AMD's RX 6950 XT has landed with a splash in the GPU market, turning heads with its high-fidelity 4K gaming capabilities. This dynamo outpaces its competitors, delivering seamless gameplay above 60 fps and matching its counterparts from Nvidia's line-up. The power tucked under its hood makes it a highly sought-after graphics card.
However, it's no secret that AMD's graphics cards often come with a catch—relatively weaker ray tracing performance. That said, the compromises in ray tracing with the RX 6950 XT seem justifiable considering its overall impressive performance. When pitted against Nvidia's RTX 4070 at native 4K, it holds its own and even surges ahead when ray tracing is disabled.
The RX 6950 XT proves its mettle, particularly in demanding 4K games, even though it might require a few tweaks here and there. Some games with intensive graphics such as Portal RTX and Cyberpunk 2077's path tracing mode might challenge the card, especially without the support of features like DLSS 3. However, when one considers the wider gaming landscape, it's apparent that the RX 6950 XT leads the pack in its segment.
Shifting our focus to the budget gaming scene reveals an arena fraught with fierce competition and, unfortunately, occasional disappointment. Both AMD and Nvidia have struggled to deliver a compelling choice for budget gamers. However, AMD's RX 6700 XT has emerged as a silver lining, stepping up to fill this void in the market.
The RX 6700 XT brings to the table a premier 1080p gaming experience, with enough power to venture into 1440p territory, albeit with some concessions. Its impressive performance, offering above 60 fps at 1440p in most games, even at maxed-out settings, make it a force to be reckoned with. Its prowess in less-demanding ray tracing titles like Resident Evil 4 further underlines its capabilities. The card may lag behind Nvidia's offerings in extreme ray tracing workloads, but its overall performance, coupled with its substantial 12GB of VRAM, make it a formidable contender. This GPU not only outperforms its peers but even bests higher-priced alternatives in games like The Last of Us Part 1.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ninja/post/113401
With a relentless speed that harks back to Devil Daggers, Hellscreen's heart-thumping pace is a hallmark of its design. Developer Jamie Degen has masterfully crafted a world where death serves as an upgrade, leaving players to face a fiery onslaught of flaming skulls and eldritch horrors. The game's idiosyncratic aesthetic, a dramatic interplay of cyan and red, lends a surreal quality to the eerie maps and comic-book-style gunfire, recalling the disturbing artistry of H.R. Giger. With each inevitable death, players return stronger, ready to brave the uncanny labyrinth that unfurls beneath a blood-red sky.
The game’s first-person perspective is enhanced by an intriguing feature—a rear-view mirror. This novel addition, uncommon in first-person games, elevates the need for environmental awareness. It’s not merely about charging ahead; players must constantly swivel between what lies ahead and the threats creeping up from behind.
Surprisingly, the mirror offers more than just improved situational awareness. Right-clicking allows players to fire backwards, with a small gun and reticle appearing in the mirror view. The game rewards players who master this feature, offering double damage when moving and firing forwards, and quadruple damage when progressing forwards and shooting backwards. Navigating this three-dimensional battlefield feels akin to grappling with a groundbreaking realm of movement. This unique mechanic adds a satisfying layer to the game, calling for well-timed, precision mirror shots.
Over several years of development, Hellscreen has evolved from its initial Kickstarter campaign into a standout shooter. The narrative immerses players into a universe of ancient gods, an afterlife machine, and creatures artificially crafted as part of the mechanism. As one of the machine’s errors, you are thrust into the Hellscreen dimension, caught in a cycle of death and resurrection. It's up to you to destroy this malfunctioning machine, restore the natural order, and perhaps then find everlasting rest.
What are you considering for your next AMD build and why?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ninja/post/90587
Imagine being able to play four new Quake episodes.
What the Dwell?
Dwell, an ambitious project for Quake, is a four-episode mega map pack put together by a team of over ten members who share a deep love for Quake. Despite currently being incomplete, with only two of its four episodes released, the project has drawn attention due to its intricately designed maps and attention to detail. The single available episode, set in an Egyptian-themed landscape, presents an impressive array of challenges and design masterclass. The team behind Dwell has poured meticulous care into creating the textures and models necessary for the thematic swap, evident from the moment players encounter the structures and enemies.
The initial experience of Dwell, starting from a difficulty-selection map and leading to a ruined laboratory, might come off as underwhelming. Players might be initially put off by the large team size, the unfinished state of the mod, and the first level seeming like a slow-paced reiteration of previous Quake levels. However, the game quickly disrupts these expectations by offering challenging encounters, like facing a shambler at the exit gate armed with minimal weapons, which forces players to show their mastery of the game's mechanics.
One of the key principles of Dwell is that it expects players to perform well, as it's a mod released two decades after the original game. The game's difficulty increases consistently but satisfyingly, and just when players think they need a change of pace, they are often offered a reprieve or a new weapon. The following levels are impressively designed with well-rendered textures and creative map design, offering a captivating experience. The game's visuals and set pieces continuously evolve, transitioning from sunny sands to gore-drenched depths, and then into vast blackness filled with sacrifice chambers and Chthonic rituals.
A common concern is whether Dwell might end with a whimper rather than a bang, as many Quake mods do, given their lack of big final boss-type enemies. However, Dwell promises that every episode of the pack will feature its unique end boss to fight against. The first boss in Dwell, known as "The Warden," is a formidable adversary, requiring players to have a complete understanding of Quake's mechanics. This boss challenges players with deadly projectiles and a horde of foes to beat before they can face him.
Dwell serves as a beacon demonstrating that as long as a game has a thriving community, it's never truly dead. Even though the Quake series hasn't seen a main series release since 2005, the community's efforts, exemplified by projects like Dwell, keep it alive. If the current work by the Dwell team is any indication of what's to come, fans of the series have much to look forward to.
#Quake #episodes #boomer_shooter
AMD's core technology is set to advance significantly with the upcoming Zen 4 and Zen 5 cores. The Zen 4 cores, expected to arrive in 4nm and 5nm variants, could bring a sweeping refresh to all AMD chips or be selectively used for specific chip categories. Meanwhile, Zen 5 cores will launch with a 4nm process and eventually include 3nm variants. The timeline for these cores' debut is slated for 2024, according to AMD's CPU roadmap slide.
Zen 4c and Zen 5c cores will play a pivotal role in the construction of ultra-dense server chips optimized for heavily-threaded cloud workloads, similar to efficiency cores found in other chip architectures. An exciting reveal is the forthcoming EPYC Bergamo chips, which will feature Zen 4c cores and support a staggering 128 cores and 256 threads. The 'c' cores, smaller than the standard Zen 4 core, are geared towards improved compute density and increased core counts, although specific cache configuration details remain undisclosed.
In a significant leap forward, AMD's Zen 5 architecture will undergo a major redesign and hit the market in 2024. This redesign is set to deliver improved performance and efficiency, achieved through a re-pipelined front end and increased issue width. Moreover, AMD intends to integrate AI and machine learning optimizations into the architecture, although details regarding this addition remain sparse.
AMD's chiplet-based architecture, enabled by the Infinity Architecture, plays a vital role in the company's chipmaking capabilities. It allows for the connection of chiplets, memory, I/O dies, and even data center application accelerators like GPUs. Plans are underway to extend this technology to include Xilinx IP and third-party vendor IP support, broadening its chiplet-based production scope.
Finally, AMD is set to support the Compute Express Link (CXL) and the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) consortium. CXL is an industry-standard cache-coherent interconnect providing an interface between CPUs and other devices, while UCIe aims to standardize die-to-die interconnects between chiplets, reducing costs and promoting a broader ecosystem of validated chiplets. These new additions further cement AMD's leading position in chiplet-based products.
#AMD #processors #CPU #roadmap
What’s your current AMD build? Any plans to upgrade?
In case you have been living under a rock…
Asus, the well-known PC hardware manufacturer, has recently been under scrutiny due to reported overvolting issues leading to damage in Ryzen processors. The issues have spurred an influx of returns, casting doubts over the safety and reliability of Asus products. Specifically, Asus motherboards appear to have caused malfunctions in the Ryzen 7000 processors, with users reporting dead processors and visible damage on motherboards. Gamers Nexus, a YouTube channel, criticized Asus for allegedly releasing faulty BIOS updates that permitted unsafe voltages in Ryzen 7000 processors, leading to these issues.
In response to the controversy, Asus issued an official statement, assuring customers that the warranty of ASUS AM5 motherboards would cover both beta and fully validated BIOS updates. It further clarified that the ASUS AM5 motherboard warranty also encompasses all AMD EXPO, Intel XMP, and DOCP memory configurations. Moreover, Asus stated that all recent BIOS updates comply with the latest AMD voltage guidelines for the Ryzen 7000 series processors.
However, a Reddit post showing a large number of returned Asus motherboards at Micro Center raised questions about Asus's reputation and trustworthiness. A closer look reveals that the majority of these returned boards are Intel Z690 models, not related to the AMD Ryzen 7000 controversy. Some speculate the returns might be linked to a recent upgrade promotion by Micro Center, which encouraged users to return their old boards. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding Asus's handling of the overvolting issues with Ryzen processors could have long-lasting implications for the brand's reputation.
#AMD #motherboard #CPU #red_team
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ninja/post/72948
SELECT * from local_user; provides a list of users that has a password_encrypted field. That list is exactly equal (all the same accounts are listed) to what I get from: select p.name, p.display_name, a.person_id, a.email, a.email_verified, a.accepted_application from local_user a, person p where a.person_id = p.id;
So I can see a persons a.email (email address), a.person_id, and their password_encrypted (hash) by correlating these tables, can I not?
These accounts are NOT ALL local to my server… So I MUST be being passed hashes, right?