Junction Runner

Well, I reseated my pcie riser again for the hell of it and then tried running furmark, quit after two hours but didn't seem to have any sort of issues, so at least my desktop is usable at this moment. Hoping that's all it was, but don't feel 100% confident since I've had random screen blackouts for a good while now. it's not like, an amazing riser but it's a mid range shielded one. At least it buys me some time to save up a little and plan more, and maybe get some of the water cooling parts on the way to have ready like the new radiators and tubing. (I've run mayhems cleaning kits multiple times and still get gunk in my loop, uuhg). Seems like 4000 series is a long way away, but maybe I'll order a nice 4.0 riser cable and swap that out in advance to be prepared, who knows, maybe that's what causes the random screen blackouts. I won't feel so good about my card for a good week at least at this point though.

Another factor is that I'm running at 3440x1440, and I remember something about 30 series cards being bottlenecked at that 2k resolution area vaguely, or they just left a lot of performance on the table compared to running at 4k. I need to find what that was about. And obviously a lot of this thinking is lofty dreams at this moment. Cutting the price down and going more 3070 ti route might make more sense for my resolution, only going to be 120fps max as well for my refresh rate. That being said, I don't currently really play any triple a titles, but I'd also like to see what raytracing is like in person finally so having really nice rtx performance is alluring as well. An MSRP founders 3080 would be like, the ultimate I think, but yeah, slim to none chances of that.

That $1400 to $1600 price range is kind of what I'm optimistically thinking since now after quite a lot of looking i don't think I'll really be able to get anything lower than that. I'm not too picky about brand or anything, one thing is that I'll be liquid cooling the card, so no real restraints around length, though cards with extra tall PCBs are likely going to be a fight to fit my system. I'm going bac through all the media coverage and whatnot to see benchmarks and comparisons, at this point honestly I'm kind of mentally talking myself towards that $1800 ti mark, kind of figuring it would probably be good enough for me to skip the 40 series outright and just not have to worry about a gpu upgrade for a while and just be like, done with it for a while. I've got to add the cost of a water block and probably new radiators because of the loop issues I've been having so regardless this won't be cheap or super quick, so I've just got to gather options and weigh it. On the sort of plus side, the shop that's had my car since before friggin December fixing it is being slow as hell, so that money is just sitting there and I could probably save it back up with plenty of time for when it's done at this rate. It would still be like, a not amazing month money wise still, but it would be awfully nice to go all out. That amazon deal you sent @An0maly_76 is definitely pretty good looking compared to a lot I've seen. also interestingly I seem to see a lot of 3080s really close price wise to the ti which seems odd, maybe some of the non ti cards are without the LHR change which is something else to get familiar with again, not that it should really affect me. (power here isn't all that cheap so idk the prospects of mining while I'm at work lol, probably not great.)

It's been a good two or three years with my refurbished MSI 1080 aero OC, but for the past few months it's randomly had the outputs turn off briefly, then back on. Was fine, aside from a bit annoying, but now it hard died for a while, then threw driver errors, I've run DDU twice and it was ok for a few days, but now I get 5-10 minutes before it completely dies again. My system stays running but all the outputs go dead. Breaks my heart, it's been water cooled most of it's life with me and overclocked pretty damn nicely, but now I'm stuck looking for something new. I could technically afford full price for a 3080 ti, but god, I really don't want to pay full price for one. I also want to water cool, so the closer to MSRP I could get the better since I don't need a fancy triple slot cooler or oodles of RGB added to the cost. Unfortunately bestbuy is of course out of stock and hell, I don't even know if they've ever gotten more in Canada. I gave up looking for GPUs quite a while ago because I figured my card was working well enough, I may as well just wait for the 40 series launch, but right now I'm out of luck so hoping some people with their finger on the pulse a bit more. At least now I can afford more than a refurbished card, but yeah, 2 grand really stings to think about. Wish I had gotten that AMD card that I actually had a chance to buy through the verified actual gamer program but I spent too long trying to cram research in for it and it was still tight budget wise At least I should be able to hopefully get a bit back selling my water block.

OMG! Guys! Remember the rush of coming to this topic when a new video came out? That's all.

I want to see them use up the whole write endurance on the drive, as they said it wouldn't take long, it would be cool to see what happens once it does reach that end of life.

Yeah, that doesn't really look like a QR code at all, the pattern doesn't match any of the bits of pattern needed for a QR code to work (there are set points in the corners that have to be there, and a certain amount of the checker pattern, but a lot of that is error correction hence why text or logos can be put in QR codes). I do think VAG is going to start trailing off but it seems like supply and demand issues will be a problem for the next few months at least, though the ti cards are a pretty shit deal, if it's all you can get then it's kind of, well, the only good option even if it's a stupid price hike for the performance improvement.

Got this reply on the latest video, seems suspicious but sending my banks wire transfer info, social security number and dna samples to them just in case /s

VAG is dry today.

To be fair to me, I've never even considered buying or even really looked at current gen GPUs until now. Was running a 660 oc on my desktop for ages, didn't have one for a fair while, then built one with a refurb 1080. I knew the first go at raytracing would be meh so basically ignored the 20 series, I also had no money anyhow. Then new ryzen comes out, I upgrade my 4770 to actually modern components, first time every buying something on launch day as well, it was super exciting and actually no massive line around the block where I was. I was so excited to have a shiny new GPU with shiny new reflection technology and be able to say I had a properly modern system but it feels.lole at this rate the next line of ryzen processors will launch before I can manage to get a graphics card. At least the refurb 1080 is holding up well in terms of being stable and not glitchy.

Derp, ignore just woken up brain

Yeah, if there was no shortage they wouldn't have priced it so damn stupidly high for sure. Fuckin greedy move that's blatantly obvious, and we're stuck dealing with it or waiting possibly over a year for it to improve still.

Oh no. So I held my old monitor up above my new one while sitting down because I thought it would be a kind of stupid but fun idea, but at least from a quick impression... I kind of like it. It's not very practical for sure and I'd need to change the piston in the monitor arm I have to pull, not push unless I found a way to mount like, sideways or something, since the top is the only real spot. My desk isn't amazing structurally but it could handle it I'm sure. I'm not hurting for cash right now... man, I might try it. Here's a quick photoshop.

Oh yeah, dying light has a splashscreen on boot that says it plays best on alienware, so that also makes the monitor worth it. (minor eye roll)

Well, I've had it for two days now, used it a fair bit but not an insane amount. It's really subtle at first honestly, and you just have random moments of when you realize how ludicrously large the screen is. You can also forget that it's curved now and then but there are reminders like the taskbar or text on the full screen having a gentle bend in it, it's kind of neat. And then man, when you play games, some of them it's pretty cool but not a massively different experience, but with assassins creed black flag and the launched exe when you're sailing around and fighting... it's like you're playing a movie, not a game anymore. It looks absolutely incredible and really feels different to a standard aspect ratio. For first person shooter stuff or dying light the immersion is really cool and scenic views look incredible as well but for something like AC4 it really stands out. Yeah, I see how people don't go back after using an ultrawide. I do also see how some would though, I haven't gone through a load of games but as mentioned assassins creed needed a patched launcher, and things like this forum don't work well full screen. Facebooks new update makes it total hilarious trash too. I found someone who let me borrow a spyder 4 color calibrator and that helped the color a bit, honestly the color from factory was super close, it felt a little warm but the green was definitely a little pumped up. I actually thought it was way off because of the color of some links in chrome's search bar but that wasn't actually true, it's just a chrome thing that they look slightly large. The colors overall didn't look awful on my old one and I haven't done side by side testing but the IPS glow on this one is far better in terms of being even and blacks look better. Hard to say how much better colors are since it's also more immersive. For the game enhanced modes anything above fast for pixel response speed makes the ufo test have pretty bad ghosting, there are lots of presets that are iffy looking, the darkness leveler is interesting but not something I'll use. Also the design of this thing, man, hands down to the engineers for making a monitor look so damn sexy, I wish I had a place with a desk facing the inside of the room so that I could see the back of the monitor, it looks incredible. The stand is super wide and deep and does get in the way of my mouse pad a bit, but I love the white, it matches my void pro headphones and I've been wanting to switch to white peripherals for a while. A monitor arm might be cool for this to seem floating but my desk isn't great for that look anyhow. There are times when I regret spending on a big purchase but I haven't felt that once with this monitor. When comparing it with my old one, it's actually not as insane of a difference as you'd think objectively, but it's way different using it, wider might be cool but also it wouldn't fit and I'd need a deeper desk for sure. A 38" might be pretty nice instead of 49 for ultrawide though, but yeah, super happy with this. Oh yeah, and as far as dead or stuck pixels, I can't see a single one, I think I won the panel lottery hands down. Now, I'm not sure how big a dead subpixel on here would be but I went over it pretty thoroughly and couldn't find anything. I'll check now and then as it breaks in.