ProductImage/34-317-792CVF-06.jpg' alt='Intel Hd Graphics 4600 Manual Meat' title='Intel Hd Graphics 4600 Manual Meat' />AMDs Vega Graphics Cards Could Kick Off a War. Every nerd loves a good tech war Windows vs Mac, Apple vs Android, Intel vs AMD. They give us something to armchair argue about over beers with friendsor to rant over in the comments of illustrious tech blogs. After spending the weekend playing with AMDs new Vega 6. Vega 5. 6 graphics cards, I think I can safely say an old tech war is back oneven if AMDs latest salvo feels paltry. Nvidia might be leading the discrete graphics card industry, but AMDs two newest cards are cheap and fast enough to finally compete. And that can only mean good things for PC users. ZPhu488i-480.jpg' alt='Intel Hd Graphics 4600 Manual Meat' title='Intel Hd Graphics 4600 Manual Meat' />Price4. Vega 5. Vega 6. 4What is it Discrete GPUs that are competing against graphics titan Nvidia. No Like. Dont expect any flash. AMD, which purchased Nvidias previous competitor, ATI Graphics, has been losing the GPU war for a while. Nvidia is currently producing the majority of discrete graphics cards found in computers today. According to Jon Peddie Research, by the end of 2. Nvidia had more than 7. AMD trailed far behind with just 2. So AMD decided to focus on building cheap cards to go in cheap machineslike the 5. I reviewed back in April. The AMD Vega 6. 4 and Vega 5. Nvidia 1. 08. 0 with cheaper options that start to approximate its performance. When the Vega microarchitecture the cards are based on was announced back at CES, people didnt immediately leap out of their seats. Every nerd loves a good tech war Windows vs Mac, Apple vs Android, Intel vs AMD. They give us something to armchair argue about over beers with friendsor to rant. The database recognizes 1,746,000 software titles and delivers updates for your software including minor upgrades. Its that time of year when Intel, the largest maker of laptop and desktop processors in the world, announces the guts of your future PC. These CPUs are always a. Im pretty sure that none of our readers who drives a car with a manual transmission has ever looked down at their shifter and exclaimed I sure wish this was a. AMD didnt have a cool hook like when Nvidia announced it had spent billions to develop its latest card. All AMD had was a promise of speed when the cards arrived this summer. Bmw Ipod Interface Adapter Installation Art there. Eight months later, the Vega 6. The AMD Vega 6. 4 retails for 5. AMD Vega 5. 6 retails for 4. Both also have 8. GB of RAM built in. The big difference between the two is the number of compute unitsthink of those like the cores in a CPU the more the better. The Vega 6. 4 has 6. Vega 5. 6 has 5. 6. When I compared the Vegas to the 1. I found was far less exciting that what Id hoped for. While the AMD Vega 6. Instead it was sort of like going to the car lot and having to choose between a Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla. Theyre both very nice, cost the same, and do the same damn thing. What was really astounding was the performance of the 4. AMD Vega 5. 6. Despite being considerably cheaper than both the Vega 6. Nvidia 1. 08. 0, it played Overwatch and Civilization VI only marginally slower. The 1. 08. 0 managed 1. Overwatch on Ultra at 4. K, the the Vega 6. Vega 5. 6 pulled of 9. K with the graphics cranked to Ultra. Thats not just a little respectable, thats really damn good. In Civilization VI the difference was even smaller, with the Vega 5. Vega 6. 4. In one case the Vega 5. Nvidia 1. 08. 0, and was on par with the more expensive Vega 6. When I rendered a frame in Blender, graphics software that allows you to create large 3. D images that heavily tax a discrete GPU, the Nvidia 1. The Vega 6. 4 rendered the same frame in 9 minutes and 2. The Vega 5. 6 Just 9 minutes and 2. With that kind of neck and neck performance theres no reason to really buy either a Nvidia 1. Vega 6. 4 over the Vega 5. But speed isnt the only factor to consider when buying a discrete graphics card. See, the cards that go in your desktop PC are very power hungry. If your power supply cant provide enough juice, the GPU is worthless, and that is one place Nvidia performs far better than AMD every time. The Nvidia 1. 08. The Vega 5. 6 requires 2. Vega 6. 4 requires a whopping 2. All the extra juice means you have to use not one, but two 8 pin power connectors from your power supply. The Nvidia 1. 08. With the new Vega cards AMD is trying to get around the power constraints of it GPUs by offering some software solutions. The first, and most notable, is the Radeon Chill feature, and its actually sort of clever. It operates under the assumption that people dont really need the fastest video card, they just need one fast enough for their monitor. Both AMD and Nvidia have a technology that allows cards to sync with monitors to deliver top level graphics without straining the GPU Nvidia calls its tech G Sync, while AMD calls it Free. Sync. But you have to have a special monitor that works with the syncing technology and no monitor works with both the AMD and Nvidia sync tech. Radeon Chill works with any monitor. You simply tell it how many frames you actually want to see per second. Got a monitor that refreshes 6. Set the max to 6. Radeon Chill makes magic happen. In addition, the software doesnt try and churn out 6. Instead it recognizes moments with static visuals and dramatically cuts down on how much power is being usedand you can tweak the number as well. Want it to never go below 3. Just set the slider in the AMD software. AMD added other software features that give users a better ability to throttle their cards without diminishing visuals. Theres a power saver mode which allows you to force the cards to sip as little as 1. Frame Rate Target Control mode that lets you cap the frames per second and an Enhanced Sync mode that figures out the optimal frame to display on screen, even if it means skipping a few other frames. All these features make the AMD Vega cards feel incredibly practical versus the excess and overclocking shenanigans of Nvidia. Its as if AMD is trying to say if you want nose bleed speed go with Nvidia, but if you want control and a nice experience join us. Thats a reasonable sale to an old woman such as myself. I play my games on 4. K TVs that have no syncing technology though Microsoft suggests that could change next year and can only show between 6. I dont need dual video cards or crazy numbers, I need good enough. And the AMD Vega 6. AMD Vega 5. 6 are good enough. If youre looking for a reasonably priced card the AMD Vega 5. But these cards arent enough to lure Nvidia loyalists or the power hungry away. As the latest salvo in the war between Nvidia and AMD goes, the new Vega cards are pretty weak. READMEThese cards are neck and neck with the 5. Nvidia 1. 08. 0 in the speed department. But they natively draw a lot more power. A bevy of software features try to resolve the power issue, but it means youre effectively throttling your shiny new GPU. SPEC DUMPAMD Vega 6. GB of RAM 6. 4 compute units 1. MHz base GPU clock 4. GBs memory bandwidth 2. TFLOPS 3 x Display. Port 1 x HDMIAMD Vega 5. GB of RAM 5. 6 compute units 1. MHz base GPU clock 4. GBs memory bandwidth 2. TFLOPS 3 x Display. This Patent For A Toyota Assisted Manual Transmission Is Very Weird. Im pretty sure that none of our readers who drives a car with a manual transmission has ever looked down at their shifter and exclaimed I sure wish this was a hell of a lot more complicated, needlessly Im pretty sure. I cant say the same for some Toyota engineers, who have patented an electronically controlled manual transmission that I have no idea who would want. The patent is from January, and it came to our attention via this post over at Motor. I took a look at the patent itself, and its pretty confusing. A lot of that confusion comes from the strange, other universe logic of patent language. For example, look at this flow chart of how the transmission works, and note how they choose to indicate if the clutch pedal is pressed or not IS CLUTCH PEDAL UNOPERATED So, if yes, then that means, no, the clutch is not operated. Or maybe, yes, the clutch is un operated. Or both. And, if no, that means, yes, it is not not operated. Which means it is operated. Ow. I think I pulled a think gland. Anyway, according to the abstract, this is what this transmission does An electronic control unit permits a shift operation to a neutral position, by which a manual transmission 1. Accordingly, shifting to the neutral position can be performed only by the shift operation. Thus, power transmission can be blocked after termination of the coasting control. In addition, the electronic control unit prohibits the shift operation to a particular gear after the transmission is switched to neutral. Thus, overreving or underreving at the termination of the coasting control can be suppressed. Okay, so from what I can tell, the transmission has a little computer thats watching all kinds of things, specifically vehicle speed and engine speed, and when it detects the clutch engaged you know, not not operated and the shifter in the neutral position, it leaps into action. It looks like one of the big goals of this transmission is to prevent overrevving and underrevving the engine when shifting say, if youre going 7. To keep these embarrassing and potentially engine harming things from happening, a series of shift lock pins are deployed to make it impossible to stick the car in the wrong gear for the given engine RPMs. Im guessing all this compu math happens in the brief interval when the clutch is down and the shifter passes through the N positionwhat the document refers to as coasting control. I guess I can see some usefulness here, as trying to start in 3rd is never fun, and I guess keeping an engine from overrevving in too low a gear is good, but these hardly seem like the sorts of things that would require all this additional hardware and complexity. Wont a normal rev limiter be enough to protect the engineAnd, when you try and drive in too high a gear, you feel it lugging pretty quickly. Plus, wouldnt this sort of kill deliberate downshifting and engine braking The shift prohibition settings are described, confusingly, here 0. The shift prohibition position setting section 1. V. FIG. 7 is a graph of a relationship between the vehicle speed V and the engine speed Ne at each of the gear shift stages. As shown in FIG. 7, when each of the gear shift stages is defined, the engine speed Ne is increased as the vehicle speed V is increased. In addition, as the gear shift stage is lowered, the engine speed Ne is increased at the same vehicle speed V. An RED speed Nered in FIG. Alternatively, the RED speed Nered may be set at a speed at which the driver receives a sense of discomfort. An idle speed Neidle is a lower limit speed of the engine 1. The idle speed Neidle is set at such a speed that an engine stalls when the engine speed Ne falls below this lower limit speed or a speed at which an oil pump cannot feed a sufficient amount of oil. Alternatively, the idle speed Neidle may be set at a speed at which the driver receives the sense of discomfort. Thus, the gear shift stage, at which the post gear shifting engine speed Ne falls within a speed range between the idle speed Neidle and the RED speed Nered becomes a permitted speed, becomes the permitted gear shift stage. Meanwhile, the gear shift stage, at which the post gear shifting engine speed Ne falls out of the above speed range, corresponds to the shift prohibition gear shift stage. I think this line is important Alternatively, the RED speed Nered may be set at a speed at which the driver receives a sense of discomfort. But mostly because Im not clear on if this is being referenced as a good or bad thing. So, it looks like this is basically a manual transmission with a bunch of extra hardware to keep drivers from making a couple of simple mistakes that pretty much anyone who has driven stick for any amount of time knows pretty much how to deal with. Whats the point of this, exactly A sort of more forgiving manual transmission, I guess I mean, Im not totally opposed to that if it helps manual transmissions stay viable, but its hard not to feel like this misses the point of manual transmissions entirely.