Category: Uncategorized

Nvidia RTX 3000 GPU’s have been in short supply literally from the minute they launched. There have been countless forum threads, tweets and Youtube videos dedicated to how impossible its been to find and buy one of these elusive GPUs. It looks like a combination of actual user demand, short supply, and scalpers have made it almost impossible to get your hands on one of these cards.

I have been targeting the RTX 3070 to pair with my Asus VG259QM, so that I could maximise that 240Hz refresh rate. So after reading about the kerfuffle surrounding the RTX 3080 launch, I didn\’t hold out much hope that I would be able to buy one. On launch day itself (October 28), it was no surprise to see all the online stores immediately go out of stock. I took a trip down to the local PC mall, and was aghast at the marked up prices the retailers were selling the cards for. For a US$500 / S$750 GPU, the shops and scalpers were asking over S$1000!

I reached out to the distributor directly, and even they could not tell me when more stock would come in to be listed on their online store. I resigned to the fact that I would probably not get a new GPU this year, as the shortages were expected to last until 2021. So lo and behold, to my immense surprise, that same distro releasing exactly 1 piece of the Zotac RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC at 6pm on 30 October through their online store. I was randomly refreshing the online ecommerce store, and there it was – 1 piece left in stock! I have never gone through a checkout process that fast!

Five days later, I welcomed this baby to its forever home:

Granted, I did end up paying a slight markup, but it was less than 10%, so no major issues there. I was actually more worried that the online store would cancel my order, as there were numerous reports on other sites (i.e. Reddit) of that happening to other users.

So I was relieved when it shipped on Monday.

Here are the specs:
GPU GeForce RTX 3070
CUDA cores 5888
Video Memory 8GB GDDR6
Memory Bus 256-bit
Engine Clock Boost: 1755 MHz
Memory Clock 14 Gbps
PCI Express4.0 16x
Display Outputs3 x DisplayPort 1.4a (up to 7680×4320@60Hz)
HDMI 2.1* (up to 7680×4320@60Hz)
*Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable is required to support 8K/60FPS or 4K/120FPS
HDCP Support 2.3
Multi Display Capability Quad Display
Recommended Power Supply 650W
Power Consumption 220W
Power Input2 x 8-pin
DirectX12 Ultimate
OpenGL4.6
Cooling Ice Storm 2.0
Slot Size Dual Slot
Card Length231.9mm x 141.3mm x 41.5mm / 9.1\” x 5.6\” x 1.6\”
Accessories2 x Dual 6-pin to 8-pin cable
Manual

I had it installed in my rig in about 5 minutes

Damn that looks good! I fired up the 3D Mark benchmarks and these were the scores:

Time Spy: 12133
TIme Spy Extreme: 6025
Port Royal: 8038

Next, i jumped into Shadow of the Tomb Raider and ran the benchmark

130 FPS on average is crazy with those ‘Highest’ settings! And my god does the game look gorgeous with raytracing and DLSS. I’ve seen at least a 30% improvement over the RTX 2070 (which has been donated to my daughter’s PC, btw). This is probably the largest performance jump across generations I’ve seen in the last 10 years. The GPU boosted up to 1950 MHz, which is an astounding number!

I also ran GS:GO, and it was a constant 240 fps throughout the game. That is absolutely nuts!

My one concern about this card is the idle temperature. At max load through out a game, it’s peaked at 72 C, which is pretty good. However at idle, it stays at 55 C, because the fans don’t turn on until it hits 60 C. I’ve tried to use Ice Storm to plot a custom fan curve, but it doesn’t seem to stick after a restart. Might have to try Afterburner eventually.

Overall, I must say that the combination of the RTX 3070 and a high refresh rate (more the 240fps) 1080p monitor is as good as it gets in 2020, and is at least on par with the 1440p/144Hz and 4k/60Hz options. Might need to get my hands on one of those ultra wide QHD monitors. Gah, why does the AW3420DW have to be so pricey!

If you’re gaming at those higher resolutions, then I would recommend that you look at the RTX 3080 or the RTX 3090. But for 1080p, the RTX 3070 is more than enough to keep you in those high framerates.

p.s. Shireen, don’t be such a kay poh

The update bug got me. It got me good. With the recent releases of the latest generation graphics cards from Nvidia (the RTX 3000 series) and AMD (the RX 6000 series), I’ve been itching to upgrade my gaming setup. I know that it\’s more a want than a need, but when has my addiction to the latest tech ever needed any justification?

For reference, my current rig was built in 2019, and isn’t too bad:

• Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Elite
• i7 9700K
• Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3000 CL15 32GB
• Samsung 970 250Gb Evo Plus
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 2070 Mini OC
• Corsair 900D
• Windows 10 Pro
• Corsair h115i Platinum
• Corsair Hxi 850w Platinum
• 3 x Dell U2414H

The one component that I obviously need to upgrade to take advantage of my current GPU and any future (i.e. coming very soon) upgrade would be my monitors. The U2414H’s are about 5 years old, and though they are still as sharp as the day I got them, they are missing some key new features that I’ve been dying to try out.

The big one is obviously adaptive sync, which comes in 2 flavours: Nvidia’s G-Sync or AMD’s Freesync. This feature allows the frame or refresh rate of the monitor to scale up or down depending on what the GPU is capable of delivering. This benefits gamers by eliminating tearing, stuttering and judder during gameplay. I’ve seen a few demos of 144Hz displays and games in shops, and I’ve always been blown away by how smooth the games feel. I want that feeling when I\’m sitting down for a sesh at home too. Unfortunately, my current monitors are only capable of going up to 60Hz.

That’s where this bad boy comes is:

While maintaining the same profile and size of my current monitors, this little fella can boost up to 280Hz! That’s > 4 times what my current monitors can do. Its also got some other modern features like Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB) backlight strobing, which claims to improve the sharpness of the image further. Also important for me was the fact that this was an IPS monitor, which I have always found to be the best for colour reproduction. Every monitor I have is an IPS monitor, and this one would be no different!

You may be wondering why I didn’t go for a larger size and bigger resolution. The main use case for my PC is for work and productivity, and for that, nothing beats multiple monitors. I find 4K monitors to be too big for a desktop, and the size of 27 inch/1440p monitors means I can only fit 2 of them on my desk. Add on the fact that I\’ll need a top-of-the-line GPU (RTX 3090 or RX 6900) to drive them to even 60Hz, it just does not make sense for me.

One area where this monitor lacks is probably HDR. Its HDR 400 certified, but that is a pretty low bar. My 3 year old 65″ LG Oled B6 TV is so much brighter, but then it also costs me the equivalent of a couple of body parts. For a 80% productivity / 20% gaming use case the VG259QM should do just fine.

The first game I loaded up was Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and put everything on High settings. When I ran the benchmark, the FPS was usually in the 140-150fps range. During actual gameplay, it went from a high of 180 fps all the way down to 95 in some high intensity scenes. This was with ray tracing and DLSS enables. The visuals were epic!

Last month, my AC87U started acting up. It was randomly disconnecting from my wireless clients, and was often failing to handover the connections to the AC5300U. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring a portion of my infrastructure up to Wifi 6 standards.

A little bit of a background – the 87u sits near the entrance of the house, and is mainly to service the living-room, balcony and kitchen. Due to the presence of 2 large aluminum backed mirrors, I had to place the 5300u in the study room, so that it could service the 4 bedrooms.

Since the 87u was no longer fit for purpose. I was on the lookout for a new router that could integrate with my existing hardware. I had heard about the Asus AIMesh functionality, but the reviews had been poor for the first couple of iterations. But the latest reviews were starting to sound good, so I knew this was an option.

I also researched other standalone mesh systems, but the price to feature ratio did not make sense for me. I didn’t want to be paying $400 for a device that had better Wifi 6 speed, but then loses out on the configurability (?!) that I can get from the Asus WRT software and especially from the Merlin firmware. Long time readers (all 2 of you) would know I love this firmware because of the OpenVPN integration and the general performance boost.

So a quick search online and I found that Asus had more than a few options:

Source: https://www.asus.com/sg/Networking/Wireless-Routers-Products/

The Asus RT-AX56U caught my eye for a couple of reasons:

Cheapest of the lot
AI Mesh compatible
Merlin firmware compatible
Dual band (Since this would be placed near the entrance of the house to serve only a few clients, it didn’t need to have mind-numbingly high throughput)
A quad-core broadcom 1.5Ghz CPU with 512MB of RAM (double the 87u)
A quick trip to the hardware shop, and here it:

A fresh Asus RT-AX56U

Out went the 87u and in its place went the 56u. The usual process through the Asus connection wizard and I was up and running. Of course, I had to import all the settings from the 87u, but that didn\’t take me more than 30 minutes. I used my only Wifi 6 device (Samsung Galaxy S10) to connect to the router, and lo-and-behold, would you look at that Network Speed!

1.1 Gbps wireless connection speed – welcome to the future!

I’m obviously happy with that connection from 2 meters away, but what I was really keen to test out was the mesh network handover. Using the S10 I walked step-by-step towards my bedroom. As expected, the hand-off occured the moment I passed the 2 aforementioned mirrors. (Sidenote: The 5300u backhaul is connected using an ethernet cable for maximum stability. ) That is exactly how I wanted the router to perform, and I am happy that that’s what it does out-of-the box.

One caveat about Asus routers – they tend to run hot. After an hour, my 56u was hovering in the 70 C range. I put a USB fan under it, and the temperature went down to 50 C.
Router in DB Box with a USB fan for cooling

In summary, if you are looking for a cheap Wifi 6 router that can serve as an AI Mesh node, look no further than the Asus RT-AX56U. It is priced in the S$159 – S$199 range, and it’s good value for a simple but capable router. I’m happy with my purchase, but there’s that little voice that tells me I should have bought the RT-AX58U for the triple band connection. Let\’s see how long we can ignore the upgrade bug!

‘Gadget Review: Asus RT-AX56U Router’,’If you are looking for a cheap Wifi 6 router that can serve as an AI Mesh node, look no further than the Asus RT-AX56U.