Tag: Reviews

Introduction

The Kioxia brand was established around 2018/2019, after Toshiba sold its SSD and memory branch “Toshiba Memory.” The company now produces flash memory for its own products, but also WD and SanDisk. Part of the original Toshiba SSD business was formed in 2014, when Toshiba bought the famous OCZ brand. Kioxia later acquired the SSD maker Lite-On. Unfortunately, first party Kioxia SSD products are not available in the United States.

In today’s review we are taking a look at the Kioxia Exceria Plus G4, which, as the name suggests is the fourth generation of the company’s “Exceria Plus” solid-state-drive. What’s new with the G4 is that it is Kioxia’s first consumer SSD that introduces support for the PCI-Express Gen 5 interface. We reviewed the Exceria Plus G3 last year, the new G4 uses a Phison E31T controller instead of the E21 on the G3, and the NAND flash is Kioxia’s 218-layer 3D TLC (vs 112-layer 3D TLC on the G3). This E31T+218L TLC combination is used on other drives, too, like the Corsair MP700 Elite, PNY CS2150 and MSI Spatium M560.

The Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 is available in capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB. While Kioxia doesn’t sell these drives in the States, pricing in Europe is €112 for the 1 TB model and €190 for the 2 TB variant, including 20% VAT, which we converted to $100 and $170 respectively. Endurance for these models is set to 600 TBW and 1200 TBW, respectively. Kioxia offers a five-year warranty with the Exceria Plus G4.

Introduction

MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Gaming Trio OC is a premium custom-design rendition of NVIDIA’s new performance-segment GPU that launched earlier this month. The Gaming series of graphics cards played a pivotal role in building the MSI brand since its introduction in the early 2010s. Even though it’s been supplanted at by the SUPRIM and Vanguard lines of enthusiast custom design brands the Gaming Trio still offers a compelling combination of product design, aesthetics, cooler capabilities, and factory OC. The GeForce RTX 5070 is possibly the most important model in the RTX 50-series Blackwell generation yet. It targets the broadest segment of the PC gaming market, offering maxed out gameplay at 1440p, including with ray tracing; or 1080p high refresh-rate gameplay.

The new Blackwell graphics architecture introduces Neural Rendering, a new technology in consumer 3D graphics that combines objects created by a generative AI model with conventional raster 3D scenes much in the same way as RTX brings ray traced objects to it. You need little introduction to the awesome capabilities of generative AI models to create photorealistic images and video, and can imagine its impact on gaming. AI hence plays a bigger role in rendering, and isn’t just relegated to the DLSS upscaler. This is made possible due to a new hardware-based scheduler component called the AI Management Processor (AMP), which lets the GPU accelerate AI models and render graphics in tandem.

The new Blackwell SM sees all 128 CUDA cores being capable of concurrent FP32 and INT32 math; only half the cores in an older Ada generation SM were capable of INT32. The shader execution reordering engine of Blackwell comes with the ability to reorder neural shaders. The 5th Gen Tensor core leverages FP4 data formats to increase throughput in lieu of precision. The 4th Gen RT comes with even more fixed function hardware, this time to enable Mega Geometry—a concept similar to Mega Textures, which allows ray traced objects to have exponentially higher triangle counts by leveraging hierarchies.

The GeForce RTX 5070 debuts the new GB205 silicon, the company’s third gaming GPU based on the architecture. The RTX 5070 nearly maxes it out, enabling 48 out of 50 streaming multiprocessors present on the silicon. This works out to 6,144 CUDA cores, 192 Tensor cores, 48 RT cores, and 192 TMUs. The RTX 5070 gets all 80 ROPs present on the silicon, which is an increase over the 64 that the RTX 4070 came with. It also gets more on-die cache, with 48 MB on tap, compared to the 36 MB of the RTX 4070. While the memory size hasn’t changed—it’s still only 12 GB—the memory bandwidth sees a significant 33% increase thanks to the 28 Gbps GDDR7 memory being used.

The MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Gaming Trio OC features a very similar board design as the RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC+ we recently reviewed. It is a slightly toned down version of the Tri Frozr 4 cooler MSI debuted with the Vanguard family of graphics cards, in that the cooler doesn’t get a vapor chamber baseplate—it uses a nickel-plated copper plate—and has fewer heat pipes, but has all other innovations by MSI for this generation, including a new aluminium fin arrangement that maximizes turbulence for heat dissipation; and the latest generation of StormForce axial airflow fans. MSI is giving the RTX 5070 factory overclocked speeds of 2610 MHz compared to 2512 MHz reference. The company is pricing the RTX 5070 Gaming Trio OC at $650, a $100 premium over the NVIDIA baseline price for the RTX 5070.

Introduction

Today we are reviewing the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5090, the company’s second premium custom-design graphics card based on the flagship new generation GPU by NVIDIA. For the RTX 5090, ASUS offers the ROG Astral series as its most premium custom design, followed by the TUF Gaming we’re looking at today. There are no ROG Strix or Prime series models based on the RTX 5090. The TUF Gaming series has over the years risen from being a value-segment brand to something premium. These cards are endowed by fairly powerful cooling solutions with heavy heatsinks and airy cooler shrouds designed to expose most of the heatsink for airflow, which is why ASUS refers to the cooling solution as the Ventilated Exoskeleton.

The GeForce RTX 5090 needs little introduction at this point—it’s the fastest gaming GPU money can buy, and is the flagship of the RTX 50-series Blackwell generation. The card is designed for 4K Ultra HD gaming with maxed out settings, including ray tracing; with DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation unlocking new use-cases, such as 4K high refresh-rate (144 Hz or even 240 Hz), and 8K. The GPU is endowed with nearly double the number crunching machinery as the next-fastest one from the lineup, the RTX 5080, and double its memory size, with nearly double the memory bandwidth. These prove crucial not just for high-resolution gaming, but also assist with what NVIDIA is trying to accomplish with Blackwell—bring AI closer to gaming.

The new Blackwell graphics architecture introduces a potentially revolutionary new technology called Neural Rendering. You already know about the incredible power of generative AI in conjuring photorealistic images and video, and NVIDIA figured if a locally running generative AI model could create objects for the game that are combined with conventional raster 3D graphics, much like ray traced objects are. To this effect, NVIDIA worked with Microsoft to standardize the technology, giving applications direct access to the Tensor cores. The company introduced a new hardware scheduler for all the AI acceleration resources, called the AI Management Processor (AMP).

The new Blackwell generation CUDA core offers generational IPC uplifts, and concurrent FP32 and INT32 capability on all cores in an SM. The shader execution reordering engine comes with support for neural shaders. The 4th generation RT cores come with even more dedicated hardware, including preparation for Mega Geometry—a concept that increases geometric complexity of ray traced objects. The 5th generation Tensor cores come with support for the FP4 data format for even more throughput by tracing in precision. The display and media engines receive significant upgrades, including support for hardware flip-metering and 4:2:2 video formats. The former also plays a crucial role in enabling Multi Frame Generation.

Introduced with DLSS 4, Multi Frame Generation is the logical next step to Frame Generation introduced with the RTX 40-series, it lets the GPU generate up to three frames following a conventionally rendered one, entirely using AI. The DLSS 4 feature set itself sees the replacement of older convoluted neural networks (CNN) based AI models with newer transformer-based models that are more accurate, and improve image quality for upscaling, frame generation, and ray reconstruction. While Multi Frame Generation is exclusive to the RTX 50-series, the rest of the DLSS 4 feature set is available even for the RTX 40-series and RTX 30-series.

The GeForce RTX 5090 is based on the GB202, the largest GPU in the family that attains its size because NVIDIA hasn’t switched to a new process node to manufacture these chips—they’re based on the same NVIDIA 4N process node as the RTX 40-series Ada generation. All energy efficiency upgrades you see are purely a function of the architecture. The RTX 5090 features as many as 21,760 CUDA cores across 170 SM, along with 680 Tensor cores, 170 RT cores, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. The memory subsystem sees a massive upgrade over the RTX 4090, you now get 32 GB of memory across a 512-bit wide GDDR7 memory bus, and with a speed of 28 Gbps, you have a mammoth 1,792 GB/s of memory bandwidth on tap.

The ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 5090 features the most premium version of the TUF Gaming Ventilated Exoskeleton design, with two-tone metal surfaces on the frame, a trio of the company’s latest Axial-Tech fans, and a heavy cooling solution that uses a vapor chamber plate to pull heat from the GPU. There are as many as 12 heat pipes that transfer heat from the GPU and memory across the aluminium fin-stack. The TUF Gaming comes at reference clock speeds, but there’s also a TUF OC model that’s clocked higher. ASUS is pricing the TUF Gaming RTX 5090 at $2,450, a $450 premium over the $2000 MSRP, although we’ve seen this card sell for nearly $4,000.

Introduction

Dough, formerly known as Eve, prides itself on being a community-driven gaming monitor brand. The company actively (and publicly) communicates with its customers through the r/doughcommunity subreddit, discussing product features and upcoming updates as well as tackling issues. This approach is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s great to see a manufacturer that proactively shares information about its products and is willing to face customer inquiries head-on. On the other hand, as you can imagine, the most vocal members of such communities are usually the ones with something to complain about. As a result, the subreddit paints a fairly bleak picture; at a quick glance, you might get the impression that Dough’s monitors are barely operational, which doesn’t match my two-month experience using the Dough Spectrum Black 32 at all.

The Spectrum Black 32 is the company’s current flagship product. It’s a 31.5-inch 4K OLED monitor equipped with LG Display’s third-generation WOLED panel with MLA+ (Micro Lens Array Plus) technology, which maximizes light emission through a layer of micrometer-sized convex lenses to achieve very high peak brightness. On the gaming front, the Spectrum Black 32 boasts a 240 Hz refresh rate at 4K, but the monitor also supports Dual-Mode functionality—originally introduced by LG—which switches it to Full HD at 480 Hz with the push of a single button.

There are three variants of the Spectrum Black 32 available. The one I’m reviewing has a matte screen coating and comes with no USB hub. It’s equipped with a single USB-C port, which can only be used for firmware updates. Then there are two variants with Gorilla Glass 3 covering the panel: one without a USB hub and one with it. The USB hub variant offers a USB-C port with DP Alt Mode and 100 W Power Delivery, a 10 Gbps USB-C upstream port, two 10 Gbps USB-C downstream ports, and two 10 Gbps USB Type-A downstream ports. This variant also has an integrated KVM switch and a DisplayPort 2.1 port instead of DisplayPort 1.4, supporting daisy-chaining. Additionally, there are three 27-inch 1440p variants of the Spectrum Black available – with and without a USB hub/Gorilla Glass – using a similar WOLED MLA+ panel and offering the aforementioned Dual-Mode functionality.

Specifications

5

on Mar 10th, 2025,

Manufacturer: XPG

Packaging & Contents »

Introduction

I would like to thank XPG for supplying the review sample.

The XPG STARKER AIR BTF is the latest in the series of mid-tower cases, but with the ability to also accommodate BTF based motherboards. Bundled with four fans, the Starker Air BTF is available in black or white and aims to provide a balanced mix of features and functionality for the modern mainstream gamer. To stand out, the case also has a few additional tricks up its sleeve, so lets dive right in.

Specifications

XPG Starker Air BTF
Case Type:	Mid-Tower
Material:	Steel, plastic, and tempered glass
Weight:	8.75 kg
Slots:	7 (or 4 vertical)
Drive Bays:	2x Internal 2.5/3.5″ 2x Internal 2.5″ & 1x 3.5″ on E-ATX bracket
Motherboard Form Factors:	Mini-ITX, microATX, ATX (BTF Compatible) and E-ATX
Dimensions:	496 x 242 x 464 mm
Front Door/Cover:	N/A
Front Fans:	3x 120 or 140 mm (3x 120 mm ARGB fans pre-installed)
Rear Fans:	1x 120 or 140 mm (1x 120 mm ARGB fan pre-installed)
Top Fans:	3x 120/2x 140 mm (optional)
Bottom Fans:	N/A
Side Fans:	2x 120 mm (with E-ATX bracket removed)
Front Radiator:	360 mm / 280 mm
Rear Radiator:	120 mm / 140 mm
Top Radiator:	360 mm / 280 mm
Bottom Radiator:	N/A
Side Radiator:	N/A
I/O:	1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C 2x USB 3.0 1x Audio Combo
Fan/LED Controller:	ARGB Controller with dedicated LED button
Compatibility:	CPU Cooler: 180 mm GPU: 390 mm PSU: 220 mm

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• Mar 5th, 2025 Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ Review – Beating NVIDIA
• Mar 7th, 2025 XFX Radeon RX 9070 XT Mercury OC Magnetic Air Review
• Mar 5th, 2025 ASUS Radeon RX 9070 TUF OC Review
• Mar 7th, 2025 MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk Max Wi-Fi Review
• Mar 4th, 2025 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition Review
• Mar 6th, 2025 Corsair Vengeance RGB CUDIMM DDR5-8800 48 GB CL42 Review
• Nov 6th, 2024 AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review – The Best Gaming Processor
• Feb 20th, 2025 ASUS GeForce RTX 5070 Ti TUF OC Review
• Feb 20th, 2025 MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC+ Review
• Feb 19th, 2025 MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Ventus 3X OC Review

Introduction

We have with us the XFX Radeon RX 9070 XT Mercury OC Magnetic Air. This is the company’s most premium custom-design rendition of AMD’s new performance-segment GPU that’s making waves for restoring competition. The XFX Mercury OC comes with the company’s heaviest and most capable cooling solution with an innovative and tool-free fan removal design. It also comes with a powerful VRM solution and a triple 8-pin power connector setup to ensure adequate overclocking headroom, given that the RX 9070 XT will be the top graphics card in the RX 9000 series.

The new AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is designed to offer maxed out gaming experiences at 1440p, including with ray tracing, as well as 4K Ultra HD gaming at acceptable performance levels. The GPU is based on AMD’s latest RDNA 4 graphics architecture that offers a generational leap in performance per compute unit (CU) over the previous RDNA 3, allowing AMD to create a lean GPU that can remain competitive even as prices drop over time. The biggest strides AMD has taken are in the areas of ray tracing performance and AI acceleration.

The new RDNA 4 RT engine offers a 100% gain in ray tracing performance, lowering the cost of enabling it in games. Advances made in AI acceleration throughput paved the way for AMD to innovate FSR 4, the biggest update to its performance enhancement technology suite so far. FSR 4 uses an AI ML-based upscaling algorithm to reconstruct details in upscaled frames. This offers significant improvements to image quality at every performance preset over FSR 3.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT is based on the 4 nm Navi 48 silicon, which it maxes out. The company built this generation of GPUs on the TSMC N4P foundry node, which improves efficiency over the TSMC N5 node that the previous generation Navi 31 and Navi 32 chips used for their compute dies. Navi 48 is a traditional monolithic chip, and not a chiplet-based one, and so all components, including the memory controllers and Infinity Cache, are built on the newer node, resulting in a significantly smaller chip than Navi 31, but at comparable transistor counts.

The RX 9070 XT gets all 64 RDNA 4 compute units (CUs) present on the Navi 48, resulting in 4,096 stream processors, 128 AI accelerators, and 64 ray accelerators. Other key specs include 256 TMUs, and 128 ROPs. The RX 9070 XT comes with 16 GB of memory across a 256-bit memory bus, but this is the older generation GDDR6, running at 20 Gbps, and yielding 640 GB/s of memory bandwidth. AMD probably chose the older GDDR6 to give itself better headroom to wage price-wars against its competition, by relying on architecture-level innovations to overcome comparatively lower bandwidth when compared to the competition, namely the RTX 5070 Ti.

The XFX Radeon RX 9070 XT Mercury OC Magnetic Air offers the company’s highest factory overclock, with a 2570 MHz Game clock compared to 2400 MHz reference. It features a unique set of axial airflow fans that are held in place with a magnetic interlock. The back of the fan hub and the base of the fan frame come with circular grooves that are magnetized. These grooves have the fan’s electrical traces running through them. You pull the fans out of the cooler manually, but without needing any tools. This allows you to keep the fans and portions of the heatsink underneath clean. The cooler also comes with a tastefully executed RGB lighting setup along the top-edge. There are enthusiast features such as dual-BIOS and ARGB headers to sync your rig’s lighting to that of the card. XFX is pricing the RX 9070 XT Mercury OC Magnetic Air at $800, a whopping 33% premium over the $600 baseline price.

Introduction

Corsair is a well-known name in the US and European computer markets, recognized by its distinctive yellow packaging that lines retail store shelves. With years of experience in the computer industry, the company has built a reputation for delivering high-quality gaming peripherals, storage solutions, cooling systems, power supplies, and pre-built computers. Its memory division is particularly notable, consistently pushing the boundaries of emerging technologies while maintaining exceptional customer service.

Corsair’s memory portfolio is diverse, catering to various consumer needs with products ranging from laptop DDR3 SODIMMs to enthusiast-grade DDR5 memory for desktops. The company has successfully transitioned its popular Vengeance and Dominator product lines to DDR5, offering a range of options from budget-friendly to high-capacity premium solutions.

This review focuses on the 48 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-8800 CUDIMM memory kit, which boasts enthusiast-grade timings of 42-54-54-141 at 1.45 V and an Intel XMP profile of 8800 MT/s. Compared to the baseline JEDEC 6400 MT/s DDR5 supported by Intel’s LGA 1851 platform, this kit promises significant performance gains. Designed specifically for consumers with Intel Ultra 200 series CPUs and later, we’ll put this CUDIMM memory kit to the test, starting with an examination of its specifications.

Specifications

Introduction

AMD’s next generation of gaming graphics cards is here to breathe life into a market stiflingly inflated prices, and we have with us the Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+. The NITRO line of graphics cards represents the very best in graphics card design by Sapphire, one of AMD’s oldest and most important board partners, and given that the RX 9070 XT is the top-spec part from the RX 9000 series, the company has thrown everything and the kitchen sink into this product. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is a performance-segment graphics card that AMD claims is capable of 4K Ultra HD gaming. The company goes as far as to claim that this GPU has “everything you need” for that resolution, at a confidence-inspiring starting price of $600, which is slightly above that of the GeForce RTX 5070 that NVIDIA is launching today.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT is powered by RDNA 4, the fourth generation of the RDNA graphics architecture that has seen AMD’s return to competitiveness in the gaming GPU market. The RX 5000 series had enough performance to disrupt RTX 20-series Turing, causing it to launch the RTX 20 Super series; the RX 6000 RDNA 2 series was commercially a heyday for AMD, as that’s when the crypto mining boom soaked up all premium and enthusiast GPUs, while the products themselves squared off well against NVIDIA’s RTX 30-series Ampere. The RX 7000 series powered by RDNA 3 fell sightly behind in competitiveness, and AMD identified a crucial reason—naming.

While the RX 6800 XT performed in the same league as the RTX 3080 and ray tracing performance wasn’t a big differentiator, its successor, the RX 7800 XT was significantly slower than the RTX 4080, which wasn’t just faster but also priced nearly double that of the AMD card. Meanwhile, gamers began more direct comparisons between AMD and NVIDIA SKUs based on naming, and found that even the RTX 4070 Ti was a faster pick than the RX 7800 XT. AMD had to come up with the RX 7900 GRE, which offered comparable performance at a better priced, but only compounded the problem of naming—you now had an RX 7900 series product compete with an RTX 4070 series. It is to address exactly this, that AMD decided to give its gaming GPU series a significant change with product naming.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT is part of the Radeon 9000 series, and within it, is a xx70-segment product. Its name guides gamers to compare it with the RTX 5070 and the RTX 5070 Ti, although at a starting price of $600, the company aims to offer better performance than the RTX 5070 at better price-performance than the RTX 5070 Ti, which starts at $750. With the RX 9000 series, AMD is withdrawing from the enthusiast segment. It’s hard to speculate why, but this means that the company gets to flex its engineering muscle at making the RX 9070 XT at least a segment-best GPU.

The RDNA 4 graphics architecture is purpose built for two things—to pack the most performance per mm² die-area, and to allow AMD to wage price-wars against the RTX 5070 series SKUs. The company claims a significant increase in performance-per-CU over the previous RDNA 3 architecture, with which it can achieve its performance targets using 64 CU spread across 4 shader engines. The company also claims a 100% increase in ray tracing performance over RDNA 3, which should reduce the performance cost of ray tracing. There is a similar leap in AI acceleration throughput, now close to 1600 AI TOPS, paving the way for FSR 4, the biggest upgrade to the FSR suite of performance enhancements. FSR 4 uses a new AI ML-based upscaler that offers superior image quality at every performance preset.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 that we’re also reviewing today, share a common silicon, the 4 nm Navi 48, which the RX 9070 XT maxes out. Unlike NVIDIA, which stuck to the exact same process node for the Blackwell generation as the Ada generation, AMD gave the Navi 48 two key process-level upgrades. Firstly, the company switched to the 4 nm TSMC N4P node, which offers clock speed and efficiency upgrades over the previous TSMC N5 node, and secondly, Navi 48 is a monolithic silicon unlike Navi 32, which was a chiplet-based GPU with a 5 nm GCD and 6 nm MCDs. The entire Navi 48 chip is made on 4 nm, including the memory controllers and Infinity Cache, and then there are power management and IPC improvements from the RDNA 4 architecture.

The Navi 48 silicon features 64 RDNA 4 compute units (CU), all of which are enabled on the RX 9070 XT. This works out to 4,096 stream processors, 128 AI accelerators, 64 RT accelerators, 256 TMUs, and 128 ROPs (an increase over the 96 ROPs than the Navi 32 came with). The card comes with 16 GB of memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface, although what’s interesting is that AMD stuck with older GDDR6 memory standard, using 20 Gbps memory speeds, which results in 640 GB/s of memory bandwidth. AMD is counting on new architecture-level features, such as out-of-order memory management, and the 64 MB Infinity Cache, to keep the RX 9070 series competitive with the GeForce RTX 5070 series.

The Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+ comes with a stunning custom design that looks like it’s a piece of jewellery. The triple-slot cooling solution features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink, and a premium high-conductivity TIM. This is probably the only premium custom design RX 9070 XT to implement a 16-pin 12V-2×6 power input, which is neatly tucked away, more on this in the picture pages. The NITRO+ also comes with a generous amount of RGB LED lighting in the form of a large RGB diffuser that spans the length of the card. The card comes with factory overclocked speeds of 2520 MHz Game clock, a generous increase over the 2400 MHz reference. Sapphire is pricing the Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+ at $730, a $130 premium over the $600 starting price for the RX 9070 XT.

Introduction

We have with us the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition graphics card. NVIDIA has had a brisk start to its new generation RTX 50-series from the top, with the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 in the enthusiast segment, and the more recent RTX 5070 Ti that sits in a gray area between performance and enthusiast. The new RTX 5070 is a more focused performance segment graphics card that brings you gaming at 1440p with maxed out settings, including ray tracing. The RTX 5070 comes in at a starting price of $550, which is significantly lower than the $750 that the RTX 5070 Ti starts at. The RTX 5070 gives you all the latest gaming technologies introduced with the Blackwell architecture it’s based on, including Neural Rendering, ray tracing that’s ready for Hyper Geometry, and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation.

The new GeForce RTX 5070 debuts NVIDIA’s third gaming GPU silicon from the Blackwell generation, the GB205, which it nearly maxes out. The RTX 5070 comes with 12 GB of memory across a 192-bit wide GDDR7 memory interface. While the memory size hasn’t changed, there is a significant 33% increase in memory bandwidth over the RTX 4070, which should come in handy to drive some of the key features being introduced with this generation.

The GeForce Blackwell graphics architecture introduces a potentially revolutionary new technology to consumer 3D graphics, Neural Rendering. The concept taps into the incredible potential of generative AI to create photorealistic graphics. An AI model running in tandem with the graphics rendering stack creates neural objects that are combined with traditional raster 3D much like how ray traced objects are combined to it. NVIDIA even worked with Microsoft to standardize this at the API level, giving applications direct access to the Tensor cores, and for the SM-level shader execution reordering to support neural shaders. Neural Rendering capabilities are exclusive to Blackwell for now, since it relies on a specialized hardware scheduling component on the silicon, called AI Management Processor (AMP).

The new Blackwell generation CUDA core comes with generational improvements in IPC, but also concurrent FP32 and INT32 math capability on all cores in an SM. INT32 capability was only present half the cores in an SM with the previous generation Ada. The 4th Generation RT core comes with specialized hardware for even more features, including preparation for Mega Geometry, a technique with the geometry complexity of ray traced objects can be increased manyfold. The 5th generation Tensor cores come with FP4 data format support for increased throughput.

The GB205 is a lean new silicon that was given just the right specs for a product like the RTX 5070. Given the volumes of RTX 4070 NVIDIA ended up selling, the company probably realized it could do with silicon specs that are closer to those of the actual SKU specs to reduce wastage of perfectly good silicon. The GB205 physically comes with 50 streaming multiprocessors (SM) across 5 graphics processing clusters (GPCs), and the RTX 5070 nearly maxes it out by enabling 48 SM. This gives it 6,144 CUDA cores, 192 Tensor cores, 48 RT cores, and 192 TMUs. The RTX 5070 gets all 80 ROPs present on the silicon. If you recall, the previous RTX 4070 only got 64 out of the 80 ROPs on the AD104 silicon it was based on, which the RTX 4070 Ti had maxed out. There are one each of the latest NVDEC and NVENC video accelerators. The memory interface, as we mentioned, is a 192-bit wide GDDR7. Like the other chips in this generation, the RTX 5070 implements PCI-Express 5.0 x16. The GPU is clocked at speeds of up to 2512 MHz boost, while the memory ticks at 28 Gbps, yielding 672 GB/s of bandwidth. The RTX 5070 maxes out all 48 MB of L2 cache present on the silicon.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition is a slick first-party custom design by NVIDIA that’s aimed to set design and performance standards for the company’s board partners. It implements the same Dual Flow-Through cooler architecture as the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 Founders Edition cards, but is a lot more compact, and well within NVIDIA’s SFF Ready dimensions. To support its given clock speeds, the RTX 5070 comes with a total graphics power rating of 250 W, a 50 W increase over the RTX 4070. This is probably because NVIDIA is building the Blackwell generation of GPUs on the exact same NVIDIA 4N process node that the Ada generation was built on. Whatever performance per watt gains you see are purely a function of the new architecture. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition comes in at NVIDIA’s starting price for the RTX 5070, of $550.

Introduction

The FlexScan EV4340X is the largest monitor currently offered by the famous Japanese manufacturer EIZO. Sporting a 42.5-inch 4K IPS panel and a host of productivity-focused features, the FlexScan EV4340X is designed for use in control rooms, financial institutions, video surveillance centers, CAD applications, and other environments where a large panel is essential. Can you use it in an office from a normal sitting distance? You absolutely can, and if you’re looking to maximize your screen real estate, the FlexScan EV4340X is a tempting proposition. Given EIZO’s stellar reputation among monitor enthusiasts, especially those who favor professional-grade monitors, I can imagine some purchasing the FlexScan EV4340X on the spot without even diving deeper into this review, despite its $2,000 price tag (around €1,600 in Europe).

According to EIZO, the FlexScan EV4340X is ideal for hot desking – the concept where an office has no strictly assigned seating, instead allowing workers to use any available space and share it among them. This monitor is a multitasking monster, not only because of its massive 42.5-inch screen but also thanks to its 4-source Picture-by-Picture (PbP) functionality with 12 different screen layouts, an integrated KVM switch, and a host of connectivity options. These include four video inputs (one of which is a USB-C input with DisplayPort Alt Mode and 94 W Power Delivery), an integrated USB hub, and a gigabit Ethernet port. You even get a handy remote control, which is primarily used to switch inputs and quickly access PbP profiles. The monitor is available in black or white; I received the former variant.

Specifications