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Lelouch

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  • 2 weeks later...

Steam's March hardware survey numbers are out and it looks like 6-core CPUs have now surpassed quad-cores in gaming rigs.  Not exactly earth-shaking news, but definite progress nevertheless.  A few game developers have claimed as recently as last year that it wasn't worth it for them to do more than superficial reworking of their game engines to account for multiple cores because after "housekeeping" functions like GUI and hardware servicing most systems only had 2 cores left over anyway.  That's basically one for the game engine and one for the game code itself, so why bother?  Good to see that argument is continuing to become more ever more specious and untenable.

On the other hand this is unlikely to change anything radically or soon.  4- and 6-core CPUs between them still occupy nearly 70% of the installed base, with 8-core systems still representing less than 20%.  Developers likely look at the situation kind of like you might growing grass in your lawn.  Eventually you know you'll have to cut it but you don't necessarily have to do it today.

On the gripping hand, another way of looking at it is that 6-core+8-core systems together now represent over 50% of the market.  The writing is clearly on the wall. Developers that haven't yet jumped on the multi-core bandwagon already definitely need to come up with plan for using multiple cores effectively in their products or risk leaving performance on the table for their competitors to use against them.

Edited by efaardvark
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Saw a Radeon 6600XT for less than $400 today.  $370 actually, after rebate.  Only problem was it was an MSI board & I'm not a fan of their gfx cards as they tend to run hot and as a consequence are loud and don't last (as) long.  Still, at least the price is going in the right direction.  Another hundred bucks and it'll only cost what my ancient RX 480 cost me about 5 years ago.  :D 

(At the time I thought that over $250 for a gfx card was crazy but looking back I have to admit that I certainly got my money's worth out of it.  If I'd bought a cheaper card I'd likely have been a lot less calm about GPU prices over the last few years.  I mean, sure I'd have liked a better card, but the 480 has enough performance that even now it is still quite serviceable as long as I don't go crazy and try something silly like 4k or 1440p at "ultra" settings.  At 1080p HD it works fine even for gaming.)

Edited by efaardvark
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Must. Play. 🤩

On 4/20/2022 at 5:06 PM, efaardvark said:

Found another NMS trailer during lunch today...

One of these days I'm going to have to get this game.

Really appreciate the work that was put into correcting the mess it was during launch. Went from a massive flop to truly impressive. Great game!

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Nice to see GPU prices continue to fall.  I've had my eye on a Radeon RX6600 for a while now to replace my ancient (and possibly failing) RX480 but I've been holding off because every time I check the price has dropped another few bucks.  Just now I saw one at Best Buy for $270.  Do I hear $250?  Looking for $250 here.  Papa needs a new gfx card.  :D 

Actually, at this point I should probably wait for the new RDNA3-based 7000-series cards.  Not that I need the latest-and-greatest, though if I can get lower power consumption and better performance-for-price I'll take it of course.  But when the new stuff comes out the prices on the older cards should fall even further.
 

Edited by efaardvark
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  • 3 weeks later...

So EVGA is terminating their association with NVIDIA and leaving the GPU market entirely.  Wow.  Didn't see that coming.  Sounds like a pretty messy divorce too. 

Personally I'm sorry to see it as well.  EVGA is on my preferred-companies list.  One of the few that still makes quality products and has decent customer service.  (In my experience anyway.)

Edited by efaardvark
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What is nvidia thinking re their announced RTX 4000 series?  Some of the cards I've seen announced are more than US$1,500.00, more than 450 watts, and take 4 PCI slots!  That's nuts!  Those prices aren't going to come down to anything reasonable for *YEARS*.  I can see why EVGA left the market.  There's simply not going to be a market for cards that are that unreasonable.  I mean, yeah, sure, there might be a very few sales to people that can afford any price for performance, but for the rest of us that's just off-scale high in all categories.

This definitely opens the door for AMD to come in and take over the market for GPUs like they did for CPUs.

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The more I hear about NVIDIA the less I like them.  Their open-source support is pretty much non-existent.  Their next-gen 4000 series cards are ridiculous.  Too hot, too big, too power-hungry, too expensive. 

The company management is wacked too.  The CEO just said, "Moore's law is dead. And the ability for Moore's Law to deliver twice the performance at the same cost, or the same performance at half the cost every year and a half is over. It's completely over.  And so the idea that the chip is going to go down in cost over time, unfortunately, is a story of the past."  This even as the company brags to shareholders about how the company's margins continue to expand to new records.  (And their partners' margins continue to shrink.)

Talk about out of touch!  People are stupid, but not that stupid.  NVIDIA's (former) best partner, EVGA, has already left the market.  As a customer the 4000-series cards are off my xmas shopping list for sure as well.  I may or may not be interested in whatever comes after the 4k cards, depending on if the company can reconnect with reality or not, but know I'll be taking a good look at whatever AMD comes up with for my next gfx card.

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I'm gonna drive my 2070 Super "until the wheels fall off", as my dad used to say when someone suggested he buy a new(er) vehicle. It serves its purpose, but I've been curious about AMD GPUs for a good while myself. I'm not really in the market for a new card anytime soon, but if NVIDIA's being that obnoxious, and EVGA backed out, I'm probably going to be more careful and skeptical moving forward. That's sad about EVGA. The first graphics card I ever got was an EVGA 8800 GTX, back in 2007. Couldn't believe the difference in visuals between the consoles and PC after I played Crysis that first time.

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I’ve been using an old RX480 for many years now.  I originally got it for an old AMD FX-based build.  The wheels are getting kind of wobbly there.  :)   It has served me well through 3 desktop builds now but I’m getting to the point where I need to upgrade.  One of the 4 video outputs is already dead and it has no DP outputs, only HDMI.

That’s fine at the moment because I only have 2 x 1080p HD displays but my monitors are similarly old and in need of an upgrade.  I don’t quite see the point of 4k but a 2K widescreen with a higher refresh rate than the 30hz on my main display would be good.  That’ll probably require a DP for the bandwidth.

I’m also really interested in VR.  The better headsets out there are basically at least 2x1080p HD displays at >90fps refresh.  I’m sure the old 480 would struggle there, especially if I wanted to keep both existing monitors and add the additional output(s) to a headset.  

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That’s interesting that you mention that, because the last build I was using before my current rig had an AMD FX proc with an RX500 (it was either a 550 or 560, can’t remember which) series card I picked up from a local Best Buy after my 8800 died. For a $99 card, it held up really well. Most of the games I play are a bit older, so I was able to max them out graphically, but newer titles had to be set at low to medium settings, depending on which game it was. I gave that rig to my brother to use since he was wanting something to be able to record music on that wasn’t an Apple computer, and it’s still holding up pretty well in that regard too. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

KSP2 -finally- has a release date!  Officially to be released for early access on Feb 24, 2023.  I'm still nervous about how Take Two (Rockstar, 2K) will treat the game and (especially) the modding community but at least the next version is still making progress towards release.

Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbZ6M9Whyc4

 

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In FFVIII Remastered I'm trying to look for the White SeeD ship, but it's hidden pretty well. In FFX HD Remastered I'm trying to get the Waterproof armor drops from the Water Flans before taking off for Kilika. No luck so far though. I've gotten it before, so I know it's a drop, but it must be a rare drop.

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