Good morning everyone and welcome to another weekend. It's strangely warm this morning at 6:35 am as I woke up to 55 F outside after going to bed when it was around 30 F last night. These last couple of storms have been bonkers. Warm rain, then snow, then hail and high wind gusts all at once for hours at a time, then nothing. I haven't seen totals for this most recent storm but I know the Sierra snow pack is way, way above average for this time of year and I really hope it stays there to last until it really matters in the summer. As for the previous storm, I got eleven inches of rain in three days. I've seen more, in fact I remember getting nine inches of rain in one day some years ago, but this was definitely a big hit to the drought conditions in CA. At least for the immediate term. It'll take years for that water to get to the aquifers and water tables. In the meantime there's flooding and dam spillway failures to attend to, but we have to take the good with the bad. I did hear something that kind of made me go slack-jawed for a moment and that's the prediction that the recently passed storm contained something like fifteen times the volume of the Mississippi River as a whole of precipitation.
But enough about the weather, let's look at some tech stuff.
Okay, so the Nvidia 4070ti very recently made it's way to the market and it seems like it's a mixed bag of pretty great performance but for a pretty bad value. It's a little tough to figure out, because it's roughly the same performance as the 3090ti but for MSRP it's around $1,200 cheaper. That sounds great except that even the 3090ti came way, way down as time went on due to crypto busts and so on, including the simple fact that a $2,000 GPU isn't on a lot of people's must have lists. The value drops quite a bit just based on that, but also the fact that the 4070ti is an MSRP $800 GPU for the same performance as the 3090ti.
Okay, sure there's equal performance for less money, but let's remember that the 4070ti is a 12GB memory solution widely believed to be the 4080 12GB that had its launch cancelled and was supposed to be around $900. The 4070ti was reduced by a hundred dollars and Nvidia is still making money on that. So if it is in fact the rebranded 4080 12GB card (and there's a lot of evidence to suggest this), then the nine hundred dollar price was an even bigger markup simply for the number on the card saying 4080. There's never been a '70 series this expensive and board partners have to charge even more to make money so the value depreciates further there. All this even with the understanding that the denser the architecture becomes the higher the cost of manufacture.
Hardware reviewers JayzTwoCents and GamersNexus among others have fleshed this out better than I can. I recommend a watch of at least these two before you decide to buy.
Speaking of GPU issues, AMD has responded to the vapor chamber problem in the new reference 7900 XTX. Scott Herkelman has said that AMD will replace your reference card "no matter what". They have ways of identifying the problem and say they have units to ship immediately. So if you got a 7900 XTX from AMD Direct you can call the customer support line and they're supposed to set you up right away. That number is 1-877-284-1566 in the US. For a full list of numbers by country click here. If you got your reference card from a different store you'll need to contact them first. Importantly though, this is only a problem with the reference cards, that is to say AMD made GPU's. No board partner has this problem.
This is all well and good and hopefully it's true because as has been stated in the past, it's not always the problem that can hurt a company, it's the response to that problem. Hopefully AMD are actually ready to go on fulfilling RMA's. In a video from PC World at CES you can see Scott Herkelman respond to the issue and it sounds pretty good. However if you look at the comments below you can see the verified post made by Der8auer, a pretty darn respected reviewer himself, say more or less the exact opposite of what Herkelman claims based on his own information gathered. If you'd like to see Der8auer open the vapor chamber itself, check this out.
What are we playing this time?
Greywolfe: ok, people nonsense all done. it's time for games! much the way i ended up playing shadow hand to completion, i'm now playing another solitaire game called "the solitaire conspiracy." it's sort of ok. the powers the suit cards give you are kind of disruptive, though and that's the basis for the game, so that just makes it an "ok solitaire game with a fun framing device." very 5/10.
Yoda: Got gifted Hades for Christmas and ha e finally been checking that out. It's basically a blast. Still need to look at Metal Hellsinger as well. Also might start playing Diablo 2 with a friend. So basically no matter what I'll be spending my weekend in Hell
Scrooloose: Destiny 2 Seraph things, Darktide chaos things, and I think it's time to pick up Snowrunner again now that I'm two seasons behind.
AJ: Just got OlliOlli World and Return to Monkey Island so I'll probably check those out a bit. I'm also obsessed with River City Girls 2 at the moment so it's likely I'll play some more of that as well.
Tru: Well, last weekend of my Winter Break as a teacher. During the holidays I picked up both The Last of Us Pt I and Pt. II for only about fifty bucks. I told myself I would never get Part II unless it was "barging bin" prices, and well, I got it for only ten bucks. I just platinumed Part I so I'll be switching over to Part II now, I guess.If not I got Stray for my wife and I might check that out.