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Jedi2155

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Everything I'm seeing is that a "mid-range" x570 board is going to be $250.  Partially because of all the additional power phases, the extra thick pcb and some of the additional components being added.  That being said AMD is clearly not treating themselves as the bargain option and I think that's understandable. 

If people wanted a bargain they should be looking at the 2000 series CPUs, I'm seeing some crazy deals being offered to clear stock and their performance is still overkill for most people. 

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  • I'm not sure this is AMD's doing. There have been boards in the past with very built up VRMs and they did not demand exorbitant prices.
  • I'm seeing a bunch of 2.5gb, 5gb and wifi6 NICs. They are going to market the hell out of that.
  • There is hype for these new AMD CPUs. Hype = money.
  • There has been an Asus brand-name price premium for a while now. I would not be surprised if they are just leaving the middle and lower price segments to companies with less name recognition.
  • Spec sheet for TUF Gaming X570-Plus and Prime X570-P looks alright and, if that price rumor is to be believed, they are priced reasonably: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-amd-x570-motherboards,39457.html
  • It has happened plenty of times before in previous launches where some mid-range-priced boards matched the top-end-priced boards when it came to performance (overclocking). The differences were usually in marketing, color scheme and bells-and-whistles (lights, integrated water blocks, the number of NICs, etc.).
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  • 2 weeks later...

news article - https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/26/dish-launches-a-wifi-and-tv-service-aimed-at-apartment-dwellers/

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Last week Dish announced a new service designed to make smart home technology available to all, now it's launching another service that makes modern tech accessible to everyone. "Dish Fiber" is a combined WiFi and livestreaming TV bundle for those living in multifamily communities, such as apartment blocks and student housing.

The service lets landlords offer two services -- WiFi and livestream TV -- direct to their tenants. While the property owner manages the overall contract with Dish, each resident has access to their own personal network. This means that tenants don't have to go through the hassle of sorting out these utilities when they move in -- everything is set up and ready to go -- while landlords can tack on an extra fee to the rent for the services. Or, according to Dish's press release, "monetize their highly-valued amenities."

According to Dish, the service comes with flexible billing options. Exactly how the contract works between landlord and tenant is presumably down to the landlord, and therefore potentially open to abuse -- could the tenant end up paying over the odds for these services if they're otherwise in the dark about how it all works? That said, sorting out WiFi and TV services are a familiar headache for those that move frequently, and this kind of deal gives them access to the utilities they want without locking them into lengthy contracts directly with a provider.

 

That sounds awful. I was already asking in the past "so how does internet access work here" when shopping apartments but it sounds like that is doubly important now.

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article - https://www.anandtech.com/show/14599/phison-ps5016e16-pcie-40-ssds-random-readwrite-performance-disclosed

I'm sure benchmarks will have the final work but this article would seem to indicate that SSDs using Phison PS5016-E16 on PCIe 4.0 x4 are going to show little real-world performance improvement over current SSDs  using Phison PS5012-E12 on PCIe 3.0 x4.

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The max sequential read/writes which is the number they put on the box is what they're trying to advertise as much as possible.  There are some workloads that might make use of that, but I understand that for real world use cases most users wouldn't see that benefit - we'll eventually get a new phison controller which might bump the random read/writes but that will take another 6-12 months. 

SSD/NAND prices have absolutely hit a new low point, I'm assuming some of these producers will try and use this new PCI-E 4.0 devices as justification to try and raise prices again. 

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21 hours ago, Malaphax said:

SSD/NAND prices have absolutely hit a new low point, I'm assuming some of these producers will try and use this new PCI-E 4.0 devices as justification to try and raise prices again. 

A part of me wants to buy a new nvme ssd because the prices are so low right now but I don't feel that I have any real world scenarios right now that would benefit from the additional performance over my current Samsung Evo 850.

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If you're doing video editing you'd probably see some additional benefits.  For games and basic windows usage it's negligible, but there are still some minor performance gains.  Some additional considerations are case layout and cable management (minor downsides are cooling).  Considering you can pick up a very good nvme drive for ~$100/1tb that's pretty fantastic value, but it's still a cost benefit analysis that you'd have to be comfortable with. 

As a side note, Micron (and possibly other NAND producers) are currently cutting production and future investment - while I'm sure NAND storage will continue to get faster, I'm not sure if it's going to get significantly cheaper in the near term. 

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Double posting because why not. 

We're starting to see some of the PCI-E 4.0 nvme drives on sale like the 1tb ($230) and 2tb ($430) model from Sabrent: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-2TB/dp/B07TLYWMYW/

I'd like to see proper reviews before I pass significant judgement, but from the anandtech article that kuhla previously posted and general understanding of the e12 controller vs the "new" e16 controller, I suspect they're just not worth the 2x price premium of the current PCI-E 3.0 models.  I'm also curious if the e16 controller and higher bandwidth might also cause additional thermal issues.  I've seen plenty of people recommend putting a proper heatsink on nvme drives, especially if your case has limited airflow.  The risk of thermal throttling both the nvme drive and having the chipset fan on an x570 board spin up seems like a real possibility. 

I'm probably going to start making some buying decisions in the next few weeks as benchmarks and reviews start to flood in for ryzen 3000, x570 boards and other stuff. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, kuhla said:

Saw an advertisement on a bus stop yesterday and then decided to look it up. Oh jeez. I remember these guys. This has been "coming soon" for years and years but now they have an actual map for coverage.

  1. https://sifinetworks.com/cities/fullerton-ca/
  2. https://www.gigabitnow.com/fullerton/

 

Their pricing isn't great - it's basically what AT&T is charging.  I'm mildly interested and might end up giving them a call at some point, but surprisingly I've been happy with AT&T's service - we had one major outage and since then it's been rock solid. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

The rumor mill is heating up again regarding the AMD GPU space.  People are suggesting that AMD might release a 5800/XT sometime in the "near future".  Lisa Su herself is kinda fanning those flames as well. 
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd’s-lisa-su-hints-that-high-end-7nm-navi-gpus-are-on-the-way.html

As a note, the 5700XT still doesn't have AIB models, in fact I really disliked how they launched those cards, but I suspect AMD is taking a page from Nvidia and trying to push their own stock cards to some of the first adopters and eke out a little bit of extra margin.  There's also the thermal issues that the 5700 faces, aside from the blower cooler being utter crap, the GPU runs warm, and a larger more power hungry version might need even more cooling. 

Honestly I'm hoping that AMD can push Nvidia, I'd look forward to the added competition, but I suspect that we won't see a 5800 before Q4.  I also expect that the 2080ti will remain unchallenged, but that they could challenge the 2080(S).  There's also Nvidia who is clearly sitting on extra performance headroom in case AMD starts to become competitive - I expect they have a 2080ti super waiting in the wings in case AMD actually pushes out something competitive.  Not to mention Nvidia is expected to transition to 7nm cards sometime in 2H'20. 

Finally and this isn't strictly related to the desktop GPU market.  AMD is still the partner for both Xbox Scarlett and Playstation 5.  While both consoles are expected to use some similar ryzen/navi tech on them, it might also use AMD's raytracing rather than Nvidia's RTX version (I assume both are built mostly of the windows dx12 api, I'd like to see what vulkan can come up with).  I'd be interested to see if the new consoles actually make use of raytracing at all, and if that will be due to better optimization and limited implementation or if they'll just dynamically adjust the resolution to 1080p or even lower. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nvidia pushed out some new drivers, 3-5% increase in certain titles.  They also enabled a low latency mode, I assume this is to compete directly with AMD's "anti-lag" options.  Finally, they also added full integer scaling, which allows pixel art games to properly scale at higher resolutions, that's actually pretty great considering how many pixel art games there are and the current renaissance of that art style. 

Nvidia press release: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/gamescom-2019-game-ready-driver/

Driver link (win10 64): https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/150300

As a note some sites mentioned that geforce experience is not optional on this release, hopefully that's just a small bug. 

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2 hours ago, Malaphax said:

As a note some sites mentioned that geforce experience is not optional on this release, hopefully that's just a small bug. 

I'll wait for the next one.

2 hours ago, Malaphax said:

.....compete directly with AMD's "anti-lag" options....

What is this? Why have I not heard of this?

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-software-anti-lag

https://www.techspot.com/article/1879-amd-radeon-anti-lag/

*reads*

Ahhh. Ok. This is basically about limiting prerendered frames. This has been done before. It's not all upsides.

 

EDIT: Nvidia added more compatible monitors too https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/g-sync-monitors/specs/

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37 minutes ago, kuhla said:

Ahhh. Ok. This is basically about limiting prerendered frames. This has been done before. It's not all upsides.

Sort of.  Nvidia flat out admits there are 3 settings: Off, On - same as setting max_pre-rendered_frames_1 in prior drivers,  and ULTRA.  They are adding an extra code/instructions for the Ultra setting that uses a different just-in-time scheduler.  Again, Nvidia mentions that this works best in the 60-100fps range when you're GPU limited.  So it's not a silver bullet, but it might make games feel slightly more responsive in that fps range. 
The really big caveat that people aren't mentioning too much is that DX12 and Vulkan already use different rendering instructions so this does not work with either.  I suspect that this is basically backporting the vulkcan/dx12 rendering instructions to dx11 and dx9, which has limits. 

Speaking of Linux, many linux enthusiasts are quietly hoping that stadia helps push developers to properly roll out linux/vulkcan support for newer games.  This could be yet another push towards linux gaming (valve has been carrying that torch for many years) which might eventually making linux gaming a real possibility. 
I did a bit of research into linux gaming recently and the two major issues I came across are anti-cheat software not working (easy anti-cheat being the big one) and the need to troubleshoot games/workarounds.  I'm hopeful with many new games moving towards vulkan renderer, and Google throwing money at developers to release on stadia, we might see another big jump in linux support for gaming.  I'll continue to keep my eyes open, at this point I think any one of us could comfortably run a dual-boot setup successfully, but I don't think Linux is ready for full time just yet. 

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23 hours ago, Malaphax said:

As a note some sites mentioned that geforce experience is not optional on this release, hopefully that's just a small bug. 

I'll wait for the next one.

https://old.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/csvqh5/game_ready_driver_43602_faqdiscussion_integer/

According to this thread, with a post from someone claiming to be an Nvidia Community Manager, this was a bug and they took the drivers down for a while and it has now been fixed.

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I initially used it to help get some basic graphical settings recommendations.  They started pushing for logins and were somewhat recently hit by a security vulnerability (I believe that has been patched). 

The geforce experience can stream/record/highlight pretty well, and there's nothing wrong with using it to stream - it's far simpler than OBS.  But I like the different features OBS provides (even if I use very few of them).  Beyond that I'd rather cut down the bloatware I have on my computer and reduce the attack surface my computer represents, within reason. 

Nvidia drivers already contain some substantial bloat, the audio driver over HDMI (I don't use) and 3d vision and a few other pieces that aren't needed.  So cutting the geforce experience is an easy part I can opt out of. 

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I have not been installing GFE for a long time now. At best I have no use for the features it provides. At worst it's just another program that adds another screen overlay, or another driver, or some security vulnerability, or another thing checking for updates/doing stuff in the background when I don't expect it to, more complexity that can introduce problems.

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  • 4 weeks later...

"Air Force to offer up a satellite to hackers at Defcon 2020"
article - https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/09/19/air-force-to-offer-up-a-satellite-to-hackers-at-defcon-2020/
 

Quote

 

Last month, when the US Air Force went to the Defcon hacker conference, it dragged along an F-15 fighter-jet data system.

The destination: a corner of the conference where the first-ever Aviation Village brought together the aviation industry with the infosec/hacker community. There, vetted security researchers picked that system to pieces.
....

Will Roper, the Air Force’s top acquisition official, told the Washington Post that....
"""But now technology changes so rapidly, and most of it is driven by software. The idea that closed can make you more secure is a hypothesis we need to question. Industry is going more toward open, being secure by allowing external experts to find vulnerabilities in a way that protects them so that they’re not legally culpable but that provides a safe conduit to make those available to the government."""

"""What we’re planning on doing is taking a satellite with a camera, have it pointing at the Earth, and then have the teams try to take over control of the camera gimbals and turn toward the moon. So, a literal moon shot."""

 

More in the article.

It's refreshing to see the US government in many small ways recognizing the value of bug bounty type programs. Everybody wins when it is done well.

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"Cable Giant Spectrum On Quest To Outlaw 'Insane' Streaming Password Sharing"
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190918/08020643016/cable-giant-spectrum-quest-to-outlaw-insane-streaming-password-sharing.shtml

Quote

 

On the other side of the equation sits Charter CEO Tom Rutledge....
....

"There’s lots of extra streams, there’s lots of extra passwords, there’s lots of people who could get free service,” Rutledge said at an industry conference this month...“It’s piracy,” Connolly said. “It’s people consuming something they haven’t paid for. The more the practice is viewed with a shrug, the more it creates a dynamic where people believe it’s acceptable. And it’s not."
....

    "Ultimately our goal is that we can get an alliance of a large enough group of programmers and operators to protect the value of the content that people produce and the content that we distribute and we pay for,” Chris Winfrey, Charter’s chief financial officer, said last week at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2019 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills.

    Winfrey severely criticized programmers that turn a blind eye to the practice of password sharing, claiming such practices are “insane."

    “To think that it doesn’t impact the way we get paid, it does,” Winfrey said. “And it conditions the entire marketplace to think that content should be devalued, it should be free, and that’s the way it is and I shouldn’t have to pay for it. It’s our firm belief that we’d be growing and growing significantly [if it wasn’t for password sharing]."

 

There must be continuous and endless growth! Anything less is unacceptable! (/s)

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To give another example of companies cracking down on shared logins, you also have Spotify asking for people's addresses to verify everyone on a family plan lives at the same address. 

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/12/20863066/spotify-family-plan-sharing-location-terms-conditions

Honestly, this isn't a great look for the companies.  I understand they would rather have 2 individuals at $10/month rather than a family plan covering both at $15 a month, but they're also losing out on goodwill.  Netflix is rather lenient on account sharing and while there will always be some people who abuse the system, I think most people pay their fair share.  By being more aggressive in targeting people who account share you risk antagonizing customers - if you do this badly enough you might have people boycott/avoid your product because of a bad experience they've had. 

I think we're also seeing a hyper-focus on growth from smaller/newer streaming services, because many of them are specifically adopting a lower pricing model in an attempt to pick up large numbers of new subscribers.  Combining an already oversaturated market with an aggressive stance on account sharing is just going to invariably increase piracy, which I'm sure these companies will point to as a scapegoat for why their new streaming service isn't growing as fast as their forecast. 

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Beyond the insatiable mindset of all-growth-all-the-time, I think it shows a complete lack of vision and understanding from these companies.

  • Is the subscriber visiting someone else's home and took their mobile device with them? How is that different from someone bringing their VHS tape over?
  • Did the subscriber invite others over to their home to have a little get-together? How is this different from superbowl parties?
  • Is it one family with members that might float between 2-3 addresses?

These are all reasonable use case scenarios not just with our modern technology ecosystems but have parallels to older setups too. You cannot reasonably verify an account is not being shared unless someone is regularly going over the max number of simultaneous screens/streams and even that is shaky.

This post is not really done but I don't want to type anymore. Stuff like this gets me a little mad.

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