Tag: windows

AMD Radeon R9 380 to Radeon RX 560 upgrade/downgrade remarks (WHL #73)

Groan, computer hardware again, please spare us… :mad:

Well, in this day and age of mismanagement, “chip shortage” and even war in Europe, you get what you get and you don’t get upset. I scored a graphics card on eBay (aftermath of my Covid quarantine) and I need to get rid of the old one as quickly as possible. As insane as GPU prices are nowadays, I don’t think a card that was released in June 2015 (close to fucking seven years ago) and that has a current market value still equal/higher than what I paid for in 2018 will ever go up in price again, ever. […]


Mellanox ConnectX-3 MCX311A-XCAT 10GbE and Solaris 11.3 (WHL #42)

The heat. F*ck me.

I think post #42 deserves something nerdy. More nerdy than usual. Glad to report that I just bought something suitable – two Mellanox SFP+ cards (MCX311A-XCAT), capable of 10GbE over fibre (IEEE 802.3ae) and per DAC cables (not even sure which 802 that is – 802.3ak is Twinax as used in DAC, but thats quad-Twinax as used in CX-4 connectors, like Infiniband does). 55.00€ delivered from the Netherlands, as fast network connections are “Neuland” in Germany and therefore carry a heavy premium. Slap on some 1.5m of compatible FS.com […]


USB 3.0 to 10/100/1000 Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet LAN 1000Mbps Network Adapter (WHL #34)

While I’m at computer peripherals…this one has been laying around for quite some time. Bought in January 2017 for 5.68€ on AliExpress, but current pricing is basically the same. Guess IC prices haven’t dropped much, although laptops that do not carry an ethernet port due to height limitations have become more common. Yeah, bullshit, but Jon Doe likes thin hardware with cooling problems. Always reminds me of the Macbook Air / Thinkpad X300 ad parody…

That aside, I really wanted to compare this Gigabit adapter with the two other types of network interfaces that I have available – some Realtek onboard stuff that I deem “good enough” for everyday use, and some PCIe addon card from Intel that is usually considered worth the upgrade (after all, people still buy sound cards, right?). […]