WMGroomAK

Well, they decided to post their tear-down video...

It appears that the full GT102 is in the Quadro RTX 6000, which is being priced at $6300.00... The main difference being that the Quadro card has: 2 additional TPCs, 4 additional SMs, 256 additional CUDA Cores, 32 Additional Tensor Cores, 4 Additional RT Cores, higher base clock at 1455 Mhz, higher boost clock at 1770 Mhz, more memory at 24 GB, 8 additional ROPs & 14 additional Texture units. Of course this is a Quadro card so that probably accounts for about $4000.00 right away, but it would be interesting to know if the 2080 Ti would perform reasonably similarly in some of the Quadro workloads...

Someone over on HardOCP posted a link to nVidia's Whitepaper on the Turing architecture so I'll link it here... https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/design-visualization/technologies/turing-architecture/NVIDIA-Turing-Architecture-Whitepaper.pdf The section on DLSS is Page 35 thru 37 (42 thru 44 in pdf), it also details more of the other shading and infilling techniques that they are implementing, some of which look familiar from the last several years of image testing they've released online.

So PCPer has an article out detailing the Turing Architecture in the same vein as Gamers Nexus video... Within the article is a small section detailing DLSS, although still without the detail I would like on the blackbox workings of it. https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Architecture-NVIDIAs-RTX-GPUs-Turing-Explored/RTX-Features-Ray-Tracing-and-DL Kind of wish there were better scenes that they were rendering via this method with more contrast... Maybe something not so dark on a black slide?

This is actually the best 'unboxing day' video that I've seen yet! Would be great to have @LinusTech and GamersNexus do a short series of videos (Maybe Techquickies?) to go over the details of nVidia's RTX, Ray Tracing (History of and modern implementation) and DLSS. I'll try to see if I can type up some of the relevant points from this into the thread...

My basic understanding of what DLSS does is that it is an upscaling technology so you are taking something like 1080p or 2160p framerates and upscaling it to 4k resolution.

At GTC Japan today, nVidia is still building up the hype for the upcoming RTX 2080 & 2080 Ti by releasing some comparison graphs of Turing vs Pascal & Maxwell performance at 4k 60 FPS showing that the 2080 and 2080 Ti will be hitting or exceeding this benchmark, while both Pascal & Turing fall behind. They also indicate that enabling DLSS will allow for '4k 60 FPS' performance in excess of without DLSS. 4k 60 FPS w/o DLSS: 4k 60 FPS w/ DLSS https://www.overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/nvidia_reveals_rtx_2080_and_rtx_2080_ti_performance_data_at_gtc_japan_2018/1 nVidia has also added 9 more games to the DLSS supported list, making for a total of at least 25 games that will have DLSS support. This will include Darksiders III, Overkill's The Walking Dead, Fear the Wolves & Hellblade. https://www.overclock3d.net/news/software/nvidia_builds_dlss_momentum_reveals_9_new_rtx_enabled_games/1 Honestly, looking at the graphs provided is extremely disappointing just because they are horrible graphs with no relative meaning. Still, it will be nice to see if they can justify the price increase with consistent 4k 60FPS+ performance... Update: With today apparently being unboxing day for the new cards, Gamers Nexus has put out their take of an unboxing by releasing a technical dive into the Turing Architecture that provides some better details on how nVidia is calculating Ray Tracing and how it is being implemented, changes from Pascal to Turing and details on the TU102 chip. Definitely would encourage a watch as this is probably going to be one of the better release videos out there. Some key takeaways is that: FP32 * 0.8 + INT32 * 0.28 + RTOPS * 0.4 + Tensor * 0.2 = nVidia new metric for RTX Ops Unified L1 and SRAM for a total of 32 KB + 64KB 2 SMs per a TPC instead of single SM per TPC (better segmentation and memory/cache untilization) Comparison of Full TU102 and RTX 2080Ti Specs (corrected typo to the chart is that the RTX 2080Ti has 4352 CUDA cores, not 4532): There is also a better explanation of the Ray Tracing processing at around the 22:20 mark... With the specs listed though for the Full TU102, I would not be surprised if nVidia decides to release a RTX Titan card sometime in January or so... Just going to add that PCPer also has an article up detailing a lot of the same information on the Turing Architecture for those who would like to see all the pretty graphs and read about it... They also mention that there will be NVLink with 50 GB/s in the single link found on the 2080 and 100 GB/s with the dual link connection on the 2080Ti. It looks like the NVLink bridges will be an additional $79.00 (in addition to the second card). Finally they have a short discussion on the implementation of DLSS, although the details are still not quite as detailed as I would like... https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Architecture-NVIDIAs-RTX-GPUs-Turing-Explored

That's about the figure I was coming up with looking at it... Seems like a steep mark up to me. I would hope that maybe the included version of their software might add a bit of value, but not thinking it's $1000.00 worth.

An article on The Register serves as a good Public Service Announcement (PSA) on why we should maintain local & backed up copies of movies and music purchased in digital format. Essentially, what has happened is that a biologist found out that three movies he had purchased through iTunes had disappeared from his library. When inquiring with Apple as to where his movies had gone, he learned that Apple had lost the licensing rights to those movies. Basically, if he had not downloaded and saved a copy on local storage, he lost those movies completely. Apple did offer up something in the way of recompense in the form of four movie rentals up to $5.99 a piece, however that was more a discretionary offer. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/12/apple_film_rights/ So this serves as a good reminder that no matter which platform you purchase your digital content on, it is worthwhile to download a local copy to storage and not just count on having it available and retained in the distributors system. Reminds me that I should probably see about getting more space on my NAS at home.

Biostar has released their newest all-in-one Cryptomining rig, the Biostar iMiner (because everything needs an 'i' in front) A578XD for about $3500.00 USD. This machine features 8 RX 570s that are attached to their TB250-BTC D+ motherboard, thus eliminating the need for riser cards and fitting everything into a single, rack mountable case. In addition, this is running a Celeron G3930 with 4 GB of RAM, a 120 GB SSD and a 1600 Watt PSU at 88+% efficiency. Biostar is claiming that this will have an Ethereum Hashrate of ~220 MH/s. They will also be releasing two additional pre-built miners in the future, one with 6 RX 570s and the other with 12 RX 560s. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13348/biostars-iminer-a578x8d-crypto-mining-machine-now-available With the recent downtrend in Crypto prices, I'm not sure this would even be profitable (unless you get extremely cheap or free electricity), although it may be good if the Crypto markets take off again. Of course, the individual components cost themselves are probably several hundred less than this as a pre-built system. Maybe Biostar will have frequent updates that increase the different types of Crypto it can mine as the individual cryptos get too complicated for GPU based mining.

An article over on PCWorld looks at why you may or may not be able to easily use your third party USB-C headset or dongles with your new phone. A big part of this problem arises from whether the phone has/is using a built in DAC or not. What this leads to is that some dongles will work across a range of devices while others won't and the same with the headset. Another issue comes from a lack of uniformity across devices. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3284186/mobile/bring-back-the-headphone-jack-why-usb-c-audio-still-doesnt-work.html While I can understand the want to consolidate the number of ports on a device for issues such as IP rating and convenience. It either needs to be implemented in a standardized fashion or just bring back the 3.5 mm port.

Ultimately I think that this is a bad timing move by Twitter as it is only providing more coverage for Alex Jones and ready fodder for him about being silenced, especially coming a day after Senate testimony by Twitter concerning how they are trying to avoid censoring over political inclinations.

I think some of those slides are on the Guru3D site... Would be nice to know if the Athlon truly will only have 4 PCIe lanes available for graphics as that will be a limit on building an ultra low end machine and upgrading graphics later on. https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/55-usd-amd-athlon-pro-200ge-shows-up-in-slides.html

Well the good news for you is that according to Huawei's Official statement that is floating around, they are planning to provide users with access to the 'Performance Mode' meaning you too can enable battery draining and overheating mode on your phone. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/05/huawei_on_smartphone_benchmarks/ Still seems kind of weird double talk with the whole 'we prioritize user experience over benchmark scores however we enable our performance mode when you benchmark'.

While I agree for the most part that real world use is what matters, the big issue is that the benchmarks are supposed to provide a common ground of comparison & correlation between devices and how the real world, day to day performance is.

Interesting article over on Anandtech looks into Huawei enabling higher power limits and thermal headroom on the SoCs for benchmarking tools. Essentially this allows for Huawei to score higher in benchmark applications than you would expect with this 'high-performance' mode turned off. When Anandtech questioned Huawei about this at IFA, their response was fairly much a confirmation and stating that they do this to stay competitive with other companies in China that do this to get high scores. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13318/huawei-benchmark-cheating-headache Sorry for posting a large quote, but this feels like the most relevant from the first page of the article and I would encourage people to browse the whole article... As it is, it definitely raises questions about any benchmark you see for Huawei and Honor within the last year in particular, but also any benchmark on any Chinese phone manufacturer.

Honestly the only reason I see for buying Playstations is for the exclusive games that are locked into the system, although some of those are slowly moving over on to PC...

In a case of why you should never challenge someone to try, BitFi has removed the claims that their 'unhackable' cryptocurrency wallet is actually unhackable and discontinued their $250k bug bounty program. The hack that was performed this time essentially allows for a someone to run code on the hardware without the memory being erased, thus allowing the attacker to extract the memory from the RAM and find the Crypto Keys stored on the device. https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/30/john-mcafees-unhackable-bitfi-wallet-got-hacked-again/ I guess the overall lesson is that you shouldn't try to assert that your solution is completely foolproof and unhackable... There is always someone out there that will find a way to get in. Would also like to know if they were actually able to claim the $250k bounty. Seems like they've earned it... Bleeping Computers article: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/bitfi-wallet-is-vulnerable-no-bounty-no-unhackable/

Lenovo will be implementing the Snapdragon 850 on their Yoga C630 machine with Windows S. The 850 is supposed to provide higher performance than the first generation machines due to SoC improvements and OS optimizations within Windows. As for the system specs, it will supposedly support over a 25 hour battery life on a single charge (impressive if it works), come with a 13.3-inch full HD IPS display with multi-touch, be about 12.5 mm thick and weigh about 1.2 Kg (2.7 pounds). The system will feature up to 256 GB of UFC 2.1 storage and up to 8 GB of LPDDR4X with two USB Type-C, and all the other little goodies (including an actual 3.5 mm audio jack). Starting prices is supposed to be around $849.99 and should start sales in the US in November. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13309/lenovo-yoga-c630-snapdragon-850-windows Other than this being limited to Windows S, it looks like a nice little light and portable laptop replacement. Maybe just something nice to have for basic Office tasks on the go with some video streaming and browsing...

Well, it should get about 32% better power efficiency on the CPU side and about 178% better GPU power efficiency over their last chip (at least if you trust their slides)... I would hope that would and an hour or two to the battery life during the day.

It should be interesting to see the performance of these chips once they launch in October... Would especially like to see how accurate the new GPS chip is since it'll support the L5 bands. Also find the WiFi throughput speeds (1.7 Gbps) to be fairly impressive if they hold out.

I was thinking that the bare minimum increase would be about 20% for this generation just based on the general CUDA count increase (4352 vs 3584)... Good to see that it may actually be a bit higher than that, but still not looking at it as an upgrade for this generation. Maybe in 2 to 3 years when they have their next generation being released and some of the specialized features become more mainstream.

While I like my XZ1 Compact, can't say I've enjoyed the body looks of the XZ2/3 models... Also don't like the removal of the 3.5 mm connector they started with the XZ2. Still, at least they haven't put a stupid notch in the screen. If they continue with that and also making the compact versions I might stick with the Sony devices.

So as IFA 2018 has been going on, one thing has become apparent in that TV manufacturers feel that your puny 4k resolution is not good enough and you need to be upgrading to 8k. Samsung, LG and AU Optronics at IFA 2018 have all shown off new 8k resolution TVs with screen sizes of 85-inches or greater. In the case of LG, it is in the form of an OLED panel that was previously only a prototype being displayed at CES. https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/lg-88-inch-8k-oled-tv-introduced-ifa2018/ Samsung's 8K display is the QLED Q900FN, which will actually be available for purchase as opposed to the Q9S demoed at CES. This will include the same resolution upscaling as was demoed at CES as well as 4000 nit brightness and HDR10+ support. https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/29/samsung-8k-qled-tv/ AU Optronics is pushing out a Quantum Dot LED 8K display with a full 120 Hz refresh rate and 1200 nit peak brightness. https://hothardware.com/news/auo-85-inch-8k-120hz-hdr-tv I'm severely doubting that when any of these release within the next year or so that they will have anywhere near a reasonable price and there is no real content out there to drive on these but maybe it will help to encourage the decreasing prices on 4k displays to a degree that a decent large format 4k TV or monitor isn't out of reach... Might actually have a reason to upgrade my TV at that time.

My question on this comes as to whether the list of 'Approved Reviewers' is to control who reviews it or as a fall-out of controlling the Driver releases. If nV is truly trying to control the Driver release (which could have some pro arguments) then they would need a list of who is authorized to access.