Let's Talk Tech
Can a new graphics card save my old PC?
The folks at Zotac are sponsoring this video to see if we can give my workstation a new lease on life! Matching the size and staying close to the power draw of my previous GPU, will the Zotac 4070Ti Trinity OC keep this HEDT system running for another year?
Shop the Zotac 4070Ti on Newegg https://howl.me/cluW54czjqk Continue reading “ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070Ti Trinity OC: Can a new GPU save my old PC?”
Get your tech week started off right!
NVIDIA kills the GPP amid backlash and bad press, but still doesn’t disclose what the program included. Nokia is selling Withings health hardware back to Withings. I share my reactions to LG G7 reactions. Facebook matching algorithms might be helping extremists and terrorists find each other. Cambridge Analytica is re-branding as Emerdata. Tesla Motors is looking to cull contractors, but is rapidly improving battery manufacturing.
There’s a HUGE vote for Net Neutrality heating up May 9th, here’s the recent news on the federal front, state initiatives in Connecticut, New York, and California. Plus we take a look at some of the lies ISPs use to push anti-competition legislation in city and state governments.
Download this week’s podcast – SGGQA 039 (RSS subscription links below)
Get your tech week started off right!
Yahoo sells Flickr to SmugMug. Google walking away from Allo? Asus intros a new brand for AMD GPUs. Apple cutting HomePod production. New Surface Phone Rumors surface as Windows Phone disappears. AT&T and Verizon allegedly colluded to prevent eSIM. California voting on state Net Neutrality bill. Huawei is leaving the USA? Whew… That’s a lot…
Download this week’s podcast – SGGQA 036 (RSS subscription links below)
NVIDIA is calling back almost 90,000 of their 8″ Shield Tablets over concerns that the battery can overheat.
The Shield was a niche favorite, focusing on a nearly stock Android UI combined with gaming prowess and the ability to stream games from a PC.
This affects tablets sold from July 2014 to the present, and should not affect any other NVIDIA products. You can read NVIDIA’s press release below.
Continue reading “NVIDIA Recalls 88,000 Shield Tablets, Battery Overheating Concerns”
It’s a gripe I’m sure NVIDIA hoped would have blown over by now, but quite the opposite, as it looks like Big Green is facing a class action lawsuit.
The issue stems from how NVIDIA advertised the GTX 970 as including 4GB of RAM. While this is technically true, only 3.5GB is high speed, and that last 512MB is a separate slow bit. Whenever the card needs to access that last partition, performance suffers.
When gamers discovered the anomaly, it was hoped that there might be some kind of driver or software update to improve performance as the card utilized that last half a gig. Unfortunately, it would seem NVIDIA purposely designed the card this way, likely hamstringing it to distance performance from their top tier card the GTX 980. Continue reading “Class Action Lawsuit Filed Over NVIDIA Falsely Advertising GTX 970 RAM”
NVIDIA delivered a lean, mean, gaming machine. Now with the LTE version available, is the Shield still a good value for the price? Let’s go hands on with this Android gaming slate!
Shop the Shield on Amazon.
Shop the Shield Controller.
Shop the Smart Cover.
NVIDIA’s Shield is a handy little Nexus 7 competitor with solid gaming capabilities, and they’re now offering a 32GB version with LTE. Starting today, you can pre-order the Shield on AT&T for $399, and if you’re signing up a new two-year agreement, you will also receive a $100 credit towards the purchase.
It’s not a bad upgrade from the WiFi-only Shield as it doubles the on board storage and adds that LTE radio for only $100 more. For more info on Shield, or to commit your cash to receiving one when they ship, head on over to NVIDIA’s site. Pre-orders are expected to ship by the end of the month, and you can find more info on AT&T’s promotion from their press release.
So most folks understand that they have a special chip or card in their gadgets which runs the graphics on their computers, phones, game consoles, etc. A Graphics Processing Unit is really good at crunching numbers to provide us things like detailed environments, high resolution textures, dynamic lighting, and fluid particle effects. A GPU is purpose built to chew through information our CPU’s aren’t great at dealing with.
Over the last couple years, that number crunching ability is now being harnessed for other computing tasks. As an example, my video editing software uses my GPU to render video, so my aged workstation is still pretty quick at pushing high quality HD video out the door. The fact that I have an old CPU, doesn’t hamstring me that much.
Well, moving up the computing ladder, many number crunching super computers are incorporating GPUs. Piz Daint in Switzerland, activated earlier this year, utilizes NVIDIA K20X GPU’s. It was built for life science, physics, and meteorological simulations. The system is not only the fastest supercomputer in Europe, but it’s also up to 7 times more energy efficient than traditional computing solutions. Continue reading “NVIDIA partners with IBM for GPU accelerated Super Computing, Unveils Tesla K40 GPU”