Two Sides of the Same Screen.
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.