F.E.A.R.

wouldn't be the first time. It's exactly what they are doing to Huawei. there has still been zero evidence of back door or spying chips, and yet the US is trying to
destroy them as a company by trade sanctions and tell other US based companies that they cannot do business with them. It's all "what ifs" because they are a Chinese Company.
 
no one should trust ANY company that holds personal information. Just look at Facebook and their Cambridge Analytica breach, Twitter's recent Data breach, everything Edward Snowden revealed, the hundred and hundreds of claims about Microsoft's telemetry.
 
I don't trust the claims made by the US towards China any more than i trust the claims made by China about China

they have no right to operate in the US, they are merely allowed to unless they get banned.
All tiktok would need to do it move its headquarters and cut all ties to the CCP which they wont do cause the CCP wont allow it.

I'll start by quoting Jim Sterling. Making some money is not enough these days, they're only happy if they make all of the money and even then they still wont really be happy.
 
Fans have created a HUGE backlash after a Reddit post pointed out that EA Sports UFC 4 is now showing full screen adverts during replays as well as smaller "card" style adverts at other points during matches and an advert which covered the majority of the ring canvas. All adverts were for the Amazon Prime exclusive show The Boys.
As pointed out in the title of the Reddit post, EA waited until 2 weeks after release to turn this feature on, something which an obvious attempt at dodging reviewers and makes the apology (which we will get to later) make no sense at all. To add insult to injury they also thought it would be a good idea to retroactively add adverts into UFC 3, a game which came out 2 years ago now. Seems like they were worried UFC 4 users would simply go back to playing UFC 3 to avoid the ads.
UFC 4 was already under fire from fans before this for its MANY glitches and bugs plus the fact very little was changed between UFC 3 and UFC 4. Its also worth pointing out, UFC 4 already has microtransactions in it too.
EA have now pulled the adverts from both UFC 3 and UFC 4 and issued an "apology", or should I say a "Sorry we got caught" which following standard operating procedure claims ignorance.
Yeah, because they didn't realise that fans wouldn't like this before they launched it.... That's why they waited for 2 weeks after launch to avoid reviewers.
 
Anyway right now UFC 4 is sitting at a 1.8 on Metacritic.
 
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-09-05-ea-on-the-ropes-after-adding-in-game-ads-to-ufc-4
 
I'm so glad I no longer invest much time in gaming as a hobby. These days I might buy 3 to 4 games a year maximum and only 1 of those I'll pay full price for. The only silver lining is that gamers seem to be finally waking up to just how much they're getting ripped off and are starting to push back against it.

And what's thew price of other consoles in South Africa? Why do people always assume that a supposed (it might not even be the final price) in one country means something will be the same price in all countries?

Make the tires Athlon green, and then I'd buy it.

While the rest of the company readies for their new graphics card, fans can now buy AMD branded bicycles on their fan store in the link below, comes with 3 color options.
Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/big-navi-big-wheels-amd-sells-mountain-bikes-now
https://amdfanstore.com/amd-custom-mountain-bike/
Thoughts: Since I already have a completely fine and working off-brand mountain bike I have no interest in getting this. However those color options for wheels are a nice touch. And from the specs I think most bike experts would rate this ride pretty poorly as well.

I've had it since launch as well. I'm not complaining.

A friend of a friend refused to wait for the event recently, and bought a 2080Ti last week!

Digital Foundry got a 3080 early to do some initial testing on. While they couldn't directly say what the FPS was, they gave relative performance improvements based off the 2080, so a quick spreadsheet with some simple math shows a rough estimate of performance.
The downside is, I've had to pull these figures from random YT videos, so they aren't 100% and Nvidia still probably has some driver updates to do etc. Just a quick look. If anyone has a 2080 willing to benchmark I can put in some better figures.
 
The figures are still generally impressive, and most titles are capable of running 4k ultra at 60.

They better ditch the SUPER branding

Summary
Lenovo listed one of their Legion T7 Desktop systems as having a 3070ti. The card apparently features 16gb of gddr6 memory.
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
I think that super/ti versions of their cards with more vram would make sense for Nvidia to release. I was underwhelmed by the amount of vram especially in the 3080 and I think other people were too.
 
Sources
https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3070-ti-spotted-with-16gb-gddr6-memory

Nice, but I'd wait for third party testing before getting too excited.

Summary
 Today, Nvidia released more RTX 3080 footage. This time, it was Doom Eternal, running at 4k. They say that it is running at max settings, and has over 170FPS spikes, with lows of 90FPS. The video has comparisons to the 2080ti, in the benchmark.
(1:01)
 
This was the lowest FPS I could find.
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
Given that the 2080 TI was having 80FPS, with 100FPS spikes, this looks real nice. I just wish we could see the 3070 and 2080TI compaired, instead of 3080 and 2080ti.
 
Sources
 
 

Yeah, I have no idea how Fortnite works either. Just read the article and you're right it is indeed a custom map AMD had made. Even if it's a custom map hosted by AMD I'm sure Epic is getting something out of it.
I wonder if someone has made a custom map for Apple headquarters and added a vault filled with Tim Cook rolling around in a pile of 30% of all vBucks sold on iOS. That I would be interested in seeing.

I see news regarding RDNA2:

 
I see news regarding RDNA2 being teased in f0rTn1t3:

I wonder how much money Fortnite (Epic Games) make from putting these advertisements "Easter eggs" in their games.

Only a few days after Nvidia announced the 3000 series AMD's marketing team is swinging into action. In what was obviously a marketing stunt a streamer showed off an easter egg in a fan made AMD themed map for the popular game Fortnite.
 
To access a hidden message in the level players must enter the code "6000" while playing the map, obviously a reference to the fact RDNA 2 will be the 6000 series.
Doing so reveals the following message

 
For anyone interested in seeing it for themselves - https://hothardware.com/news/amd-big-navi-easter-egg-discovered-in-fortnite-map
Source - https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-6000-big-navi-teased-in-fornites-easter-egg
 
Things are going to get very interesting in the next few weeks. I'm excited to see what AMD can bring to the fight.

Historical initial MSRP of the top tier cards are as follows.
Excludes Dual GPU cards and OC'ed specials. (feel free to correct me on anything listed, just provide links as proof... cheers)
 
Launch Year ------- GPU ------------ Price ---- With Inflation
 
2000 --- GeForce 2 Ti --------------- $500 ---- $750
2001 --- GeForce 3 Ti500 -----------$350 ----$515
2002 --- GeForce 4 Ti4600 ---------$400-----$575
2003 --- GeForce FX 5950 Ultra ---$500-----$705
2004 --- GeForce 6800 Ultra -------$500 -----$685
2005 --- GeForce 7900 GTX -------$500 -----$665
2006 --- GeForce 8800 GTX -------$600 -----$770
2008 --- GeForce 9800 GTX+ -----$230 -----$275   (no this isnt a typo)
2009 --- GeForce GTX 285 --------$400 -----$485
2010 --- GeForce GTX 480 --------$500 -----$600
2011 --- GeForce GTX 580 --------$500 ---- $575
2012 --- GeForce GTX 680  -------$500 -----$565
2013 --- GeForce GTX 780 Ti -----$700 -----$775
2015 --- GeForce GTX 980 Ti ---- $650 -----$710
2017 --- GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ----$700 ----$740
2018 --- GeForce RTX 2080 Ti ---$1200 ---$1230
2020 --- GeForce RTX 3090 ------$1500 --- $1500
 
Spot the outliers.
 
Now we can argue and debate about the 3090 being a Titan or not, if it is then fine, but we should then accept that a 3080ti is to release in the future as the 3080 isnt close enough in performance to the 3090 (as per Nvidias release event graphs) to be the top tier gaming card. (all previous gen Titans had a gaming card that was near identical in performance).
As such this leaves Nvidia the chance to either do what they have done in the past, which is release the new x80ti at the same prices as the x80 and drop the x80 price.... or do what they seem more likely to do nowadays and increase the x80ti price to somewhere between the 3080 and 3090, likely $900-$1000.
 
~$700 (in todays currency) are not uncommon as we can see, but above that is unacceptable.
 
Hope this clears up the debate over price.
 

Press F for all those who payed premium for the RTX 2080 Ti.

F************

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

For what Samsung "Pro" drives normally cost I don't see much reason for a 250GB model. If you just want a cheap 250GB OS drive there's probably much cheaper alternatives. 
Quite disappointed it only goes up to 1TB models as well. Would have liked to see some higher capacity models.

Reading that part made me feel like this is an announcement of the 980 Pro-ish.
 

I do not like this. It should be called the 980 Evo instead. I know TLC has come a long way, but I still prefer MLC (or if I can get my paws on it, SLC).

Without an official announcement to the media, Samsung quietly made the new line of 980 PRO SSD storage devices ifo available on their site.
 
 
So, essentially the new 980 PRO is 970 EVO with turbo-charged PCIe 4.0 controller.
 
Sources
https://www.guru3d.com/news_story/samsung_980_pro_pcie_gen_4_m_2_ssd_has_been_launchedrated_at_7000_mbsec_reads.html

I thought the same until I used DuckDuckGo and realized how shitty Google is now. The results on Google are all filtered, promoted, ads, and paid. You'll search for something and 4 ads are shown and the top result is paid to be there, unlike DDG where it actually gets the results from a proper index. The same goes for Google images. It's terrible now with the scaling and not allowing you to save the full res image without manually going to the website. I dropped Google 5 years ago and it is amazing how bad it is