[OFFICIAL] Windows 10 Insider Program

By Ian S.
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Windows Technical Preview  

1031 members have voted

  1. 1. On a scale of 1-5, 1 being worst, 5 being best. What do you think of Windows 10 from the leaks so far?

    • 5.Great, best OS ever
      156
    • 4. Pretty Good, needs a lot of minor tweaks
      409
    • 3. OK, Needs a few major improvements, some minor ones
      168
    • 2. Fine, Needs a lot of major improvements
      79
    • 1.Poor, Needs too many improvements, all hope is lost, never going to use it
      41

  2. 2. Based on the recent leaks by Neowin and Winfuture.de, my next OS upgrade will be?

    • Windows 10
      720
    • Windows 8
      20
    • Windows 7
      48
    • Sticking with XP
      3
    • OSX Yosemite
      35
    • Linux
      24
    • Sticking with OSX Mavericks
      3

  3. 3. Should Microsoft give away Windows 10 for free?

    • Yes for Windows 8.1 Users
      305
    • Yes for Windows 7 and above users
      227
    • Yes for Vista and above users
      31
    • Yes for XP and above users
      27
    • Yes for all Windows users
      192
    • No
      71

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Dot Matrix

Posted
Posted

Anyone else but me think the traditional recycle bin icon should be ditched for a live tile on Start?

It would be great to see thing like how much space files there amount to, last cleaning time, etc...

Proficient

Woelfel

Posted
Posted

Anyone else but me think the traditional recycle bin icon should be ditched for a live tile on Start?

It would be great to see thing like how much space files there amount to, last cleaning time, etc...

 

Nah. Too much info for something that's used to get rid of stuff. Right click on the icon for that type of info in my opinion.

Experienced

Mugwump00

Posted
Posted

Anyone else but me think the traditional recycle bin icon should be ditched for a live tile on Start?

It would be great to see thing like how much space files there amount to, last cleaning time, etc...

 

Yes, but not just Start.  Think about it, the Recycle Bin is a 'live' icon, with, count them, 2 frames of animation/info!  Groovy in 1994, now it's time to move on and destroy the Windows 8 headache of 2 UIs in one and make Live Tiles a full part of the shell.  And smarter, more interactive Live Tiles, too.

Rising Star

Pulagatha

Posted
Posted

Yes, but not just Start.  Think about it, the Recycle Bin is a 'live' icon, with, count them, 2 frames of animation/info!  Groovy in 1994, now it's time to move on and destroy the Windows 8 headache of 2 UIs in one and make Live Tiles a full part of the shell.  And smarter, more interactive Live Tiles, too.

 

I'm not much for interactive Live Tiles on the desktop, but I do think that the redesigned icons on the desktop (without a color tiled background) should be updated with a new preview/highlighted information dialog box.

 

There's a concept on DeviantArt that has the Start Screen as a side bar and I feel like that is a much better place for the Interactive Live Tiles.

 

start_side_menu_transparent__1920x1080__

Experienced

Mugwump00

Posted
Posted

That concept is right on the money - the only truly way for tiles to be useful 'at a glance' is for a screen reservation, like the Vista Sidebar to exist.   Many would hate it and disable it, but if tiles were truly useful and interactive, it would make a great power-feature for the 'power user'.

 

I would assume the desktop icons would be semi-live, e.g. a Mail notification number?

 

I don't see a conflict with the Notification Center, any more than the NC conflicts with WP81's Home screen - you're either focusing on one or the other.

Rising Star

Pulagatha

Posted
Posted

But how would that sidebar concept work with the action center? Seems to me that would create a conflict.

 

The Action Center button pulls out the Start Screen Side Bar and brings in the Action Center. I don't think that's very confusing. It would be almost exactly as it is now. The main reason I like the Start Screen Side Bar concept (besides the Interactive Live Tiles being constantly on display and having a designated area) is with the Interactive Live Tiles it would be nice to have a Messaging (Skype) Live Tile that gets Quick Replies and have that already on display to reply to without going to the Action Center to bring it up. I suppose there is the other option of putting the Interactive Live Tiles in the Action Center, but considering both options I like the first one a little more.

Experienced

Mugwump00

Posted
Posted

I don't think there's a need for an always on side bar just because of the tiles. I would hate to constantly have that space taken away.

 

You must be using that conceptual version of Windows where every setting is strictly enforced.  I hear about that around here a lot.

Grand Master

indospot Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Calm down, I just didn't remember to think it could be optional. So long as I can choose to have the tiles on the Start screen, options are always welcome, of course.

 

I would like it if the idea Dot said aout the recycle bin could be used for other apps, on the desktop itself though. Weather could show the forecast, and other apps (such as Skype, Facebook, etc.) could at least show the number of notifications if nothing else.

Grand Master

+Zagadka Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

You know, I'm not too worried about the horrible icons. The only people who really care will, I'm sure, find a thousand different icon packages.

 

I'm not saying we should stop bitching about it and expecting something non-horrid, but there are more important things.

Grand Master

Dot Matrix

Posted
Posted

Control Panel is officially dead to Microsoft:

"In time we expect the Settings app to subsume all of the prior Control Panel functionality."

http://twitter.com/thurrott/statuses/578200512509681664

Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

Control Panel is officially dead to Microsoft:

"In time we expect the Settings app to subsume all of the prior Control Panel functionality."

http://twitter.com/thurrott/statuses/578200512509681664

 

"We Expect"

 

ex
Grand Master

Brian M. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Control Panel is officially dead to Microsoft:

"In time we expect the Settings app to subsume all of the prior Control Panel functionality."

http://twitter.com/thurrott/statuses/578200512509681664

I don't really see the reason behind the current setup. You have Settings, Control Panel, then all the advanced stuff (Computer Management, etc). I'd like to see them move the stuff from control panel that people actually use into settings, and then make one nice "advanced" UI, containing all of the stuff from the various utilities (regedit, computer management, etc), with a nice menu system (maybe a sidebar).

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  • Posts

    • AMD RX 9070 GRE AI, Blender benchmarks vs 9070 XT, 7800XT, Nvidia RTX 5070, 4070

      By hellowalkman · Posted

      AMD RX 9070 GRE AI, Blender benchmarks vs 9070 XT, 7800XT, Nvidia RTX 5070, 4070 by Sayan Sen Earlier this week, we shared the first part of our review of AMD's new RX 9070 GRE. It was about the gaming performance of the GPU, and we gave it an 8 out of 10. As a follow-up, similar to how we did with the 9070 XT and non-XT, we are doing a dedicated productivity review for the RX 9070 GRE as well, where we compare it against the 9070 XT, 9070, 7800 XT, as well as Nvidia's 5070 and 4070. This will include AI, rendering, compute, and more benchmarks. AI performance, especially, is a very important metric in today's world, and AMD also promised big improvements thanks to its underlying architectural improvements. We will be pitching it against the data we already have for the RX 9070, and RX 9070 XT, but also the Nvidia 5070 FE, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 VENTUS 2X 12G, and Gigabyte Radeon RX 7800 XT GAMING OC 16G as they are in a similar price class, but also because we do not have a comparable 5060 Ti card lying around here that we can compare it against. Before we get underway, this is a collaboration between Sayan Sen and Steven Parker, who lent me his test bed. Also, there was no editorial input from AMD. First up, the specs of the RX 9070, 9070 XT, and 9070 GRE, which were given to us by AMD: Radeon RX 9070 GRE Radeon RX 9070 Radeon RX 9070 XT Boost Clock: Game Clock: up to 2.79GHz up to 2.20GHz up to 2.52GHz up to 2.07GHz up to 2.97GHz up to 2.40GHz Stream Processors 3,072 (48 CU) 3,584 (56 CU) 4,096 (64 CU) Ray Accelerator 48 56 64 AI Accelerator 96 112 128 ROPs 96 128 Texture Mapping Units 192 224 256 Memory 12 GB GDDR6, 18Gbps Clock, 192-bit Bus 432 GB/s 16 GB GDDR6, 20Gbps Clock, 256-bit Bus Effective Memory Bandwidth: 640 GB/s Infinity Cache 48 MB (3rd Gen) 64 MB (3rd Gen) Card Bus PCI-E 5.0 X16 Output 2x HDMI 2.1b 2x DisplayPort 2.1a Power consumption 220W 304W Recommended PSU 650W 750W Slot width 2x 3x Price (SEP) $549 $599 As you can see from the specs above, it is less than the standard RX 9070 in every way that counts, except for slightly higher Boost and Game clock speed. Design Moving on, the RX 9070 GRE we were given is an XFX Swift triple-fan, dual-slot design with two 8-pin connectors. At 30cm (self-measured), it will fit in most systems easily. There is no RGB either. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE by XFX from all angles. Test system Our test system consists of the following: Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini V2 Flow (Amazon|Newegg) ASUS Z890 ProArt Creator WiFi (Amazon|Newegg) Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus (Amazon|Newegg) Thermal Grizzly KryoSheet - 44x37 (Amazon|Newegg) 2x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB (7200 MT/s in XMP) (Amazon|Newegg) Sabrent Rocket4 Plus 2TB SSD (Amazon) Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.8246) AMD shared a press driver based on the recently released Adrenaline 26.5.2 that we were required to use. We now move on to our benchmarks. First up, we have Geekbench AI running on ONNX. For some reason, the 9070 GRE does exceptionally well here in both half-precision (FP16) and single-precision (FP32). It manages to beat the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 non-XT, and is only behind the 9070 XT. Since Geekbench runs in short bursts instead of continuously hammering the graphics card, it seems the GRE's faster boost clocks are helping here. Next up, we move to the UL Procyon AI test suite, starting with the image generation benchmark. We chose the Stable Diffusion XL FP16 test since it is the most intense workload available on Procyon. The Nvidia cards do very well here, as even the 4070 out-muscles AMD's best fairy easily. The positive thing about the GRE is that it gets quite close to the 9070 non-XT in this test; this indicates that the VRAM does not play a very big role here, as SD XL relies on float16 (FP16). So this is something to keep in mind again. If you wish to work with float32 AI workloads, graphics cards with larger than 12 GB buffers would likely emerge as victors. Regardless, the gains are still massive on AMD's 9000 series compared to the 7000 series. Following image generation, we move to the text generation benchmark. This is one test where the 9070 GRE struggled, quite a lot. It seems that the 12 GB VRAM and lower memory bandwidth of the new Radeon 9070 GRE are hurting it quite a bit; the split is massive, especially in a test like Llama2, which packs 13 billion parameters. As such, in all the tests, the 9070 GRE is the slowest of the lot. Next, we tried Blender, and here the AMD GPUs were beaten by Nvidia. Rendering is something the Green team has always had a lead over the Red side, and it has not changed so far. On the positive side, though, the 9070 GRE shows significantly better results than the 7800 XT, which means AMD is on the right path. Catching up to Nvidia, though, will require a lot more effort. And we hope HIP and ROCm can keep improving. Wrapping up AI testing, we measured OpenCL throughput in the Geekbench compute benchmark. The RX 9070 GRE alongside the 9070 did not fare well here at all, even falling behind the 7800 XT. Interestingly, even the RTX 5070 could not beat the 4070 on OpenCL, so perhaps this suggests that OpenCL optimization may not have been a priority for either AMD or Nvidia in the modern era. Conclusion We reached the end of our productivity performance review of the 9070 GRE, and we have to say it's a mixed bag. Unlike the 9070 and 9070 XT, the GRE excels in some areas while losing ground fairly easily in others. Similar to how it happened in gaming, any time the card's memory subsystem gets hammered, it tends to fall behind the others. This was the case with text generation, wherein we saw the VRAM sometimes hit its maximum available 12 GB of usage with larger model sizes. So what do we make of the RX 9070 as a productivity hardware? It can certainly be used, but you have to know it has its limitations. For those looking for a GPU that can deal with more, AMD recently unveiled the Radeon AI PRO R9700, which is essentially a 32 GB refresh of the 9070 XT with some additional workstation-based optimizations. On a similar note, the new Ryzen AI Halo platform is something you can consider if you want to set up a local AI processing station. Considering everything, we rate AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE a 7.5 out of 10 for its productivity performance. Price is less of a factor for those looking at productivity cases compared to those considering the GPU for gaming, and as such, we felt it did quite decently on many occasions and can be handy if you need a 12 GB GPU and, for some reason, don't want to get Nvidia. Purchase links: RX 9070 / XT / GRE (Amazon US) As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • Microsoft released new Defender update for Windows 11, 10, Server ISO installations

      By skinnyJM · Posted

      Does anyone here know if these updates are integrated into the UUP dump isos?
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    • AMD 9070XT

      By Steven P. · Posted

      NVIDIA officially supports Ubuntu, as linked above with the GeForce NOW Hands on I did in collaboration with Paul Hill.
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      By cooky560 · Posted

      TO be clear I am not running linux today, however I keep thinking about it. And I want to make sure there are minimal obstacles if I decide to make that switch in the coming months.

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