Cptn.Canuck

Just tinkered with this upscaling on a hockey stream. So far there does seem to be some artifacting around the players as they skate and pass the puck, especially at high speeds. It's minor though and not super noticeable. The main thing I noticed was that the digital rink ads were sharp as hell. Thank god I can read the ads better now. It seems to look really nice when the camera breaks from the overhead angles and the players are in a scuffle around the net, or when it jumps to closeups on the bench and whatnot. Basically everything that isn't live play looks amazing. I only watched the last few minutes of a game while I was tinkering. Gonna try watching a full game in a few minutes when the Devils and Lightning play. Will see how it is over a full 60.

Would be curious to see the LTT Team revisit C-Force's product line. There was one video on them back in 2019 that piqued my interest, and it actually prompted me to buy one of their products. It's been a permanent addition to my laptop bag since. The monitor is thin enough to fit in the laptop sleeve of my bag with my laptop, and it only needs a single USB-C cable to run at 3k 30hz, or 1080, 60hz. I think they have a 144hz model now too. I honestly don't see a need for adding so much bulk to the screen of your laptop when you can just run out to an entirely separate display with one cable. The flexibility of being able to reposition at will, place it on either side of the monitor, etc. is so much nicer than having something that has to fold and hinge out from the back of your laptop screen.

Right on, thanks for all the replies guys. Mostly what I had assumed, but the links to the skews for that model have been pretty helpful. I'll keep an eye on where the bids go for these. If one of them could be had in the $400 range, it might be a worthwhile gamble. I've seen auctions like this just blow prices up past even retail pricing, so there's a chance that it's not even worth it if there was something good inside.

Not as far as I can tell. The auction is all online, and the only picture I have is the one I shared, and the only details on the lot was the "Corei7 8th gen" descriptor. Seems to be a flash liquidation of the place. Lots of TVs that don't even have model numbers, and random furniture and other stuff just listed by basic descriptors. These are listed at a pretty low price, likely because there's very little info on what you're getting. Was curious if I could narrow it down a bit and hedge my bets.

Hey all! I've been looking at an auction site today as there's some decent stuff up for grabs, and they've got a bunch of Alienware PCs that might be had for a decent deal depending on the bids. Thing is, I'm not sure exactly what's in them. The lot says "Computer Tower Intel Core i7 8th Gen" and that's it. I know these PCs were used in an esports training program, so there's definitely a graphics card in there, and maybe an SSD. Was curious if anyone could identify the skew of product based on the chasis. Obviously there's no way to know for sure what's in it until it's purchased, but even knowing the range of options available from Alienware's prebuilt configurator from around the time this was on the market could likely narrow it down and help me value these appropriately. Any thoughts? Alienware's site only shows their most current models, so I can't seem to find a good way to track down the model based on the image alone. From some googling it seems like it's an Aurora skew. The 8th gen processor maybe implies a 10 series nvidia card?

For just a dual monitor setup, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Just use the 1060. It's more than good enough to run a dual monitor setup on it's own. If you were looking at 3+ monitors, there may be a case to be made, but don't bother for now.

Isn't every problem on a tech forum a first world problem? My apartment is just really heat inefficient, and the only heating I have is electric baseboard which tends to run the utility bill pretty damn high in the winter months. Just trying to find a more localized solution that I can use basically just at my desk without concern for heating the rest of my apartment.

Yeah, that's what I got into looking at today. I guess the question becomes mounting and positioning well with my rig. I've got some desk space, but I'd love a solution that sits below my monitors and points at my mouse and keyboard. Maybe I should look into getting a flexible lamp of some sorts and installing an IR ceramic bulb or something so I can move it around.

Yeah, can't fit my keyboard in there too though. Tried.

I live in the great white north, and have a legitimate problem in keeping my hands warm during winter gaming sessions. I tend to be pretty stingy on the thermostat, and opt for sweaters and blankets, but I tend to end up inescapably having my hands exposed, and moving quickly to play esports games. The rapid heat loss from my finger tips legitimately impacts my performance and is just plain uncomfortable. Has anyone else experimented with ways to remedy this? I bought these USB powered heat-pad gloves from Amazon a while back, but they were cheap and uncomfortable, and one of the heat pads stopped working after a few months. I tried using these snap-heat packs but they only last for about 20-30 minutes, and require you to boil them on a stove to reset them, which is a pain to do. Not to mention you need to take your hands away from your game to use them. I've seen some players using these heatbuff things at events, but $200 is pretty steep for a product I haven't seen reviews on, and only saw in sponsored product placement. Anyone got thoughts or suggestions? Other Canadians starting to feel the chill as we head toward winter? I was joking with a friend of mine that I should extend my water loop through a pair of gloves so I can use my frigid ass hands to cool my CPU. If that's not an LTT video, I don't know what is.

I went to a school and took a game design course, and I've been working in the games industry for 7 years now, first as QA, then as a designer, and now as a product manager. It strongly depends on what you want to do in the games industry. There are a few main "tracks" that most games careers take. Typically you'll fall into one of these categories: 1. Engineering 2. Design 3. Art 4. Production (Management) There can be crossovers between them. There are technical artists who do programming and work with complex editors to create particle systems. There are artistic designers who make beautiful, but usable UI designs. There are wiz-kids that do it all. If you want to be in engineering... actually writing code and building stuff from scratch, you should take a computer science course. No game development course I've ever seen has had a programming course sufficient to get you ready for game development. If you want to be in design... coming up with systems, rules and mechanics for games, game design programs can be good. They teach you how to analyze games, write coherent documentation, test your games, etc. They just don't do a lot for your technical skill, and breaking into design roles can be hard without those. If you want to be an artist... making characters, 3D models, worlds, concept art, etc. Do an art or animation course. Develop those artistic skills first, and learn the software as you do so you're up to date with evolving industry standards as you go. Production... I'm sure there are management courses, but almost every product / project manager I've ever met has come up through design, or QA. Most of them either joining the industry with limited skills, or with vague backgrounds in related digital fields like graphic design, programming, marketing, sales, etc.

So far since updating my drivers 3-ish hours ago, ram usage has been low and stable. Doesn't seem to be climbing. Thanks to everyone for your input and @Mira Yurizaki especially for pointing me to the network drivers. For anyone finding this thread in the future, make sure you're updating your drivers by manually identifying your components and going to the manufacturer's site for drivers. I had tried updating my network drivers before in this process, but just went to the device manager and used the windows automated "search online for drivers." That shit don't work, and when it says you have the latest drivers, you probably don't.

Yeah, VMWare is entirely inactive as far as I'm aware. I don't use it regularly, and haven't used it since I started seeing this issue. I mostly pop it up every couple months to try learning to use linux.

That's good information. Thanks a lot. I've updated my network drivers, so we'll give it some time and see if my ram usage continues rising. Any way that you know of to "secure" VMWare to be entirely idle when I'm not running it aside from just straight up uninstalling? Are there certain settings I can tweak or set to keep it contained?

Hmm, Firefox is showing a slow ramp up of resources, but still not to the full extent of taking my entire PC's resources. Is the current release of firefox known to have issues like this? Or maybe popular addons? I don't have too much customization on my firefox. Just ublock origin, a color-swapping addon for google docs, and tampermonkey running no active scripts.