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saturnotaku

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Everything posted by saturnotaku

  1. saturnotaku
    The MBA 15 was released less than 6 months ago, and I get the impression that it's been an out-of-the-park home run for Apple among both consumers and businesses. It wouldn't make a ton of sense for them to refresh it so soon.
  2. saturnotaku
    The memory thing with the M3 is weird indeed. The prevailing theory is that it has something to do with Apple using three memory chips on those models. You probably also noticed that bandwidth has been reduced to 150 GB/s versus the M2's 200. That's probably another reason why in the presentation they seemed loathe to make a lot of comparisons to the most recent silicon with more than a couple mentions about M1 and Intel. I expect Apple to continue talking about the benefits of moving to M3 over Intel if/when the rest of the product stack gets upgraded as the big-wigs are likely tired of having resources dedicated to x86 compatibility on the software front. It may also be possible that the Air, Mini, Studio, and Pro skip M3 in favor of M4 next year. The last Intel Macs will turn five next year so I wouldn't be surprised to see OS 15 be the final one to support that "legacy" hardware. As far as RT support, who knows what may be possible, but it would be pretty amusing if we could see, say RTX 3050 mobile-level performance from Apple Silicon running through multiple translation layers.
  3. saturnotaku
    With M3 and the announcement of hardware RT and dynamic caching (which as I'm understanding it is basically a hardware scheduler), it looks like Mac gaming could get another shot in the arm, no pun intended. Not long before the keynote, I had purchased an M1 MacBook Air for $750, but I'm going to return it and go all in on a 14-inch M3 Pro. I was originally going to go for the base 11 CPU/14 GPU/512 GB version, but since I want to play around with the GPT and VMs, I'm getting the 12 CPU/18 GPU/1 TB model for the extra graphics and storage headroom. Best Buy is giving TotalTech members $100 off the top, and since any Apple product you buy gets AppleCare+ at no additional charge, the $179 membership fee more or less pays for itself with this one purchase, at least for the first year.
  4. saturnotaku
    You could start your listing at that price but be prepared to accept a lower offer if you want a quick sale.
  5. saturnotaku
    Much obliged.
  6. saturnotaku
    Wasn't sure if I should make a new thread on this, but I'm hoping some folks here can help me potentially corroborate or disprove a conspiracy theory. I've been installing NVIDIA drivers with NVCleanstall, removing telemetry and only putting on the basics (control panel, USB-C, HDMI audio). I did this with the most recent set (545.84) on my 4080-equipped Legion Pro 7i. I reinstalled Quake 2 RTX and fired it up. At 1080p and the default in-game settings (medium RT), I was seeing around 100-110 fps. That was OK but seemed kind of low so I went to the YouTubes and found a video of someone testing the game on the same GPU with the same power limit, albeit on a different laptop. In his video, at the same settings, he was getting around 150 fps. After trying various settings, I then DDU wiped the drivers and then reinstalled them from the .exe without NVCleanstall, and lo and behold, my laptop was seeing the same performance as in the video. I don't have the time right now to try again with different games, but if any of the enterprising users here can double check that I'm not going completely insane, this might be worth looking into.
  7. saturnotaku
    Come CES, I expect we'll see 14th-gen CPUs + RTX 4000 Super GPUs in gaming laptops. My question is whether or not the potential 4070 Super will still have 8 GB of VRAM. I say no that it will come with 10 GB so NVIDIA can say they've listened to people's concerns while maintaining that separation between it and the 4080.
  8. saturnotaku
    When it comes to power consumption, Raptor Lake refresh is Rocket Lake on steroids.
  9. saturnotaku
    Librewolf looks interesting, though Edge + AdGuard has worked really well for me for years now.
  10. saturnotaku
    The screen is nice, but that ZOMG G4M3R keyboard deck is still rather hideous. I don't even like the logo that's on the deck of the Omen 16 I'm using right now.
  11. saturnotaku
    I wanted to add an "End" key to my Keychron Q1. Since the board is Via-compatible, I figured it would be easy to just load up the website, program the macro, and be on my way. Of course, it wouldn't be so easy. I had the board in Windows mode because obviously that was the operating system I was using. Via recognized the board, but I couldn't program anything into it. It turns out I had to switch it to Mac mode, and from there it worked just fine. I simply had to reprogram all the other keys to match what I was using before. Kind of a pain, but it all worked out in the end.
  12. saturnotaku
    I think all it will take is one major publisher to commit to a couple reasonably high-profile releases on macOS then we'll see the flood gates open. Ubisoft would be a good contender, though since they probably lost their shirts betting on Stadia, they're probably a bit more gunshy to commit any serious resources to Apple. This would never happen, but Apple should purchase a few studios to release some in-house games. Could you imagine them acquiring 343 Studios and putting Halo back on the Mac (I know Halo is Microsoft's property, but I think they could work something out).
  13. saturnotaku
    Any interest in a fully equipped Legion Pro 7i with RTX 4080 instead?
  14. saturnotaku
    I somehow lost the dongle to one of my HyperX headsets so I picked up a Razer Barracuda V2. The company's claim of 50 hours of battery life seems pretty spot-on, and it doesn't require Synapse to fully function. Pretty good. I've still been thinking about picking up a MacBook Air for casual use, but instead I went with a Lenovo Tab M9. Including coupon code, Rakuten cash back, and rewards points I've accumulated over the years, the total out-of-pocket cost will be less than $70. I'll be adding a keyboard case, which is around $30-35 from Amazon. This setup will be super portable and should do everything I would have otherwise needed from the Mac for around 1/8 of the spend.
  15. saturnotaku
    Just FYI, the ray reconstruction feature is only available when the path tracing option (RT overdrive) is enabled so don't expect performance to be all that great on anything short of an RTX 4080 or 4090.
  16. saturnotaku
    Dang. 😬
  17. saturnotaku
    With a 4090-equipped Pro 7i available for as low as $2600 recently, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to consider the 9i. Even if the latter were to drop to $3300-$3500, it still wouldn't be worth it.
  18. saturnotaku
    I tried Lies of P on Game Pass. The game looked great and ran beautifully on my 4080-equipped Pro 7i at 4K, max settings with DLSS on quality. However, Soulsbornelike games just aren't for me. I enjoy watching people who are good at them play, but I just can't get into the genre myself. Not sure what I'll play next. Maybe Callisto Protocol on my Series S since I got it cheap with a bunch of Microsoft store credit.
  19. saturnotaku
    There is a cheaper version of the ifixit kit that will have all the screwdrivers and pry tools you need: iFixit Essential Electronics & Computer Repair Tool Kit | Best Buy Canada
  20. saturnotaku
    I'd consider one of these for a small home server, but unfortunately that Cooler Master case isn't particularly good.
  21. saturnotaku
    So after much deliberation, I've ultimately decided to keep my Legion Pro 7i and sell the desktop. One thing that really helped in this decision was getting a new backpack as my MSI one finally gave up the ghost after nearly 15 years. The new one has a lot more padding that somehow makes the Legion feel not as heavy when I carry it. I'm also going to use the 170W power brick that came with my kid's IdeaPad Gaming 3 as my travel adapter. While the lower-wattage adapter locks out performance mode, I never use it anyway when I want to play games on the road. Since the IPG3 only has an RTX 3050, I figured it was safe to use my 135W 20V/6.75A Lenovo GaN charger there.
  22. saturnotaku
    Finally found a workaround for an issue that's been bugging me for long time. When typing in Outlook and Word on a display connected to an NVIDIA GPU, there would be frequent "corruption" for lack of a better word. Characters that you type would appear missing, line breaks wouldn't show when they should, and just a bunch of random badness. The workaround is to use a program called ParkControl and disable CPU core parking. In researching others who are experiencing the same, it looks like Microsoft is blaming NVIDIA and vice versa so I don't expect it will be resolved without the workaround any time soon. Besides, I've not noticed any strange behaviors or unwanted thermal changes with the program running so whatever. It's strange that it's specific to NVIDIA. It doesn't exist when using my Legion's internal screen with Optimus on nor on my wife's laptop that has an AMD APU.
  23. saturnotaku
    The Legion 9i is now available for pre-order. $3799 for a 4080, 32 GB of RAM, and 1 TB SSD. The RTX 4090 is a $520 upgrade. According to one article I read, the laptop will come with both the standard 330W GaN charger as well as the 140W USB-C one so that's kind of nice, I guess. Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8 (16″ Intel) | AI-enhanced gaming & software engineering powerhouse | Lenovo US
  24. saturnotaku
    After the TUF A16 debacle, I went back to the Lenovo well. Started with a base model Legion Slim 5 with Ryzen 5 7640HS and RTX 4050. Sent it back after the fans would turn off and on with the laptop at idle for no reason. Jarrod had the same thing happen with his Ryzen 7-powered Slim 5 so I'm guessing it's probably a firmware issue. Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I swapped it for basically the same laptop but with an i5 13500H CPU instead. This one is much better in terms of fan acoustics and behavior. One of the Type-C video outputs is connected to the iGPU so I can use it at my office without fear of offending co-workers with fan noise; it's not the port that does USB-PD, but I can live with it. If things continue to go smoothly, I'll likely be putting my Pro 7i up for sale.
  25. saturnotaku
    This is a very even-handed review. I'll certainly try it on GamePass, but no way in heck I'll be spending actual money.
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