Aaron44126

Looking at the motherboard render above, there is no indication that the GPU is off on a separate card. (Dell usually does these sorts of renders properly, with regard to how the system is actually put together.) In any case, if Dell did separate the GPU, I have no doubt that they'd use their proprietary DGFF "pseudo-standard" and that it would not be interchangeable with systems from other manufacturers (and likely not even interchangeable with other older Alienware/Precision systems that also use DGFF).

Locking the GPU clock speed to a certain value or range. The way I've always seen documented to do this is to use the nvidia-smi command with something like: nvidia-smi -i 0 -ac 877,1215 This would specify a specific memory and core clock speed respectively. However, this is not supported with GeForce GPUs, only pro GPUs, so it cannot be used with the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in the Precision 7X70 systems. ...I was playing around and discovered that a command like this actually works on the GeForce GPU. nvidia-smi -i 0 -lgc 1110,1110 With this command, you are setting the GPU clock speed only (not the memory clock speed) and you are asking the GPU to stick within the specified range. In this case, I have used the same value for the lower bound and upper bound so the GPU clock speed is fixed at 1110 MHz. You can reset things back to normal with: nvidia-smi -i 0 -rgc You can see the list of supported GPU core clock speeds with: nvidia-smi -i 0 --query-supported-clocks=gr --format=csv My understanding is that the GPU may still clock down below the requested range if there are power/thermal constraints that prevent it from sticking in the requested range. In my case, I'm interested in setting the GPU clock to a fixed value just to get consistent performance. I play with some odd applications (err, game console emulators) that are sensitive to timing and hiccup or stutter if the GPU does not realize that it needs to ramp up the clock speed frequency quickly enough. There is also a parameter -lmc and -rmc to lock and reset the memory clocks... I have not played with this one yet.

They shot it down and are recovering debris. U.S. downs suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast - https://www.npr.org/2023/02/04/1154527155/faa-halts-flights-chinese-spy-balloon

China has admitted to the balloon currently over the U.S. being theirs (though their claim is that it is not a "spy balloon", but rather a "civilian airship" with a meteorological purpose and way off course).

Twitter is going to revoke free access to the API and make people pay for it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23582615/twitter-removing-free-api-developer-apps-price-announcement https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/cash-strapped-twitter-to-start-charging-developers-for-api-access-next-week/ About a decade ago, I worked for a digital marketing company, and worked on a product that allowed clients to make promotional posts to their web site, an SMS list, Facebook, Twitter, and some other outlets simultaneously and from a centralized "dashboard", so I have some real first-hand experience with the Twitter API. I'm sure there are a number of businesses that offer a service like this. I also wrote a little scraper to turn a user's tweet stream into an RSS feed just so that I could consume it in my RSS reader rather than having to use the Twitter web site (that I stopped using after Feedly started supporting Twitter feeds directly). Being able to slap together a tool like that was definitely handy. Also as mentioned in the article, the Twitter API is the interface that bots use to function, plus third-party clients (...now banned...) and tools that just read tweets and whatever out of Twitter for research and analysis. Anyway, I wonder how many API users will really pony up for the paid access? And of course, Twitter has only given a one-week notice, and no indication of what the price will be.

Not a bad idea. I will note that the program supports command-line parameters so you can set yourself up a batch script shortcut to quickly set options like this. Run it with "/?" to see what the options are, or look at old documentation for DellFanCmd (the options are the same). However... You shouldn't try to use command line parameters to adjust the fan behavior while the GUI app is running, or the GUI app will likely end up having issues. Control via command line or control via GUI, not both.

Two "Yes" buttons. "No" button discretely hidden away at the bottom. Yes. Double yes. This is the way to do it.

Intel Arc A750 (supposedly in competition with GeForce RTX 3060) is getting a price cut down to $250 USD. https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/1/23580952/intel-arc-a750-price-cut-directx-9-performance-improvements

Explorer Patcher relies on old Windows 10 code that Microsoft hasn't actually removed yet and still exists in Windows 11. No telling if it will continue to work long-term. ...I do think that adding those shortcuts to the corner of the Windows 11 Start Menu has been around for a while. There are similar settings to add shortcuts to the Windows 10 Start Menu, they get pinned along the left edge (separate from the tiles and application list).

Touchpad firmware update. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=3XDH8 [Edit] Also, saw this notice on a Samsung 980 Pro issue. I know a few users have installed one of these drives. My drive came with the "problematic" 3B2QGXA7 firmware. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-980-pro-ssd-failures-firmware-update

Do you have the latest BIOS installed? My understanding is that undervolting support has been disabled in the latest Intel CPU microcode (permanently, unless someone finds a new workaround). I know at least some Lenovo system BIOSs have been "patched" already. More information —

Major Windows feature upgrades (released yearly) will reset this value. For things like this, I have a batch script that runs at startup to just make sure the configuration is how I like, should Microsoft decide to reset it. (Also handy to just apply your configuration to a new PC, having all of the steps in one place without having to remember everything.) You could do something like: REG ADD "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power" /v PlatformAoAcOverride /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f /reg:64

I'll point again to Start11. They've "reimplemented" the Start menus for Windows 7, 10, and 11 (you can pick which to use) and have additional features and options available in many cases. They've also done some work to add back missing taskbar options to Windows 11. It's a small cost but there is a free trial if you want to check it out. I've been using it with the "Windows 10 style" menu and I really like it, and it's nice to know that my tile layout won't "go away" after I eventually upgrade to Windows 11. Some features that they have added specific to the Windows 10 style are the ability to set custom individual tile images/icons, change individual tile colors, change the overall tile size, and to have multiple "pages" of tiles.

See - Basically to help add keywords that search engines can latch onto.

Eh. NVIDIA added tensor cores to their GPUs with Volta to help with AI acceleration in the data center, and then they were carried forward to all future architectures from NVIDIA. DLSS is done using the tensor cores, and I'd say that it is a natural use for those cores that would otherwise sit idle under a gaming workload. It's not like they are not also improving traditional rendering as well (each generation still has more CUDA cores packed in), and if you prefer more traditional/complete rendering instead of DLSS, you can of course turn it off and take the framerate hit. It's getting harder and harder to make chips smaller so I think that they days of performance doubling from one generation to the next (without "tricks") are done. That said, this isn't new with DLSS; 3D rendering has been full of "tricks" to speed things up by taking shortcuts to reduce the GPU for years. Things like TAA and VRS fall into the same bucket to me. My experience so far has actually been that TAA is a good deal worse than DLSS when it comes to adding artifacts, but I have not had a chance to try DLSS 3.

I think most Steam games support Steam's cloud saving... And in any case, PC Gaming Wiki is great for pointing you to exactly where the save files are for a particular game.

Yes, I did migrate to Windows 10 everywhere immediately at release (...looking back, I would not do the same thing again...) and right now all of my PCs are Windows 10 LTSC 2021. Have you used Steam's remote play feature to stream a game from one PC to another? I've heard that it works well but I have not tried it. I do know that you don't even have to use it with Steam games. You can register any application with Steam (on the "server" side), start it remotely to open a remote session, and then just alt+tab out (if it is fullscreen) and fire up a game from another store or just do whatever you want to do on your desktop.

Yeah. Not just graphics though. With "meh" combat and a "meh" story, or at least that's what I'm hearing, it just doesn't sound interesting at all.

It is Luminous Engine right? AFAIK, other than some tech demos, the only other full game using that engine is Final Fantasy XV... Which I did play through last summer. It has a lot of wonky behaviors and odd performance problems on the PC, I am not surprised if Forspoken is similar. I was a bit interested in Forspoken when I first heard about it a couple of years ago. But, it seems like they've gone and thrown a lot of time/money at this game, and they sure are giving it a big marketing blitz, it seems like they only managed to come up with something mediocre at best. Pass.

Yes. Dell is pretty lenient with the warranty when it comes to adding and removing components. The rule is basically that the warranty is intact as long as you didn't break anything with your modifications, and Dell has the option to request that you put the system back into its original configuration before performing service. (Dell even provides the screws and heatsinks that you need to install additional SSDs in the Precision 7000 systems, something that you do not always see from laptop makers.) .......I myself just used Macrium Reflect bootable media and cloned the drive while it was still in the system (before booting it for the first time). You most likely would have to switch the BIOS disk controller mode from "RAID" to "NVMe/AHCI" in order for Macrium Reflect to be able to see the drive, and then switch it back before booting Windows for the first time.

With DLSS 3, the GPU uses AI to generate (up to) 75% of the pixels in a frame, and then it generates 100% of the in-between frames. So, between two frames, only 12.5% of the pixels might be "rendered" and the rest are "guessed" by the AI engine. So, it's no surprise that some weird artifacting can happen (especially in high-motion high-detail scenarios). Don't get me wrong, it's pretty awesome that this is technically possible to achieve realtime and I'm sure the algorithms will improve to deal with situations where you see artifacting like this. I sort of envision that in a decade or so, "most" pixels in "most" games will be AI-generated rather than directly rendered and things look just fine. And yeah, NVIDIA would really love to push people to buy their latest super-high-cost GPUs... But if you don't care about the latest and greatest in graphical fidelity, you can still play (almost?) all of the latest games, without ray tracing, on a GeForce GTX 1080 (1080p with, depending on the title, "medium" or "high" settings but probably not "ultra" or whatever), and probably most even run on a GeForce GTX 980 (1080p low settings or 720p with medium/high). I've found that as I get older, I care less about chasing the best graphics and I'm good as long as I can find a configuration for a game that gets a consistent 60 FPS. I guess part of it is that I'm just used to what games used to be like, and I think lots of modern games look pretty great by comparison even at "medium" settings. I feel like we're hitting a point of diminishing returns, and a lot of GPU power is just given to "effects" which are in many cases actually hard to notice while you're actually playing. I've also sort of stopped trying to run games in 4K (on my 17" laptop), because I can't really tell the difference between 1440p and 4K at that screen size, and running at 1440p instead of 4K cuts the GPU load about in half (if DLSS is not in play). ...I do play a lot of more obscure / indie titles where DLSS is less likely to be supported.

Yeah, I don't know about modern standby issues, I have had it disabled since I got this laptop.

I generally keep the screen at 90% brightness and I have never experienced something like this. The display has been pleasantly free of any sort of flicker issues. I do not run with HDR mode enabled for the desktop. I find that it makes the colors appear pretty washed out for non-HDR applications (...which is basically everything). I do have something funny that happens with the screen. Occasionally, I open up the laptop and it decides that it doesn't want to put the brightness above about 60%. In this case the brightness-up button (Fn+F7) actually makes the brightness indicator/slider thing and the screen brightness level to go down, like the system knows there is an issue with the display and wants to lower the brightness. I wonder if the display is overheating or something? It seems sort of like how my phone behaves if I run a high load and heat it up... it will eventually lower the screen brightness. If I repeatedly press Fn+F7, it will end up putting the brightness down to about 10%, but I can still move it higher by dragging the slider with the mouse (still won't go higher than about 60% — the slider will, but the actual brightness tops out well before the slider reaches the top). Very odd. When this happens, the workaround is to just wait a few minutes, shut and open the lid again (forces the display to power cycle), and then it will be working fine. It's an infrequent occurrence (maybe once every two or three weeks) but it has happened both before and after I had the display panel in this system replaced. Actually, I guess it hasn't happened since I installed the 1.8.0 BIOS (but now that I say that I'm sure I will see this issue recur tomorrow).

Multiple lawsuits are now trying to recover money from Twitter. They've apparently not paid $7 million in rent for the main California HQ since the takeover, plus the UK office mentioned above (and most/all other offices), and also there was that lawsuit that resulted in Musk being basically obligated to buy Twitter... those lawyers have not been paid either. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/twitters-landlord-sues-for-millions-in-unpaid-rent-at-firms-us-headquarters/ It seems like bankruptcy is inevitable, but I'm sure at some point Musk will be trying to "renegotiate" the conditions of various obligations that Twitter has. Elon Musk's own comments continue to be fun reading. "My follower count is really high, so obviously I am very popular and doing everything right." https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571793/elon-musk-twitter-tesla-brand-image-damage-earnings "It's easy to raise money" (as Twitter continues to have trouble covering expenses). https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571568/elon-musk-twitter-loan-financing I feel like the main defense strategy at the trial is just to muddy things up for the jurors so much that they don't (all) come to the conclusion that he owes people money. I recently set up a Mastodon account to check that out. I found a few of my (old) Twitter followees on there, but I don't feel like enough people have moved over that I have a really interesting feed to look at.

I could be getting things mixed up (mostly a Dell guy here). I have also heard about the ThinkPad GPU whitelists. I know that HP systems in the past have had whitelists for the Wi-Fi card but maybe I jumped the gun a bit on suggesting that they also have GPU whitelists.