June Loose Ends Reader Mail

Hi Tom, love your work! I'd love you to talk about core architecture for a bit. Laptops and server are much larger product segments than desktop, yet intel seems to have designed golden cove and raptor cove for scaling to high individual core tdp's on desktop. A symptom of this is laptop performance and battery life stagnation/regression over willow cove which were perhaps designed for server/mobile only? I find it crazy that 12th gen processors are lackluster on mobile whilst amd, apple, qualcomm design their cores for low power foremost. Does intel in your opinion need to start separating core designs between laptop and desktops ie. using a fully fledged e-core only in mobile and using the huge mm2 desktop core in desktop only? Will dlvr and intel 4 save their mobile brand reputation? Idk about you, but 12th gen mobile seems like a lack of care and thought just like the other shortcuts they're prone to. Slapping more cache on cores, redesigning chipsets every two years etc

tasty bounlaki

Hey Tom I was just wondering if u know of any other chips Nintendo may really consider for the switch 2(super switch I like or just to be weird and dumb switch 64) I know there is the Oran NX 10 watt variant but I read somewhere that there was another chip higher then 10watts lower then 25watts

Jeff Burns

Hi Tom, I had a question that has been burning on my mind this past week. I heard that amd amf encoder has caught up to Nvidia's nvenc encoder according to Tom's hardware. Puget systems tested it and said it has the same quality as nvenc while streaming. Why does obs and other programs that depend on video encoding not implement the new encoder that reintroduces b-frames back into their encoder. Is it amd's fault or do these companies just don't care. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-amf-encoder-quality-boost

What can you say about the current relationships between AIBs/distributors/retail/chipmakers? I get the feeling based on the current supply and upcoming releases that a lot of fingers are being pointed around and some relationships could get burned.

Trogdor

Hi Tom, I currently have a Titan X Pascal (first one, not XP) that I got used, and most of the time it's been good enough for me, but it struggles a bit in VR to push high enough frame rates, and I'd like to check out raytracing. I'm not in a huge hurry, and I'd like to roughly double performance while hopefully not spending more than ~$500. At this point do you think my best bet is Rx7700 (will that come out with the higher end RDNA3 or later?) or to try to score a good deal on a used current gen high-end card as prices crash this summer? When do you think the nadir of used card prices will be? (Should add, my CPU is a 5800x, B550, 64GB ram) Thanks, and keep up the great work, and hugs to Reesie!

Alexander

This may be for when you have a guest that specializes in CPU/Cache. I noticed that AMD is going big with Cache memory. My experience has been that Cache was SRAM, not DRAM. As a result, it consumed a lot more energy. Maybe they got over the energy issue, but in the past, a hit rate of 85%, but better, 93% hit was required to be "worth it" from an energy/performance profile. Do you have any insight into the AMD chache?

TheBestRTaken

What's the chance that the PS5 Pro will include hardware to emulate part of the PS3 engine, either as FPGA or silicon. Doesn't Sony have ownership in the tech used for PS3? IT seems like some of the features are harder to emulate. If a few instructions were added to simplify an X86_64 implementation of the emulation, that could solve backward compatibility. IF it is FPGA based, they can use it for AI and other stuff too.

TheBestRTaken

What is the likelihood of AMD or NVidia coming out with a GPU with a PCIe M.2 NVME that they can handle the GPU data and system data? A GPU at PCIE5 doesn't need 16 lanes for video, not even video, and nvme would fill the bandwidth.

TheBestRTaken

Hi Tom. I know this is a bit late, but issues with WiFi VR Headsets. With WIFI 6 and 6e, there are multiple radios used in parallel to get the bandwidth. WiFi AC allowed for 5Ghz OR 2.4Ghz, one radio at a time. ^ allows for 5.2 + 5.8 + 2.4 all at the same time. 6E, I believe, allows for 3 channels of 2.4, 1 of 5.2, and 1 or 2 of 5.8, plus they are looking at adding additional frequencies. This means more transmitters. The receiving isn't an issue, but transmitting can be a potential issue. The energy presented to nearby items, like your brain, face, etcetera, is expressed by E_total = (E_1 +E_2 +....E_n)/distance_squared. This means as you move away from the transmitter, doubling the distance reduces the energy to 1/4, not 1/2. That is why there is more concern about putting it on your face. Also, the health concern about original cell phones was the amount of power held to your ear. Fewer towers meant that they had more powerful transmitters. I think it was originally planned to be 5 watts and then reduced to 3 watts for safety. Walkie-Talkies were 5Watt as a health concern, but they only transmit when you press the button. A cell phone is continuous. That was 1G, 4G has more towers and so lower power, I think 0.5 watts. I think 5 or 6G is expected to be like 0.1watts. People freak out about how close and frequent the towers are in these newer technologies, for example, 5G, but they don't understand how much lower the power is. In WiFi, the power is determined between the device and the Access Point. if the signal isn't clear, it tells that device to turn up the power. Other transmitters make it harder to read so it will demand the power be turned up. Imagine that on your face. The issue isn't that it causes cancer in and of itself, but exposure over time may weaken or distress systems in the body that allow other issues such as cancer. I'm not saying it does or doesn't but explaining the issue. Also, the higher the frequency, the more energy is absorbed by a body. 900Mhz had a much further range because it didn't get absorbed as easily. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold as much data. Higher frequencies hold much more data but get absorbed more by matter, such as the human body. I am only writing in as it seems to have been brought up but not understood.

TheBestRTaken

Hi Tom, So Intel keeps their 2 CPU gens compatibility as per usual? Too bad they didn't change things a bit after AM4...

Roy Ackerman