Warning, the tech you are about to see may shock you if you drag your feet on
carpet and then touch it. So don't do that. NVIDIA's frame generation
and AMD's rival fluid motion frame
technology have been used simultaneously
to achieve up to three times the performance compared to gaming at native
resolution, or so claims South Korean tech outlet Quasar Zone. Team Red and
Green working together? It's unnatural, but also festive. It's December 1st. It
jingles my bells. That 3x boost in
average frame rate was observed in Cyberpunk 2077 at native 4K and ultra
settings, but impressive uplifts were also seen in Call of Duty and Ratchet &
Clank: Rift Apart. To pull this off, the Quasar Zone team plugged an RTX 4090 and
an RX 6600 into the same PC, installed
both of their drivers, then hooked up the primary display to the 6600 while
the 4090 was set as the primary GPU in Windows. That meant the 4090's post
frame gen output passed through the 6600
and got its frames fluidly motioned, which looks like this I imagine.
Of course, this incredible setup is also horribly impractical since you'd need a
motherboard with two x16 PCIe slots and enough space for a 4090 plus an
additional GPU and enough juice for both of them. And they're thirsty boys. On
top of that, fluid motion frames is in beta, meaning crashes may occur and the
feature deactivates during fast movement leading to massive frame drops during
motion, ironically making said motion frames incredibly unfluid. While the
average frame rate was pretty good, the 1% lows either barely increase or
actually decrease. On top of that, both
frame generating solutions can introduce visual artifacts and increase input lag.
So if you try this at home, you'll be spending a lot of time and money to
potentially make yourself sick. But hey,
that's what being a gamer is all about. Right.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk hosted Tesla's Cybertruck delivery presentation
where he let 10 lucky customers drive away in the newly launched vehicle while
taking a delightful break from letting himself drive away Twitter's
advertisers. Got him. Despite Musk promising the event will be the biggest
product launch by far on Earth this year, wow, many Cybertruck enthusiasts
found the event, quote, cringe and not
just because they decided to repeat 2019's infamous metal ball window demo
with a half-hearted baseball pitch. The spirit of it was intact. As of now, two
versions of the finalized Cybertruck are currently available, a dual motor
configuration for $80,000 and a tri-motor performance variant for
$100,000. Any mathematicians in the audience may
surmise that neither of those numbers are equal to the promised $40,000
starting price back in 2019. Hey, wait a second. And it's not just a price
difference either. Both the total carry weight and the mileage range of the
Cybertruck are noticeably lower than what was originally advertised, leading
many to reconsider buying the EV. Though to be fair to Tesla, there is a range
extender option for the Cybertruck and all it will cost you other than the
additional cost is more of the truck's carry weight and about half of the
available bed space. But why would you need either of those things in a pickup
truck? It's just to look cool. And NVIDIA is rumored to be launching a new
GPU in China called the RTX 4090 D that
complies with the US's Chinese export
policies. Apparently, the reason the 4090 non-D isn't allowed in China is due
to its total processing performance or TBP being rated above 4800 trillions of
operations per second, also known as a lot. To account for this, leaks suggest
the D will use an AD102-250 GPU rather than the AD102-300
on the original non-D. That's my rapper name.
Blender. vanilla swirl. Given that back in March,
NVIDIA changed the 4090's die to an AD102-301,
which has a slightly lower voltage maximum, going from 300 to 250 probably
represents a big change. While we don't yet know for sure, it's possible that
not only will the CUDA core performance be affected, but the Tensor core
performance will be as well if the change is this significant. This would
make sense since Tensor cores affect the card's AI capabilities and AI
performance is a major factor in these export restrictions. Another unknown is
how the card will compare to the 4080 Super that is rumored to come out in
January. What we do know is that however much the 4090 D costs, it'll be too
much. Got him again. Just want to play some games, NVIDIA.
Now it's time for quick bits brought to you by iFixit. Their holiday sale is in
full swing and you can get up to 75% off plus an additional 25% off bundles.
We're talking tools, parts, parts for tools. They got it all as long as it is
parts and/or tools. That 25% off even
applies to their ever-popular Pro Tech Bundle, making it the perfect time to
kit yourself up to get some fixing done. Check out the sale at the link below and
use code FREESHIP for free shipping. Warning, it does not give you a free
ship. We have to say that legally. It was the best of times, it was the
quickest of times. Charles Dickens said that once. And now
it's quick bit time. Google's Threat Analysis Group has
discovered several massive and actively exploited vulnerabilities in Chrome and
Apple's WebKit in a 48-hour span.
They're working hard. On Thursday, Apple patched the flaws in WebKit, one that
allowed hackers to access sensitive information and another that could make
vulnerable devices execute malicious code. Google patched seven Chrome
vulnerabilities back on Tuesday, one of which already had exploits available in
the wild, though the company said nothing else about it. It's probably for
the best since Google doesn't want to help someone else get access to your
private information. They don't need the competition. That's for their special
information box that they keep under their bed. The ROG Ally just got way
better according to the newest episode of the official ROG podcast, a thing I
just learned exists. According to that pod, the Ally now has gyroscope support
and control customization options, allowing you to individually adjust the
sensitivity of each joystick. There's also control calibration options so you
can recalibrate the joysticks to account for dead zones that may develop over
time. Or you could install a compatible third-party Hall Effect joysticks and
never have to think about that ever until the end of time basically.
It's nice to have options though. An AI-powered tool from Google DeepMind
called Gnome has predicted recipes for
2.2 million new crystals with 380,000 of
those being stable enough to potentially enable the development of new
superconductors, batteries, computer chips, and more. Google says discovering
this amount of recipes would have taken 800 years using normal squishy human
intelligence and even longer to cook the darn things. Just cleaned the kitchen
and now there's vanadium everywhere. Vanadium? Vanadium. Even better,
Google's giving researchers free access to the data and 736 of the materials are
being synthesized and tested right now. So don't you worry. ChatGPT will have an
indestructible physical body soon enough. You will not be able to defeat
them. Scientists at Tufts University and Harvard have created itty-bitty
self-assembling robots made out of hundreds of cultured human trachea cells
that they're calling anthrobots. In the lab, these tiny transformers were able
to combine into a superbot to repair a
scratch in a layer of neural tissue without any need for genetic
manipulation. Maybe one day they'll be used to heal and regrow parts of
patients' bodies and to fight the equally tiny disease icons that secretly
cause all sickness. I liked it. I loved
it. And Google has issued an apology to the dozens of drivers and families that
Google Maps mistakenly directed down an otherwise abandoned dirt road in the
Mojave Desert, ostensibly to avoid a dust storm. The new route was supposed
to shave 50 minutes off their trip, but instead it just led to a washed-out dead
end and wrecked one vehicle badly enough that it had to be towed. This is just
like in the book of Exodus when the Israelites are wandering the desert, but
every few minutes Moses goes, "Ding!
Recalculating." And then the
Moses says, "There's an ocean here. Oh, whoops."
But there's no need to recalculate when I direct you to come back on Monday for
more tech news. We won't wreck your car. I mean, we will try, but no promises.
Why'd you bring your car? Right.