Agent47

Having unveiled its crucial Eletre SUV, Lotus will now shift focus to readying its second Chinese-built ‘lifestyle’ EV, the Type 133 saloon, for launch in 2023. The Type 133, which will follow Lotus convention in getting a name beginning with ‘E’ in production guise, will provide the brand with a more direct rival to the hugely po[CENSORED]r Porsche Taycan, which company bosses confirmed as one of the main benchmarking influences while developing the Eletre, despite the two cars’ different positionings. Gavan Kershaw, Lotus’s director of attributes and product integrity, said dynamic development of the Eletre was “really, benchmarking the platform”, rather than the car itself, with a view to then rolling it out to the Type 133 and a future Type 134 crossover. Kershaw referenced the suspension technologies – “active roll control, CDC [continuous damping control], air-sprung independent active rear steer and active aero” – as features that most obviously mark the aluminium Electric Premium Architecture out as the more dynamically oriented platform in the Geely Group stable. He also said they have been ‘package-protected’ for “everything we want to do” with future electric cars, suggesting the Type 133 will follow suit with a similar set-up. “Our type of car – that we want to drive as well as it looks – requires all that technology,” he said, hinting that the ‘lifestyle’ positioning of EVs built by Lotus Technology in Wuhan, China, will not come at the expense of driver engagement. Further details of the Type 133 remain under wraps, but using the 592bhp twin-motor drivetrain from the launch-spec Eletre would line the saloon neatly up against the Porsche Taycan GTS, leaving ample room above and below for both softer and more hardcore additions to the line-up. Design work on the Type 133 is understood to be approaching the sign-off stage in line with Lotus’s plan to accelerate product development time frames, but it will not simply take the form of a lower-slung Eletre. Lotus senior vice-president of design Peter Horbury was keen to emphasise that while “there has to be some continuity and family identity” across the range of Lotus EVs, “families aren’t made up entirely of triplets or quadruplets. Every member of a family can have their own character.” The Type 133, then, can be expected to borrow cues from the Eletre but adopt a distinct overall design, albeit one that is still heavily influenced by Lotus’s preoccupation with aerodynamic efficiency. Lotus's 'perfect' three-car garage With three radically different models now on sale, Lotus provides the “perfect garage”, according to managing director Matt Windle, who envisions that diversification will play a key role in attracting conquest customers to the brand. Windle said: “You can own a Lotus for every stage of your life. That’s something that hasn’t been there before, and we hope that people buy into the brand and understand what we’re trying to do.” The Lotus Emira is now rolling down production lines ahead of summer deliveries, the Lotus Evija will follow a few months behind and deliveries of the Eletre – for which 20% of the deposit target had been met even before the reveal – will begin next year. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/lotus-primes-type-133-saloon-rival-porsche-taycan

AMD has confirmed to Tom's Hardware that a bug in its GPU driver is, in fact, changing Ryzen CPU settings in the BIOS without permission. This condition has been shown to auto-overclock Ryzen CPUs without the user's knowledge. "We are aware of an issue in the AMD software suite that is adjusting certain AMD processor settings for some users. We are investigating the issue and we’ll share more information as soon as we’re able." — AMD representative to Tom's Hardware. Reports of this issue began cropping up on various social media outlets recently, with users reporting that their CPUs had mysteriously been overclocked without their consent. The issue was subsequently investigated and tracked back to AMD's GPU drivers. AMD originally added support for automatic CPU overclocking through its GPU drivers last year, with the idea that adding in a Ryzen Master module into the Radeon Adrenalin GPU drivers would simplify the overclocking experience. Users with a Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU could use one interface to overclock both. Previously, it required both the GPU driver and AMD's Ryzen Master software. Overclocking a Ryzen CPU requires the software to mani[CENSORED]te the BIOS settings, just as we see with other software overclocking utilities. For AMD, this can mean simply engaging the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature. This feature does all the dirty work, like adjusting voltages and frequency on the fly, to give you a one-click automatic overclock. However, applying a GPU profile in the AMD driver can now inexplicably alter the BIOS settings to enable automatic overclocking. This is problematic because of the potential ill effects of overclocking — in fact, overclocking a Ryzen CPU automatically voids the warranty. AMD's software typically requires you to click a warning to acknowledge that you understand the risks associated with overclocking, and that it voids your warranty, before it allows you to overclock the system. Unfortunately, that isn't happening here. Overclocking isn't suitable for all systems, particularly those with lower-end coolers or motherboards, for instance. Naturally, overclocking also exposes you to increased risk of BSODs that can ultimately result in data loss. Overclocking also causes other ill side effects, like excessive heat generation, which is problematic if you don't have a suitable cooler. Luckily Ryzen CPUs have robust protection features built in to prevent any physical damage to the chip. Still, system instability from a warranty-voiding feature isn't acceptable if you aren't made aware of the risks first. As such, we're sure that AMD will work quickly to resolve the issue. The company says that it will share more information soon, and we've asked about the warranty implications of this driver bug. We'll update you as we learn more. Until then, users have taken to using the Radeon Software Slimmer to delete the Ryzen Master SDK from the GPU driver, thus preventing any untoward changes to the BIOS settings. This is not official advice from AMD, though, and since this is third-party software, proceed at your own risk. Also, note that users of Intel CPUs obviously aren't affected.

Name of the game: The Planet Crafter Price: 16,19$ Link Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284190/The_Planet_Crafter/ Offer ends up after X hours: in 28 hours Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 Processor: Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 2GB VRAM Storage: 3 GB available space RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows 7 or more Processor: Intel HD Graphics 5000 or better, OpenGL Support required Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 4GB VRAM Storage: 3 GB available space

Since 2016, dozens of farm and life sim games have been chasing the success of Stardew Valley—fated to be forever compared with Eric Barone's breakout indie hit. Now that he's announced his next game, the shop sim Haunted Chocolatier, Barone says he's well aware that his second game may wind up chasing after his first game just as much as all those others. Barone sat down on a livestream with Reason Studios, the developers of the music software that he used to create all of Stardew Valley's soundtrack. Before jumping into the music itself, Reason's host compares Barone's success with Stardew Valley and the resulting pressure on Haunted Chocolatier to the "sophomore slump" theory of bands struggling to live up to an initial hit with a second album. "I can relate to some degree with working on Haunted Chocolatier," Barone says. "Which is a game that's very much in Stardew Valley's shadow at this point and will be compared to it. Sure enough, it was immediately obvious from Haunted Chocolatier's initial reveal trailer how much it looks and sounds like Stardew. Barone's pixel art style is definitely still present, as are some of the instruments and vibe of Stardew's music. "I can't help but think about Stardew Valley when I'm making this game. It'll manifest in ways like 'Oh, I can't do this. It's too much like Stardew Valley.' But then a lot of the things in Stardew Valley are the way they are because it just makes sense. It would be foolish to do it any other way." "Lately I've just kinda been like 'you know what, screw it,'" Barone says. "If that means a lot of stuff in Stardew Valley was perfect and it doesn't need to be changed, then I'm just gonna do it the same way and not worry about it. If people say it's cut and paste Stardew Valley, well so be it. What did you expect? Did you expect me to make a sports game or a racing game? This is just what I do." Even knowing that he's inevitably leaning on his past work, Barone has already revealed a bit of the ways that he's looking to evolve past the Stardew standard. He's explained a bit about how he's changing Stardew's combat for Chocolatier by adding things like shields. "Almost everything in Haunted Chocolatier, including the combat, is completely coded (and drawn) from scratch," he explained in that developer log from October. "Probably even me announcing Haunted Chocolatier is a way of lighting a fire underneath myself," Barone says of the choice to reveal his next game while he's still deep in development. "Now everyone knows about it. I can't back down now. I have to finish this game. I have to make it fantastic." As Barone says of Stardew's success elsewhere in the livestream, he believes that it was the right game at the right time. There may already be more Recettear-like and Moonlighter-ish shop sim games on PC now than there were Harvest Moon style farming sims when Stardew Valley launched. Even so, I'm not the only one eager to get Barone's take on it.

What is it? The phrase ‘Britain’s best-selling car’ is regularly found in a sentence containing reference to the Ford Fiesta. But no more. Last year, it didn’t even make the top 10 and was outsold even in Blue Oval showrooms by the Ford Puma. The semiconductor shortage was behind the drop in sales, as Ford diverted more of the chips it had into more profitable models like the Puma, which competes in the same class. Yet rather than let the Fiesta’s long reign as Britain’s number one be followed by a period back in the ranks, it has made a series of changes to the car as part of this mid-life facelift to bring it back up the sales charts when the chips are no longer down. The changes aren’t the biggest, admittedly. Remember: the Fiesta enters this facelift from a position of strength as one of the best-driving superminis that remains a compelling ownership proposition. What's it like? Those changes, then. Visually, the biggest changes are at the front, where there's a new design for the bonnet, headlights and grille, to where the Ford badge is relocated. There are new colour and wheel designs as well as a shuffle of the trim levels. However, there are no mechanical changes to the chassis (which is not a bad thing at all, given how sweet the Fiesta is to drive) and the engine line-up remains unchanged. It starts with a 99bhp version of Ford’s ubiquitous 1.0-litre turbocharged three-cylinder petrol engine, which higher up the range gets belt-integrated starter-generator mild-hybrid (MHEV) technology to be offered in 123bhp or 153bhp outputs, the latter tested here. The familiarity of that engine and chassis mean, unsurprisingly, it’s more of the same from the Fiesta on the dynamic front. The handling is simply a joy at any speed; this is a car that can raise a smile no matter how mundane the corner or manoeuvre required. As before, none of this involving handling is at the expense of ride comfort or quality. The car transmits to the driver exactly what the road surface is doing while absorbing and isolating from bumps with a sophistication a car in this class really has no right to. It’s all backed up with an engine that remains one of the most characterful on the market. The 1.0-litre triple is vocal but sounds enthusiastic, rather than unrefined, and delivers excellent performance levels, particularly above 2000rpm when the turbocharger kicks in. The MHEV technology stores energy lost under deceleration and then uses it under acceleration to use less fuel, and the result is real-world economy of 50mpg, even when the car is delivered with enthusiasm. The front wheels are driven through a slick six-speed manual gearbox. The facelift in the interior centres around the addition of a 12.3in digital screen for the instrument display. It’s a welcome upgrade over the old dials, although it alone doesn’t lift the Fiesta above the criticism the interior of this generation has always had for being on the dark-and-drab side. It remains just that, although it's comfortable, if a little cramped, and access to the boot is let down by a very high lip. Should I buy one? A winning formula hasn’t been altered in this round of changes for the Fiesta. Rivals may offer more space, more technology and a richer cabin, yet none of them can match the driving pleasure offered by the Fiesta. It remains one of the best pound-for-pound driving experiences in any class, yet those pleasures can also be found much lower down the range than the £24,440 before options (and £28,315 after!) price of our test car. A simple 99bhp version of the Ecoboost engine in ST-Line trim should do the trick. Link : https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/ford/fiesta/first-drives/ford-fiesta-10-ecoboost-mhev-st-line-vignale-2022-uk-review

It's been a bit of a winding road to get here, but the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti officially launched today, with full specifications and pricing revealed about two months later than originally expected. If you're after maximum performance — "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" sort of thinking — the RTX 3090 Ti should now reign as the fastest option in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, and possibly as the best graphics card for prosumer content creation people that don't want to move up to the Nvidia A-series offerings (formerly Quadro). So, where's the review? We're still awaiting our sample, as Nvidia elected not to seed reviewers with its Founders Edition. We should have an AIC partner card shortly, and we'll post a full review with the usual suite of benchmarks once it arrives — including some extra proviz testing in content creation workloads. If you're mostly interested in gaming performance, take the GeForce RTX 3090 and tack on an extra 10% or so performance, give or take (Nvidia says it's 9% faster overall), and you'll mostly end up with the 3090 Ti. While we wait for our card to arrive, here's a quick rundown of the official specs. Considering the past 18 months of extreme GPU shortages and inflated GPU prices, you should definitely take the last line in the above table with a healthy serving of salt. There's a clear downward trend in recent graphics card prices, including a 25% observed drop in EU pricing during March, but we're not out of the woods just yet. Our latest data for the US using mid-March eBay GPU prices puts most of these extreme GPUs at around 30–50% over MSRP, except for the RTX 3080 (10GB) that's still floating at closer to double the MSRP. The (*cough*) 'good' news is that with a much higher starting MSRP, the actual RTX 3090 Ti prices may land a bit closer to Nvidia's hypothetical starting point — sort of like how the RTX 3080 Ti is only 30% over MSRP since it was priced over 70% higher than the 3080 as a baseline. Moving past the pricing elephant in the room, there are some other eyebrow-raising items of note. We've long expected the memory to clock at 21Gbps, and credible rumors indicate that's a major reason for the two month delay in Nvidia spilling the beans on the 3090 Ti. The GPU also uses the fully armed and operational GA102 chip, sporting 84 streaming multiprocessors (SMs) and 10752 CUDA cores, with boost clocks about 200MHz higher than the RTX 3090. But there's a catch, and it's a pretty big one: The RTX 3090 Ti has a TBP (Total Board Power) rating of 450W, 100W higher than the 3090 and 3080 Ti. That's nearly a 30% increase in power use, which isn't too surprising given the higher boost clock and memory speed. So basically, Nvidia is pushing to the far right of the voltage/frequency curve and maxing out performance at the cost of higher power consumption. Considering the recent Nvidia Hopper H100 reveal, this could be a taste of things to come for the Ada / RTX 40-series graphics cards. What can you expect from the increased power, pricing, core counts, and clock speeds? As noted already, we don't have the card in hand just yet, but we do have benchmarks from all the other GPUs. In gaming performance, the RTX 3090 was only 2.4% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti overall, with a slightly larger 3.0% advantage if we focus purely on 4K gaming performance. Even if we switch over to ray tracing games with our DXR benchmark suite, the 3090 was still only 2.9% faster than the 3080 Ti. There's a bigger gap between the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080, with the 3090 leading by 16% on average and by 20% at 4K, but there's not a lot of gas left in the GA102 tank, it seems, even when paired with the Core i9-12900K, the current best CPU for gaming, or at least the fastest CPU for gaming. On paper, looking just at the specs, the 3090 theoretically has 4.4% more compute and 2.6% more memory bandwidth than the RTX 3080 Ti. It also has 19.5% more compute and 23.2% more memory bandwidth than the RTX 3080. That means real-world performance scales pretty close to the paper specs, with compute being more important than bandwidth. The RTX 3090 Ti theoretically delivers 12.4% more compute and 7.7% more bandwidth than the 3090. At best, then, the 3090 Ti could be about 12% faster than the 3090, but in general, we expect it to land closer to 10% — and the margin of victory will be even smaller if the workload happens to be CPU limited. Note that because Nvidia isn't seeding reviewers with reference clocked RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition cards, there's a good chance that comparisons will be made using a factory overclocked card that can reach even higher levels of performance. It's likely only going to be a 2–4% bump, but we can't help but think the lack of reference card sampling was at least partly done in order to make the custom 3090 Ti cards look a bit better. They're still a highly questionable value, basically bringing back Titan RTX levels of pricing without a few of the extra Titan features.

Name of the game: Nightmare Price: 17,84$ Link Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1051690/Nightmare_Reaper/ Offer ends up after X hours: 4 April Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 Processor: i3 or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 670 Storage: 4 GB available space Sound Card: Any RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows 7 Processor: i7 or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 Storage: 4 GB available space Sound Card: Any Additional Notes: A SSD is recommended

Happy birthday to 2 of my brothers ❤️

Portal 2: Desolation is a fan project that's currently in development, a whole new singleplayer campaign in the Portal setting. It's basically a community-made Portal 3, or at least Portal 2.5, being made "in tribute to Valve's Iconic series", as Emberspark Games puts it. The developers have spent the last year getting Desolation's graphics to look slick, which has meant totally replacing the Source Engine's rendering and lighting pipeline. While Portal 2 already looked nice, its lighting was baked-in via a separate editor once levels were laid out, and the results could only be seen after maps were compiled. Any changes to light sources meant recompiling again, which is a time-consuming process—especially as maps get bigger and compile times expand. The Desolation team have added real-time a lighting system so that lighting can be edited as they go. It does look nicer too. I think the most impressive part of the whole showcase, which you can watch above, is when the red lights of turrets illuminate pipes and other surfaces as they flicker over them. The Desolation team also did a lot of work to improve surface rendering, reflections, and more. Their goal was to ask, "How would Aperture Science look if it got the same treatment City 17 did for its upgraded representation in Half-Life: Alyx?" I'd enjoy a Portal game even if it didn't look shiny, but this work is still pretty impressive and certainly answers the question they set out to ask. Desolation's campaign will feature original characters and locations, and be set years after the events of Portal 2. It will apparently feature "hours of tightly-paced puzzle solving, driven by an epic new narrative." That's a heck of a promise, but let's cross our fingers and hope the Desolation team can live up to it. Check out their website for more info.

Music Title: Rachel Platten - Fight Song (Lyrics) Signer: Rachel Platten Release Date: Mar 29, 2022 Official Youtube Link: Informations About The Signer: - Your Opinion About The Track (Music Video): Good

Motherboards get segmented and marketed to specific groups, like gamers or professionals. But each major board partner also has a board dedicated to getting the most out of overclocking. Any of these boards aimed at a specific niche can usually do at least an adequate job as a more general-purpose board as well. That brings us to Gigabyte’s Z690 Tachyon, which is designed to handle the rigors of extreme overclocking, but is also surprisingly well-rounded for more typical computing needs. This overclocking-centered board includes all of the basic specifications of the Z690 platform and features an extreme overclocker will love for $549.99. The Tachyon has all you’d expect in a Z690 motherboard. There are a total of four M.2 sockets (but none are PCIe 5.0), premium audio, plenty of USB ports (including USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports), overbuilt power delivery, along with built-in overclocking buttons and switches to help speed enthusiasts get the most out of their platform. Compared to the Z590 version, the new model sports similar styling and layout. There’s one less PCIe slot, one more M.2 socket, and much-improved VRMs to help support extreme overclocking of Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake processors. Performance using the Z690 Tachyon was slightly above average overall, with most benchmarks running as fast or faster than on other boards. We saw some of the fastest results in our new Blender benchmark, Cinebench R23, Procyon Office, and more. Power consumption was, surprisingly, slightly better than most, while gaming performance was spot on compared to others. The only result slower than average was the Procyon Video editing test. In our testing, almost all motherboards from Gigabyte sit around this same middling score in that benchmark. In all, the Tachyon is one of the faster Z690 boards we’ve tested out of the box. Below, we’ll look more closely the latest Tachyon’s features, including all of the overclocking goodies, software and performance, to see if this $550 motherboard is worth the expense and perhaps a place on our best motherboards list. But first, here’s a detailed list of the Z690 Tachyon’s specs, direct from Gigabyte. Inside the box, along with the motherboard, Gigabyte includes your standard fare of accessories including SATA cables, Wi-Fi antenna, and more. Curiously, a driver disk/USB stick is missing, but you can download them from the website. Below is a complete list of the included extras. (4) SATA cables (2) Temperature probes RGB extension cable (3) M.2 screws Wi-Fi Antenna Microphone G-connector Stickers/case badge Rear IO plate Installation manual

Name of the game: The Planet Crafter Price: 16,19$ Link Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284190/The_Planet_Crafter/ Offer ends up after X hours: 31 march Requirements: MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 Processor: Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 2GB VRAM Storage: 3 GB available space RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows 7 or more Processor: Intel HD Graphics 5000 or better, OpenGL Support required Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 4GB VRAM Storage: 3 GB available space

FromSoftware's Souls games have a reputation for difficulty, but they are also fair and mechanically consistent (except for when it's funny.) Which is why these games that usually see players finishing a playthrough at level 90–120 can be beaten without seeing the level-up screen once, and the "soul level one" run and its equivalents are a vaunted tradition in the Souls speed and challenge run community. Two Soulsborne challenge runners, Ongbal and LobosJr, have progressed deep into Elden Ring at rune level one, defeating some of its toughest bosses like Malenia or the Godskin Duo with minimal health, endurance, and damage. Ongbal uploads exclusively to YouTube and came into their own with some truly off-the-wall Sekiro challenges. Their build centers on the Wretch (the only class that starts at level one) and their default club, altered with the "cold" infusion for bonus frostbite damage. Lobos has been a staple in the Souls challenge run community for years—I was introduced to him through his Dark Souls 2 all-bosses speedruns, but his no-weapon, no-HUD run of Bloodborne is a standout achievement for me. Lobos has experimented with numerous weapons in his level one run, but the Misericorde thrusting sword served him well against the mega-hard hidden boss, Malenia, and he seems to also be getting good mileage out of the extremely nasty Ringed Finger club. Both Lobos and Ongbal make extensive use of the Buckler shield's generous parry window to set up critical strikes for most of their damage-dealing, as opposed to the typical Souls series dodge-and-attack rhythm. In a different take on the level one run, long-time Souls and For Honor YouTuber Iron Pineapple has released a sort of "everyman's guide" to the level one run, relying as much as possible on whatever strategies, advantages, and cheese available, no matter how ridiculous, to roll credits on Elden Ring. Unfortunately, Iron Pineapple's run relied on many of the same speedrunning strategies that were wiped out by the 1.03 patch. While other average joes won't be able to replicate Iron Pineapple's strategies exactly, he at least was able to make it to the end before the nerfs came through. My favorite of the now-extinct exploits Iron Pineapple used was a technique involving the Erdtree Greatshield's Golden Retaliation weapon skill. Iron Pineapple used an incantation with a self-damage effect to proc the Erdtree Greatshield's magic reflecting ability at will, turning the shield into a veritable semi-auto magic cannon. It's only been a month, and players are already pushing Elden Ring's combat system to its very limits and discovering the most ludicrous secrets buried in the Lands Between. This is likely only the tip of the iceberg for Elden Ring hijinks.

After checking your activity, it would be a PRO from me. Not only activity matters, personality, character also. PRO

Electric car range in winter can be as much as 20% lower than in summer, a new real-world test by What Car? and Move Electric has revealed. The tests by Autocar's sibling titles were conducted with four identically specced cars driven to a specified route and within defined parameters for driving style at a proving ground last summer and again earlier this month to discover how lower temperatures affect electric car battery efficiency. In the winter range test, the Porsche Taycan 4S Performance Battery Plus managed 224 miles on a full charge. That’s a 20.1% drop on the 281 miles that the same model on the same-sized wheels achieved when What Car? tested it last summer. Other models retested included the Ford Mustang Mach-E Extended Range RWD (which fell 18.0% short of its summer figure), the Skoda Enyaq iV 60 (15.7%) and the Fiat 500 42kWh (15.2%). Significantly, the test also revealed the positive impact of buying an electric car fitted with a heat pump, which reduces strain on the battery by drawing excess heat from the electric drivetrain, distributing it around the interior of the car through the air conditioning. Electric news in your inbox: subscribe to the Move Electric newsletter Five models equipped with a heat pump were tested and they fell short of their official WLTP mileage figures by an average of 25.4%. By comparison, five models that relied on a regular interior heater suffered an average deficit of 33.6%. The tests were conducted on a closed vehicle proving ground, on a 15-mile route consisting of 2.6 miles of simulated stop-start urban traffic, four miles of steady 50mph driving and eight miles driving at a constant speed of 70mph to simulate motorway journeys. Winter vs summer range test results Porsche Taycan 4S Performance Battery Plus Battery size: 83.7kWh; Summer range: 281 miles; Winter range: 224 miles; Difference: 20.10%. Ford Mustang Mach-E Extended Range RWD Battery size: 88.0kWh; Summer range: 302 miles; Winter range: 247 miles; Difference: 18.00%. Skoda Enyaq iV 60 Battery size: 58.0kWh; Summer range: 207 miles; Winter range: 174 miles; Difference: 15.70%. Fiat 500 42kWh Icon: Battery size: 37.3kWh; Summer range: 140 miles; Winter range: 118 miles; Difference: 15.20%. Link : https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/move-electric/electric-vehicle-range-test-reveals-20-drop-winter

Asus is arguably the most recognized enthusiast PC brand in the US, selling some of the best motherboards, graphics cards, gaming laptops, and more with a focus on PC gamers. Its GeForce RTX 3050 ROG Strix follows the familiar formula of using a large cooler with plenty of RGB lighting, coupled with a relatively large factory overclock. Like other GeForce RTX 3050 cards, however, the resulting performance lands well behind similarly priced GPUs like the Radeon RX 6600, and also trails the previous generation GeForce RTX 2060. Our updated GPU benchmarks hierarchy puts it well into the midrange or even budget territory, but the ongoing component shortages and brand name recognition give it a high-end price tag that makes it a poor value relative to the best graphics cards. This Asus RTX 3050 review is our third time testing the RTX 3050, following on the heels of the initial EVGA RTX 3050 Black XC and subsequent Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC reviews. With the highest factory overclock of all the announced GeForce RTX 3050 cards, the Strix should be the pinnacle of the sort of performance we can expect to see out of Nvidia's lowest tier RTX 30-series GPU. Here's how it looks on paper: GPU Specifications Graphics Card Asus RTX 3050 ROG Strix OC Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 (Reference) EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC AMD Radeon RX 6600 (Reference) Architecture GA106 GA106 GA106 GA106 Navi 23 Process Technology Samsung 8N Samsung 8N Samsung 8N Samsung 8N TSMC N7 Transistors (Billion) 12 12 12 12 11.1 Die size (mm^2) 276 276 276 276 237 SMs / CUs 20 20 20 20 28 GPU Cores 2560 2560 2560 2560 1792 Tensor Cores 80 80 80 80 N/A RT Cores 20 20 20 20 28 Boost Clock (MHz) 1890 (OC mode), 1860 (Gaming) 1777 1777 1807 2491 VRAM Speed (Gbps) 14 14 14 14 14 VRAM (GB) 8 8 8 8 8 VRAM Bus Width 128 128 128 128 128 ROPs 48 48 48 48 64 TMUs 80 80 80 80 112 TFLOPS FP32 (Boost) 9.7 9.1 9.1 9.3 8.9 TFLOPS FP16 (Tensor) 39 (77) 36 (73) 36 (73) 37 (74) N/A Bandwidth (GBps) 224 224 224 224 224 TDP (watts) 130 130 130 130 132 Launch Date Jan 2022 Jan 2022 Jan 2022 Jan 2022 Oct 2021 Official MSRP $489 $249 $249 $399 $329 eBay Price (Feb 2022) $523 $455 $450 $470 $460 Even with the OC mode enabled, theoretical performance on the Asus RTX 3050 is only about 6% faster than the reference RTX 3050. Of course the TDP limit is likely higher (Asus doesn't specify the card's TDP, but we'll look at power use later), but with the same memory bandwidth and core counts, we don't expect to see a massive difference between the various RTX 3050 cards. We've included MSRPs as well as the typical GPU prices from eBay for the past month (February 2022). The former is generally meaningless right now, while real-world prices at places like Newegg and Amazon often mirror the eBay pricing. The good news is that, as far as street prices are concerned, the Asus ROG Strix 'only' costs about $50–$75 more than the cheapest RTX 3050 cards on average. The bad news is that the typical price on an RTX 3050 is about $200 more than Nvidia's pie-in-the-sky suggested price. We've included AMD's Radeon RX 6600 in the table as well as a comparison point. Particularly in non-ray tracing (and non-DLSS) games, it tends to compete with the RTX 3060 and will thus easily outpace the RTX 3050 cards. AMD also has a (relatively) large Infinity Cache, 32MB for Navi 23, which improves the bandwidth utilization quite a bit so that performance often ends up being far better than what the raw specs would suggest.