Ask GN 47: Multitasking vs Gaming Perf, X300 ITX

By Steve Burke Published March 31, 2017 at 5:36 pm

Hardware

This 47th episode of Ask GN features questions pertaining to test execution and planning for multitasking benchmarks, GPU binning, Ryzen CPU binning, X300 mITX board availability, and more. We provide some insights as to plans for near-future content, like our impending i7-2600K revisit, and quote a few industry sources who answered questions in this week's episode.

Of note, we worked with VSG of Thermal Bench to talk heatpipe size vs. heatpipe count, then spoke with EVGA and ASUS about their GPU allocation and pretesting processes (popularly, "binning," though not quite the same). Find the new episode below, with timestamps to follow the embed:

Timestamps

1:13: Cool Andromeda data

1:54 Paraphrasing Zeta: User: "I'd like to know if the heatpipe count or surface area matters more on an air cooler. For example [assume all else is equal], more heatpipes of smaller size or fewer heatpipes of larger size - which is better?"

6:06 Surpuppa: "Question for next Ask GN or an idea for an entire episode: How does multitasking affect game performance? If I have a few chrome tabs, a stream, skype, discord, steam and battlenet etc open at the same time, is my performance affected much? Maybe see how Ryzen can combat this with its many cores?"

9:49 Omar Bahaa: "When a company is selling the same exact GPU with different factory overclocks for a price premium, do they have the same overclocking headroom (neglecting silicon lottery) or are they binned? I am asking about the normal not like the known to be binned KINGPIN cards. In my case I'm specifically looking for the XFX RX 480 GTR, one version runs at 1288 MHz and the other runs at 1338 MHz for $20 price premium (MSRP)?"

14:29 Comanso Rowlett: "How does Ryzen chip binning work? I can barely see a difference when overclocking all 3 of the R7 line up, so what's different apart from the price tag? Is this to do with ASIC quality?"

18:37 Ethan Lauchman: "will evga make amd video card?"

19:23 Orion Agappe: "Where are the AM4 X300 Mobos?"

20:04 Ata Vax: "can you do benchmarks with old overclocked 2600k and 3770k and compare them to stock 6700k and 7700k in gaming benchmarks to show how feasible it is to overclock your old CPU to compete with new ones? I know my 4.8Ghz 2600k outperforms a stock 6700k in CPUZ's benchmark, but would like to see how they compare in real gaming benchmarks."

Host: Steve Burke
Video: Andrew Coleman

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.