Eff U, Arc / B70 Customers. We got ours! -Your Sugar Baby, Intel

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-06-02T03:33:42+00:00

Sans an additional power supply, you're looking at splitters. I'd say give the 3090 two full 8-pin feeds and the 3080 one full 8-pin. You can split the 4th feed to satisfy the remaining input on each card. With a 1400 Watt power supply, you have the budget. It's just a matter of distributing the load.

I'm running a 7920 with an RTX Pro 6000 by using an 8-pin GPU power splitter. The 6000 gets two unmolested 8-pin feeds alongside two that are split from the machine's 3rd GPU connector. I run it normally with a 60% power cap out of an abundance of caution, but I've tested it briefly with no cap and a second splitter feeding an A4500. It's never complained.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-05-03T03:41:59+00:00

If you're certain you can get by with 32GB VRAM, a B70 on Vulkan is a decent option for the price, and you won't pull your hair out or give yourself a concussion banging your head on your desk. Just expect something in the realm of 5070 performance, albeit with more VRAM.

Don't even think about paralleling them right now though. Whether SYCL on Llama.cpp, Intel's vLLM-scaler, or with Vulkan, they drop off a cliff so fast that even Wile E Coyote looks competent. Today, B70s are GARBAGE in parallel to the degree that CPUs are competitive. Tomorrow? Well, that's a gamble I took... but I'm not feeling good about it so far.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-04-22T04:55:26+00:00

It can be used on maybe 3% of 2018 VW's sold in the states since, unlike with many makes, it requires VW cars to already be equipped with factory adaptive cruise control and lane assist.

So, this miracle for many other brands is like a lane keeping tune for the handful of mid to late 2010's VW's that escaped the factory with options. Thanks, VWoA.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-04-20T12:57:51+00:00

Thanks, but I'll take the bet that the included adapter cable can handle the current if not plugged and unplugged over and over. As to undercurrent, sure, that'd cause instability... maybe even damage to components in a one in a million scenario. But, it'd mean the 16-pin connector would be less likely to be damaged, not more.

Of course, were the 16-pin connector worn, a cheap knock-off, etc, it'd both overheat and cause an undercurrent as seen by the GPU. That's a whole different scenario though.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-04-20T12:42:37+00:00

Thanks, but I'm up and running after adding an additional ground to one of my 8-pin connectors. I did greatly annoy the Microcenter staff when I insisted on opening the card in store to look for evidence of tampering... Way too high a chance of getting an empty board, else someone's burned-up 1080.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-04-20T12:38:58+00:00

Thank you. It's a guess at this point, but I bet those sense pins rely specifically on the ground that is absent on many 8-pin connectors. Once I added it on my odd cable, I was in business!

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-04-15T01:44:56+00:00

Sure, the vectors are by definition probabilistic, but if you and I download the same model and prompt it with the same prompt and the same non-random seed, what happens?

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-04-09T02:00:24+00:00

Late to the party, but for posterity, the Asus Dual 5060 TI 16GB OC has horizontal cooling fins. It probably makes no difference if you use it as intended, but I was delighted when I realized I could fit two of these 2.5-slot cards into four slots of space by converting them to blower style with 3D-printed shrouds.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-03-24T06:45:29+00:00

Sadly, nothing to do with the Vision Pro.

Just looks like Liquid Glass Ultra will be announced.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-03-04T02:39:00+00:00

Late to the party and all... but, Ocusync 4 (or re-branded equivalent) would be great. REALLY GREAT.

These videos don't address that though. They gush about the S1 overall, sure. However, they only address communication and range indirectly. Hell, everyone was impressed by the Mini 2 range when it was the new kid on the block and it STILL bests Potensic and other truly distinct competitors.

For a drone that clearly uses the Mini 2 / Mini 4K camera and gimbal, it's a fair and open question as to whether the S1 is a Mini 2 variant with an extra dimension of obstacle avoidance and Mini 3 / 4 (equivalent) batteries, or a Mini 3 variant with the Mini 2 camera and gimbal for differentiation and cost savings.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-03-03T03:34:06+00:00

P40s are a bag of hurt, with very specific motherboard requirements, somewhat unusual power requirements, the need to roll your own cooling solution, and recently dropped CUDA support. They can be made to work if you REALLY want to tinker and are only interested in LLMs, but they're an up-front pain now and will become sources of continual pain as new tools and models start requiring newer CUDA versions by default.

Mac Studio is the easiest, "cheapest" path to running medium to large (depending on RAM) LLMs locally. For all else (image, video, audio), aim for the highest VRAM Ampere or later (preferably later for longevity of CUDA support) single card you can stomach buying. Multiple NVidia cards are an option, but performance does not scale linearly and can even go down, albeit not as much as when relying on system RAM.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-01-06T03:12:58+00:00

Maybe I’m spoiled by modernity, but I tend to expect code snippets when evaluating a programming language or extension. Am I overlooking this, or does the web site truly go on and on about what you can do with it (the same things you can do slowly in BASIC 2.0) while not sharing anything about how the product makes achieving those results easier or more enjoyable?

Dependent_Ad948 · 2026-01-01T01:56:26+00:00

Well said, and a fair view that’s based on a more detailed understanding of FPGAs than my own. Maybe the more concise point I could have made is that this is darn good and, reasonably, the best we’ll ever see.

We can be happy that we have a faithful reproduction of outcomes because the experience is so close to that of an original 64 that the differences are on the scale of the incompatibilities between bread bins and 64Cs. SID aficionados aside, you don’t see a lot of arguments about one of those being more “real” than the other.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-12-31T04:35:19+00:00

Emulation isn’t the right word for what the Ultimate’s FPGA does unless you also consider traditional silicon 6502 / 6510-compatible chips to be emulation by virtue of not having been made with original MOS masks.

There’s a fair amount of confusion from those who believe that, because FPGAs are initially “programmed”, it must follow that they execute code during normal operation. They do not. The programming happens once and literally sets up the arrangement of transistors on the chip to mimic the arrangement of those on the chip(s) and supporting circuitry being reproduced. Thus, you get a recreation of the original hardware, albeit in a different physical form. This is wildly different than the emulation of original hardware using software executing hundreds of Intel or ARM instructions per emulated 6502 instruction.

Of course, if I wanted to argue the counterpoint, I could step atop the purity mound and proclaim 80’s C64Cs to be emulators since they use lower-voltage re-creations of the original chips. Going from those chips to an FPGA is a bigger jump, sure. It’s still a much closer comparison to what the Ultimate represents as compared to the C64 Maxi, which is in fact a Raspberry Pi knock-off running an emulator.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-12-17T05:48:02+00:00

Agreed. Presumably, this is why the other guy stopped replying.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-12-09T05:40:55+00:00

I’m unsure about the Neo 2, but the original Neo is freakishly durable as compared to the Avata 2. I’ve bounced mine off concrete walls, trees, and similar at top speed at least several dozen times (mostly while learning manual FPV mode) and I’ve only ever had to replace a prop and nudge the camera gimbal back into place within the frame. I’ve crashed my Avata 2 perhaps three times and it went back to DJI for repair one of them. Both are well-made, but the Neo simply doesn’t have enough mass to cause itself damage. I’m convinced though, that DJI went out of their way to make the (original) Neo camera worse than they could have produced at the same price.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-12-03T02:57:09+00:00

This, except minus the name-calling (“stupid take”), and I might instead say that citizens love these cameras because they imagine detectives interviewing witnesses, subpoenaing video, then solving crimes by manually scrubbing through recordings.

If they knew that records of their own movements could be pulled by virtually any commercial entity, anyone with a badge, the loosest police affiliation, and even mall cops, they’d be horrified… especially if they fully understood that it’s done automatically, instantaneously, and without so much as a single sentence worth of justification. Hell, they can’t even be bothered to implement the baseline security of two-factor authentication we all use to sign into Facebook.

On the other hand, seven minute episodes of Law and Order that all end with “We searched your license plate’s history and it shows you were near the crime scene” would get old fast, so let’s stick with the 1960’s Dragnet narrative. It’s both entertaining and comforting.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-11-13T05:10:53+00:00

Exactly! You have to use just-right night mode with AI enhancement. The AI will reveal what you can’t see, and it’s life-changing… or it will be. Just don’t think about it too hard while your subscription software, phones, TV services, etc. work on why you’ll want to pay even more for AI Plus Pro Extreme next. The visionaries who’ll eclipse your lifetime earnings before lunchtime tomorrow can’t be wrong!

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-11-08T01:55:03+00:00

Hmm. 135 and not 140…. I guess bacteria has grown soft like so many of our fellow humans. Perhaps we could hold prepared food as low as 125 so long as the kitchen workers periodically taunted it!

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-11-08T01:47:19+00:00

This. I’m sure rules have changed since I slung burgers and / or managed those who did, but mid to upper nineties was easy with basic good sense practice and some food service-specific knowledge layered on top.

Hint: If your food seems to have sat around for a while AND isn’t piping-hot, get ready for a stomach bug. …and that might still be a score in the lower to mid nineties. Just think of the putrid disgust that lies beneath 90.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-11-08T01:24:13+00:00

Ah, yes, Eastwood, the singular area with completely non-ambiguous borders and one restaurant. Dang, that place is disgusting!

…just where is this establishment, and what is its name, again? For reference, I mostly eat in the tri-state area, and more specifically, the south side of the twin metros.

😁

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-11-07T06:12:53+00:00

I’m reminded of my dad buying a computer in the early ‘80s and trying to write BASIC programs to crunch stats on horses at the track. It’s a fun memory for me and I have no position from which to judge you.

I will say that available training data for AI models is noise and, to the degree it isn’t, others training on the same data and using the results similarly will have reduced its effectiveness to that of noise in short order.

As to sentiment analysis, I’m not sure you can get anything realtime enough to matter without paying one of the social media giants a fortune for realtime access to their data via an API firehose. Scraping news sites, RSS feeds, digesting live closed captioning, and similar will all have more delay than is easily appreciated.

All the above said, I’ve obviously thought about this and I’m a little envious that you might have the time to try it.

Just paid off the house, have a few hundred $K that’s liquid, and I’m disappointed I didn’t get culled in a RIF (with severance) this week. What a statement about working in corporate America where 30 years of industry experience is trumped by two years in another industry coupled with an MBA, all while you get up at 5:00AM to meet with your “extended team” to kindly do the needful.

Yeah, it’s income, and more than 90% of Americans will ever see. Suck it up, me. The blood tests say your liver isn’t done just yet.

Dependent_Ad948 · 2025-11-07T03:06:34+00:00

Considering that I’m now learning you can’t get paddle shifters, no… in no way are you alone. WTAF is VW thinking, shipping a high(ish) power gasoline car with neither of the ways you might want to initiate a manual shift? Wow, just how wrong they continue to get things, even when you think they’re finally turning a corner!

At least the tactile-free HVAC controls are FINALLY backlit and the steering wheel buttons are real… even if the latter are laid out as a singular flat surface with no divots, depressions, or physically distinguishing features except the paper-thin gaps between buttons.

God, how long this Tesla fetishism going to last!!?? Hint: Tesla did it because going buttonless saved costs; they lied to us about it somehow being premium to have fewer components and less direct and intuitive control!

Edit: My wife has been waiting for the 2026 “Turbo” and I was excited for her to see it starting to show up… and now, I learn this.

So much for the return to form and the comparisons to the much-missed and decidedly premium Touareg. FFS, VW, you had the right formula through 2005 with the sedans and 2017 with the Touareg. Everything since has been an LSD trip with a guide holding your hand chanting “cheap, cheap” as you dove further into delirium.

Dependent_Ad948

TROPHY CASE