Latest Comments by CatKiller
AMD announce the Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT
16 June 2020 at 2:17 pm UTC

QuoteOn the subject of cooling, AMD say the AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT comes with a Wraith Spire cooler but the other two AMD suggest looking elsewhere for better cooling "with a minimum 280mm radiator or equivalent air cooling".

That is sensible. AMD aren't in the heatsink business, and there are lots of other companies that are. The lower performance processors coming with an adequate heatsink is a big advantage for their customers, since it removes a potential headache, but enthusiasts are going to want the choice of going with water-cooling, or big heatsinks with big fans to reduce noise, or some other thing. At that tier, the one-size-fits-all solution is to leave it up to the customer.

Not lying about their TDP numbers and sticking with AM4 (even if not all AM4 processors will work in all AM4 motherboards) have also made it easier to be confident in the cooling market. Manufacturers can concentrate on making their products better rather than having to rework the connector every year, and customers can keep using their (potentially quite expensive) cooling solution if they want when they upgrade.

EVERSPACE 2 sure does look shiny in the new Alpha footage
14 June 2020 at 6:21 pm UTC Likes: 5

I think it's worth remembering that the people selling Rocket League (Epic) said that the people who made Unreal Engine (Epic) had done such a terrible job at making a cross-platform game engine that they needed to give a full refund to all of their customers on two of the platforms they'd released on. That is quite a strong statement from them about their level of competence.

Star Labs reveal their new Linux-powered Star LabTop Mk IV
12 June 2020 at 10:25 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI actually wish I had a screen for my desktop that I could flip sideways (ie upright) and have the picture follow like on a phone.

As well as the one iiari found, both my monitors (both Dells, both 16:10) can swivel into portrait mode. You need to manually set the display to portrait mode, though, since they don't have accelerometers.

AMD slides show Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA 3 GPUs before 2022
11 June 2020 at 10:50 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI remember reading years ago that circuit sizes were, or would be, starting to run into fundamental physical problems in being basically just too thin to keep the little electrons from wandering between what's trying to be separate "wires".


That already happened. It's why we have multiple cores rather than faster processors. We got to 3 GHz pretty quickly, and then slowly managed to crawl up to sometimes, maybe, for brief periods, getting close to 5 GHz over the course of two decades.

As you scale things down if you want to switch faster then you need a lower switching voltage. But, as it turns out, low voltages with small features are the same as the voltages that just leak out on their own, so your 1s and 0s become indistinguishable from each other.

QuoteBut they still keep shrinking things, 5nm coming up . . .

Not easily. Intel have been failing to do 10 nm for years. Features are etched by focusing light through a mask, and there's a limit to how much you can focus light. We passed the point where features were smaller than the wavelength of the light being used a while back, and lenses are opaque to light with shorter wavelengths, so you need to focus it with other methods instead.

QuoteI wonder if at this point the actual shrinkage is smaller than the change in definition makes it seem just because if they pack any closer things stop working.

The manufacturing process node name used to refer to the size of the features. Then the size of the smallest feature. Then a size that was a bit like the size of the features. And then it didn't really mean anything, except which generation of process a particular semiconductor was made with.

TSMC's 12 nm is about as dense as Intel's 14 nm - how many things you can fit on a chip of a given size. Both of them get various numbers of pluses for how much you can squeeze them without changing the fundamental process, since switching to a new process is both hard and very expensive. TSMC's 7 nm is about the same as the 10 nm that Intel didn't really get to work. TSMC's 5 nm will probably be about the same as an Intel 7 nm, if either manage it. The light used for it will probably be Extreme Ultra-Violet.

The itch.io charity bundle hits over $4 million and now over 1,500 items inside
11 June 2020 at 12:36 pm UTC

Quoting: toojaysI'd like to be able to add selected Windows Itch games to Steam so my son can access them from family mode without having access to my whole Itch library. Hopefully this is doable, but maybe I have too many layers of indirection. Suggestions welcome.

I've not done it with Itch games yet, but it's pretty straightforward to add games to Steam. I've got Minecraft and the GOG version of Witcher 3 added to Steam, and you can pick the Proton version in the usual way if it's a Windows game that you've added. I've not tried the family mode with them yet, though, since my little one just knows which games he's allowed to play from my account and when.

Star Labs reveal their new Linux-powered Star LabTop Mk IV
11 June 2020 at 12:25 pm UTC

16:10 means that my next laptop when it's time to upgrade will be a Dell. I hope other manufacturers can move away from 16:9 as well.

Steam has a Summer of Pride 2020 sale and event going on
10 June 2020 at 7:05 pm UTC Likes: 3

As an event it's mostly celebrating that all these people have gone a year without being murdered, and commemorating the ones who have. If you think that it's a good thing that they haven't been murdered, you should celebrate along with us. If you don't think that's a good thing, then there's nothing I could say that would fit within GoL's rules.

Steam has a Summer of Pride 2020 sale and event going on
10 June 2020 at 6:07 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: einherjarI am white and hetero, but why should I be proud because of that?

I'm not really sure why people are conflating race with it.

If you were gay, or bi, or trans, why should you be ashamed of that? Why might you not feel safe to reveal that aspect of yourself? That's why Pride events have to happen.

Steam has a Summer of Pride 2020 sale and event going on
10 June 2020 at 4:10 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: ZlopezBut I don't need any special month to be proud about myself. For me it's funny that somebody even needs this :-)

Only having one month when people aren't as marginalised as much or discriminated against as much isn't funny, it's tragic. Taking that as an opportunity to assert your privilege, and the fact that you aren't marginalised or discriminated against, would be a dick move, yes. But taking it as an opportunity to celebrate the existence of people that are different from you, and work to minimise the harms they experience, would be an entirely appropriate thing to do.

Steam has a Summer of Pride 2020 sale and event going on
10 June 2020 at 3:40 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: ZlopezSo if I am white heterosexual I can celebrate the pride month?
Why wouldn't you?