APC_Australia_Issue_442_June_2017

More documents

Recommendations

Info

thelab » LATEST REVIEWS LABS BENCHMARK RESULTS General performance X265 (FPS) RYZEN 5 1600X 22.18 INTEL CORE I5-7600K 15.86 0 10 15 20 25 30 Multimedia performance CINEBENCH R15 SINGLE (INDEX) RYZEN 5 1600X 159 INTEL CORE I5-7600K 179 0 50 100 150 200 250 CINEBENCH R15 MULTI (INDEX) RYZEN 5 1600X 1,223 INTEL CORE I5-7600K 663 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 CPU $359 | WWW.AMD.COM AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Taking AMD’s new hexa-core hotness for a spin. When AMD pulled the wraps off its radical new Ryzen CPU, it was all about those eight awesome cores. Count ’em, Intel. The first Ryzen 7 chips blew the market for $600-plus CPUs wide open. But not everybody can unload that kind of money on a processor, especially a brand new design that also requires a motherboard upgrade. Enter the Ryzen 5 1600X. On paper, it might just be the ultimate balancing act between performance bang and efficient deployment of your hard-earned buck. The 1600X packs six cores and supports 12 threads, while a similarly priced Intel processor, the Core i5-7600K, has four cores and just four threads. And as a consequence of being the top six-core model, it also clocks in at 3.6GHz nominal and 4.0GHz turbo. It looks like a very nicely balanced chip. And for $359, it’s the mid-range CPU that we’ve all been waiting for, right? For the most part, yes. When it comes to outright multithreaded performance, it pops a cap in the head of the Intel Core i5. The Core i5-7600K manages 663 in Cinebench. The Ryzen 1600X? A massive 1,223 points, nearly double the Core i5’s capability. Admittedly, the Core i5 retains some dignity in the single-threaded version of Cinebench, with 179 points compared to the 1600X’s 159 points. However, the AMD chip looks like the better trade-off at first glance. Elsewhere, if the results aren’t quite so spectacular, AMD still chalks up some decent wins. It crunches high-quality video encoding at 22fps to the i5’s 16fps, and it motors through the Fry Render benchmark in just 3 minutes and 46 seconds — two minutes faster than the 7600K. If you want a CPU for content creation or any workload that majors on parallelism, this isn’t a race. The Intel competition is hideously, hopelessly outclassed. That’s true even taking into account the fact that the Ryzen CPU is a little more power-hungry. An extra 10 watts at the wall is surely worth it. Where the Ryzen is a little less compelling is in the games arena. When it comes to average frame rates, the 1600X delivers on that 4GHz promise. The subjective experience, however, tells a slightly different story. Total War: Attila is a great case study. Running on the Intel processor, it’s supersmooth, whether you’re up in the sky, lording it over your troops, or down in the thick of the action. But with the Ryzen CPU at the same settings and using the same video card, there’s juddering almost everywhere. There are a few reasons why. We used an Nvidia GPU, and there are at least indications that the Nvidia driver is poorly optimised for Ryzens. There are also question marks surrounding Ryzen’s basic architecture, which is composed of a pair of quad-core modules. Some latency is involved in communicating between the two quad-core modules, and that can require careful management by both OS and application to avoid performance penalties. Ryzen is brand new, so most software has yet to be tweaked to take account of such issues. Of course, most software runs OK without any modifications. On a final note, like other Ryzen processors, the 1600X has pretty much zero overclocking headroom. AMD has these things running pretty ragged. An additional 100MHz was the best we could achieve. Jeremy Laird Verdict Features Performance Value The six-core design makes this an appealing choice in some circumstances, but this is not for gamers (yet). 22 www.apcmag.com
LABS BENCHMARK RESULTS 3DMARK: FIRE STRIKE (INDEX) SAPPHIRE RADEON RX 580 NITRO+ 12,044 AMD RADEON RX 480 10,542 EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1060 3GB SC 10,251 0 3000 6000 9000 12,000 15,000 GRAPHICS CARD $420 | WWW.SAPPHIRETECH.COM Sapphire Radeon RX 580 Nitro+ Revamped, reclocked, rebadged. 3DMARK: TIMESPY DX12 SAPPHIRE RADEON RX 580 NITRO+ 4,515 AMD RADEON RX 480 3,979 EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1060 3GB SC 3,905 FAR CRY PRIMAL (FPS) NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI 52 NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 FE 48 NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 FE 49 THE DIVISION (FPS) NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI 42 NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 FE 34 NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 FE 31 RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER (FPS) NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI 12 NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 FE 11 NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 FE 9 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 05 10 15 20 25 Oh AMD... Why do you do this to us? You fight, you riot and you revolutionise the processor industry, then tease us with a brand new graphics card, only for it to be little more than a rebadge. Let’s cut straight to it, there’s very little new about the Radeon RX 580. The launch of this new GPU came with little fanfare, and with good reason. Moving from the RX 480 to the 580 provides nothing more than a slight overclock to the base card. Indeed, you could achieve the same results, by bumping up the power target to 110% and moving that clock frequency slightly higher. So why do it? Good question. We can only guess that it’s down to improvements in the manufacturing process. Rumours abound, we know that Global Foundaries (the guys who manufacture AMD’s GPUs and CPUs), use Samsung’s 14nm LPE technology in its 400 series cards. It’s possible that with the RX 500 series, GloFo is using Samsung’s (newly announced) 14nm LPU tech instead, improving power efficiency and clock speeds in the process. Which may explain the additional 30W TDP included and the slightly higher clocks. That aside, it’s the nomenclature that gets us. Traditionally with every new series of cards, you’ll get one or two rebadges. For instance, a 380 becomes a 470, a 370 becomes a 460 and so on. Dropping the price point, and improving power efficiency in the process is great for the consumer. The 580, on the other hand, has missed that beat. The RX 480, has migrated across to the 580. This would make sense if AMD was about to embark upon a new naming scheme, or even if it were to launch two new flagships with these rebadges, but that’s not the case. So why do it? If anything, these two cards should’ve been renamed the 485 and the 475. How’s it looking from a performance perspective? Well, we have to make clear that our RX 580 sample was the Sapphire Nitro+ pre overclocked, compared to our stock RX 480. In game, we saw an increase of around 10% across our titles at 1080p. Going from 61fps in Far Cry Primal to 66, 58 to 67 in The Division, and 34 to 40 in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Fairly impressive for a GPU that is essentially just a rehash. This card is aimed at those who still haven’t upgraded from AMD’s R9 300 series, or the lower end of Nvidia’s GTX 900 series. It’s a rehash on an already well priced, well manufactured graphics architecture, bringing that price to performance heritage forward into <strong>2017</strong>. It’s actually in a bit of a sweet spot. It doesn’t quite wipe Nvidia’s GTX 1060 3GB off the top of the 1080p hill, but it’s close. Couple it with a decent FreeSync 1080p monitor and you’ll be onto a winner. There’s been no official announcement from AMD yet as to when Vega may launch, although rumours speculate that it could be any time within the next few months. By the time you read this, it may well have been officially announced at Computex. Until then, you might want to hold off on those big GPU splurges. Zak Storey Verdict Features Performance Value Solid performance at 1080p, impressive value for cash, quiet and cool, but can be achieved on an RX 480 with OC. www.apcmag.com 23
Page 1: 27in PC MONITORS UNDER $300! WHY PA
Page 4 and 5: Contents Issue 442 June 2017 42 TRA
Page 6 and 7: exclusivesoftware » HOW TO DOWNLOA
Page 8 and 9: technotes » NEED TO KNOW Windows 7
Page 10 and 11: technotes » HARRY DOMANSKI LOOKS A
Page 12 and 13: technotes » GEAR WE WANT OAXIS INK
Page 14 and 15: technotes » HOW IT’S DONE About
Page 16 and 17: technotes » EPINIONS “The NBN as
Page 18 and 19: technotes » dawn of the accelerato
Page 20 and 21: technotes » dawn of the accelerato
Page 24 and 25: THE MOST FUN YOU CAN HAVE WITH YOUR
Page 26 and 27: thelab » latest reviews LABS BENCH
Page 28 and 29: The home of technology techradar.co
Page 30 and 31: thelab » latest reviews “The scr
Page 32 and 33: thelab » latest reviews WIRELESS K
Page 34 and 35: thelab » lateste reviews GAMING HE
Page 36 and 37: software » APPS FOR ALL THE PLATFO
Page 38 and 39: App Store » iOS APPS Sway Dance wi
Page 40 and 41: Linux » OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE MTPai
Page 42 and 43: superguide » transformative 2-in-1
Page 50 and 51: superguide » 2-in-1 tips & tricks
Page 52 and 53: superguide » 2-in-1 apps & games V
Page 54 and 55: superguide » 2-in-1 apps & games X
Page 56: superguide » 2-in-1 apps & games C
Page 59 and 60: Monitor specs at a glance A quick r
Page 61 and 62: $250 | WWW.PHILIPS.COM.AU 23.8 inch
Page 63 and 64: Windows 10 Creators Update: all the
Page 65 and 66: Game Mode: Too good to be true? Edg
Page 67 and 68: Take Night Light, for example. It
Page 69 and 70: No sign of Cortana? This Registry e
Page 71 and 72: Recuva works happily with all kinds
Page 73 and 74:
3 5 1 SETTINGS Many of Windows 10
Page 75 and 76:
WHAT’S THE NEXT MUST-HAVE ON YOUR
Page 77 and 78:
How to Better control Apple’s med
Page 79 and 80:
Use Disk Utility to free up space o
Page 81 and 82:
Put Elementary on your Mac FIRST ST
Page 83 and 84:
a modern AMD card meant that we cou
Page 85 and 86:
Blu-ray keys file from the URL prov
Page 87 and 88:
through S/PDIF’ with SMPLayer) un
Page 89 and 90:
C getting too much mail from Remotr
Page 91 and 92:
via your server PC. If you don’t
Page 93 and 94:
BUILDING ON A SOLID CORE The Ryzen
Page 95 and 96:
1 The Antec P9 Window comes 1 with
Page 97 and 98:
The usual updates Before loading th
Page 99 and 100:
In the beginning... In the early da
Page 101 and 102:
and aptX HD formats also getting a
Page 103 and 104:
Sony’s MDR-1000X headphones suppo
Page 105 and 106:
The Serial Monitor will output the
Page 107 and 108:
The more samples used in a DDS tabl
Page 109 and 110:
of values that represent a single s
Page 111 and 112:
Bayonetta Platinum’s ultra stylis
Page 113 and 114:
The worlds are bleak and barren, bu
show all

APC_Australia_Issue_442_June_2017

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?