saturnotaku

With discounts from Stack Social, you can buy several lifetime licenses for AdGuard for less than what one month of YT Premium costs. I know a lot of folks don't like running extra software on their machines, but it's the most effective way to skirt the Google panopticon.

Stuff from my most recent shopping adventures: Gigabyte RTX 4070 Super: Got this open-box from Best Buy for less than what a vanilla 4070 would have cost. Box was beat up, but the card was in perfect condition. Fans run super quiet with no perceptible coil whine. Gives slightly better performance than my RTX 3080 while having 2 GB more VRAM and consuming 100W less power. MSI G274QPF 1440p/180 Hz monitor: Bought at Costco to replace a no-name Chinese monitor with similar specs that started failing after just a couple months. Said Chinese company's support wasn't particularly helpful, and they have no US presence to return for RMA so I'm going to take the financial loss on the chin. So far the MSI is working well. I like that it doesn't have any RGB nonsense and there's a Type-C input, though oddly, no built-in USB hub so you can't use it as a one-cable solution for a laptop. 2011 17-inch MacBook Pro: Purchased from Vintage Computer Fest Midwest last weekend. I had its 15-inch counterpart back in the day, and while I consider it the best computer I've ever owned, I always wanted the 17. Aside from some dirt and a few nicks, the chassis is in surprisingly good condition, at least relative to similar ones I've seen for sale on fleBay. The battery even holds a charge, though I still plan to replace it. The seller "modded" it to run Big Sur, but I'm going to remove it in favor of a more era-appropriate OS that can still run 32-bit applications and games. Overall, not a bad buy for $75.

Bump

There apparently exists an MXM version of the RTX 4060. Fast forward to about the 10:45 mark of this video to see it:

Price: SOLD

About six months ago, Comcast came out and replaced some of the old wiring that was running from the outside box to our house. Unfortunately, they didn't bury the cable underground far enough so the crew who was aerating our lawn yesterday sliced the main cable. As such, we're without TV or Internet access so I'll be spending until at least tomorrow afternoon hot-spotting through my phone.

WTF? To do the same on our two Hondas, all you have to do is pull the glovebox past its normal stopping point, which is easily done by pinching the sides to release the tabs; unclip the air filter retention plate, again easy as it's just two pinch clips; remove and replace the filter; reverse the previous steps and Bob's your uncle. When I had my 2020 GMC Terrain, replacing the engine and cabin air filters was also a pain. The conspiracy theorist in me says this is being done intentionally by General Motors because they want you to pay inflated dealer prices for routine maintenance items.

Should the 7600X3D come out, I don't expect that will happen any time soon unless it's a limited release to get rid of "old" silicon like the 5600X3D was.

End of the Road: An AnandTech Farewell Anandtech was a vital part of my learning about and becoming an enthusiast of PC hardware. I remember being in college during their infancy, marveling and the quality and thoroughness of their reviews. RIP, you will be missed.

The same update is also available for systems running 22H2. Microsoft Update Catalog

The Zen 5 rabbit hole gets deeper, with Windows 11 24H2 offering some pretty big performance uplifts in certain games. Though these improvements apply to Zen 4 and apparently Zen 3 as well.

Lots of shady marketing around these CPUs. I'll be holding on to my 5600X3D a while longer unless the rumored 7600X3D comes to pass at a reasonable price.

Despite a dedicated benchmark having been available for a week and the game releasing today as the biggest single-player title in Steam's history, AMD still has not released an optimized driver for Black Myth Wukong.

So upon a clean installation of the 7900 XT, my desktop hardlocked twice. After forced restarts, the GPU driver disappears from Windows, so back to Amazon it goes. Guess I'll be sticking with the RTX 3080 until Blackwell comes along. If it ends up like I expect and not a significant generational leap, I'll pick up a discounted RTX 4080 Super or something. I'm also kind of miffed that Black Myth Wukong goes live tomorrow, and AMD has yet to release an optimized driver for it despite the benchmark being available for a week now. Speaking of the benchmark, that's a really nice thing I wish more developers would do, especially for a title that's going to be as demanding as this one.