Recent content by jtr1962

If MediaTk/Nvidia can come out with an APU which also has some fast, dedicated VRAM that would be a winning combo. A big bottleneck for iGPUs is the fact they use system RAM, not dedicated, much faster VRAM. Even a relatively small amount (i.e. a few hundred MB) of VRAM in the same package as...

Just wondering if it would be remotely possible to install Win 7 on a modern system with, say, a Ryzen 8000G?

Yes, noise and the cost of electricity. Plus in summers it's that much more heat the A/C needs to deal with. With my intermittent but all day long use patterns, my PC is on 24/7. The monitors shut off after 10 minutes. At ~45W while idling, that's OK. It comes to only ~30 kW-hr/month. Something...

Well, that explains a lot. Honestly, when I first tried running Open Rails on my laptop, I crossed my fingers that the performance would at least match that on my desktop. When I saw it was probably 2x better, I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't know Intel closed the gap with AMD this much...

Same here. I'm going by how often you would actually need that extra performance. Take my use case. About the only thing I currently do which taxes my iGPU is play Open Rails. Even then, 90% of the time I'm getting 40 to 60+ FPS, with 30s most of the rest of the time. Maybe a few percent of the...

Isn't quite a bit of power used just sending data to and from a discrete GPU? When everything is on one chip data transfer is a lot more efficient. It's easily possible that a 65 to 105 W APU can come close to the performance of a 65W CPU and ~100W graphics card as a result. Even if the discrete...

I'm thinking the reason for these monster graphics cards might have to do with the fact iGPUs have gotten good enough for most people to not need a graphics card. They essentially fill the niche which used to be taken up by lower end graphics cards. I guess the reasoning goes, why make a $50 or...

The 20th century model worked fine. The problem is businesses think their profit margins should be a lot higher now. It's the difference between making a reasonable profit providing a good or service, versus an obscene profit. It's also the result of defacto monopolies like Microsoft. In theory...

Sounds like a much better idea than every home having a furnace and hot water heater. Are there any heat exchangers to recover some heat from wastewater? In theory if you could recover most of the heat once you "prime" with some hot water to get things started you would need to add very little...

I looked into that first for the kitchen sink. They have ludicrous power requirements, starting at well over 5 kilowatts. That doesn't even get you a great flow rate. If your incoming water is 40°F (typical in NYC winters) and your outgoing is 110°F, 5 kW only gives you ~0.5 gpm, maybe twice...

He repairs PCs for a living, so that at least gives him some credibility. Truth is people are too complacent. We should have nipped this whole thing in the bud years ago. It's not just happening with PCs, either. Too many things are becoming rentals instead of buy once and use forever.

Yeah, I'm getting the impression we're fast approaching a time where a PC will need to be on its own circuit breaker, much like a larger air conditioner.

Speaking of that I was in MicroCenter the other day and saw what I thought was a heat exchanger for a small air conditioner inside one of their display computers. I think it was an RX7900 video card. So much for more efficient processors. Unless I needed a space heater, I'd never run one of...

Honestly, I smell a big class-action lawsuit against MS for stuff like this. You shouldn't have to jump through all their hoops just to access your own data. I get security to some extent but you should be able to disable it. I'm the only one who will ever access my PCs. Nobody lives with me...