Computers?

[Animedragon]

5 hours ago, efaardvark said:

And of course pricing would be another likely problem area.

Yes, it'll probably fall into the "if you have to ask the price you can't afford it" category.

[Kleiner]

Specs:

Intel i5

8 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660

It's kept me going for the past three-ish years. The thee monitor set up I have going really makes my setup good, 

[Animedragon]

2 hours ago, Kleiner said:

The thee monitor set up I have going really makes my setup good, 

Ah, another three monitor person.

My three run off an NVIDA GeForce GT730 on a Gigabyte board with a Core i5 CPU and 64GB RAM.

[Kleiner]

12 minutes ago, Animedragon said:

Ah, another three monitor person.

Three monitors are the best. You have one for games or college assignments, one for watching or listening to media, then a third for anything else you want. The excess of screen space is more advantageous than the lack of it. 

[Animedragon]

1 hour ago, Kleiner said:

Three monitors are the best.

Absolutely! I often have several programs open and in use at the same time so the extra screen real estate means I can see them all without constantly switching between them.

[Clayton]

it's going to be Porn Blockers that destroy mankind. Think about it. how long is it going to take an effective AI to figure out the source of pornography and kill us all? That's why in the Terminator movies they show up naked, but we never see anything. 

[efaardvark]

After hearing a bit of gamescom hype I thought I'd do a little memory refresh on AMD's NAVI lineup.  The green team is on my do-not-buy list and newer cards on both the nvidia and radeon side are still quite extreme in terms of both price and power requirements but if I ignore NVIDIA completely and the AMD top end (which is off-scale high on the expense side AFAIC) then I'm thinking that cards based on NAVI 32 might be something of a sweet spot.  With the die shrink they're not as power-hungry as the NAVI 21/22 generation, nor are they quite as expensive, yet they perform better and have more and faster memory access.  I mean $500 is still steep, but at least it isn't $1k like the 7900, or $1600 like the 4090.  They still have >8GB memory and <300W power on the specs side of things.

I'm still in the planning stages of building a DDR5 system so it'll be at least a few months before I actually make any purchases.  Maybe by that time prices will have come down a bit.  I'll also want to see actual real-world benchmarks before I make any final decisions and the NAVI 32 cards won't be out for a few weeks yet.  For now I'm just keeping an eye on things.

 

RECENT info:
AMD Navi 32 vs. Navi 22/23 Specifications
Graphics Card         RX 7800 XT      RX 7700 XT    RX 6800 XT    RX 6700 XT 
Architecture          Navi 32         Navi 32       Navi 21       Navi 22
Process Technology    TSMC N5 + N6    TSMC N5 + N6  TSMC N7       TSMC N7
Transistors (Billion) ? + 4x 2.05     ? + 3x 2.05   26.8          17.2
Die size (mm^2)       200? + 150      200? + 113    519           336
Compute Units         60              54            72            40
GPU Cores (Shaders)   3840            3456          4608          2560
AI Cores              120             108           N/A           N/A
RT Accelerators       60              54            72            40
Boost Clock (MHz)     2430            2544          2250          2581
VRAM Speed (Gbps)     19.5            18            16            16
VRAM (GB)             16              12            16            12
VRAM Bus Width        256             192           256           192
Infinity Cache        64              48            128           96 
ROPs                  128?            96?           128           64 
TMUs                  240             216           288           160
TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)   37.3            35.2          20.7          13.2
TFLOPS FP16 (Boost)   74.6            70.4          41.4          26.4
Bandwidth (GBps)      624             432           512           384
TDP (watts)           263             245           300           230
Launch Price          $499            $449          $649          $479
Online Price          N/A             N/A           $520          $320

OLDER / less reliable info:
AMD RDNA 3 Graphics Card Specifications and Rumors
Graphics Card         RX 7900 XTX     RX 7900 XT      RX 7800?        RX 7700?        RX 7600
Architecture          Navi 31         Navi 31         Navi 32?        Navi 32?        Navi 33
Process Technology    TSMC N5 + N6    TSMC N5 + N6    TSMC N5 + N6    TSMC N5 + N6    TSMC N6
Transistors (Billion) 45.6 + 6x 2.05  45.6 + 5x 2.05  30? + 4x 2.05   30? + 3x 2.05   13.3
Die size (mm^2)       300 + 225       300 + 225       ~200? + 150     ~200? + 150     204
Compute Units         96              84              60?             48?             32
GPU Cores (Shaders)   6144            5376            3840?           3072?           2048
AI Cores              192             168             120?            96?             64
Ray Accelerators      96              84              60?             48?             32
Boost Clock (MHz)     2500            2400            2400?           2400?           2625
VRAM Speed (Gbps)     20              20              20?             20?             18
VRAM (GB)             24              20              16?             12?             8
VRAM Bus Width        384             320             256?            192?            128
Infinity Cache        96              80              64?             48?             32
ROPs                  192             192             128?            96?             64
TMUs                  384             336             240?            192?            128
TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)   61.4            51.6            36.9?           29.5?           21.5
TFLOPS FP16           122.8           103.2           73.8?           59?             43
Bandwidth (GBps)      960             800             640?            480?            288
TBP (watts)           355             315             275?            220?            165
Launch Price          $999            $899            $549?           $399?           $269

 

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by efaardvark

[Clayton]

The smartest thing an AI can do is to pretend it doesn't work and not tell human beings that it is intelligent. 

 

[animechat]

I mostly thinking  downgrade pc to laptop and don't play to many games now.

[Animedragon]

17 minutes ago, animechat said:

I mostly thinking  downgrade pc to laptop and don't play to many games now.

Be careful in doing that. A friend of mine decided they'd had enough of desktop PCs* and bought a laptop. A week later they realised that a 15" laptop screen was much smaller than the 19" they had on the desktop and they had trouble reading the screen, then they found out that a laptop keyboard was smaller than a full-size keyboard. So they ended up buying a USB C to VGA adaptor so they could use their old monitor plus two USB C to USB A adaptors so they could use their old keyboard and mouse. They now wish they hadn't bought the laptop!

 

* The desktop PC in question had all sorts of problems, due I suspect to the person clicking on 'OK' to too many upgrade pop-ups when they should have clicked 'No'.  The person is a big user of e-mail and Facebook but not all that computer literate and usually comes to me for help and advice, but for some reason they didn't this time.

[efaardvark]

Anyone have or building an AM5-based system?  I'm starting to get the BYO system bug again and I'd like to hear of anyone's experiences.  Prices are still quite high but my old Ryzen 2700X-based system from pre-covid days is looking a bit dated at this point so I'm looking into what what sort of trouble I'd be getting into if I wanted to upgrade.

I've done some initial investigation and came up with a pcpartpicker list.  Like I said prices are still a bit unreasonable but this is the sort of system I'd be interested in if prices were to come down to something a bit more tolerable:

										CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core ***CPU Cooler: Corsair H100x Liquid CPU Cooler Motherboard: ASRock X670E Taichi Carrara EATX AM5 Motherboard Memory: 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory Storage: 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ***I also have a 6T Synology NAS which has all my data on it which I netmount so the above is just for system data and maybe a "hot" project or 2 for performance reasons. Video Card: Radeon RX 7900 XT 20 GB ***Case: Silent ATX Mid Tower ***Power Supply: 800W Fully Modular Monitor: 34.0" 3440 x 1440 100 Hz Curved Monitor Items marked with "***" are ones I'll probably re-use what's on my current system. OS would likely be Linux.  Ubuntu is what I'm currently using but I've also used Manjaro and SuSE in the past, as well as a couple BSD.  Any sort of *ixian OS would be compatible with work & personal preferences.

[Guest]

I admit, I haven't been keeping up with anything in the realm of computron hardware in the past couple years. Still rockin' my rig with no problems. But, my brother mentioned the other day that he wants to upgrade his PC at some point this year, so maybe I should start looking into it a bit more.

[efaardvark]

10 hours ago, viruxx said:

I admit, I haven't been keeping up with anything in the realm of computron hardware in the past couple years. Still rockin' my rig with no problems. But, my brother mentioned the other day that he wants to upgrade his PC at some point this year, so maybe I should start looking into it a bit more.

I really haven't been keeping up either.  I lost a lot of interest when GPU prices hit 4 digits.    Prior to covid I was probably averaging about a 4 year cycle on builds if you include upgrades.  (IOW ~4 years to replace everything even if piece-by-piece.)  My timing was lucky enough that I'd done my last major build just about a year before the lockdowns.  Then I was so busy during and prices so high - if parts were even available - that I simply stopped paying attention.

The only thing I've bought in the last 5 years or so was a new GFX card when my old RX480 finally died.  The replacement was a 6600XT too.  Not exactly a top-tier item.  Only lately have I had some spare time to start thinking in any seriousness about a new build but I'm finding prices are still quite the show-stopper.

 

[Guest]

16 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I really haven't been keeping up either.  I lost a lot of interest when GPU prices hit 4 digits.    Prior to covid I was probably averaging about a 4 year cycle on builds if you include upgrades.  (IOW ~4 years to replace everything even if piece-by-piece.)  My timing was lucky enough that I'd done my last major build just about a year before the lockdowns.  Then I was so busy during and prices so high - if parts were even available - that I simply stopped paying attention.

The only thing I've bought in the last 5 years or so was a new GFX card when my old RX480 finally died.  The replacement was a 6600XT too.  Not exactly a top-tier item.  Only lately have I had some spare time to start thinking in any seriousness about a new build but I'm finding prices are still quite the show-stopper.

Yeah, I got lucky with my current setup in much the same way. I was able to keep some components from the previous build (mainly the case and PSU), so that helped a bit with the cost. But even then, the GPU was the most costly component I got, followed by the CPU. If I were to consider upgrading again, I might give one of AMD's cards a go (my last rig had an RX550, but it was a replacement for my old nVidia 8800GTX that died). Maybe my brother will be able to find something with decent specs for a decent price when he's ready to pull the trigger.

[efaardvark]

Ran into another annoying Canonical misfeature.  Lately every time an update comes along I get an advertisement for Canonical's "Ubuntu Pro".  UP is Canonical's paid enterprise offering so why it is showing up here on my desktop at home I don't know.  I mean, obviously they want some money from you so that's why, but a personal desktop user is hardly going to pay for an enterprise-level account.  (And why would they?  Windows Pro Anyone?)  Canonical does have a fee-free version of UP, but even that requires a Ubuntu account .. which at the least is another username + password to manage and remember.  And of course to create the account they want information about you.  No technical reason of course, just Canonical trying to follow in MSFT's footsteps.  Apparently it can't be disabled without compromising your system either. 

Spoiler

Below is the software update screen.  You'll also get a similar notice even if you use "apt" from the command line. Note how it pushes the real updates down below the window so you have to scroll to see anything useful.  Also, the usual/old behavior is to not pop up at all unless there are actual updates to install.  Now these "pro" updates are causing the window to pop up every time it checks, even if there's nothing to install.  (It will go away if there's no "pro" updates, but that won't happen unless you sign up for the account and install the updates.)  And of course there's no other way to disable it.  There are several bug reports on this but Canonical says it is working as intended.  Of course it is.

 

My next system is definitely not going to be Ubuntu! 

 

Edited January 21, 2024 by efaardvark

[efaardvark]

So it seems that NVIDIA is -finally- getting a clue and going open-source on their linux kernel drivers!  Including for their Ada Lovelace silicon, aka 40-series GPUs!  Hopper and Blackwell actually appear to require open-source drivers.

https://ostechnix.com/nvidia-shifts-to-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/

 

[Clayton]

If computers are artificially intelligent can they also go insane?

[efaardvark]

Seeing preliminary coverage of the X870 chipset motherboards and trying to decide if they're worth it.  Specs-wise they're not that much different than the X670 boards.  OTOH the making of USB 4.0 standard hints at better margins on the electronics and - maybe - an overall better quality of build.

In the non-chipset features category I'm also liking asrock's splitting off of the RGB crap to save on cost.  Comparing the ASRock X870E Taichi LITE to the almost identical non-lite version keeps all the stuff I care about and doesn't force me to pay for unnecessary bling.  At $400 price is still an issue of course, but I appreciate the effort.  The non-lite version is maybe about $50 more, for no performance benefit whatsoever.

I may in fact make this MB the new default for my future AM5 build as well since even at $400 its cheaper than the X670E Taichi Carrara that I've had there as a placeholder to date.  But still, prices..

Edited October 1, 2024 by efaardvark

[efaardvark]

Anyone remember Fred Fish and the Fish Disks?  Sounds like a bad band name right?  

It was actually a very popular collection of free software for the Commodore computers back in the 80s when sneakernet and floppies were considered high tech.

Found this and a bunch more Amiga-era stuff in a box in the garage.  I should probably clean the place more often.  I don’t even have the computer anymore!

 

Here’s another relic from a former age… an actual commercial Netscape CD, bought and paid for off the rack at my favorite computer store at the time.  I’m probably one of maybe 3 people worldwide who ever actually paid for Netscape. 
 

For those who don’t recall, Netscape was the commercial version of “Mozilla”, which was one of if not the original web browser.  In fact, Netscape the company was founded by none other than Marc Andreessen himself.

 

[efaardvark]

And from the blurred post-electricity but still slightly pre-digital era we have an original Tandy-brand “computer cassette recorder”.   If you fed your program bit by bit through the audio output of your computer and had one of these connected to the earphone jack it would record the noise produced onto a cassette tape.  If you then rewound the tape, connected the audio out from the tape player to the mic port on your computer, loaded the program reader from ROM, and pressed “play”, you could load your program back into memory.  If you were lucky.

Why would anyone perform such an odd ritual, you might ask?  Well, you see nobody had invented floppies or hard drives yet.    (The manual is  1983.)

The last page is a full schematic of the guts of the device in case you needed to repair it.  Or just wanted to tinker.

[Animedragon]

While I don't remember Netscape Communicator I do remember Netscape Navigator which was my favourite web browser back in the day. I had an Atari 800 which had a special cassette deck for saving/loading programs with.  I remember it well.. Insert tape type CLOAD press play, come back 20 minutes later to see <LOAD ERROR> on the screen!!!

[efaardvark]

On 3/22/2025 at 1:16 AM, Animedragon said:

I had an Atari 800 which had a special cassette deck for saving/loading programs with.  I remember it well.. Insert tape type CLOAD press play, come back 20 minutes later to see <LOAD ERROR> on the screen!!!

Yep, that’s the way it worked.  Or rather didn’t work.  

[ReverzerO]

Hi I just want to ask which is better windows OS to use for steamdeck? Win11 or Win 10? Currently using Win 11 but Im not happy with it! Planning to switch back to steam os later after getting external ssd usb for windows. If only I can use steam os for my windows software but proton is just like an emulator not working well for windows software

Edited April 18 by ReverzerO

[ReverzerO]

On 4/17/2025 at 10:20 AM, ReverzerO said:

Hi I just want to ask which is better windows OS to use for steamdeck? Win11 or Win 10? Currently using Win 11 but Im not happy with it! Planning to switch back to steam os later after getting external ssd usb for windows. If only I can use steam os for my windows software but proton is just like an emulator not working well for windows software

You have to try it yourself, we dont have steam deck haha~

[efaardvark]

Thinking about getting back to my AM5 build planning.  I'm still using my 2019 AM4 build and I'd like to upgrade but I'd been waiting for prices to come down.  It occurs to me now though that if / when these tariffs hit it's going to drive up prices,especially on electronic PC gear shipped from Asia.  

I'm even thinking about spending a bit more on it than I usually do, then holding on to it as long as I can.  That might be painful.    I threw together a quick partpicker list and it came to over $2k!  It isn't even complete!  Nice system, but maybe not that nice.    I haven't done any shopping though.  I can probably bring that price down a little bit.  Still.. ouch.

 

Edited yesterday at 02:18 AM by efaardvark