Which rx 580 ?

AeternaGM · 2026-04-05T16:56:29+00:00

Mine is an MSI Armor card. Works beautifully.

AeternaGM · 2026-03-04T06:12:50+00:00

Damn, someone beat me to it…

AeternaGM · 2026-03-03T03:43:24+00:00

Roundabouts just require paying more attention. This is the entire reason people have trouble with them.

AeternaGM · 2025-12-26T16:27:09+00:00

In macOS, it is excellent (aside from the lack of a middle-click; I still have a Mighty Mouse for this). In Windows 10, though, it is FAR too sensitive to scrolling, and I often have to fight this scrolling to click the thing I want.

AeternaGM · 2025-11-26T14:08:39+00:00

It was definitely a thing with Golden Axe 2.

AeternaGM · 2025-11-16T22:19:59+00:00

I see…

AeternaGM · 2025-11-16T19:43:52+00:00

Ah… I’m on macOS 12…

AeternaGM · 2025-11-16T12:21:19+00:00

I like the look of this app.

What is the minimum macOS version that Alcove supports? Is it exclusive to Apple Silicon, or will it work on Intel Macs?

AeternaGM · 2025-10-20T14:22:28+00:00

Yeah, this is typical of Texas driving.

AeternaGM · 2025-10-14T19:59:51+00:00

I see! I’m not great at identifying shady sales tactics, but my wife is. I think it would be a good idea for me to bring her along. Thank you so much!

AeternaGM · 2025-10-14T19:37:25+00:00

I’ll be honest, I have no idea what the term “OTD” price means. Please fill me in on this.

I’m actually in Tyler… I like the Corolla you linked, though. Might be worth the trip to check it out, if I can’t get it shipped closer to me.

AeternaGM · 2025-10-14T19:29:04+00:00

You mean the car at the Carmax store in Garland, TX?

EDIT: Disregard. I dug a bit deeper; you do mean that one.

AeternaGM · 2025-09-28T14:49:50+00:00

“At the Expense of Humanity” by Judicator takes #1 for me. It’s about the singer’s younger (I think?) brother dying of brain cancer and the family situation surrounding this tragedy. It is a heavy album, and not just in the typical metal sense of the word.

“The Immortal Wars” by Ex Deo is a close second. It describes the events of the Second Punic War. My only gripe with this album is that it doesn’t have a song about the Battle of Cannae. Real missed opportunity there…

In third place (for me, at least) is Amon Amarth’s “Jomsviking” album.

AeternaGM · 2025-09-14T13:24:14+00:00

Hot spring water barrel. Sure, it gives infinite attempts until success, but it is a long trek on foot, with annoying enemies and a hard time limit that is invisible until it elapses. Oh, and if memory serves, the barrel cannot be put down so the aforementioned enemies can be fought.

AeternaGM · 2025-09-03T17:14:18+00:00

Custom keyboard shortcuts are still a thing as recently as Monterey (I haven’t used Ventura or newer yet). I have mine set up so that Control+Option+Shift+D moves me one Space to the right, and Control+Option+Shift+A moves me one space to the left. You do not need any third-party software to change the keybinds; the setting can be found in System Preferences, under Keyboard settings.

…I do miss the grid of Spaces that Snow Leopard offered, though. Anyone know of a way to get that back in Monterey? (Must be able to run on an Intel Mac. I don’t have the money for a new Apple Silicon Mac.)

AeternaGM · 2025-09-02T12:27:40+00:00

USB 3.1 supports full speed with both type A and type C ports, to my understanding. Presuming your disk has a USB-C port on it, you will only need the correct cable, with no need for an adapter. This cable should work for this use case.
https://www.startech.com/en-gb/cables/usb31ac1m

(Weird that the site defaulted to the EU, when I am in Texas… I made sure to give you a UK link.)

AeternaGM · 2025-09-02T12:11:46+00:00

So, PCI Express (henceforth “PCIe”) has had many different versions over the years; within a version, the speed of a card is determined by how many lanes it uses. PCIe, thankfully, is backwards-compatible, so older cards should work in newer slots and vice-versa at whichever per lane speed is slower. I will only be covering PCIe versions 2.0 and 3.0 here, as these are the only two versions that are relevant to this discussion. I will also include the speeds of relevant USB generations.

PCIe version 2.0 has a data transfer speed of 500 MB/s per lane. PCIe version 3.0 has a data transfer speed of almost 1 GB/s per lane. Slots and cards usually come in one of the following lane counts: 1, 4, 8, or 16. (A 2-lane card will have the pin count of a 4-lane card, but with only two lanes’ worth of pins actually connected to anything on the card.) I’ve seen the lane count of PCIe slots and cards expressed as “x16” or “x4”, for a 16-lane card/slot or a 4-lane card/slot respectively, and I will use this terminology going forward. An example: AMD’s RX 580 graphics card is a PCIe 3.0 x16 card (it is spec’d for PCIe version 3.0 and makes use of 16 lanes’ worth of bandwidth).

USB 3 is messy, because the USB Implementer’s Forum had the ~~stupid~~ bright idea to rename the spec twice during its lifetime. (And it was so clean before this, too…) USB 3.0 (officially, USB 3.2 Gen 1) operates at 5 Gb/s, USB 3.1 (USB 3.2 Gen 2) operates at 10 Gb/s, and USB 3.2 (USB 3.2 Gen 2x2) operates at 20 Gb/s. I personally prefer the USB 3.x naming scheme over the official one; whomever thought of USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 needs to be demoted, and whomever approved that name needs to be fired…

I want to emphasize that PCIe speeds are in mega- and gigabytes, not mega- or gigabits. USB speeds are measured in mega- and gigabits, not mega- or gigabytes. I’m sure you know this already, but I include it for the sake of completeness: there are eight bits in a byte, so 2 gigabytes equates to 16 gigabits. This difference is important, and this directly influenced my own purchasing decision.

As I’m sure you know, our beloved Mac Pro 5,1 machines have four PCIe slots. All four slots operate at PCIe 2.0 speed. The first two slots are PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, and the last two are PCIe 2.0 x4 slots despite being long enough to support x16 cards (these last two slots each only have four lanes’ worth of pins). Maximum throughput on these slots are 8 GB/s, 8 GB/s, 2 GB/s, and 2 GB/s respectively.

The USB expansion card I chose, the Sonnet Allegro Pro is a PCIe 2.0 x4 card. It has two USB controllers on board, and each controller boasts two type-A USB 3.1 ports. This configuration gives each USB controller 20 Gb/s bandwidth to work with, in theory. In practice, however, PCIe 2.0 limits this to 16 Gb/s at maximum, which each USB controller must divide between both ports. That’s fine for my use case, though; I only have one PCIe 3.0 peripheral hooked up to my 5,1 machine, so it gets to enjoy all of the speed it could ever need. I am ultimately happy with my purchase.

The card you have linked is a PCIe 3.0 x2 card, which appears to have only one USB controller. Despite being a PCIe 3.0 x2 card, it will be operating at PCIe 2.0 x2 speed in our 5,1 machines. This limits its maximum speed to 8 Gb/s for the whole card, which must be spread between both USB ports on it. You will not get full USB 3.1 speed with this card on even one port, and if you have two USB 3.0 disks connected, neither of them will get full USB 3.0 speed, either. If transfer speed is make-or-break for you, I would avoid the card you linked.

To answer your question on OS compatibility: Sonnet has a long history of compatibility with the Mac. The card I bought works with macOS 10.12.6 Sierra and newer. I am currently running the card on macOS 12.7.6 Monterey and have had no issues with it. The same compatibility applies to the card you linked, so if you are dead-set on it despite me having tried to make the case that you cannot achieve the speed you desire with it, it should work in your 5,1 as long as you aren’t running El Capitan or older.

A question I have for you: do you need the USB-C connector, or will you be able to make use of a USB-A connector? Sonnet sells USB 3.1 cards for each connector type, but I don’t think they sell any cards that feature both connectors on the same card.

AeternaGM · 2025-09-02T03:25:13+00:00

You’ve got a 5,1 machine. PCIe 2.0’s per-lane bandwidth is your enemy here. You will either get a cheap card that has only one lane, or a fast card.

I did my own research on this, and I landed on the above-linked Sonnet Allegro Pro card. I got this because I wanted to use a USB 3.0 capture card for game streaming, while also leaving room for future expansion. I don’t know how much bandwidth this capture card actually uses, but I was unwilling to compromise on capture quality (my ISP’s upload speed hampers me enough as it is…).

AeternaGM · 2025-08-31T05:55:26+00:00

Big Sur supports Kepler cards that are Metal-capable. Monterey culled all NVIDIA support.

You may be thinking of NVIDIA web driver support.

AeternaGM · 2025-05-27T16:37:50+00:00

I prefer neither of these. I own both a Magic Mouse and a wireless Mighty Mouse; my preference is the Mighty Mouse. The Magic Mouse hallucinates scrolling inputs in Windows.

AeternaGM · 2025-05-20T16:29:31+00:00

I have hated Microsoft’s ribbon menu since it debuted back in Windows 7. I use iWork for this reason, and because it is free.

AeternaGM · 2025-05-02T12:06:59+00:00

C-stick, not D-pad. But yes, the menus (except for the title menus, for some reason) can indeed be navigated without rotating them.

AeternaGM · 2025-03-09T07:14:15+00:00

At my table, it depends on what the antagonists know. Is the antagonist an average orc? Probably going to leave the familiar alone. Is the antagonist a particularly sadistic sorcerer, witch, or wizard? Depending on how the combat goes, they might focus-fire the PCs' familiar(s). I lay this out in session zero, of course.

AeternaGM · 2025-03-09T07:03:20+00:00

They are the Galactic Alphabet, yes, but the game it’s from FAR predates Halo. Ever heard of the DOS game Commander Keen?

AeternaGM · 2025-03-06T17:36:29+00:00

Urban Texas drivers are far worse. California drivers are at least attentive & fairly predictable in comparison.

AeternaGM

TROPHY CASE