UltraMega

Well, I was demoted. Figured it would happen. Grudges exist. 

I would have kept helping with news, but I'm just going to leave. Good bye. 

A subsequent guide. I hoped this would serve as a more simplified and up to date/to the point guide.

If you want the source in the title, by all means. We stopped doing that here a long time ago because the room for titles on the main page is pretty short, and because we use the tags for the source.

No need to put the source in the title FYI.

30% more die for 30% more performance.

  On 19/01/2025 at 23:58, pio said:

Absolutely agreed on every point.  Maybe once the bumpy transition period is over we can figure out a way to start up some sort of news posting contest or something.  That'd be kind of fun!  

And also agreed about E.  E will be missed greatly as the site founder and original owner.  (Yes, we see the ribbon thingy, yes its on the to do list to fix as we're not founders ).  Honestly, I hope he still pops in and checks up on us from time to time even.  I'm pretty sure he's just gotten busy.  He absolutely was an enthusiast and still is.  Did ya'll see some of those later reviews he published?  Hot dang!

The site is STILL Enthusiast ran, I think we can spin it that way. 

And about the paid staff thing.  Who's to say that good work won't go unnoticed?  Help us make the site turn a profit, and the staff will see those profits.  Help us make it more profitable than that, the users will see those profits then somehow (in terms of prizes, giveaways, etc).  If the site makes money, the users will see it.  Full transparency (that we can legally and morally do).  I'm here not as the owner (I didn't buy the site, Labrat did).  Not saying we'll be offering like actual wages, but it all depends.  If the bills are paid and the site is running on its own, any profit from the site (specifically) is GOING back into the site.  (This is NOT any sort of confirmation, this is just what we are planning to HOPEFULLY accomplish in the future).  Of course right now the site's broke monetarily.  So there's nowhere to go but up from here. 

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I agree with everyone on their comments about the news section. 

But with that said, just a splash of cold water; even if everyone here was posting news actively, it wouldn't bring in new members. If you guys want this site to turn a profit, you're going to have to figure out a way to have a consistent flow of new members finding the site to begin with. As it is now, unless someone specifically recommends this site to a friend, I think EHW is basically invisible to any potential newcomers. 

Maybe find a small-ish and cost effective youtuber that you could pay for a few sponsored videos or something, and then focus on making sure there is enough content to retain some new users. As long as the userbase is this small and virtually no new users are coming in, profit is impossible. 

Love it or hate it, this is the cutting edge.

Update to this story:

https://www.ign.com/articles/tiktok-is-back-online-in-the-us-after-being-officially-banned-on-january-18

Because the ongoing nature of this is now even more political, I am going to lock this thread. 

News, will continue to posts news. 

https://extremehw.net/staff/

The DLSS factor will be huge. If it's broadly equivalent to a PS4 but with DLSS, that alone would be a huge difference that would make it way better than a PS4, but with 50% more memory and an NVME, it should be able to push way further. 

I don't think the footage of Mario Kart was intended to show off anything other than a new Switch playing a familiar game. I'm not even sure if it's a real game or just something they put there for the reveal. Surely there will be a new Mario Kart game, but that might not be it. I don't think they are ready to show off graphics capability yet since that could slow down sales for current gen Switch games. 

It's going to be interesting to see what devs can do on a constrained device that supports Nvidia's brand of RT and upscaling for sure. 

I hope it has a 1080p screen. I think anything less would be a big disappointment. My cheap phone that is probably almost 4 years old is about 1440p res. If we can't even get 1080p on a Switch 2 in 2025 that would be pretty lame. 

  On 18/01/2025 at 15:53, pio said:

Those were just examples.   OCN didn't have paid staff when it was popular.  I agree with the rest of it though, I'd love to see more news being posted too.  It's definitely appreciated.  There's a lot of tech news I end up getting only here because you guys post it.

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OCN did have paid staff back in the day. Not full time, but there were a few paid members. They even paid me a little at one point.

Not suggesting anyone here should be paid, just pointing out the differences. OCN is on life support at this point just coasting on the audience it built up before it went downhill, and the other sites are not dedicated forums only, and have full time paid staff, so there definitely are some major differences that set EHW apart from other sites that seems to be doing well.

  On 18/01/2025 at 00:21, pio said:

I think its possible to grow the site still.  There's still plenty of activity at other forums like LTT and TPU.  Why not EHW?

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Those sites have full time paid staff. EHW does not so that's one big reason why. 

  On 18/01/2025 at 09:22, Kaz said:

A big part that made OCN great was the news.  Before it was purchased it was my go to site for tech news.  After the purchase news wasn't really a focus.

 

Now I am going elsewhere for news, but I think it's something that generates traffic and is worth talking about.

 

I remember talking to a guy who ran an offensive cybersecurity company.  Some of his more notable customers at the time were johnson and johnson and mcdonalds.

 

I was talking about intel's hardware speculating and how that was a serious liability with spectre/meltdown and zombie attacks.

 

He wasn't aware of the spectre/meltdown attacks.  That's the kind of cool news we used to have.

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It also used to be true that tech news was more obscure and spread out but now there are at least a dozen sites that are alway up to date on tech news. OCN filled a gap with the news that no longer exists.

With that said, I agree the news section is crucial here, which is why I've focused on posting news the whole time I've been here. Would be great to have more people consistently posting news. 

Was it not enthusiast owned before? I think E is an enthusiast...

I won't try to speak for E but just from my own observations, while E has mentioned he didn't have the time to really focus on the site as much as he wanted, the issue with sites like these is that Discord and apps like it are taking over. Even here, most of the member activity happens on Discord. 

Forums like this are simply fading away across the board. While I'd love to see this site succeed, I'm not sure what E could have done differently that would have really made a difference. 

  On 17/01/2025 at 14:31, Slaughtahouse said:

 

What do you believe will disrupt this wall and why would it take 10-30 years? 

 

In the short term, I believe we all agree that 2 year cycle of GPU architecture / node swaps is dead. If GPU vendors want to release new GPU SKUs every year for constant cash flow and revenue, expect more iterative changes. Node changes likely will be 4 years+ at this rate considering the costs and yields. 

 

The latest roadmap we have from TSMC (Nov 2024) is linked below. I read it that it's likely consumer graphics wont be on 3nm until late 2026 or early 2027.

 

TSMC Technology Roadmap: 1.6nm Chip Manufacturing Set for 2026

WWW.GURU3D.COM

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has revealed its technology roadmap for the coming years at the Open Innovation Platform (OIP) 2024 conference in Amsterdam.

 

That would mean it would be approx. 5 years since Ada / RDNA 3 debuted with 5nm. Now I could be dead wrong and Nvidia launches their refresh of Blackwell on TSCM 3nm, but it seems unlikely when they're maximizing 3nm Blackwell for data centers. For context, the revenue from data center vertical was  10x that of consumer, gaming cards in the last quarter. $30B vs. $3B. 

 

NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Third Quarter Fiscal 2025 | NVIDIA Newsroom

NVIDIANEWS.NVIDIA.COM

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Record quarterly revenue of $35.1 billion, up 17% from Q2 and up 94% from a year agoRecord quarterly Data Center revenue of $30.8 billion, up 17% from Q2 and up 112% from a year ago SANTA ...

 

All of this is speculation of course...

 

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It's pure speculation about what will disrupt this, but as we get closer and closer to the wall I'd imagine a lot of research will shift towards looking for new ways to get around current limits, and eventually we will get a breakthrough in something like maybe graphene or 3D transistors or something not yet imagined. 

  On 17/01/2025 at 08:29, Sir Beregond said:

Interesting. Explains the power increase somewhat.

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More fps for more power and die.

User meets wall.

I've been talking about the wall for a while now. Here is the latest example. 

we are 10-30 years out from getting around this. 

I only use Facebook for the marketplace and everytime I login, the stuff it shows me is all either super weird or AI generated thirst posts. I don't know how anyone takes Facebook seriously anymore. It's such a broken platform. 

  On 14/01/2025 at 19:44, Slaughtahouse said:

 

A dev wont utilize a dedicated NPU anytime soon for games. GPUs already have the latest and greatest, and have enough market saturation to make it worth while. If PS6 or Xbox Series Y or w.e has a separate NPU, then sure, add another 2-3 years before we see some optimization. 

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Yea I agree that it will take a few years at least, but this is one of the first steps towards opening up NPU capabilities to allow for more general usage beyond just upscaling. I fully expect the next console gen to have NPUs that devs can use in a general way as they see fit.

  On 14/01/2025 at 14:45, Slaughtahouse said:

Microsoft and commitments don't go well together. 

 

Potential is probably there but I remain extremely skeptical we'll see wide spread adoption of whatever they're trying to attempt. If they optimize the use of "NPUs" like tensor cores on Nvidia cards to improve performance when using DLSS or other neural rendering, sure I am all for it

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DLSS already runs on the NPUs in an Nvidia card. Using other NPUs like the ones integrated into a modern CPU probably wouldn't work for DLSS since the NPU on a CPU would have a latency penalty and DLSS relies on very fast/near-instant processing.

I think this is more aimed at opening up NPUs to being used for more than just upscaling. It sounds like they want to establish an API that will give devs some openness and flexibility in how they use an NPU for games. 

Perhaps we could eventually see games that opt not to offer DLSS so that the NPU is available to do other things for the game.

  Quote

Microsoft recently announced what could be the next major development in the history of DirectX. The High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) team is currently working with major GPU and SoC manufacturers to bring support for neural rendering technology in the company's APIs for 3D graphics, which Microsoft described as a significant evolution in what's possible with real-time graphics.

 

Redmond defines neural rendering as a suite of techniques capable of leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning algorithms, and models to evolve traditional graphics pipelines. Cooperative vectors are the core element of these new neural rendering methods, and they should soon become part of the DirectX API suite for cross-platform game development.

 

Cooperative vectors are useful for accelerating AI workloads for real-time rendering, which in turn will improve the performance of neural rendering techniques. Cooperative vectors optimize the matrix-vector operations that are usually required in large quantities for AI training, fine-tuning, and inferencing, Microsoft explained.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/106318-microsoft-support-next-gen-neural-rendering-technology-directx.html

Seems like the potential to use NPUs to speed up RT workloads is huge. Will be really interesting to see how this evolves. 

There's also a lot of "neural" tech demo stuff in this DF video from CES 2025:

AMD snuck this under the radar. 

Congrats @pio and @LabRat!

And congrats @ENTERPRISE on passing on the site!

Looking forward to seeing what comes next. 

  On 07/01/2025 at 16:08, Sir Beregond said:

Speaking of a wall....I suspect any traditional raster improvement over 40-series is going to look minimal outside of the 5090. Ada gen got a lot of its improvements simply from the move from Samsung 8nm (a 10nm process) to TSMC N4 (a 5nm process). Given Blackwell sticks to TSMC 5nm (but I think the rumor is moving to N4P), most of it's improvements are going to have to come from architecture, clocks, power draw, and larger dies...and that only gets you so far. We at least also have the move from G6X to G7 memory which should help a lot as well. But otherwise? AI AI AI AI AI. Presumably the RT performance in the very specific scenarios Nvidia used is where you'll see the biggest improvements, otherwise...

 

But I also fully expected nGreedia mode because AMD simply is not going to compete at many levels here with RDNA4...they have stated as much.

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Looks like you were right. Native CP2077 performance went from 24 to 27. 

Another one: 

just to get real bassy:

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There might not be a mysterious 'dark' force accelerating the expansion of the Universe after all. The truth could be much stranger – bubbles of space where time passes at drastically different rates.

The passage of time isn't as constant as our experience with it suggests. Areas of higher gravity experience a slower pace of time compared with areas where gravity is weaker, a fact that could have some pretty major implications on how we compare rates of cosmic expansion according to a recently developed model called timescape cosmology.

 

Discrepancies in how fast time passes in different regions of the Universe could add up to billions of years, giving some places more time to expand than others. When we look at distant objects through these time-warping bubbles, it could create the illusion that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

Two new studies have analyzed more than 1,500 supernovae to investigate how likely the concept could be – and found that the timescape model might be a better fit for observations than our current best model.

The standard model of cosmology does a pretty good job of explaining the Universe – provided we fudge the numbers a bit. There doesn't seem to be enough mass to account for the gravitational effects we observe, so we invented an invisible placeholder called dark matter.

There also seems to be a strange force that counteracts gravity, pushing the cosmos to expand at accelerating rates. We don't know what it is yet, so in the same spirit we dubbed it dark energy. All of this comes together, along with ordinary matter, to form what we call the lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model.

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Forgive me for the article above, but I cannot find a good article with proper sources at the moment. 

TLDR, red/blue shifting is not being accurately represented because we are not accounting for relativity according to mass... properly. 

It's a bit of a mess but the new math is lining up better that dark matter theory so far. This could be the end of dark matter theory all together, and I think that is a serious claim.