It's time for the PCPer Mailbag, our weekly show where Ryan and the team answer your questions about the tech industry, the latest and greatest GPUs, the process of running a tech review website, and more!
On today's show:
00:50 – Rumble gaming chairs?
02:18 – SSD for VMs?
04:08 – Playing old games in a virtual machine?
05:54 – Socketed GPUs?
09:08 – PC middlemen?
11:02 – NVIDIA tech demos?
13:10 – Raven Ridge motherboard features?
14:45 – x8 and x16 PCIe SSDs?
17:50 – Ryzen 2800X and Radeon RX 600?
19:53 – GeForce Partner Program?
21:14 – Goo goo g'joob?
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I have an old Asus ROG G20
I have an old Asus ROG G20 gaming system and I have never been a “Gamer”. I bought the system for Programming and video editing. I have 1 1080P HDMI monitor and 1 34,400 x 1440 monitor. Can I add another monitor that is different than these?
Bob
Salem, OR
The best possible AM4
The best possible AM4 motherboard/s(Video outputs/etc) that is/are tested and Certified(Raven Ridge guaranteed on the Box) to work with Raven Ridge APUs is what I’m looking for. MBs with no extra hoops to jump through like firmware updating first required before the MB will boot/work at all with RR APUs as well as not having any other issues that may be present on pre Raven Ridge AM4 MBs when used with RR APUs.
So it’s not only having the video outputs it’s also gettng a motherboard that has the properly vetted firmware factory installed to boot up with Raven Ridge out of the box. Ditto for any MB’s hardware vetting using Actual Production RR APUs during the MB’s Hardware/Firmware vetting process.
And does the 400 chipsets series support more PCIe 3.0 connectivity than the 300 series chipsets that had some slower PCIe 2.0 connectivity along with PCIe 3.0 on the remainder. So are all the PCIe lanes on the 400 series AM4 MBs going to be PCIe 3.0 with no slower 2.0 lanes used at all like where used with the 300 series chipsets.
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P.S. I think that a Ryzen 2800X SKU may not be offered by AMD because AMD will want folks that need even more performance than what the 2700X offers to instead be moving up to using AMD’s Threadripper offerings. Maybe it also has something to do with the 1800X not having as much overclocking headroom so folks who like to overclock went with the 1700/X series instead.
I have always thought that the top end part in any series should be designed to come out of the box with as little overclocking headroom as possible. And that part of that original attraction of overclocking in the first place was in fact in getting a lower binned/lower cost part and trying to get that part to perform like the higher end part and the overclocker saving money and getting their satisfaction that way. But It appears that now, after Intel decided to monetize overclocking under its K series branding, that everybody appears to be dissatisfied that the highest end parts have little or not overclocking headroom.
All of AMD’s offerngs are overclockable to some degree with AMD not locking off features on AMD’s CPU/APU/GPU SKUs mostly. But Overclocking has become an eSport in and of itself and Intel may have just chosen to under-bin its top end K series parts more in order to give it’s K series customers a sense of satisfaction but that overclockers of Intel CPUs have to pay extra to get.
Hey bud, why don’t VR
Hey bud, why don’t VR manufacturers just use hardware upscalers to take low-res input to super high-res eye displays? Screen-door effect could be eliminated with no hit to current-gen GPU performance. Maybe this is Google’s plan with their VR?
Cheers!
Jim Lahey
You guys cover a lot of
You guys cover a lot of steering wheels but never flight sticks or gamepads. Why is that?
Anonymous
Most reviews from the online
Most reviews from the online websites are somehow funded by a free sample, or ads and or other sorts of funding. But it’s usually by obtaining a free review sample and to a lesser degree the paid to plug a product sort of arrangement. Some folks are even remunerated to refrence other reviews done on other similar websites so the product’s maker does not have the extra expense of having to send out as many review samples at some greater cost to the product’s maker. Many websites have taken to doing this to fill out their daily run of articles as some of those folks on staff need to be spending most of their time conducting benchmarks and that leaves little time for writing non-benchmarking articles or conducting as many benchmarks on products as one site is able to conduct.
I’m seeing more and more of that pateron sort of arrangement where websites actually want to obtain a free review sample but can not do so because of limited free review sample availablitiy.
I’d love to see a bunch of review sites pool their resources and raise the funds necessary to create a review sample lending library among the assoicated review sites that have entered into such an arrangement. And these review sites all able to get access to review samples that are directly purchased from some random retail outlet with a good price on the product. That way there can be a maybe non-profit entity set up as a review sample lending library with all the library’s contributing members able to reserve a review sample for benchmarking over the long term as needed for short periods of time.[Pipe Dream]
Look at websites like Phoronix and others that are doing Linux OS focused benchmarking and that’s not as revenue intensive so there is always a need for review samples either loaned form readers or obtianed through purchase.
Linux will become very necessary the closer it gets to 2020 and 7’s EOL!
If I where lucky enough to be one of those big lottery winners I’d fund a college or university institute via a non-profit trust. The non-profit would be dedicated to PC/Laptop oriented benchmarking via open source benchmarking software and engineered testing mules that are designed to remove the unknown benchmarking variables and produce accurate and objective benchmarking and power usage testing results. Non-Profit institutes can also apply for government research grants from the Department of Sicence and Technology, DOE, othere relevent public and private sources that are not assoicated with any of the products being tested makers. [Not likely as the odds are too great against for winning the lottery and also our educational instutions have become so compromised by the Big Technology Interests that there may be too much resistance from the vested interests against any objective testing of PCs/laptops by any college or university institute]
/Wall-O-Text end!
If nothing else, your random
If nothing else, your random anon usernames are humorous, otherwise
TL;DR
I knew you would be the first
I knew you would be the first to object! [Bugs Bunny begins to fiddle he’s callen’ this square dance while he riddles]
Now grab your partner you smelly ol’ hicks circle round back and grab your sticks. Now beat each other across high forheads and beat each other hard on down into the ground. Now grab your sister and head for the church is marrying time she’ll be your Swife(Sister-Wife). [Fiddle: Wah Wah, Wah Wah Wah Waw, Wah Wah Waw Waw Waw!]
Now that brood of yours is some ChildraNewts thay got themselves some gills for underwater breath’en. They got themselves webbed hands and feet for swimming in that pond slime that oh so reeks. [Fiddle: Wah Wah, Wah Wah Wah Waw, Wah Wah Waw Waw Waw!]
Your Ma and Paw had the same arrangement that’s why you have your recessive genes expressed mental derangement! [Fiddle: Wah Wah, Wah Wah Wah Waw, Wah Wah Waw Waw Waw!]