The mid-range graphics card segment is seeing some interesting moves by board partners of AMD and NVIDIA in recent times, making it possible to get a 1440p-class contemporary graphics card under $400. AMD markets the Radeon RX 7700 XT as a 1440p-class GPU, and our review agrees with this notion. VideoCardz spotted the card going for as cheap as $349, a $100 (22%) drop in price from its $449 launch price. The card in question is a PowerColor RX 7700 XT Fighter, the company's affordable custom-design based on the GPU, which is listed on Newegg for $349. The card comes with a triple-slot cooling solution with a triple-fan setup. It sticks to AMD reference clock speeds for the RX 7700 XT. Here's the kicker, even at this price, you are eligible for a game bundle worth $60 with this card, the current offer includes copies of both "Warhammer 40000: Space Marine II," and "Unknown 9 Awakening."

NVIDIA GeForce board partners are preparing a silent launch of a variant of the GeForce RTX 4070 with slower 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory in place of the 21 Gbps GDDR6X that's standard to the RTX 4070, which results in a 5% reduction in memory bandwidth. It turns out that other specs, such as GPU clocks or core-configuration aren't changed to compensate for the reduced memory bandwidth. ASUS is among the first board partners with an RTX 4060 GDDR6 card, the ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 GDDR6, which was briefly listed on Newegg for $569, before it went out of stock. This is reported by VideoCardz as being the same price as the regular ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 with GDDR6X.

ASUS isn't the only NVIDIA board partner with an RTX 4070 GDDR6, Wccftech spotted a GALAX branded card that comes with the model string "RTX 4070 D6 1-click OC." Its retail box features a large specs-sheet on the front face that clearly mentions GDDR6 as the memory type. NVIDIA's move to re-spec the RTX 4070 with 20 Gbps GDDR6 was originally seen as a move to reduce its costs, letting the card be sold closer to the $500-mark. It remains to be seen if real-world prices settle down below those of the original RTX 4070 cards.

Latest reports indicate that sanctioned Chinese PC hardware manufacturer DeepCool's products have appeared on major US online marketplaces under the brand "Shaking Tank," as revealed by YouTuber Greg Salazar on social media platform X. This comes two months after the US State Department sanctioned DeepCool for alleged business with Russian firms involved in the Ukraine conflict, barring US sales and imports of their products. Despite this, retailers like Amazon and Newegg list apparent DeepCool products under the Shaking Tank brand. These listings show product renders with the DeepCool logo blurred or removed. Fan hubs previously displaying the DeepCool emblem now show blank spaces, and product packaging has obscured identifying marks. Examples include the DeepCool AK620 and LS720 models, now advertised as ShakingTank AK620 and LS720.

The nature of this rebranding still needs to be clarified. While DeepCool adopting a new name to bypass sanctions would likely face severe legal consequences, more plausible explanations include a reseller rebranding remaining inventory or retailers clearing sanctioned stock. This situation questions trade sanctions' effectiveness and enforcement in the global marketplace, leaving consumers uncertain about DeepCool's future in the US market and potential impacts on international trade regulations.

Newegg Commerce, Inc., a leading global e-commerce company specializing in computers and consumer electronics, today announced that its CPU Trade-In program is now live on Newegg.com. As the latest addition to the GPU Trade-In program launched last year, Newegg's CPU Trade-In program enables customers to trade their used CPUs in exchange for credit toward an entirely new CPU from Newegg.

About the CPU Trade-In Program
A CPU, often referred to as the brain of a computer, enables PCs to process data and operations. When new units become available, users frequently opt to upgrade their system's CPU with newer, faster models capable of accommodating increasingly sophisticated software and programs. Newegg's trade-in program allows customers to trade in their existing aged CPUs for credit toward a new CPU.

With competition in the performance segment of graphics cards heating up, the GeForce RTX 4060 "Ada" finds itself embattled at its $299 price point, with the Radeon RX 7600 XT at $325, the RX 7600 (non-XT) down to $250. This has prompted a retailer-level price-cut for a Zotac-branded RTX 4060 graphics card. The Zotac RTX 4060 Twin Edge OC White is listed on Newegg for $279, which puts it $20 below the NVIDIA MSRP. The RTX 4060 is squarely a 1080p-class GPU, designed for AAA gameplay with maxed out settings, and ray tracing. The one ace the RTX 4060 wields over similarly-priced GPUs from the previous generation has to be DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Our most recent testing puts the RX 7600 within 2% of the RTX 4060 at 1080p raster workloads, although the ray tracing performance of the RTX 4060 is significantly ahead, by around 16%.

NVIDIA has discontinued production the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card, as it replaced it with the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER at the $800 price-point, equipped with a wider 256-bit memory bus, 16 GB of memory, and more CUDA cores. With a rather wide $200 price gap between the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and the RTX 4070 SUPER that's priced at $600, retailers found an opportunity to sell their remaining inventories of the RTX 4070 Ti for around the $700-mark. The cheapest RTX 4070 Ti is the MSI Ventus 2X OC, which is listed at $699 on Newegg, with a coupon shaving off a further $20, bringing the price down to $679.

Would you pay the extra $80 to grab an RTX 4070 Ti over the $600 RTX 4070 SUPER? Our testing shows that the RTX 4070 Ti is about 8% faster than the RTX 4070 SUPER at 1440p, when averaged across our tests. With the latest prices, the RTX 4070 Ti remains 13% pricier than the RTX 4070 SUPER. The RTX 4070 Ti maxes out the 5 nm AD104 silicon, enabling all 60 streaming multiprocessors (SM), for 7,680 CUDA cores, 240 Tensor cores, 60 RT cores, 240 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, besides the chip's full 48 MB L2 cache. Unlike the RTX 4070 SUPER, the RTX 4070 Ti comes with dual NVDEC units.

AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT continues to be on a downward pricing slope, with prices over the last weekend touching as low as $399 on Newegg. The Sapphire RX 7700 XT Pulse is listed with the retailer for $409, with a coupon discount shaving off a further $10. At $399, the RX 7700 XT poses a severe competitive threat to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB, with the cheapest card on Newegg going for $419; and the cheapest RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB at $389. The RX 7700 XT is a 1440p-class graphics card, and is from a segment above both the RTX 4060 Ti cards, with a 14% higher performance at 1080p than the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB, and 16% higher performance at 1440p. It's offers roughly the same performance in games with ray tracing, trailing the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB by just 1% in our testing. NVIDIA has a rather large price-performance gap between the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB and the RTX 4070 (cheapest going for $525).

MSI's official North American online store has started to sell their brand-new Claw A1M handheld portable gaming PC—earlier in the week media outlets spotted a premature Newegg store listing, perhaps foreshadowing a widespread US launch on March 8 (today). MSI appears to be staggering the Claw's rollout across the global markets—late last month, German customers were treated to "early" pre-order access thanks to de-store.msi.com listing the basic model (Handheld CLAW A1M-036), with units declared as being "in stock." US customers are similarly limited to the entry level "052US" SKU—the region's MSI store official launch day price sits at $699.00. This model sports an Intel Core 5 135H "Meteor Lake" processor, and 512 GB of internal storage.

Newegg has relisted the three MSI Claw A1M variants, albeit with a revised release date of March 15—interested parties can pre-order the Core Ultra 7 + 1 TB SSD version for $799, or MSI's middle-of-the-pack Core Ultra 7 + 512 GB model for $749. Newegg's product page for the basic Core Ultra 5 + 512 GB SSD configuration bears the same $699 price tag as seen on MSI's official store listing. We are not entirely sure whether Western embargoes have been lifted to coincide with today's North American launch—a trickle out of English language evaluations could occur next week. Chinese review outlets have been experimenting with press samples since mid-February.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 series enthusiast-segment graphics cards now start at a street price of $719. A PowerColor Radeon RX 7900 XT Hellhound custom-design graphics card is listed on Newegg for $749, with a coupon code that shaves a further $30 off, bringing it down to this new low price. At this price, the RX 7900 XT offers significantly higher performance per Dollar than the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, which starts at $799, and is tested to offer around 5% lower performance than the RX 7900 XT.

Meanwhile, prices of AMD's flagship graphics card, the RX 7900 XTX, has been on a downward slope, too, with a PowerColor RX 7900 XTX Red Devil premium custom-design card being listed for as low as $889 with a coupon discount. This would space the RX 7900 XTX at least $200 apart from the cheapest GeForce RTX 4080, which is starting at $1,089.

Newegg Commerce, Inc., a global e-commerce leader for technology products, today announced the launch of Newegg's GPU Trade-In Program, allowing customers to trade in an eligible GPU device and receive a trade-in value credit toward the purchase of a new qualifying graphics card also known as a graphics processing unit (GPU).

Newegg's GPU Trade-In Program not only helps customers upgrade to a newer GPU model, the program also helps limit electronic waste. By offering a resource for customers to exchange their unwanted GPUs for new ones, the program simultaneously contributes to waste reduction and facilitates cost-effective PC upgrades.

A Newegg product page popped up last week, giving us a first glimpse at ASRock's Phantom Gaming Arc A770 16 GB graphics card. The e-tailer had no stock available on July 20, but the listing included an asking price of $329.99 (MSRP is $349). The Taiwanese manufacturer was radio silent at the time—no press material was released, and their own website was not updated with a product page for the 16 GB variant of its existing custom Alchemist design.

The ASRock Arc A770 Phantom Gaming 16 GB OC model's page is now live and fully accessible, and Newegg appears to have units in stock. TPU has not received any fresh PR material, so ASRock is seemingly taking a quiet approach to their new product's launch. The spec sheet shows that the card's memory clock comes in at 17.5 Gbps, which makes it a good alternative to Intel's recently discontinued A770 Limited Edition. It joins Acer's competing Predator BiFrost model in an exclusive club—these are the only 16 GB A770 custom design graphics cards available in the West.

Newegg released its PC Builder ChatGPT Plugin yesterday, and former TPU writer—Francisco Pires—decided to put it through the proverbial ringer. His hands-on adventures with AI-assisted PC build suggestions were documented in a Tom's Hardware article. Initial impressions are a mixed bag—he brings in a metaphor to describe his experience: "it was akin to entering Alice in Wonderland (the Tim Burton version): everything's interesting and somewhat faithful, but laid out in just the wrong way." The beta version (released back in March) proved to be a confusing mess, according to Avram Piltch, Editor-in-Chief at Tom's Hardware.

Pires proposed that the tool is decent enough for fledgling PC build novices to utilize, but the chatbot was found to overvalue certain components: "the typical price for the Radeon RX 6700 XT hovers around the $330-$370 range so the $558.99 MSI card the bot recommends is overpriced by more than $230!" The assistant also struggled to keep a suggested system build within a specified $1000 budget, the total was stretched to $1123.09. He also discovered some quirks related to the assistant's (apparently) incomplete GPU model database: "why did ChatGPT suggest a GeForce RTX 4060 for the build, if its knowledge cut-off is set at September 2021?" The plugin seems to have scraped information about newer products from Newegg's store, but the bot's full text answer (see the attached screenshot) provides a comparison between older generations.

USA retailer, Newegg, is currently running a sale on a couple of custom NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB graphics cards. The cheapest option is an MSI VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G OC model, available for an an-all-time low price of $334 (representing a nice 16% discount)—thanks to a promo code ("ZIPTECH") shaving off a further $45.60 from the sale price of $379.99. NVIDIA set an MSRP of $399.99 upon the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti's launch back in late May, generating plenty of ambivalence within the PC hardware enthusiast community. That pattern will likely repeat with next week's premiere of RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB variants—its recommended retail price is set at $499, with tricked out custom cards predicted to go beyond $550.

Potential buyers of the bog standard 8 GB GPU in the States will be somewhat happy to discover that Newegg is not limiting the sale and discounts to a single model. MSI's slightly fancier (triple fan design) VENTUS 3X 8G OC card is going for $351.99, and the GIGABYTE RTX 4060 Ti EAGLE plus ASUS RTX 4060 Ti DUAL OC are available at the same price. These deals look quite good when placed next to discounted GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB custom cards—these are getting blown out for $329 - 339.

Graphics card prices on a much-needed downward spiral, and this doesn't spare even the enthusiast class of graphics cards. The AMD flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX is available for as low as $799 with retailer promotions. Specifically, an ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming graphics card is listed on Newegg for $899, with a coupon shaving off a further $100. That's a 30% departure from the $999 MSRP of AMD for the RX 7900 XTX.

At $799, the RX 7900 XTX applies pressure on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, as the RX 7900 XTX can now be had at its MSRP. The RX 7900 XTX is on average 31% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti at 4K Ultra HD in our testing (the intended use-case of the RX 7900 XTX), and about 21% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti at 1440p (intended use-case of the RTX 4070 Ti). The RTX 4070 Ti is about 4% to 9% faster at real-time ray tracing.

Newegg is currently running a time limited offer on AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU—the base price sits at $662, but a promotional voucher can be applied at checkout that removes $105. Amazon USA price matched the competition earlier today—via their own voucher system—but stock allocation of the powerful desktop processor appears to be sold out. North American customers eager to acquire an attractively priced Ryzen 9 7950X3D soon-ish will have to do business with Newegg.

The latest $557 deal is certainly more generous when compared to a campaign run by the American online retailer back in May, albeit via their Ebay store—several Ryzen 7000X3D-series CPUs were discounted at the time, perhaps in reaction to bad publicity swirling around the product lineup (referring to accounts of hardware burnouts). The Ryzen 9 7950X3D was reduced to a previous all-time low of $629.99. Perhaps public perception of AMD's top flight models has not improved all that much since then (plus other economical factors), and very deep discounts are necessary to attract customers. A Newegg mini-store page recently revealed a forthcoming "Starfield Game Bundle Promotion," that will apply to all Ryzen 7000-series CPUs. The AMD + Bethesda initiative will probably kick in closer to the game's September 6 launch date.

NVIDIA's high-end GeForce RTX 4080 has, for the very first time, dropped below the $1,000-mark in pricing. A Newegg retailer-level promotion sees the MSI RTX 4080 Ventus 3X OC graphics card listed at $1,099, with a coupon shaving off a further $100. This is a 16.5% discount over the $1,199 NVIDIA baseline MSRP for the RTX 4080. The MSI Ventus 3X OC was originally launched at a $60 premium over the MSRP.

The GeForce RTX 4080 is seeing a much needed downward trend in street pricing, with the graphics card market as a whole experiencing a slump. The RTX 4080 in particular could be experiencing pressure from the Radeon RX 7900 XTX for NVIDIA and retailers to consider price-cuts, with the lowest street-price for the AMD flagship recorded at $881. It's probably hoped that a $999 price could attract some buyers away from the RX 7900 XTX. The GeForce RTX 4080 is an enthusiast-class graphics card designed for maxed-out gaming at 4K Ultra HD, with ray tracing enabled, and loaded with features such as DLSS 3 and dual-stream encoders and decoders.

American online retailer, Newegg, has perhaps jumped the gun a little by readying CPU listings for an "AMD Starfield Game Bundle Promotion." The store page was noticed by some eagle-eyed folks over the weekend, and news sites were soon tipped off to the early announcement. AMD was revealed as Starfield's exclusive partner on PC last week, but upcoming promotions/bundles were not mentioned during presentation proceedings. Newegg's mini-site only functions as a promo product container (at the time of writing) for all available Ryzen 7000-series CPUs—individual SKU pages are void of any Starfield material, and the previous Star Wars Jedi: Survivor campaign ended on June 30.

The Newegg promo page includes everything in the mainstream Zen 4 lineup—from the entry-level Ryzen 5 7600 model going all the way up to the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D, but internet sleuths were unable to track down anything representing an equivalent campaign for AMD's latest Radeon RX graphics cards. Team Red's Zen 4 and RDNA 3 technologies got plenty of shout-outs in last week's partnership presentation: "Making this game even more special, is the close collaboration between Bethesda and AMD to unlock the full potential of Starfield. We have worked hand-in-hand with Bethesda Game Studios to optimize Starfield for both Xbox and PC with Ryzen 7000 series processors and Radeon 7000 series graphics. The optimizations both accelerate performance and enhance the quality of your gameplay using highly multi-threaded code that both Xbox and PC players will get to take advantage of."

Newegg is currently running a promo offer on an ASRock AMD Radeon RX 6600 Challenger D 8 GB graphics card—a code can be used at checkout to remove a further $20 from the already low retail base price of $199.99. Prices of this previous generation GPU are falling internationally, but Newegg's all-time-low price is only available to customers in North America. The recent launch of a successor (Radeon RX 7600) has ultimately caused retail outlets to lower their asking prices for older cards—VideoCardz notes that certain custom RX 6600 custom cards have dropped this week to around €209 in Europe, following consistent downward trends since new AMD and NVIDIA offerings hit the market in late May.

TPU's review of AMD's Radeon RX 7600 GPU states that this new lower end RDNA3 card offers a 25% gen-over-gen performance uplift versus RDNA2's RX 6600 (non-XT). The latter certainly offers excellent value at its current very low price on Newegg, with a saving of $90 over the RX 7600's steadfast MSRP of $269.99. Further drops are anticipated following the arrival of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 (non-Ti) on June 29, but Newegg's next batch of promotional codes could be less generous with discounts by then.

Newegg has been running various discount promotions on Ryzen 7000-series desktop processors over the past month, but their latest offer finally affects one of AMD's lower end models. The Ryzen 5 7600X CPU is on offer over at the American e-tailer - by using a time limited promo code (MDSCS2342) when checking out you can get the price down to $209 - resulting in a saving of about $31 (from the normal $240). The Ryzen 5 7600 (non-X) CPU is not part of this Memorial Weekend promotion - it is currently listed at $223, with no active Newegg promo code granting a generous saving.

Both of these Zen 4 (Raphael) Ryzen 5 processors were awarded TPU's Editor's Choice accolade - despite receiving criticism for "high platform costs," so it is nice to see that the 7600X is available for just north of $200 in the United States - this saving can offset the added premium of an AM5 motherboard, DDR5 RAM and necessary CPU cooling solution (no Wraith unit is included in the slimline box). Customers in China are fortunate to get an even better online deal - the Ryzen 5 7600X and 7600 are available for way below MSRP via JD.com, with both CPUs priced at an all-time low of $183 (1299 RMB) each.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D, the 12-core/24-thread Socket AM5 processor that's been playing middle-child to the popular 8-core 7800X3D and 16-core 7950X3D flagship, just got a major retailer price-cut. It can now be had for as low as $499, down from its launch price of $599. The chip could be briefly available last month at $549. The $499 price is available on Newegg, where the chip is listed at $589.99, but with the promo-code "MDSCS2343," that shaves $90 off, you arrive at $499. The Ryzen 9 7900X3D is a 12-core/24-thread processor featuring 3D Vertical Cache technology on one of its two CCDs. The processor hence has 128 MB of L3 cache, besides 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core.

Newegg has reduced the asking price for Intel's Arc A750 Limited Edition 8 GB graphics card - this reference model is now available at an all-time low of $199. It is too early to tell whether this a permanent discount or just a seasonal sale - but the online retailer could be reacting (in advance) to the launches of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 (in July) and 4060 Ti models, as well as AMD's Radeon RX 7600 GPU lineup later this week.

Team Blue is putting a lot of effort into getting the hardware buying public to adopt its first generation of A-series/Alchemist discrete graphics cards - including the premiere of a slightly bizarre marketing campaign last week, called "Arc Balanced Builds." Intel has been navigating a market long dominated by NVIDIA and AMD, where plenty of folks have welcomed a third player on the field - but the Arc series experienced a much delayed and rough launch process last year. Intel has seemingly committed to next generation graphics technologies, with its Battlemage and Celestial architectures speculated to be in-progress at the company's AXG division.

AMD's cheapest Zen 4 X3D processor is shaping up to be its most popular. Sales numbers from Germany's Mindfactory posted by TechEpiphany seemingly shows the recently launched Ryzen 7 7800X3D outselling last year's Ryzen 7 5800X3D nearly 2:1, with 4,720 7800X3Ds selling to the 5800X3D's 2,510 over a few week period. While these figures show sales for only a single region, evidence for this momentum is reflected in other regional retailers as well as some global outlets. On Amazon, for example, the 7800X3D has made a frequent appearance on the top 10 best selling CPUs list, with the rest of the Zen 4 lineup trailing well behind. Newegg reports the 7800X3D to be among the top 5 best selling CPUs on the site at time of writing. Microcenter also shows the 7800X3D and 5800X3D side-by-side in seventh and eighth places respectively for popularity.

Despite recent troubles with the AM5 platform and Zen 4 X3D processors, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is proving to be quite a success for AMD. The 7800X3D in our review was shown to be one of the most efficient processors we've ever tested, and offered gaming performance at or near the top of the charts across the gauntlet of games and resolutions thrown at it. The staggered release of the 7000X3D lineup, with the 7950X3D and 7900X3D launching first and the 7800X3D launching later, gave early signals that AMD knew what they had and wanted to push as many early adopters away from the better value chip as they could. Pricing for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D has been steady since it released, however we've already seen retailers offering discounts on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Ryzen 9 7900X3D, as they presumably struggle to sell as well as the more aggressively positioned 7800X3D.

Intel has published its latest blog post, announcing the Intel Arc Balanced Builds, an initiative that pairs up Intel Arc GPUs with Intel Core CPUs, creating balanced configurations that match Intel Arc graphics cards to the "best-fitting" Intel Core CPU. Starting at $423 for the GPU and CPU and $899 for the full system, Intel claims these combinations come from thousands of test runs and hundreds of hours in the lab, leading up to 15,000 datapoints and 22 GB of data.

According to Intel's own testing, which includes a wide variety of Intel Core processors in different configurations and games, there is a perfect CPU range for both its entry level Intel Arc A380 graphics card, as well as the Intel Arc A750 and Arc A770 graphics cards. Of course, for those with a big or unlimited budget, there is always the best configuration that money can buy, but making a balanced build is what makes sense for many others.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X has been discounted down to $294.99 in the US, which actually makes it less expensive than the Ryzen 7 7700 (non-X). Since it launched at $399.99 and later pushed down to $329.99, the latest discount makes it quite a catch. In Europe, the price is still holding at around €320, depending on the region, although it has been seen at €309 earlier.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X is an 8-core/16-thread Zen 4 CPU with 40 MB of cache and a 105 W TDP. It works at 4.5 GHz base and 5.4 GHz Turbo clocks. As spotted by Videocardz, the discount was available on both Amazon and Newegg but the one on Amazon has either been removed or ended and now holds at $339. It is possible that it was a limited deal coming directly from AMD. The next step is the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but the price has not budged from $449.

Nextorage Japan is preparing its NE5N range of PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs for launch in early June - listings have emerged on Newegg for 2 TB and 1 TB models - with a product page appearing recently on the company's (Japanese language) website. These units boast read and write speeds rated for operation up to 10 GB/s, and are based on Phison's E26 PCIe Gen 5 controller. Nextorage started off as a provider of PlayStation 5-oriented PCIe Gen 4 SSD products, due to company ties to Sony Corporation, but its upcoming NE5N range indicates that it intends to target buyers within the enthusiast PC market.

The initial batch of cutting edge SSDs are unlikely to end up in any PS5 consoles, thanks to a sizable dual formation heatsink - the Japanese company has filed a patent for the bulky two-level structure and heatpipe combination design. Gen 5 SSDs are said to be difficult to tame in terms of heat output, and manufacturers are going to great lengths (and sizes) to provide adequate cooling solutions in advance. Future versions of Nextorage Japan's NE5N NVMe M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 5 SSDs are being refined for compact PCs and laptops, so it will be interesting to find out about the intended thermal tempering for more cramped environments.