Hardware Discussion Thread

[NaturalViolence]

(03-27-2016, 10:07 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: They already stopped updating those drivers last year, that's why I got a 960.

Yeah AMD usually stops supporting GPUs entirely after 4-6 years and Nvidia after 8-10 years

[teh_speleegn_polease]

Heya guys. Dunno if anybody remembers me (I used to lurk here quite a bit about a year or so ago), but either way, I am now back to leech off you guys' experience without contributing anything meaningful to the forums.

In short, I'd like advice about a keyboard. In particular, the switches on it. I plan to spend a lot of time both typing (code) and gaming on it; so I thought that brown switches would be a good compromise. However, I'm wondering how red switches feel for typing?

From what I hear, tactical feedback is important for touch-typing. At the same time, I've never owned a high-quality keyboard, but I do know that with some of the cheap, high-travel and high-tactility keyboards I've used are pretty horrible for gaming. Hence my uncertainty regarding committing to brown or going for red instead.


And on a slightly different note, the keyboard I've been seriously considering getting is this one: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ It looks cool yet kinda gimmicky, but, despite its cheesy name, from what I can see it seems like it would actually be able to live up to its claims. I've used a split keyboard for a very short time before, and I feel like it really would be pretty nice... But has anyone here used anything similar for any considerable amount of time, and if so, would you say it's worth it or is it just a gimmick made to appeal to the kind of hipsters that use vim on a dvorak keyboard with blank keycaps?

[AnyOldName3]

I use Cherry MX Browns, and have no trouble with them for gaming. I'd definitely not go for something with less feedback (I'd probably have gone for Blues if they weren't a lot louder), but the whole reason they make multiple styles of switch is that different people have different preferences.

[teh_speleegn_polease]

Alright, thanks for the advice. I'll see if I can try out various switches somewhere just see what I like best.

[AnyOldName3]

Honestly, that's the best option.

[Qaazavaca Qaanic]

> https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com

I frequently use complex shortcuts (ctrl, shift, alt, win, pageup/home/f#).

Many laptop keyboards remove pageup/down/home/end, instead dumping them on fn-something. This makes using them significantly more difficult.

The UHK's mod-keys are located in the center-top of the keyboard, not along the edges. This makes it easier to confuse the location of any one mod-key.

The right-click menu key is not in the bottom bar. I don't know if it's still there, nor the location, because I don't recognize the icons. This key is really important to me.

Also, even the arrow keys are gone!

[teh_speleegn_polease]

Out of those ones, the only ones that really matter to me are the function keys. I never use page up/down, and my current job requires a mac so I've gotten used to a modifier+key combination for home and end (Cmd+Arrow to be precise, for those who never used a mac). And Ctrl, Shift and Alt are all there.

Arrow keys are a big point, yes. Depends on what you do - using vim, for instance, you don't need arrow keys. All other types of text editing might suffer. That's a pretty good point.

There's no "right-click menu" button because you have mouse control, so you have an actual right-click button which you can use to bring up the right-click menu. Still, I use the keyboard shortcut often enough to probably end up remapping one of the right-hand modifier keys to it (since who uses modifiers on the right hand anyway, other than Shift of course). Since the keyboard is fully programmable, that should be easy.

One big problem I have with it is the staggered key layout. If I'm going to splash out a few hundred dollars on an esoteric, highly specialised keyboard, I'd expect it to at least have a sane grid layout (a la ergodox ez or typematrix 3000, to name a couple).

[admin89]

Recently , Intel has screwed up so much ...
_First , they destroyed tick tock
_Second , they plan to rename the current i7 6700k , lower the base clock from 4.0GHz down to 3.6GHz and call it the new generation i7 7700k
This is getting rediculous . They should call i7 6690k instead
If this is not monopoly then what is it ?

[KHg8m3r]

Those are pre-release engineering samples, so the base clock could be increased at the time of release.

While at first I was kinda mad that tick-tock had been abandoned, it makes more sense since as the die size gets smaller, it becomes even harder to work with. While Intel has buttloads of money to throw at making smaller manufacturing processes, it still takes time and issues need to be worked out

[NaturalViolence]

admin89 Wrote:_First , they destroyed tick tock

Oh for fuck's sake.  Now we're blaming them for the breakdown of Moore's law too?  Is it their fault that quantum physics exists?  Name one other company that has a plan in place to develop quantum well transistors in under 3 years.  I'll wait.

Rant:
TSMC, GF, samsung, qualcomm, etc. are only JUST NOW getting FINFET and won't have it in consumer products for another few months.  Intel had it in consumer products 4 YEARS AGO.  That's how far ahead their manufacturing technology is compared to everyone else and still everyone online complains that Intel is too slow to improve and therefore their must be some sort of business conspiracy holding them back.  It could never possibly be that they understand less about engineering nanoscopic semiconductor diodes than Intels world renouned electronic engineers, oh no.  I swear this stuff gets more rediculous by the year thanks to the internet's echo chamber effect.

admin89 Wrote:_Second , they plan to rename the current i7 6700k , lower the base clock from 4.0GHz down to 3.6GHz and call it the new generation i7 7700k

That's not what they're doing at all.  The i7 7700K is a kaby lake cpu.  Thus the 7 at the beginning of the model number to indicate the 7th generation.  And the turbo clock is still 4.2GHz so the clock rate will remain the same when it's under load.  If it achieves a 10% gain in IPC like all of the previous generations have then it will perform the same at 3.6GHz as its predecessor did at 4GHz while using considerably less power.  And 10% better at 4.2GHz when under load.

admin89 Wrote:If this is not monopoly then what is it ?

An alternate universe where AMD, samsung, qualcomm, etc. don't exist.  This is at best an oligopoly.  People are throwing around the word monopoly these days so much without any regard for the actual definition of the word.

Lately I feel like I'm going insane. I feel like I'm the only one on the internet that has read anything about semiconductor manufacturing even when compared to the people writing news articles about it. Yes I know that's not true but it sure feels like it sometimes.

@teh_speleegn_polease

Not a big fan of that one personally.

Any standard layout mechanical keyboard with MX blue's feels great to me. But I know some people don't like keyboards that are that clicky. And they're too loud for use at work so I'm looking into getting something quieter that still has that clicky feeling. There are some nice options coming out this year that I'm waiting on before I make my decision though.