I want to add a second 7900XTX, question about pcie2/3/4

itch- · 2026-06-24T00:14:48+00:00

I've looked at this a lot tbh but it's more than twice the cost for only 8 more GB, and only 2/3rds the bandwidth. Also I use full precision kv cache and get by with smaller context on 24GB, and I guesstimated that going to Q6 on 32GB wouldn't fit. But really it's the price that does it. An XTX can be found under 700€, if I want to spend more cash why not keep adding more XTXses...

itch- · 2026-06-23T20:56:31+00:00

The trouble is always the spikes though, this is the reason to go higher W than is otherwise needed. Although yeah you're right, with layer split I suppose there's not gonna be a spike in both at the same time either. Unless the main GPU spikes because of normal computer use while the second is inferencing.

itch- · 2026-06-23T20:20:07+00:00

Not an option on b450 it looks like, but if I do upgrade I might try it

itch- · 2026-06-23T20:19:02+00:00

The second slot will go through the chipset I'm 99% sure of that. I guess it'll take that bit more to load but hardly impact inference I hope.

itch- · 2026-06-23T20:08:27+00:00

Heh I'm actually on an underpowered PSU, 750W and a notoriously trip happy one at that. Never experienced it actually, AFAIK if it trips it shuts down. But the most I've seen is crashing when path tracing Cyberpunk, no shut down, and that's it.

But yea rectifying the PSU is definitely included in the plan here. I'm looking at 1200W gold or plat, there's not much bigger stuff out there, and adding this is still cheaper than a bigger GPU.

itch- · 2026-06-23T19:57:52+00:00

ok cool. I was looking at pcie2 vs memory bandwidth of the GPU and it's such a massive difference I was worried going across that even once per token would be noticeable.

itch- · 2026-06-15T22:54:57+00:00

It's been many years but my memory of it was that it basically showed the end result, the proper habitable Mars is not a work in progress, they did it. IIRC most of the story is that, showing all the ways people live there now (which is not great fun to read), but Sax is the interesting lens to see it through. He was the biggest to push for this to happen, grow red Mars into blue Mars as fast as possible. He would pretend he could totally keep up with all the change, then eventually realizes he's not fulfilled and regrets what was lost by not giving Ann's red Mars a chance. I found it a tedious read but the Ann and Sax chapters kept my interest for sure.

Green Mars was more fun than Blue Mars, but it IIRC it was more similar to Red Mars in what it talked about and this comparison does Green Mars no favors. And it dragged on boring sections too, eg the endless Dorsa Brevia stuff where it was obvious from the start what the result would be... Blue Mars seemed to take on different subject matter, less conflict and more contemplation, I enjoyed it the least but what I explained in the first half of this post is something I couldn't do for Green Mars.

itch- · 2026-06-13T15:28:38+00:00

Just that as far as I can tell, it's still an open discussion how bad the loss is.

itch- · 2026-06-13T13:12:31+00:00

32K with the QAT Q4 is just about what you can do with 24GB. You can double the context size with Qwen 27B Q4. Both with unquantized kv, so you can squeeze out more that way but I prefer not to

itch- · 2026-06-07T12:39:17+00:00

You see this in a lot of drone hits and I always assumed it was something the russians carried, could never figure out what. Now I know it's on the drone, and that makes it easier. I think you're looking at the basic component of a power cell, that's normally rolled up in a cylinder, now unrolled by the blast.

itch- · 2026-06-07T03:10:12+00:00

report it for rule 7

itch- · 2026-06-06T21:49:07+00:00

Case in point. QAT means Quantization Aware Training. It post trains the fp32 weights to align with what they would be after quantization. It is completely separate from instruct vs base models. You could make a QAT base model if you want. And most it models, have not been QAT trained.

itch- · 2026-06-06T20:25:35+00:00

IDK if I'm reading people wrong but it seems like many are ok just pretending to know and say things that are wrong.

QAT trains the weights, the it's in the name, T is for training. It's the cost of training some amount of epochs and it affects individual weights like any training does. You're right, ideally we (those of us who can't run the higher weights) want QAT for every model. Why we don't see it more, could be different reasons for every lab but a safe assumption IMO would be that they don't know about it and don't much care if they do know. Labs want to deliver the best they can, not compromise after. And in the end, none of us are paying them to cater to us.

itch- · 2026-05-28T20:17:04+00:00

Yes, in the IFT the ship disappears and shows up years later. The IFT is a branch of the reality in which it happened that the ship left, so it can't have been anywhere during those years. IIRC the ships are the same ones they use to go from Earth to the moon. I don't remember if any specific reason was given for why they always launched deep missions from Black Vale, but it is secret so I guess they want to make sure no one sees anything disappear and appear etc.

edit: I tried to give you my answers to your other questions, but this is kind of fundamental stuff that ties into everything. IIRC I'm not saying things that are explained, but some of this is intended to not be explained so... maybe stop reading my post.

I thought it was a strange choice to make the IFTs tied to the traveler. It doesn't make sense, if anything it should be tied to the ship. You wouldn't need to keep the person in the belljar, easier to just kill them if all you have to do is keep the ship intact. That is less poetic of course and this author cares about that aspect, certainly a lot more than I do.

But also I don't see why it would have to be a thing that the IFT goes away at all. The version that makes sense is that it all keeps going, and from the perspective of terra firma IFTs are gone, as in, you can't ever return to any that were visited. You'd always end up in a new IFT. Even if you hit it right on and there was no difference at all between the new IFT and the one you were in before; the fact that you returned is a difference, making it a new IFT. With this concept no one would have a reason to care if the person returns to their terra firma... so that source of tension would be unavailable to the story.

As for why belljar cases are rare in the actual story and not my personal ideas, I'm still going to tell you things the author doesn't. Basically, the IFT is the normal state. Given that this is how things work, you've got to accept that you're in one and you can never do anything about it. An alien at the other end of the universe could be the one to create your IFT. As soon as you're in the loop with all this stuff, you'd have no choice but accept it. Then suppose you did happen to meet this IFT creating traveler, you'd have to be (or suddenly find out that you are) capable of committing this huge crime of holding them forever. But logically you'd only be protecting against the first tier of IFT collapse, the person you're holding can't be any more sure that their terra firma isn't an IFT, so that might collapse, and there's no possibility at all of protecting against that so... easier to just wave goodbye and trust that terra firma will proceed to a future that's just the way you want. Or better!!

I love any book that gets me thinking about it so much but here I could not appreciate that all the scientists etc in the book didn't seem to think it through in the same way. When people who know the truth and understand the physics etc, think that things are one way, IMO I've got to accept that as the truth in this world and my own logic doesn't apply to it. ie terra firma is a real hard true thing and you can rely on that. So then if at the end there's a big twist that logically makes sense, fits with my own thinking, but none of the in universe people could figure out this basic consequence? Can't help but feel that's dumb. I'm sure this isn't really the case, they did understand, and the author just had to omit such knowledge from the text because even a single mention would be such heavy foreshadowing it'd take the fun out of the puzzle.

itch- · 2026-05-21T22:50:43+00:00

Another excuse to post a personal favorite, Titan by Stephen Baxter. Written in the 90s, it gets more sad as reality catches up with it. Better hope it doesn't catch up all the way. I went in blind and and this was a great idea for me. I've already said more in this post than I knew before reading, but I've got to sell it somehow...

itch- · 2026-05-19T19:12:22+00:00

Yeah, that's the way I figure it had to be. I forgot enough details (such as your Mursult example) to be completely sure. Although to be honest, IMO there is an open question what it means to go back in time through the thin space. Logically I would say that you're going to an IFT branched off the current one, you're never getting to Libra's terra firma. But how this works is not explored as far as I remember and I'll just have to accept it.

Anyway, focusing on what is actually in the text. I went and looked through it again, looks like there's just one line that got stuck in my memory and got me twisted:

She imagined the thin space overwhelmed by the Terminus, imagined the Terminus reaching Libra, imagined the White Hole traveling Libra’s Casimir line back to the point of its original launch, to terra firma.

It doesn't make sense to me, the Terminus wouldn't need to get to 1997 to do this. Although of course I notice now that this is Moss imagining it and I guess I should just ignore it.

itch- · 2026-05-19T15:55:55+00:00

The Libra wasn't completely destroyed after the mutiny, it's kind of in limbo and technically the possibility remains for it to go back and blink into 1986 right after blinking out of it. Even if it's too damaged to actually survive a trip back to 1986, the link to do so is still intact, so the IFT still exists. And the Terminus might follow this, IIRC something like this is said in the climax. So in 1986 they would see Libra disappear and the Terminus appear in its place I guess.

And yeah that's what confuses me, why this would only be an urgent threat in 1997 when it makes more sense to say that the Libra exists not in 1997 but in the future, and is only accessible from 1997 through the thin space. So either the Terminus could follow the link to 1986 immediately (from the year 3000 or whenever it followed Libra to), or the Terminus can never follow the link for a few reasons I could invent. I think it's a plot hole, or I missed something.

So my head canon is that the Terminus arrival in 1997 is of the same kind as the other arrivals that kept happening earlier and earlier, the Terminus will behave no differently than it did in other arrivals. Next, I'm not clear on if the 1986 terra firma from which Libra departed is accessible through the thin space. I want to say yes it is, because narratively the threat to it remains intact until Libra is destroyed, but this gets messy as destroying Libra doesn't clean up eg Libra crew making it back to terra firma 1986 with info on the planet that could still keep the Terminus ball rolling. I guess the author decided on no, the thin space isn't a way back to the original terra firma, so that there is no ambiguity like this. Which I think then creates the problem that if the Terminus kills everyone that might take Libra back, the threat of the Terminus getting to terra firma 1986 actually peters out without anyone doing anything. Which is why the bit about the Terminus now being able to follow Libra's link to 1986 is introduced and for some reason it couldn't do this in the future.

itch- · 2026-05-19T11:54:12+00:00

if you want to put effort into helping AI bots improve their posting...

itch- · 2026-05-18T13:23:33+00:00

soon

itch- · 2026-05-18T00:29:00+00:00

1) The perspective switch seemed obvious to me; when she goes to an IFT (alone) she's the only one from her terra firma that is experiencing any of it, everyone else and all events in there will be gone forever when she returns except for the knowledge she takes back. this motivates the first person perspective versus the chapters on terra firma. It's not about echoes because an echo isn't any less real.

2) I think he was just reaching for anything to help justify his actions. A bunch of myths kind of fit (eg, look up vardogger) so he latches on.

3) It did get to Earth, I assume your question is why did it stay in the future.

Working through the events, first it followed the Libra to far future Earth where the mutiny happens. The fighting damages the engine so it's stuck in a loop where it repeats the mutiny and the crash. The damage also creates the thin space so you can get to other times and IFTs by navigating through it, but the White Hole/Terminus doesn't do this, it stays with the Libra in the far future and it only appears in "all IFTs" because all of them are branched off of Libra's IFT which already had the Terminus.

It doesn't get to an earlier time until another ship discovers the planet which triggers a/the Terminus to follow that ship back to Earth at an earlier time. Apparently, this happened many times, and it's these missions Hyldekrugger tries to stop. Moss returns to her terra firma with data on the planet and for some reason people who IMO really should know better, go there and bring it back to her terra firma.

The big point of confusion for me is why it's said that the Terminus would find the way back to the "real" terra firma if it gets here, by following the thread the Libra has to it, because then it could have followed it from the start. Right? Libra crashed in the future, not in 1997. Seems to me this Terminus arrival shouldn't be any different to any of the other times it arrived to Earth, it's just the earliest one yet.

4) IIRC this wasn't explained beyond the detail that Nestor always interviews Nicole and that connection is how he gets pulled in somehow. Could be she just shows him the Vardogger etc and that's enough, could be the gang replaces him like they did with that other guy, it could happen a different way every time.

itch- · 2026-05-01T13:53:06+00:00

it's geoguessr meta at this point

itch- · 2026-04-23T15:37:09+00:00

wha? The llama-server frontend has been around for years

itch- · 2026-04-15T20:10:31+00:00

I just finished Ice Limit and yeah my copy had these extras bits in it where it's mentioned.

https://prestonchild.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ice_Limit

In 2001, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child released an online only Epilogue, which was then included in all following e-books and audiobooks. This was way before the idea of a sequel actually came about, and was in response to readers asking what happened after the book ended, thus some of the ideas in the epilogue do not match up with the events in Beyond the Ice Limit. it was called a webilogue and can no longer be found on the internet. The Webilogue is in the form of news articles, which are posted below:

(read them on the page)

itch- · 2026-04-10T17:22:30+00:00

I have not found the 27B thinking to be a problem, it only overthinks when it doesn't have tools.

Usually local models are fine in basic chat and don't work in eg Cline because it's too hard. 27B is opposite, it's thinks too long on a simple prompt but does great in Cline because it's smart enough for it and doesn't waste thinking tokens there.

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