Kaz

If I were trying to build a good gaming computer for cheap, I'd look at the 2nd hand market. 3060ti or 3060 super 3060 12gb version, and 5800X3D would be my go to choice. That combo can run any game on the market reasonably well and will be an enjoyable experience. The 5800X3D is somewhat expensive as they are good gaming cpus and hold their value well. However they have the same socket (AM4), as many other CPU's, and you could easily pick up a different AM4 CPU and change it later if it matters. 5700x's are going for about $115 on ebay. Ram should be DDR 4 3600 or 3000, with the 3600 being preferred. 16 gigs is probably enough. Just about any B450 motherboard should work, and they are pretty cheap new. Although you might want to consider if you need/want wifi tied into the motherboard. PSU? What is your power supply or do you need to buy one? I generally do not buy prebuilts, although I do recommend picking up used computers from the local university, which are essentially prebuilt PC's that are about 5 years old. University computers are cheap enough that replacing a component or two isn't that bad. Prebuilt computers tend to cut corners. PSU is generally not a good one and ram is often slow. Often times they never bother to set the ram timing in the motherboard settings. For me, it works out better to just build a computer.

Just a moment... TOPCLASSACTIONS.COM I think class actions aren't covered enough in the news. If you, or anyone you know was using USAA in 2021, there's a paycheck waiting if you fill out the paperwork. USAA serves military members and their families.

"It's growing" — NASA discovers a vast anomaly on Earth affecting America WWW.ECOTICIAS.COM NASA’s discovery of the growing South Atlantic Anomaly raises concerns for satellites, technology, Earth's magnetic field. Scientists... I can't read this article and not think about the Bermuda Triangle. The article tries to paint this as something that is being studied and that it's not alarming. The truth is, we don't know what to expect because we've never seen this happen before. Earth has changed it's magnetic poles throughout it's life, but it's rare enough that humans don't have records of it.

You might be able to assign a static IP address to the device and block the port that youtube cast is using. Wireshark will tell you what port it's running on. However if there are other services running on that port it will cause problems... Generally ports aren't a mix and match thing because that causes it's own problems. The downside to this approach, you would have to control the router you are connecting to. An alternative might be to install a firewall and use that. This post might have some more specific options that are available on your device: How do I block devices on an Android? My neighbors recently purchased a Chromecast and my phone keeps trying to cast to it but I don't wa... WWW.QUORA.COM Answer (1 of 2): On your device, go into the main system settings and find the Google menu. Scroll down until you find Device Connections...

Undocumented "backdoor" found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices WWW.BLEEPINGCOMPUTER.COM The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains an... This feeds into what Christopher Domas was saying about the concerns of hardware back doors and the potential for hidden commands. It's why the U.S. developed the Chips and Science Act to subsidize chip manufacturing in the US. I don't think hardware designers are done trying to backdoor their equipment. Domas went to work for Intel and has been quiet ever since... There's a reason IOT is scorned upon in the information security sector. If it doesn't need to connect to the internet, it probably shouldn't. I am greatly opposed to Apple and Amazon feeding internet connections to other devices they own if they don't have their own internet connection.

There is some real irony that they are first available in China when China is under strict sanctions regarding GPUs.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5050 To Be The First RTX Blackwell GPU To Feature GDDR6 Memory; Likely Being a Budget-Friendly Model WCCFTECH.COM NVIDIA's RTX 5050 is said to be the first RTX Blackwell GPU to debut with GDDR6 memory, likely being a more value-for-money option. Slower memory would be alright if they would give enough of it....

AMD is launching its latest Ryzen 9 X3D gaming processors on March 12th WWW.THEVERGE.COM The new chips start at $599. Previous 900X3D chips have been worse than the 800 ones because the 3D V-cache was only on the first 8 cores and there weren't sufficient options to control which cores games use. I'll be watching to see if these are any better!

Yikes, I did some digging on the vcore settings and it looks like a stock 2690 V2 is running a 1.092 V

I was hoping you'd get better advice than what I can offer... Most of the non-server CPUs were 'safe' to run at a vcore up to 1.3. I haven't looked into what servers used. I would think it's a higher number, but possibly not. I'd take a look at the HwInfo that the cpu pulls at stock and use that to see if it's pulling more. My 4790K was overclocked to 4.7 Ghz with the vcore running somewhere around 1.28. It ran that way for 5 years and then became unstable and I had to remove the overclock. It's still a good computer, but on very rare occasions it does throw a blue screen. When I was using it as a daily driver it would happen once every month or two. I guess what I'm saying is, safe is a relative term. CPU's that might last 12 years could drop off at 5-7 years even though the voltage is below the stock settings. Other guys on the forums were saying they would run theirs up to 1.35 or so, which was apparently required to break the 4.7 ghz barrier for the 4790k. My i7 930 was also safe to run up to 1.3. I sold it off about a year after overclocking which was very late in it's life cycle. That computer is still in use, not overclocked. It's been over 16 years, but it's prone to hard freezing. It's still recommended to downclock ram speed to 1333 while figuring out the CPU overclock. Once the CPU runs the way you want it to, then it's time to see if the ram functions or if additional timing changes need to be made.

I made the switch. DRM is disabled by default but can be enabled in the settings under general. I had fingerprint prevention checked and it locked out the ability to select dark mode, which just tells websites I want a dark mode version if they have one. When I looked it up online people recommended using "Dark Reader". I found dark reader wasn't very good. Some websites maintained a white border along the sides until I did farther tweaking by enabling filter or filter +, neither of which look that good compared to regular Firefox dark mode. In the end I disabled browser fingerprint protection and switched LibreWolf to dark mode. I'm probably easy to fingerprint due to ublock, no-script, and privacy badger. I don't know if LibreWolf is telling websites I am using it instead of Firefox (maybe @pio knows...), but between all of those there are relatively few people who fit the description. Waterfox used to tell websites I was using it instead of Firefox and that gave me problems with some websites that would check the web browser. I didn't meet their approved browsers of the latest Firefox, chrome, or safari. In the end I stopped using Waterfox and tweaked Firefox to fit my needs. I don't know if Waterfox ever fixed that problem.

Louis is recommending LibreWolf. He's of the opinion that Mozilla sucks at communicating but that this isn't a big deal. California state law would classify that because Mozilla takes money from google to make them the default search engine, they are technically selling user data. I'm sick of spending 20 minutes opting out of everything every time I install firefox. I can never remember what about:config settings remove search with google and search with amazon from the address bar. Anonymized data is often trivial to de-anonymize because users dox themselves in ways that the anonymization doesn't take into account. A change in the terms of service is a change in the terms of service. Their practices might be acceptable today, but nothing is stopping them from selling data to other companies. Que Vader "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

That might be correct, although at this point people are saying the 5070ti doesn't exist!

9070 $549 9070XT $599 9070 is supposed to be about 20% faster than the 5070. It also has 16 gigs of ram as opposed to 12. Nvidia needs to quit cheaping out on ram. 9070xt is supposed to compete with the 5080. Ray tracing has been greatly improved, although if it's enough remains to be seen. Moores Law is Dead is predicting the 9070xt will sell out on launch day. It should have decent volume, but Nvidia's supply still isn't there and there is not enough supply to meet the demand of the market. Tarrifs in the U.S. are supposed to go into effect march 4th. This might be another card where MSRP is only available on launch day...

That promise is removed from the current version. There's also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, "Mozilla doesn't sell data about you, and we don't buy data about you." ... Users criticized Mozilla in discussions on GitHub and Reddit. One area of concern is over new terms of use that say, "When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox." Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic ARSTECHNICA.COM Mozilla says it deleted promise because “sale of data” is defined broadly. Really disappointing. I knew data brokerage was in the works back when they let people login to sync devices. It was a reason to harvest bookmarks and history. Someone has to pay for that data storage... Mozilla doesn't mention anything about this change when using the program. Might be time to start looking for alternatives... Shady contract updates without notice don't sit well with me.

Somewhere I read a report about up scaling moving aimed shots off by a pixel. It's probably not a noticeable difference, but competitive first person shooter (fps) games are where frames per second (fps) matters! FPS matters for FPS, imagine that! I also remember reading that on older graphics cards with limited v-ram, on games like pubG, shrubs aren't drawn in when it's a longer distance, which is why you should never hide in the grass for cover! #FirstWorldProblems, my graphics card is too good!

At 40 FPS I immediately downgrade shadows! I learned a long time ago that shadows are a pretty big hit to GPUs and my brain doesn't look for detail in shadows. If there's a shadow that's good enough for me. I guess that's an old tendency and I could be looking to enable up scaling instead. (I downgrade shadows before up scaling).

Would you replace your 7900 XTX if the 5090 was good? I'm planning to get 8 years out of my XTX... I think the only thing that would change my mind is VR performance.

I think the problem is that both of them can operate at a near loss, even affording to take a loss when selling older stock off. They have shown that they will undercut each other, so in order to prevent printing cards for pennies we have price fixing. Price fixing favours Nvidia because they have spent more developing Ray tracing, DLSS, and now fake frames. Nvidia seems to partner with gaming companies to favour their hardware. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle came out as ray tracing only. This is the stuff that makes teenagers tell their parents, I want the good card that can play everything. It has to be Nvidia! I'd rather boycott some games, but that's just me. Nvidia lost me as a customer when they screwed with the GTX 970 memory controllers. When I was using that card FSR worked and DLSS didn't because Nvidia chose to lock out older cards. I'm team red and I don't regret it. I did when I was team green.

Calibre is great! I've used it to convert pdf's and epub to mobi for my kindle. Guess I'll never buy a newer kindle, USB loading is the only way to go! Kindle batteries are easy to replace, so I guess there will never be a need to upgrade.

NVIDIA Is Reportedly Suppressing Inventory Levels For High-End RTX 50 Series GPUs, As a Move To "Market" Its SKUs WCCFTECH.COM NVIDIA is now reported to have "artificially" suppressed inventory levels in the retail segment, as a move to market its RTX 50 GPUs. I almost didn't post this because it's not news, we already know this. Still, it's nice to have confirmation that they are intentionally holding back inventory. Taking a page out of Nintendo's book. At this point you'd have to pay me to use a 5090. There's black screen / driver issues, cable overheating, card catching fire, missing ROPs, and scalping. Why does anyone put up with this?!

To bypass ads on Kindle, connect to a PC, then delete the add folder. Make a new text file and change it's name to be that of the folder (make sure to remove the .txt file extension). Kindle will replace the folder if they think it has been deleted. The text file does not work like a folder does, but because it has the same name they don't replace it with a working folder. I did that after I started seeing advertisements for diaper. I changed my nephew and niece's diaper a few times and I didn't enjoy the reminder of it.

PSA: Amazon kills “download & transfer via USB” option for Kindles this week ARSTECHNICA.COM “Download & transfer” was one last official way to get new books on old Kindles. I don't like when the terms of a sale are changed after the sale. My Kindle has never connected to a wireless network.

I can't think of a worse launch.