appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-26, 06:22:

I don't mean to second guess your choice but why would you buy that for that price when the RX 6800XT is on sale for even less than that on Amazon?

Local availability was the driving factor, really. I was able to get a new card without having to worry about anything beyond picking it up.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-25, 01:20:

The 4790k is a rock solid CPU, had one for ages and its still going strong in my brothers PC, it does need a decent cooler as their code name Devils Canyon is appropriate, heat aside it did overclock really well and overall was a nice upgrade over stock Haswell.

My older desktop before I built a new one a little over a year ago was built around a 4790k on a MSI Gaming 5 Z97 motherboard, and yeah, that is one seriously awesome CPU. Ran it for about 7 years straight and never had a lick of trouble with it, and I threw everything I could at it. A Cooler Master 212 EVO kept it perfectly cool enough. It's currently in a decommissioned state, but as I've learned throughout life and some bad decisions which led to seller's regret, I'm just not in the business of selling retired hardware anymore. I'll just store it away until I have a use for it down the road, maybe an extreme Windows 7 PC or something.

Brawndo wrote on 2022-07-27, 03:13:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-25, 01:20:

The 4790k is a rock solid CPU, had one for ages and its still going strong in my brothers PC, it does need a decent cooler as their code name Devils Canyon is appropriate, heat aside it did overclock really well and overall was a nice upgrade over stock Haswell.

My older desktop before I built a new one a little over a year ago was built around a 4790k on a MSI Gaming 5 Z97 motherboard, and yeah, that is one seriously awesome CPU. Ran it for about 7 years straight and never had a lick of trouble with it, and I threw everything I could at it. A Cooler Master 212 EVO kept it perfectly cool enough. It's currently in a decommissioned state, but as I've learned throughout life and some bad decisions which led to seller's regret, I'm just not in the business of selling retired hardware anymore. I'll just store it away until I have a use for it down the road, maybe an extreme Windows 7 PC or something.

I dont want to say I regret giving it to my brother but I may just buy myself another to have a spare one in my spares, its really was a solid CPU, I want to get another 1080ti too which I also gave to my brother. both the 4790k and 1080ti were just rock solid parts that will only get better as the retro scene ages and I can see them being ultimate collector parts down the road.

Yawnald wrote on 2022-07-26, 00:30:

Heyyyyy! Low profile 730 GT! I didn't even know they still had those kicking around! Gonna grab one right now.

Looks like EVGA is liquidating their DVI only 1030 card ($69.99). That's the Superclocked (SC) model so well over double the performance of the GT 730. My guess is not many people want it without HDMI and why it's heavily discounted over the other 1030 SC models.

Edit: Wow. That sold out quick. Matter of hours.

The other day, I bought a MacBook Air early 2020 1.1GHz 8GB RAM 512GB storage that needs a refresh and a USB-C 30W Apple charger. I have the 128GB flash drive set with the Monterey 12.5 installer.

Brawndo wrote on 2022-07-27, 03:13:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-25, 01:20:

The 4790k is a rock solid CPU, had one for ages and its still going strong in my brothers PC, it does need a decent cooler as their code name Devils Canyon is appropriate, heat aside it did overclock really well and overall was a nice upgrade over stock Haswell.

My older desktop before I built a new one a little over a year ago was built around a 4790k on a MSI Gaming 5 Z97 motherboard, and yeah, that is one seriously awesome CPU. Ran it for about 7 years straight and never had a lick of trouble with it, and I threw everything I could at it. A Cooler Master 212 EVO kept it perfectly cool enough. It's currently in a decommissioned state, but as I've learned throughout life and some bad decisions which led to seller's regret, I'm just not in the business of selling retired hardware anymore. I'll just store it away until I have a use for it down the road, maybe an extreme Windows 7 PC or something.

Gaming socket 1150 boards and CPUs still command some money even for their age. I am looking for a 4790K chip for my collection (or a close XEON). I already have a 1st generation I7-980x and a recent I7-2600K but I need something faster than a I3-4170 I have on a Asrock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer motherboard I just snagged and fixed (sold cheap with bent pins). Seems like I have been fixing a lot of cards and motherboards lately.

liqmat wrote on 2022-07-29, 18:42:

Yawnald wrote on 2022-07-26, 00:30:

Heyyyyy! Low profile 730 GT! I didn't even know they still had those kicking around! Gonna grab one right now.

Looks like EVGA is liquidating their DVI only 1030 card ($69.99). That's the Superclocked (SC) model so well over double the performance of the GT 730. My guess is not many people want it without HDMI and why it's heavily discounted over the other 1030 SC models.

Edit: Wow. That sold out quick. Matter of hours.

Yeah, that was quick. Missed it.

So it turned out I didn't have enough good enough RAM for the P5N-D ... only 2x2GB PC2-8500 ... so, I found a local set of 2x2GB PC2-8500, for about double couch cushion change. There's a "whole bunch" matching at some distance away, which I may make a play for next month when I'm near their home stadium, if this don't work out. Anyhoo, one set is OCZ and one set is Kingston, they're both 5-5-5-18 dropping to 5-5-5-15 under raised volts and tuning and both nForce certified, so I hope they're going to play somewhat nice together with a C2Q or so.

Also picked up an Athlon II x4 620. Similarly cheapish. I have been hunting Phenom IIs for years locally, always miss them or just ignore them because they want cloud cuckoo money, or they're just not around. Not been very lucky on sporadic eBay hunts. I guess because I'm restricted to 95W. Also hard to get full deets out of sellers sometimes because there's some faster ones around that are DDR3 only I think. (IDK there's a lot of faulty info around about them, one time I look one models has DDR2 next time I look it doesn't). So screw it, I'll grab this one for cheap and be done with it, unless anything falls in my lap, fed up of looking for the perfect one at perfect price. I checked and it's at least as fast as a Q6600, so can't be that bad. Some kind of K6-2 vs K6-3 going on between them and the Phenom II as it has one level less of cache, sometimes it don't matter and they're clock for clock, sometimes it does and the Phenom leaves it behind a bit. But not having the L3 also means they're less finicky to overclock and go some.

Anyway, as some twitter fake Dumbledore said, there's 4 kinds of kids, Brave, Smart, Sneaky and Miscellaneous. Or hard workers as Hufflepuffs like to call themselves. Need to designate a hufflepuff box. Do a load of media snarfing and format conversion. Smart might be the i7, brave might be the top clocked core class, and sneaky might be the quiet one.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-30, 20:32:

for the Phenom ii check out the 925. Its a 95watt 2.8 quad core with good OC headroom and around $10 on the evil bay

ODwilly wrote on 2022-07-31, 05:25:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-30, 20:32:

for the Phenom ii check out the 925. Its a 95watt 2.8 quad core with good OC headroom and around $10 on the evil bay

How is that a better option than an athlon ii 640?

appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-31, 06:49:

ODwilly wrote on 2022-07-31, 05:25:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-30, 20:32:

for the Phenom ii check out the 925. Its a 95watt 2.8 quad core with good OC headroom and around $10 on the evil bay

How is that a better option than an athlon ii 640?

More juicy l3 cache, more instruction sets iirc and power delivery/saving stuff, voltage tolerance. By the time the 925 rolled out the quad core phenom ii's were well established and it was a very mature 32nm CPU. All am3, 2 and 2+ CPU's memory controllers support ddr2. The reason it's impossible to run a am3+ FX cpu on a ddr2 am2-3 board is because they left the ddr2 controller off since it took up so much room on the phenom ii CPU's. The EDIT: DDR2 :End edit: controller on the am3 CPU's is better IIRC, depending on the mobo and capabilities. The ddr3 memory controller on the FX chips is better however. The 925 is fun because its so cheap and can clock to 965 speeds pretty reliably.
Edit: forgot to add a period appropriate overview that I read a decade ago when I was rocking my free athlon iix2 and debating between a cheap Phenom ii quad, six or FX chip https://www.overclockers.com/amd-phenom-ii-at … nce-comparison/

Bought a 4tb.Seagate Game drive at Walmart about a month ago. It was on clearance for 54$ US. Probably not the fastest model needless to day. I've wanted to switch over to all 2.5" drives, to alleviate the sargasso sea of cables. Started moving stuff over to it 2 nights ago. Initially it took 2 1/2 days to format the thing to ntfs. But it's taking loads of data seemingly well. Bought another newer model last night for 65$. For redundancy. Going to get rid of all the other drives and consequently be a lot happier.

Steel Series Stratus XL that looks brand new for $5

I finally bought a Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 32" monitor and stepped into the wonderful world of variable refresh rate displays. This bad boy has it all--at least, for an LCD display. It's based on one of the new super-fast VA panels that have absolutely no issue with dark color transitions. It can paint beautiful 10-bit, 3840x2160 images at a blistering 165 Hz, something I didn't think the current version of DisplayPort could even handle until I plugged it in and, well, it just worked! Oh, and it has an absolutely bonkers (again, for an LCD) 4200:1 native contrast ratio that's made even better by an 1196-zone FALD backlight. I adore this thing.

The thing is, I'm not sure I'm using right, at least in 2D apps. In 3D, everything's great. Variable refresh kicks in automatically, and everything looks "I-can't-believe-this-isn't-CRT" smooth. However, in regular 2D apps, the refresh rate appears to be locked at the maximum 165Hz. And 95% of the time, that's OK because browser scrolling, window dragging, and UI animation all look ridiculously smooth at 165 Hz. However, when I watch 60p video on YouTube, I notice some very slight frame hitching, which I didn't get with my previous 120Hz (fixed refresh) display. And sure enough, when I drop the refresh rate of the Neo G7 down to 120Hz, 60p video looks completely smooth.

I always thought that VRR displays could sync up with 2D apps as well. Was I wrong? I have VRR enabled in Windows settings and G-sync enabled in the nVidia control panel. If 2D VRR simply isn't a thing yet, that's OK I guess. After all, I don't even notice the hitching in 60p video unless I'm actively looking for it. I guess I just expected absolute perfection. But hey, I can live with 95%!

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2022-08-16, 02:12:

I finally bought a Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 32" monitor and stepped into the wonderful world of variable refresh rate displays. This bad boy has it all--at least, for an LCD display. It's based on one of the new super-fast VA panels that have absolutely no issue with dark color transitions. It can paint beautiful 10-bit, 3840x2160 images at a blistering 165 Hz, something I didn't think the current version of DisplayPort could even handle until I plugged it in and, well, it just worked! Oh, and it has an absolutely bonkers (again, for an LCD) 4200:1 native contrast ratio that's made even better by an 1196-zone FALD backlight. I adore this thing.

The thing is, I'm not sure I'm using right, at least in 2D apps. In 3D, everything's great. Variable refresh kicks in automatically, and everything looks "I-can't-believe-this-isn't-CRT" smooth. However, in regular 2D apps, the refresh rate appears to be locked at the maximum 165Hz. And 95% of the time, that's OK because browser scrolling, window dragging, and UI animation all look ridiculously smooth at 165 Hz. However, when I watch 60p video on YouTube, I notice some very slight frame hitching, which I didn't get with my previous 120Hz (fixed refresh) display. And sure enough, when I drop the refresh rate of the Neo G7 down to 120Hz, 60p video looks completely smooth.

I always thought that VRR displays could sync up with 2D apps as well. Was I wrong? I have VRR enabled in Windows settings and G-sync enabled in the nVidia control panel. If 2D VRR simply isn't a thing yet, that's OK I guess. After all, I don't even notice the hitching in 60p video unless I'm actively looking for it. I guess I just expected absolute perfection. But hey, I can live with 95%!

Possibly a windows thing, I have similar issues with my 4k VRR panel and it doing strange things with the framerate when watching YT videos, it seems to have a big issue with 1080p@50 videos more than the 60FPS ones. Its essentially windows preventing the panel from adjusting the VRR to match. Since its only the video thats at 50 and not the entire screen it causes oddities with the video but the rest of the screen remains fine.

I think VRR confuses the hell out of the WDDM manager or its simply not aware of it yet.

Ah, the good old Windows compositor. Always slightly behind the times. 😜

Bought a MacBook Pro A1707 EMC 3072 that has a broken off piece that'll get fixed and a Nintendo Switch.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2022-08-16, 02:12:

I finally bought a Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 32" monitor and stepped into the wonderful world of variable refresh rate displays. This bad boy has it all--at least, for an LCD display. It's based on one of the new super-fast VA panels that have absolutely no issue with dark color transitions. It can paint beautiful 10-bit, 3840x2160 images at a blistering 165 Hz, something I didn't think the current version of DisplayPort could even handle until I plugged it in and, well, it just worked! Oh, and it has an absolutely bonkers (again, for an LCD) 4200:1 native contrast ratio that's made even better by an 1196-zone FALD backlight. I adore this thing.

have you considered a 65" 8K TV? That would be rather incomparable picture quality.
It's like choosing 320x240 monitor vs 640x480 one.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2022-08-16, 02:12:

I finally bought a Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 32" monitor and stepped into the wonderful world of variable refresh rate displays. This bad boy has it all--at least, for an LCD display. It's based on one of the new super-fast VA panels that have absolutely no issue with dark color transitions. It can paint beautiful 10-bit, 3840x2160 images at a blistering 165 Hz, something I didn't think the current version of DisplayPort could even handle until I plugged it in and, well, it just worked! Oh, and it has an absolutely bonkers (again, for an LCD) 4200:1 native contrast ratio that's made even better by an 1196-zone FALD backlight. I adore this thing.

The thing is, I'm not sure I'm using right, at least in 2D apps. In 3D, everything's great. Variable refresh kicks in automatically, and everything looks "I-can't-believe-this-isn't-CRT" smooth. However, in regular 2D apps, the refresh rate appears to be locked at the maximum 165Hz. And 95% of the time, that's OK because browser scrolling, window dragging, and UI animation all look ridiculously smooth at 165 Hz. However, when I watch 60p video on YouTube, I notice some very slight frame hitching, which I didn't get with my previous 120Hz (fixed refresh) display. And sure enough, when I drop the refresh rate of the Neo G7 down to 120Hz, 60p video looks completely smooth.

I always thought that VRR displays could sync up with 2D apps as well. Was I wrong? I have VRR enabled in Windows settings and G-sync enabled in the nVidia control panel. If 2D VRR simply isn't a thing yet, that's OK I guess. After all, I don't even notice the hitching in 60p video unless I'm actively looking for it. I guess I just expected absolute perfection. But hey, I can live with 95%!

Wonderful monitor! 2000nits peak? wow! A beauty! People don't understand until they sit in front of such a beast.

robertmo wrote on 2022-08-18, 12:01:

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2022-08-16, 02:12:

I finally bought a Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 32" monitor and stepped into the wonderful world of variable refresh rate displays. This bad boy has it all--at least, for an LCD display. It's based on one of the new super-fast VA panels that have absolutely no issue with dark color transitions. It can paint beautiful 10-bit, 3840x2160 images at a blistering 165 Hz, something I didn't think the current version of DisplayPort could even handle until I plugged it in and, well, it just worked! Oh, and it has an absolutely bonkers (again, for an LCD) 4200:1 native contrast ratio that's made even better by an 1196-zone FALD backlight. I adore this thing.

have you considered a 65" 8K TV? That would be rather incomparable picture quality.
It's like choosing 320x240 monitor vs 640x480 one.

Find an 8k TV that does 2000nits, hell find one that does more than 600nits. For HDR to work you really need at least 1000nits. I'm sure the monitor Steve has destroys every TV for specs.