cusideabelincoln

It's bad now, but how much profit were they making during the booms? Surely they were making as much or more profit for a longer period of time than what they have been losing lately.

No one really, each manufacturer makes several different models of the same card that have different capabilities. It's all about power delivery now. So you'll want to get the "premium" model from a manufacturery. For MSI that is the SuprimX, Asus that's the ROG Strix, and Gigabyte has the Aurus Xtreme. Then each has a budget model, MSI is the Ventus, ASUS is the TUF, and Gigabyte is the Eagle. And then there are models in between and some will have special high end model, like EVGA's Kingpin. Right now, the ROG Strix has one of the best VRM designs so it will probably carry over to next gen as well. That was the initial reporting, but after some time the EVGA 3090 cards this gen, as well as some other brands and models, had an inadequate VRM *controller*. There were a lot of other cards with this design or a worse one because Nvdia provided a bad reference design, but there were some of other manufacturers who used better controllers on their SKUs (ROG Strix for example). The controller basically couldn't properly distribute an even load across all of the VRM stages, so some of the stages were overworked while others did nothing. If hit with too high of a load that's where some of the failures would happen. The BIOS allowing too high of a clockspeed is just a side effect of the problem. By reducing the clockspeeds, they reduced the power needs so that the VRM controller would never be put into a situation where it could send more power than the VRM can handle. The reference design did change for the 3090 Ti cards so just about any brand should be good for longevity, the only thing to look for when buying a Ti is how much power will the BIOS let you have, and cooling. There were definitely some other cards affected the New World issue, I believe Gigabyte reported problems too. I suspect we only heard of EVGA as the widespread issue because more people buy EVGA cards than other brands.

Don't fret, your 2080 TI is faster.

Imagine playing Mario Party with the Joycons.

They should be marketing the price as it really is: $69.99. Very nice.

It took me hours to get used to the normal controller layout. I had never played a From game before and had no idea how to manage combat, particularly that I naturally wanted to use all four shoulder buttons and would awkwardly hit the wrong one almost every time. But I did get used to it and I like it now. However, I still don't play the game with a regular controller. I started out with the Steam controller and now I use the Elite controller. The extra buttons are soooooooooo helpful. Right now I use them to basically replace the D-Pad so I can move and manage my inventory seamlessly, but I can easily see how they would be helpful if you wanted to use the back buttons as some combo of jump, dodge, heal, target lock, or crouch. Half the battle with the controls is knowing the movement limitations and timings of the enemies and yourself. When I first started the game I wanted to have a shield, multiple melee weapons, and long range weapon equipped all the time, thinking I would just instantly switch them at a moments notice to do what I want. Well, it definitely doesn't work like that. You have to know exactly when to switch, otherwise the enemy will fuck you in your downtime when you should be fucking them in their recovery downtime.

This is so meta meta.

Also check deal sites, like Slickdeals.net. Sometimes GOG will offer free games. Steam has been randomly making games free (usually older titles). Microsoft also randomly making games free for PC or Xbox. etc etc. Raw performance puts his PC ahead of the Series S, but a little behind the PS5/SeX. So it can easily handle 1080p gaming and currently do well in 1440p gaming.

3200 and 3600 are the most popular DDR4 speeds right now. 3600 probably offers the best value as it's only a little bit more than 3200 and can make a difference for gaming. But for most other tasks outside gaming, you're not going to see much of a benefit from RAM speed. All DDR4 speeds are backwards compatible, so you can mix and match speeds and it should work most of the time, with the only downside being you will either have to run all the sticks at the slower speed or try to overclock the slower sticks to match the higher speeds. There are certain scenarios where if you mix and match specific sticks the system won't boot, or if it does boot you will have to run the sticks at speeds lower than you paid for, but you'd have to have a crazy configuration to do that and it will also depend on what motherboard you have too. But the recommendation to just get new sticks is a good one. If you need 64GB to do your work, you can get 2x32GB of DDR4-3600 for under $200. This will be the simplest way (as in you won't have to fiddle with manually setting timings and latencies) to upgrade and practically guarantees compatibility. Otherwise you can save like $10-20 and get 4x16GB. If you only need 32GB to get your work done, then I'd recommend just grabbing any cheap 2x8GB DDR4-3200 kit from Amazon and it really shouldn't have any problems running at 3000 MHz to match your current sticks. 2x16GB of DDR4-3200 sticks should also work if you went for a middle ground. But depending on what type of RAM you have now, there is a higher chance of running into a compatibility issue with either of these options because 2x8 and 2x16 have been on the market for so long and there are so many different configurations out there. If you were to just toss random speeds and brands together, 95% of the time mix and matching should work, but there is that 5% chance it won't, and that's basically what we're doing here with the information we have. If you do your research and get sticks that are capable of downclocking to the same speed and timings (which is pretty much guaranteed because 3000 MHz is now considered really slow) and are the same rank as your current sticks, everything should work fine. And one important tip: You should check your BIOS to make sure it's configured correctly, not only when you upgrade but right now because you can't always trust system builders to set it right. You'll want to make sure the XMP profile for the memory is enabled, otherwise it's going to run at 2133 or 2666 MHz and be a noticeable hit to performance. And when you change the memory speed in the BIOS there is one other setting related to it that will affect performance that you need to manually set yourself. This is called the Infinity Fabric speed, will typically be labeled as FCLK in the BIOS. This speed needs to match the "real" speed you set your memory to. Your current DDR4-3000 is actually running at 1500 MHz (double pumped, to effectively make it 3000 MHz), so the FCLK needs to be 1500 MHz. If you get DDR4-3600, your FCLK needs to be set at 1800 MHz. If these settings aren't in sync with each other, and you set one or the other higher or lower or anything but the same, then the CPU will cut whatever value you set as your FCLK in half and tank your performance.

AMD is definitely shooting to maximize profit margins now. Since they can manufacture their chips, both CPU and GPU, cheaper than Intel and Nvidia can, whatever price Intel and Nvidia set will be the barometer for AMD's prices. Since their performance is actually competitive, or better, they have that luxury of choice now. The 5000 didn't drop in price until Intel released their 12 series chips, so I would expect the same pattern to hold this generation. The six core parts, both 5600x and now 7700x, do seem high since historically slightly less six core parts would retail for $150-200.

If only I didn't refinance my loan with a private lender a year before the pandemic

I hope Nintendo releases one and calls it the Switch Pro E-Lite controller.

Waiting on one more set of fans to come in the mail and then I should be done with it until I feel the need for a PCI-E Gen 4 or 5 device.

Upgrade in progress. EVGA 3090 FTW3 Bigger pump Second radiator Better fans With GPU prices finally dropping and somewhat stabilizing, I decided the jump on a deal. Unfortunately my thriftiness cost me a lot of time and convenience with my RTX 3090 purchase. Found one one eBay that already had a waterblock installed on both sides of the card, and bought it for less than what normal slower cards were going for. I got the card and just glanced at it, everything seemed fine. So I tested the fit in my case, along with getting all the tubing cut right, and THANKFULLY I decided not to rush testing it and took the card apart to see if everything was tight. And of course, as I did that, I discovered a bunch of little problems and one potential big problem, or at the very least severely performance-reducing. The display output bracket was a bit wobbly and turns out two of the screws and nuts were not installed. One screw was missing from a non-critical area of the backplate. But when I took out the backplate, I was shocked to see there were absolutely no screws holding the front waterblock to the card, aside from the ones that came through the backplate. Yes, that's right, the 4 spring screws that normally tighten the block against the GPU die itself were not installed. There was definitely some contact being made, but the thermal paste was not fully squeezed to the edges of the die like it should have been. I wonder if this is why the seller parted with it on the low side. I contacted the seller, and apparently he did install the block himself but has no idea where the other screws are. So he royally fucked up and probably didn't follow directions. And unluckily, he somehow does not have the original heatsink (and screws) for the card. Luckily, he did at least install the water ports correctly and I didn't see any signs of water leakage. So while I search for the appropriate screws and order them, I found some shorter ones I had and tightened the GPU die down carefully without the springs, had a screw to fill the missing one from the backplate, and used some old motherboard mounting standoffs and screws to secure the display bracket: Then I booted it up and.... no display ;( Looked over the connections, and whoops, I somehow didn't get the PCIE riser cable properly inserted. Booted it up and it's working, pretty well now. 3DMark Scores are well above average for stock 3090, and I haven't even reinstalled the drivers or tweaked anything yet. Only negative is there is coil whine from the card, which my previous card also had, so I guess I'll be on the lookout for an even beefier power supply despite the fact I recently put a good 850W unit in here. Oh well. Even though I got a deal on the card + waterblocks at $950, I don't think it was worth the stress of worrying if the previous owner took care of his shit. And my hunch was right this time: the previous owner did not fully understand what he was doing. Next time I'm going to just pay a bit more for new hardware, for the warranty peace of mind.

Richard Donner's Superman was ahead of its time.

It's a Cooler Master controller that came with the previous AIO, it supports up to 4 devices. I don't actually need it since there's only 3 fans and cables in the case, they are some China brand 120mm x 360mm single frame fans, and RGB splitter cables would work just fine with the motherboard. My next fans are going to be the Lian Li Unifans since you can connect 3 together with just a single cable and they come with a controller as well.

Should be good now. I'm definitely thinking about getting a GPU with a waterblock on my next upgrade, and maybe add another radiator.

Well after ordering the parts a year ago, I finally got around to actually installing them. I'm definitely going to be changing out the fans because the current ones are uglier than I expected and don't push much air. Was using just an AIO before: @Mr.Vic20

We're going to need more stories about a good guy with a gun shooting another good guy with a gun who was trying to shoot the bad guy with a gun. So we obviously need more guns in the hands of more people before we can finally convince the morons that maybe we shouldn't have guns, or maybe we'll just all end up dead. Tic tac toe.

While it was the best Vader dialog, it has the same problem as everything else he said in the series: Just repeating phrases he's said in other movies and doesn't explore or expand the character or the lore. The emotion of this this duel is a rehash of the one they had in RotS. I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt that the limited vocabulary of Vader is a result of the AI voice construction, but any new words spoken sounded fine. So my gut tells me they were just playing it safe and maximizing 'member berries'.

Director's choice to have the camera was constantly bobbing around even while panning. It was so bad in episodes 4 and 5 I felt nauseous.

I definitely appreciate the lack of commercial break intro and outros.

I mean I'm enjoying the cool stuff, but this episode felt like pure over-leveled video game power fantasy, and we could have both a good story and cool shit at the same time... Eh, BoBF had some crazy shit man. Really felt like it was inspired by Solo's "explain everything about this character" narrative, but on a more dope endeavor. How does Boba get his armor back? Oh, let's get revenge on the Sarlac Pit using the coolest explosive device in all of cinema history. Remember the Rancor? Oh, let's bring it back... then have Boba ride it on a rampage through the city. Why does Boba want to be the Kingpin, because he really doesn't care that much? Eh, we get a one-liner from the Ming-Na Wen saying there was nothing else better to do. But I do feel this Obi-Wan show is worse than BoBF. Outside of Ewan McGregor and little Leia, who are both fantastic in what they are doing, the show is horribly bad. It looks much worse than any other D+ show. The acting is atrocious. The dialogue is meaningless and hollow. And the narrative is nonsensical, sometimes non-existent, and confusing - not to mention uncreative as the show is basically ripping off every plot beat from Jedi: Fallen Order.

This and Boba Fett feel like they are created by 6 year olds in the back yard playing with action figures. Shit just happens with little coherent sense for the sole reason of "I bet this would look cool."

/Not as good looking as the Space World 2000 demo.