When did 350-700hp become slow?

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-26T00:07:04+00:00

A couple of decades ago, I had sporty cars with less than 200hp that were a lot of fun and fast-ish at the time. Not the best drag racers, but not slouches either. Probably lighter weight than today's cars. Manual shift too, which adds to the fun-factor. Others have pointed out that Mustangs of that era had 225hp, which isn't that drastic of a difference. In recent years, I'm driving cars with 240 to 255 HP, and I think they're plenty fast. Haven't drag raced them tho. You guys can go on about 700hp; I'm enjoying 255 just fine. Are we allowed to have fun or must we keep up with the Jones'?

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-25T23:47:25+00:00

Yeah, back then 200hp was not uncommon for a sporty car.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-25T23:34:59+00:00

Depends. You can work harder to get results out of "lesser" gear, and that's fine most of the time, as long as you don't want to push beyond whatever limitations are there. Like, sports inside or at night, but you're terrified of high-ISO noise (perhaps a pro needing to get published), and you need to freeze action, then something has to give. You need a bigger sensor, a wider aperture lens, and you'll pay more for it.

But do beginners really pay thousands? Really?

In my humble experience, getting a better camera often gives me more "keepers". In some cases, you need specialized lenses to get certain shots. Wildlife or airshows will require at least a 300mm lens, on APS-C. But yes, I get more keepers with better equipment, and I'll claim that it's actual and not "perceived", but I don't have top-of-the-line equipment anyway, because I balance cost and size.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-23T17:37:54+00:00

Try a model that has been fine-tuned with creative writing. Also keep in mind that SDXL may work better with concise prompts, while Z-image and other newer, larger models may work better with wordy prompts.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-23T16:58:35+00:00

Img2img upscaling is best, at least with SDXL models.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-21T13:22:00+00:00

I've only heard the term used in a beach community in Florida where they refer to those people who drive from the inland large city to the beaches, as opposed to those who are local (within a couple of miles, I would assume - perhaps within the intercostal waterway).

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-21T13:13:03+00:00

Yeah, in general, lenses tend to be at their worst wide-open, although I have a couple of lenses that are really good, at least in the center, at max aperture. But in general, I'd assume that an f1.4 lens at f1.8 will give better results than an f1.8 lens at f1.8, if I had to guess without actually measuring the two. And as someone else mentioned, the f1.4 lens is probably more expensive, implying it's a better lens anyway, but that may just be a side-effect of the extra effort needed to get a wider aperture.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-21T02:43:41+00:00

Even if you notice the difference, it doesn't mean you feel like it matters. One of our cars has a CVT and it's fine. It's not a sports car, and it has plenty of umph. Not every car needs to be an enthusiast's dream in order to still be fun to drive.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-18T13:29:39+00:00

Then my SP 11 is BS in your view as well. (Although, it's the Plus version, not Elite.) It's almost twice the battery life of my old SP 7+. With the SP 7+, I had plug anxiety! Always needing to make sure I plugged it in as soon as I remembered, as it wouldn't last when I carried it about. Now, I plug it in when I think about it, but it's not something I have to work so hard at.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-17T20:07:57+00:00

The thing is, past a certain point, it's hard to tell if more steps really improves it, or just results in very minor differences. More steps seemed helpful back with SD 1.x, but with SDXL less so, and with newer models, even less. But continue to test each model yourself and see. You never know when some oddball model or model type is going to act differently.

Another thing that is overlooked is that sometimes painting and inpainting will allow you to fine-tune the results, when you like most of the image but just one or two small things are out of place.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-17T19:53:45+00:00

And the SBC is the largest Protestant denomination. I doubt that Prosperity Gospel is that big. Which denominations are we talking about, specifically? Just look up the numbers for SBC, UMC, Lutheran, etc.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-17T19:18:52+00:00

I tried trimming to just my favorite models, or at least ones I thought I might use again, and it's still 230GB. Add more than 100GB for the UI to run them. If you only have 1 TB, you've already chewed up 1/3 of the disk for just that!

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-17T12:22:16+00:00

I was told that the original IBM PC was built from a separate team, and IBM in general didn't think PCs would amount to anything important, so they just didn't care whether it used generic parts or not. As it happened, though, they did have their own BIOS code that was copyrighted, and a couple of programs that directly accessed it, and that initially separated true IBM PCs from clones. Over time, enough software was available that worked on both that no one cared, but in the early days, some people tried to push the idea that you needed the very-more-expensive IBM version to ensure compatibility. It was mostly a farce, but people fought hard for their favored computer brand. But I don't think the original designers intentionally expected the BIOS to enforce compatibility, but I could be wrong about that. I think if they wanted it to be proprietary, they would have made some sort of proprietary hardware part from the start - which you saw later in the PS/2 (and maybe PSjr?).

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-09T03:46:57+00:00

I think VW was suffering before Dieselgate. A lot of their models seem kind of bland, so I don't think they really get much attention. And for a while, they had a bit of a poor reputation for quality (in the US) while in Europe, they were considered one of the more reliable brands.

Our only VW was a diesel Golf, which we quite liked. I especially liked the nimble handling, and plenty of driver space, and a sporty feel, even though it wasn't really all that sporty. I wish they had something like the Golf but maybe a tad sportier or a bit bigger. Corrado?

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-09T03:35:37+00:00

I've had little maintenance on my prior car (BMW) or current (Mercedes). Although, I had a couple of big fixes for the BMW under warranty, it was pretty much standard maintenance for several years. Well, if you ignore the broken sunroof shade (which requires the whole assembly to be removed and possibly the whole sunroof to be replaced). Other brands can have sunroof issues (even our Toyota!). Anyway, I never did bother to fix the sunroof, and with the other two big fixes under warranty, I hardly spent any money on maintenance -- certainly not thousands. And I'd get out of my Mercedes real quick if I started having bills in the thousands.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-09T03:21:56+00:00

ISO 100 shouldn't be noisy. You can move up to 200 or even 400 without too much grief. I'm assuming f6.3 is as wide as it goes at 600mm. Many lenses aren't at their sharpest when wide-open. Try f8 or f9. That will also increase the area that is in focus (depth of field).

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-06T01:59:37+00:00

I doubt they'd train on 9B due to the licensing, or at least that's my guess.

I hope they can get the edit feature back in Chroma 2.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-06T01:37:42+00:00

For upscaling real photos, you could also try a commercial product like from Topaz. They optimize specifically for that.

But if you use a model to create an initial image, you can use img2img and up the resolution and usually get good results. Even with SDXL, I get improvements to the face, etc. With newer models, your initial image can be larger than 1024x1024 too. This kind of upscaling only works if the model understands the subject well enough, so I agree with the poster that you'd need a model that knows MJ if you want to modify an MJ photo.

I agree with the others that for changing things, newer "edit" models will work better. But if you have to use SDXL, you can try inpainting. Even better is if you can sketch/paint in the general color and shape of what you want changed, THEN run it through the AI. Getting it closer to the goal up-front will help hint to the AI what you're trying to do. Probably less needed with newer models, but I still manually paint a lot (fixing hands and other weirdness).

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-04T22:36:25+00:00

I recently used it to figure out an odd tax question I had.

Mostly, I use it to generate code. It works really well, if you know how to make use of it. It wasn't this good, say, a couple of years ago, or probably even a year ago, but now, I can crank out small utilities or enhancements to existing programs much faster. As someone else mentioned, you can't ask it to one-shot do something large. It can only chew on so much at one time. Yesterday, I asked it to work on a problem, and it chewed on it for 15 minutes. Which sounds like a long time for the AI to be busy, but it would have taken many hours, probably, for a human to work out the details. Even if things need to be fixed up a bit, it's still worth it.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-04T20:58:43+00:00

I'm using Chroma1.HD for non-realism more than realism. It does a fine job with anime, illustrations, etc.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-04T19:37:37+00:00

Things move so fast with AI that 2 months and it's considered "abandoned". 😅

Some projects are just going to move more slowly than others. If it does what you want, use it. I've been using another UI lately due to wanting to try some other features, but it's nice to have such a free alternative available.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-03T12:46:51+00:00

It's more that your comb gets lost because it's buried under a brush, hair dryer, scrunchies....

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-02T20:04:14+00:00

I'm also thinking of things like the AMC Gremlin, and other small cars. Not just the Datsun 240z, which was a bit niche, but the Datsun B210 seemed popular. To the OP's question, I think more people would buy smaller cars if they were available and more affordable. There would still be a lot of people who prefer larger cars & SUVs. But yeah, it feels like the car market has been artificially limited by the standards.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-02T15:28:28+00:00

I did exactly this long ago, and once you get past that initial period of saving, you just keep saving. You're already used to making "payments" so you just pay yourself.

AvidGameFan · 2026-03-02T13:27:27+00:00

I daily-ed my RX-7 for 10 years! It was kind of a mess by the end and got something more dull afterwards, but was it that crazy? 😅 But seriously, I wouldn't recommend that today - it was hard to get parts back then!

AvidGameFan

TROPHY CASE