[214324]

Manufacturers are sort of getting better at incorporating better cooling and getting the most out of the new 15W quad core parts (for the more premium laptops anyway), the new XPS 13 for example runs at a ~26W TDP and can sustain a phenomenal 4 x 2.7GHz. With some undervolting I'd be surprised if it couldn't fit squeeze out another couple hundred megahertz. To put that in perspective, the old Skylake XPS 15 ran at 4 x 2.8GHz! (both comparing base level chips on a repeated Cinebench load from notebookcheck, i5-8250U vs i5-6300hq, though the XPS 15 was infamous for being real poopy back then with throttling)

Intel are really starting to push the cTDP angle with these new chips, they even list the cTDP specs in the ark where the previous generations used to be a bit more hush hush.

I wonder what they're going to do in the ~28W TDP segment now which is dominated by the 13" touchbar Macbooks, Apple tends to want a beefier iGPU so perhaps they're going to use that new Intel+AMD chippie instead. I have no idea if they've given up on the Iris Pro lineup.

I just wish Dell could make that bottom bezel thinner. I actually think devices like the Macbook Pro 2016/2017 look better because the bezels are both thin enough but also well balanced. Anyways, yeah the XPS 13 2018 (9370) is an interesting one when it comes to max TDP, although I haven't been seeing much better for some of the others. The most notorious is HP with their hyperbaric design (basically positive pressure design) which has effectively no headroom.

They seem like the only one though. Part of it looks like a bit of impatience for the 28W parts, so they basically created their own to make up for the low base clocks when running all 4 cores simultaneously. I'm not happy that they've decided going for a thinner device was more important that including a larger battery. I don't think a 52Wh battery is a great idea for a device whose TDP is permanently set to 26W from 15W. From the battery life numbers, it looks like they're leveraging some pretty aggressive power management so it might be okay.

Iris Pro as it is right now is dead. They snatched Raja Koduri from Radeon Technologies Group so we will probably see something within the next 2-4 years on the graphics side. For the time being, Intel will be very happy working with AMD; they get a very cheap GPU, can make a CPU+GPU combo that performs as good as any CPU w/ an NVIDIA card but offer it for a much lower price, and are able to make more money from manufacturers. AMD is happy because they get more GPU share. NVIDIA is basically at a loss here and if Intel and AMD keep it up, they can actually eliminate NVIDIA from the consumer GPU market for the most part.

 

[miceblue]

Hey man, you just woke me up from my (almost a year-long) Head-Fi coma! Everything... looks different...

Unfortunately, I won't be going this year as I'm on the other side of the world right now. Though I might make it on time for 「London」 this year...

But yeah, how you AAMML guys doing?

Ever since summer of last year, I took a break on the headphone/tech scene and, to a lesser extent, Chinese Cartoons due to work as I rarely get to sit down on my desktop without already being fatigued / sleepy. On weekends I usually just creepily take pictures of random people and try to pass it off as 「Street Photography」. When I get tired, I sit down on some random park and play this Fate kusoge (playing since day 2) and some idol game that no one really plays anymore. Sometimes even shamelessly watching CGDCT cartoons out in public at Wash. Sq. Park.

Last thing I finished watching was 「New Game!」 S1, just this Monday. I like it. It's cute and oddly relatable.
This season I'm only I'm watching Pop Team Epic and Last Encore, with the latter being disappointing so far. Seems like I just can't get into any of the "serious" Fate entrees.

Well, considering I'm on a weird half vacation / half part-time (?) job thingy on my hometown with 3 Mbps internet, might as well funpost on HF.

Spoiler: Hopefully my poor R70x doesn't get lost somewhere on the Pacific Ocean.

よろしくねぇー。

Ah mmk. The new X7 gen 2 is pretty badas, just sayin'. : p

I've been pretty busy with work too. I take photos from time to time of nature stuff. The super blue blood moon event was pretty awesome to see in LA.
I'm so behind on anime though. orz I've been meaning to watch Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo and Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou, but I got a new PC and brought down my PS4, so I've been more busy with those. MGS V is so much fun.

 

[deadlylover]

A friend's STAX L500 has been sent back to the store in Japan (major channel imbalance), they couldn't find anything wrong with it so they offered to send it directly to STAX for inspection. They kept asking me to send in an amplifier because there might be something wrong with the amp instead....sigh... I AM THE SENATE!!

I hope it wasn't something stupid like a loose bias wire on the left channel, and shipping "knocked" it back in place. Well it's summer here too compared to winter in Japan so that might have something to do with it.

 

[U-3C]

No they just won't maintain above base clock for the most part. Turbo is only for up to 100 seconds of load and even then, the amount of power draw over TDP is dictated by how good the cooling is. You will never run above 2GHz at best in the long term (or 1.6 GHz since that's the actual baseclock speed for most of the U-series quad cores right now). Higher core count doesn't make things smoother either when it comes to drawing since it's a single-core load task. Multicore loads require much more parallelized workloads; pen strokes are a single process workload.

Jitter isn't a result of processing power either. Whatever delay there is (the kind of stuff you can see in slowed down footage) really isn't an issue. Most people don't notice it; unless you just like to make really fast pen strokes (like mouse-flick high dpi level kind of flicks) it's not going to matter. Jitter is a result of digitizer/pen interactions and digitizer polling.

I wouldn't bother talking about things you don't have an inkling of understanding about (basically every enthusiast community with 99% of its members).

Alrighty then.

----------------

Happy Lunar New Year everyone!

\(^~^)/

 

[deadlylover]

Happy Lunar New Year everyone!
\(^~^)/

I want to have yum cha tomorrow but I thiiink it's gonna be packed. (or closed)

I picked up a couple of ex-lease Dell U2312HM's for AUD110 each, not too bad. While they do cover ~96% sRGB and have reasonable contrast at the 800:1 mark, the MINIMUM brightness is like 100 nits (normal calibrated monitor runs at 120 or so)...good thing it's mostly displaying black anyway. Sipping 15W each is very reasonable for a 5 year old monitor, the 19" I have takes only 7W on minimum.

Current 5 display config now;
Dell 30"
Dell 19"
Thinkpad 12" (this and above on dock, so I can pick up my main execution platform and go to the kitchen/do laundry without having to plug anything in, I love docks)
Dell 23" x 2 (used as charting monitors on another Thinkpad as backup, no dock though...waiting for a cheap one to pop up)

I want to mount a few more displays above the 30" but getting tall enough monitor stands is gonna be expensive, the common sizes only go up to 27".

 

[RERO]

The super blue blood moon event was pretty awesome to see in LA.

Yeah, it was awesome. There were a few cirrocumulus clouds but it was mostly clear during the main event in our part.
Staring at the moon for almost an hour, all I could think of is how this phenomenon would look like on the moon.
Well, that and I wish I had my T2i and 55-250mm with me. There was even this nice scene where the moon nice and big and was in between banana trees when it was still near the horizon. The best I have at hand is an iPad 5th gen.

「The best camera is the one you left at home.」

But it's all cool I guess. Sometimes, it's just nice to indulge the experience without fiddling with your camera.

 

[214324]

RIP DigitalRev.

 

[214324]

Iris Pro as it is right now is dead. They snatched Raja Koduri from Radeon Technologies Group so we will probably see something within the next 2-4 years on the graphics side. For the time being, Intel will be very happy working with AMD; they get a very cheap GPU, can make a CPU+GPU combo that performs as good as any CPU w/ an NVIDIA card but offer it for a much lower price, and are able to make more money from manufacturers. AMD is happy because they get more GPU share. NVIDIA is basically at a loss here and if Intel and AMD keep it up, they can actually eliminate NVIDIA from the consumer GPU market for the most part.

Alright scratch what I said about Iris Pro being dead (maybe).

https://www.techpowerup.com/241584/intel-ice-lake-u-gen-11-igpu-features-48-execution-units

So 48 EU's is Iris Plus (not pro) but double the clockspeed is really nice. My guess is this will be regular Iris or Iris Plus. I could see it being regular Iris because Intel has been focusing a good amount on iGPU and if 10nm++ is now good enough (after 2 generations of failure) it should give a nice chunk of die space back.

That's based off Iris Pro 580 though which has 72 EUs. Iris Pro 6200 was 48 EUs. (both had eDRAM though)

 

[castleofargh]

I finally watched the first 5 episodes of FranXX. robots, and something not coming from manga, of course I was going to watch at some point.

now get ready for whine tsunami extravaganza! spoilers don't really go beyond the first ep I think, the rest really doesn't matter, at least it doesn't seem to matter to the writers of that story. so fair warning, if you haven't seen the first epidsode and don't want me to suck the soul out of this anime, don't read what's next:
sorry I don't share the enthusiasm of others here despite how it's one of my favorite genre. it's very ok and TBH not boring so I wouldn't say to avoid it. it's entertaining for sure. but the guys who made it, clearly don't have a clue what they're doing, or I'm too dumb to get it.
I'm a little frustrated by how little they care about the fighting scenes. the super rapid changing of "camera" to make nothing look like something very dynamic, that's fine to make it look like Liam Neeson can fight and do stunts. because there is no other way to make it work. but for anime where the artist can depict absolutely anything he likes, it really shows laziness and lack of skill IMO.
I'm ok with the apparent patchwork of ideas stolen from everywhere else, I just wish they'd try a little harder to turn that into a rational story. I hope I'm wrong about that part and that the lack of reasons for everything is conditioned by how we see the story through the kids who are themselves kept in the dark about most subjects. but if nothing comes up we go on, then my pre-conclusion is that it's crap.
all the nonsense Aquarion style about couples and more sexual innuendo than I care for, well that's ok in general. I get it, anime "is for kids" and that kinky stuff will always work. I also realize that after something like Pacific Rim, we can all wipe ourselves with logic involving giant robots. but I wish somebody did care a little and at least pretend to make up a believable story to justify all the weirdo sexual stuff.

so far:
why are those machines special? are they special? why didn't they make them bigger to fight huge rats? how comes that in the anime universe guns aren't the obvious way to deal with... anything? why aren't the city canons also lava powered to hurt the big lemmings? wait a sec, I though they said that everything was magma stuff powered?
why are the old geezers wearing half armor stuff on their heads? they were fighters and got hurt or transformed or whatev? they're 700years old? it's the google glass of that period? or is it really just a look given by the artist without an after thought, like with most of the story?
if pairs are important, why aren't they more clearly made? why was it just fine for the leader at the start to go pair with special snowflake hero? why are they all right with ruining random guy already in a pair and put him with horny girl when the occasion arises for no reason?
and if she eats up men like she does breakfast, why was she brought with only 1 half dead guy and nobody as a reserve? moshi moshi? is everybody brain dead on this project?
if they have so few weirdos to ride the machines, and it's their first time, how did the city survive all this time against the strong "rodents" given how often they seem to come?
after special kid comes out of the pairing with vampirella without a scratch, the old dudes don't have a clue how it worked out. it's amazing, unique and unexplained, so what do they decide? to never put them together ever again... What is going on with the script?
and what's up with the animal form for the Frankisskiss robot at the beginning? why don't they all have it? why don't we ever see it again even with the jealous guy for the pair?
and you can't "drive" alone, but like in Pacific Rim, you actually can, and it's super dangerous but in fact supreme leader is just fine after doing it in the mock up battle.

arrrrrrggghhhhhhhh!!!! I haven't seen so much things making no sense in a long time. even the last star wars, and the dragon making blue "cold flames" in GOT can't compete. even Naruto characters giving up their secrets in a 20mn talk with their enemies, end up looking like a fairly reasonable thing to do now.

 

[deadlylover]

it's very ok and TBH not boring so I wouldn't say to avoid it. it's entertaining for sure.

That's more than what can be said for most shows, to be fair. XD

We're getting 24 episodes so we'll see how things pan out.

 

[Muinarc]

A friend's STAX L500 has been sent back to the store in Japan (major channel imbalance), they couldn't find anything wrong with it so they offered to send it directly to STAX for inspection. They kept asking me to send in an amplifier because there might be something wrong with the amp instead....sigh... I AM THE SENATE!!

I hope it wasn't something stupid like a loose bias wire on the left channel, and shipping "knocked" it back in place. Well it's summer here too compared to winter in Japan so that might have something to do with it.

If you go back and read the first year or two worth of posts in the 009 thread you'll see this is super common with STAX. The theories range from STAX being too proud to admit fault, the headphones freezing in a plane's cargo hold fixes the issue, to voodoo magic. Here's a weird one for you. My 007's have a ~2dB imbalance but ONLY on one of my PCs. No idea how it is happening but I've tried an alternate DAC and on the one PC the imbalance is always there but on tablets, phone, 2 other PCs and straight out of my SACD player, it's fine.

arrrrrrggghhhhhhhh!!!! I haven't seen so much things making no sense in a long time. even the last star wars, and the dragon making blue "cold flames" in GOT can't compete. even Naruto characters giving up their secrets in a 20mn talk with their enemies, end up looking like a fairly reasonable thing to do now.

Honestly, I think people are thinking about this one too much. Yes, it's being overly cagey with the details*, but it's early yet and it seems like the pace is picking up possibly(?) in the last episode. I also think the "feel" of the show invites NGE levels of dissection but maybe, just maybe it just wants to be about sexually confused kids being forced to fight robo-monster things and that's all. It's just too early to decide these things in a 2-cour series imo.



*Anime has a pretty bad habit of doing this; Kokkoku this season has been unreasonably boring due to lack of information, and recently; Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul was reduced to a hate-watch because they kept the Antagonists motives for being a total genocidal person hidden until the last 3 episodes or so (even though by then you knew the reason would be dumb

Spoiler

and it was

).

 

[vantt1]

RIP DigitalRev.

They were already half dead when Kai left, then Lok left too.

 

[deadlylover]

If you go back and read the first year or two worth of posts in the 009 thread you'll see this is super common with STAX. The theories range from STAX being too proud to admit fault, the headphones freezing in a plane's cargo hold fixes the issue, to voodoo magic. Here's a weird one for you. My 007's have a ~2dB imbalance but ONLY on one of my PCs. No idea how it is happening but I've tried an alternate DAC and on the one PC the imbalance is always there but on tablets, phone, 2 other PCs and straight out of my SACD player, it's fine.

~2db isn't too hard to measure electrically, I would go nutso trying to chase it with a multimeter. =P

IMO electrostats are too delicate/finnicky to manufacture, and there is just no way STAX can run proper quality control for field use as that'll involve 6 months of testing in a humid environment. That wouldn't be such a problem if they had a decent warranty, but it's only one year for god's sake.

 

[Growler]

Any "Gundam" lovers here? I think it's the best anime series EVER!!!!

 

[Muinarc]

Any "Gundam" lovers here? I think it's the best anime series EVER!!!!

I've watched a few Gundams in my day. It's an ok franchise..... but Macross is better!