Feb 07
The personal computer evolution seems to be slowing. Apple seems to be ignoring high-end customers, 2-in-1 designs are proliferating, and the desktop PC stagnates. On the OS side, MacOS seems to be stagnating and Windows continues to be overly intrusive. What’s going to happen to the PC going forward? Eric, David, and I discuss happenings …
Dec 19
Last week, AMD partially unveiled its upcoming Ryzen processor, aka Summit Ridge. AMD only demonstrated the high-end model running at an estimated base clock frequency of 3.4GHz. AMD CEO Lisa Su compared its high-end Ryzen to Intel’s Core-i7 6900K. It’s clear from the demos that Ryzen isn’t quite fully baked yet. The company hasn’t enabled …
Sep 19
My younger daughter surprised me when she asked for a desktop PC prior to heading off to graduate school. She had been using an HP Omen, which included reasonably decent graphics (mobile GeForce GTX 960) as well as a quad-core processor. I’d often see her online playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fallout 4, and other PC …
May 05
If you’re a PC performance enthusiast without severe budget constraints, you’re probably running an SSD in your system. Solid state drive prices continue to plummet, dropping below $0.22 per gigabyte on some 1TB models. While older systems may continue to run a secondary hard drive with rotating platters, newer systems, most users can get by …
May 02
I found myself in an interesting online discussion about Intel several days ago that triggered a few thoughts. In addition to restructuring itself to be more cloud-focused, Intel just announced it had given up on the mobile phone and small tablet business, abandoning its Sofia and Broxton processors, targeted at high-end mobile phones. Also abandoned …
Apr 11
Choosing the right PC processor lies at the intersection of what you need, what you can afford, what you want to accomplish, and your self image. The focus here is on desktop processors — in particular, desktop systems you plan on building youreself. Since laptop CPUs ship inside complete systems, that’s a topic for another …
Feb 08
I’ve attempted to build small form factor gaming PCs over the years — anyone remember the tiny boxes Shuttle sold, complete with proprietary motherboards and power supplies? Those never lasted long, mostly because the anemic PSUs would eventually fail trying to deliver power to high end CPUs and graphics cards. Today, we’ve got a plethora …
Apr 11
Improbable Insights Podcast: What AMD’s Ryzen Means for the Industry and Consumers
Scott Gardner, former industry analyst and tech company executive, joins David Bryant and me on the Improbable Insights podcast to discuss the impact of AMD’s Ryzen CPU release will have on the industry. AMD just began shipping the Ryzen 5 CPUs, which sport four or six cores, with two threads per core. More importantly, AMD …
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