• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Genuinely not had a problem with mods, and I’ve been PC gaming for decades. Of course sometimes mods don’t work but thats life. Just be patient, you’ll get it done.

    Decent mods have a readme file - follow the steps strictly - no skipping thinking you know better - and they should work.

    Also look on YouTube or search online for guides - people often provide step by step guides to mod games purely out of a love for gaming.

    Keep going - mods can be great, and its one of the many benefits of PC gaming. You’ll get there!










  • I use a Boox Note, and I like it a lot. Its an android based eBook reader so you have full access to android apps including side loading apps from other stores.

    By default it does not have Google services set up but you can use the Play store should you want. But its not integrated to googles services. Obviously there is some integration to Onyx Boox services which is based in China. However infindnit is unobstrusive and you dont have to use their store or any of their tools.

    Personally I use Calibre on my Linux PC to manage my books on the device, and I use fbreader as a reader (closed source) but you can install open source software if thats your preference. KOReader certainly works but I’m not a big fan of the interface personally.

    I use ebooks.com to buy books (and calibre to remove DRM so I can use my preferred software), and you can install the Kindle app to access a kindle library if you haven’t liberated your books yet. Ebooks reader works on the device too. Obviously DRM free books from any source and format can also be used.

    My device - the note - has an nice crisp screen, is well made with a nice aluminium chassie and is comfortable to hold. I read books in portrait mode so you have 2 pages visible at a time. Its also good for a4 size documents. They do also have smaller sizes that match a kindle paper white.



  • I’m guessing it’s automated stupidity. Meta has cut staff and we’re seeing the results.

    Much of the big tech companies have done this over the past year or two, and also been pushing “AI” to replace roles like moderation. I think we’re seeing the results of over relying on AI and cutting staff to boost share prices.

    Lets face it, Meta is dying; Facebook is declining, and Instagram seems to be in decline too, the pivot to VR failed and the pivot to AI will fail. It’s best chance seems to be trying to get its hands on TikTok in the US and even that is hardly going to drive the company forward.



  • Its worth saying a GPU dock is just an eGPU. Often they use mobile GPUs and will make something more streamlined or portable. They often include a USB hub.

    Most eGPU chassis are the same tech but often larger so you can install a larger desktop gpu, and have more space for cooling and even a dedicated PSU.

    GPU docks have their own usefulness but you are likely to get more performance for the price by getting your own chassis and card, but less mobility and more bulky.


  • There are plenty of chassis available if you go looking. Some haven’t been updated to newer models but remain available.

    A chassis is fairly simple - its basically a bit of mother board with pcie and a thunderbolt 3+ connection. Thunderbolt 3 remains powerful enough for most uses, and ones with dedicated PSU will work with newer cards. I think the lack of new products reflects the lack of needing to change the products at the moment.

    I haven’t seen much about thunderbolt 4 reducing the overhead. It might do, but there are fundamental constraints in these devices as this is basically converting pcie to thunderbolt and transferring over a distance - thats not going to ever match a direct pcie connection into a motherboard no matter how fast Thunderbolt 4 or 5 are. Thunderbolt 3 may not be the main bottleneck.

    The Razer Core X is still available for example. And there are loads of smaller companies woth offerings.

    I think just the highest end cards would be out of reach for the popular existing chassis but there is not going to be much market for pairing cards costing 1000s with a laptop when you are far better getting a desktop. So there may not be the market to make lots of new thunderbolt 4 chassis with PSUs.


  • The most important consideration is your laptops ports and it’s cpu. You will need Thunderbolt 3, 4 or 5 or USB 4 to get high enough transfer speeds and bandwidth between your eGPU and the laptop. You also need a decent CPU to get the full benefits - an eGPU paired with an old or low powered CPU may mean you dont get the full benefits of the eGPU as your CPU is still a bottleneck in running the software or games that would make use of the eGPU.

    Then the eGPU chassis you choose will have specific limitations in terms of size of card that will fit. You need to check these carefully to ensure the chassis can fit and support the card you want. The bigger and better the chassis the more expensive it will be. Were talking a couple of hundred pounds / dollars on top of the card price.

    But in theory there isn’t a limit on the cards you can use. Any GPUs that fits the chassis would work as its a standard pcie slot. However i would contend that if you want to use a top end card like a 5090 youre better off getting an actual PC to enjoy the full performance. If youre spending 1000s on a GPU it should be paired with a high end laptop or far better in an actual desktop to get the benefit. You also need to ensure the chassis can provide enough power to the card you want.

    You lose about 10-15% of the cards functionality in the overhead of the eGPU. Thats because as fast as thunderbolt and usb4 are, you are transfering that to/from a pcie slot in the eGPU chassis and also transferring data over an distance via a cable compared to a gpu plugged directly into pcie on a motherboard for a PC, with direct connection to the CPU and rest of the motherboard. Newer thunderbolt and newer chassis might have lower overheads but they will never be able to completely match direct plug into a motherboard.

    So yes eGPUs work, if your device can support it, and you can get big performance boosts. There isn’t a limit on the GPU but you should probably not go too high end as you’d be wasting money. A low end GPU would likely out perform any integrated card or graphics for most laptops and a mid range card would likely give excellent performance if paired with a decent specced laptop. But any eGPU set up cannot match the Max performance of the card in a dedicated desktop set up.

    Edit: I know you have a surface but in case others read this and have a Mac - eGPUs wont work with Apples M1/M2 CPU chips. There is no way around this. AMD and Intel chips do although newer is better.