The FPS Review Weekender: FSR 4.1 Costs Radeon RX 7000 Owners 7 Percent and Is Still Worth It, Plus 12 More Hardware Reviews

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By David Schroth

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The most useful GPU review of the week is not a new graphics card, it is two old ones. ComputerBase went back and re-benchmarked the Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7600 with FSR Upscaling 4.1 in place of FSR 3.1, and the result is an answer to the question every RDNA 3 owner has been asking since June: yes, you give up a few frames, and yes, you should still switch. Beyond that, the display segment finally delivered RGB-stripe Tandem OLED panels worth arguing about, three AM5 boards landed at different prices, we published our own verdict on whether DDR5-8000 is worth it on Ryzen, and another review of Noctua’s first case collaboration.

FSR Upscaling 4.1 Retested: Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7600

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: ComputerBase rebuilt its GPU test suite in May with RX 7000 still running FSR 3.1, then AMD shipped FSR Upscaling 4.1 for RDNA 3 in June and invalidated those numbers, so this is the corrective retest. At 1440p the RX 7800 XT gives up seven percent in raster and five percent in ray tracing against FSR 3.1, while the RX 7600 loses nine percent and seven percent respectively, and ComputerBase attributes the smaller card’s larger deficit to FSR 4.1’s slightly higher memory footprint pushing it into its VRAM ceiling in some titles. Their verdict lands where TechSpot and Club386 landed earlier: somewhat slower, but visibly better, and the upscaler RDNA 3 owners should now be using by default.

FPS Review take: The RX 7600 hitting a memory wall purely because the better upscaler wants a little more VRAM is the whole 2026 GPU market in one data point, and it is the same wall we mapped in our RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs 8GB performance testing. If you own an RX 7000 card, take the seven percent and never look at FSR 3.1 again.

The 4GB Question: Radeon RX 9050 4GB and the VRAM Floor

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: Hardware Unboxed spent the week flopping around on the entry-level memory floor, first living with a 4GB card in current games and then running a direct 4GB versus 8GB comparison, and the channel’s framing is openly hostile to the idea that a 4GB card belongs on shelves in 2026.

FPS Review take: AMD brought the Radeon RX 9050 4GB into the lineup with Adrenalin Edition 26.7.1, and the timing of this testing is not a coincidence. Anyone weighing a budget card should watch both videos and then read our RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs 8GB results, because the ceiling moves every year and it never moves down.

RGB-Stripe Tandem OLED: Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM and ROG Strix XG32UQWMS

Written reviews:

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: The PG32UCWM is the first RGB-stripe Tandem OLED to get broad review attention, and the pitch is that dropping the triangular subpixel layout fixes the text fringing that has been OLED’s most cited desktop compromise. Techtesters and Linus Tech Tips (Ed: Comments are brutal on this one, amirite?) both come away treating RGB-stripe as the genuine generational step rather than a spec-sheet flourish, with LTT going as far as calling it the best OLED tech currently buyable, while TFTCentral’s companion piece on the Strix XG32UQWMS frames the arrival of 32-inch 4K Tandem WOLED a glorious moment.

FPS Review take: If you have been sitting out OLED specifically because of subpixel text rendering, this is the panel generation that finally addresses your objection, and TFTCentral’s explainer is the honest answer to whether you should wait. The 32-inch 4K class is exactly where the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 XT tier lands, which is the tier our readers keep buying.

Philips Evnia 32M2N8900P

Written reviews:

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: Club386 puts the Evnia 32M2N8900P at the top of the 32-inch 4K QD-OLED pile it has tested, crediting a rich gamut, strong uniformity, and a real brightness lift over earlier models, with Ambiglow and an extra USB-C port as the differentiators. The knock is out-of-box colour accuracy, which is not best in class. At £779 it undercuts the MSI MPG 322UR X24 by around £80, though the MSI answers back with 98W USB-C power delivery.

FPS Review take: Club386’s point that it is now hard to go wrong with any Penta Tandem 32-inch 4K QD-OLED is the real story here, because that was emphatically not true eighteen months ago. Buy on features and price at this point, not on panel lottery.

Samsung Odyssey G80HS 6K

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: Monitors Unboxed is the only outlet to put the 6K Odyssey G80HS through testing this week, and the review is framed less as a buying guide than as an interrogation of whether a 6K gaming panel has any coherent use case at current GPU performance levels. Treat this as one outlet’s opinion rather than a settled verdict.

FPS Review take: Resolution above 4K on the desktop has spent a decade being a productivity story wearing a gaming costume, and nothing about the current GPU pricing environment makes 6K look like a sensible gaming target. Interesting panel, wrong year.

GIGABYTE X870E AERO X3D DARK WOOD

Written reviews:

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: Vortez is the latest to work through the DARK WOOD and lands where the rest of us did, praising excellent VRM thermals, a genuinely easy BIOS, and a connectivity sheet that leaves little out: dual USB4, dual 5GbE, four M.2 slots with two at PCIe 5.0, PCIe EZ-Latch Plus Duo, and an onboard HDMI output that is unusually handy for feeding an internal LCD without stealing a port from the graphics card. They flag the oversized primary M.2 heatsink as a clearance risk with large air coolers, a missing fan header near the rear exhaust, and the sheer weight of the board. Our own review reached the same conclusion on build quality while being blunter about the wood accents not quite matching the standard of the rest of the design, and TweakTown handed it an Editor’s Choice.

FPS Review take: This is one of the few boards where the aesthetic argument is doing real work, and if you want the full walkthrough you can read our GIGABYTE X870E AERO X3D DARK WOOD review or watch our video review of the board, and compare it against the lighter WOOD Edition we reviewed in March. If you are building the matching wood-trimmed system, our LIAN LI LANCOOL 217 Black Genuine Walnut Wood case review used this exact motherboard.

AM5 Motherboard Mini Roundup: ASUS ROG Strix B850-F Gaming Wi-Fi7 Neo, Gigabyte X870 AORUS Infinity, ASRock X870 Challenger Wi-Fi

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: Three boards, three completely different arguments. TechPowerUp and Guru3D both come away positive on the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming Wi-Fi7 Neo, citing excellent VRM thermals, tool-friendly M.2 heatsinks, 20 Gbps USB and 5 Gbps Ethernet, and a reworked BIOS, with the premium price as the standing objection; Guru3D is careful to frame the Neo as a refresh of the existing B850-F that targets signal quality, cooling, connectivity and firmware capacity rather than more CPU power, with official memory tuning now quoted past DDR5-8400 on Ryzen 9000. At the other end, TechPowerUp calls the ASRock X870 Challenger Wi-Fi outstanding value at $170 for PCIe Gen 5, USB4, Wi-Fi 7, four M.2 slots, and a robust VRM, which makes it the budget reference point of the week. WCCFTech’s X870 AORUS Infinity is the outlier, positioned as Gigabyte’s flagship overclocking board with pricing still unannounced.

FPS Review take: A $170 X870 board with USB4 and Wi-Fi 7 is a genuinely striking value in a week when motherboard prices are forecast to climb through Q3, and buying now rather than later looks defensible. For value-tier AM5 comparisons, our MSI MAG B850 TOMAHAWK WIFI and MSI MAG B850 GAMING PLUS MAX WiFi reviews remain our closest reference points.

SanDisk Optimus GX: 7100M 2TB and GX Pro 8100

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: Tom’s Hardware calls the Optimus GX 7100M the best M.2 2230 drive currently available, a spiritual successor to the WD Black SN770M that carries over the class-leading responsiveness and power efficiency of the SN7100 into the short form factor, available up to 2TB, with heat the main complaint alongside minor performance quirks. ComputerBase covers the full-length GX Pro 8100 in the same week and is more sceptical, framing it as familiar hardware in new packaging rather than a new performance tier. Together they describe a lineup that is strongest exactly where the competition has thinned out.

FPS Review take: A high-efficiency 2TB 2230 drive is the single most useful upgrade a Steam Deck or ROG Xbox Ally owner can make, and efficiency matters more than peak sequential numbers in a handheld. Watch the thermals if you are installing it in a system with no airflow over the slot.

G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-8000 EXPO

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: We tested a 32GB DDR5-8000 CL38 EXPO kit on a Ryzen 9 9950X against default SPD 4800, a lower-latency DDR5-6000 CL28 kit, and a light overclock, across synthetics, content creation, and eleven games. DDR5-8000 wins clearly in bandwidth and in specific real-world workloads such as video transcoding, but in gaming the DDR5-6000 CL28 kit is generally faster, because moving to 8000MT/s halves the memory controller clock to 2000MHz against 3000MHz at DDR5-6000 and the frequency gain does not cover that loss.

FPS Review take: The short answer to the headline question is no for gamers and a qualified yes for people with long render queues, which is exactly the kind of finding that gets lost when you buy on the spec sheet. If you want the same question asked on the other platform, see our Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus RAM scaling testing from 7200MT/s to 8800MT/s.

Antec Flux Pro Noctua Edition

Written reviews:

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: ThinkComputers takes the most build-focused look yet at the $399 Flux Pro Noctua Edition, which pairs Antec’s Flux Pro full tower with six Noctua G2 fans, the eight-channel NA-FH1 hub, walnut trim, and a six-year warranty. The value case is the one every reviewer keeps arriving at: it is more than double the standard Flux Pro’s $180 MSRP, but the bundled fans and controller alone would run over $200 bought separately, which makes the premium far more reasonable than the sticker suggests. Gamers Nexus and Hardware Asylum reached similar conclusions on the near-silent-without-sacrificing-airflow pitch.

FPS Review take: Noctua putting its name on a chassis was always going to be judged on whether the fan bundle justifies the markup, and the arithmetic says it roughly does. If you want premium-aesthetic case coverage from us, our LIAN LI LANCOOL 217 Black Genuine Walnut Wood case review is the closest comparison point.

Cases: Montech TG3 Panoramic, Cougar MX600 Max RGB, Lian Li B4-mATX

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Video reviews:

Consensus summary: Three budget-to-midrange cases, all recommended, all for different builds. Tom’s Hardware makes the Montech TG3 the value story of the week at $59.90 with four fans included and some of the best air-cooled CPU temperatures on their new test hardware, with slightly elevated GPU temperatures and a polarizing non-color-matched PSU shroud as the trade-offs. KitGuru calls the Cougar MX600 Max very easy to recommend on the strength of two pre-installed 200mm ARGB intakes behind a mesh front, noting that airflow is already well optimized out of the box and that support extends to 400mm graphics cards, 360mm roof radiators, and back-connect motherboards, with bulk the main complaint. ComputerBase rates the Lian Li B4-mATX a first-class compact chassis, and KitGuru’s video build demonstrates an RTX 5080 plus a 360mm AIO inside 21 litres.

FPS Review take: A $59.90 case delivering top-tier air-cooled CPU temperatures is the sort of result that should make anyone spending $150 on a mid-tower think twice, and the panoramic-glass-versus-airflow tension we flagged in last week’s Endorfy coverage does not seem to bite the TG3 the same way. The B4-mATX is the interesting one for anyone who wants small without giving up a full-size GPU.

Corsair Nightsword V2 Wireless SD

Written reviews:

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: This is the week’s clearest split verdict. Both outlets agree on what the mouse is, an ergonomic 89g-rated wireless mouse whose headline feature is a dedicated thumb button that summons a virtual Elgato Stream Deck on screen, with 8000Hz polling and side-to-side scrolling. FunkyKit calls it a strong all-round choice that handles competitive gaming and everyday work alike. KitGuru disagrees firmly at 7.5 out of 10, weighing the retail sample at 92g and calling it heavy and fatiguing for competitive play, criticizing significant pre- and post-travel on the main clicks, and flagging a slippery rubberized side coating, concluding that the Stream Deck integration only pays off for a narrow audience. N

FPS Review take: When one reviewer’s “versatile all-rounder” is another’s “heavy and hollow-feeling,” the deciding question is whether you will actually use the virtual Stream Deck, because that button is what you are paying the weight penalty for. Competitive players are better served elsewhere.

Gears of War: E-Day Open Beta Performance

Written reviews:

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: The E-Day beta ships with a built-in benchmark tool and a graphics preset above Ultra called Ludicrous (Ed: Why no plaid?), and that preset is where the headlines come from, with reported figures putting an RTX 5090 in the mid-40s at 4K Ludicrous with FSR 4 Quality and around 67 FPS on Ultra with DLSS 4.5 Quality. GameGPU’s sweep across current and legacy hardware puts a comfortable 60 FPS within reach of roughly RX 6700 XT class hardware with upscaling enabled, while Daniel Owen’s testing characterizes the beta as hard on both CPU and GPU and includes an RX 9070 XT against RTX 5070 Ti comparison across presets. All three major upscalers are present, DLSS 4.5, FSR 4, and XeSS, but the beta ships without frame generation for any of them.

FPS Review take: These are beta numbers on a game that does not ship until October 6, and remember that Halo: Campaign Evolved taught us last week how much headroom a UE5 title can find between beta and release. If you are planning to play, our coverage of the E-Day multiplayer reveal and beta schedule has the dates, and the 610.88 WHQL driver adds the required support.

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David Schroth
David is a computer hardware enthusiast that has been tinkering with computer hardware for the past 25 years and writing reviews for more than ten years. He's the Founder and Editor in Chief of The FPS Review.

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