Welcome back PCWorld fans to that time of the week again. I know, time really flies when you’re
having fun am I right? This week has been a fun one especially thanks to PCWorld’s most recent
special edition of The Full Nerd podcast featuring security professional Mike Danseglio. Outside of
that, there were quite a few heavy-hitting topics to drop. For starters, we found out
that Windows 11 has a bigger performance impact on AMD’s Ryzen processors, at least for now.
The world has seen its first Intel 12th-gen ‘Alder Lake’ powered Gaming Rig get listed thanks to
Acer. AND, ANOTHER GPU LAUNCH! How exciting! Well let’s break these topics down, shall we?
Starting things off with the most concerning news this week is going to be none other than
the ongoing saga with AMD Ryzen and Windows 11. Last week we reported on
the known issue where L3 cache latency can be upwards of three times slower
when using Windows 11 versus the same system running Windows 10.
If three times sure seems bad, then you’re really not going to be enthused to hear that testing done
by Paul Alcorn at Tom’s Hardware has actually shown it can be up to 12 times the difference.
For number’s sake, Alcorn found a Ryzen 9 5900X’s
L3 performance using AIDA 64 running Windows 10 to be 10.54 nanoseconds. The same test in
Windows 11 found the resulting latency to be 29.23 nanoseconds. For posterity,
he did test the 11th gen Core i7-11700K, and while there was an impact, it was minimal.
While this is an issue and certainly impacting those latency-sensitive esports titles, it isn’t
an issue going unnoticed. Both Microsoft and AMD are working together towards a fix and we’ll keep
you updated here as we find out more, so make sure you subscribe to the channel for more updates.
We all know Intel is releasing its 12th generation ‘Alder Lake’ CPUs at some point now, but
we really don’t know just when yet. Thanks to Acer we have a little more of a view of what’s
coming with their newly announced Acer Predator Orion 7000. It’s a whopper of a prebuilt with
tons of custom features, but most importantly are the specifications that it supports.
Expected from this pre-built line is lots of water-cooling, tempered glass, and RGB..
Not only can it be configured with up to an RTX 3090 it also is supporting the latest from Intel.
According to Gordon, it seems to be the first desktop to announce that they’ll be packing in the
latest 12th gen ‘Alder Lake’ CPUs from Intel featuring up to 16 cores and 24 threads.
If you’re worried about thermals, then you’ll be glad to hear strapping an AIO cooler to the CPU.
Release date and pricing is the only thing missing so if you were hoping to find out when Intel was
launching Alder Lake then, just like me, you’re a little disappointed at the end of this one.
Here’s something you won’t have to wonder about when it comes to pricing,
availability, and performance. That being the newly released Radeon RX 6600 NON-XT.
That’s right folks, if you’ve missed it this week then I completely understand.
The latest from team red came to market with very little pomp and circumstance.
What are reviewers having to say about this card? Well, it aims at the 1080p market and
is poised to tackle the GeForce RTX 3060 with the same starting MSRP of $329.f
you want the full review then hit the link in the description to really sink your teeth
into Brad’s take. But at the high level, you’re going to find great 1080p gaming
with ultra settings, 8GB of memory onboard, and really good power efficiency. Unfortunately,
as the story goes nowadays, it comes at a cost. It’s a high one admittedly for 1080p,
especially since the ray-tracing performance is quite a bit behind that of the Nvidia counterpart.
The catch in today’s market is availability, and if they can make enough of them and curb
the mining crave then AMD just might have a winner on its hands despite the shortcoming.
But that about does it for this past week! And as exciting as it was, all good things come to an end
and so does this video. But a quick wrap-up on the way out! AMD and Microsoft are working together
to solve the issue with the L3 cache on Windows 11, so until they do I’m recommending holding off
for Ryzen owners. We see the first prebuilt system rolling out with Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs,
but unfortunately, the Acer Predator Orion 7000 doesn’t have a launch date or pricing just yet.
And AMD released the Radeon RX 6600 to the world and the response was about as vanilla as the name.
That’s a wrap folks, if you enjoyed this week’s round-up let me know by hitting the thumbs up
and be sure you’re following us here for even more PC Hardware goodness!