EChondo

No problem, I personally haven't used it, but I have had a few friends utilize it and it worked out for them just fine.
 
I am partially doing the same as you. I just built a SFFPC and bought a 2060 about 2 weeks ago. I specifically bought a EVGA because their support is awesome and their cards run great, but also for the Step-Up, so if I like the 3080/3070 pricing I can upgrade to that for my main rig and then slap my 1080ti in my SFFPC instead. And if I don't like price:performance...then I won't do the Step-Up lol.
 
Hope whatever you decide works out. To me, as long as you have a good GPU, you can always wait things out. I'd rather have a 2060 than nothing at all.

the 3060 wont likely be released next month. also i dont think returning the 2060 only to buy another one is worth the hassle.
 
but really though, a 2060 KO for $350? $30 more you can get yourself a 5700xt

remember to quote or mention until its highlighted @Oswin that we may get notified of your reply
 
if you are not looking to use the features like nvenc, dlss, or raytracing (a 2060 is not gonna do well with RT anyway), then then go with the 5700xt because its a good bit faster. though you might want to consider EVGA's step up program linked by @EChondo instead.

I didn't know about that program, really appreciate it!

How about using EVGA's step up program? Make sure to register the card ASAP. But at least with this you have a card you can use for a month or two while waiting for info and if you dont like the info, then you can keep the card...never know, if 2060's get sold out because people don't like the prices for the 3060's, then there might be shortages, which could cause prices to rise.
 
https://www.evga.com/support/stepup/

So this clears up the misconception that at least I had about the second fan on the new reference design (the one close to where the power connectors would traditionally be). It doesn't push air the opposite way of the first fan, but rather it just pulls it through the fins and pushes it upwards in the case.
This raises another question or concern though: how bad is this going to hurt CPU air coolers and temperature sensitive RAM? Hot air from the graphics card's heatsink will be pushed right towards the CPU and memory area, by the looks of it.

ASUS has announced the worlds first 360Hz monitor - the PG259QN - launching in September for $699. 
 
 
My thoughts
 
As someone who has gone through 30-60-120-240 and now will go through 360Hz very soon, I’m glad that technology has progressed. 
 
A lot of people will say that even 240Hz is “a limit” and that you “can’t tell a difference/much of a difference” between 144 & 240. 
 
However, when I first tried 240 and went back to 144 due to TN just not being good enough, especially at 1080p, I did notice the difference. 
 
I soon went back to 240Hz with the Lenovo Y27gq which is a 2nd Gen 8-bit TN panel at 1440p and 240Hz - this made a big difference to the colours and quality. 
 
Now I’m really excited for 360Hz on a IPS panel!
 
I intent to pair this with the upcoming flagship Nvidia 3090 - or whatever the top tier card will be. 
 
With the new cards, plus 1080p, I do expect to hit 360Hz in many MP games. 
 
Exciting times ahead!
 
Edit:
 
Review of Monitor:
 
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/asus-rog-swift-360hz-pg259qn
 
Sources
 
https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/blog/asus-rog-swift-360hz-pg259qn-esports-monitor-with-360hz-refresh-rate-details-released/
 
https://www.asus.com/Monitors/ROG-Swift-360Hz-PG259QN/
 
https://www.thefpsreview.com/2020/08/25/asus-rog-swift-pg259qn-360-hz-gaming-monitor-releasing-in-september-for-699/
 
https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/news/49af3c9

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/24/21399434/epic-vs-apple-lawsuit-fortnite-app-store-monopoly-challenge
 
Oh here we go more whine.
Judge to Epic : "Maybe I'll allow the account to be reinstated, but not the game"
 
... wait didn't I call this a shell game earlier?
 
Admittedly, it wasn't in that context.
 
 
Should have thought of that before before you made that preemptive strike Epic.

Legally speaking, if you make a market small enough, every company has a monopoly over something - which is not illegal. Let me explain...
 
Linus Tech Tips has a monopoly over all LTT videos when you "shrink" the online video market to include only LTT content. Best Buy has a monopoly over all Best buy sales when you "shrink" the electronics store market to only Best Buy stores. Apple has a monopoly over the iOS App Market when you "shrink" the Smart Phone market to be only iPhones. Etc etc etc. You can always "shrink" a market to create a monopoly. The legal question that will be considered is if Apples App Store constitutes a "harmful monopoly". Chances are, Epic has quite an uphill battle to win this case.
 
Consider the following:
1) Epic *does* have a market choice when it comes to the Smart Phone Market. They can skip iPhone and just go Android. The fact that Android has higher market share doesn't help Epic's case at all. Afterall, if a game developer doesn't like Microsoft's terms for the X-Box, they can simply go Sony, or vice versa. As long as both companies don't conspire to artificially force the developer to do something, the developer has a valid choice to develop for one, or the other, or both, or neither. 
 
2) There is no precedent to force one store to provide for and contain another. Epic says it wants to create a competing app market to Apple's on iOS, but that would be like Best Buy being forced to have Microcenter kiosks - there is no precedent for that. 
 
3) Epic has no inherent right to be allowed on Apple's platform. Again, just as Best Buy gets to choose what goes on its own shelves, Apple gets to choose what goes on its own platform. It's not as if Sony can force Best buy to carry its headphones.
 
Long story short, Apple is perfectly within its right to control its own platform - even if it's a monopoly over its own market. Except...
 
Where Apple may be in trouble:
1) The fact that Apple has conditions in its terms of service which dictate prices outside of the iPhone market gives the terms a good chance of being considered "harmful" interference in other markets. It is not as if Best Buy can force Sony to sell its headphones at a certain price on Sony's own website. This is probably Epics best legal argument. 
 
2) Apple does not allow apps to advertise a "suggested retail price" or the software app equivalent. Its not as if Best Buy can dictate whats on Sony's own packaging - even if they want to put a suggested retail price 
 
Again, not taking sides here. Just some legal insight. 
 

https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-1
 
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-204_bq7d.pdf
 
Apple operating the App store, is not a Monopoly. Apple being the sole manufacturer of the iPhone is not a monopoly. Apple producing iOS and MacOS X only for Apple devices is not a Monopoly. It's simply a superior product and Apple has not tried to restrain trade in iPhones by acquiring it's competitors (eg buying Alphabet, or Samsung) or businesses critical to it's competitors (eg ARM)
 

OK, but just because you asked.
1. The Flash player was originally designed to make small vector animations (1996). Basically tiny vector images, and later images. This required a plugin for the browser. It was later bought by Adobe and bloated into a video player and "game platform", despite artists pleas to keep it as a animation tool. (To which flash animators have either moved to ToonBoom, or keep using old versions of Flash until 4K video became standard, as flash can't create smooth motion tweens without any sub-pixel precision at 1080p+)
2. The Unity player (2005) was originally designed to make games on multiple platforms, or basically "all" platforms. It required a plugin to browsers.
 
3. Flash was basically blocked from ever being a browser plugin on the iPhone, despite that you could still compile "flash" to binaries for the iPhone. 
4. Unity 3.0 expanded from browsers and iphone to desktops. So it basically started as a special purpose tool that became more generic over time, just like flash.
 
Unity however is making the mistake Flash made, where by making the tool more general purpose, it's ignoring what it's tool was designed for, and most usable as. Unity 5.0 allows games to be made for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, iOS, Android, etc, but it had to be dragged kicking and screaming into 64-bit, just like flash. It's still tied to using features only available in WebGL (after the plugin was depreciated) so it can compile to HTML5.
 
Meanwhile Adobe did the stupidest thing possible and turned Flash into "animate" that generates html5 code. Keep in mind that Actionscript 3.0 basically torpedoed it's ease of use and Actionscript 3.0 is basically Javascript that uses classes (EMCAScript 4th edition that didn't ultimately get used by anything but Actionscript.) No 64-bit version until version 13 (2013), and WebGL in 2014. Yet, have you seen any HTML5 animations produced by Animate anywhere? No? Because Unity is now the better thing to build amateur games with. Flash's main benefit was tiny binary files, and that no longer exists when you export as HTML5. So now the only thing you would be making with Animate are the same animations, but exporting them directly to HEVC and making them 100x larger than they could have been had Adobe just righted the ship and released the SWF format as an open vector format for browsers to process natively. The entire reason the "canvas" tag exists was to replace the flash plugin.
 
To which this is what is being seen with Unity. Unity's poor licencing model has amateurs shunning it, and thus learning other software that is more permissive. The Unity store is a huge shovelware haven (something that Unreal hasn't managed to do oddly enough) and the term "fake games" and "asset flips" accurately describe the Unity ecosystem. Why build a game when you can buy a "demo" game on the store, reskin it with some other assets bought from the store and release it as something new? And when you stop making money from it, reskin it again and release it as a new thing. It's Atari 2600 game crash all over again. And how much of this is Unity's fault? All of it. The Unity store should exist, I'm not saying it shouldn't. However it should not "enable" asset-flips. It should require that "kit" games use the "plus"/"pro" licence and removing "Unity ads" as a feature of the free licence, and likewise stores like Steam , iOS, Android that these shovelware games end up on, need an asset manifest proving that they secured the rights to the assets being used (and didn't simply rip off the game they are asset flipping.) 
 
The more "general purpose" a tool, programming language, or OS becomes, the more likely that something else newer (and not necessarily better) will be built on top of it and ultimately replace it. Such is the hellscape of current Javascript frameworks.
 
At any rate, while Unity might enjoy a short-term success as a game engine, it's not Unreal Engine. It's largely deficient in supporting hardware on native systems. Like two of the most recent games I've played (Groove Coaster) and (Fall Guys) have problems with their UI, and Groove Coaster just crashes if you have a Creative Labs card because it's OpenAL module doesn't work on hardware that supports OpenAL (needed for rhythm games.) Nearly every Unity game you run on the PC assumes it's running on a mobile device and opens to 720p and won't resize or scale beyond 1080p on a 4K screen, making your only option running it in a tiny window or full screen at 720p/1080p, blur and all. 
 
If I had to recommend a game engine, I wouldn't put Unity up there as a first choice, maybe a third.
 
Unreal engine, at least as far as things go right now, is a complete kit, but it's also horribly obtuse to use, so unless you are working on a team that decided to use it, it's definitely not the thing a solo dev should use. 
 
Both Unity and Unreal are immensly overkill for 2D games, with the base binaries often being larger than the assets the game uses, and setting up 3D pipelines that require substantially more resources than what is required.
 
Anyway, the point is that developers are not left without choices, but Unity is is not something you would choose over Unreal. Unreal is the mature codebase that Win/Mac, and PS4/XboxOne support. Unity is the "mobile-oriented" less-powerful engine that is used on the Nintendo Switch and the iOS/Android platforms, and it's entire graphics pipeline is designed around it. Both engines support all the consoles and computers, but they are only really optimized for either systems with one or the other, which is why you almost never see massive Unreal engine games on iOS, because the games can't suck up 90GB like they can on a PC. Unity however most games are small downloads, and then the assets are streamed as needed if they are digital downloads.
 

Where are you getting that idea. No, a monopoly never lowers prices. There is no standard mobile platform for which a third party could install a generic phone OS to like you would, say Linux on a x86-64 PC. If such a thing existed, Microsoft wouldn't have had to abandon their phone OS product would they?
 
 
YOU, are the person in the thread insisting that Apple has a monopoly when all signs point to them not having a monopoly on anything. You can't have a monopoly on your own product because you're the only one who makes it. You can not compel Apple to license MacOS X or iOS to other manufacturers, because that's the only way you're going to see lower prices, by other hardware manufacturers selling compelling products with the same OS. Third party stores on Android are utter failures and there's no evidence that they have lowered prices there either. Considering that third party stores seem to be focused on piracy than anything.
 

Here's why you don't want "sideloading" as a standard feature:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/cheap-chinese-smartphones-malware
The fourth largest handset maker, preloaded malware.
 
I've never heard of this brand.
 
This is the kind of crap that is pulled when something allows sideloading, software being installed without your knowledge.
So, someone is loading this malware onto the devices before they ever get to the customer. If the ability to sideload didn't exist, or could only be enabled by say.... having the device activated with a sim-card installed, this wouldn't happen. 
 
 
And less you think this is only a problem for poorer countries:
 
Sideloading should not be an option by default, only wiping the firmware+storage by the user. Hence the suggestion a few times in one of these threads that arbitrary side-loading not be permitted. It leaves the person who ultimately uses the device open to malware. 
 
To take this into context with the App store. Let's say Epic's underhanded tactics allows it to get an "Epic store" on the iphone, and then one of the games Epic sells downloads further binaries from the developer to generate cryptocoins on the device. The user never sees this happening.
 

Nah the problem is almost certainly the Apple guidelines themselves being inconsistant or vauge enough on purpose so that they don't have to be clarified without someone taking them to court. Like when I worked at eBay, there was a lot more stuff on "internal" policy than there was on the customer-facing one. Basically unwritten rules, because (and have seen first-hand) people will readily tweak their listings to not violate the policy while still violating the intent of the policy, and then the policy gets tweaked yet again.
 
Like the thing with the Epic stuff is this, quite literately. Apple does not want Epic to be a freeloader, so it has no reason or excuse to give Epic a deal, especially since Apple is not only footing the bill for the bandwidth and other QA stuff needed for it to run on the iphone/ipad. Such is not the same thing with Netflix or Amazon which stuff like Amazon Prime or Signing up for Netflix might justify the customer acquisition commission but not really justify the on-going subscription commission since they aren't footing the bandwidth for Amazon Prime or Netflix 's streaming itself, and may have partnership agreements in place to work with the AppleTV service. If your entire purpose for omitting the IAP while having it available somewhere else is to dodge the app store fees, then that justified the fees in the first place.
 
I don't see apple moving the commission price for any reason without everyone (and I mean everyone that matters like Sony and Nintendo, not Epic which doesn't have the clout for) doing the same for their respective platforms.
 
The wordpress app is different in this regard, because the service itself is free, and the app is not a "sale" to a subscription. By putting the purchases to the website services in the app, that puts an additional burden on the wordpress service to synchronize with it, for what might be extremely low volume purchases (I can't imagine the wordpress.com site gets more than a few dozen purchases per year, and only some very large brands using it for one-off sites would pay for it, and wouldn't be using an app in the first place.) 
 

Soo, Thermi 2.0 anyone?

We do know that Microsoft does want to keep the Xbox One S(XOS) for another year or two to help with the transition to next-gen...but the $300 price point seems quite large...
 
If the $300 price is true for the XOS, then I don't doubt we'll see XSS for $350-$450 and the XSX for $500 or more.
 
The rumor of $600 for the XSX seems to be more and more likely every day.
 
Wonder if Xbox Live Gold will be free to compensate...

I don’t, since I never use the damn thing. 

Mobile devices are substantially underpowered compared to desktop gaming rigs, and the matter-of-fact is, if you can turn it into a video stream rather than a CPU/GPU-powered program, you can actually squeeze more performance out of the server than the mobile device, thus allowing desktop-like performance on a crappy undersized phone with the battery life equal to the movie watching time.
 
Like for all practical purposes, the "5G" part here probably has more to do with point-to-point 5G between a mac and an iphone/ipad since that is something in 5G. But it could just as equally mean a Stadia-like service, or some hybrid between the two where YOUR mac actually actually runs the game, but you have continuity between the mac game and the iphone switching to streaming mode, eg, playing the game from the bedroom, or at work while on break.
 
It's probably too early to really know what Apple has intended here.
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020163635

This looks more like Stadia.
 
 

Hmm, I take that back, the patent is entirely descriptive of a 5G Cellular network. It sounds more like a "roaming" system where you can play a game while on 5G while having it handed off between 5G cells and the patent is entirely about authorization profiles. There's no mention of entertainment or games. So it's speculative at this point what it's for.

I suspect the Xbox One S V2 might just be a re-SKUing of the current Xbox One S to account for the Xbox Series X (and the potential Series S) coming too. Could also be a new bundle for the system, too.

Go to https://ismyswitchpatched.com/ and enter the first six digits of your serial number after the prefix (eg XAW1 + XXXXXX) to see if your Switch is patched or not against the fusee gelee exploit. If your Switch is unpatched it's going to be worth much more on the resale market since hacking an unpatched Switch is pretty trivial and not something Nintendo can stop with via firmware updates.

Try this;
 
Look in this folder;
D:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Call of Duty 4\players\profiles\*MAIN PROFILE NAME*
 
Open up the config files for both "config" and "config_mp", search for "r_mode" and change the value after it in parenthesis to your desired resolution.
 
See if that works.

You literally can't appease the Halo community lmao
 
I've been a part of it since I was 8 on YouTube on my mom's phone, it's always been a massive circle jerk. 

Why is the image so damn small, was it resize on purpose?
Here is the larger version

You're missing that there are some instruments like options which can cost you more money than you actually put in.  With options you can become obliged to provide shares at current market price.  And if a stock moves 600% like Hertz did you may be holding options that require you to delivery 10,000 shares that you bought when the price was only $1 but now it's $6 and your $100 options bet now costs you $60,000 to make good on.
 
I'm "experienced" in market trading and I stay the fuck away from options.

Best: GTA V
Worst: GTA V