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chconline, I love your reviews and your setups, but where do you get all the money to buy the stuff you review? Like the DiNovo Edge keyboard that thing costs like $200 and adding up all the other stuff you've bought, it's like 1k+

@pdmcmahon - Nice setup for sure mate!

Question for you...have you ever had any issues with those external WD hard drives? I was thinking about grabbing one, but wanted to know your experience with them? Normally, I would just buy a case and HD and put one together myself.

Thanks! :)

John, that is very good job at hiding the wiring. Are you putting it all behind the dresser?

Yeah, except its a file drawer :p

img0069ch0.jpg

Everything is nice and twist tied together. The cable on the left is for my Ikea lamp, the middle thick one is for everything (Monitor, speakers, etc) the one on the right is for my G5 V2 mouse so it gets free movement.

Its quite convenient to use my network cable plugged into the network jack to guide the cables, lol :p

:yes: +1 on the wiring.

I also love the new chair, can you post a link? I always really like your setups and hardware reviews.

http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku....;affixedcode=WW

It's called "Office Star Air Grid Manager's Chair". :)

chconline, I love your reviews and your setups, but where do you get all the money to buy the stuff you review? Like the DiNovo Edge keyboard that thing costs like $200 and adding up all the other stuff you've bought, it's like 1k+

Quite beyond 1k, but I don't need to pay for these things ;)

desk.JPG

Twin 3007WFP HC screens

Twin 2405FP screens

I've sold one of the smaller 24" LCDs and am using the other one now with my Inspiron 9300.

Desktop is an E6600 @ 3.2

2GB 4-4-12-4 Corsair DDR2 @ 966 or so

8800GTX

I have a few soundcards in the case - X-Fi Fatility for games, M-Audio 24/96 for music

Genelec 1030A studio monitors

Lots of synth gear to the right, but this is all about workstations and not funstations :p

Love your setup ahfunaki,

I get my matching lcd today for dual monitor setup, has been too long with an lcd and a crt :)

Oh, and make sure you use a program called ultramon, its great for dual monitor setups.

thanks, and yea I can't live without ultramon. definitely a must have for anyone who owns dual monitors...

@pdmcmahon - Nice setup for sure mate!

Question for you...have you ever had any issues with those external WD hard drives? I was thinking about grabbing one, but wanted to know your experience with them? Normally, I would just buy a case and HD and put one together myself.

Thanks! :)

You might laugh at how I have them set up, but yes, they work just fine.

Originally, I had 3 internal 250GB drives on each of my file servers. 750GB total. Now, I plug all 5 of these into my domain controller (pitched the file servers as I didn't need them anymore). So, now I share all 5 volumes across my entire LAN. My 3 Macs all mount them and my PCs map to them, all on startup/login. Even though they are USB 2.0 hard drives and not internal, I see no performance issues whatsoever. Obviously, if you were to just plug them in to your workstation directly, they would be even better.

My philosophy is to be redundant with everything. For example, from the left to the right, they are VOL1 through VOL6 (no VOL5 right now). VOL1 and VOL3 are exactly the same contents, pictures, software, etc. VOL2, VOL4 and VOL6 are all exact copies, they contain all of my complete album MP3 folders. I am not going to say how many I have, but I will say that they fit in 500GB drives quite well :)

Overall, they work just fine for what I need. The added bonus is that when no one is accessing the drives, they simply spin down after 10 minutes of inactivity. In other words, when I go to work, I don't need to shut the whole thing down. When I come home and I log in, the simple act of mapping/mounting the shares makes them wake up.

Here's my 'reverse Squeezebox':

img0075xj9.jpg

Old AMD Athlon 64 sitting behind the set.

img0078pn3.jpg

Yes, it will live next to the sub lol. Sound output is from my Creative Audigy 2 sound card, using digital out (S/PDIF passthrough for external decoder) to the receiver. Darn Creative and their 3.5mm jack outputs, it took me a while to find something that would convert 3.5mm to RCA jack. Well, I found them in my basement, so what the heck. Connected via a standard 75ohm digital coaxial cable to the receiver.

The ATI thing is the receiver for my Remote Wonder II remote control.

Why I call it a 'reverse squeezebox':

The Squeezebox can stream music from a fixed source to anywhere in your home. Well, in this case, the music is located in a fixed source and any computer in the home can instruct it to play :laugh: (Remote desktop -- connected to main home gigabit network).

BUT it can stream music from my NAS.

img0081kp6.jpg

lol 32" display, no complaints about size of the display of this media player :p

You might laugh at how I have them set up, but yes, they work just fine.

Originally, I had 3 internal 250GB drives on each of my file servers. 750GB total. Now, I plug all 5 of these into my domain controller (pitched the file servers as I didn't need them anymore). So, now I share all 5 volumes across my entire LAN. My 3 Macs all mount them and my PCs map to them, all on startup/login. Even though they are USB 2.0 hard drives and not internal, I see no performance issues whatsoever. Obviously, if you were to just plug them in to your workstation directly, they would be even better.

My philosophy is to be redundant with everything. For example, from the left to the right, they are VOL1 through VOL6 (no VOL5 right now). VOL1 and VOL3 are exactly the same contents, pictures, software, etc. VOL2, VOL4 and VOL6 are all exact copies, they contain all of my complete album MP3 folders. I am not going to say how many I have, but I will say that they fit in 500GB drives quite well :)

Overall, they work just fine for what I need. The added bonus is that when no one is accessing the drives, they simply spin down after 10 minutes of inactivity. In other words, when I go to work, I don't need to shut the whole thing down. When I come home and I log in, the simple act of mapping/mounting the shares makes them wake up.

Perfect...thanks a lot for the input! They really do sound like great ExHD's, even though at first when they arrived in stores, I didn't like them as much. :D

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    • 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.
    • Does anyone here know if these updates are integrated into the UUP dump isos?
    • Motrix Next 3.9.4 by Razvan Serea Motrix Next is a modern, open-source cross-platform download manager built as the official next-generation successor to the original Motrix project. It has been completely rewritten using Tauri 2, Vue 3, TypeScript, and Rust, while still relying on the powerful Aria2 download engine for high-speed multi-protocol transfers. The app supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, BitTorrent, ED2K and magnet links, offering advanced features like multi-connection acceleration, task scheduling, bandwidth control, and batch download management. With a significantly reduced install size (around 20MB), it focuses on being lightweight, fast, and resource-efficient compared to traditional Electron-based download tools. Designed for Windows, macOS, and Linux, Motrix Next delivers a clean, modern UI inspired by Material Design 3 principles, with smooth animations and a minimal workflow. It improves usability through better download organization, system tray integration, and enhanced torrent handling including selective file downloads and tracker management. Motrix Next features: Multi-protocol downloads — HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, Magnet, .torrent, ED2K, and Metalink tasks BitTorrent — Selective file download, DHT, peer exchange, encryption controls, metadata caching, GeoIP peer flags, and tracker probing Browser extension integration — Embedded Extension API with independent authentication, download confirmation, smart auto-submit, filename hints, referer/cookie forwarding, and real-time controls (Chrome Web Store · Edge Add-ons) Safe filename handling — Content-Disposition, RFC 2047, non-UTF-8, percent-encoded, and extensionless URL resolution with path traversal sanitization Download organization — Favorite and recent folders, optional file-type categorization, stale-record cleanup, and completed history backed by SQLite Concurrent downloads — Independent controls for active tasks, HTTP connections per server, segments per file, and BT peer limits Speed control — Global and per-task upload/download limits with day-of-week and time-of-day scheduling System integration — Tray operation, optional tray speed display, macOS Dock badge/progress, protocol handlers for magnet://, thunder://, and motrixnext:// Lightweight mode — Destroys the WebView on minimize-to-tray while Rust keeps the engine, task monitor, notifications, history, and extension routing alive Notifications and power options — Native task start/complete/failure notifications, keep-awake during downloads, and optional shutdown after completion Network controls — Scoped proxy support for downloads, app updates, and tracker updates, plus system proxy detection Auto-update channels — Stable, Beta, and Latest Across Channels policies with separate download and install phases Diagnostics — Structured logs, exportable diagnostic ZIPs, database integrity checks, automatic DB rebuild, and Linux GPU rendering fallback Personalization — Light/dark/system theme, 10 color schemes, 26 languages, and first-launch system language detection Motrix Next 3.9.4 changelog: Motrix Next 3.9.4 promotes the 3.9.4 beta cycle to stable. This release refreshes bundled engine binaries, improves task detail readability and copy actions, expands link handling for magnet and ED2K workflows, polishes responsive navigation and text wrapping, updates browser extension documentation, and refines network preference controls. New Features Task Detail copy actions — Added copyable values for task metadata and reusable render functions for long text fields. Magnet and ED2K lifecycle support — Added task lifecycle handling for magnet and ED2K links. History cleanup for deleted tasks — Deleted tasks can now remove matching history records. User-Agent management — Added user-agent management and improved related network preference controls. Browser extension documentation — Added the Firefox Add-ons link for the Motrix Next extension. Improvements Engine binaries — Updated bundled binaries for supported architectures. Task Detail readability — Long task names, URLs, tracker values, and copyable metadata now render more clearly. Deletion messaging — Refined localized task deletion text for clarity and consistency. Text wrapping — Improved URI input wrapping and task name multiline display. Navigation layout — Improved sub-navigation responsiveness. Disk allocation default — Changed the default file allocation method to trunc. Proxy controls — Improved proxy button styling in network preferences. Download: Motrix Next 64-bit | ARM64 | macOS ~20.0 MB (Open Source) Links: Website | macOS / Linux | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • NVIDIA officially supports Ubuntu, as linked above with the GeForce NOW Hands on I did in collaboration with Paul Hill.
    • 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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