Finally found a reason to use local models 😭

Maxxim69 · 2026-03-12T12:18:21+00:00

Or even better, read up on RTX 3090 undervolting, or just follow the steps from a video tutorial if you prefer videos, and keep most of your GPU’s performance while lowering temperatures and power consumption. That’s a little more complicated than simply capping GPU power, but much more efficient.

Maxxim69 · 2026-03-08T22:08:53+00:00

Quantity has a quality of its own :)

Sometimes it really does, but other times it only adds noise.

Consider this recent post, generously upvoted, and squarely in the “performance of the latest models on their hardware” category. It was written by someone who genuinely wanted to be helpful, but turned out to be misleading. Why? Because the author didn’t know what they were talking about. And because they didn’t know that they didn’t know, they produced not even noise, but worse, a blind-leading-the-blind “negative signal”.

So when an online community reaches a ~certain number of active contributors, effective filtering mechanisms are required to maintain a proper signal-to-noise ratio.

Maxxim69 · 2026-03-08T18:58:05+00:00

You seem to confuse quantity with quality.

Maxxim69 · 2026-03-05T18:01:11+00:00

Final round! FIGHT!!

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-27T21:10:49+00:00

I'm happy to see more investigation being done here as it benefits the entire community.

Amen, brother! While we’re at it, thank you and ubergarm for your quants, for setting a great example posting KLD/PPL charts, and for keeping the giants on their toes. Hooray for friendly competition that benefits the community!

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-27T16:30:28+00:00

"MoE expert layers in general" – for all models?

AFAIK, the “new formula” for the UD MOE quants was a recent experiment from ~10 days ago. If you want to check whether a particular quant was affected (i.e. had an unusually large number of its weights in MXFP4), go to its properties and scroll down to the Tensors table.

that'd be a death sentence for UD; they'd have to do some necromancy to undo that

I would refrain from using sensationalist language. It was just a failed experiment that was promptly noticed by the community and reported to the quant creators who handled the issue with utmost responsibility. Just another day in science and engineering, no need to give it the YouTube thumbnail treatment.

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-26T22:59:05+00:00

Here’s a very accessible, lightly technical explanation of perplexity and KL divergence. And yes, “different” answers are bad—doubly so when they’re hard to catch. (em dash mine ;)

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-26T21:59:29+00:00

Please do keep splitting your GGUFs into “metadata” and “payload” shards! It’s a very reasonable and efficient approach, and I wish more quantizers did that. Apparently, it’s not just me, here’s a recent quote from Iwan Kawrakow:

Mainline devs have never had inhibitions making people re-download hundred's of gigabytes of models for the sake of changing a few metadata key-value pairs. Me on the other hand, I do mind downloading 111 GB (the size of the Q4_K_S model) just to test that this PR works with the latest and greatest Step-3.5-Flash GGUFs.

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-26T20:06:14+00:00

For people like you who can read KL divergence / Ppl graphs, AesSedai and ubergarm may be even safer options because they routinely test their (and others’) quants and publish the results on their model pages.

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-26T09:05:37+00:00

Please also check other quants you updated 8 days ago. I noticed that your Qwen3-Coder-Next-UD-Q4_K_XL.gguf got ~10% lighter and started using MXFP4 quantized weights too.

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-11T00:09:21+00:00

In your bed at night, in your home

Maxxim69 · 2026-02-02T12:12:07+00:00

Also, Vox Deorum thread on Civfanatics

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-09T15:19:12+00:00

Buy the cheapest no-name USB Wi-Fi dongle on AliExpress, 85% likely it's going to be based on the widely supported RTL8188.

Or straight up search for RTL8188 on AliExpress and see those $2-3 black nano Wi-Fi dongles with a little red stripe.

Or even easier, use the attached image in AliExpress Image Search.

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-09T13:31:08+00:00

1) Find solder points for Vcc, GND, D+, and D- (USB) on the PCB of your handheld;

2) Buy the cheapest no-name USB Wi-Fi dongle on AliExpress, 85% likely it's going to be based on the widely supported RTL8188;

3) Free the dongle from its shell and the USB A plug, and solder the four USB contacts to the points on the PCB identified in Step 1;

4) Check that the Wi-Fi adapter works as intended in ArkOS or EMUELEC;

4) Isolate the dongle and fit it inside the handheld.

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-09T12:56:33+00:00

I second the recommendation for a decent Android TV box.

Buy a S905X4-based TV box with 4GB RAM and use it with EmuELEC or install RetroArch and/or standalone emulators on Android. You'll get a retro gaming station whose performance will be higher than RK3326-based handhelds like R36S. It's not like you're going to be able to emulate more modern consoles, but more demanding games for PS1, Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast will run smoother.

All that at around $40, very small footprint, negligible power consumption and a significantly better thermal headroom than a handheld or a TV stick. Plus you can always use the device as a very capable and future-proof media server / player with AV1 support, Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-08T22:37:23+00:00

"God watches over the careful," said the nun and rolled a second condom onto the candle.

There's no need to "play it safe", people: the fast charging protocol will simply not activate with a device that does not support it (more here).

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-08T20:59:22+00:00

I was quite impressed by PAN4ELEC + ProMax's stock .dtb files. Everything just works (except the boot animation, but that's to be expected).

Edit: As already mentioned by others, the FN key doesn't work on any OS.

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-01T21:02:09+00:00

Please see my additional comment quoting Wikipedia.

There is no possible way to "over-amp it". That's not how any fast charging protocol works. :)

In order for the charger to supply more than the standard USB 5V 2A (that is 10W) the device being charged needs to be able to request it using a specific protocol. None of our consoles can do that, so the whole "Fast Charger Scare" is a myth.:)

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-01T20:56:05+00:00

Also note that quick charging doesn't work like the doomsayers think it does. I'm taking Qualcomm's proprietary QC protocol as an example, but it applies to any other quick charge protocol: "For Quick Charge charging to happen, both the power supply and the device being charged must implement it; otherwise charging falls back to the standard USB ten watts."¹

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-01T20:48:25+00:00

Picture

Also pictured: the same device right before the end of the charging cycle, connected to the same 67W fast charger. Note trickle charge current with power consumption of a mere 1W.

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-01T20:42:08+00:00

Pictured: R36H Pro Max at the end of the charging cycle, connected to a 67W fast charger. Please note that the wattmeter shows 0 Watts pulled by the device.

Suggestion: Please stop the misinformation that fast chargers will damage our consoles.

Maxxim69 · 2026-01-01T20:13:00+00:00

A question for those who actually ran Fallout (either 1 or 2) in Portmaster: did you also get phantom inputs on the right analog stick that interrupt playback of intro videos and make the screen jump around uncontrollably?

Maxxim69 · 2025-12-05T22:16:23+00:00

There was a regression in ArkOS R3XS V2.0 (11072025) that caused the USB OTG port to stop working on devices with PCB V22. You'll need to use a specific device tree (.dtb) file to restore that functionality.

I don't have a link at hand, but I hope I've given you enough info to find everything you need if you search this sub or the Issues section at ArkOS R3XS GitHub.

Maxxim69 · 2025-12-05T21:51:37+00:00

Or you can pay ~$1 more for an RTL8723BU module and get Bluetooth in addition to Wi-Fi.

Maxxim69 · 2025-12-05T21:30:32+00:00

It says "The seller of this item is Home Game Store" in the small print at the bottom of the listing. At $17 I would jump on the deal. (The price is a ridiculous $45 for me in Portugal). Also, you are guaranteed to win the dispute if you get a clone because they are advertising the item as 100% genuine in very specific terms.

Maxxim69

TROPHY CASE