• Prices of SSDs are in free fall because (a) nobody is buying anything and (b) there isn't a cartel propping prices up.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Western Digital's 1TB SN770 - a basic but generally decent drive - has dropped from $90 at the beginning of January (and since it is still February that's less than two months ago) to $60 today.  The 2TB model is also great value at $120.
  
  Prices are expected to continue falling at a slower pace during the year.  Manufacturers are cutting production but since it takes months for wafers to go through the pipeline and turn into chips that get put into SSDs, that's going to take a while to have any effect.
  
  
  
• The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro is currently available for $154.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I'd suggest spending another five bucks and getting the Western Digital SN850X, because Samsung's drives have had some...  Problems, lately.

• The US government has blacklisted Inspur, Loongson, and 33 other Chinese tech companies.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Loongson makes crappy CPUs in China, for China.  Nobody wants them, not even China, except Russia.  China is stuck making chips at 14nm while Taiwan and South Korea are ramping up production on 3nm, but Russia is stuck at 65nm, which is 18 years out of date as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
  
  Inspur however is the largest server manufacturer you've never heard of, producing about 10% of the servers in the world.  That is going to cause some ripples.
  
  
  
• The Radeon 780M - the integrated graphics in, um...  The 7940HS, that's the one - is as fast as a GTX 1650 Ti or something.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's what the headline says, but the scores given in the article do not include the 1650 Ti, so take it with a pinch of pepper.  It's only 25% faster than the previous generation 680M, and for that it requires fast new 7500MHz LPDDR5X RAM, but it still it is 150% faster than Intel's best integrated graphics solution.
  
  
  
• Gigabyte's AERO 14 OLED BMF is a 14" laptop weighing 1.49kg (22,994 grains) with a 2880x1800 OLED display (you might have guessed that), an Intel 13700H CPU with 6 P cores and 8 E cores, a 1TB SSD, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one regular USB, HDMI 2.1, a microSD slot, a 1/8" audio jack, a separate power connector if you don't want to charge via Thunderbolt, Nvidia RTX 4050 graphics with 6GB of dedicated VRAM, the Four Essential Keys in their proper location....  And 16GB of soldered LPDDR5 RAM that is impossible to ever upgrade because fuck you that's why.  (Gigabyte)
  
  If they had a 32GB option, it would be the perfect small laptop.
  
  They do not have a 32GB option.
  
  There is a larger 16" model with a 3840x2400 OLED display, RTX 4060 or 4070 graphics options, and actual DIMM slots so that it's not instant e-waste.  But that's also 40% heavier.
  
  And 30% to 50% more expensive.

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 05 2023 08:38 AM (BMUHC)

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• The 7950X3D is not four times faster than the regular 7950X when using the integrated graphics.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The original story from PC Magazine has been updated to reflect the fact that the figures for the 7950X were originally taken with an outdated driver that gave radically lower than normal performance.
  
  The updated tests now show that the integrated graphics performance of AMD and Intel's desktop chips is basically identical.  AMD provides one sixth the performance of last year's laptop chips, where Intel provides one third the performance of this year's laptop chips, but AMD's laptop chips from last year had twice the graphics performance of Intel's chips from this year, so for example the racing game F1 22 gets exactly 33 fps at 1080p, lowest quality, whether you're on a 7950X, 7950X3D, or 13900K.
  
  Or a 13500, which seems like the best option from Intel's desktop lineup.  Six P cores and eight E cores at 65W.  I'm thinking of getting two 13500 systems rather than one big 7900X or 7950X system
  
  
  

Tech News

• If you want to get a 7950X3D or 7900X3D you might have to wait.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I checked my two regular fixers and both are out of the 7950X3D, while one of them still has the 7900X3D available.
  
  I'm not planning to buy either one, though.  There's notable benefit for non-gaming tasks and the required drivers make everything more complicated.  At least with Intel chips the P cores are always faster than the E cores.  On the X3D chips, which cores are faster varies with the application.
  
  
  
• If you need a 64 port 800Gb Ethernet switch chip, Marvell has you covered.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Yes, that's 51.2 terabits per second of switch bandwidth.  In a single chip.
  
  
  
• If you need a 64 port 800Gb Ethernet switch chip with integrated photon torpedoes, Broadcom has you covered.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Yes, that's 51.2 teratons of photnuclear payload.  In a single chip.
  
  
  
• A post-MWC roundup including a hands-on repair of that repairable Nokia phone.  (The Verge)
  
  In this case the "repair" consists simply of replacing the battery, but if it's something a tech journalist can do - in seven minutes - your dog can probably do the same.
  
  
  
• The Secret Service and ICE illegally spied on civilians.  A lot.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  "Was that wrong?", they asked.  "Should we not have done that?"

• Fixed the blog formatting.  Didn't finish work until after midnight yesterday, so I didn't notice.
  
  
  
• AMD's new 7950X3D can deliver up to four times the gaming performance of the regular 7950X...  When using the integrated graphics.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Which is weird, but more importantly highlights the fact that the integrated graphics on AMD's desktop CPUs provide only one sixth the performance of their laptop chips.  That means they're slower than the integrated graphics on Intel's desktop chips, and you shouldn't buy one expecting to be able to play games without a separate graphics card.
  
  Actually, something about those benchmark numbers doesn't add up; the scores on the regular AMD chips are too low; they should be much closer to the Intel scores.

• Meanwhile AMD's 7945HX is faster than Intel's 13980HX while using 40% less power and has the same crappy integrated graphics as the desktop version.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The 7945HX is a 16 core laptop chip that uses as much as 120W, which is fine for a desktop but a lot for a laptop.  The 13980HX is a 24 core laptop chip that can use more than 200W, which is simply too much.
  
  
  
• PCIe 5.0 SSDs are finally here.  Don't buy one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  For the $350 price of a 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD you can get two 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs, run them in RAID-0, get 40% better performance and twice the capacity, and still have a little money left over.
  
  PCIe 5.0 will matter eventually, but it's not used in the one place it would actually make sense, on the connection between the CPU and the chipset.  Both AMD and Intel have kept that at PCIe 4.0, because PCIe 5.0 costs too much and runs too hot.  Though all their current desktop chips support it.
  
  
  
• The Resonance Theory of Consciousness is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.  (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience)
  
  This came up in a YouTube channel I've been watching lately, and it's like explaining how cars work by studying only the noise they make.  Cars make noise when they move, therefore it's the noise that makes them move.
  
  It's cargo cult science.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, March 02 2023 12:42 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Don at Thursday, March 02 2023 01:00 AM (V0jOj)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 02 2023 05:21 AM (BMUHC)

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