say Intel is right on schedule for its next major node shrink. It will be transitioning from Intel 7 (10nm) to Intel 4 (7nm) later this year. It’s the first major node shrink for Intel since it moved from 14nm to 10nm in 2018.

Digitimes cites sources within Intel confirming Intel’s right on target for Meteor Lake according to Tom’s Hardware. It’s expected to enter high volume production in the second half of 2022. This will be a breakthrough product for Intel. It’s not only its first 7nm CPU, but its first tile-based chip as well. It also marks the beginning of Intel’s use of EUV lithography, making it the last of the big foundries to adopt this technology. Intel has lofty goals for its 7nm process. It expects to offer a 20 percent performance boost in the same power envelope as Intel 7. It can also offer a 40 percent reduction in power at the same clocks. Intel says this node will be optimized for high-performance silicon. Thus, it will likely be used for its own processors as opposed to products for foundry customers.

Although Intel’s 12th and 13th generation CPUs use hybrid cores, they still use a monolithic design. That ends with Meteor Lake, as the company switches to a tile-based layout. This will mark the first time the company combines tiles from different nodes on one package. It will create the I/O and CPU tiles on Intel 4. The other two will be made by TSMC. The GPU tile will be a 3nm part, while the SoC will be N4/N5. If all that wasn’t enough to chew on, it’s also using Foveros to connect the dies laterally and vertically.

As you can see, Intel 4 is a lot of “firsts” for the company. Several novel technologies have to come together perfectly, making it quite the engineering feat. Now, you could say AMD has been doing tiles for years now, and Intel is late to the party. That’s also true, but as you can see the implementations are radically different. Either way, it’s a good sign that Intel is on track to deliver on its roadmap. If it’s able to successfully execute this node shrink, it should help silence the naysayers. If that’s not enough, Pat Gelisinger recently brandished an 18A wafer (top of article). He bragged that the company’s most advance node is already six months ahead of schedule. It is due to arrive in 2024.

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Lock Screen Ads Are Coming to Android Phones in The US

Research shows that people unlock their phones more than 100 times per day. More often than not, they see the lock screen while doing it. That’s a major advertising opportunity, according to Glance. This company has been active overseas for several years, stuffing sponsored content on phones from numerous manufacturers. Now, Glance is reportedly heading for the US with carrier partnerships, and the first Glance-integrated phones could launch in the next few months.

Glance is a subsidiary of mobile marketing firm InMobi, which is based in India. The Glance lock screen shows up on more than 400 million Android phones across Asia, where it can replace the standard system lock screen. It appears at first like any other lock screen with large HD images, and you can still access notifications or quick settings in the system UI. However, Glance tries to grab your attention with messages aiming to get you to engage with a news feed and other info. The entire experience is interspersed with sponsored content that earns money for Glance.

As reported by TechCrunch, the partnership with carriers is a change for Glance, which works directly with device makers in Asia. That just speaks to the differences in how phones are sold in the two regions. In the US, most people buy phones directly from their carriers, often on a payment plan, and carriers have a huge amount of control over the software. In Asia, it’s more common to purchase an unlocked phone outright from a retailer. Consumers there have many more budget phone options, and OEMs turn a profit by selling in high volumes. Services like Glance can make these cheap phones more profitable, and the US carriers are certainly not going to turn up their noses at more money.

It’s unclear which phones US carriers will equip with Glance or what the interactions will look like. It’s almost guaranteed to be a mess, even if they focus on inexpensive phones. In the past, there were apps in the Play Store that attempted to advertise on the lock screen, but Google banned them in 2018. People with Glance-infused phones in Asia also regularly complain about the service wasting mobile data and causing their devices to lag.

This is not the first time Android phones in the US have sported lock screen ads. Amazon briefly experimented with the Kindle model for smartphones. Starting in 2016, it offered discounted versions of budget phones with some added Amazon apps and ads on the lock screen. It was a bad experience, and Amazon decided to end the practice in 2018 — the same year Google banned lock screen ads in the Play Store… weird! It will be interesting to see if carriers can make Glance work in the US. I certainly hope not, though.

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The EU Passes Legislation to Regulate Apple, Google, And Other Big Tech Firms

In the United States, both sides of the political spectrum have been expressing concern over the actions of Big Tech. Although, they can’t agree on why we should be concerned. In Europe, parties have come together to pass the Digital Services Package (DSP), a bundle of legislation that will force companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon to adjust their practices in myriad ways. Some have pointed to the DSP as a model for future US legislation, but it goes much further than the typical business-friendly legislation in the US.

The Digital Services Package consists of two parts: the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act. The legislation was proposed in 2020 and has now been adopted by the European Commission with the aim of creating a comprehensive rulebook for tech companies that will preserve privacy and choice in the marketplace. For the companies it targets, the Digital Services Package is going to mean a lot of regulatory monitoring.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is all about regulating the companies that operate “core platform services” like app stores, search engines, and more. Small companies won’t have to fret over the provisions in the DMA, but big tech will. What marks a company for DMA regulation? The legislation creates a legal framework for so-called “Gatekeepers,” which have a significant impact on the EU market, operate important consumer gateways, and have a large enough market share that they aren’t going anywhere. The EU expects to designate 10-15 gatekeepers, along with smaller firms in lesser roles as “emerging gatekeepers” that could become dominant in the near future.

Gatekeepers will have a range of obligations to ensure consumer welfare and the fairness of digital markets. For example, gatekeepers will not be allowed to leverage their dominant market position to give unfair preference to their other products and services — something that could irk Google and Facebook. Advertising is also a major focus of the DMA, which connects it with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to ensure data portability and privacy.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) is similar to the DMA but it focuses on the behavior of online “intermediaries” like internet service providers, cloud services, messaging, and social networks. It seeks to regulate the role of these companies in connecting consumers to online services and content.

The DSA requires designated firms to maintain regulatory compliance officers, take action to remove illegal content, and work to protect the rights of consumers. For example, users can flag content as illegal or harmful, or even file complaints about a platform’s moderation policy. It also bans some of the more shady methods of ad targeting and user tracking. However, it does not set EU-wide rules about what kinds of content are illegal — it’s just a framework to ensure users have tools to protect themselves.

The EU’s new laws have teeth, too. Gatekeepers that violate the DMA can be fined between four and 20 percent of the company’s worldwide annual revenue. Violations of the DSA can be punished with fines of up to six percent of annual revenue. The DMA will be enforceable in six months, and the DSA will be live on January 1, 2024.

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IDC: Apple, Sony Will Challenge Meta’s VR Dominance in 2023

Even though Virtual Reality (VR) has been around for awhile now, it’s never completely caught on with gamers. Reasons for this vary, but one contributing factor is there’s not many modern, updated headsets to choose from. Today, there’s really only one affordable option in town; the Meta Quest 2 headset. It controls the vast majority of the VR market due to its affordable price and great performance. That’s about to change though, according to a new report from IDC. Apple is widely reported to be entering the market soon with a mixed reality device. Sony has also announced its second generation VR hardware for the Playstation 5. This means Meta is about to get some serious competition for the first time. Given the investments by Apple and Sony, it could radically alter the VR landscape.

IDC’s latest report shows that Meta currently controls 90 percent of the VR market. That’s all thanks to its Quest 2 headset. The company with the second-highest global market share is a Chinese company named Pico. It’s actually owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance. Though it mainly operates in China, it’s still penetrated various global commercial markets. Despite that limitation, it holds a 4.5 percent market share. The remaining companies each hold less than a four percent share. They include DPVR, HTC, and iQIYI. We’ve never heard of DPVR and iQIYI either. These are global stats mind you, not just for the US.

IDC predicts Meta’s Project Cambria and Apple’s headset will cause a sharp rise in VR headset prices into next year. (Image: IDC)

As you can see, Meta has no serious challengers to its VR dominance. However, IDC doesn’t think subsidizing the hardware is a viable long-term strategy. “Meta continues to pour dollars into developing the metaverse but the strategy of promoting low-cost hardware at the expense of profitability isn’t sustainable in the long run,” said Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager for IDC. As we’ve reported previously, Meta’s Reality Labs VR division is a money pit. The company has poured billions of dollars into it in the previous years. At the same time, Meta does plan to earn billions from the metaverse, eventually. Zuckerberg recently stated he expects it to be a thriving marketplace in 2030.

The solution to Meta’s revenue woes is Project Cambria. It’s the company’s first high-end headset, and it will be launching in 2022. No pricing is available yet, but it will likely be at least twice as expensive as the $400 Quest 2. IDC believes it will begin to shift the entire market away from affordable headsets to more expensive offerings. Ubrani stated, “The good news is that the upcoming productivity-oriented headset from Meta will serve as the starting point for the company’s pivot towards higher revenue generating hardware and will also help provide an uplift in end-user pricing for the entire industry as average selling prices creep up and the tech substantially improves.”

The fact that Meta is launching Cambria right when Apple is expected to enter the market sets up an epic clash between the two rivals. Apple’s device will be expensive, and also not metaverse-friendly. It will also not ship in high volume due to its price. Instead, it will be a “toe in the water” for early adopters and diehard Apple fans. At the same time, Sony is expected to begin selling its PSVR2 hardware this year. It announced the radically upgraded hardware awhile ago, but it still hasn’t launched. Also, in the US, Sony ranks second in market share to Meta, so it’s a formidable competitor.

Next year is predicted to be a crucial time for the industry. Both because of the titans clashing, and because of the arrival of next-gen hardware. IDC expects VR shipments to increase by 26 percent for 2022, and that rate will only increase next year. Which company will come out on top when the dust settles is anyone’s guess. However, Meta has every advantage at its disposal right now.

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Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Intel’s Raptor Lake to Support Both DDR4-3200 And DDR5-5600

Intel’s Alder Lake spearheaded the company’s efforts to turn the tide against AMD. It was successful too, earning praise similar to “Intel is back” from many reviewers. Now that Alder Lake is in the history books, the company now turns to its successor, Raptor Lake. It will be an enhanced version of Alder Lake, as Intel is using its famous tick-tock strategy again. Despite the similarities between the two architectures, one lingering question was whether or not Intel would continue to support DDR4 memory. It did so with Alder Lake, but that launched last year when DDR5 memory was almost non-existent. It has now been confirmed that Intel will indeed support both memory types on its upcoming platform. The news comes from a leaked slide Intel showed to sales teams in China.

The slide was posted by a Twitter uses named @9550pro and it lays out in tidy detail what to expect from Intel’s upcoming Raptor Lake-S platform. Support for DDR4-32oo is unchanged from Alder Lake. Still, it wasn’t clear if Intel would drop it in order to get people to adopt DDR5 instead. The fact that it’s keeping it around for one more generation is good news for upgraders on a budget. It will also help Raptor Lake appeal to more people than if it removed DDR4 support. On the DDR5 side of the equation, the news here is it’s upping the frequencies a bit. Alder Lake maxed out at DDR5-4800, but it will supports speeds up to 5600 on Raptor Lake. It also notes there are “additional PCIe 4.0 lanes for the chipset” but it doesn’t say how many.

(Image: Baidu)

News of support for DDR4 is somewhat surprising, but also welcome. DDR5 memory is still quite expensive and has not seen widespread adoption yet because of it. It’s also only supported on certain Intel-based Z690 motherboards. The rest only support DDR4 currently. It’s also a shot across the bow of AMD, as its upcoming socket, AM5, will likely be DDR5 only. This isn’t confirmed, but it seems like AMD is keen on offering a “next generation” platform. Such a future-looking platform would have no place for antiquated technology like DDR4. It also helps with alliteration in marketing to say DDR5, PCIe 5, socket AM5. Having support for more affordable DDR4 memory could certainly sway upgraders trying to decide between the two platforms though.

Intel’s Raptor Lake is eagerly anticipated as Alder Lake is a solid foundation to improve upon. It’s being touted by Intel as offering more of everything: more cores, more overclocking, and more performance. So far we know the flagship Core i9-13900K will feature eight P-cores and 16 E-cores, for a total of 32 threads. This is an eight-thread increase from Alder Lake’s 24-thread maximum. It’s been rumored that Intel is targeting a 6GHz frequency range for its flagship part. Alder Lake topped out at 5.5GHz on a single core for its binned Core i9-12900KS. AMD has also been talking up overclocking for Zen 4 too. At Computex it showed its upcoming CPU running at 5.5GHz as well. It seems this currently cold war-esque battle will rage anew once both platforms launch later this year.

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