Pokemon Go's Ho-Oh Now Available Worldwide

Pokemon Go fans have been able to catch Lugia, one of the Legendary Pokemon from Gold and Silver, since July. However the other Legendary Bird Pokemon, Ho-Oh, has so far been unavailable in-game. Luckily, following the recent Global Catch Challenge, developer Niantic has unlocked the rainbow-colored creature in Raid Battles worldwide.

"As a result of all your hard work, Ho-Oh is now appearing in Raid Battles at Gyms around the world until December 12, 2017," the company said. The Global Catch Challenge ended just recently, and unlocked Farfetch'd around the world (as well as Kangaskhan in east Asia). Since players reached the end goal of collectively catching 3 billion Pokemon, they also earned 6-hour lures and double XP.

Developer Niantic continues to support Pokemon Go, though it does have at least one more project in the pipeline. The company confirmed last week that it's making a new title called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The developer did say, however, that making that game would not mean it would stop supporting Pokemon Go.

In addition to the new event, Pokemon Go also has new Pokemon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon cosmetic items available now. Those 3DS games launched just recently, and we awarded them an 8/10 in our Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon review. For lots more on the new games, check out this breakdown of the key differences between Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

Filed under: Pokemon GO

Overclocking Coffee Lake

In terms of how you go about over clocking Intel’s latest Coffee Lake CPUs, the method hasn’t really changed compared with over clocking a Kaby Lake CPU. You still have a 100MHz base clock, a CPU multiplier and you need to deal with similar voltage ranges. The difference, of course, is that with more cores, you’ll have to contend with more hit.

 
Core i3 CPUs have brought the biggest change in this respect, where the TDP has risen from 60W for the Corei3-7350K to 90W for the Corei3-8350K, thanks to a doubling in the number of cores.

At stock speed, these CPUs are easily tameable, but we’ve found the 6-core Core i7-8700K draws quite a bit more power than the core i7-7700K, and generates more heat too,which is to be expected when it has 50percent more cores under the heat spreader.

We’ve found 5GHz to be a reasonably easy target for the Coffee Lake CPUs we’ve tested so far. Our Corei7-8700K is an engineering sample from Intel, and we got it up to 5GHz using a vcore between 1.25V and 1.32V, depending on the motherboard; more recent EFIsonZ370 board shave seen the required voltage to be closer to the former figure.

However, we’ve heard from a number of retailers that 5GHz isn’t always possible on the Core i7-8700K, with4.8GHz being a more realistic frequency on some retail samples. Temperatures quickly become an issue too, since Intel is again using thermal paste and not solder between the CPU core and heat spreader. However, we’re also dealing with more cores, and there fore many more fast-switching transistors, concentrated in the same amount of space as a Kaby Lake CPU package.

Our Core i3-8350K sample, however, was a retail CPU, so we’re a little more confident about its performance and over clocking head room being indicative of other retail samples.

That’s is great news, as we managed to get our chip to 5.1GHz, albeit with a fairly high vcore of 1.34V. Still, our all-in-one liquid cooler easily dealt with the temperature, and none of the cores went beyond 85°C.

Set XMP profile

Which ever Coffee Lake CPU you’re using, start by applying the XMP profile in your motherboard’s EFI to set the correct memory speed; in our case, this happened to be 3200MHz.

This setting will also apply the correct memory timings. The XMP profile setting is usually found in the Extreme Tweaker section on Asus motherboards, the MIT section on Gigabyte motherboards or the OC section on MSI motherboards.

Set vcore

We’ll be applying a fairly simple fixed vcore in this guide, but you can conservatively experiment with adaptive and offset modes if you want to reduce power consumption as much as possible.

We haven’t needed more than1.35V to get either of our K-series CPU samples to 5GHz, so that’s a good starting point from which to work back. You might need to switch the EFI’s CPU voltage setting to manual mode in order to set the vcore.

Set multiplier

Find the CPU core ratio setting and put 48 into the field. We’ll start with 48, and then hopefully you’ll be able to raise this figure to 50, but aim for 4.8GHz first, incase the CPU buying lottery didn’t land you with a particularly overclockable chip.

Apply loadline calibration

While we only had to set the correct frequencies and vcore on the MSI and Asus motherboards we tested, Gigabyte’s boards seemed to love a helping of loadline calibration, which suggests they suffer from vdroop. However, they then required the lowest vcore on test, as well as having very frugal power consumption.Consider applying loadline calibration if you’re using a Gigabyte board, or if you’re having problems getting your CPU to 5GHz.

Using software instead of the EFI

Alternatively, you can use your motherboard’s software to overclock the CPU from within Windows, which can save you a huge amount of time. However, it’s still worth applying the XMP profile in the EFI. Makesure you tell the software to apply the overclock to all cores. There’s usually fan control software too, which can help you to fine-tune your system’s fans to keep your overclocked CPU cool without making too much noise.

Stress testing

There are two parts to stress testing. Firstly, you need to make sure your CPU cooler can handle the temperatures from the increased frequency and voltage, and then you need to assess whether the voltage is high enough for the overclock tobe stable. Start by downloading Core Temp (www.alcpu.com), CPU-Z (www.cpuid.com) and Prime 95 version 26.6 (www.mersenneforum.org).

Check your overclock has been applied using CPU-Z, and use CoreTemp to monitor
temperatures. Run the smallfft test in Prime95, and check the core temperatures while it’s running. Any temperature above 85°C is at adwarm for an everyday overclock, especially if you’re testing in colder months. A15-minute run of Prime95 can be a good indicator of stability too. If your temperatures are acceptable, it’s also worth running the video encoding and multi-tasking tests in our Real Bench test suite (www.asus.com/ campaign/Realbench) as well as having a few gaming sessions to makesure.

If your system is all stable, head back into the EFI and increase the multiplier a notch. Rerun the benchmark and temperature tests a gain until you encounter stability issues, then knock back the multiplier to the previous stable setting. In our case that was 5GHz for the Core i7-8700K and 5.1GHz for the Core i3-8350K, although your mile age may vary.

Don’t leave the voltage at 1.35V,
Stress-test your CPU, while monitoring the core temperatures, to make sure your overclock is stable
as you can likely cut it back. Dropit by0.02V (from1.35Vto 1.33V), then rerun the benchmarks to test stability. When you encounter issues, raise the voltage again by the same 0.02V amount and retest your system.You should find that you can reduce the voltage to below 1.3V, which will mean your CPU will run cooler, draw less power and be less likely to suffer in the long run.

What’s the best memory for Coffee Lake?

Very little has changed with Coffee Lake compared with its predecessor. We’re sticking with DDR4 memory, and the CPUs haven’t changed much apart from core counts and cache levels. However, memory prices have risen considerably in the past few months, with your average premium 16GB kit costing around £170 inc VAT for 3200MHz modules, compared to just over£110 when we first looked at Kaby Lake at the beginning of the year.

This begs the question of

whether the sweet spot has shifted. Is 3200MHz still worth buying at this price, or is the performance gain so little between that and a 2400MHz kit that you can potentially save some cash? Also, how much could you save by dropping down to 8GB from 16GB, and would the performance sacrifice be worth it?

Firstly, let’s look at prices for the four speed ranges we tested this month. We used 2400MHz, 2666MHz,3000MHz and 3200MHz kits, and the price difference between them is still relatively small. For example, a 16GBkit of LPX memory costs£160 inc VAT. Stepping up to 2666MHz with similar timings costs around the same at £165 inc VAT, and you pay just a couple of pounds more for 3000MHz.

To get to 3200MHz, you only need to spend just over£170 inc VAT, meaning there’s barely £10 difference between kits separated by800MHz. Going above 3200MHz still demands a much bigger premium, though, with the cheapest 16GB 3466MHz kit we could find costing just under £200 inc VAT.

It’s clear, then, that 3200MHz is still the sweet spot in terms of price, but with prices well north of their position a few months ago, you can save£80 by dropping down from 16GB to 8GB if you’re on a really tight budget. For your typical £1,000-plus PC, it’s still worth going for 16GB. We regularly see our PCs using more than 8GB with a few browser tabs open, along with a photo editor. If you have limited funds, that’s £80that could be better spent on a faster graphics card, and even now most games won’t benefit from more than 8GB of RAM, as long as you don’t have any other big software packages, or lots of browser tabs, open at the same time.

 In terms of speed, our results paint a similar picture to the one we saw with Kaby Lake in January. We used an Intel Core i5-8400 along with a 16GB kit of 3200MHz Cors air Vengeance LED memory. By moving from 2400MHz to 3200MHz, you gain around a 2 percent boost in performance in photo editing,4percent in video encoding and 10percent in multi-tasking, with our system’s over all score increasing by 6percent just down to the memory speed. Rendering saw less of a boost, with the CinebenchR15 score rising from 959 to 971.

The overall score also highlights that there are diminishing returns, with the score rising more between the two lowest frequencies than the two highest frequencies, so opting for memory faster than 3200MHz will offer poor value. As a result, our ideal Coffee Lake memory would runat 3200MHz, and if you can afford it, make it a dual-channel 16GBkit.

Intel Coffee Lake

Despite the huge changes in the number of cores in Intel’s latest mainstream CPUline-up this time around,with core boosts for everyCore i3, Core i5 and Core i7 desktop CPU,Coffee Lake offers comparatively little in the way of architecture change so rchipset improvements. The biggest talking point is that Coffee Lake CPUs aren’t backwards compatible with previous LGA1151 sockets. In other words, if you own a Z170 or Z270 motherboard, you’re out of luck if you want to drop a Core i7-8700K into your motherboard.

No backwards compatibility 

Similarly, older CPUs aren’t compatible with the new Z370 motherboards either, and this situation has caused afair bit of commotion among enthusiasts due to the fact that the sockets are practically identical. Both sockets have 1,151 pins, the notches are in the same place and Kaby Lake CPUs will even physically fit into the new socket. However, you’ll be met with failed boots and black screens if you try. 

The close proximity of the January 2017 launch of Kaby Lake and October 2017 Coffee Lake launch, along with the physically identical socket, result edin many people incorrectly assuming that Coffee Lake would be backwards compatible. As it turns out, Kaby Lake is the last CPU core architecture to landon Z270,which means that anyone who invested in a Z270 motherboard recently can understandably feel a little short-changed. 

Sadly, it’s not a situation that can be altered with a simple BIOS update fix either. With their additional CPU cores,Coffee Lake CPUs require extra power, and this power is being fed through numerous activated pins in the CPU socket that were previously dormant. As a result, the pin assignment of the LGA1151 socket has changed,making it incompatible with older CPUs. 

Additionally, in a recent interview with bit-tech, Asus revealed that it’s technically possible for a Z270 board to support a Coffee Lake CPU, but that it would require an upgrade to the management engine, as well as BIOS update. According to Asus, however, Intel has locked down compatibility. The company also hinted that the tweaked socket’s new power-delivery capabilities  might also be useful for CPUs with more cores in the future.

Small change 

Meanwhile, the integrated graphics remains the same under the hood, except for a small bump in clock speed and a name change to UHD Graphics. The chipset doesn’t have any major changes either, and despite some early rumours pointing at more PCI-E lanes, Z370 actually has the same number of lanes as Z270, with 16 lanes for graphics cards. 

Coffee Lake CPUs are all manufactured on a 14nm process, and while that’s technically the same node size as Kaby Lake, Sky lake and Broad well, Intel now calls the process 14nm++ to highlight thef act that the process has been refined three times.This refinement usually means we can expect higher clock frequencies and perhaps even better over clocking too,while Intel in theory has better yields. The down side, is that we now haven’t had a mainstream CPU die shrink for four generations. 

As well as core boosts across the range, The Z370 chipset’s capabilities are practically identical to those of its predecessor with all Core i3 desktop CPUs now sporting four cores,Core i5 CPUs sporting six cores and Core i7 CPUs offering six cores and Hyper-Threading, the L3 cache amounts have also increased. The Core i7-8700K has a hefty 12MB of L3 cache, the Corei5-8600K has 9MB and the Corei3-8350K has 6MB. The latter is particularly interesting, since it means that this £160(inc VAT) processor now has an almost identical specification to the previous Core i5-7600K, which currently costs around £50 more.