Embedded Files
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cork, Ireland. 10th of February 2025 - VerTecX21's 25th Anniversary this year "heralds the dawn of a new age" according to director Ciarán Creedon. We are announcing Vulcanus, the latest machine build constructed at VerTecX21 and now online.
In a significant change from the norm established since even before the founding of VerTecX21, we will be using for the very first time, a non-Intel platform. We have chosen the new AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D as Vulcanus' nucleus. A change from Intel's Core to AMD's AM5 platform was due to the lackluster offerings of the 15th generation of Intel's Core processors when compared to AMD's concurrent Ryzen products. We have additionally lost confidence in Intel's manufacturing and quality control processes which led to several issues with both 13th and 14th generation Core processors in 2024 and that trust would need to be regained over some years.
The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is AMD's "halo product" for the current generation and while historically VerTecX21 does not procure such products, we have observed over time the longevity of AMD's 3D cache technology to be a validator and maintains performance, sentiment and value over Intel's Core i9's during the same period. We also acknowledge that while we are only observing between 6.5 and 12.5% performance uplift in real-world metrics while we maintain an interactive entertainment paradigm of 1440p UW / Ultra / RT /175Hrz, we currently project more significant gains over the planned duration Vulcanus will be Primary System. We currently expect this to be until 2029 at the soonest and believe the investment will pay off over time.
Vulcanus Specifications:
AMD Ryzen™ 7 "Granite Ridge" 9800X3D 4.7/5.2 GHz processor
Asus Prime X870-P AMD AM5 PCIe 5.0 mainboard
32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000MHz RAM
2TB WD Black SN850X Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD
While Vulcanus will be a significant platform upgrade, it's not a total system change. We will continue to use Tritonis' GPU the MSI RTX 4070Ti for the forseeable future. Additionally the secondary SSD, PSU, chassis and fans will be as they were for Tritonis. This will have a knock on effect down the VerTecXneT line where other changes took place for the existing systems to take on new roles. These changes included the complete removal of a liquid cooling solution from Sicarius as the component has reached the end of its viable service life after almost 10 years.
We acknowledge the announcement of a new system project was not expected until 2026 at the earliest as Tritonis has served as Primary System for only three years. Three main factors which prompted the acceleration of the project timeline are:
Some increasing degradation of user experience on Apophis, the retired Tertiary System, stemming from the age of some system components. We felt it was necessary to retire the core Apophis platform after accumulating 13 years of service in total over all system roles. While a precedent was set for interim upgrades as most recently as 2015 when Apophis' predecessor Maxximus was upgraded to keep it running smoothly, that upgrade was performed as it was entering service as Tertiary System where it served for the last 7 of it's 14.5 years. Apophis however, is now 13 years old and was scheduled for decommission in 2026. We therefore felt that an upgrade of a second generation Intel Core platform would be a poor investment in 2025.
Hardware incompatibility of Apophis with Windows 11 OS in advance of Windows 10 end of support in October. Apophis' hardware was not capable of running the Windows 11 OS. As Microsoft are moving forward with plans to end the standard support period of the Windows 10 OS in October 2025, without necessary security updates and patches, Windows 10 would have become a security risk on Apophis, threatening VerTecXneT as a whole. We could not allow this.
Economic uncertainty resulting from political factors. The current western political climate and unpredictable economic events or decisions resulting from them may negatively affect purchasing power in the EU from now for at least four years. Therefore we feel it more prudent to move up the project timetable to sooner rather than later to shield ourselves from the uncertainty.
Q & A Session
Q1: Can you elaborate on the decision to not upgrade the GPU at this time as this would be considered a primary component.
A1: Tritonis' GPU was upgraded mid-lifecycle in April 2023 to an Nvidia Lovelace 40-series GPU. We're retaining this owing to the Nvidia Blackwell 50-series not offering a significant performance uplift to justify cost at this time and AMD have not released their RDNA4 90-series to evaluate. That said, the greatest single cause to trigger an upgrade would be a requirement to use 16GB of VRAM as opposed to the current 12GB but we see no such demand at present as bench-marking proves that Vulcanus delivers an average of 120FPS in real world tests of 15 random interactive entertainment products produced within the past 5 years. We will review the situation should that average drop below 90FPS while using preferred graphical settings but not before.
Q2: There's been a significant cost saving by not acquiring a GPU but also presumably by using the existing chassis and PSU, why was this never done before?
A2: It's always considered at the design stage since at least the design of Hyperion in 2002. However there were factors which have always prevented utilising existing components due to requirements or inherent incompatibility between many components. For example, if we had been intending to use Sicarius' H90 AIO CPU cooler in what was originally Apophis' Antec P280 case, it would have been impossible as the H90 had a 140mm fan while the Antec P280 could only be fitted with 120mm ones. We had Apophis' original BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced air cooler which had been replaced by a Kraken X31 AIO in 2015 and we were able to use it again despite being designed for LGA1155 socket as it retained compatibility for Sicarius' LGA1151. Basically, all the cards we wanted to play were aligned and we saved considerable expense this cycle.
Q3: Are there any concerns over using Apophis' components considering their age or due to the degraded experience mentioned earlier.
A3: The core platform of Apophis has been retired permanently and we believe that to be the the cause of the degraded performance. Although it was incompatible with the case the remainder of Sicarius would be rehoused in, the Corsair H90 AIO cooler only had a 5 year warranty but had been operating continuously for almost 10 years, so we had already decided to retire the component for safety reasons. Other retained components, the GPU, PSU and case although are now indeed 13 years old, are still working within normal parameters with no sign of performance issues today. We are unconcerned at this time as to issues but in case they do occur we have replacements in stock. Some storage devices now in both Sicarius and Tritonis are 10 years or less old this year but one HDD still in operation having being part of Maxximus' original parts, is 18 years old in August! All these drives also retained and in use but will be removed and replaced as failures or system incompatibilities occur as with storage devices in the past.
About VerTecX21
VerTecX21 was created 25 years ago in June 2000 as a name to use for Ciarán Creedon's multimedia projects. In many ways it's simply a name to put on things when Creedon wanted people to know he had a hand in their creation. As most of it's projects are technical in nature or require the use of technology, the VerTecX21 website is used to catalog Creedon's current level of technology..
Contact
For more information please use the following:
Email: vertecx21(at)gmail.com
Web: www.vertecx21.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VerTecX21
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse