What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

[Grayfox]

My TV that was 1.5 years old died, so I went and got another one.

 

[PRO_TOO]

I was browsing the net for ANY cheap graphics card...
it’s the damn wrong time to start building a new computer. Those prices everywhere... crazy!
But I need to... greatness awaits!

question: for a decent full HD setup, a 1660 is a good value?! I became a newbie regarding that stuff the last 15 years. Never had any real interest lately, but now!
What about a 5600XT?

 

[sesselpupser]

@PRO_TOO it depends on your definition of "decent" and what you want to play more than anything and you'll just need to accept that you likely won't be running recent games at high settings. The 1660 is a good card, if completely overshadowed and forgotten thanks to the RTX cards, but if prices are inflated (I have no idea what the original MSRP was or what it sells for now) it may not be good value in general. Then again it's not as if you have a lot of choice right now...

My (limited) experience of Nvidia's mid-range cards is that they're surprisingly good. I bought a 960 to replace my 680 in 2014 and only upgraded to a 1080 in 2017 because I bought a VR headset. It was capable of running GTA V at 60fps with settings higher than I assumed it'd be capable of, it was a great card. I'm sure the 1660 is much the same.

 

[PRO_TOO]

@PRO_TOO it depends on your definition of "decent" and what you want to play more than anything and you'll just need to accept that you likely won't be running recent games at high settings. The 1660 is a good card, if completely overshadowed and forgotten thanks to the RTX cards, but if prices are inflated (I have no idea what the original MSRP was or what it sells for now) it may not be good value in general. Then again it's not as if you have a lot of choice right now...

My (limited) experience of Nvidia's mid-range cards is that they're surprisingly good. I bought a 960 to replace my 680 in 2014 and only upgraded to a 1080 in 2017 because I bought a VR headset. It was capable of running GTA V at 60fps with settings higher than I assumed it'd be capable of, it was a great card. I'm sure the 1660 is much the same.

Hey,

just Racing Sims. ACC, RaceRoom, Automobilista... and alike.
I asked friends and family but cards are rare and/or expensive.

what headset did you use with a 1080? When this set up is four years old, in a normal world, I would probably be able to get it for a more reasonable price by now I guess.

 

[sesselpupser]

Hey,

just Racing Sims. ACC, RaceRoom, Automobilista... and alike.
I asked friends and family but cards are rare and/or expensive.

what headset did you use with a 1080? When this set up is four years old, in a normal world, I would probably be able to get it for a more reasonable price by now I guess.

I don't know about ACC (as it's a different graphics engine) but I was playing AC, Automobilista, RaceRoom and more on my 960 - Dirt Rally, Forza 7 and Horizon 3/4, umm... Basically all racing sims and games this side of iRacing with no issues.

I've got a Vive although I've barely used it for racing games, I think I did two races in AC, half of one in Project CARS and less than five minutes in Dirt Rally mainly because I didn't have a wheel at that point and DR made me extremely motion sick!

 

[Nexus]

I was browsing the net for ANY cheap graphics card...
it’s the damn wrong time to start building a new computer. Those prices everywhere... crazy!
But I need to... greatness awaits!

question: for a decent full HD setup, a 1660 is a good value?! I became a newbie regarding that stuff the last 15 years. Never had any real interest lately, but now!
What about a 5600XT?

5600XT is much more powerful than the 1660.

(Shouldn't need to worry about the different VBIOS between cards anymore)

 

[PRO_TOO]

5600XT is much more powerful than the 1660.

(Shouldn't need to worry about the different VBIOS between cards anymore)

Thanks you for the advice Nexus!
This card should work beautifully with my Ryzen 5 3600!

I don’t want much, just a decent setup that can play racing sims in 1080p. 1440p if possible.

 

[Team THRT Drift]

Thanks you for the advice Nexus!
This card should work beautifully with my Ryzen 5 3600!

I don’t want much, just a decent setup that can play racing sims in 1080p. 1440p if possible.

I hope this helps with your decision as well:

​

I know with the 5700 there is no real difference with the 5700XT only a different BIOS, which you can flash to an XT version if you want.



The 5600XT is perfect for 1080p gaming. If you have a 1440p monitor and want to exclusively game on 1440p, the 5700XT wins and also provides you with some future-proofing even though it seems 1440p was abandoned altogether for 4K.

So if you're tech-savvy, get the cheaper 5700 and flash the BIOS. If you're not tech-savvy/don't want to risk bricking your new graphics card, try to find a 5700XT.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I was browsing the net for ANY cheap graphics card...
it’s the damn wrong time to start building a new computer. Those prices everywhere... crazy!
But I need to... greatness awaits!

question: for a decent full HD setup, a 1660 is a good value?! I became a newbie regarding that stuff the last 15 years. Never had any real interest lately, but now!
What about a 5600XT?

1650 is a good card for a lot of titles at 1080p. My son has one in his rig, which I bought as an interim until he gets a bigger monitor.

Now for the bad news: I bought a 1650 in early December for £165. You cannot now find them for less than £400.

Don't pay £400 for one.

 

[JohnBM01]

Recently, I deleted what seemed to be over 8 GB of space that ended up being a lot of space deleted. My main hard drive went from having 4GB left (yikes!) to 30 GB. You certainly have to make a habit of deleting unnecessary space from Windows Updates and stuff every now and then.

I also am thinking about in the future maybe getting one of those SSD (Solid State Drive) hard drives. I am starting to realize most SSD drives don't cost all that much these days, and many of them have more than enough storage space. For example, some SSD drives have as much memory as my PC- about 500 GB of storage. Having an SSD drive of 500GB would pretty much double my space. I'd have two terabytes of memory if you include the 1TB external drive I use. The way I see it, it would be better to have an SSD so I wouldn't have to worry about maybe my external drive going out randomly at times (it hasn't happened- just saying).

 

[Sonygamer455]

So I while I was reworking my music library the other day, I realized Foobar2000 can convert to Apple's AAC format and that I could have used that instead of MP3 when converting all those FLAC's I had a while back. Now I am having to go back track down all of them again after I deleted them. I feel dumb for not realizing this sooner.

Fortunately, I am about where I left off before learning of this and I am making progress. However it's taking longer than I thought it would, so much for getting it done in mid March like I hoped.

 

[Grayfox]

Been ripping DVDs to my NAS.

Will have to start downloading the programs I use, drivers, etc as windows is starting to act weird with random hanging.

 

[Nexus]

Been ripping DVDs to my NAS.

Will have to start downloading the programs I use, drivers, etc as windows is starting to act weird with random hanging.

I usually keep the installers for programs I use (and drivers) stashed away in my Downloads folder just in case I ever need to reinstall Windows.

I usually use Ninite anyway, but I still keep the installers out of habit.

 

[Grayfox]

I usually keep the installers for programs I use (and drivers) stashed away in my Downloads folder just in case I ever need to reinstall Windows.

I usually use Ninite anyway, but I still keep the installers out of habit.

I do too, but programs get old and out of date.
NTlite is great, but too many features are locked and for the single user paying $60 or so is a bit much.

If it was $10 or so, yeah I would get it.
Some tasks I can do afterwards with powershell like removing Apps

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Recently, I deleted what seemed to be over 8 GB of space that ended up being a lot of space deleted. My main hard drive went from having 4GB left (yikes!) to 30 GB. You certainly have to make a habit of deleting unnecessary space from Windows Updates and stuff every now and then.

I also am thinking about in the future maybe getting one of those SSD (Solid State Drive) hard drives. I am starting to realize most SSD drives don't cost all that much these days, and many of them have more than enough storage space. For example, some SSD drives have as much memory as my PC- about 500 GB of storage. Having an SSD drive of 500GB would pretty much double my space. I'd have two terabytes of memory if you include the 1TB external drive I use. The way I see it, it would be better to have an SSD so I wouldn't have to worry about maybe my external drive going out randomly at times (it hasn't happened- just saying).

John, you should definitely buy an SSD. Because the "seek" time is effectively zero, the performance boost is incredible, no matter how old your machine is.

You can get software (sometimes actually bundled with the drive) which allows you to clone your system drive onto the SSD, which saves you the hassle of having to reinstall everything

 

[ProjectWHaT]

I've been incredibly busy working on my classes this semester, but it has also been incredibly rewarding.

Last semester I took an intro computer graphics class

Yep, it was all in Python. We basically create a 3D coordinate system with triangles and spheres. Then produce rays coming from a "camera" and see if it intersects anything. Then calculate shading using Blinn-Phong shading, do recursive shading for reflections, etc. In the end, it was super easy.

View attachment 969709

This 3840 by 2160 picture of the Cornell box obj file I found online took 205 minutes to render after some optimizations I added.

This semester, I'm in the advanced course. So far, we've implemented a real time interactive ray tracer in C++ using Intel's Embree library. You can move the camera around in 3D space and it'll calculate the shading in real time. It includes point lights, area lights, and ambient obscurance. The last two are calculated using Monte Carlo estimations. You can ray trace any scene given an obj or dae file, but you need to manually write a JSON that contains the light and material info.

Our next assignment is creating our own rasterizer using OpenGL.

At the same time, I'm taking an intro game design class. The class is split into teams of 8 where we basically develop our own indie game for the semester. My team is making a platform puzzle game with magnetism physics. We made a "gameplay prototype" last week based on example code that was given for practice and we are now working on a "technical prototype" which should finalize most of the physics. The game is coded in Java using the LibGDX engine

 

[Nexus]

Tried a mate's spare GPU (GTX 750) in my PC a few days ago to see if it worked, and the system booted up eventually (after clearing the CMOS a few times and giving it time to boot up). I then tried putting my GPU (RX 480) in his old system today and got no video output with my card, though his card showed an output.

I RMA'd my PSU thinking it was the issue, but the retailer said that they conducted testing and all appeared to be well. I asked them to send it back to me and I'll try my PSU in my mate's PC when I get it back, but it's looking like my card has given up the ghost.

Luckily I'll be visiting my family soon, so I'll lift my RX 570 from my spare PC and just use that in my main rig. I wanted to upgrade rather than downgrade (though tbf it looks like it'll only be a 5-10fps decrease going from a 480 to a 570), but with current shortages, I'm lucky to have a spare card on hand full stop.

 

[eran0004]

Using Python and the PIL library I plotted an Archimedean spiral where radius = angle for all natural numbers 0 to 511.

 

[Nexus]

Tested out my RX 480 in a mate's PC and didn't get any video output, so I swapped in my RX 570 into my rig. I was still having problems in the form of blackscreens every reboot - the only way to consistently boot up my PC was to either:

a) Clear the CMOS and run the default settings
orr b) Let it chill for half an hour and it'd work fine for some reason

I couldn't update the BIOS from within the BIOS itself as that required a reboot (which once again resulted in a blackscreen), so I used the USB Flashback option to update it. So now my PC is finally back up and running after like a month and a half.

 

[Dave A]

Recently, I deleted what seemed to be over 8 GB of space that ended up being a lot of space deleted. My main hard drive went from having 4GB left (yikes!) to 30 GB. You certainly have to make a habit of deleting unnecessary space from Windows Updates and stuff every now and then.

I also am thinking about in the future maybe getting one of those SSD (Solid State Drive) hard drives. I am starting to realize most SSD drives don't cost all that much these days, and many of them have more than enough storage space. For example, some SSD drives have as much memory as my PC- about 500 GB of storage. Having an SSD drive of 500GB would pretty much double my space. I'd have two terabytes of memory if you include the 1TB external drive I use. The way I see it, it would be better to have an SSD so I wouldn't have to worry about maybe my external drive going out randomly at times (it hasn't happened- just saying).

On a similar line as this, I discovered I was running out of space on my primary drive yet thought I had plenty of free memory not long before. Using a program (I forget the name) I discovered a log file that had grown to 80gb in size in the GEForce experience folder. Promptly deleted that and all OK.

 

[Team THRT Drift]

On a similar line as this, I discovered I was running out of space on my primary drive yet thought I had plenty of free memory not long before. Using a program (I forget the name) I discovered a log file that had grown to 80gb in size in the GEForce experience folder. Promptly deleted that and all OK.

The equivalent to finding a benign tumour in your system

How does a log file reach that size??

 

[sesselpupser]

How does a log file reach that size??

The touring Robots gallery that I work on has this issue all the time, three of the robots used to periodically fail because the SSD fills up with logs but because a) we're all Linux amateurs and b) it hasn't been in our museum for us to support it "24"/7 since 2016, it catches us out from time to time.

Back in November I went to Hong Kong to install the robots there, had everything running fine, then two weeks after I got back we had an email saying one of the robots we've never had a problem with wouldn't work because the PC wouldn't boot. Trying to troubleshoot a problem like that from the other side of the world and with an 8 hour time difference is a nightmare scenario but luckily, as it's not my first, second or even fifth rodeo I was able to tell them exactly what to do and we all had a good laugh at the ~200GB log file that basically says "everything's OK" once a second, nearly 16 hours a day for five years (although with months of downtime between venues). The thing is as we know nothing about the software, which is all bespoke and all unique and we've got 16 different robots to support, and don't know enough about Linux it's hard to know if this problem will happen until it happens, but at least it's a very well understood problem now.

I also finally got around to making cron jobs to keep the log directories on the robots that we know have this problem clear during that last install visit. It's genuinely hilarious (to me, anyway) that the only fault we've ever diagnosed using log files is that the log files can and do get too big.

 

[Dave A]

The equivalent to finding a benign tumour in your system

How does a log file reach that size??

I think it was due to a GPU driver update that crashed mid-way through.

 

[Grayfox]

How does a log file reach that size??

Quite easy, I remember the CBS.log file getting quite chunky in Vista and 7.

 

[Korza]

Quite easy, I remember the CBS.log file getting quite chunky in Vista and 7.

I quite often have to deal with Windows.ebd files used for search indexing that end up filling any remaining space on the boot SSD. Worst one I've seen was 200GB.

 

[Sonygamer455]

Finally finished inspecting the audio to my music library the other day and making sure the replacements I found were an exact match to what I had before but with better sound quality. Of the 300+ old songs I had, only 28 I was unable to find suitable replacements for. Fortunately I have 2 CD's coming in the mail soon that contain at least 2 of the songs I am looking for.

So, the most tedious part is done for now. Now all I got to do is tweak the meta data on all of them, put them all in appropriate folders, make sure I didn't forget anything and that should be it! Hopefully by next week I'll have it all in order and I'll be done renovating my music library finally. (ignoring the 28 I still haven't found anyhow) Started doing all this back in June of 2020 I think, gave up for a while, and but recently went back to it. I'll be glad when it's all taken care of! It's been very ambitious and time consuming, but it'll be worth it. 👍

 

[Sonygamer455]

Well, finished checking the metadata on my music and double checking everything. Surprisingly, it took considerably less time than I thought it would! I did discover along the way one song I ripped had issues and I was missing a few from one album, but it's taken care of now. That said, I think my music library overhaul is finally done! It took a long time to do, having a library of over 2321 country songs is not exactly small, but I can honestly say it was worth it! 👍 I am about 90% sure I didn't forget anything, I am still missing some songs I was unable to reclaim and it's possible I may want to change somethings later on, but I am calling it finished it here. (finally)

 

[sesselpupser]

a library of over 2321 country songs

it was worth it!

...

Just kidding of course! I hope these images aren't obnoxiously big...

Edit: oh god, they're huge

 

[Sonygamer455]

...

Just kidding of course! I hope these images aren't obnoxiously big...

Edit: oh god, they're huge

I'd say they're a little big.

I said 2321, but it's 2315 now because I forgot to look for any unwanted duplicates. I kept feeling like I was forgetting something last night, but I figured maybe I was just overthinking it, only to realize shortly after I was indeed forgetting something. I guess when you have a library this large, you're bound to miss something. Sometimes I feel like I am never done tweaking things.

I got 2 CD's coming in the mail this week, so it's definitely going to get larger pretty soon.

 

[eran0004]

I created a machine learning AI to design steel beams for the purpose of minimizing material use. Here is its first proper result, a steel beam designed to carry a load of 50 kN/m over a length of 8 meters:

This beam is very weak for bending along the Z axis though, but I guess I can modify the AI to check for that as well.