Tech News, Reviews & Buying Guides

Both standards now run the same VESA Adaptive-Sync tech and work across Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Here is the short answer, plus the VRR gotchas that still bite.

X870's only guaranteed extras over B850 are USB4 on every board and a mandatory PCIe 5.0 GPU slot — and neither raises a single frame. Here's when the pricier AM5 chipset is worth it.

On a PC, DisplayPort is the safer default: it carries more data than the HDMI version on the same monitor, so it hits the higher refresh rate. But below 1440p/144Hz you will not see a difference, and consoles change the answer entirely.

You can mix RAM brands and sizes and a PC will usually boot with the full capacity — but everything runs at the slowest stick's speed, and two loose sticks aren't guaranteed to train together. Here is when to mix and when a matched kit is the smarter buy.

The 14600K wins 1080p gaming by about 4% and dominates multi-core work; the 7700X is cheaper, cooler, and sits on a socket that's still alive. Here's which one fits your build.

The RX 9070 averages about 13% higher 1440p frame rates than the RTX 5070 and packs 16GB versus 12GB of VRAM, for about $41 more in our catalog. The RTX 5070 wins heavy ray tracing. Here is who should buy which.

The RTX 5080 costs about twice the RX 9070 XT in our catalog but leads by only roughly 15-20% in 4K raster. It pulls far ahead in path tracing. Here is who should buy which.

Yes — a PCIe 5.0 SSD works in a PCIe 4.0 slot; it just runs at Gen4 speed. Sequential bandwidth roughly halves, real game load times don't move, and the actual thing to watch is how your board shares M.2 lanes.

One 16GB stick or two 8GB sticks? Dual-channel is worth about 12% average FPS and 16% of your 1% lows at 1080p, and far more on an APU. The catch: the two-stick kit often costs less.

A PCIe 5.0 SSD runs hot enough to throttle with no cooling at all — but the M.2 heatsink your motherboard already ships with stops that. Here is when a separate heatsink is worth buying and when it does nothing.

The RX 9070 XT matches the RTX 5070 Ti in raster for about $266 less in our catalog, but the 5070 Ti pulls ahead the moment you turn on ray tracing and draws far less power. Here is who should buy which.

X870 and X870E run your GPU and main SSD at the same PCIe 5.0 speed straight from the CPU, so gaming FPS is identical. The extra money buys USB and SATA ports, not frames.