Author: batteryforpc

The XG438Q is based around a VA panel, with the usual characteristics of this technology. It has very high 4,000:1 contrast, and quite high 450cd/m2 brightness. On the downside, the pixel response is 4ms gray-to-gray, which is par for the course for VA. Brightness and contrast are sufficient to enable HDR-10 support, with the ability to display 90 per cent DCI-P3 gamut to go with it.

Since this is such a big screen, it’s not packed with the adjustment. You can tilt forwards and backwards, but otherwise the position is fixed on the stand, with no swivel or height raising. There are three HDMI 2.0 inputs and a single DisplayPort 1.4, so you can plug in multiple games consoles, media streamers and your PC all at the same time. There’s a USB 3.0 hub, but only with two downstream connections.

However, a screen this size, with this resolution and feature set, doesn’t come cheap. Priced over £1,000, the XG438Q is a premium screen for a premium gaming experience. Let’s find out if it delivers.

Specification:

Screen size: 43-inch, 16:9 aspect

Native resolution: 3,840 x 2,160

Curvature: None

Refresh rate: 120Hz, AMD FreeSync 2

Panel type: VA

Contrast ratio: 4,000:1 (typical)

Brightness: 450cd/m2

Response time: 4ms Gray-to-Gray

Display inputs: 3 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x DisplayPort 1.4

USB hub: Yes, 2 x USB 3.0

Tilt: 5 degrees forward, 10 degrees backward

Raise: No

Swivel: No

Portrait: No

Other: Audio output, audio input, 10W stereo speakers

The ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q is an absolutely huge screen that comes in a huge box.

Inside you get the usual array of a video cables for each type of connection (HDMI, DisplayPort), USB upstream for the hub, and a power cable with external supply. There’s also an analog minijack audio cable, plus a remote control. The final inclusion is a little lighting device for projecting the ROG logo via ASUS Aura Sync system.

The fixed stand makes the XG438Q look more like a TV than a gaming monitor. There is Republic of Gamers branding strategically placed front and rear, but the design is completely overwhelmed by the size of this panel.

The only adjustments available are tilting five degrees forward or ten degrees back.

On the side of the screen, in a place that’s more convenient to reach, can be found the analog audio mini-jacks for input and output for headphones or external speakers. The upstream and two downstream ports for the USB 3.0 hub are also located here. Finally, one of the HDMI 2.0 ports is available facing sideways, making temporary connections easier. The remaining two HDMI 2.0 connections, DisplayPort 1.4, MiniUSB for AuraSync devices and power input are found beneath a plastic cover.

The menu is operated by four large buttons on the rear right corner of the panel, with a joystick at the top.

The lowest button simply turns the monitor off and on, so we’ll move up to the second-from-bottom button.

This button reveals quick menu access to the GameVisual preset modes, which include a lot of different game types. There’s a more generic Scenery Mode, then Racing Mode, Cinema Mode, RTS/RPG Mode, FPS Mode, sRGB Mode, and a separate MOBA Mode, where many monitors will expect you to use the RTS option for MOBAs. Finally, there’s a slot for user-configurable settings.

The next button up lets you choose between the four different video inputs manually.

The third button up simply exits other menus, so we move swiftly to pushing in the joystick, which reveals a menu you can now use to get to the same functions as the buttons, as well as the main menu. Note that pulling or pushing the joystick in any other direction rather than pushing it in before this menu appears doesn’t do anything.

If you push the joystick in again, you get the main menu, with the first subsection being the GameVisual modes once more.

Next along is GamePlus, where you can place a crosshair onscreen – for practice purposes only, we always stress. You can also superimpose a timer, hardware FPS counter, and grid to help with aligning multiple screens. However, you’d have to be truly minted to have more than one XG438Q monitor.

Next down is the Color section, which includes the usual controls for brightness and contrast as well as saturation. Color Temp has Cool, Normal and Warm presets as well as the ability to adjust via separate red, green and blue values. The Gamma options include 1.8, 2.2 and 2.5.

The Image section provides pixel overdrive options under OD. Aspect Control will only be available with non-native resolutions. ASCR is a smart contrast system. You can enable FreeSync here, and add up to four levels of Blue Light Filter to help counter eye strain. HDR is only available with an appropriate video signal, while Dynamic Dimming is another way to improve contrast. Finally, Shadow Boost improves contrast only in dark areas – handy for helping you to pick out enemies who hide in poor illumination, without blowing out brighter portions of the screen.

A screen this big, with this many video inputs, is a prime candidate for picture-in-picture. You could, for example, have your set-top box input superimposed within your Windows desktop.

The main menu also has a section for switching manually between the four video inputs.

Under System Setup, you find all the sundry configuration options such as how the USB hub behaves, which input is supplying sound, which menu options the quick buttons point to, how the OSD itself behaves, and which language the interface uses. You can also view information about the input signal and screen setup. However, at the top can be found Aura Sync and Aura RGB, which is where you alter the behaviour of the external projector and rear lighting.

Finally, MyFavorite provides the ability to save and load two full custom configurations.

Overall, the OSD has plenty to offer and makes it all quite easy to find with a logical layout. Unlike some manufacturers, ASUS keeps presets for multimedia and games in one place, although there aren’t any work-related options here. There is a good array of game-specific functions available. This is essentially the standard set of ASUS gaming monitor OSD features, and we never really have much to complain about in this area. We particularly like the wide selection of presets for specific game types, including the ever-popular MOBA.

Our main test involves using a DataColor SpyderX Colorimeter to assess a display’s image quality. The device sits on top of the screen while the software generates colour tones and patterns, which it compares against predetermined values to work out how accurate the screen is.

The results show –

A monitor’s maximum brightness in candelas or cd/m2 at various levels set in the OSD.

A monitor’s contrast ratio at various brightness levels in the OSD.

The brightness deviation across the panel.

The black and white points.

The colour accuracy, expressed as a Delta E ratio, with a result under 3 being fine for normal use, and under 2 being great for colour-accurate design work.

The exact gamma levels, with a comparison against preset settings in the OSD.

We first run this test with the display in its default, out-of-the-box state, with all settings on default after a factory reset. We then calibrate the screen using the Spyder software and run the test again.

We always test the display subjectively on the Windows desktop, using it for general tasks such as browsing and word processing, and with games as well, even if the display is not intended solely for that purpose.

We pay careful attention to any artefacts, ghosting or motion blur, and enable any gaming-specific features, such as adaptive-sync settings like G-Sync or FreeSync, using a compatible graphics card in our test PC.

We performed the quality tests on the ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q at its native 3,840 x 2,160 resolution in the default mode, after resetting the OSD, which sets the refresh to 60Hz, over a DisplayPort connection. Our test system was equipped with an AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card, which supports FreeSync, so we enabled that for games testing.

The gamut is very good, with the usual 100 per cent sRGB we now expect from all monitors, plus an excellent 86 per cent AdobeRGB and an also excellent 94 per cent DCI-P3, which is actually above specification.

Brightness uniformity is not so impressive, however, as we’ve often seen with very large monitors. The brightness differs in double percentage figures in a lot of areas of the screen compared to the centre.

Colour uniformity is a bit more respectable at most brightness levels, although not the best we’ve seen.

The XG438Q actually exceeds its brightness specification of 450cd/m2, managing 462.3cd/m2 at its maximum setting. Contrast hits a very commendable 3,270:1 at this setting, too, which is a little behind the 4,000:1 rating but we don’t test with contrast all the way up anyway, we use the default value. The white point isn’t that uniform, ranging from 6600K at zero brightness to 7000K at 100 per cent, which is quite a wide variation.

You get a fair amount of options with the different GameVisual presets. Scenery Mode is high brightness and contrast, offering 428.8cd/m2 for the former and 3,790:1 for the latter, with a mid-range 7000K white point. Racing Mode (the default, for some reason) is still quite bright at 407.9cd/m2 and high contrast, offering 3,610:1, with the same 7000K white point. Cinema Mode uses a much cooler 8900K white point, with a lower 334.6cd/m2 brightness and still high 2,960:1 contrast.

The RTS/RPG and FPS modes are almost identical, with 406.7cd/m2 brightness, 7000K white point and 600:1 or 590:1 contrast respectively. The differences between these modes are likely to be in other settings, such as shadow boosting and pixel overdrive. MOBA has very similar brightness at 407.5cd/m2, the same 7000K white point but a much higher contrast of 3,610:1. Finally, sRGB goes for a relatively low 182.5cd/m2 brightness, lower but still strong 1,850:1 contrast, and slightly cooler 7200K white point.

The gamma modes are consistently 0.1 above their nominal value, so you can’t achieve a true 2.2, but at least you know what you’ll get with each and the increments are uniform.

Colour accuracy at default settings, however, is not that great. The average deviation of 3.13 isn’t terrible, but we’d expect more from a monitor this expensive, making the XG438Q a prime candidate for calibration. So we fired up the SpyderX again.

After calibration, which consisted mostly of dropping the brightness down a lot from the default 90 per cent, the gamut has gone down slightly. You still get 100 per cent sRGB, but AdobeRGB and P3 have both dropped two per cent to 84 and 92 per cent respectively. These are still great values, though.

The Gamma 2.2 preset is now spot on the 2.2 value it’s supposed to provide.

Calibration has improved colour accuracy notably, to an average deviation of 1.7. This is good but still not as exceptional as a number of the monitors we’ve tested recently.

Overall, the ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q offers good but not outstanding performance.

Of course, this is a gaming monitor so we also had to fire up our usual suite of games including CS:GO, Rainbow 6 Siege and League of Legends. We enabled the FPS Gaming Mode preset for the first two games, and MOBA for LoL. We also made sure FreeSync was enabled.

The first thing we should say is that this is an absolutely amazing monitor for a MOBA. There is so much space that you can get a truly excellent view of the game terrain. We also tried Civilization VI and the huge space was superb for this as well (we switched to RTS Mode for Civ).

Our AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card could only drive CS:GO at high enough frame rates in 4K to get close to the 120Hz refresh. It was smooth and eminently playable. Rainbow 6 Siege was only hitting around 60fps so not making much use of the higher refresh. Sitting at desk distance from a screen this huge for FPS play is quite mesmerising, and if we’re honest a bit too immersive. We didn’t have a 4K console to hand, but we suspect that this screen will be absolutely in its element for gaming when you’re a little bit further from the display itself.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q is a monster of a screen. Paying over a grand for a monitor sounds expensive, but looking at other 4K monitors with this screen size (of which there aren’t that many), it’s around what you’d expect. The performance out of the box isn’t quite as outstanding as we would have hoped, but its acceptable once you calibrate, so this screen is capable of decent quality if you set it up correctly.

The ASUS OSD as always delivers a fine array of features that will allow the gaming user to tweak the configuration for the style of play desired, including useful options like a hardware FPS counter. There’s not that much here if you did want to cross over into work territory, other than the sRGB GameVisual mode. You can have some fun with the light projection system and Aura Sync for a truly blinged-out gaming experience.

We do wonder why there are only two USB ports, although they are usefully placed on the side. But you get a wealth of video connectivity, which points to the direction where this screen is best suited. If you’ve got consoles, video set-top boxes and a PC all to use through one screen, preferably all in 4K, then the XG438Q is a decent choice. However, it is worth pointing out its HDMI ports are only HDMI 2.0, not HDMI 2.1. This means next-gen consoles won’t be able to utilise the 120Hz refresh at 4K, though PC users can of course utilise a DisplayPort connection instead.

You will also need a hefty graphics card to get the most out of the 120Hz ability with the latest AAA PC titles. But if you’re serious about your gaming screen size, the ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q is well worth considering.

The ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q is available from Overclockers UK for £1,078.99.

Pros:

Huge 43in 4K desktop.

120Hz refresh.

AMD FreeSync 2 adaptive sync.

Reasonable price for a 4K screen this big.

Plenty of adjustments available in OSD, particularly for gaming.

Lots of video inputs.

Aura ROG logo projector included.

Built-in USB 3.0 hub.

Cons:

Mediocre colour accuracy before calibration.

Only two USB ports on hub.

Almost no ergonomic adjustment.

Mediocre brightness uniformity.

HDMI 2.0 ports, not 2.1.

AMD has officially announced that the Zen 3 architecture will land this year and outlined the new Ryzen 5000 models, setting the stage for a new wave of powerful chips based upon a newer version of AMD’s most successful architecture to date. The new Zen 3 microarchitecture will power AMD’s full lineup of next-gen chips, including the Ryzen 5000 “Vermeer” desktop processors that will soon vie for a spot on our list of Best CPUs, the Ryzen 5000 laptop chips, and the EPYC Milan data center processors.

The first four new Ryzen 5000 models come as chips for the desktop PC, and they stretch from the $299 Ryzen 5 5600X up to the $799 Ryzen 9 5950X. The chips will be on shelves on November 5th and could represent a big shift in the AMD vs Intel CPU wars. 

AMD says Zen 3 features a grounds-up rethinking of the architecture that finally allows it to take the 1080p gaming performance lead from Intel. Paired with a 19% boost to instructions per cycle (IPC) throughput and peak boost speeds of up to 4.9 GHz, AMD may just have the magic 7nm bullet that finally upsets Intel from its position at the top of our gaming performance benchmarks. In fact, given what we’ve seen so far, it looks like AMD could soon enjoy a dominating position in the desktop PC market unlike anything we’ve seen since the Athlon 64 days. 

AMD’s Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 stack begins with the impressive 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X that will retail for $799. This chip boosts up to 4.9 GHz, has 64MB of unified L3 cache, and a 105W TDP rating. AMD says this chip is faster than Intel’s 10-core Core i9-10900K in pretty much everything, which isn’t surprising — Intel has no equivalent for the mainstream desktop.

The $549 Ryzen 9 5900X slots in as the more mainstream contender, at least by AMD’s definition of ‘mainstream,’ with 12 cores and 24 threads that boost up to 4.8 GHz. AMD says this chip beats the Core i9-10900K by even more impressive margins in gaming. Further down the stack, we find the 8C/16T Ryzen 7 5800X for $449 and the 6C/12T Ryzen 5 5600X for $299.

Intel is stuck with its Comet Lake chips for five long months to try to fend off the Ryzen 5000 lineup until Rocket Lake arrives in Q1 2021, which doesn’t bode well. 

As odd as it sounds, Intel may have one hidden advantage — pricing. AMD now positions Ryzen 5000 as the premium brand and says it has the benchmarks to prove it. As a result, AMD has pushed pricing up by $50 across the stack compared to its Ryzen XT models. However, the XT family doesn’t really represent AMD’s best value chips; its own Ryzen 3000 series, which comes at much lower price points, holds that crown.

As a result, Intel’s Comet Lake chips now have comparatively lower price points than AMD’s Ryzen 5000 lineup. However, AMD says it still maintains the performance-per-dollar lead. We won’t know the full story until the chips land in our labs, but that obviously won’t be long — AMD says the full roster of Ryzen 5000 chips will be available at retail on November 5.

If one thing is for certain, the Zen microarchitecture has completely redefined our expectations for mainstream desktop chips, and it’s rational to expect more of the same with Zen 3. Let’s cover what we know about Zen 3 so far. 

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 At A Glance

1080p gaming performance leadership

Ryzen 9, 7, and 5 models

From 6C/12T up to 16C/32T

Same optimized 7nm process as Ryzen XT models

Zen 3 microarchitecture delivers 19% IPC improvement

24% gen-on-gen power efficiency improvement — 2.8X better than 10900K

Higher peak frequencies for most models — 4.9 GHz on Ryzen 9 5950X

Lower base frequency for all models, offset by increased IPC

L3 cache now unified in a single 32MB cluster per eight-core chiplet (CCD)

Higher pricing across the stack (~$50)

No bundled cooler with Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 models

Drop-in compatible with the AM4 socket

No new chipset/motherboards launched

Current-gen 500-series motherboards work now (caveats below)

Beta support for 400-series motherboards begins in January 2021

All Zen 3 desktop, mobile, and APU chips will carry Ryzen 5000 branding

Same 142W maximum power for AM4 socket as previous-gen

Same 12nm GlobalFoundries I/O Die (IOD)

Here we can see the full Ryzen 5000 product stack, and how the new chips stack up against Intel’s Comet Lake. The first big thing you’ll notice are the increased Precision Boost clock rates, which now stretch up to 4.9 GHz. However, we also see a broad trend of lower base frequencies for the Ryzen 5000 series compared to the previous-gen chips, but that isn’t too surprising considering the much higher performance-per-watt that we’ll outline below.

AMD obviously leans on its improved IPC rather than raw clock speeds, thus boosting its power efficiency and reducing heat generation. The Ryzen 5 5600X is the best example of that — despite only a slight reduction to the base frequency, the chip drops to a 65W TDP compared to its predecessor’s 95W. 

What’s not as impressive? AMD has continued with the precedent it set with its Ryzen XT series: Bundled coolers no longer come with processors with a TDP higher than 65W. That means the Ryzen 5 5600X will be the only Ryzen 5000 chip that comes with a cooler in the box. AMD said it decided to skip bundled coolers in higher-TDP models largely because it believes most enthusiasts looking for high-performance chips use custom cooling anyway. AMD also still specs a 280mm (or greater) AIO liquid cooler for the Ryzen 9 and 7 chips, which significantly adds to the overall platform costs.

AMD continues to only guarantee its boost frequencies on a single core, and all-core boosts will vary based on the cooling solution, power delivery, and motherboard BIOS. The Ryzen 5000 chips still expose the same 20 lanes of PCIe 4.0 to the user (another four are dedicated to the chipset), and stick with DDR4-3200 memory. We’re told that memory overclocking capabilities remain the same as we see with the Ryzen XT models, so AMD hasn’t changed its guidance on that front. 

AMD Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 Performance Benchmarks and Comparisons 

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Gaming and Application Performance Benchmarks 

Before we get into the benchmarks, be aware that AMD provided them. Like all benchmarks provided by any company, they could be (and probably are) heavily skewed toward games and applications that favor the company’s products.

Also, AMD tested all processors (both the Ryzen 5000 and Intel models) with DDR4-3600 memory. For reference, DDR4-3200 is the stock configuration for the AMD processors, and DDR4-2933 is stock for the Core i9-10900K. AMD also used a Noctua NH-D15s, a high-end air cooler, for all tested platforms (which is fine), and an Nvidia GeForce 2080 Ti. (It probably couldn’t buy a GeForce RTX 3080 or GeForce RTX 3090 either.)

What does the 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X and its eye watering $799 price tag get you? The first slide pits AMD’s 5950X against the previous-gen Ryzen 9 3950X and shows 20%+ performance gains in the tested games, though the deltas do vary. 

AMD also says the Ryzen 9 5950X scores 640 points in the single-threaded Cinebench R20 benchmark, which is much higher than the Core i9-1900K’s 544 points. The content creation benchmarks show the 5950X with solid gains in lightly-threaded apps, like CAD, Adobe Premier, and compilation. 

However, performance gains in the heavily-threaded V-Ray application are a bit less pronounced. AMD says the Ryzen 5000 processors still have to adhere to the 142W power limit of the AM4 socket, which reduces performance gains in heavily-threaded applications. 

On the brighter side, AMD says those performance gains come at the same level of power consumption, which means the chips are more power-efficient. It will also be interesting to see how that looks when we lift the power limits in our own tests.

The second slide shows the 5950X against the Intel Core i9-10900K in several games and applications. The benchmarks show what is basically a dead heat with the 10900K, but the Ryzen 9 5900X is actually the faster gaming chip, so you’ll see bigger deltas over the Core i9-10900K in the benchmarks below.

Of course, with the RTX 2080 Ti, it could be the main bottleneck even at 1080p ultra. We joked about AMD not having RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 testing results, but in all seriousness, anyone upgrading to Zen 3 for gaming purposes is likely eyeing Nvidia’s Ampere or AMD’s Big Navi as well. That’s something we’ll be testing once we have hardware in our labs. 

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Gaming and Application Performance Benchmarks 

Here’s a quick look at the improvement in AMD’s favorite single-threaded benchmark, Cinebench R20. AMD like this test because it is extremely favorable to its Zen microarchitecture.

The Ryzen 9 5950X scored 631 points, while the Core i9-10900K weighed in at 544 points. That works out to an outstanding 16% advantage for the Ryzen 9 5900X, but bear in mind this occurs in a single benchmark, so take it with a grain of salt. 

We scored 535 points with the 10900K in the same test, albeit obviously with a different test platform and conditions. AMD didn’t show the Ryzen 9 5900X’s multi-threaded CineBench score, but measured the Core i9-10900K at 6,354 points. That’s close enough to call a tie with our own measurement of 6,356 points.

AMD bills the Ryzen 9 5900X as the fastest gaming CPU on the market, which it says it measured from the average fps from 40 PC games at 1920×1080 at maxed-out settings.

Here we see a spate of AMD’s 1080p performance benchmarks with the Ryzen 9 5900X up against the Ryzen 9 3900XT. Overall, the 5900X provides a 26% average fps performance improvement, which is pretty stellar for an in-socket upgrade. Notably, the processor notches higher gains in some titles — to the tune of 50% in League of Legends and 46% in CS:GO. Other titles, like Battlefield V and Total War, see low single-digit gains. 

The second slide pits the Ryzen 9 5900X against the Core i9-10900K in a selection of games at 1080p with high fidelity settings. AMD recorded a slight loss in Total War, and some single-digit performance increases in a few titles. However, League of Legends and CS:GO, both of which are older titles, received significantly higher fps measurements.

We’ll obviously have to see these titles tested on our own test systems, and Intel could gain a bit more performance from overclocking. The jury is still out on Ryzen 5000’s overclockability, but the chips use the same process as the existing Ryzen XT models, so we don’t expect much headroom.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Gaming and Application Performance Benchmarks 

AMD didn’t share dedicated benchmarks for the Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X — the higher-end models are obviously in the spotlight for today’s announcements. However, the company did share performance-per-dollar slides, which you can see above for the Ryzen 7 5800X. We’ll add more benchmarks as we learn more. 

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Gaming and Application Performance Benchmarks 

Here we can see AMD’s performance-per-dollar projections for the Ryzen 5 5600X. Given that this and the Ryzen 7 5800X are single-chiplet designs, we expect them to be incredibly competitive in gaming at the lower price ranges. 

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 Motherboards

AMD didn’t launch a new chipset with the Ryzen 5000 series; instead, the chips drop right into existing 500-series chipsets, like X570, B550 and A520 models. These boards require an AGESA 1.0.8.0 (or newer) BIOS to boot a Zen 3 processor, but AMD has been shipping silently shipping supporting BIOSes since summer. As a result, every 500-series motherboard on the market should have a downloadable BIOS available.

While the early BIOS revisions ensure the chips will work on the most basic level, you’ll have to update to an AGESA 1.1.0.0 (or better) BIOS for the best performance. These revisions will be available for all 500-series motherboards by the November 5th Ryzen 5000 launch date.

AMD originally announced it wouldn’t provide Zen 3 support for 400-series motherboards, but due to concerns from the enthusiast community, the company reversed course. Now AMD will also provide support for 400-series chipsets, but the BIOS updates are under development the first beta BIOSes will be available in January of 2021. 

However, a series of important restrictions apply to 400-series upgraders, which you can read more about here, but here’s the short version from AMD:

We will develop and enable our motherboard partners with the code to support “Zen 3”-based processors in select beta BIOSes for AMD B450 and X470 motherboards.

These optional BIOS updates will disable support for many existing AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor models to make the necessary ROM space available.

The select beta BIOSes will enable a one-way upgrade path for AMD Ryzen Processors with “Zen 3,” coming later this year. Flashing back to an older BIOS version will not be supported.

To reduce the potential for confusion, our intent is to offer BIOS download only to verified customers of 400 Series motherboards who have purchased a new desktop processor with “Zen 3” inside. This will help us ensure that customers have a bootable processor on-hand after the BIOS flash, minimizing the risk a user could get caught in a no-boot situation.

Timing and availability of the BIOS updates will vary and may not immediately coincide with the availability of the first “Zen 3”-based processors.

This is the final pathway AMD can enable for 400 Series motherboards to add new CPU support. CPU releases beyond “Zen 3” will require a newer motherboard.

AMD continues to recommend that customers choose an AMD 500 Series motherboard for the best performance and features with our new CPUs.

Note: You lose support for PCIe 4.0 on 400-series boards, but most gamers will not, and should not, care — PCIe 4.0 makes no meaningful performance difference in gaming. 

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 Pricing and Availability

The Ryzen 5000 series will come to market on November 5th, 2020. We expect to learn more information, like performance benchmarks, for the Ryzen 7 and 5 models in the interim. We also expect to eventually hear about Threadripper 5000 products with the Zen 3 architecture, but we aren’t sure when AMD will bring the new design to its ultra-powerful high end desktop lineup. 

The Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 processors do come with a recommended $50 markup across the product stack. AMD’s suggested pricing often has little to do with what we see at retail; you can expect the chips to eventually retail for far lower than MSRP. 

The change comes as AMD positions itself as a premium chip supplier as opposed to its long history as the value alternative. The continued absence of bundled coolers also serves to drive up the platform cost – in most cases, you’ll need to invest at least $40 to find a cooler that’s as capable as AMD’s stock coolers. The company specs a 280mm AIO cooler (or equivalent air cooler) for the chips, so plan accordingly. 

That’s led to plenty of complaints, and Intel’s Comet Lake lineup actually has lower pricing in critical price bands. We do have to take performance into account, though, and we have yet to do our own testing. That means the jury is out on the price-to-performance ratio for Ryzen 5000. 

AMD’s Zen 3 pricing in the market will be largely predicated upon how it performs relative to Intel’s chips. Given the big performance gains we expect with the Zen 3 generation, it’s possible the numbers could work out in favor of Intel’s competing chips. 

If Zen 3 lives up to its billing, it looks like AMD’s only constraint will be production capacity at TSMC. AMD will sell every Ryzen 5000 chip it punches out, at least until Rocket Lake arrives – and we still don’t know if Intel’s new 14nm design can keep pace with AMD’s 7nm chips. AMD’s ecosystem of 500- and 400-series motherboard partners have plenty of relatively affordable options, so we don’t foresee any problems with motherboard supply.

On that front, AMD will undoubtedly meet with stiff demand for the Ryzen 5000 chips at launch, and the company says it is working with retailers to avoid the plague of purchasing bots that exacerbated Nvidia’s now-infamous Ampere launch. And AMD hasn’t been free of shortages at launch either, with the Ryzen 9 3950X being relatively difficult to purchase for the first couple of months after it launched.

Should I Buy a Ryzen 5000 Series Zen 3 CPU?

The jury is still out on just how AMD’s Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 series chips will perform in the real world: We won’t know until the silicon lands in our labs, but you can bet that will be soon given the November 5th 2020 launch date. 

The performance does look promising; AMD has made plenty of alterations that should boost performance significantly. Here’s what we know about the Zen 3 microarchitecture:

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 Microarchitecture 

AMD shared many new details about the Zen 3 microarchitecture, but the company says it will share even more information in a future briefing, so we’ll have a lot more information for our forthcoming Ryzen 5000 reviews.

AMD embarked on what it describes as a ground-up redesign of the Zen 2 microarchitecture to deliver the gains we would normally see with an entirely new design. In fact, the company’s ~19% increase in IPC represents its largest single-generation increase in the ‘post-Zen’ era (Zen+, Zen 2). We certainly haven’t seen an increase of this magnitude for desktop chips from Team Blue in the recent past, either — the initial Skylake architecture achieved a similar boost, but everything since has been nearly static.

AMD calculates its 19% IPC number from the geometric mean of 25 workloads measured with two eight-core chips locked at 4.0 GHz. The impressive IPC gains required a ‘front-to-back’ series of modifications to the design, including (but not limited to) the cache subsystem, front end, branch predictor, execution engine, and load/store elements, all with a focus on boosting single-threaded performance while wringing out better instruction level parallelism (ILP). The result is improved performance across the board in both single- and multi-threaded integer and floating point workloads. However, the 142W power limit imposed by the AM4 socket does restrict the scope of performance gains in heavily-threaded workloads, though there are some advances there, too.

AMD says it uses the same enhanced version of TSMC’s 7nm process node that it used for the Ryzen XT series, but still hasn’t provided specifics. AMD’s ‘special recipe’ for 7nm is largely kept confidential, but the firm specified that it doesn’t use TSMC’s 7nm+ (an EUV node). That means that AMD uses the standard N7 from Zen 2 with improved design rules, or that the chips use the N7P node. 

AMD’s end goal is to have undisputed best-in-class performance across the full spectrum of applications, and gaming performance was a particular focus, which brings us to the changed cache hierarchy. 

As with the Zen 2 processors, Zen 3 uses the same 12nm I/O die (IOD) paired with either one or two chiplets in an MCM (Multi-Chip Module) arrangement. In the image above, we can see the large I/O die and the two smaller eight-core chiplets. 

AMD chose to stick with this basic design for its Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 chips. And just like we see with the previous-gen Zen 2 chips, processors with six or eight cores come with one chiplet, while chips with 12 or 16 cores come with two chiplets. 

While the overall package design is the same three-chiplet design, AMD made drastic changes to the internals of the two eight-core chiplets. In the Zen 2 architecture (left), each Zen compute chiplet (CCD) contained two four-core clusters (CCXes) with access to an isolated 16MB slice of L3 cache. So, while the entire chiplet contained 32MB of cache, not all cores had access to all of the cache in the chiplet.

To access an adjacent slice of L3 cache, a core had to communicate with the other quad-core cluster by issuing a request that traversed the Infinity Fabric to the I/O die. The I/O die then routed the request to the second quad-core cluster, even though it was contained within the same chiplet. To fulfill the request, the data had to travel back over the fabric to the I/O die, and then back into the quad-core cluster that issued the request.

On the right side of the slide, we can see that the chiplet now contains one large unified 32MB slice of L3 cache, and all eight cores within the chiplet have full access to the shared cache. This improves not only core-to-cache latency, but also core-to-core latency within the chiplet.

While all eight cores can access the L3 cache within a single compute chiplet, in a dual-chiplet Zen 3 chip, there will be times that the cores will have to communicate with the other chiplet and its L3 cache. In those cases, the compute chiplet’s requests will still have to traverse the Infinity Fabric via signals routed through the I/O die, which incurs latency.

Still, because an entire layer of external communication between the two four-core clusters inside each chiplet has been removed, the Infinity Fabric will naturally have far less traffic. This results in less contention on the fabric, thus simplifying scheduling and routing, and it could also increase the amount of available bandwidth for this type of traffic. All of these factors will result in faster transfers (i.e., lower latency) communication between the two eight-core chiplets, and it possibly removes some of the overhead on the I/O die, too. We imagine there could also be other advantages, particularly for main memory latency, but we’ll wait for more details. We do know that the default fabric speeds haven’t changed, though. 

All of this is important because games rely heavily on the memory subsystem, both on-die cache and main memory (DDR4). A larger pool of cache resources keeps more data closer to the cores, thus requiring fewer high-latency accesses to the main memory. Additionally, lower cache latency can reduce the amount of time a core communicates with the L3 cache. This new design will tremendously benefit latency-sensitive applications, like games — particularly if they have a dominant thread that accesses cache heavily (which is common). 

Naturally, power efficiency will improve as a function of reduced traffic on the Infinity Fabric, but that’s probably a small fraction of the performance-per-watt gains AMD has extracted from the architecture. Increased IPC and other SoC-level optimizations obviously factor in here. Still, the net result is that AMD managed to stay within the same TDP thermal and electrical ranges as the Ryzen 3000 chips while delivering more performance.

AMD Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 Power Consumption and Efficiency

AMD says it has not increased power consumption by a single watt — the maximum power draw for the AM4 socket still stands at 142W — which naturally will lead to impressive efficiency gains. AMD’s chart above uses the first-gen Ryzen 7 1800X as a comparison point, and here we see a 2X improvement by moving to the 7nm Zen 2 architecture. That isn’t too surprising considering the move from the older 14nm process to 7nm with that generation of chips. 

The more important reduction comes from extracting more efficiency from the ‘same’ 7nm node, which is far more difficult and requires a combination of both better design methodologies and architectural improvements. As a result of these factors, AMD says it wrung out another 24% gen-on-gen efficiency improvement with the Ryzen 9 5900X over the Zen 2-powered Ryzen 9 3900XT. That’s impressive. Intel’s most recent Comet Lake chips had to increase power draw quite a bit and still had far lower performance improvements.

What does that mean to you? Faster, cooler, and quieter performance for your PC compared to AMD’s previous chips – and those models already posed a stiff challenge to Intel’s Comet Lake. 

The Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 chips arrive at retail on November 5th, 2020. We’ll update as we learn more. 

For most of the last few weeks, I’ve been using an Acer Chromebook Spin 713 review unit. I was impressed by this convertible Chromebook just from the first impressions. And now? Everyday usage has confirmed my initial experience: I don’t think you can buy a better Chrome OS laptop for $629.

To help explain why, let me share a little perspective.

My daily driver is the predecessor to this laptop, Acer’s Chromebook Spin 13. Most of the updates and upgrades to the Spin 713 are either cosmetic (more on that later) or newer generation components. And yet, a similar configuration of the older Spin 13 when it launched was priced in the $800 to $900 range. So as an “upgrade”, you’re getting more for less.

Additionally, when similarly configured to the Spin 713, Google’s own Pixelbook Go costs $849. With it, you’re getting a smaller and lighter Chromebook with a more modern design. Is that worth paying $229 more instead of looking at the Acer Chromebook Spin 713? For some, it might be, but you’ll be giving up some features and quite a bit of performance.

Power-packed with performance

Here’s what I mean about performance in general, based on benchmark runs between the three Chromebooks I’ve mentioned. All tests were run using the current Stable Channel of Chrome OS 85 in guest mode and with no experimental flags enabled.

I wouldn’t call any of these Chromebooks slow, particularly when compared to entry-level or sub-$400 options. And benchmarks are really just general performance predictors more than anything.

However, everything from boot up to browsing, along with Android apps and Linux usage, happens faster on the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. It’s the fastest Chromebook I’ve used yet although I should note that there are higher priced Chromebooks with more powerful processors on the market.

It’s what’s inside that makes the difference

Obviously, with a newer 10th-generation Core i5 processor, I’d expect the Spin 713 to be faster than older devices. The Spin 13 and Pixelbook Go both use 8th-generation Core i5 chipsets. And the main reason the Pixelbook Go benchmarks slower than the Spin 13 is because its Core i5 is a lower powered Y-Series chip. With the U-Series processor, the Spin 13 can simply outperform the Go. But it can’t outperform the newer U-Series processor in the Acer Chromebook Spin 713.

There’s another nice hardware upgrade in the newer Spin 713 as well: NVMe storage which is much faster than the eMMC storage used in most other Chromebooks. There are exceptions such as the Asus Chromebook Flip C436 and Samsung Galaxy Chromebook. They use faster NVMe storage but cost $799 and $999, respectively. Acer has somehow found a way to get high-end Chromebook components in the Spin 713 while keeping the cost much lower than its competitors.

Lenovo does have a $479 model of its Chromebook Flex 5 with NVME storage. However, you’re only getting half the memory found in the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, a lower resolution display, and a 10th-generation Intel Core i3 processor inside.

I haven’t quite seen the 10 hours of claimed run-time in my daily usage, which is comprised of a few dozen browser tabs open as well as a Linux app or two also running concurrently. However, I’ve never seen less than 8 active hours and I average around 9.

I suspect a battery test of looping video might hit or exceed the 10-hour mark. Acer’s internal testing of video playback suggests between 11.5 and 14 hours on a single charge, so this might be good for movies on a long flight. Well, when we can fly again, that is.

Speaking of videos, they look great on this display. I think the panel is a slight upgrade from the older model because colors have a little more “pop” and the screen seems to have a bit more brightness. Video calls look great as well and none of my contacts have had any complaints with output from the built-in webcam. Whether on a video call or watching movies, you may want to use headphones, however. I can’t hear any improvements to the downward-facing, under chassis dual speaker system over last year’s model.

Game streaming with either Stadia or GeForce Now looks fantastic too. I’ve put in at least 10 hours on Red Dead Redemption 2 (shown above) without feeling I’m missing anything from a visual experience.

Design improvements on the outside too

As I noted in my first impressions, Acer has slimmed down display bezels, boosted the size of the trackpad, and made the chassis more svelte towards the front. These small changes add up to big improvements I mentioned prior: The left, right and top display bezels are about half of what they are on my Spin 13. They’re not quite at Dell XPS levels if you’ve ever seen those laptops, but they’re getting closer.

Aside from offering a more immersive display experience, this bezel reduction makes the screen around 0.75-inches shorter on the Spin 713 as compared to the Spin 13. And it saves nearly a half-inch on the length of the chassis as well. So while these two devices look very similar, the Spin 713 is slightly smaller. The Spin 713 also shaves 0.3 pounds from the older model as a result.

While the design of the Chromebook Spin 713 isn’t glitzy or glamorous — I find it fairly generic — it’s certainly not offensive. And I appreciate the design changes. One in particular might not sound like it’s worth a mention but it is. Acer put both a USB Type-C and full-sized HDMI port between the power button and the volume rocker. On the old model, these two buttons are right next to each other. I’ve lost track of how many times I put my older Spin 13 to sleep by hitting the power button when I wanted to change the volume.

I find the island-style keyboard comfortable to type on and the much larger trackpad is fantastic. Acer opted not to include a fingerprint reader; something typically found in comparable devices. It would be nice to have but I can live without it. And there’s no included stylus like last year’s model has. There appear to be some configurations of the Spin 713 that support a USI stylus but I don’t believe the model I’m reviewing does.

Who should buy the Acer Chromebook Spin 713?

If you have the budget to spend $629 or more, I think the Spin 713 deserves a long hard look.

Yes, you can get new Chromebooks with a 10th-generation Core i7 processor or with a 4K display but that will cost you. Provided that you have to have one or both of those features and you’ve got the budget, then go for one of those options.

Not in that camp though? The price to value ratio for the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is super high. It can easily handle the workload of a student who’s learning remotely. It’s ideal as an all-day browser and online productivity machine for anyone who needs more horsepower than an entry-level Chromebook. Even developers could be happy with this package based on my usage of Visual Studio Code in Linux. For Android Studio folks, you’ll probably want a Chromebook with more memory though.

If I haven’t made it clear, I’m simply amazed at what you get for the price here. The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is already high on my short list for Chromebook of the year, although I’ll make that final determination at the end of 2020.

Simply put, the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is improved in nearly every way from its predecessor, rivaling more expensive, other Project Athena devices from Asus, HP, and Samsung. How Acer does this for $629, I don’t know, but unless you’re a heavy duty developer, you can’t go wrong with this convertible Chromebook.

I’ll wait another week before returning the review unit, so if you have any specific questions, leave me a comment. I’ll do my best to answer them.

The iPad Pro and MacBook Pro will be the first Apple devices to use new Mini-LED display technology. So says a report from DigiTimes, citing industry sources.

An earlier rumor said that an early 2021 refresh of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro will be the first Apple product to use Mini-LED, with new MacBooks coming in the second half of the year. There will apparently be 10,000 Mini-LEDs used in each display.

Check out our iPad Pro (2020) review

Learn more about Apple’s next big product: the iPhone 12

Plus: Samsung Galaxy S21 could get the OnePlus 8T’s best feature

Mini-LED, as the name suggests, is a version of normal LED displays that uses smaller LED light sources. This should prove to be much better when it comes to brightness and color. However, Mini-LED is currently between 20% and 30% more expensive than standard LED, meaning it’ll remain a premium option for the time being.

Mini-LED was originally on track to appear in devices this year, according to reports. Coronavirus and the associated lockdowns ruined those plans, which is why we’re only expecting to see the first Mini-LED Apple machines appear in 2021. However, DigiTimes says rival laptop makers will also begin using the new tech early next year.

The displays will reportedly be made by Epistar, a Taiwanese manufacturer. While this is the only confirmed supplier, it’s about to be joined by Malaysia-based Osram Opto according to DigiTimes. Osram Opto currently makes display components for Apple Watch and iPhone devices, but will switch to Mini-LED parts, specifically for new MacBook Pros. Meanwhile, Epistar will be producing Mini-LED components for the iPad Pro.

Since Apple is allegedly planning on moving over more of its displays to Mini-LED technology, it makes sense to hear that it’s finding more production partners to help provide the necessary parts. DigiTimes also claims that a third company, China’s Sanan Optoelectronics, is also being evaluated by Apple as a Mini-LED supplier.

While you’ll likely have to wait until 2021 for these Mini LED devices, Apple should have a slew of other products right around the corner. Apple’s big iPhone 12 event is tipped to take place on October 13, and could also mark the reveal of such products as the AirPods Studio, AirTags and the first Apple Silicon MacBook. 

Gigabyte has updated its lineup of the BRIX Pro series with Intel’s latest 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs including new Xe integrated graphics. Gigabyte has three Tiger Lake units available, with different CPUs for each SKU, you can grab a Core i7-1165G7 Quad-Core, Core i5-1135G7 Quad-Core, or Core Core i3-1115G4 Dual-Core model.

As found by FanlessTech, connectivity is extensive on the BRIX Pro, rivaling that of entry-level PCs. Each BRIX comes with four HDMI 2.0a ports, one Thunderbolt 4/USB 4.0, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 and two Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports in the rear I/O. Wireless connectivity comes in the form of Intel AX201 WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. But that’s not all, the front I/O includes four more USB 3.2 ports, plus headphone and microphone jacks.

For storage, you can kit each unit out with two M.2 SSDs, and one SATA 3 laptop hard drive or SSD. One of the two M.2 slots can run either NVMe or SATA protocols which is great as SATA M.2 SSDs are usually cheaper than their NVMe counterparts. For system memory, you get two SODIMMs slots supporting a max of 64GB (32GB per slot) at a frequency of 3200MHz.

The size of the Tiger Lake BRIX Pros are excellent given the amount of connectivity they offer, measuring just 7.7 x 1.7 x 5.5 inches (1‎96.2 x 44.4 x 140 mm). They are compact and useful for when space is at a premium. They can also be attached onto the rear of your monitor with the built-in VESA mount that supports 75 x 75mm and 100 x 100mm mounts.

Gigabyte have yet to announce availability and pricing.

HyperX, Kingston’s elite gaming division, today launched new Impact DDR4 SO-DIMM offerings with capacities that span up to 64GB. 

HyperX’s announcement points to high-capacity kits that could be the best RAM for enthusiasts needing large amounts of memory on their notebooks or small form factor PCs.

Impact memory modules are equipped with the brand’s Plug N Play feature that automatically sets up the memory to run at the advertised frequency without any manual tweaking. Compatibility-wise, Impact memory modules should play nicely on both AMD Ryzen and Intel platforms.

HyperX is selling the new single-rank 16GB Impact stick as a single module or in a dual-channel configuration. The frequencies range from DDR4-2400 to DDR4-3200 with CAS latency values between 15 and 20. Regardless of the frequency, the memory modules only require 1.2V to operate smoothly.

The single modules retail between $77 to $95, depending on the frequency. The 32GB (2x 16GB) packages start at $153 and top out at $190.

HyperX says it factory tests every Impact DDR4 SO-DIMM memory kit to assure that it performs at the advertised speed without hiccups. The vendor also backs them with a limited lifetime warranty.

Over 300 million PCs have upgraded to Windows 10 version 2004, based on the latest usage data from AdDuplex.

“[Windows 10 version 2004] is now on more than 33 percent of Windows 10 PCs, the latest AdDuplex report notes, adding that its data is based on a survey of almost 150,000 PCs.

As you may recall, Windows 10 version 2004 got off to a slow start this year, thanks to massive compatibility and reliability issues. But usage in the new version doubled last month, from 11.6 percent the previous month to 24.1 percent, indicating that most of the issues had been resolved.

This month, the gains weren’t quite as big—usage jumped from 24.1 percent to 33.7 percent, AdDuplex says. But it’s now neck and neck with the most popular Windows 10 version, 1909, which has 34.5 percent usage. And with its predecessor, Windows 10 version 20H2 now finalized, it still has a few months to reach its usage apex. Maybe more, if 20H2 has issues too.

AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X has been spotted in a game benchmark where the purported chip put up a very impressive performance compared to Intel’s current flagship Core i9-10900K, getting AMD fans excited that this CPU could be a real winner in terms of its price/performance ratio.

The Ryzen 5800X was spotted in an Ashes of the Singularity benchmark (as ever, bear in mind the usual caveats about early leaks and authenticity), with the processor being an eight-core effort as previous rumors have claimed.

Sadly the clock speeds aren’t detailed for the 5800X – and neither are the systems in the compared results, save for the graphics cards, which are both RTX 2080 models (and the AMD PC has double the system RAM) – but the 5800X manages to notch up a score of 5,800 (and 5,900 in another run) at 4K ‘crazy’ settings, roughly equal to the Core i9-10900K. The Ryzen chip also hit 6,300 at 1080p.

R7 5800X VS i9-10900K pic.twitter.com/eXLc9WmMz8September 29, 2020

GPU bottleneck

Drilling down and looking at the CPU frame-rate in the results (highlighted by Wccftech) – in other words, sidestepping the GPU bottleneck caused by the RTX 2080 in the intensive 4K benchmark – shows more like a 15% advantage in favor of the Ryzen processor (averaged over the different batch results).

That’s pretty huge, of course, considering Intel’s Comet Lake champ is capable of boosting to 5.3GHz and has two more cores than the purported eight-core Ryzen 5800X. And if AMD retains a similar pricing structure to existing Ryzen CPUs, and the asking price of the 3800X; well, you can see why folks are starting to get excited…

Still, we should temper our expectations as with any leak, and bear in mind that this is just a specific scenario in a single game benchmark, and there’s much more to gaming performance than just a snapshot like so.

This spilled benchmark is also further evidence that AMD is going to use the Ryzen 5000 name for its range of next-gen Zen 3 processors, essentially to reverse the order in which the CPUs come out for the incoming 5000 series, so that desktop chips hit first, and then Ryzen 5000 mobile.

Also, it represents another nail in the coffin for the vague notion floated that the 5800X might move up to 10-cores (although theoretically there could still be a 10-core CPU, of course, elsewhere in the range).

Lenovo’s ThinkPad brand has a new flagship model: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 1 complements the high-end ThinkPad X1 series with a new, much smaller model.

In design, the new ThinkPad X1 Nano is very similar to the existing Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8. You could call the ThinkPad X1 Nano a smaller brother of this model, as it has the same wedge-design and black Carbon fiber top-cover. The key difference between the two: While the X1 Carbon uses 14 inch displays in the more common 16:9 aspect ratio, the X1 Nano comes with a 13 inch screen in the taller 16:10 ratio. By going this route, the X1 Nano provides the same screen height as the X1 Carbon, but in a much smaller package.

Lenovo Nano: Lighter than X1 Carbon & XPS 13

The chassis is not only smaller, it is also significantly lighter. Lenovo notes that the ThinkPad X1 Nano is the lightest ThinkPad laptop so far, with just 962 g or 2.12 lbs. That is not only lighter than the X1 Carbon (1.09 kg/2.4 lbs), but also significantly lighter than the new Dell XPS 13 9310 (1.2 kg/2.64 lbs).

To make a ThinkPad this small and light, there had to be some compromises. Notably, the X1 Nano does not have the impressive array of ports that the bigger X1 Carbon boasts. Instead, the ThinkPad Nano has just two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone-jack. The battery and the keyboard are also slightly smaller in size compared with the bigger counterpart. 

Of course, Thunderbolt 4 already hints at it: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is powered by Intel Tiger Lake, the first ThinkPad X1 to have these newer CPUs. At this stage, it is not clear if it will feature the UP3 or UP4 Tiger Lake models though. Some additional firsts for the ThinkPad X1 line: 5G and LPDDR4X memory (up to 16 GB). The screen will only be offered with a single 2K level resolution (2,160 x 1,350), which has a brightness of 450 cd/m². Both touch and non-touch are available.

ThinkPad X1 Nano: Pricing & availability

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano will be available in December 2020. It will cost at least $1,599. It will ship with either Windows 10 Pro or Ubuntu Linux.

At the Microsoft Build 2020 virtual developers’ conference, CEO Satya Nadella announced that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2.0 would soon support Linux GUIs and applications. That day is closer now than ever before. At the recent X.Org Developers Conference (XDC), Microsoft partner developer lead Steve Pronovost revealed that Microsoft has made it possible to run graphical Linux applications within WSL.

It’s always been possible to run Linux graphical programs such as the GIMP graphics editor, Evolution e-mail client, and LibreOffice on WSL. But it wasn’t easy. You had to install a third-party X Window display server, such as the VcXsrv Windows X Server in Windows 10, and then do some tuning with both Windows and Linux to get them to work together smoothly. The X Window System underlies almost all Linux graphical user interfaces. 

Now, Microsoft has ported a Wayland display server to WSL. Wayland is the most popular X Window compatible server. In WSL2, it connects the graphical Linux applications via a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection to the main Windows display. This means you can run Linux and Windows GUI applications simultaneously on the same desktop screen. 

Pronovost explained:

WSL essentially runs Linux inside of a Virtual Machine hosted by Windows and we integrate applications (console, and now GUI) back onto your Windows desktop so you can run both Win32 and Linux applications inside of a unified experience. Because Linux is running in VM, we can’t run the native GPU driver that expects direct access to the GPU (unless we were to do something like discrete device assignment and assign one of the host GPU to the VM… but then the host would lose access to that GPU!). With GPU-PV [GPU Paravirtualization] we can essentially project the host GPU in Linux and have both Linux and Windows processes share the same physical GPU without the need for fixed resource partitioning.

Craig Loewen, Microsoft WSL Program Manager, added in a Twitter thread that the key differences between using a third-party X server and the built-in Wayland server is that: “You don’t need to start up or start the server, we’ll handle that for you.” In addition, it comes with “Lovely integration with Windows,” such as drop shadows and Linux icon support.

Loewen also said you can run a Linux web browser in it. “We haven’t tested it extensively with a full desktop environment yet, as we want to focus on running often asked for apps first, and primarily IDEs [integrated development environment] so you can run those in a full Linux environment,” he said.

Don’t get too excited about it just yet, though. Loewen continued, “We don’t yet have an ETA for the beta channel, however, this work will be available in general for Insiders to try within the next couple of months.”

Microsoft’s integration of Linux into Windows has been coming for some time. Four years ago, Microsoft introduced WSL, which brought the Linux Bash shell to Windows 10. With Bash and WSL, you can run most Linux shell tools and popular Linux programming languages. 

As time went on, Linux became more of a first-class citizen on the Windows desktop. Multiple Linux distros, starting with Ubuntu, were followed by Red Hat Fedora and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED). Then, Microsoft replaced its WSL translation layer, which converted Linux kernel calls into Windows calls, with WSL 2. This update came with Microsoft’s own Linux kernel running on a thin version of the Hyper-V hypervisor. 

More recently, starting with the Windows 10 Insider Preview build 20211, Windows users can access Linux file systems. This includes access to Linux file systems, such as ext4, which Windows doesn’t natively support. It also means, if you dual-boot Windows and Linux with different disks, you can now access Linux files from Windows. With this, you can access Linux files from both the Windows File Explorer and PowerShell window with administrative privilege.

At the rate things are going, my “crazy” prediction that Windows 11 might run on top of Linux may yet come true!