PCPer Mailbag #24 - 12/29/2017

[@GregorMima]

Thanks for the HDR answer Ryan! And obv for the rest of your podcast :) cheers!

[@SyedWajihHassan]

Thank you for the response. And thankful for the service

[@Bunjamin27]

Thumbs up for the set

[@TransHerring]

Hi Ryan. I love the show and really like the addition of the Mailbag to the show. I have a question for the whole crew, what is a question that you haven't been asked that you expected to be asked?

[@Jagerbomber]

Why are there bears?

[@TransHerring]

Josh Russell LOL lol lol.

[@gr33nbits93]

Awesome stuff like always.

[@DJ_NOOB]

Ryan- I agree with your comments about informal setting. I like it!

[@JohnSTF72]

Do we expect to see GPUs starting to feature GDDR6 memory or HBM2 will play a bigger role for graphic cards appearing in 2018 and beyond? Have a happy, healthy and productive 2018!

[@johnbell4328]

The two products I hope to see at CES are both from Asus: the release of the hoped for Z370 Maximus X Extreme mobo and (finally) the PG27UQ monitor.

[@Nick_Kearney]

Question for the post CES Mailbag: I really want to know what's going on with 4K UHD 144hz G-sync displays. We saw them at CES 2017 and they became vaporware. Anything with these or similar displays that you learnt at CES 2018 you can share???

[@richardbeirne827]

Please check out the Dell setup at CES. I'm hoping for a new OLED monitor!

[@Kylethejobber]

Hi Ryan could you explain what async compute is

[@BMFandu]

happy new year!

[@WhiteZerox]

When are we going to get a tour of the new office?

[@RedmoonIndustries]

I'm going to CES for the first time this year, where can I come say Hi to you guys, and will Josh be there?

[@larrywhite9552]

Thanks Ryan

[@dimitarttt]

I have a 1080ti paired with 4770k @ 4.0G (its a terrible at OC) and I game at 1440p at 144 Hz. I play mostly new titles and I was wondering if I'll see a significant fps gains if I upgrade my cpu to something like a 8700k?

[@VeritronX]

That really depends on who you ask..you have very similar gaming performance to an overclocked ryzen cpu.. some say they are terrible, others say it's fine. There will be gains from upgrading, but the upgrade would cost you the same or more than the 1080ti.. My recommendation would be grab the i5 8600K instead, or just stick with what you have. I have a 1080ti myself and a 4Ghz ryzen 8 core, but I'm moving the 1080ti to a dedicated gaming pc with a 5.2Ghz binned delidded 8600K and keeping the ryzen as the workhorse pc.

[@Jagerbomber]

Who even _watches_ the mailbag videos rather than just listening? I'm glad they use a different spot. Though, admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan of whatever changed their backround colors from what it was at the old place. (And their rarely used second camera really hates the colors as well.)

[@danielworthey]

Is it safe to buy a 1070ti after ces, if nvidia doesnt release a new gpu? Im not dying for a new gpu ...i just want more, so i can afford to wait if it means ill get more bang for the buck.

[@Raivo_K]

What technology/product category do you think has been lacking meaningful progress lately?. In my opinion: USB thumbdrives, SATA SSD's and Monitors.

[@2drealms196]

DDR3 to DDR4, and DDR4 to DDR5. The majority of current gen games don't use lots of cpu memory bandwidth: Games are designed around consoles hardware limitations. The reason being consoles are the lowest common denominator and the biggest market. These consoles have APUs with unified memory that share memory between the CPU and the GPU. This sharing of memory has benefits but also a disadvantage as it introduces something called 'memory contention' between the cpu and gpu that degrades available memory bandwidth as the two compete for bandwidth.. To counter this game devs have been designing games that limit the amount of bandwidth the cpu uses from that shared main memory. So devs limit the cpus access as much as possible in order to free up as much for the GPU so you can have those pretty graphics and high res textures. - Xbox One leaked dev docs specifically recommend limiting the cpu's utilization of memory bandwidth to limit memory contention. - PS4 dev docs similarly state that cpu bandwidth usage disproportiantly degrades gpu memory bandwidth, and show a graph that if the cpu uses just 5GB/s, the gpu loses 35GB/s instead of just losing 5GB/s. - Naughty Dog devs gave a presentation available on youtube to a college/university on programming and rammed down how critically important it was on PS4 to limit cpu code size so it stays within the cpu's L2 cache and you do everything to minimize cpus need to access mainmemory for cpu operations. For this reason the majority of current generation games use little cpu memory bandwidth.

[@Najvalsa]

Do you think Nvidia's going to replace the tensor cores with CUDA cores for little/mainstream Volta, or is it more likely for them to just cut out the tensor cores?

[@daves.8869]

As long as the host is presentable (no stained wifebeaters or naked!) than the information provided far outweighs whatever could be happening in the background. However (!) sometimes it's distracting trying to 'eavesdrop' on whatever is being benchmarked in the background to get a headsup on what could be still under NDA. But that's me being a nosey bastard rather than anything PCPER is doing wrong.

[@CaptainShiny5000]

LOL! Holy shit! The brand name of your mic stand would not fly in germany, I can tell you that for a fact!

[@jimtanous2151]

It's just the company founder's name: heilsound.com/heil-amateur-radio/about-us/

[@CaptainShiny5000]

I guess the guy can't help his name. Still super weird if you're german.

[@Jagerbomber]

Bitcoin dropped because people got spooked by the announcement of Coinbase accepting trading of Bitcoin Cash and just after the recent crazy upspike of Bitcoin value.

[@pelleg59]

I like the view

[@Romanamon]

Bit disturbing that Ryan has the same facial expression in the video thumbnail as Tony Blair's Christmas card photo. Yikes!

[@toastymallow-gaming8382]

First? Maybe? Idk Either way keep up the good work :D

[@DoctorWho14615]

AMD's bullshit train led me to the green team.They can't even produce Vega, screw Navi.