3080/5800x PC Upgrade

 

I ended up replacing the CPU cooler with a Scythe Fuma 2 due to the heat produced by the 5800x.

Instead of waiting for the Nvidia 4000 series GPUs, I upgraded my 5700 xt to an EVGA 12 Gig 3080, along with my Ryzen 7 3700x to a Ryzen 7 5800x. After seeing the prices for the high end 4000 series, I feel fairly justified in spending 799 on a 3080. EVGA, probably the best Nvidia partner, also just pulled out of the graphics card market, citing abuses by Nvidia, so I guess I lucked out in grabbing my EVGA card. On paper, it's a big upgrade over my 5700 xt. With 4 more gigs of memory as well as hardware ray-tracing support, my 3080 should be almost 50 percent faster than my old card at conventional rasterization. The 5700 xt doesn't support ray-tracing, so I now have access to that much hyped feature, along with Nvidia's superior DLSS upscaling. The CPU upgrade should give me a little more headroom, as the 5800x is probably about 15 to 20 percent faster in single core applications compared to the 3700x. It's a hot little bugger, and I had a lot of problems with it until I installed the Ryzen chipset drivers.

So how much faster is my pc now? In Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I went from 62 frames per second at 1440p at the highest settings to 92 fps, with my 1 percent lows improving from 40 to 50 fps. Halo Infinite now runs flawlessly at 120 fps at ultra quality 1440p, whereas I was getting around 60 to 70 fps with  occasional frame drops below on my 5700 xt at medium quality. Ray-traced games like Spiderman Remastered look amazing, although the cost to frame rate is pretty huge. Honestly, Quake 2 RTX is the most impressive ray-tracing demo I've played. It'll be interesting to see how the technology develops with the release of the 4000 series, since the X Box Series X and PS5 are pretty deficient compared to Nvidia in that department.

All in all, it was a big upgrade, but not exactly as transformative as my i5-2500k to Ryzen 3700x jump. Here's to holding off the consumerist urge to flush money down the toilet for another 3 to four years.

Guess which one is the 3080?

Quake 2 RTX Review

 

Check out that real-time reflection!

I splurged on a Geforce RTX 3080 instead of waiting for the release of the 4000 series like a smart person, but I wanted an upgrade and I almost never spend cash on myself (or on much besides basic necessities). I'll do a review on my EVGA card eventually, but first I want to talk about Quake 2 RTX, which is obviously the reason anyone would spend 800 dollars on a ray-tracing capable graphics card. For those not in the know, Quake 2 is a classic first person shooter developed by id Software back in 1997. It featured id's most developed campaign to date, along with an upgraded graphics engine supporting hardware acceleration, colored lighting, texture filtering, and other stuff that was innovative at the time. Twenty-five years later, Quake 2 looks just as dated as Quake, and I would argue its art direction hasn't aged as well, considering retro shooters like Amid Evil are clearly inspired by the pixelated look of the original (although Dusk definitely looks like a Quake 2 era game). However, Nvidia have added full ray traced lighting, shadows, and reflections, and boy, does Quake 2 suddenly shine. Having previously owned a Radeon 5700 xt, which lacked hardware ray-tracing, I was always on the fence about the tech. In screenshots and youtube videos, the realistic lighting didn't really appear worth the massive hit it cost frame times. After playing Quake 2 RTX however, I've changed my tune, at least in this one case. The dull oranges, browns, and greys of Quake 2's military installations have been replaced by the brilliant lights of hyperblaster fire or the flickering shadows of a flare. Glass consoles reflect light as well as the player character; corridors hide monstrous enemies in inky blackness, waiting for you to illuminate their lo-fi visages. Suddenly I'm transported to the wonder of playing games back in the 1990's, when every other year brought an amazing technical advance, and my imagination filled in the blanks that primitive 3d graphics engines could not. Quake 2 RTX feels a lot like Doom 3. It's a corridor shooter with fewer enemies than Doom, and you'll use your flare like Doom's flashlight. Unlike Doom 3, Quake 2 features a kickass arsenal, including id's best supershotgun. You'll never tire of rending Strogg into gruesome giblets, and it sounds like God's thunder. For all the brilliance of ray-tracing, the conventions of late nineties level design limits some of the fun. You'll find yourself backtracking an awful lot, hunting down key cards, and while the reflective surfaces and realistic shadows help differentiate some rooms, you're still running through low-poly environments that don't do much to distinguish themselves. A map would really help, but to my knowledge, Doom is the only id series that ever had a map toggle. Anyway, I think Quake 2 RTX is worth checking out if you have a capable gpu. The game is still pretty fun if you have a high tolerance for wandering around searching for keys.

Screenshots:

 

The Esteemed Critic Reviews Blade Runner 2049 and Hail, Caesar!

 

Blade Runner 2049 is one of the most gorgeous films the Critic has ever viewed. Director Denis Villeneuve loves scale, and utilizes the enormity of structures in such a way that the viewer is often held in awe. The original Ridley Scott cyberpunk staple had its share of megacorp pyramids married to a dystopian, space trucker aesthetic--his other sci-fi classic Alien as well as The Empire Strikes Back also exist in the same dirty, lived-in universe--but Blade Runner is not as striking a film visually, nor is it as epic as 2049. Concessions must be made to the great advances in special effects and CGI that have happened in between Blade Runner and its sequel, but I'll be damned if 2049 isn't the better movie. Gosling's K/Joe has a great character arc that satisfies while still calling back to the thematic material of the original movie. Master creep and possible cult leader Jared Leto is also a compelling villain as the sociopath cyborg CEO of the Wallace Corporation, which manufactures bio-engineered humans called replicants. The relationship between Joe and Joi, a personalized AI, recalls the film Her favorably. My only real criticism is that 2049 is a long movie, and some of the action sequences could've been trimmed. Anyways, if you're in the mood for a damn good cyberpunk noir thiller, watch Blade Runner 2049. 

Hail, Caesar! is a quirky Coen brothers comedy about a studio fixer trying to find a kidnapped movie star during the golden age of cinema, when westerns, musicals, and biblical epics dominated the box office. Josh Brolin exudes his typical gruff masculinity as fixer Eddie Mannix, while George Clooney plays a charming, if not particularly clever, star named Baird Whitlock. Numerous allusions to the flicks of the time delight; Channing Tatum is hilarious as a dancing sailor who is secretly a communist planning on defecting to the Soviet Union. None of the violence that sometimes features in the Coen brothers' work is on display--this is no No Country for Old Men or Fargo. A good time for any well-versed student of cinema, or simply an average Joe or Jane looking for something more charming than a Marvel movie or whatever drivel is showing on Netflix.

Welcome to T-Town

 

Welcome to T-Town, brother! It's good to see a new face on the Nugenix Total-T! Remember to take your prayers and say your vitamins! It's high time you get off of your namby-pamby ass and see what all the fuss is about!

In T-Town we walk in the middle of the street and wave at all the couples co-washing their big-ass trucks while Doug Flutie throws missiles at any unaccompanied minors walking the sidewalks. If Big Frank comes your way, you smile and nod and make damn well sure you're taking your Nugenix Total-T, else Frank might have to make sure your ladies are satisfied. She'll like it too! She did last night, eh? And if she didn't, you call Frank, you hear?

With Nugenix Total-T, you'll stop having problems with tangled hoses and troublesome belly fat! Once again, your wife will remember that you have a penis and are semi-competent in its usages. No longer will she sigh and stare longingly out the window, hoping that Big Frank walks down the street. If she starts getting excited at Doug Flutie, then you know you're in trouble and better double, hell, triple that Total-T dosage.

Middle-age is a bitch, ain't it? It sure ain't in T-Town! In T-Town, we don't prey upon your insecurities. We fix them with Nugenix Total-T! Once again you can be that rowdy lad who participated in the burning of Woodstock 99! Turn back the clock to the time of Gears of War and beer pong and sloppy sex! Remember hangovers? Remember when they didn't feel like someone took an ice pick to your head and then shit in the big hole it carved out? Fix it all with Nugenix Total-T!

With Nugenix Total-T, one simple pill will make you grow hair on your dong again! It'll turn you into a chest-beating ape with a ranging boner and the sexual mores of a Tyrannosaurus! Never get old again with Nugenix Total-T! Ignore the irony of a Hall of Fame athlete with excellent genetics hocking an overpriced B12 supplement as a literal elixir of eternal youth.

Why the fuck was Doug Flutie in these commercials? He looks old as shit. Somebody better give him some Nugenix Total-T.

Half A Year on Juggernaut AI

 

After a year with Juggernaut AI, I'm satisfied enough with the app to continue to pay for it, which is just about the biggest endorsement I can make. I was initially disappointed after maxing out on my meet day, but after considering the circumstances and realizing that I hadn't hit numbers close to what I did in some time, I'm satisfied. So let's talk about my peaking cycle, since I've written about the hypertrophy and strength blocks before. 

The goal of the peaking cycle is to drop fatigue by cutting volume, while still hitting a heavy weight every now and then to prepare for your meet/test day. I think the app did a wonderful job at that. My lifestyle, however, got in the way of dropping fatigue. I have a demanding manual labor job that often leaves me sore and tired, as well as two small children who often do the same. My sleep has never been great, although I usually get around six to seven hours. Several stressful life events, such as my wife going on a work trip and leaving me alone with the kids, compounded to increase that fatigued feeling. By the last week, I was worn down, and no amount of volume cutting was going to save me. Rather than doing my test day on Saturday as scheduled, I moved it to Friday after I'd worked about five hours, since I didn't have any other time. My back was sore and my upper body felt weak. I benched 300, deadlifted 475, and squatted 405. None of those are PRs, yet I haven't benched 300 in two years or squatted 405 in four or five. The deadlift was the biggest disappointment, but farming is really hard on your back, so I guess I should be content with 475. I failed a 305 bench for my last attempt, as well as a 500 lbs deadlift. The squat was the real surprise, since I think I probably could've done another 15 to 20 pounds, which would've been a PR. My legs were able to recover, which makes sense, since walking around the orchard isn't too hard on your quads, whereas picking bushels and climbing in trees fatigues your upper body and back.

My 405 squat.

My 300 bench.

So Juggernaut helped me get stronger in the powerlifts than I'd been in a couple years, even if I didn't smash any PRs. Age, work requirements, and lifestyle compounded to complicate matters. My next cycle will peak in March, so I'll be in better shape as far as job demands then. Anyways, the Juggernaut app keeps improving, so I'd recommend it for anyone looking for an intelligent way to train. The hypertrophy variation, the careful changes in weight and volume, as well as the smart utilization of self-regulation all combine to form a powerful system, one that likely can nearly replace a decent coach. I know my squat feels better than it ever has, and my chronic injuries have minimized to the degree that they don't impair my training any more. I just need to manage my fatigue better and reduce stress. But don't we all?

New Music: Happy Once Again

 

Almost a Jackson Browne like number I put together a couple of days ago. Not all the instruments are playing at the same time, but it swings, baby, at least, in my mind. Rock and roll is the domain of amateurs, am I right?

The Art of Doing Nothing

 

Wu Wei? I dunno.

Wake up in the morning, get the kids ready for school. Swallow down a protein shake that tastes like a lukewarm banana smoothie. Go to the house I grew up in, swallow down more coffee, venture outside in the humidity to labor in the fields like some sort of medieval peasant. Accidentally run over a box turtle with a lawn mower and feel like shit. Pick the kids up from school, take them home and slowly accumulate a decent amount of stress inside myself from listening to the screeching. Do the bedtime routine and then get two hours of time to myself, at best before starting the cycle all over again.

I've had a couple hours to do nothing today and I don't know what to do with myself.

Is it good for your psyche to waste time on the internet? How do I remove this stress from myself permanently? 

I've tried meditation. It does seem to have a cumulative effect, yet it is often hard to find the time to do it. Maybe I should be meditating right now instead of keeping this blog alive.

Maybe I should manage my time better. Maybe those precious two hours should be used judiciously, spent on creative endeavors rather than Elden Ring. Maybe no time is truly wasted.

I dunno. I want more sleep. I want to sleep better. I love caffeine almost as much as I love beer, however, and neither improve my sleep quality.

Life seems to be full of constant trade-offs. You can have a job and a family and then forego free time and creative pursuits. You can have neither, and live in an empty house that yawns and threatens to swallow you. Somehow, you have to come to peace with your decision before you turn into a withered old man, sunburnt and hollow, all the vitality having been drained out by the years.

Pointless Venture will live again. Pointless Venture will die in ignominy.

I need to have time for someone to teach me the art of Wu Wei.

Elden Ring, 34 Hours In

 

It may be running on an antiquated engine, but I'll be damned if Elden Ring isn't one of the most artistically impressive games I've ever played.

Fromsoft games have a reputation for being incredibly difficult. Having played through the Dark Souls trilogy, I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate. I soloed Dark Souls, only beating the game because I turned my character into a brick shithouse complete with a fully upgraded Great Log and Havel the Rock's impervious armor. In Dark Souls 2 I increasingly relied on online Summons, which teleport a human player into your game to help with a boss. In the final game of the trilogy, I think I only beat about four bosses without coop. So the game is only as difficult as you make it, really. Fromsoft games aren't Bioware titles--there's no opportunity for conversational role playing--but the freedom to make a character rivals tabletop RPGs. That's the appeal for me--playing Elden Ring is like playing DnD in that I never know what I'm going to find out in its fantastical world. Add in combat mechanics that From have been refining for decades, and you have the recipe for one addictive game.

Let's go over some of the changes from Dark Souls. From have added Spirit Ash Summons, which are upgradeable ghost npcs that you can call to help with most bosses. This greatly decreases the difficulty, in my opinion, which is a good thing. You don't have to use Spirit Ashes, but they're available and prevent one from grinding their head against a particularly difficult boss. And believe me, there are some ridiculously hard bosses in this game, with movesets that you'll struggle to memorize, just because of the shear number of enemies. From also let you change the scaling and special move of your weapon penalty free at bonfires (Sites of Grace in Elden Ring). Have you been rocking a bloody katana and find yourself up against an enemy immune to hemorrhage? Switch its scaling to Quality (dexterity) or Magic if you have the intelligence points. Also new is Torrent, a goat-horse capable of double-jumping who you'll use to make your way across the vast expanses of Limgrave and its surrounding lands. Did I add that From have included a jump button?

Despite the changes, Elden Ring is still fundamentally Dark Souls. Patience is rewarded, and most enemies have to be defeated with a careful back and forth. My character so far is a knight wielding a plus ten blood uchigatana and the beast crest hunter shield, with a bit of pyromancy on the side. Fun times, although the inventory could be tweaked (it's a pain to have to switch between four or five items just to find the right flask). The fact that you're not being constantly directed with quest markers is awesome, but Elden Ring could stand a little more direction. Quests (or what passes for quests in Elden Ring) are very easy to miss. This is a game that requires a little internet investigation, in my opinion, in order that you don't miss some things.

I stayed away from Elden Ring for a couple months after hearing about the numerous technical issues that plagued the game upon release. Despite featuring technology that looks decidedly last gen (the game's art style is amazing, but it looks like a higher definition Dark Souls), Elden Ring has problems maintaining 60 frames per second on the newer consoles (did I mention that it's locked at 60 on pc?). On pc, shader compilation stutters often result in one second pauses. These issues were replicated across many different systems and occurred on high-end hardware as well as lower end systems. However, I haven't encounter many stutters at all, and the game has maintained a frame rate of between 50 and 60 fps 99 percent of time (except for the forest around the Bellum Highway where it inexplicably cratered). I think this is because I'm running the game on a pcie 4.0 drive (albeit in a 3.0 slot) and Windows 11. I initially installed Elden Ring on my sata ssd with Windows 10, and I encountered frequent stutters. So having a fast hard drive and the newest version of Windows will greatly improve your experience.

Elden Ring is recommend to those who enjoy action RPGS and expansive worlds that are meant to be explored with little direction. Screenshots below:

  

Tech Ramblings: A 5700 xt/3700x Combo is Surprising Capable at 4k

 

 Odyssey looks good at 4k medium settings, although there are some textures missing on yonder hills.

If you hang out around certain corners of the internet (reddit), you might think you need a 2000 dollar plus computer to play at 4k. Not true, internet! My two year old pc featuring hardware that's about three years old at this point is perfectly capable of gaming at 4k, provided you're aiming for 60 frames per second and are willing to turn graphical settings down below Ultra. In a very scientific experiment, I took a ten foot HDMI cable and hooked it up to my 4k 55 inch tv and then booted up some games. Here's what I found.

Elden Ring was up first. Although not a particularly well-optimized game, I found that it played pretty similarly at 4k medium compared to 1440p maximum, albeit with a few more dropped frames. Frame rate is capped at 60 fps in Elden Ring, but I did notice drops more, since I was playing on a tv without veritable refresh rate. Still, it played well and looked great, the only real noticeable difference being an increased rate of pop in as you approach objects.

For Halo Infinite, I used the medium preset as well as the dynamic resolution feature (min and max frame rate), which I set to 60. There aren't many differences between medium and ultra in Halo, that is, unless you're analyzing comparison screenshots. The drs wasn't readily apparent, and the game held 60 fps even in the open world areas. This surprised me quite a bit, since Infinite has a reputation for being unoptimized. I think the game was designed to be used with drs, and it's good enough that you'll not notice it on a decent machine. I didn't try native 4k, but the X Box Series X can't do 60 fps at 4k native in Halo either, and heavily relies on drs, according to Digital Foundry. I think a 3700x/5700 xt combo stacks up pretty well against the next gen consoles, which makes sense, considering similarly powered AMD hardware is in both machines.

Forza Horizon ran beautifully at 4k High settings, keeping a steady 60 fps. This is a fun game to play on a big screen. I also tried Assassin's Creed Odyssey. To keep a steady 60 fps, I had to reduce settings to the medium preset. I also turned adaptive anti-aliasing on, which is actually an upscaling feature tied to the framerate limit. Medium settings at 4k looked great. My general impression is that an increase in resolution generally looks better than higher graphical settings at a lower resolution. 1080p ultra doesn't looked as good as 1440p medium, just like 1440p ultra doesn't look as good as 4k medium.

Now I wouldn't purchase three year-old hardware if I were building a gaming computer to pair with a 4k monitor, but I wouldn't break the bank on a 3090 ti for 1600 bucks. This is more a reminder for myself than my non-existent computer gaming audience. Hop off the hedonistic treadmill and the upgrade wagon. Save that sweet cash for essentials, like your housing payment and gasoline.

Elden Ring is one of those games where medium quality settings don't look that different from max.

New Video: Teenage Idol

 

I'm going to start doing acoustic solo performances for Youtube, just because I think some of my songs translate well to doing the Dylan thing, and it's super easy and doesn't require a bunch of time, which I don't have a lot of. Teenage Idol is one of my favorite songs, written years ago for my band Theme Park Mistress. It sounds vaguely like a Buddy Holly type ballad, although the lyrics are sardonic, as is my style. The quality is rough, but who doesn't like a little hiss in their audio recordings?

Weightlifting: Juggernaut AI, Week 22

 

With only 44 days to go before my meet/test day, I'm pretty happy with Juggernaut AI. Sure, it could be cheaper (35 bucks a month), but I'm confidant that I'll hit most of my previous PRs, especially in the bench and deadlift. My squat is feeling better now that we're moving into heavier weights and less reps. The first Strength block started with 6 reps for the main lifts (5 for the deadlift, which is always one rep less than the squat and the bench), then decreased to 5, and then finally decreased further to 4 (3 for the deadlift). The assistance work is also supposed to get heavier, with fewer reps, although I still try to keep in the 8 rep range. I feel as though the volume is very manageable now, whereas during the hypertrophy blocks I was often struggling to finish my workouts within an hour. This is the longest I've ever done a program, and surprisingly, I have no desire to stop and try something else. So all in all, I think Juggernaut AI is a smart way to train, and a great option for those with 35 bucks to spare. It's refreshing to just have a program laid out for you, because as a 36 year old man with a job and kids, I have very little free time. Recovery is also incredibly important, and being able to easily dial back the volume is a great option to have (check out the screenshot above for an example of the daily readiness assessment). I'll report back with my final results 44 days from now.

Couple more random observations:

--The more equipment you have, the more exercise variations you'll have access to, making it easier not to get bored. I really need a pair of heavy dumbbells for my work gym so that I can do incline dumbbell presses. Having a pulldown attachment is nice. By the way, I randomly busted out 20 pullups the other day and it wasn't even difficult, so that's an achievement, eh?

--the warmup is a good way to assess soreness, but I often skip it and just do a bunch of light squats or benches.

--training in high humidity is probably the worst environment you can train in. It's been hot and extremely humid, and even some easy days have been made a lot harder by all the sweat dripping down my face.

--every once in a while the app will randomly decrease my bodyweight down to 100 lbs. It's a pain to increase it, because you have to hit the plus button about one-hundred times. That's the only bug I've encountered, although my buddy claims that the app has reset him back at week one (he's also skipped a bunch of training sessions, so that might have something to do with it).