Humanoid

Went through the Snow Bros remake on Switch. It sucks. Well, to be specific, the first 50 levels that are just reskins of the old game are okay. The extra 30 levels the new dev team added suck. Play the NES version instead.

Worth it if the weight of the game can be measured in kilograms, it's a big boy.

At the pace that actual meaningful DLC is being released for CK3, that's not going to be until next decade. And I use the word "meaningful" very loosely. Mostly the CK3 team has been just drip-feeding poorly scripted events that are pretty much thrown in by individuals working alone with no editorial oversight.

The 4080 has seen recent specials bringing it down from its $2219 AUD MSRP down to $1899 AUD, which would be low enough to start eating AMD's lunch if sustained. But it's only been one day so who knows? (For comparison the XTX MSRP is $1789 AUD, so the price difference is/was down to the equivalent of ~$70 USD) I suppose nVidia had more room to move here because they inflated their prices more in the first place. US price + tax + 15%, versus AMD doing US price + tax + 9%.

Or is it the exact opposite of that, lack of death?

I remember their Amnesia sequel was critically panned. Seems like they're good at walking simulators but have faltered when asked to do anything more complex than that.

RDNA 2 was reasonably clean, Navi 21 for the 6800 series and above, Navi 22 for the 6700 series, and Navi 23 for the 6600 series. And yes, the refreshes were simply clock boosts. For Ampere, it was GA102 for the 3080 and above, fine. GA104 though problematically started from the 3060 Ti through the 3070 series. Which left GA106 to serve as the plain 3060 and 3050. (None of these count mobile GPUs which are a complete mess that I don't even want to look at, let alone disentangle)

In hindsight, having a company name their motherboard the "LANparty" seems so absurd now, but that's what DFI were doing not much more than a decade ago, complete with bright orange highlights.

Yeah, I've been lucky to have avoided porch pirates so far despite dozens, probably hundreds of deliveries having been left at the front door - all day on occasion. Not that it didn't make me nervous, particularly when a couple of times it was for parts worth several hundred dollars. Probably even less risk now though as I have a new neighbour, an old retired guy, who spends all day tinkering in his garage with direct line of sight to my door.

So a 3060 Ti vs 3060 situation then. To be clear, I absolutely do think they should never have brought back the XTX naming scheme and that the XT should have been the 7800 XT. But I do think it's no more egregious than what the industry has already been doing for years. I get the sentiment, but I think $600 (or 60%) is more than "another few hundred". On the other hand, I have seen retailers here cut the 4080 price such that it was half the MSRP difference. It was a one-day special so it's gone now, but the equivalent of $1100 for the 4080 vs $1000 for the just-launched XTX did deflate AMD's balloon somewhat there.

Is it though? It's certainly not good, but an X doesn't carry the same implication as specifying a certain amount of VRAM. An X could mean anything, same as a 'Ti', and at least invites some investigation. The nVidia thing is more like discovering that a 600mL bottle of Coke not only has less Coke in it than a 1.25L bottle as one would expect, but it also tastes worse.

An AI could probably write the script of how this generation's launch went quite easily. See you all again for more of the same in 2024? Actually that might not be strictly true. nVidia would have gotten a big one-off boost this generation by switching from Samsung back to TSMC, so hindsight tells us that such a leap might be difficult to replicate. At least, that's what AMD might be hoping for. As for me? Well, when does The Witcher 4 launch? (I can easily see myself still using this 6800 non-XT through the next generation too, so maybe 2026? The only thing I play that challenges it is Cyberpunk, though it also "only" does 100-110fps in Euro Truck Sim 2. At 7680x1440, that is.)

The only time I played the Diablo series was D2 at a small LAN party I think (four people). I think I was a Barbarian who refused to wear any chest armour. Probably played for an hour or two? I think Total Annihilation was the go-to LAN game for my circle back then.

Generally about 5% difference if you average it across a broad spectrum of games. I wouldn't even contemplate doing anything until the Zen 4 3D CPUs are released and reviewed.

At this moment my ire is directed at Steam's new login interface that always defaults the "Remember Me" box every time you open it. Finally got around to adding the command-line switch that forces the old UI, but who knows how long that will last.

Yeah, I looked through Wikipedia's list of Activision games, but it doesn't include titles that are technically under their umbrella due to mergers and such.

You're not presenting a convincing argument against the merger by tempting me with a potential resurrection of that series. Other than that, they have what? Spycraft?

Hey, for them a 4.8 is better than a 5.1 because plenty of people like myself won't know if it's scored out of 5 or out of 10. Huh, I've just argued myself into believing that a score out of 100 is a better system than scoring out of 10. Until a game comes along and gets 9/100 of course.

Never even visited any of the apartments after I moved in with Judy.

I mean, it's not how you play the game, it's how you place the blame. And in this instance, the blame lies with Gorth.

Yeah. these monitors have an external power brick, the first such monitors I've owned. Slimmer display but more clutter, unfortunately. But I'm going to tape the bricks to the underside of my desk, so the final result should be fine. The big brick that's visible in the first photo is for the G920 wheel though. I'd give it similar treatment, but a wheel is a device that's more likely to be removed entirely at times, so not sure. The brick-like thing at the left edge of the screen is not a power brick, but my Loxjie A30 amp. Anyway, I ended up installing the other new monitor in the centre. This is because after seeing the old and new displays side by side for an hour or so, I do feel that there's a significant improvement in both colour and sharpness in the new ones, so yeah, the Asus gets shunted out to the left, which is my least-viewed monitor. Frankly, if I didn't want to try out 144Hz on multi-monitor Euro Truck Sim, I'd have used the even older Dell U2715 as the left monitor, because while it's only 60Hz, at least the picture is fantastic and the design is far sleeker and less obstrusive. (To be honest I've never really been happy with the purchase of the Asus monitor, but it came at a time I'd bought a brand spanking new i7-6700K + R9 290X system and wanted to try out adaptive sync for the first time. And the damn thing cost me almost $800 back then, ugh.)

Aside from that, I've only just bothered to check what that shield on some avatars means, and realise now we have triple redundancy in the space of, oh, about 10 square centimetres? EDIT:

So these new 8GB 3060s eh? Almost feels like the counterpart of the 4080, in that making them so horrifically bad (and confusing) would make the products above them sell better for fear of them being discontinued and missing out. The 4080 may have accelerated the sales of the 3080 and 3090 series, and indeed those seem to be in relatively short supply now, but there looks to be still plenty of 3060-3070 class cards around. The most insane part of this is that if they had gone for 6GB instead and retained the 192-bit bus, it'd probably be a far, far better product than this monstrosity of a 128-bit card we ended up with. Disgraceful.

I want to replace my modem-router but we're sort of in limbo here with the current connection being VDSL2 (100Mbit down 40 up). My Netgear D7000 drops out more than I'd like, but there are no suitable all-in-one replacements and truthfully I don't know where the problem with it lies, the modem bit or the router bit. Therefore I don't know if running it in modem-only mode and adding a new, modern WiFi 6 router would resolve the problem, or whether it'd just be a huge waste of money. The current government would like to eventually upgrade the infrastructure around here to proper fibre (no modem required), but who knows how many years that'll take. _______________ In the meantime, I've picked up a pair of discontinued LG 27GN880 monitors. These displays are fairly standard 27" 1440p 144Hz IPS monitors and the actual panels have no particular special properties that would make them a better buy than competing products. It may seem a very weird time for me to buy new IPS monitors with the new LG 27" OLEDs about a month away from release (in the US at least), and indeed I thought I was done buying LCD monitors for the rest of my life. But this was never about the displays themselves. So yes, besides the fact that I got them for about 10% less than the generally-accepted entry level for this type of monitor (such as the Gigabyte G27Q), this product's party trick is the LG Ergo stand. I'm in a bit of a spring cleaning mood, despite summer now being upon us, and I figured it would be a great time to declutter my desk. And while I'm only midway through the process, these progress pictures show the improvement. Shame I can't do anything about the huge DIY speaker stands, although I really should have painted them. Note also the rogue cable in the second picture, which is unfortunately because the standard length DisplayPort cables - both the ones I already own and those included with the monitor - are too short if I route them through the monitor pillar as intended. Still a very good design overall and neater looking than if I had bought one of those VESA standard adjustable monitor arms, which would probably also have cost me another $50AUD at least. For context I got these for a little over $350AUD each. A new gaming monitor with separate VESA arm would add up to $450+. In contrast, the MSRP of the new OLED monitors is expected to come to, oh, about $1600AUD. As a result, it was very easy to justify buying two of these and maybe run one OLED in the middle initially. Which brings me to my dilemma: I still have to install the second new monitor. Do I install it in the middle for now, given that it's theoretically a bit better than the existing Asus MG279 pictured? The Asus still a 1440p display and running at 144Hz (it's technically overclocked) but it has annoyingly thick bezels and is just a generally inferior panel, the design being around six years older than the LG. However I would then have to move it aside once I buy the new OLED in 1-12 months time. If I instead install the new monitor on the left, it would be an easy straight swap of the old Asus to the OLED in the future.

A Protocol buggier than Alpha. Who'd've thunk? I suppose you could even call it ...Pre-Alpha Protocol.