UltraMega

Life is so hard.

Well that usually is the case, not like you can play Valve games without a Steam account. This is definitely annoying though. To reinstall windows on a customer's computer with this requirement, I would either have to leave the setup at the part where credentials get entered which means any setup after windows fully installs would be left up to the customer, I'd have to get the customers Microsoft email credentials or use a temporary Microsoft account and then convert the PC to a local account after setup, if that's even possible. It's hard to see the logic in this move. Luckily its only windows 11 and only the pro version.

If me and Pioneer agree on anything, that means something.

When it comes to this kind of hardware, I don't think marketing carrier a lot of weight. Performance speaks for itself, though if you include something like locking down memory speeds to high end CPUs that could be considered bad marketing. I agree AMD's initial prices for Zen 3 were a little surprising, but they were outselling Intel so it's hard to say they missed the mark. I do expect they will pull back a little on initial price hikes going forward. Zen 3 was them being ahead by a good margin for once. Intel has caught up, haha.

I think this site should have a section for amateur reviews. Maybe there would be a barrier to be able to post reviews, like a certain amount of rep. I like seeing this kind of user made content here. It's fun to make and read through. Nice review.

I think about this all the time. I was a teenage back then and didn't have money, but I tried HARD to convince my dad to buy AMD at that price and he didn't listen. Honestly AMD's value still feels too low, or more so I think they have some insane potential. They've been closing the gap between themselves and Intel as well as Nvidia for years. They're the only company deeply embedded in the CPU and GPU market and they're hitting a level of quality now that would have me extremely worried if I were the competition. Arguably they're already ahead of Intel. Intel might have the performance crown right now but we're definitely in a race now where each team has major viability and will probably trade blows and in an even race, I think AMD wins on consumer preference. That's why we see reports that despite Intel's current advantage, AMD CPUs still have amazing sales. On top of that they have a lot of headroom to improve their architecture being a node or two ahead of Intel already. Even though Intel is currently ahead in performance, it feels like they're on the run and responding to AMD while AMD is just continuing to impress without needing to respond to Intel with much more than a few price cuts. IMO Intel would have waited longer to jump into trying to mainstream DDR5 if they weren't feeling the pressure from AMD. GPU wise, Nvidia has a stronger lead on AMD compared to Intel but that gap is also closing. I have an RX 6800 and there isn't much to complain about. Nvidia wins on features that are still in they're very early stages anyway, like ray tracing and AI upscaling. AMD cards have great raster performance already and the RT is good, not great but good. Once they have a bit better ray tracing and jump into the AI upscaling game which I expect they will do with their next lineup, all that will matter is if they're able to close the gap more and more and I think they've been on that trajectory already. One has to wonder if there will be an inflection point where all these things meet and AMD at least strongly matches or even pulls ahead of both Intel and Nvidia. It took AMD a LONG time to get strong momentum after they acquired ATI and took on a ton of debt but those days are well behind them now and they may be in a phase now to really start benefiting from being the only company that can make top tier CPUs and GPUs. I mean look at the consoles, they are all AMD and this gen they are very powerful machines not disappointing to anyone in terms of specs, and the steam deck is all AMD. But then of course Intel is about to enter the GPU market so that could shake things up. In any case with Intel, if they do well or not with their GPU lineup, things look more and more competitive for Nvidia. Then again none of this really matters as long as the GPU market is so crazy and all three companies will be selling every card they can make as soon as they can make it, but if things ever return to normal, I think it's going to be a race between Intel and AMD to see who can eat away at Nvidia the most. I think both will do well in that race but AMD will do better. TLDR, I see things going like this:

AMD surpasses Intel's market cap for the first time ever WWW.TECHSPOT.COM The sudden boost in AMD’s market cap came from its $49 billion all-stock takeover of Xilinx on Monday, 15... They grow up so fast.

It might be more powerful in raw horsepower, but there are instruction sets it lacks that would make a massive difference and on hardware that old, it's probably not hard to find those situations. Most things using newer instruction sets would still run better on the newer hardware even if it's really weak low end hardware. In anycase, I don't fault MS for having the hardware cut offs they do. The only one that seems questionably is the win11 TPM thing but since win10 is still good until 2025 and win11 offers no real benefits anyway, I see it as a non-issue. You're probably one of few people who would complain about not being able to run newer OSes on hardware that old haha. I'm sure they could reach further back with support if they wanted to but it also makes sense to have a bottom line so devs don't have to write programs for ancient hardware all the time.

Yea they probably do have some incentives for employees in some other areas, but I just can't see how it would apply to RMA even for a somewhat shady company. It would be REALLY shady if they did that for RMA.

Are you sure the CPU you're using is a 64 bit CPU? Not all CPUs back then were IIRC.

I didn't see the LLT video, but it seems unlikely that they would apply perks to RMAs specifically. I think far more likely they just have crappy management that perhaps feels pressured to turn away as many RMAs as they can get away with and they pushed too far.

Older CPUs don't support newer instruction sets that newer software relies on. Even if the OS would run, lots of software wouldn't.

Yea I'm also super curious. I would love to see some footage of their RMA department, but I doubt we'll get that.

Yea, it's all about TPM, no doubt. I'm not a security expert but security moving more into hardware is something that's slowly been happening for years. Not defending it, and I think TPM is mostly about DRM rather than security but it's not unique either. GPUs and CPUs all have had DRM hardware for years. You can't stream 4K content on you PC from Netflix without it. All that aside, Win11 fixed an issue I was having in a game that nothing else fixed so I'm a fan. Still mad I can't move the start bar though. There really isn't a reason for people to switch from 10 to 11 though, they are 99.9% the same. I don't get the sense that Microsoft is even really marketing it. It's more there just to be ready and available for ARM hardware and that's really it as I see it. I'd love to have a phone that ran Win11 though... I think that's Microsoft's long term plan to get back into the mobile market... to just wait until the hardware catches up to the software and they can put full windows on phones.

Ever since Intel started locking down memory speeds for non K CPU's I have been rooting for AMD. Intel can have the performance crown and as long as there are still competitively prices CPUs from AMD it will be my preference for the foreseeable future. Intel could get me back if they had some CPUs with some really good OC headroom but that happens less and less these days.

Newegg apologizes for customer service shortcomings, will discuss matter on camera soon WWW.TECHSPOT.COM Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus recently purchased a Gigabyte motherboard from Newegg and opted for expedited shipping as he needed it quickly for a content piece. By... TLDR, Newegg has had some pretty questionable issues with Open Box returns lately. In this case Gamers Nexus bought a mobo that was Open Box but ended up never needing it and returned it without even opening the box it was shipped in, yet Newegg initially refused to issue a refund. Now he is going to meet with them in person to talk about what happened and soon there will be another video with that interview.

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-presents-roadmap-of-energy-efficient-blockchain-accelerators.html Intel wants that Nvidia money.

Nice. You got an RV/Van?

double post

This

IDK why you always gotta so be rude. I was trying to be nice by giving you creds and differing to the better judgment here. Just adding my two cents without reading every comment. Had a couple typos, fixed.

If PC repair was my main gig I'd be sad about all these windows improvements as they'd be costing me repair fees, but since I've long given up on that monetary chain... I see lots of evidence that MS has drastically improved security and OK with that.

Sorry if I missed something but I just want to add my sound blaster z gives me a lot of subwoofer control. More than my PioneerIsLoud approved receiver. You may want to look at sound cards with good bass management options but again, sorry if I missed something in the thread. Didn't read everything.