Jaxseven

I've just started a job as tech support for the high schools in my county and I've come across a bit of a challenge. In my school's media center we have 8 nearly decade old OptiPlexes all with 4GB of RAM and spinning HDD. They've been getting a lot of tickets for being slow since at idle the utilization is 100% for the HDD and 85%-90% of the RAM. My immediate thought is to upgrade the drives and memory, however we may not have funding to replace parts or computers.

We found some other computers in our school that work better and we may replace those so my second thought is to cannibalize some of the OptiPlexes we replace to upgrade the memory and configure the remaining slower computers into RAID0. Can anyone confirm whether or not they've been able to configure on a hardware level RAID0 on OptiPlex models 3010 and 3040?

5 minutes ago, MageTank said:

GPD has a history of doing shady stuff like this. They changed the shipping BIOS on the GPD Win Max because the advertised memory speed of 3733 was unstable, so they decided to change the speed and not warn any of the backers of this change. This wouldn't be too problematic if not for the fact that the iGPU scales pretty heavily with memory speed and the 3200 profile they flashed is pretty mediocre.

 

They also had an issue on the same GPD Win Max with a large dark square appearing in the center of the screen:

 

Mine has the exact same issue too and they've done nothing to address it.

 

I enjoy the creativity of their products, but as a company they are pretty scummy. Very little quality control efforts and almost non-existent customer support. This is completely ignoring the fiasco that was their original shipping promises that ended up getting delayed several months with little communication as to why.

Yeah they did that same sort of changing without announcement with the WiFi modules in the original Win 3 units. When they did correct the issue with new Win 3 models they had much slower SD readers in those units so no matter what you got screwed in some area of the product. I thankfully have had a mostly painless experience compared to a lot of people but that's because I read all the horror stories before I got hands on with the unit.

27 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

GPD make great stuff, but unfortunately that's the typical response from Chinese companies who don't understand Western markets, seen the exact same with other companies in a similar position.

I'd like to argue that their stuff while impressive at times, is not of high quality. My Win 3 had loose thumb stick caps pretty soon after I received it to the point of falling off if lightly brushed. It was virtually unplayable due to the caps shifting underneath my thumbs when in use. I eventually gave in and bought replacement caps from their(?) AlliExpress page except it gave me no description of quantity of caps. I ordered two packs and ended up with eight replacement caps as there's four per pack which is on me more than them.

Fast forward to last week when someone had this same issue but GPD support wasn't giving them anything and there were no caps on AlliExpress anymore. I reached out to the Reddit user and shipped him my extra 4 pack. The user was overjoyed by the gesture but it's concerning the only way they solved the issue was pure luck. I can also say the plastic shell of the Win 3 is quite soft as it's scuffed up by the included dock by the USB-C port.

Summary

News site GamingOnLinux’s Twitter account recently posted they were blocked by the Chinese handheld company’s Twitter page after accusing them of taking YouTube footage of Steam Decks without credit to use in marketing for GPD devices. Liam Dawe describes the situation as such.

Quote

Recently, they started taking various Steam Deck videos from YouTube creators, sticking them together with a look at their own devices and not crediting any of the people who put the work into those videos. On top of that, GPD has been attaching a "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" license to the videos, again, without permission from the original creators.

When Liam tweeted this to GPD’s official Twitter account, instead of any type of response he was immediately blocked by the company. After noticing this, Liam proceeded to post a follow up tweet and a write up on his Linux gaming focused news site. Liam mentions he would’ve been open to exploring Linux on one of GPD’s devices however after these events brings the company’s integrity into question.

My thoughts

As I’ve mentioned in my last GPD post I was a customer of GPD backing the Win 3 and I’m completely in the camp of GamingOnLinux here. I’ve watched GPD’s moves heavily from the announcement of the Win 3 to now and it’s safe to say describing GPD as desperate is accurate. The company does not handle criticism well and will go as far as resorting to bribery unhappy customers with heavy discounts on upcoming GPD devices to get them to stay quiet at least in the cast with the GPD backers who were organizing chargebacks on the Win 3 due to received the wrong WiFi chip. All of that is detailed in a Reddit post about shifting attitudes in GPD’s subreddit. 

Sources

GPD are getting quite desperate against the Steam Deck - GamingOnLinux by Liam Dawe

Video from GamingOnLinux’s official YouTube showing proof.

Latest GN tweet from the thread:

Quote

Additionally, if you bought an open box or refurbished item and they refused to take it back for damage caused before you received it, that would be helpful as well. egg@gamersnexus.net

Thank you!

Summary

Gamers Nexus recently announced on their Tweeter they will be flying out to Newegg’s headquarters to confront them about the recent RMA scandal amongst others. GN’s decision to do this was based on various stories from users about similar situations and includes alluding to an whistleblower emails. The full Twitter statement is as follows:   

Quote

 We decided to book a flight to California to visit Newegg this week. We have informed @Newegg that we will be arriving at their doorstep with cameras and that this is the company's opportunity to have a discussion. We're just letting you all know in case they put PR spin out. Newegg was not a part of this decision. We will be there whether or not they show up to the meeting -- but we're flying across the country and will make it on time, so we hope they come out of their front doors. We will afford Newegg the opportunity to explain itself, but after seeing customer complaints and receiving insider emails this past week, we have decided it is best to take our questions to their doorstep. Thank you to our Patreon and GN Store supporters for making this type of journalism possible.

My thoughts

Newegg has been trying to contact Steve throughout this mess and I think Newegg is very well aware how far these tech channels can reach so there’s clearly some fires at Newegg right now. It’s all damage control from here so I expect there will be PR spin along with only the PR department greeting Steve out front if they meet him out front. Just because Steve shows up at their door, there’s a chance Newegg never comes out of the building.

A while back there was a big trans rights protest out front of the BBC HQ over BBC’s coverage of trans rights issues. There was a very large turnout and well documented on Twitter, however despite how newsworthy the protest was the BBC never reported it and never came out of the building. Instead they later on said they had a duty to report news all over the world and just couldn’t spare any manpower to cover the trans rights BBC protests as there was more newsworthy things to report.

Reason I bring this up is we know Steve doesn’t take BS and I’m sure Newegg knows this. If the company sees at as a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” moment then they may not come out to face the music. Instead they may spin it as, “Well we’re just so busy with the insane amount of orders and interest in our products to take time out of our day to answer questions from someone looking to make a hit piece about us.” Unless Newegg has some big scapegoat I don’t see any argument they could make that will look good for them or Steve will accept.

Sources

 Gamers Nexus Twitter thread announcement

Gamers Nexus latest Newegg Video (at time of writing)

25 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

i didn't put my 3ds or vita in the pocket, but i'd still carry them around and play on the go

I will say one perk to the Win 3 is the size. It's fairly close to the size of the Switch Lite (though much thicker and heavier) and fits nicely in a very small sling bag I have. Still doesn't outweigh my issues with the device, but the size is one thing I'll miss when I switch to the Steam Deck.

2 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Valve has cut the price of the Steam Deck to the bone, because that's the only price tag most gamers will swallow.  The other devices are in 'luxury device' territory.  They're in the $900-$1300 range.  The Steam Deck is less than half that for the base unit.

I definitely agree with everything you said. The price for my unit was roughly $950 (which would've been $1300+ if I wasn't a backer) and it was a hard sell for me but my biggest driving force was my massive Steam and emulation library. I have many games that will never come to the Switch and even if they did most likely they'll retail for $60 when I already own them but cannot play them in a format that is more convenient.

Along with that, the thought of being able to whip out a handheld PC (a powerful one at that) on the fly for whatever I need seemed really cool. I love my iPad but hate the artificial limitations of iPadOS and I don't like to carry much with me so having my iPad and Win 3 covers basically every computing need I have in an albeit least practical way. I think there will be some edge cases for other users these other devices will fill and the customer base for these micro PCs were already such a small niche I don't really see the Steam Deck stealing that many people away from those companies.

47 minutes ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

almost every switch like device in this category don't really have the necessary GPU horsepower in order to run more complex 3d games such as The Witcher 3.

less graphically demanding games such as indie titles or older games worked in it's favor since they don't need much but when you bought one of these things you went in knowing that it's not gonna be able to play doom or GTA5 (at least not without modifications to the games)

Quick clarification: I can run Doom 2016, Witcher 3, and GTA V on my Win 3 at 20w/out of the box TDP with GTA and Doom at least running 60 FPS on low settings. This is not to defend or champion GPD and the Win 3 but rather to emphasize iGPU are getting really good as AMD's RDNA2 APUs show us. I will still most likely be selling my Win 3 once I can get a Steam Deck.

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Why would you ever buy the thing except to play pirate games.

 

At least Nintendo, supports their hardware, for a VERY long time, and are so common you can replace the entire unit. You buy a SteamDeck or a Win3, and you'll be bin'ing it March 30 2025 when the battery dies.

 

I bought my Win 3 to play my 1000+ Steam Library on the go in a more convenient method than a laptop. From my experience gaming laptops do not lend themselves well to certain situations like commuting or long hospital stays and for me the latter is a far more common occurrence than for most. I also didn't want to continue buying games for Switch I already own and some Switch ports are just no good. I'm pretty confident Valve would have some service to replace the Steam Deck batteries so I'm sure the device would last longer than 3 years.

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

Valve is one of the few corporations that i put my trust in (Alongside with EVGA and Fractal Design)

I have a Valve Index and one of my base stations broke. Contacted support and after describing the situation they quickly got me a replacement base station after I sent them my broken one. The whole ordeal was less than 2 weeks and it was painless. If I have any hardware problems with the Steam Deck I'm pretty confident they'll give their customers the white glove treatment compared to other companies. That is to say if they can keep up with the amount of demand there might be.

7 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

GPD should be selling cheaper handhelds, IMO their products were very overpriced for the hardware you get.

But even with their GPD XP, their latest and cheapest hardware, it's still underwhelming when compared to the competition such as the Ayn Odin. In my Reddit post about GPD I go over a lot of their quality issues and while I got my Win 3 for comparatively cheap because of the early backer price, I still feel let down in key areas of the product. A number of people had it much worse than me.

10 minutes ago, Error 52 said:

There is some truth to the fact that Valve is very intentionally undercutting their competitors here in a way that doesn't really let them fight back - at least as of yet - but boy howdy "If you install Windows you can run pirated games" is certainly a statement to be making.

 

Plus there are torrents out there for a lot of games that come pre-setup with Wine and everything anyway. At least according to my uuuuhhhhhh friend.

I get that it's a scary time to have a much bigger company undercut you but with GPD they do have other product lines to fall back on so it seems silly to me to make such a post. If I was GPD I'd focus on their non-gaming lines while going back to the drawing board to come up with gaming handhelds that satisfy a niche the Steam Deck isn't serving.

I also found the pirated games need Windows thing baffling since Wine and Proton exist. Some older games even work better on Linux than Windows.

15 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

How much longer until all the Steam Deck review embargoes are lifted, again?

February 25th I believe for the software review. The hardware review is technically lifted but what is hardware without software?

Summary

Back during the announcement of the Steam Deck in August, the official news for GPD in China made a post claiming the Steam Deck was inferior to their Win 3 and Win Max 2021 on the level of technical specs and how Valve’s Linux distro SteamOS would be a closed platform. By the end of the article the company essentially say do not trust “the capitalists” and says users will need to install Windows anyway to play their pirated games. This article has recently circulated Reddit on r/SteamDeck and /gpdwin to some ridicule from GPD’s western consumers. From the “word-for-word” translated Reddit post such highlights include the following. 

Quote

 [In reference to a comparison of CPU specs between the Deck and Win devices] As you can see above, the Steam Deck is using a custom APU, the CPU part is still ZEN2 architecture, there is nothing outstanding...

 

From its low efficiency in rendering games and its announced 15W TDP power consumption limit, I can clearly say that the overall performance of Steam Deck is not the level of GPD WIN 3.

 

Don't kid yourself! The only reason Gabe created this product is to make a closed system, not to let you install Windows to play pirated games!

The Reddit post was later updated to include comments on GPD’s post from their Chinese consumers though the redditor notes they did not do a word-for-word translation due to time and the amount of slang used. They not most commenters feel the post is hilarious yet shameful in some following quotes:

Quote

 

(579 likes) Pirated games are always a grey area, it's fine you talk about it among your groups, but putting it in the official announcements??? You're telling pirating games is an advantage and paying actual money for a game is a disadvantage?? What the fuck is your company talking about. (vaguely accurate translation)

GPD replied: (9 likes) Let me tell you, as long as there would be a pirated equivalent online, I will not pay the real game, people will not pay for the real game. I never say pirating is an advantage, but I do believe if you're able to find a pirated version then you definitely should play it, you're better than 99% of the people. Do you think telling the truth about the phenomenon is showing off?

My thoughts

I backed the GPD Win 3 prior to the announcement of the Steam Deck in January and still currently have mine. As I’ve been watching coverage of the Steam Deck I’ve been running my own benchmarks and tests on my unit and unsurprisingly the Win 3 is objectively worse than the Steam Deck in terms of performance. It is especially funny to me when in GPD’s post they had one line about drivers and speaking from experience the Intel graphics drivers are maddening. Typically the only reliable aspect of my Win 3 is emulation as most emulators work well but games are still after over a year hit or miss. Halo Infinite and God of War are two recent examples that were broken on launch.

The above is more a fault of Intel Graphic Drivers rather than GPD, however in a lengthy Reddit post I made discussed the various issues with their products either breaking or not having the correct parts as advertised. My unit was part of a batch of Win 3s that had a much older WiFi chip than what was advertised on their IndieGoGo page which had it’s own drama. I suggest reading my Reddit post for the full story about the WiFi chip which was honestly a long saga that ended in people picking between basically hush money or filing chargebacks for their Win 3. My Win 3 dock’s RJ45 port seems to not function and the thumb stick caps immediately became loose on my unit and I was forced to buy replacement caps to be able to comfortably game on my Win 3. I am frustrated in my choice to back the Win 3 partly due to the announcement of the Steam Deck shortly after receiving my unit but mostly due to seeing the Aya Neo seemingly being a superior product in terms of quality and reliability. I think my disappointment in GPD is far greater because of the fact that there aren’t many companies making handheld (Aya, GPD, OneNetbook, certainly not Dell) so to have one deliver poor quality products hurt more for people like me that are excited for this new form factor. I’m currently in “After Q2 2022” for my Steam Deck.

Sources

Reddit post with translated GPD article
Original GPD post

My Reddit post discussing GPD’s missteps with the Win 3 and drama in 2021

I did see a thread with a similar issue back in 2017 but as per the message below the thread, it recommended I make a new thread. I am making a gaming setup for my partner and I have my old Razer Blade Stealth 2016 and an Aorus 1070 eGPU. I have verified the eGPU works on a separate computer (that computer has 2 lanes for Thunderbolt), the USB-C cables, and the GPU itself all work. The Stealth's Thunderbolt bolt also works as it can be paired with a Core without issue. When I plug in the Aorus eGPU to the Stealth is when the wackiness starts. It will constantly connect and disconnect until I unplug it or shut down the laptop. Tried installing the Aorus utility and then plugging it in, no change. Tried booting with the eGPU connected, no change. Searching the forum lead me to the "Aorus 1070 Gaming Box with Razer Blade Stealth 2016" thread in 2017 with the last post from @harrycar saying:

Quote

my solution was to wait until my RBS was at 90% battery then trying it - and hazah it worked! 

It must be the power-draw preferences in the card!

This doesn't seem to work for me, as my battery was around 80% - 90% at the time of my attempt. I will say I had battery issues having to replace the battery myself (thanks for nothing Razer) so I don't know if this would affect anything but I have a feeling this is more driver based. Does anyone know of any solutions? I'd prefer to get the Gaming Box working over the Core due to the size and space. 

1 hour ago, Stahlmann98 said:

Afaik most games automatically enable surround. Some have dedicated options for 5.1, 7.1, stereo, Dolby Atmos, etc. But if a game is neither of those, you're out of luck.

I did find a list of surround sound enabled games through a link on the PC Gaming Wiki, and all the games I tested were from there, but I didn’t have time to actually play through the games but instead just check the in-game audio settings. 

1 hour ago, Shammikit said:

Just a suggestion, when it comes to hellblade, play it using some good headphones. The experience is really awesome that way.   

I have played through it with my G933 and it’s definitely a game that needs headphones. I only mention it since I know 3D sound is a core aspect of the game which is why I figured there’d be a dedicated setting for it. I’ll just have to play through some games to see if anything is different. I’m going through The Evil Within with my fiancée which is listed to support surround sound so fingers crossed. 

I have a console PC in my living room and finally took the time to configure it with my 4K TV properly. After some googling, I figured out I could get 5.1 surround sound enabled with my sound bar if I hooked it up via an HDMI. It’s a little hacky since my PC thinks it’s a second monitor, but I was able to test the 5.1 sound in the audio settings. I then decided to start up a game to enable surround sound, but found the audio options limited. Even in Hellblade I couldn’t find a dedicated sound configuration option. Is there a trick to enabling surround sound in games? Do games automatically configure surround sound when you configure your Windows audio to 5.1? Any games I should use to confirm I have working 5.1 sound?

1 hour ago, OddGreyFox211 said:

You can hardly build a pc as small as a console with the same power. For that you would need a comparable apu and amd wont release one, since that would make consoles (even more) obsolete.

Not exactly. I built a PC console inside a Silverstone RVZ03 that's only a bit bigger than an old 360. It still fits in my entertainment center and has a full sized GTX 1070ti and a 6700K. The only specific hardware I needed to make it fit was a SFX PSU but that's not hard to come by. Unless you really wanted a micro console PC, my build is as small as a console and has good enough specs.

22 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

You'd be silly to not get a Ryzen-based gaming laptop.

My friend asked me to recommend a gaming laptop for $1500 and I without even thinking recommended him the Asus ROG G14. I told him to wait and I needed to put in a little more time to research, but then I looked through everything and said, "Shoot, maybe there really isn't anything better right now." I just couldn't find anything that competes at that price for the performance.

34 minutes ago, Sauron said:

But why? Running Linux on a console only makes sense as a curiosity, it has no practical advantages over just buying a PC (if it does run it's probably not going to do so very well anyway).

No, it barely even works.

I remember back with OtherOS on the PS3 was a big deal, and it truthfully was to a handful of people. The issue was I believe Sony only did it to avoid some tax or fit some type of classification of computer for the PS3. I don't honestly know of anyone that used Linux PS3 other than like you said a curiosity. I'll probably go down a YouTube rabbit hole later tonight researching this topic to see what people actually used it for outside of installing Libre Office on.

2 hours ago, OddGreyFox211 said:

Just wanted to hear about the chances. Like maybe it's worth to pick up a ps5 day one and never update the firmware and wait for an exploit. Also wanted to hear about how it works on current gen, like can it run games without problems etc

Well, "games without problems" would certainly be dependent on your definition. Tux Kart or a port of Doom (the original), maybe. Current games definitely not. Console hardware is highly specialize and don't have open source drivers for people to develop improvements on. I've been hacking a lot of my consoles lately, and while certain consoles like my Vita can do some amazing stuff, Linux really isn't one of them. The biggest use I've found is hacking a console to make game backup ROM files to emulate on a beefier system. RPCS3 has come a long way and Asura's Wrath is now playable in 4K, but ripping the game would probably be the only thing I'd do with a hacked PS3, and even then that generation is HD so I don't have any issues connecting to my TV compared to a GameCube or SNES. It'll probably just be worth it to pick up a new console one day just to play games on. I bought my PS4 for $150 off a coworker and my Xbox One S for $170 with a gift card, and for that price I'm fine with them only playing games.

This really pissed me off to see this not only because it's super scummy to implement a kernel level Anti-Cheat program for a game no one talked about the multiplayer for well after the refund window closes, but also because Doom has been sort of the showcase for DXVK Linux gaming. There was even a sale on the game the week prior to this happening! Confession, I haven't finished Doom 2016 because I have a massive backlog and I began my transition to Linux part of the way through the game. I held off buying it because I've recently gotten into retro collecting as I'm nostalgic for plug and play consoles. I already felt like I was relenting control of my own computer when I would reboot into Windows to be able to play a multiplayer game like Dead by Daylight, but now another game with kernel level access for the excuse to crack down on cheaters? Sorry, I'll take the cheaters over losing any more control over my PC. It's the exact reason I switched to Linux in the first place.

So I recently switched my board over to something with a modern NVME slot, and after all this hype about NVME storage on the new consoles I guess I should buy one.

... NVME SSD, not a PS5. Ha, thank Sweeny.

Currently my set up is, well, complicated. I have 2 500GB SATA SSDs, one is my Windows install, the other Manjaro Linux. Then I have a 4TB that I've partitioned in half because Steam really doesn't like NTFS on Linux. I've decided that the golden number of drives in my rig is three. One NVME, and 2 SSD drives otherwise I will begin limiting what cases I could use and I've found out the more drives and partition present on boot up, the slower the boot up. There's two issues I'm facing while deciding how to go about this. One is that how do I handle downsizing from 4TBs to an amount of storage that isn't going to cost me an entire new computer yet give me enough space for next gen games that will probably have monster install sizes? I did plan to invest in a NAS for Nextcloud/Plex/Phone backups, so add that to the cost. The second is trying to figure out how truthful fast NVME storage is going to benefit games. The only affordable option I see for NVME is 1TB and since I don't really want to dual boot, only one OS will be on that drive if that. The alternative is to install my games on to the NVME drive for next gen games, but again I may partition that. Is anyone really convinced gaming on NVME will make a big difference compared to a good SATA SSD in the coming console generation?

51 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The solution for the true paranoid is no smartphone. A dumb phone that runs an embedded Linux and can be hardened.  Know one guy like that.

Yeah I get that sort of thing a lot in privacy forums and chats I frequent. It just doesn't work for a normal person, especially if you work for a big company. I've gone further than anyone I know in life, but honestly deleting Facebook and switching to AOSP is much further than people I know. Once the Librem 5 is a more consumer ready product maybe we'll be there, but it'll be hard. Web Apps and AOSP is the best I got right now.

So easiest safe bet is AOSP with latest security patches and FOSS apps? I try to make it works at least. Doesn't always though.