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I am making another post about my Super Awesome PC. I did some slight changes to it, but my overal plan remains similar but this time I am not getting anything new, as I mentioned in my Sad Panda post when the new hardware launched recently :(. Okay so essentially, it's quite simple. I am not upgrading my PC in any major way this year. I did type why in that post I linked above so if you really care why you could go read that. :D I also did a few changes to my PC, as per my usual messing around, this time fueled by anxiety over my somewhat old AIO, leaking, even though there is no evidence to suggest that it will and the warranty is still 1 or 2 years remaining out of 5. I also put some RGB fans back in the case and since I'm using the Wraith Prism RGB that came with the 2700X, it looks pretty neat! Here are some pictures if you wanna see what it looks like now... The two front fans are non RGB, but they are 3000 RPM Noctua Industrial PPC fans, 140mm in size. They are for Pure Airflow if I need it. :3 I am really quite happy with how it looks and this should be my Gaming PC for next year. Plans for Next Year? Okay so next year I am either waiting for Ryzen 7 4700X (maybe Zen3?) to place in my current B450 Motherboard, or I am going to get a discounted 3700X and do that. The other option was considering Intel again. I know, right? What am I thinking? But I did hear some rumour about their 10th gen "Comet Lake" CPUs being quite attractively priced, and I won't not consider Intel if their CPUs are competitive/fairly priced. :D But that would require a new motherboard so I will see how it goes. But for now it is likely I will stick with Ryzen. :D Meow!

I know it kinda doesn't make sense, but I liked it. The title, that is. Anyway I am making a post to share a small bit of my thoughts on the two new Graphics Cards AMD just released on the 7th of July. I've only just taken the time to read some reviews and take it all in, as I was actually going to Dorset at the time and the entire thing was extremely stressful and when I got back I just didn't have the ability to cope with the stress of the excitement (yes it's a thing) of reading some new Hardware Reviews. So here's my bunch of crap on the RX 5700 series. RX 5700 XT This card looks really good on the market right now. The new revised pricing at $399 (~£370-399) is nice, and this card does offer some great value in my opinion. So the primary competition in performance is NVIDIA's RTX 2070 Super card, which provides slightly more (I am seeing around 5% on average) performance, and includes hardware-enabled DXR (Ray Tracing) features but... it costs one hundred bucks (or about a hundred quid) more. That's a lot of money for 5% in games that aren't going to use DXR... so, like, most of them. I usually have mixed feelings about the RTX situation and would argue for RTX, but only if the price difference is minimal, say like 20 or 30 pounds or something. I'm all for trying out new tech but 100 pounds is too much if the card isn't meaningfully faster, which it kinda isn't honestly. Sure there's games where it's faster but others where it's not and I am going to say here that the RX 5700XT is definitely a compelling option at 400 pounds. But what about the 2060 Super? The price competition is the 2060 Super. The 5700XT is a faster card at the same price. But also remember you are not getting hardware DXR with the 5700XT, which you might want to consider. This is a bit more complex a question for me, as I might want to consider trading a little bit of raw performance in most games for the ability to use hardware DXR in games like Metro Exodus. RX 5700 Okay so this card is $349 with the updated price and abour £330-340 here in the UK. I am going to say one thing right now: RTX 2060 (6GB) is officially dead to me. With that out of the way, let me continue. At the same price as the 6GB RTX 2060, the RX 5700 just completely kills that card. I mean it has 2GB more video memory and is considerably faster (more than 10% many times). The RTX appeal of the non-super 2060 just isn't there, I've seen really bad things about this card and RTX and stuttering. I know that's anecodtal but my own experience with a 6GB GTX 1660 was somewhat negative in games I play (Fallout 76, Far Cry 5 +HD Textures), so it would be worse on a card with the same capacity but more GPU power. And that was without RTX so... 6GB on a £300+ card in 2019? No thanks, NVIDIA. So what about the 2060 Super? This one is a bit tougher as the latter doesn't have the 6GB disadvantage and could potentially offer acceptable performance in RTX (also because of that 8GB). But it's also $50 more expensive, and doesn't consistently offer more performance than the 5700. I think honestly I would say the 5700 is a compelling alternative if you don't want to use RTX, so like, most gamers. Closing my Thoughts I think AMD has done really well with the Navi 10 launch, and the updated prices are very nice. I think perhaps AMD intended to launch at these prices from the start, but baited NVIDIA to launch their cards first with the higher prices. Who knows. Anyway RX 5700 series powered by the brand-new RDNA-equipped "Navi 10" graphics processor look to provide really compelling alternatives at a lower price to the bulk of NVIDIA's "mid-range" product lineup. But you gotta ask yourself, are you okay paying 400 USD for a card that has no capability to hardware-accelerate DXR in 2019? Yes, the games today are not that varied, but the games of 2020 are likely to have this feature in much more use, NVIDIA is pushing it a lot. So, to me, it is a bit more complex when you add in the DXR functionality. I think 2070 Super is a bad choice right now, despite initially thinking it was good. The 5700XT price cut changed that for me. But I see the 2060 Super as a possible choice because it's a decent entry to hardware DXR, something that the equally-priced 5700XT and cheaper 5700 do not have. So I think it comes down to what you want to do going forward. If you plan to try our DXR in current games or the ones coming next year in 2020, NVIDIA 2060 Super might actually be a good choice for your 1920x1080p monitor. If not? Well, it's clear. 5700 series has you covered :D. What is Sash going to get? Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Nothing, because I have to save up for next year. :< Thanks for reading you lovely people! (It means a lot to me! <3)

Oh jeeze that title is a mess. And I didn't post anything on my site for a while. Don't worry (if you care, if not, you can ignore this :D) I haven't given up on it, I'm just having a period of time where I am not posting or updating things. This will happen from time to time but I did pay for the web hosting so I'mma not about to give up on it. Uh, I mean I wouldn't anyway but still. Just FYI. Playing a lot of Fallout 76 actually. Fun game, gets a lot of hate but now Bethesda are really fixing the issues and adding the stuff the players asked for. Oh, it's 7/7, that means Ryzen 3000 launches today, and so does RX 5700 series... No new PC Hardware for Sash this year ...but I can't buy them. Because my mother and I (yes, I actually contributed towards a decision that opposes buying new hardware and benefits me as a Person O_o) decided it's best for me to save my money and wait till next year, to practise some self-control and restraint against impulsive behaviour. And you know... my PC is perfectly adequate for what I'm doing right now. Sorry AMD I can't buy this year. But I plan to do-up my PC fully next year! Ryzen 4000 and Big Navi! I think. But I don't want to plan ahead too far. I might make a post with my thoughts on the Ryzen 3000 and RX 5700 series later, after the reviews go live. If anyone's still reading this, I love you! <3

Just a Warframe screenshot minidump. Otherwise my post would get so long. I love uploading screenshots from my Favourite Game.

For a while I called him "Squatch" because I shortened the nickname "Sasquatch" (I don't know why I called him that, but it just sort of stuck for a bit). So he was called "Squatch" for a bit and now I want to make a post about my lovely little floof and "Catsquatch" just sounds really funny lol. Okay so this post is about my little guy, the ginger/orange/beigey coloured Felis Catus and my primary companion in life. I love this cat so much! His name is Nugget, by the way. I just have all sorts of dumb nicknames to express my fondness of him. I could make a post to list them all lol, maybe later. Oh and a warning. This post contains dangerous levels of cuteness. You have been warned~ :3 Some pics of the Catsquatch~ A selection of pictures of Nugget. That's it for now. Hope you liked them. :3 Cats are the best!

Update: Please scroll to the bottom to read the update that I added in Intel's defence~ Okay, let me explain. If you've been to the Funnies Corner and saw all the memes, you may notice I have an issue with Intel. Allow me to go into detail. Firstly: I have no issues with Intel's engineers, their developers, the people who work on their CPU designs and technology, they are all very talented people and Intel has some amazing technology in its portfolio. I like tech! So why don't I like Intel as a company? The problem is, Intel has spent the last decade holding back progress on the consumer desktop market by trickling down its advances in manufacturing processes and designs and limiting them to quad-core parts and charging the same or more each year, whilst removing features (HSF, unlocked multipliers, HyperThreading on recent i7 parts) and reducing build quality (starting with Ivy Bridge they switched from Solder to low quality paste). The increased core counts on mainstream CPUs have come recently, in response to AMD's Ryzen, but even with fierce competition, they are still far above what I consider "fairly priced". The higher core counts made possible by switching to 22nm FinFET, 14nm FinFET dies, etc, where all placed behind enormous paywalls that only the wealthy could afford, to drop over a thousand dollars on a CPU alone. Over the last 10 years Intel is responsible for holding back desktop consumer computing and locking higher performance behind those paywalls, locking low-income people out the ability to create content faster, stream their hobbies etc, this actually hurt human progress no matter how you look at it, all in the name of maximum profits: spent on R&D that Intel did not give back to the consumer in any way. From a gamer perspective: Game developers on PC had no incentive to develop games to use more than Quad-cores, since only a very tiny percentage of gamers could afford more. Ryzen is fixing that, especially as the new consoles get Zen CPUs but we are still feeling the effects of that stagnation today. ​ But AMD wasn't competing, it's their fault! This is somewhat true. AMD dropped the ball with Bulldozer and as a result Intel was given free reign to strangle the market into stagnation in the name of profit. But that doesn't mean I have to like Intel for it. Would AMD do the same if the roles were reversed? Probably. It's just capitalism, but that hasn't happened yet, and Intel has a history of playing dirty against AMD even when AMD had a technological advantage (remember Athlon 64). I hope the same doesn't happen now that Ryzen is truly going to be better in almost all metrics. ​ Here's the deal, I'm passionate. Highly passionate, about my interests, including tech and computing. And I want everyone to have access to this technology and performance to push the envelope every day. And Ryzen did just that, but even now, Intel are charging unfair prices for their products - just look at the current lineup versus the Ryzen lineup and you can see it in action. ​ Intel's greed damages human progress, and I absolutely wish them to lose billions of dollars in sales to Ryzen over the next few years so their investors/shareholders and management have no option other than to level their prices to the benchmark of consumer computing value: Ryzen. ​ Sorry. I'm just passionate, and I want Intel to share its technology, expertise, performance and advancements with the masses. ​ I'm not an investor in any company and I have no affiliation with any of them. I'm just enthusiastic and passionate about my interests. For better or for worse. Thanks for reading. <3 Update: I'm going to update my Rant here with a bit of extra information that came to me just now, that may explain some of the reason why Intel commands such a high premium for their CPUs. Intel also develops its own process technology for its chips I admit, I get a bit emotional and carried away sometimes, because, well that's just who I am. Now, I feel my rant is still legit, as these premiums I feel are often unfair, but it's worth noting that Intel also develops its own process technology, and that R&D costs a lot of money. The premium it charges is likely to help cover those costs. AMD is buying its process from Global Foundries (and soon, TSMC) and that is vastly cheaper for them than Intel using its own Fabs. Intel is too proud of them to allow a third party fab to produce its designs and it would negatively hurt their efficiency and performance, something Intel doesn't, obviously, want. But this is a problem, for stagnation as I said is real, but it might be less about Intel just being a greedy company. My complains still stand, in that progress was slowed down and due to some issues with their new technology (remember delays to 14nm) they didn't pass down the advances of the smaller node to the consumer (more cores in a similar die size), because they likely wanted to pocket the cash to cover up their mess in R&D for that process. I guess that's why we got Coffee Lake with 6 cores in 2018, since they felt comfortable that yields were good enough to add more value, or you know, having their butt kicked by Ryzen. :)

I made a bunch of memes. Instead of filling up my Blog with individual posts I figured I'd dump them all into one. There is a theme here, and with Ryzen 3000 launch very soon I figured they were appropriate (also one throwback to the Ryzen 5 2600X for good measure).

I know it's a bit late since they already got announced but... I made a meme for my reaction to the Ryzen 5 3600. Oh, and this is likely just going to be my entire profile for this CPU. Okay? It's like, how could the Champ get even better? I mean I just can't take this. I can't take this aaaaaaaaaaaa~

Okay so in my PC Plans post here I said I was considering getting a GeForce graphics card to replace the RX 590 in my PC right now for a bit more grunt, especially when I'm playing Metro Exodus. Also it would be nice to try out RTX/DXR in that game on the RTX card. So this post is basically me spewing out some ideas and thoughts on what I plan to do. Ehm, it's more for my own sake of keeping a diary than shoving it down everyone's throat but you could maybe take something from it I guess lol. Anyway here is what I am thinking. Team Red or Team Green? I love Radeon and Team Red and there is something cool about having a Full AMD gaming PC. It's pretty neat. But the thing is, I have been wanting to try RTX out for a while and I just want a fresh new architecture to play with... so that in mind it leads me to narrow my choices down to three video cards. Two unreleased, one currently available and they are... GeForce RTX 2070 (Vanilla, you know, Not-so-Super) RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 Ti are the only two cards in the current entire 20 series that I would even consider. Well, not because they represent amazing value but only because they are least bad value lol. 2080 Ti at least has the accolade of being the fastest gaming GPU around (And No: I don't even consider the RTX TITAN, this card might as well not exist with how abysmal the value proposition is for gamers). And the RTX 2070? Well this card is the minimum spend for an 8GB RTX card and represents the sort of, minimum entry point for this technology even at 1080p. (More on the 2060 Super in a moment..!) If I was to choose a 2070 it would be this card. I like the look of this ASUS DUAL design and it looks like a good cooler, idk, it just appeals to me. Oh my, I am babbling and filling up my post with crap again. So the biggest killer for the 20 series for I'm sure a lot of people (myself included) is the price. £480+ Is hard to swallow for me for this performance. If the 2070 gets a price cut, to, say £420 or less this is an instant buy and my first choice from these three. I also want a high end AIB. Anyway... GeForce RTX 2060 Super (with 8GB!) This card interests me as a cheaper entry to RTX with a minimum of 8GB. I don't want less memory than my 590 lol. And I feel 6GB is going to be limiting going forward. Anyway this card if priced firmly below 400 pounds is going to be my choice. For about 380 or less I think will be a good value and I would buy that. But the rumoured price of 429 USD or around 410+ British Pounds Sterling is a no-deal for me. Sorry NVIDIA! Ball's in your court, Mr. Huang! Radeon RX 5700 (non XT) And my final choice, not necessarily the worst choice, but hey. This is me staying with Team Red and my beloved Radeon which served me so well these last many years since my NVIDIA Heathenry (lol). Anyway, this is the only card in "Navi 10" Duo I will consider for two reasons: 449 USD /~430 GBP is still too much for me to want to spend on something that lacks the RTX feature I wanted to play with, so the XT is out of the question. Now, 2070 performance (give or take) for £350-360 would be something I would happily buy assuming the above GeForces don't hit my price points. Secondly? RX 5700 features the Navi 10 die with 36 Compute Units enabled (18 Dual Compute Units actually, but anyway...). And since RDNA/Navi 10's CU structure remains at 64 Stream Processors (but with 2 x SIMD-32 instead of 4x SIMD-16 in GCN) this gives this card 2304 Stream Processors! Guess what also has 2304 Stream Processors? That's right, my RX 590. So I was thinking, throwing aside the fact that Navi 10 silicon has twice the pixel throughput (64 vs 32, but at 1080p this might not be a huge bottleneck) it would be cool to do a "per clock, per bandwidth" test between these two cards to sort of assess the architecural gains of RDNA over GCN4, with the same number of SP and memory bandwidth (if it's even possible to down-clock the GDDR6 that low...). Oh, and Sapphire Nitro+ all the way! Conclusion? Basically all three of my choices give me something cool to write a post about. With the GeForces, it's my testing and opinion on Hardware DXR (RTX) and Ray-Tracing in Metro Exodus and Battlefield V, and I would love to do an in-depth on that. And offer my dumb opinion lol. Or... with the Radeon it is doing a per CU/Bandwidth/clock analysis on RDNA improvements. And with all three choices I get a nice bump in performance over my RX 590 and I will not void the warranty like I did on my poor Radeon VII. Yay! So I guess it all comes down to the pricing of the GeForce cards. Please Mr. Huang, I want an RTX but don't wanna get fleeced for it. But hey, you know, this may all change. But it's been like, what? Almost a week since I made my PC plans post and I have stuck to it so far. :D Wish me luck! <3

I'm actually posting a meme cuz I want to see how it affects the feed on my new Funnies Corner bit. Oh I added that too, you can now see all the shit and memes I post in one place. I also thought it was good to make it seperate from the stuff that I post with factural accuracy, so that no confusion is made and people won't get mad at me for making fun and then say I'm spreading false information :( I am going to work out soon how to limit memes from appearing in my Blog and entirely in the Funnies Corner. But I can't work out how to do that. Yet. But anyway this basically sums up Intel the last 10 years.

I just want to update that I had a bad phase (emotionally) recently and I took my website offline for a while and changed some URLs. The stress and anxiety of publicly posting my hobbies and stuff gets to me and I am still trying hard to cope with it. I think in the long run it is going to be great for me to cope with it, and learn how to deal with it better. Sometimes I will do this, it's just how I deal with my problems, I'm sorry please don't hate me. Anyway I changed back the URLs so everything should work again now and I am going to try very hard to actually not have a meltdown again. Everyone that has contacted me via my "friend application" and "contact me" forms has been really nice and I have some new friends to chat to now and I'm really happy with that. But I'm still just pathetic really, in that I can be overwhelmed by stress/anxiety and this was a directly result of that. I just needed some time, a few days, I think. Thanks for understanding. <3

I decided it was better to place these in their own dedicated section of my website. You can find these here. I also added placeholders for all the GPUs and CPUs I've owned, but not pre-DX11 and pre-45nm, lol. Just for simplicity's sake I am listing "fairly recent" ones. I think I might have a Computer Hardware Problem lol.