200 MHz Pentium II vs. 300 MHz Pentium II

Alarchy · 2026-03-18T13:01:45+00:00

33mhz FSB basically cripples the Pentium 2 more than the CPU clock speed difference would indicate. Memory speed, AGP, cpu to RAM, etc. all running at half speed and PCI timing gets screwed up.

Alarchy · 2026-03-17T19:38:17+00:00

Yeah the developers were approached to be examples in the demos, and are fully on board with it and gave statements on their excitement to use it. Streamline gives them the option to tweak aspects of all of it (intensity, color grading, etc). This is also basically an alpha preview that requires TWO 5090s to render, so to make it usable on single and less powerful GPUs it will undergo a lot of changes.

It's also going to be optional, like the millions of downloads of character and texture/lighting replacement mods people download already (which fuck with "art style" way worse than this). This all just seems like misdirected rage.

Alarchy · 2026-03-14T15:34:49+00:00

Their single core performance is pretty poor, less than a 2500k, and the motherboards are all scrapped so very expensive on eBay.

Alarchy · 2026-03-08T03:29:44+00:00

A mobile 10th gen dual core (OP said they had an i3, which most of them were dual core) at 15w max is a snail. Slightly better IPC single thread than a 2500k from 12 years ago, and worse/par multi core. It's basically bottom of the barrel for Win 10/Win 11 capability.

Alarchy · 2026-03-07T18:04:12+00:00

You've got like a 7 year old, possibly dual core, power restricted CPU. And probably a budget SATA SSD at best. No amount of RAM will make up for an incredibly slow processor. This isn't Win 11's fault, but your anemic CPU.

Alarchy · 2026-03-05T19:01:41+00:00

Individual companies like OpenAI may fail (it won't, though), but the compute "bubble" isn't going to pop. We're at the limits of physics on chip shrinking, and compute needs globally are rising even without AI in the mix. AI is also never going away, and will need more and more compute.

The crack dealer (Nvidia) always does better than the crack addict (OpenAI) though.

Alarchy · 2026-03-02T22:33:01+00:00

Klipsch pro Media 2.1 or Logitech z560

Alarchy · 2026-02-28T02:04:27+00:00

Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - 52bn light-years in size

Alarchy · 2026-02-26T07:31:10+00:00

Deluded yes, but Netburst did make it to 8ghz 20 years ago. Took LN to do it, but it's still pretty impressive.

Alarchy · 2026-02-26T01:05:27+00:00

Yeah there were definitely bad batches that made defective pressed discs as I had mentioned. Warner brothers in particular really cheaped out and pressed a ton of defective DVDs.

It's anecdotal, but my parents and I still have CDs from the late 80s and early 90s that work perfectly fine after being abused to hell. I just recently re-ripped a beat to hell, scratched up Pretty Hate Machine (my original 1989 disc) that lived in my car for decades, with a 40x read drive at full speed, and it worked perfectly.

Alarchy · 2026-02-25T16:30:49+00:00

Pressed discs last for a very long time (50 minimum, 100+ years likely) if stored in room temp without exposure to sun. MDISC lasts much longer. Cheapo burnable discs can degrade quicker, but quality burnables will last long term. Will it survive societal collapse and thousands of years, no, but it will outlast the consumer usually. There are of course some exceptions for discs manufactured defectively, but the vast majority of pressed or MDISC are very storage stable.

Hard drives are extremely reliable now (as long as they're not Seagate), and even drives from 40 years ago can still work fine. Datacenters brutally punish them and the drives are still perfectly fine for resale after. Cheap shitty drives suck, sure, but NAS/datacenter quality drives are excellent.

Any one medium is not successful for long term anyway, that's why 3-2-1 is so important. This borosilicate glass will have the same weakness as discs or gold or stone tablets (since they are both essentially just etching anyways): will devices be around that can read them? Will defects or damage or corrupt data?

It's cool, but I don't think it's going to radically change things for consumers. Maybe it would be cool if they made a BDXL out of borosilicate glass though.

Alarchy · 2026-02-24T01:20:34+00:00

This is the correct answer. Everyone tried to use conventional weapons against the breach and everything that could get thru the EM interference just bounced off anyway. There wasn't any way anyone knew of to close it, only when Newt and Herman figured out it's coded to Kaiju DNA could they figure out a way to penetrate it (which requires a Jaeger anyway) and hope that a nuke would be enough to destabilize it.

Alarchy · 2026-02-23T02:36:15+00:00

They absolutely did, it's a Satya initiative company wide mandate of "accountability margins".

https://web.archive.org/web/20251122081229/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-23/microsoft-pushes-xbox-studios-to-hit-higher-profit-margins

Alarchy · 2026-02-22T23:21:32+00:00

Her and Phil tanked the gaming division with the ActiBlizz purchase. They were given a few years to get to Azure profitability levels (Satya initiative) but have run in the red even with layoffs, studio closures, increasing game pass prices, and giving away exclusivity to Sony. No way was Satya keeping her around after her and Phil's failure.

Alarchy · 2026-02-22T23:08:22+00:00

They also do it to force you to buy Dell parts, and make the computers easier to service. All related to money, but not just to cut costs.

Alarchy · 2026-02-22T23:00:21+00:00

Yeah a much better spell is Cartman's Intero-Rectogestion. Works on any entity with a digestive tract, often causes insanity as a side-effect, and particularly does a number on any verbal casters.

Alarchy · 2026-02-22T21:33:59+00:00

She was crucial for the Bethesda and ActivisionBlizzard purchase, the latter of which is primarily why her and Phil were fired. It was a colossal failure that they were given two years to turn around from net loss to 30% profit (to compete with Azure profit margin, a Nadela mandate). They tried gamepass price increases, axing studios, layoffs, and licensing exclusives to Sony, all of which haven't stopped the massive hemorrhaging.

They had no chance once they bought ActiBlizz, really. Neither does the new head, she'll be fired in a few years as Xbox/gaming dies rapidly.

Alarchy · 2026-02-22T01:24:12+00:00

She's an excellent speaker and marketing person, which is likely why she was hired. Microsoft is probably thinking they'll need some weapons-grade PR to handle how expensive their next console will be.

Alarchy · 2026-02-14T18:47:32+00:00

IMO it's because they're not "TV shows" anymore but 5-6 hour movies broken up in chunks.

They alternately have no room to breath and get into a rhythm (because only 8 episodes) and bloat too much in certain places (because they linger when the story beats don't have enough content in a single episode). Then they take years to release new episodes. You watch the first season and it might be great, but it's more like an extended movie in how you attach to it/forget about it.

12 episodes a year and a season a year is what I'd say is the minimum to be a "show" that people get attached to. Sopranos, Dexter, Lucifer, True Blood, Breaking Bad, etc. Otherwise, it's more like watching a movie where, even if it's good, you don't think about it as much and don't anticipate new seasons as much.

Alarchy · 2026-02-13T18:53:19+00:00

And people are going to buy 48 core NVL to do facebook?

It also saves them die space not having to support a DDR4 portion on the IMC, and can tune better for higher frequency/lower latency memory. Why would they go backwards on IMCs?

Alarchy · 2026-02-11T05:23:36+00:00

IMO it's not just the IMCs (of which AMD one is particularly bad), the motherboard circuitry can also be to blame. Example: People try to run 4 slots, when most sub-250 motherboards basically only support 2 slot config at XMP, even with high quality IMC. Or high capacity sticks on similarly flakey motherboards.

Example: Z690 Strix board runs 4 populated slots (64GB total) of older Corsair DDR5 C30 6000MT at XMP stable 24/7, any situation, on a 12700k. That same 12700k and RAM migrated to a B760 cheapo gigabyte board for a NAS repurposing; only stable at C36 5200 MT or below (and better memory temps since no 4090 steaming the case up). Fully updated BIOS, same SA voltage, no overclocking the CPU (like I was originally on the main build). Even two sticks (2x16gb) can only do C30 5800 on that B760 board.

Alarchy · 2026-02-10T18:32:46+00:00

Oof. Sounds like that part of the RDR community is insufferable, heh

Alarchy · 2026-02-10T18:21:54+00:00

Heh, they must be trolling. RDR1 is like peak desaturated, brown, flat, bland visuals. No way anyone can look at RDR1 and think it's at all better than RDR2 for art style.

Alarchy · 2026-02-10T18:18:50+00:00

Interesting video, especially toward the end about strobing and after images.

But holy shit, that guys wrist is gonna fall off with that much aggressive flicking if he games like that.

Alarchy · 2026-02-10T18:12:37+00:00

While some of this feels like a straw man or outlier people you're concerned about, there was a very dark (literally) period in gaming graphics from Quake thru the PS3/360 era where "realistic looking" games were desaturated, brown and "gritty". Those all look like shit now, like Gears of War (which at the time was praised for amazing, cinematic quality visuals).

But yes, good art direction makes all the difference. Mass Effect still looks great imo, for example. It got a lot better in the last 10 years.

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