PCPer Mailbag #23 - Holiday Edition?

[@larrywhite9552]

Thanks Ryan, Merry Christmas to the Pcper crew

[@ImTheSlyDevil]

Happy holidays guys.

[@JohnSTF72]

Is 10 cents a gig for SSDs something that we'll finally see in 2018, or it's a distant dream for 2020 and beyond? Merry Christmas and a happy and productive 2018 to you and the rest of the PC Per Team!

[@AntonioCunningham]

I'm so glad y'all do these. I need a fix for my ignorance when it comes to the PC. These videos are a good start.

[@peterjansen4826]

Ryan, also a question for the next time. Or maybe for Josh if this is more his cup of tea? We know that the architecture won't get any change unless it is an easy tweak. How exactly could AMD make their refresh of Ryzen faster? 1. Changing the W/L (width/length) ratio of the transistors? What would the trade-off be? A higher power draw? 2. Changing some timings? If so, how? 3. Changing the clock frequency of the Infinity Fabric. Why exactly is it coupled to the clock frequency of the RAM at all? My theory was that it might be to prevent hazards in the pipeline. Your thoughts on this? 4. Any other way? Like density, interconnects and routing. 5. The smaller node. Should a X% smaller surface lead to almost X% higher clock frequency with the same power if the transistors keep the same shape and dimensions? I guess it should be clear that I don't ask to speculate, it is more a theoretical question. I don't mind a longer and more complicated answer. ;-) Also, could you spent next podcast on the news on GF 7 nm from IEDM? fusedotwikichipdotorg has written a good article on it. I don't put the link because KZbin its spamfilter might automatically remove the post and you guys wouldn't even read it. The facts on GF 7 nm. are rather fascinating, the summary is that it should allow AMD to get on a leveled playing field with Intel, nodewise. Even though there are some differences in strengths and weaknesses, one weakness being caused by GF having to be more flexible with the interconnects (customers, the ones who buy directly from GF). AMD would profit from large CPU's with a lot of cache.

[@Lardzor]

I think that the biggest bandwidth hogs on the z370 chipset would be the M.2 gen3x4, the and the SATA ports. The newest M.2 drives would come pretty close to saturating the DMI 3.0 bus all by itself. Transferring files from the M.2 to say, a 4 SSD RAID 0 array would definitely over-saturate the DMI 3.0 bus.

[@ShovaSG1]

You can buy the Intel 9260 on ebay for like $30. Antennas are extra. You can also get it with a PCIe adapter and antennas, etc.

[@davepctech1559]

@Ken You can use the "Disable storybook videos" mod for Witcher 3 to skip the intros, it will save you some time when benchmarking / firing up the game.

[@Hostilenemy]

Regarding power supplies, they are rated for how much wattage they can deliver to your components, not how much they draw from the wall. If you have a 500W power supply with an efficiency rating of 80%, it should be able to safely draw 625W from the wall under full load. On the other hand, if a similar power supply is 90% efficient, it should draw a maximum of 555 from the wall under full load.

[@cakeisamadeupdrug6134]

I presume you're talking RMS power too, which will vary from region to region due to voltage/current differences. The efficiency curves themselves vary depending on region, with higher voltage regions being more efficient than lower voltage regions.

[@PaulRKeeble]

It should also be noted that larger caches have higher latency. This is all due to the cost of associativity or other cache schemes requiring more bits when the cache is larger. This is why you see the different levels of cache (L1, L2, L3) at different sizes and not one big cache, because the larger caches have more latency (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache#Associativity)

[@cakeisamadeupdrug6134]

Now that you have one, will you be using the Titan V for CPU testing in future as your strongest gaming GPU to avoid GPU bottlenecks or will you stick with the highest mainstream Pascal?

[@bobhumplick4213]

lmao at the thumbnail. havent even watched the vid yet (ill get back to it) just had to come comment lol

[@Melinon]

Having more cash is always better!

[@Raivo_K]

Never would have guessed :o

[@GregorMima]

Hey thanks Ryan, Q for CES: HDR. whats the status? PC? compatible monitors, cards etc? VESA HDR etc ...

[@zkid1582]

I normally stream movies from my laptop through wifi to my main pc which is connected to my avr and tv. Sometimes however the wifi card in the laptop saturate which results in slow streaming . CAN you recommend a good wifi card for my laptop which is a dell n7110 to overcome this problem

[@S9uareHead]

Another problem with large caches is that they're difficult to keep fast if they're too large. That's why, for example, Intel uses 256kB of L2 cache per core while AMD uses 512kB. Intel has calculated that the lower latency is more important than larger size would be.

[@FrancisBurns]

Have you seen the cache benchmarks for ryzen?

[@Xanavi]

Question : Do you know of any 4K monitors or TV's that support a 1:4 pixel mapping mode for sharp 1080p gaming?

[@peterjansen4826]

Ryan, just a thought. Wouldn't it be smarter to upgrade to a B350 motherboard (or maybe the X370 Asus Prime Pro) and the successor of Ryzen 1600 (February) instead of upgrading from a i5 6100 to a better Skylake CPU? As far as I understand that platform is limited to 4-core CPU's, that makes it a bit of a dead end within a few years for high end gaming. Not to mention that virtual machines run a lot better with 6 cores (and a lot of RAM but that is a different matter). Then you have to buy a new CPU and motherboard again. With a 2600 and B350/X370 he would probably be fine for the next 5 years. Sure, the maximum and average FPS might be a bit lower, especially at 1080p, but it will handle 1440p- and 4k-gaming fine and you won't get any microstutter while still having a high FPS, 100 FPS is perfectly possible if the graphics card is good enough for the higher resolutions. By far the most people won't notice any difference between 100 FPS and higher, no matter how much higher. Of course when it comes to hardware different people have different opinions and none of us can predict the future but it seems to me that supporting 6 cores will become the standard within a few years, most certainly after the PS5 comes out (odds are that it will get 6 cores of some Ryzen CPU too). I might see it wrong, I just share my view on it.

[@TB-zm3zc]

Why wait? Coffee Lake checks all the boxes and is out right now.

[@peterjansen4826]

Can you put a Coffee Lake CPU on that motherboard which he has got? Intel doesn't support it. Maybe there is a hack but it is risky, it wouldn't be the first time that Intel disables such a hack with a microcode-update. As a matter of fact, they did that for Skylake before when motherboard manufacturers gave an option to overclock locked Skylake CPUs and Intel didn't like it. Why wait? Because it is only 2 more months, around 8 weeks or 56 days. The refresh of Ryzen should get at least a 400 MHz higher clock frequency at the same power level. That is better than what the 8400 can deliver and it would get close to the 8700k where you trade a bit of clock frequency for hyperthreading and a much lower price. However, more important might be that it is guaranteed that you can also put any Zen3 CPU in the same motherboard, Intel won't offer us that possibility (whatever CPU of them comes out in 2020). Also I boycott Intel because of its fraud, bribes and blackmaing in the last few decades. They made Compaq go bankrupt by not selling server-CPUs because Compaq also sold systems with AMD-CPUs. When Intel was caught for infringing a patent and got sued for it (which Intel lost!) Intel took revenge by buying a company (semiconductor) which that company depended upon. Intel got a €1 billion fine from the European Union for bribing shops (including the European Microcenter (though a lot more crappy)) and system integrators (HP, Dell...), Intel still hasn't paid that fine. Also in the USA and in Asia Intel got in trouble with the authorities for their bribing program. You do what you want, I don't support this kind of 'business', because of that I boycott Intel as long as AMD offers something which is (almost) as good or better and as long as AMD doesn't pull this kind of crap. Look, I know that business can be cutthroat but we, the regular consumers, have got less capable CPUs for a higher price because of these shenanigans. In 2004 AMD had the better CPUs for a lower price, they only lost that race because of Intel its bribing program and blackmailing. Think about what would have happened if AMD would have been competitve from 2006-2016. Think about what would have happened if AMD would have billions of $ extra if not more (Intel paid billions of $ to Dell alone!) to spend on R&D in that time. That makes it personal for me because I got and get less value for more money because of what Intel did. Note that this has nothing to do with my first reaction here, I do believe that from a consumer point of view the 1600 refresh and a B350/X370 motherboard is a better choice than upgrading to a quadcore CPU on a platform which doesn't support any CPU with more than 4 cores at the end of 2017. I just point out in this reaction that we might want to make sure that there remains some healthy competition, otherwise what happened from 2006-2016 for the CPUs and what happened for the 1070 and 1080 in the first year after launch is nothing compared to what will happen, monopolists increase the prices as much as they can while investing as little as possible, that is really bad for us tech enthusiasts.

[@Henk14789]

Is that monitor the RGB edition or something? What are you measuring there?

[@toastymallow-gaming8382]

Standard SPM testing. measuring seizures per minute.

[@Raivo_K]

FCAT - Frame Capture Analysis Tool by Nvidia.

[@TB-zm3zc]

It looks like Ken is benchmarking the Strix Vega 64, but there's no fire extinguisher handy soooooooo one can't be entirely sure

[@disk0__]

15:20 Here you can see Ken getting tired of Ryans shit

[@Ometecuhtli]

The guy who asked about people still buying 1440p monitors has been esnared by the claws of consummerism and forgotten all about practicality. May his pragmatic soul rest in peace.

[@disk0__]

Get a high refresh rate monitor, it can be 1080 or 1440p, whatever, just upgrade to a high refresh rate monitor

[@AntonioCunningham]

Question. What causes Laptop CPUs to die? I bought my laptop the same year as my First gen i7 PC. The i7 920 still runs, but the Laptop won't stay on longer than 3 minutes. I changed the thermals paste multiple times. Cleaned the cooler multiple times as well. I fear buying another laptop because of its short lifespan. (It only lasted four years)

[@Kylethejobber]

Hello Ryan why is AMD GPUs better at mining then nvidia GPUS Thanks

[@alexschalexsch]

habe die RX 580

[@jasminpichler3278]

Recognition trap stop consumer club Olympic shake traffic gaze repair.