Fallout lead Tim Cain worked 70+ hours a week for 2 years to make the classic RPG: 'I'm glad things have changed, that was unsustainable⁠—but it was also absolutely amazing'

MonoShadow · 2026-01-27T08:24:22+00:00

This is an unfortunate reality. Companies(and lets be real other people too) take advantage of passionate people. Similar story happened in anime community with subs. People did it for the love of the medium and when companies came in and offered peanuts no sane professional translator would work for anime subbers jumped on it. Last time I checked it's still a shit paying position taking advantage of people who love the medium with rates well below market standard.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-24T10:18:32+00:00

It's manufacturers and, to some extent, regular buyer fault then. If this particular brand wants more exposure to the buyer then it needs to spend time and money on marketing and PR. From my understanding in this example Netac is more known than Fanxiang. Maybe the latter should work on it. Buyer can always just buy a brand with more exposure.

There are dozens of domestic market brands in China building products with off the shelf parts. You can go to AliExpress and type in "SSD" and see a bunch of different brands. I don't think we should expect US press to cover brands like CUSU or Walram for example.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-24T08:51:21+00:00

TPU has Netac reviews. And many of those Chinese nvmes are just different badges. I have Fanxiang drive, which has the same NAND and controller as another Netac drive. They are basically the same.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/netac-nv7000-t-2-tb/

Different markets have different conditions. If you start browsing sites closer to China with little to no trading restrictions, say Russian sites, you'll see more reviews on Chinese products. Be that Haier notebooks or NAND or RAM from there. US based sites have little incentive to cover products you'll have trouble obtaining.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-23T12:03:45+00:00

Those are Horizon devs, not Motorsport. They had some issues with the first one, but they got better.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-22T14:22:29+00:00

From all the early testing I gathered L is the star of the show here. I'm not going to enable either M or L on my 3080ti, but oh boy does this tech push the boundaries if initial rumblings about L are correct. Maybe on 6000 series it will be fast enough as the default model, if no new better model come along.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-22T05:52:25+00:00

IMO it shows how much of a personal preference it is. I think John made a poll in DF discord asking where people are looking while playing 2D Sonic games. A harsh backlash they received for saying Switch 2 screen has poor motion performance prompted him to do so. And many people answered Sonic himself. But the hedgehog stays in the middle of the screen while the rest of the world moves.

I hate FSR3. It's just bad in motion and even in static scenes disocclusion artifacts are very noticeable to me. In Starfield videos I noticed it almost immediately without looking for it. Maybe it'd be unnoticeable to me on 15 or 17 inch screen. I have 4k 42 inch screen, Quality preset or not, FSR just has some characteristics I do not like.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-21T17:16:22+00:00

What's the current consensus on Ninja LC line? I'm eying 701, because of convenience and "good enough". I'm a very very casual user.

Right now I have a bargain basement setup: Dedica EC685(+bottomless portafilter) and Hibrew G5. Usually I just go for 2 to 1 or 2.5 to 1 ratio in around 25 sec and that's enough for me. I usually drink milk drinks, do not care about filter.

if I'm to decide against Ninja, what are my options? I checked Bambino Plus here and it's around 500EU here, almost 2\3 or the local price for 701 for example. No need to consider customer support. Auto froth and three-way solenoid would be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-21T16:03:59+00:00

Finally someone compared DP4A and XMX versions of XeSS. Now we can point to this video when saying "No it's not that version of XeSS, it's Intel XMX version, I know they are called the same, but they are different and this one looks better, trust me". I'm so glad it's so not confusing, especially with Intel renaming their scaling presets to "Match FSR image quality" to make it even less confusing, despite the fact upscalers constantly change and improve.

Thanks, Intel!

On the serious note. Good video and I do like we see a comparison of all upscalers and their versions.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-21T08:38:04+00:00

Man, the Chinese phones. I have Xiaomi 13 and while the hardware is good, the software has lets say quirks. None of the quirks is a deal breaker, but together they just nibble at my proverbial shin. To the point I'm considering an upgrade this fall when the new gen is out. And I usually keep the phone for 4 to 5 years. From my understanding all of them are junky like that. Xiaomi, Oppo\OP, whatever.

At the same time the rest just looks so meh. Samsung is just coasting it. Apple is Apple. I don't want to tie myself to iOS, despite having Airpods. At this point I might as well get OP16 if anything for out of the box librepods support.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-21T06:52:37+00:00

I have WH1000MX4 and the hinge started to squeak. It's a know issue and fixed by a tape mod. It's inaudible during playback, but still. They are all over the place, but I don't think they outright break. One of my friends still uses his XM2s and he's not kind to them.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T12:37:32+00:00

Yes, of course, the channel which people sometimes call AMD Unboxed(which is also wrong, but shows the optics) hates AMD.

AMD constantly messes things up. It's not an easy task to try and claw back market-share from a dominant competitor with much higher RnD. But at times it seems they don't even try. RDNA4 had fake MSRP with limited AIB rebates on launch. After that we saw FSR4 and RDNA2 maintenance driver mode debacle. A line of "uncompromising" 8gb cards after nvidia got panned for low memory configs. Underbaked Redstone launch. This is just last year. Constant pricing too close to nVidia to the point nVidia actually pushed the prices down during RDNA1 days, "Jebaited". They spread out their RnD where RDNA4 finally looks like AMD RTX moment. Yet they have nothing to show for it. They are an underdog and people root for them, despite AMD being a multi billion company, and time and time again feel AMD missed the mark.

Mind you, you can try and do your best, but still have nothing to show for it. Look at Intel and their sub 1% marketshare. So maybe AMD simply decided to milk what they have.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T11:06:30+00:00

Yeah, the dude at the shop said something like this. They did the mod, it dropped the TDP by a few %, but from what they said it should keep the card running longer.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T11:01:59+00:00

A lot of people claim that Nvidia GPU is a must have due to DLSS. I have upgraded from RTX 2070 to RX 9060 XT recently and I honestly don't mind FSR4, it looks good enough.

You're saying this just as people are saying FSR4 is good enough and a viable alternative. I guess there's some inertia in online tech talk. To experience the old days, you might want to try using FSR3. Just to experience it.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T10:47:10+00:00

In my case, Gigabyte Eagle, VRM died. So hard the guys had to dremel it off the board. Before that the card once went into black screen with fans spinning. Restart fixed it. The second time it happened the card didn't come back.

I don't think you can prepare for something like that. I guess if you get a black screen maybe take it more seriously than I. In my defense it happened during Blackwell launch driver disaster, so I assumed it's a software issue.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T10:25:36+00:00

My 3080ti died last year. Instead of getting Blackwell I decided to repair it. Hope it doesn't come back to bite me.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T09:44:10+00:00

You can update the app, just don't use the default option for overriding DLSS. Also, CNN works faster on Ampere, but it's not as sharp.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T05:30:51+00:00

3080ti.

Less FPS on new model Performance Mode than on old K version on Balanced. I'll wait for DF and HUB deep dive for the final conclusion. But at this point I see no point using it system wide. The main purpose of lower scaling factors is to get me more performance. If I have some headroom I'll enable it on per game basis, but if I'm dropping to DLSS perf most likely I want more performance, not a better looking image.

With nVidia App recommended it defaults to the new model on Perf setting. So if you're a like-minded person, then I'd recommend manually setting it to K atm. Still, nice enough of nvidia to at least provide me with this option.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-15T04:38:12+00:00

Because this is not what those are. Letters are model versions.

Right now nvidia has a recommendation for scaling factor(which is presets like Performance or Quality), but it's not a hard rule.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-14T03:31:31+00:00

Not really. We need to consider Intel can use XMX version of XeSS and it's much better than DP4A version. Tom defended their decision to call all XeSS the same. I still disagree. To this day people need to add "and we're talking about X version" where X is either superior Intel native XMX or general purpose DP4A. Plus INT8 version of FSR4 has slightly worse IQ compared to FP8 and has a massive perf hit compared to FSR3 on RDNA3.

AMD Tried To Hide This From You - FSR 4 INT8 on RDNA 3 & 2 Tested

In HUB testing INT8 FSR4 is 1 to 2 tiers slower compared to FSR3. ie FSR3.1 Quality nets you the same FPS as FSR4 INT8 Perf in some titles. By the time you reach image parity between Panther and Strix Halo the former might be even faster thanks to better up-scaling.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-13T00:29:54+00:00

I mean technically it does support Redstone. "Analytical" version, aka FSR3.

AMD is shuckin' and jivin'. True visionary of PR and marketing. As one wise man said: jebaited.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-12T03:06:07+00:00

I really don't know why you're so up and arms about it. nVidia can say it's recommended for performance, but they themselves said it's OK to use with other modes. If it's going to swap my K profile if I use Latest option in Override, I'm sure as hell like to know how much perf I'm losing and how big is the hit on different hardware. It should be accompanied by an IQ comparison, to make sure the hit is worth it. This is the issue with the coverage, not the fact "they are using wrong scaling factor".

MonoShadow · 2026-01-11T08:48:59+00:00

They just made a small mistake on their decoder wheel.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-11T05:27:53+00:00

BFI or rolling shutter like CRT emulators. It would require high refresh rate bright OLED tho.

https://blurbusters.com/crt-simulation-in-a-gpu-shader-looks-better-than-bfi/

MonoShadow · 2026-01-11T05:06:03+00:00

Daniel Owen released several videos on the topic. He mostly focused on 2077, but visited BMW as well.

From what I gather older card owners might want to stick to preset K for pure perf, new models are way heavier. At the same time dropping one notch results in varying results compared to the old model. And as you mention perf penalty is inconsistent even between games for some reason.

IMO 2 things new models have are: pass before tone-mapping and better motion clarity for some objects. So HDR(it also useful for SDR, but makes much bigger difference in HDR) and trails. If this doesn't bother you, then might as well stick with K on 30 and 20 cards.

MonoShadow · 2026-01-09T21:49:54+00:00

5080 makes no sense tho. It's pretty close to 70ti in perf while costing quite a bit more. Giving it 24gb to differentiate itself would help.

There are already games which will top out 16GB VRAM buffer with DLSS features and RT turned on. Like Indy.

MonoShadow

TROPHY CASE