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Nylon Bullet

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  1. Informative
    Nylon Bullet reacted to DocSwag in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    Computer architecture can get pretty complicated, so unfortunately there aren't really any "fun" books about it.
  2. Informative
    Nylon Bullet reacted to Taja in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    There is a book called "But how does it know?" Which explains how a cpu works, from the basics.
  3. Agree
    Nylon Bullet reacted to DocSwag in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    A few you could check out.
     
    Computer Organization and Design. There's a lot of visuals but I wouldn't really call it a fun book. It definitely focuses more on computer architecture though whereas the book @lavablade02 mentioned is more about electronics in general.
     
    You could also look into Computer Systems: A programmer's perspective. There's a fair bit of interaction with a computer in it. That might be your best bet.
     
    BTW if you need any PDFs, I could find the links and get those questionably legal pdfs.
  4. Agree
    Nylon Bullet reacted to hazeyez in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    @Nylon Bullet I have a great read for learning the fundamentals of computing, electrical engineering, architecture, and has chapters that are inclusive of microprocessors and GPU's.
     
    "But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone" - By J. Clark Scott, can be purchased on Amazon kindle e-books for about $7.00.
     
    Even if you are an intermediate-advanced student of computers - this is an excellent read that breaks the whole system down in layman's terms, and pulls it all together from how each piece operates individually to how every part affects the next, to build one machine - all while putting emphasis on electricity, engineers, architecture, etc.
     
    Highly recommended and for $7.00 you can't go wrong!
     
    let me know if you decide to purchase it I can give you some context
  5. Agree
    Nylon Bullet reacted to DanielMDA in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    I would recommend yo to read whitepapers, they give you an idea on how things work with some technical data. In terms of AMD GPUs, read these four:
     
    1) Polaris Architecture (GCN 4th Gen [1.3]): http://radeon.com/_downloads/polaris-whitepaper-4.8.16.pdf
    2) Compute Cores: https://www.amd.com/Documents/Compute_Cores_Whitepaper.pdf
    3) Vega Architecture (GCN 5th Gen [1.4]): https://radeon.com/_downloads/vega-whitepaper-11.6.17.pdf
    4) GCN Architecture (Graphics Core Next): https://www.amd.com/Documents/GCN_Architecture_whitepaper.pdf
     
    Hope you like them. There are also CPU Whitepapers from Intel and AMD, and there are also GPU Whitepapers from Nvidia.
     
     
  6. Agree
    Nylon Bullet reacted to yosarianilives in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    The wiki pages are written as a story. Pretty straightforward and easy read. Anything "easier" to read would be the same as watching a modern LTT vid hoping to find useful info on PC HW. Ie; devoid of any
  7. Agree
    Nylon Bullet reacted to yosarianilives in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    Read the wiki pages for every intel and AMD cpu arch. It should be a pretty good read. That's how I learned most of what I have, will also be more informative than the average LTT vid  
  8. Informative
    Nylon Bullet reacted to lavablade02 in Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's   
    @DocSwagreccomends Practical Electronics for inventors, but is really serious. Seems like a REALLY niche subject.
  9. Like
    Nylon Bullet reacted to Light-Yagami in PotPlayer Extensive Guide For Best Video Quality   
    Hello everyone!
     
    This guide will focus on optimising PotPlayer for best video quality. For those who're not yet familiar with PotPlayer, it's similar to MPC-HC or VLC players, but offers a simpler design and UI with powerful post processing tools that make videos look cleaner, sharper and richer in colour. That is my personal opinion, I've only done a comparison between it and the VLC player so I am biased in this regard.
     
    This guide has 3 sections. First one focuses on settings everyone should enable, regardless on the power of their system, since they're not very resource intensive. Second section focuses on settings you can enable if you have a strong system (specially on the GPU side) and the third section focuses on settings for lower tier systems. I have a desktop setup with i7-6700k@4.7ghz and GTX1070 with my laptop running i7-4710HQ and GTX860M. Those are my reference points for a high end and low end system. GPUs are the most important here, since we'll be focusing on utilising them for video upscaling, as well as running multiple post processing filters with them. Disclaimer: Settings I will show you and work best for me will stress your system (particularly GPU) - this is not a battery friendly way to watch videos. With that said, lets get right into it.
     
    Section 1
     
    When you install a 64bit PotPlayer version (which you can do here) make sure to download all addons in the installation process. After you install it, make sure to set Nvidia as its primary graphics processor if you're running it on laptop, since it defaults to integrated graphics. (If you don't know how to do that, click here)
     
    Open PotPlayer and click on three horizontal bars in the top left corner. After menu opens, click on preferences.
     
    1. On the left side click on "playback" and under "process priority" on the right side of the window select "high" instead of "Above normal" - if you want to allocate more resources to playback. I didn't, and it's fine.
    2. Click on the plus icon next to the "Filter control" on the left side of the window and select "Video decoder", as the option column expands. Click on "Built-in Video Codec/DXVA Settings" in the mid bottom of the window and check boxes as in the picture (Under DXVA2 copy-back settings select Your external GPU)
    press okay and apply settings. This settings makes your GPU render all video.
     

     
    3. Under "Audio Decoder" tab go to "Built-in Audio Codec/Pass-through Settings" and mimic what I've done (this is where you need those addons you downloaded during PotPlayer installation) After you're done, click okay and apply settings.
     

     
    4. Click on "Video" on the left side of the window and under "Video Renderer" select "Madashi Video Renderer" or MadVR, as I'll be referring to it (You'll have to select it again once you leave preferences by clicking on "show main menu" button top left > video > video renderer > Madashi Video Renderer). Below under "Fullscreen exclusive mode" select disable, if not already selected. Under "Deinterlacing" tab on the top select "use hardware deinterlacing" under the Deinterlacing Method. Under "Effects" tab on the top far right (you might have to click on the arrows to move the tabs) check the "Deblock" box (and leave the slider at 256) and "deband" box on the bottom. Apply settings.
     
    5. Click on "Audio" on the left side of the window and change settings as shown in this screenshot. Apply settings. (You don't have to do this, my headphones are compatible with 24bit 96khz sample rate)
     
     
     
    Section 2
     
    We're now going to change a couple of settings in MadVR settings. I'll first do the "high end" config and "lower end" after that, but you can always mix them together to find what suits you best. I'll tell you as I go along - what worked for me and the performance hit it has, so you'll be able to figure out if you want to do anything differently.
     
    Under "Video" tab, press on 3 dots right of the MadVR option and press "Edit Settings". New window will pop up. We'll first change some options that stay unchanged between the high and lower end config. Do as shown in screenshots.
     

     
    I hope these screenshots make it easy for you to coordinate yourself in settings. They can be very frustrating to navigate until you're not used to them. Now for the part where configs start to differ. These are screenshots for a config with similar power to my desktop config (i7-6700k+GTX1070). 

     
    Troubleshooting for higher end config:
    If you're dropping frames, decrease the number of neurons under "chroma upscaling" to 64. If you still drop frames, decrease number of neurons under "image upscaling" > algorithm quality to 32. If you're still dropping frames, change upscaling method under "image upscaling" from NNEDI3 to Lanczos and configure it the same in the screenshot for image downscaling. Anything easier to run than that already falls into "lower end" config imo.
     
    Section 3
     
    These settings can be used on almost all laptops with any sort of discrete GPU. I'll start by showing you the settings I have on my laptop (i7-4710HQ+GTX860M). After that, I'll present you with some alternatives that are easier to run but also produce worse results. 
     
     
    4
    At this point, everything should run smoothly, but if not: Decrease number of neurons under "chroma upscaling" to 32. If you experience dropped frames still, switch from NNEDI3 pixel shader code to Lanczos and configure it the same as shown in screenshot for "image upscaling". If that lags as well, change "image upscaling" from Lanczos to DXVA2. Even the weakest systems should run this smoothly. The load on the system is same as VLC player at that point.
     
    I hope I made everything understandable. After hours of digging through this guy's SITE , I tried my best to pick up on the important stuff and present it as simply as possible. I'm open for questions - I can help you out if you have any problems during the optimisation process. Thank you for reading.
     
    Additional notes: I am in no way an expert on this topic nor do I fully understand the program. I kept this simple (among other things) for my sanity as well, since there are so many options you can choose from with minimal differences it's really difficult to decide and understand what works together best and what doesn't. End result is very good in my opinion - better colour science, sharper, cleaner video with less artifacts and noise.
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