Two Sides of the Same Screen.
The Following is Based on True Forum Exchanges
Voice of Slight Logic: Don’t pretend you weren’t warned. What did you expect from AMD? When the Hawaii was released, its “certified” temperature range was a sliver shy of your kettle’s. Heat to them is an issue of scant concern, scarcely more then sand off a camel’s hump. They’ve shamelessly gambled every subsequent chip on their client’s goodwill. Their transistors run hotter than the volcanoes on the islands they’re named after. The “Tonga” may well be a newer GPU but scratch new, built from ground up? I’m afraid not, its a honed Hawaii with handful of party pieces.
1. Something clever to do with lossless colour compression in the frame buffer. Apparently it can read the data on the fly in its compacted state with no sacrifice in quality, much like an intelligent audio device plays a FLAC file, same as a WAV but 40% smaller and in the “Tonga’s” case 40% more efficient.
2. The addition of 16bit floating point and integer instructions to preserve power when processing content that doesn’t necessitate 32bit calculations.
3. Expanded H.264 support, with the ability to decode material rendered at resolutions of upto 4096×2304 at 60 frames per second and identify all base, main and high media profiles.
Did you really believe that Apple could defy physics and contain what amounts to a partially under-clocked R9 285 pumping out over 190 watts in a chassis as narrow as a Scrooge’s mind…at the beginning of the story….before all those ghosts said, “Pull yourself together man and buy Bob Cratchit a bigger candle”.
Happy 5Kers: Seriously, its nothing to huff about, most of us are quite happy. We adore our gorgeous acquisitions. Apple were smart not to kowtow to Nvidia’s avarice. AMD deserved the deal, they were far more proactive and now, we have marvellous machines equal to any mission moments after their maiden boot. Yosmite is frictionless ecstasy.
I’ve come from a PC with a 27″ Hazro and the improvement in clarity is breath snatching. I was delighted with that rig but now, I wonder how I ever coped. It’s achingly beautiful. Do you remember what it was like when you first wore goggles underwater? The transition from 1440p to 2880p is, every bit as miraculous, its a quantum leap, worth every cent, penny, dollar and crown.
Voice of Slight Logic: And what have you used it for? A spot of iTunes, telling the time, sending emails, self-indulgent Skyping, copying personal FX randomly to the clouds and back?
Happy 5Kers: Ha. Spoken like a true Windows Worshipper. Don’t think for a nano that I’ve not stressed this thing. I’ve thrown the world at it, including the games you lot dote on. I’ve tested under Yosemite and windows 7 via Bootcamp. I’ve run Crysis 3 using “very high” settings, Tomb Raider at “ultra”, Counter Strike and Shadows of Mordor, both with “high” detail and every one at 1440p. Frame rates are smooth, no hiccups, stutters or lock-ups regardless of the OS.
Believe it or not, I’ve jacked some stuff to 5k. Starcraft 11, Diablo 3, League of Legends, plus a round of synthetic benchmarks. Had to use medium or low quality for the games but hell, isn’t that forgiveable? We’re talking 14.7 million pixels. Most desktop veterans I know would struggle to maintain smoothness at 1440p, let alone 4 or 5K.
Disgruntled 5kers: And what are your temp readings?
Happy 5Kers: Oh, GPU tops out about 100 C.
Disgruntled 5kers: And you’re ok with that? No fear for the fate of your logic board?
Happy 5Kers: Certainly not. Apple is adamant that its normal, AMD too. Presumably you’ve read about the Southern Islands family. There are far more sophisticated and effective techniques to expel heat now, the Hawaii can automatically administer its core and memory frequencies, fan velocity and voltage in rapid and precise increments to guarantee the most productive and stable operating environment at any given moment. The Tonga is the same.
AMD’s Power Tune equates to Nvidia’s GPU Boost. The 28nm process is incredibly refined now, much less current leakage from the transistors, so default temps can be increased without draconian safety measures. Besides, think about it, GPUs have been dancing in the 90s for years, especially in laptops and tablets.
Disgruntled 5kers: Well thank you for such an articulate and reassuring lecture regarding contemporary GPUs. It’s funny your ride has been so free of incident. I’m running the same spec as you and find I casually canter past 70 degrees moments after launching native apps. As for games and synthetics, I’m profoundly underwhelmed. Temperatures rocket to 100+ in seconds and absolutely refuse to budge.
Throttling is instantaneous and persistent. I’ve tried Furmark, Mordor, Crysis 3 and Tombraider . I’ve used Afterburner to monitor temps, power consumption, processor occupancy, core and memory frequencies and as a soon as I hit 90 degrees, the GPU starts dragging its heels. Core drops from 850 to 834, then slides to 784mhz, then fluctuates between 762 and 784 continuously. I can partially placate the hazardous heat by transforming the card’s cooler into a hissing cockroach, this gets me back below boiling point, but is of no avail to speed until I also decrease the workload.
This was supposed replace my old Retina, acquired in November 2013. That had a GTX 780M and frankly it tanked the “Tonga”. Frame rates were butter and custard by comparison. Superior performance across the board. It never exceeded its wattage or temperature allowance, despite habitual over-clocking. I had individual templates saved for every program I pitched at it. Didn’t have to tweak a single one. Its thermal threshold was 95 and I had to wring its neck to reach 90+. It only ever touched its peak once, when I ran Prime 95 blend and Furmark during the height of summer and with the core boosted and even then, the fan was set to “auto”.
Happy 5Kers: Can’t understand that. My fan barely ever tops 2300. The R9 295X is without doubt a quicker card, it was conceived specifically to surmount the 780m. It comprehensively crushes it in a variety of routinely employed benchmarks, test suites and games as is borne out by several rigorous reports. It dashes the dust from its squirrel cage. It deposes, dominates and devastates it with panache. See for yourself.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Indeed, one shamefully skewed set of statistics. Tomb Raider is an acknowledged AMD showcase, as is Diablo 3. Notice how even the weaker “i5” with an R9 M290X is able to spank the speedier, hyper-threaded i7 with the 780m in four cases, and that in Tomb Raider its nearly 40% ahead, utterly misleading.
Happy 5Kers: Care to nominate an alternative source?
Disgruntled 5Kers. Try Notebook check. Not gospel, but at least they collate and aggregate figures from a broad cross-section of official and unofficial sources, and account for a plethora of published reviews, each based around a reliable and abundantly less rose-tinted analysis. According to them, the 780m has 13% more muscle mass than the m290x.
Happy 5Kers: But they only benchmark up to 1080p, that’s becoming a dated format.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Rubbish, tons of Gsync junkies with meatier rigs than our fragile minions use it religiously.
Happy 5Kers: Why haven’t they included scores for 1440p? That’s where the nines shine
Disgruntled 5Kers: Doesn’t matter, look at all the titles that didn’t surface in the article you linked to and rings the the 780m dances around the m290x. Assasin’s Creed Unity, 14% quicker. Alien Isolation, an 11% lead. Shadow of Mordor, 16% ahead. Elder Scross Online, a 20% gap. Sims 4 and Risen 3, 24% brisker in both.
Happy 5kers: You’re just being selective, the M290x owns Wolfenstein and Ryse Son of Rome by 11% and 17%.
Disgruntled 5Kers: But it loses out in the vast majority of cases
Happy 5Kers: Aha! and see how the M295X slaughters the 780 in Dragon Age inquisition, by 24%?
Disgruntled 5Kers: But only by 3% and 6% in Watchdogs and Crysis 3. There have been precious few tests for the 295 since its brand new and exclusive to one OEM, Crab-apple. But I don’t need confirmation when my personal findings expose such conclusive evidence. Now perhaps you could indulge me with some information. Is your fan speed set to “Auto”.
Happy 5Kers: Yes. Pretty much permanently, although on isolated occasions, for example, when Priming and benching simultaneously or running games at 5k I’ll manually intervene. But I’ve no or reluctance or aversion to do so, those circumstances are exceptional don’t typify day to day activities.
Disgruntled 5Kers: I see. Still, could you fire up MSI Afterburner, then run the “Furmark” test alongside Prime 95 and post a screen cap of the traces.
Happy 5Kers: I can, but it’ll have to be tomorrow. Got sessions in Garage band, compositions in Photoshop, all sorts of neat projects on the go and I’ll tell you, this angelic panel alone adds 25% to my inspiration!
Disgruntled 5Kers: No problem. Enjoy your honeymoon friend, wish I could go back and relive mine.
Tomorrow
Happy 5 kers: Here are the screenshots
Disgruntled 5Kers: Interesting. So yours is throttling too.
Happy 5Kers: Sorry?
Disgruntled 5Kers: Observe the lower meter.
Happy 5Kers: The core trace?
Disgruntled 5Kers: Yes, note where that line levels off, and then begins to oscillate? It should a steady reading, virtually flat, like the memory. These chips were binned at 850mhz though it would seem they perform heavy tasks hovering below 800. Now look at where the fluctuations occur relative to your temperature, exactly the same as with me, high 90s to low 100’s.
Happy 5Kers: I do, but that’s not throttling, at least not in the critical sense, its completely intentional.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Am I speaking to Tim Cook’s iPhone or Tim Cook himself?
Happy 5Kers: Nice one. Really though, this is precisely what I meant by accurate and efficient methods to constrain energy consumption and excessive heat. All the latest GPUs have it built-in. The Kepler, The Maxwell, The Tonga and the rest. Frequencies and voltages are dynamically regulated to ensure the cards remain within their respective TDPs and thermal boundaries, depending on which is violated.
Disgruntled 5 Kers: I don’t need a lesson. I’m an ex-PCer myself, defected to the lodge of the enlightened two years ago, I’m vividly aware of what’s happening and why. The question is, should it be happening at all and moreover, under vanilla settings. Should I have to intercept what is obviously a carelessly installed and slackly calibrated cooling system.
Happy 5Kers: 99% of the time you don’t have to, just let the limiter do its thing. I know It sounds like a cop out but the granularity is so fine and the algorithms so agile that there’s no discernible performance hit.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Subjective territory there I think. In any case, thank you, you’ve now proven conclusively that my niggle is not isolated, we’ve all been taken for quinces.
Happy 5kers: The niggle is your niggling obsessiveness.
Disgruntled 5Kers: So you believe its normal and acceptable for a GPU to reach throttle governed equilibrium when tasked with anything more taxing than an email.
Happy 5kers: Amusing, but also grossly exaggerative. You had me launch two of the most notorious resource hogs in software history, composed with the sole purpose of lighting up the dashboard and the consequence is a minuscule reduction in GPU speed. I’m more convinced now then ever that all is working exactly the way it should be.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Sorry, but a graphics chip that spends most of its mid to high load time spewing Fahrenheit faster than Brutal Doom spawns enemies will likely not yield long term stability. How many times have we been assured all is peachy only to have peripherals buckle and burn within a year. How much scrutiny do these units receive before they’re discharged? Remember the 2011 iMac? Distorted blue lines and artefacts or, if you were really lucky, a display as blank as a Hermit’s Twitter feed? Goodness me, what a coincidence, another AMD GPU, and a mass recall. These machines not engineered to last, they’re mass produced to keep customers perched on the precipice of satisfaction until next year’s model is available.
Apple doesn’t care about sustained reliability. Their designs, configuration and choices of parts revolve entirely around profit. Most devices that live beyond the dawn of their successors only do so when Apple’s financial incentives happen to favour a manufacturer that supplies solidly machined parts. It was pure good fortune when Nvidia secured the contract for previous models. I’d wager Apple’s testing parameters incorporate nothing other than what’s likely to expire within the initial year of ownership. After that its a calculated risk as to who will actually bother to pursue a legitimate complaint and how many will be too busy, lazy and profligate to resist trading up for the present “latest and greatest”. They gamble on our naivety and exploit our patience.
Happy 5kers. Come on. How often is a typical iMac user going to subject their rig to the sort of regime you’re contemplating? Prime 95 and Furmark morning, noon and night. What did you order an iMac for? To stick in a server farm? Bit-coining? And why single out AMD? Nvidia has implemented thermal and wattage perimeters on every one of their cards since the GTX 580. Even the Maxwell has a threshold of 80 degrees and when running Furmark, it too will throttle, just read Anandtech’s review.
Disgruntled 5kers: Wrong that’s the Maxi’s default top temp. It’s absolute limit is 95 deg, says so on nvidias site. You touched on GPU boost and Powertune earlier. Look carefully at Afterburner, notice those greyed out controls for Voltage and Power limit and how the core and memory clock sliders are dragged all the way to the right? On discrete Nvidia cards, all four of those fields can be modified.
There’s the option to manually raise the and lower the TDP and thermal thresholds over a specific range. For top tier 780s and 980s, power limits can be lifted to within 106% and 110% of their standard values and the temperatures elevated from 80 to 95 degrees. On top of that there’s Boost Clock, which pumps an extra shot of nitrous through the core under permissible conditions. On my previous iMac, I couldn’t change the voltage or thermal targets, but the GPU and DRAM fields were adjustable. Plus, I had Boost Clock, in other words like all Nvidia cards, the 780m was conservatively clocked, giving me headroom to work with and potential to engender a healthy FPS bonus.
Powertune works under similar principals, as you must know. The difference is that that the R9’s advertised figures for frequencies and temperature are their definitive parameters, meaning far less scope for supplementary pace other than at the expense of golden silence.
And that’s exactly where we stand. What use is 850mhz if a combination of mismanaged design, sloppy integration, lacklustre quality control – whether intentional or otherwise – and uncompromisingly stringent implementation, eliminates the slimmest chance of sustaining optimal performance for anything other than mundane desktop duties.
Happy 5kers: Prime 95? Furmark? What about Linpack or AIDA64 nobody with a speck of sanity would classify those apps as “anything other than mundane desktop duties”. They demand priority that’s off the scale and hardly reflect typical usage. Who in the Milky Way spends whole weekends stressing out their comps with what are essentially diagnostic tools and only recommended for efficiently verifying legitimate defects. Now, if I were getting visual corruption, sporadic reboots or everything was grinding to a halt within minutes of running them, then I’d be perturbed enough to complain, but as things stand, I feel more than fulfilled.
Remember when OCCT was the “gold standard”? That had a tortuous graphics test and front end for Linpack , which Intel themselves use to audition processors prior to release. It was hilarious how many people were perplexed when their massively over clocked chips bailed out or suffered heat stroke quicker than a , when they hadn’t encountered a sniff of instability throughout months of work and play. These programs were not intended to simulate a regular user’s requirements. That fact that incessant tweakers got a hold of them was one of the reasons why manufacturers began taking practical steps to protect their products from misuse.
Try to see things from their point of view. If I bought a car then immediately drove to my local garage and hooked it up to one of those rolling roads, you know, for monitoring horsepower. Then, instead of taking measurements in the usual way, I left it spinning on the rollers at maximum revs and a tyre blew. Should the manufacturer be culpable, or should I? Is that part of a normal motorists daily schedule? The rolling road to a car is the equivalent of OCCT or Furmark to a computer.
Fortunately for the automotive industry, very few clients have the cash or space for one in their back garden, so they don’t have the means to thrash their hardware as frequently or relentlessly as as we do. If they did, you can bet your life we’d see an assortment of pre installed governors, trips and limiters to prevent an avalanche of returns from compulsive budding mechanics on the basis of their turbocharged marvels being unfit for purpose. We, by contrast, do have ways to subject components to undue strain. Prime, OCCT, Furmark and other similar utilities have become de rigeur for the mainstream user. Folks I know, perhaps like your good self, run them for hours and hours in succession and days on end. They should use them appropriately, to diagnose faults, but honestly, it would appear they’d rather seek or, dare I suggest, actively encourage a foundation for dissatisfaction.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Fine, what’s your idea of an iMacs probable daily duties.
Happy 5kers: A bit like a healthy diet I guess, everything in moderation. I edit and produce promotional material for various companies, I’m also a freelance photographer so I bought mine mainly for work. My PC was puffing and rasping with a bunch of apps active at once, it was painfully clunky, particularly when trimming images and applying filters in Photoshop, or previewing stuff in Premier.
I rely on numerous third party plugins, for sound and video, and projects that had several streams with keying and mastering effects or fancy transitions needed more re-rendering than a British B road. Literally every few seconds for really dense sequences. Handling raw footage was horrendous because I have to deal with multiple codecs, high and low compression.
Disgruntled 5Kers: H.264?
Happy 5kers: Yes, mainly, but also MPEG 2, Cinepack, Canopus HQX, MJpeg and other AVI derivatives. I used a Blackmagic card to preview and navigating the timeline was a drag, literally. Different clips would place differing demands on the processor and hard drive, so scrubbing was smooth for some and sluggish for others. The only compromise would have been to export and re-import the whole lot in a lossless AVI but that would have taken a ton of space.
Disgruntled 5Kers: How many drives were you working with. Did you have a RAID.
Happy 5kers: Yep. It was a pretty smart system. Put it together myself in 2012 and added memory later. Asus Maximus Gene-IV, the Gen 3 model. A Sandy-Bridge processor, 2600 I think, and a couple of Seagate Barracudas, a terabyte a piece.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Sounds like you didn’t give it the wherewithal to shine. It’s advisable to keep your media and OS on separate drives, that way you can assign dedicated scratch disks and avoid a lot of overhead from applications and TSRs.
Happy 5kers: True, but I was already shifting 300 megabytes a second which was on a par with equivalent arrays, so I don’t think it would have improved things enough. The SSD in this iMac more than doubles the throughput by itself according to HD tune, and it sure feels that way. And don’t forget the a cornucopia of connectivity, least of all Thunderbolt 2. Even Thunderbolt 1 is faster than SATA 3 and not far behind SATA Express and Thunderbolt 2 is twice as fast as that. 20 gigabits per second. I’ll probably grab an external enclosure like the Promise Pegasus M4 and sling in some Samsung spiceness.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Don’t they come pre-configured?
Happy 5kers: Not sure, One early review claimed to be using a quad terabyte config, whereas Promise says it comes supplied with two. This recent article on Pro Video Coalition stated they were working with the standard array and also that it topped a gig a second in their tests.
Disgruntled 5Kers: GigaBit or byte.
Happy 5kers: Byte, obviously!
Disgruntled 5kers: So less than half of bus’s total bandwidth?
Happy 5kers: Yeah, but still mighty quick. It’s actually targeted at videographers wanting to store, manipulate or edit HD and ultra HD material consisting of mixed formats and in multiple streams, one firing line I’m delighted to be in.
Disgruntled 5kers: I’m beginning to pine for my PC. From the day my foremost build was baptised – by me when I pressed the power switch – I vowed to treasure it and all its descendant as trusted friends, as well as instruments of prosperity and pleasure.
Happy 5kers: Bit tricky to trust a home brew hybrid that’s been cobbled together from individually sourced parts, none of which has been collectively tested and is tenuously tethered to its host by drivers flakier than filo pastry in a scrap metal shredder, all unified by a software infrastructure less secure than a government approved pension scheme.
Disgruntled 5kers: Cardboard bank would have been funnier.
Happy 5kers: OK. Let’s try, less secure than a paper houseboat, a talent show winner’s recording contract, or a wireless network at a wiki-leaks convention.
Disgruntled 5kers: Or iTunes updates? Apple’s interface policy?
Happy 5kers: Don’t be a lousy sport, iTunes runs like a sloth in Windows because it was conceived, engineered or optimized for OSX. As for interfaces? I assume you mean the blue lightning blow up? That was an era ago and did it honestly merit such disgust and outrage? God! A neater connector that plugs in both ways. How offensive. I’m appalled . Give me back my old 30 pin pal so I can again relish fumbling around in frustration, trying to get both latches to click into place before realising it’s upside-down. That was one of my daily highlights throughout seven years of charitable patronage and now its gone forever. Think of the time I’ll save, I can’t bare it.
Disgruntled 5kers: It would have bothered me less were it not for the extra £40 I had to donate for yet another HDMI adaptor, which has ceased working with eight of the ten free to air film and television apps I used to depend on. But returning to my original point. My PCs weren’t disposable assets, they were precious companions and the streak of uncertainty embodied in their creation makes for greater excitement.
Being personally responsible for envisaging, assembling and enabling your transistor toting pride and joy forges a tighter bond and a more profound and meaningful relationship. You know it won’t last a lifetime, upgrades and replacements are inevitable, but a defining element may survive generations. A case for instance, can be like a bicycle, or a desk, or a pair of hiking boots. A possession that you characterize and retains a whisper of your spirit, even when you’re far away.
Surrender to a Mac, and you are merely a passenger. One of the militantly synchronized crowd and a terminal victim of premeditated obsolescence. It’s all about that fleeting honeymoon between customer and component, and keeping the former distracted just as long as it takes for divorce papers to be served by the very same priest who joined you in fallacious faith. Wholesome and rewarding romance binding constructor to computer is like a marriage. Commitment, effort, obedience, empathy and unconditional birthday presents must each be mutual, and nothing taken for granted until the senses are perfectly aligned. To anticipate a modern fairytale invites a grim fate.
Happy 5kers: Oh dear me. worse than Rumpelstiltskin?
Disgruntled 5kers: Is that a euphemism
Happy 5kers: No, I always felt sorry for him. Films and literature besides the original text have him invariably portrayed as an incorrigible and demonic entity. He wasn’t that bad, not nearly as heartless and greedy as the King or that spoilt, deceitful Miller’s daughter. He aided her in the best spirit by slavishly spinning spinning all that straw into gold, three nights running. What was she expecting, a loyalty card a free platinum wedding dress?
Disgruntled 5kers: He wanted her first born child.
Happy 5kers: Yeah, and? Did he once say or imply he’d doing anything other than cherish it as though it were his own, it’s not as if he could have had children, well, we don’t know for sure but I think we can assume so. She could have haggled, come to a dignified arrangement, visited twice a week perhaps? He was offering escape from a future of unrelenting poverty and misery. Her emancipation in return for a baby who’d likely be spending most of its time at grandma’s house as soon as cushy Queenly duties took over, so basically a win win deal, and she’s not even inclined to negotiate. Instead, how does she thank him? By pretending to accept his modest request, selfishly erasing it from her list of post-freedom priorities and marrying the very man who almost sealed her doom. A violent, villainous, money grabbing dictator and probable genocidal manic. Not only did he get her out of jail, he was her ticket to the throne, he made her a monarch and that spoilt fat-headed harlot spared him not a solitary thought.
Disgruntled 5kers: But once she has borne her baby and he returns, doesn’t she recognise him?
Happy 5kers: That’s right, and does he collect what was rightfully his, what had apparently been promised him? Not a bit of it. When confronted by her grief, out of sympathy, he a suggests supremely sporting compromise. Guess his name before three nights pass and she can keep her baby, she readily agrees. But then, worst of all, she doesn’t even play by the rules. She calls on hoards of servants to do her dirty bidding, search every corner of land and drawing up censuses, while she idles around in her palace sleeping till one o clock and fretting over a bad hair days and dresses that are too tight.
Disgruntled 5kers: I don’t recall that part.
Happy 5kers: Ok, slight exaggeration, but this isn’t. When one scout finally locates our charitable imp’s humble dwelling, he covertly acquires the information, relays it to lady muck. Then, when our poor diddy do gooder returns one final time, having commendably held up his part of the bargain, her lying, cheating majesty “guesses” correctly and wins the challenge under disgustingly false pretences.
Disgruntled 5kers: I can’t quite remember how things end, what happens?
Happy 5kers: He throws a bit of a tragic wobbly. He jumps up and down extremely hard, one of his legs falls through the floor and when he tries to extract it, he divides himself in half. And the two heinous highnesses live “happily” ever after. She should have abdicated and begged Rumpole to marry her. He’d have made an infinitely better husband. He was a genuine hero and her infallible aid in a situation of dire duress. He’d have treated her with dignity and respect, and the same kind hands that had willingly woven her redemptive destiny. Bleak winter evenings would have whirled by in whimsical splendour. Picture it.
“Mummy, mummy, I’m bored, can’t I go out and play in the snow?”
“No darling, its too late and icy cold. I can’t have you wandering in the heart of the woods after dark, you’re sure to get lost, besides, your cute little head should be on a soft feathered pillow.
Disgruntled 5kers: Was the word “cute” commonly spoken in 14th century medieval Europe?
Happy 5kers: Don’t defile this beautiful Scene with pointless pedantry.
“But I’m not tired, mummy and the wind makes scary wailing noises right outside my window”
“That’s not the wind my dear and delightful, it’s the howling of a big bad wolf hunting for small boys who have not heeded their parent’s sagely advice and strayed into the forest’s deepest, gloomiest, deadliest dells.
“But mummy, isn’t he meant to be chasing after pigs and girls in floppy red hats, he’s not in my favourite story, the one you always tell me, about how you and Daddy met, now I’m really scared.
“I’ll tell you what, if you promise to be a good boy and snuggle down in that lovely soft bed adorned in fresh lavender laundered linen, I’ll tell you the most exciting and enthralling tale those tiny tingly ears of yours have ever pricked up to and in the morning, Daddy will show you his amazing alchemy skills again. He doesn’t only do the straw trick you know.” He can grind grain into garnet, boil rice into rubies, roll oats into emeralds and prove dough into diamonds. Did you know, he knitted the silver pyjamas I’m wearing entirely from cobwebs?
Disgruntled 5kers: Cry me a torrent. Your revisionism is as odious as your bias. I wonder if old Rumpole of the hay-bails could spin silicone into a semi-decent Mac.
Happy 5kers: Well it was you that said marriages were’t fairy stories. I think I’ve now demonstrated that marriages in fairy stories aren’t fairy stories either. If everybody spent as much of their existence as you dithering and agonizing over the functionality of inanimate aluminium spouses, they’d rob themselves of the chance to savour the magic of a real relationship, or even a real virtual relationship! So how could they begin to learn any of the virtues you’re preaching? Which should take precedence, chicks or chips?
Disgruntled 5kers: We have no choice, Apples.
Happy 5kers: Suits me. I have no desire to go back to a galaxy replete with viruses, blue screens, spontaneous reboots, risky BIOS updates and supposedly fail-safe backups that restore nothing but a message saying sorry but I couldn’t restore anything.
Disgruntled 5kers: But once you had applied instinct, profound thought and hard graft to expunge each of those stubborn encumbrances and believe me, it can be done. The sense of liberty, self-empowerment and shared triumph was and remains something beyond the realm of Macintosh matrimony. After all, how can a machine whose flaws are a burden at birth, ever heed its keeper’s guidance.
Happy 5kers: Oh shut up! I dabble in music as well you know. Picked up my first Fender two weeks ago. Now there’s an inanimate object that I intend to characterize with my soul. Its a tailor made Stratocaster in gorgeous cream and sky blue livery. The colour is dead rare, originally known as “ice blue metallic”. I saw one on Ebay a while ago but found myself monetarily challenged. Some power seller snatched it within the day. I knew it would never be mine but that didn’t stop me punching the refresh button for hours just to see it wrenched from my dreams. The fact it was no longer available to loads of other people made me feel slightly happier. But I bet that seller cleaned up. I thought about going second hand again but my cosmetic tastes had shifted and nothing I spotted seduced me.
Disgruntled 5Kers: I suppose you wanted silver to “sync” with your respective other.
Happy 5Kers: Nice, humour as subtle as Albert Lee’s riffs….on a very bad day! Anyway, the Fender custom shop had tons of options so I decided to start from scratch. I wanted the pick guard to be discretely off white and distressed rather than pearl or anodized gold, which seemed a bit vulgar.
Disgruntled 5Kers: Agreed, would have clashed with your humility.
Happy 5Kers: Right on! I was also wedded to the notion of a Rosewood neck and fretboard but the quote sheet only allowed for the latter, the neck had to be Maple. So I searched further and found a fantastic independent builder. Their selection of customisations was outstanding, it covered finer details than I could possibly have imagined, and they were incredibly helpful in advising me on aesthetics and more importantly, acoustics. I wanted a bright, acute and edgy tone, sparkle over substance, and Rosewood apparently gives off a mellower, richer sound than Maple but I desperately wanted a dark shade. So the guy suggested Ebony which is silkier under the fingers than Rosewood and as sharp to the ear as Maple.
Disgruntled 5Kers: As in F Sharp or D sharp?
Happy 5kers: Sharp wit. Ended up going for a mahogany neck and an ebony fretboard and chose Maple for the body. There was the option of flamed or quilted Maple but it was $500 steeper so I passed. No point in having the whole thing made of expensive patterned timber if its going to be painted right? Neck didn’t cost too much extra and it looks sublime offset against the pale pick board.
A couple of mates said Garage band had changed their lives, they’ve graduated to Logic now but I can see what they meant, for a bundled bonus, its fantastically versatile.
Disgruntled 5Kers: More so than its host that’s for sure. And you fill in the gaps with gaming?
Happy 5kers: Right. Big fan of Crysis and Diablo, touch of LOL and WOW now and then, about to start Call of Duty AW. You tried any of them, how about some tips?
Disgruntled 5Kers: Here’s one, check your GPU frequency during play.
Happy 5kers: Oh, back to grim fault finding are we, I thought we might glean some fun from all this.
Disgruntled 5Kers: I can almost guarantee you’ll witness the same behaviour as with Furmark. That core will wobble as soon as you break 90 degrees. 850mhz will slide to 834, then 784, and probably settle between the latter and 760, as your temp tapers out at balmy 100. That’s 10% short of what is heavily publicised as this Tonga variant’s contractual obligation, where it should remain 99% of the time. Also, watch your frame counter, it’ll spike and sag in line with the throttling.
Happy 5Kers: Mon frequence d’images et manifique!
Disgruntled 5Kers: Pardon.
Happy 5Kers: Oh just messing with some voice translation apps. I said, my frame rates are magnificent. 30+ fps indefinitely at 1440p and frequent climbs to 50+. If I forgo an ounce or two of sugary visuals, I can even scrape 30 at 5k.
Disgruntled 5kers: Worthless if its not fluid. Reminds me of when AMD had all those load balancing issues with crossfire. Fan boys swooned over stunning benchmark scores, but didn’t mention that clusters of frames were either partially rendered or skipped, making the perceived frame rate much lower and less consistent than the measured one. PCPer did a whole expose. They conducted a bunch of tests, captured the footage on a separate rig and excluded the stunted or missing frames from their results. When assessed against the rogue figures, they were a major disappointment.
Happy 5Kers: Indeed yes, I remember it well. That was before they ditched the external bridge, and drivers have progressed mightily since.
Disgruntled 5kers: Such a shame you never had the pleasure of a 780m, or even a 680mx, your views would be very different and you’d appreciate my gripes.
Happy 5kers: Did I stutter? I get syrupy smooth game play irrespective of temperature or speed fluctuations and the fan doesn’t breech 2300 rpm despite the die hitting 104 degrees. Doesn’t that tell you anything?
Disgruntled 5kers: That you should open a window? Play in your fridge?
Happy 5Kers: Ha! Well It tells me that neither AMD nor Apple saw fit to fully expend the GPU’s cooling provisions and hence, they must be supremely confident in its ability to take the heat of the proverbial kitchen. Perhaps you should trust them and get on with relishing your investment.
Disgruntled 5kers: Look, you can be satisfied, be my guest, bask in the detectability of your divine display. But however you want to spin this, Apple’s actions should viewed as contemptuous corner cutting . When a manufacturer embarks on a propitiatory design, specifies all the components in the board room and fuses them on the factory floor, it is obliged to impose a comprehensive quality control program enforcing conditions that replicate real world scenarios.
Clearly their procedures were’t thorough enough because straight out of the box, these Tongas are throttling. Whether its their voltage or temperature envelopes causing the issue is irrelevant. The fact remains, it shouldn’t be happening. We’re not dealing with custom PC builds, where blame could be attributed to the customer on account of sub-optimal ventilation, a poorly fitted heat-sink or an inadequate power supply. These iMacs arrive at our front doors pre-configured, pre-assembled and as sealed units. Attempts to physically access or modify their internals for any reason other than to add memory, will annul the warranty, thus, Apple is solely responsible for fulfilling the advertised specifications.
Happy 5Kers: It must be painful to feel so manipulated and but its not going to make me paranoid or any less thrilled with my acquisition. You really believe that a periodic core speed drop of 70mhz when mercilessly maxing out your system is a deal-breaking shortfall?
Disgruntled 5kers: AMD has been playing this fiery numbers game for far too long and Apple has voluntarily condoned it. 850mhz was branded a formality. They might have at least had the decency to pull the same crude stunt as with R9s and precede that figure with the words “up to”. Instead, they’ve compounded their dishonesty and shattered what was left of my tolerance.
Hey folks, don’t panic, snap out of that red funk. 100 degrees is normal, healthy and wholly risk free, even when your GPU has to lop 10% off its core speed as soon as it sores past 90, which it will whenever you run any slightly more than moderately graphically intensive software. Have confidence in our reputation. It’s not as if we’ve ever struggled to nullify heat. Nothing we’ve produced has perished from an overdose of degrees, and AMD’s philosophy coolly accommodates our core principals. May your minds rest easy, so long as we’re in command.
Happy 5kers: Well, nobody claimed convincing you would be easy. This time next year, why don’t we meet again and see whose mac is still motoring?
Disgruntled 5kers: I’m afraid we won’t because by then, you’ll be on a joyful honeymoon with the Imac 6k and I’ll be back to building towers and paying window tax.
Epilogue
So, what was Apple’s reasoning for deserting serene and Sunny Valleys for scorching Sunnyvale? Having been granted negligible access to the minutes of any momentous meetings or crucial conference calls, superficial speculation is my only sword. But from what I was able to glean. the most prevalent explanation freely frequenting unresolved threads, was a suggestion that Nvidia had demanded crippling financial satisfaction from a corporate Shark with jaws as deadly his own. Exorbitant enough to reduce profit margins to depths where any hope of a competitive price vanished as swiftly a pearl in an avalanche. How ironic that one of the RIMac’s key attractions may also conceal a chronic Achilles heal.