Sir Beregond

Yeah and I bought a 6850 and two GTX 560's last year and a GTX 275 lol. I get that modern top end stuff is called "enthusiast tier", but an enthusiast just means someone into a particular subject or activity, one of which can be running period accurate hardware/OS to run period appropriate games.

Strange statement.

I still don't understand what any of this has to do with Pio's point about retro gaming/hardware/OS enthusiasts. Yes an extremely small and niche segment of people, but still, should they lose access to their games that otherwise works? "It can upgrade to 10". Cool, seems like a completely irrelevant point to the above.

This is a fun aside, but I think @pioneerisloud entire premise was that there are a small segment of retro enthusiasts who want to run computers on retro OS's that they have no intention of upgrading to Windows 10 on, and since the games they bought have a required spec of those same retro OS's, losing access to the games because of the game platform dropping support (unrelated to the games themselves) isn't very fun. So I don't think whether or not you can upgrade to Windows 10 is anything they give a rat's about in this context @UltraMega. I'm sure @pioneerisloud already has a W10 or W11 box.

Well said. Man I want to give AMD a try, but it still feels second rate to me. Sure the raster is there, but everything else not so much. I used to be mainly a Radeon guy back in the ATi days and the 5000-series back in the Fermi era, but man it just doesn't feel good to spend that much and feel like I am lacking features like RT / DLSS. The couple times I tried FSR it looked downright terrible. It would be nice if AMD cared to do more than just do "good enough" to then slot into Nvidia's BS pricing. I don't think the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT MSRPs made any sense at all and was just a "well this fits into Nvidia's pricing stack" move. The only reason the 7900 XTX was $999 was because the 4080 was $1199.

I mean I think the lowering of traditional bandwidth and replacing with cache or other software solutions is fine for some segments, but its another thing entirely when they are doing that for literally every SKU that isn't the top end halo product at a time when more people are checking out ultrawides, or 1440p, or 4k. I don't think I am jumping the gun in voicing my displeasure of that trending as we are already seeing that with the 40-series even if we don't really know what the 50-series will be yet. Yeah I don't think you are wrong on your assessment here. But at the same time, gamers have been pretty vocal about VRAM this year, so will be interesting to see how they navigate that. If they did have another 8GB card next year or 12GB at certain segments, is that really going to be seen as ok? Anyway it's not just about high resolutions either. Why are cards being marketed as 1080p cards suddenly at $500 price points as well with a clear stagnation of performance improvements over the previous generation? Talking the 4060 Ti and 4060 here. 1080p at this point is considered a basic resolution if not old at this point and the idea that a good card for it isn't also getting cheaper doesn't make much sense. Anyway, don't mind me, I just hardly miss an opportunity to rant about graphics cards.

Great points and I hope they actually take the time to craft some interesting aide quests and not just random gen "another settlement needs your help" stuff. Witcher 3 showed that can be done.

Perhaps if they keep updating it like they did with Fallout 76 it can fix some of those issues. But at this point I am kinda concerned for Elder Scrolls 6.

Yeah but they'll still have the problem of a "70" branded card being $800 which is just asinine. While they certainly are going the right direction with performance per dollar with the Supers, the stack still feels so wrong. In just the previous gen, the 4070 Ti being a performance match against the last gen 3090 Ti would make it seem more like it should be a 4070 branding wise (and pricing wise). 3070 matched 2080 Ti, 2070 matched 1080 Ti, etc. etc. has been the precedence. And then the actual mainstream 60-class cards are just stagnate, so there's literally zero worthwhile cards to buy below $550 and anything over $550 is misbranded and overpriced still. As for the VRAM issue - perhaps, perhaps not. If the next gen cards are coming out in late 2024, early 2025 and are expected to last 2+ years as a generation, I'm not so sure they can go another gen without upgrading VRAM. That said, if they keep skimping on memory bus in favor of L2, then that does sort of limit the options. That does make me somewhat question this 192-bit rumor for the 5080 though. Unless they are doubling density again and somehow making it a 24GB card over 6 chips (or maybe front and back chips like a 3090), then it seems off to me that they'd take the 16GB 4080 and then go to 12GB 5080. Seems to me that would get crucified.

I really appreciate you posting these @J7SC_Orion - it really is quite fun to watch these on the big OLED. I look back and wonder how I ever lived on an LCD

Honestly I've yet to really be drawn in like I would on a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game. I made it to New Atlantis, started doing all the side quests that were popping up and man, talk about basic and disappointing. They also kinda tease with some quests (like figuring out the power spikes in the underground area, forget the name) where you are presented with branching options, but in the end don't actually mean anything in any meaningful way. I've discovered the persuasion system to be absolutely random on what options work. I've reloaded saves just to retry failed attempts and it's different every time in terms of what works. On one hand I can kinda understand that from a game design so you can't just go to a guide and say use these 3 options, but on the other hand seems completely asinine as what persuades a person should be fairly rigid based on their personality, environment, circumstances, etc. And then as for the planets themselves...I haven't really gone past the tutorial and then getting to New Atlantis, but if that first planet was any indication, there's definitely not much interesting to see like there would be in a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game. I don't know, I always loved older Bethesda games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 - there are memorable quests/questlines, exploration is wonderful, and the sandbox nature of the worlds presented a lot of compelling options/modability to your play. Now I totally agree with many who would state that games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 are incredibly shallow games, but wide enough to have fun in...again as a sandbox. But man, I am just not feeling Starfield. I haven't felt a desire to pick it back up yet, which makes me glad I didn't buy it and have just been trying it out through Game Pass. Bethesda needs better writers for one thing. While I consider both to be good games, comparing Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, and then comparing both to Fallout 4 is quite something. It's got its own flaws as a game, but honestly if you've never played New Vegas, you are doing yourself a disservice. Fallout 4 was just a flat out mess, but I will admit I still had fun going around and doing things. As for Starfield, what is there to do on an empty, barren planet? Sandbox games still need interesting environments. EDIT: And for all its flaws as a game mechanically or otherwise, wife and I are actually having tons of fun in Fallout 76. Again, its an interesting world to explore and find things in.

I wonder what the memory density will be per chip by that point. Are we talking another 24GB card? Maybe 36GB or 48GB? Are they really saying 192-bit now for the 5080? That's a low blow. While I am sure the increased L2 helps, its clear time and again that at higher resolution, you know like the ones you'd use if buying top tier products, definitely gets hampered by a 192-bit bus limiting performance potential. 4070 Ti is a great example. Sure it works at 4k, but if it was a 256-bit card, it would work even better. For the money spent, its definitely performance left on the table because of that drastic cut-down. AMD figured that out. Notice RDNA3 has a smaller Infinity Cache and larger traditional bus than RDNA2 did.

Yep true with Zen 3 before it too. Always benefited from RAM tuning and per core CO I kinda gave up on as I'd get something that passed stability testing and then something would always expose an instability. Do you need the extra cores then Pio? 7800X3D would probably be the best plug in and go solution as the X3D stuff hasn't cared as much about RAM tunings. The tradeoff being, less room to play with overall as a result. But just throwing that out there.

Merry Christmas everyone! We have a solid community here and I look forward to what 2024 brings!

I play pinball fairly regularly (2-4 times a month) at a place here. I'm pretty good at South Park, Lord of the Rings, and Medieval Madness. The rest, not so much. Actually had no idea they had virtual machines like this. Pretty cool.

It certainly didn't draw me in.

Hey I'm still on 3801 on my 5900X/Dark Hero.

Good review bro! Admittedly as someone who is very little into laptops or handheld devices, I had never even seem this m.2 form factor before.

Yep, mine is now 13 years old and it is a tank. That said, back when I bought the Metro Datavac, they were more like $50. Kinda shocked to see over $100 now.

You shoulda seen how work shipped me my "new" work laptop. Talk about no care given.

Windows 11 is mostly the same as Windows 10 in my book. That said, while you could call the menus "cleaner", I'd say its just relearning where stuff is (example, copy/paste being pictures instead of line items on the menu), or sadly, adding extra clicks to get a full menu. Also they really dumbed some things down. Right clicking the taskbar has literally two options now. Task Manager (which wasn't there in earlier iterations of W11), and Taskbar settings, that's it. Just some examples of the differences and I find them annoying. But otherwise Windows 11 has been fine for me.

Pretty disrespectful language to say about anyone on their team or who joined their team who produced a BILLION points. Very disappointing to see. Very nice job @firedfly!

To think we had a few Model M's growing up and they probably got junked by my parents! Now I remember those keyboards being horribly loud, but I have to admit they were nice to type on. I just have this aversion to loud keys I guess. Would there be something non-clicky but maybe more tactile than Browns you guys would suggest trying?

Comments about PCIe not mattering usually didn't go from x16 PCIe 4 to x4 PCIe 3. That's a huge difference. It's also why there was a bunch of talk around AMD using x8 on say the 6500 XT because once again there was a big difference in performance between plugging it into a PCIe 4 slot vs 3 slot over the x8 interface of the card. Where you'd not see a big difference is between x16 and x8 PCIe 4.