Let's talk about computers

I’ve got a Commodore VIC-20. Games are kind of pixely and colors are rudimentary with sounds being sort of Atari 2600’esq. I do have trouble finding some of the modern titles ported to it, but other than that it is OK I guess.

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I never bothered to look at what the graphics situation on this newer HP Omen I am running the desktop system on. I knew they were pretty darned good. Turns out this has a GeForce RTX-3060 laptop GPU in it. I reckon that explains it. For what I am doing with this system, this is all I realistically need. This has been a really good laptop overall.

I’m interested in the 50 series just for what it will do to drive prices down on all the others. I’m sticking with the most power efficient setup due to thermals. I had a 3080 water cooled EVGA and it was like having a hair dryer on low blowing in graphics mode and temps in an upstairs office skyrocketed. Now I use an undervolted AMD 6700 drawing 143 watts max and 5800x CPU. Runs Destiny 2 74-90 FPS in 3440x1440 and really happy. If the new generation drops prices down the line I might upgrade a few steps. I heard people who just paid full retail for the 4090 are going to feel ripped off with the performance differences.
I’ll still never go back to Nvidia after the way they treated gamers during the bitcoin years. They had no qualms about playing favorites and shipping most of their cards to miners. If the 50’s make the next step up the AMD food chain drop, will go for it.

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Nvidia doesn’t really lower prices much
from the sound of it AMD is going for another 480/580 generation (bang for buck kings) to get their market share up

Yeah, which is unfortunate for that CPU was one of the best decision that I have ever made buying for I am not like the others here who have access to more reasonable prices to PC parts therefore they don’t mind upgrading to AM5. This is why I am one of the frugal PC users here who wouldn’t mind remaining on the platform for years to come. AM4 is one of the best ever and I am hoping for AM5 as well, for there will be a time that I am going to get to that point while the others are now at AM6 :rofl:

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last or couple gens ago for a big discount is a valid strat!

It’s always gonna be the valid strategy nowadays, and if I have heard correctly the latest CPUs from both sides are not much of an improvement overall, thus there are some people who still buy the 7800X3D instead of the latest one which is the 9800X3D.

Plus the latest Intel CPU, according to Steve is an another waste of sand and I cannot even remember the damn name, 285K or something? Yeah it’s a waste of sand.

You know what I wouldn’t mind improving? Intel ARC and AMD Radeon GPUs, now those would be a game changer.

The 9800X3D isn’t out yet. Only the non-X3D chips are for Zen5, and you are correct that they really aren’t an improvement over their Zen4 counterparts for gaming. They have some uplift in some workstation tasks, and are a little more friendly to higher speed memory, but Zen5 let a lot of people down.

He didn’t go that far with them. He said they were launched too early, and are priced too high, but unlike Rocket Lake they do have some use cases. The biggest issue with Arrow Lake, besides the price and absolutely stupid CPU names, is people’s expectations. That they still hold pretty even with 14th Gen perf-wise given the clock speed reduction, loss of Hyper-Threading, redesigned ring bus, and the move to their tile packaging is kind of impressive. I thought they would perform worse than they do, all things considered.

9000’s X3D’s are supposed to be overclockable unlike previous gens

At least from the hardware unboxed video testing the intel cpus, If I remember correctly it seems there is massive inconsistencies with versions of windows and such which hopefully gets improved by updates. Seems like it can be on par with their previous flagship in best case scenarios with much lower power compared to previous gen. Not a bad launching point if you take into account that they basically redesigned the whole thing, only thing you can say at least now other than the inconsistency is that Zen is still more efficient. Zen 1 when it launched wasn’t the best at many tasks definitely when it was single threaded performance compared to even older intel chips at that time but overtime they refined the architecture. Main concern I have for intel though is that seems leadership seems hectic and doesn’t seem to have changed much.

Alright thanks for the clarification and the correction, I am at least learning something every day. Also yeah the new one from Intel is just overpriced and they have not been that very uhhh… for the lack of a better term, innovative or something?

But man with the video benchmarks that he has shown on that video, it’s so funny to see when the 5800X3D is still on top of its game and is able to compete with the latest CPUs. I am so happy that I got this CPU.

9800X3D dropped

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I watched the one with Steve’s video and I am so happy that the 5800X3D is still on the charts lol. Also yeah this CPU is confirmed a game changer, I might migrate to AM5 once AM6 is out or I could just keep using my 5800X3D until it just stops working as intended or slows down.

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yeah pretty much all the X3D CPU’s are bottlenecked by even a 4090 in gaming so next gen GPU’s might make the newer ones more worthwhile

Yeah, I have no reason to upgrade from y 5800x3D either. It kicked off the X3D line, and it has proven to be a good investment to keep my AM4 platform for a while longer. It makes you wonder if it was possible to place the cache on the bottom of the 5800x at the time, how much faster would the 5800x3D be with the extra thermal headroom?! :thinking:

Im happy for the wrong reason, i gotta friend who is an upgrade-aholic , with a little luck i’ll buy his system off him

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Speaking about the 5800X3D, I have decided to modify some things about it when it comes to its temps, for it was running too hot for me on stock. Hence I have to use the Curve Optimization method in order to ease up the temps and as well as improve the performance as well.

I am glad that my Deepcool Assassin III is still doing a solo job cooling it, even thought I know for sure that I am going to need a CPU cooler that is essentially better than I currently have. But hey, it gets the job done cooling it and not bad for me who is living in a country that can go hot and humid.

You will notice cooler temps and pick up some fps in games…FroznHood has a really good vid on youtube for those of you that don’t know how to do it…

I hesitate a little to bring this up here, but here goes…

I’m a simple guy with simple needs. At least I like to think so. Not a gamer at all. I guess at the computer I’d call myself a web surfer, typist, spreadsheet master, reader, and music librarian. A little bit of a photo archivist, but at a very, very basic level. Foobar 2000 and Qobuz for music.

I bought a Lenovo desktop around 2017, and I’m using an Acer monitor I inherited from my dad. Just an everyday, lovingly used consumer rig. But I guess Windows 11 is here, whether we like it or not. And Microsoft tells me it won’t run on my machine. My experience with Windows goes back before pre-Windows 95. I have an Android phone that I treat as more of a necessary evil than anything, and an iPad Mini for YouTube, Netflix, reading, and “games” like Tetris and match-style time-wasting mindless puzzles to do while listening to music. The iPad is great, but my solemn vow is not to use an Apple product for desktop computing.

So my question is this: buy a new machine, bite the bullet, and try to de-bloat Windows 11, or keep this machine and wander into the vast, arcane, smug, bewildering world of Linux? The noncommercial aspect of Linux really intrigues me, but I don’t want to be constantly struggling with workarounds, compromises, and hassle to accomplish computing tasks that the rest of the world takes for granted. I use Open Office at home instead of the Microsoft products, but they’re a tiny bit clunky. Firefox is my trusted browser. Microsoft has worked for me for more than 30 years, but I’ve become really bitter about profit-driven, ad-fueled, performance-sapping bloatware.

Let the harangues commence!

I think this is a reasonable place to put a request, keep this in mind for what I write since I run fedora linux on personal laptop, dualboot windows 10 and Arch linux on my main desktop, and windows 11 on work laptop. Overall I am a power user and tinker a decent amount.

A new machine could be a decent upgrade if you dont have a i5 or i7 from that time or SSD. 2017 is when AMD first struck back with new cpus and the landscape has changed in 2024. Since you use light workloads you might not see too many massive improvements in day to day tasks over your old machine but it should last you a good decade perhaps if you were to upgrade.

Windows 11 debloat and modification to make it run decently takes a bit of work and is a pain in many aspects. Overall my time with windows 11 has not been the smoothest with inconsistent performance and that’s with a new business thinkpad. Onedrive is honestly absolute pain to take out and ends up with so many things connected to it that it just a menace and all the random other stuff installed a pain to remove. It getting harder to unlink devices or not have an account in windows 11 which is extremely annoying. You can use something like Windows Utility from Chris Titus to speed some things up and remove things but microsoft can make a patch undoing some work. I think his script allows you to make a custom iso so that you can just have a setup preloaded so that it is a faster install.

If you want to squeeze out more out of your current setup with linux for daily use it can be nearly a direct transition though there is some big caveats. Alternative in linux is often the way it goes however even as an avid user. You already use Open Office so are not locked with microsoft products on that part and firefox is well supported on linux. Biggest issues would be music players as Foobar doesn’t have an app for linux so you would need to use Strawberry music player or Fooyin if you want to customize it like foobar but it still not as good in plugin support but should play all the file types and theme just fine. Qobuz if you use the web version is works great but that is the main way you are going to use it on linux or through strawberry. The good news is the apps are usually found in the common app stores of a distro or on flathub store so you do not have to play around with terminal, similar to the windows store but not as annoying. Also hunting audio drivers for DACs can be annoying. Photopea is a good photoshop option in web so if you want to edit some photos it is super good. Its become less of an issue of being locked to certain distros for applications and something like Linux Mint would be very familiar since you primarily used windows before. A little bit more adventurous then try something like pop os.

I recommend to experiment first try using a virtual machine to test out linux. That way you can see if it is right for you and if something is buggy or difficult to find a solution for. Look up VMware or virtualbox to see how it works and assign the vm with a good amount of ram and some storage.

Direct VMware Download link since Broadcom is a stupid company if you want a decently easy to use and setup VM software:
https://softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds/vmw-desktop/player/17.6.0/24238078/windows/core/VMware-player-17.6.0-24238078.exe.tar

Either way good luck on finding your solution, hope the long message does not bore you

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