Hardware stub

Ask GN 46: Where Does Intel Feel Pressure? VRAM Consumption?

Posted on March 24, 2017

It’s been since February 23 that we’ve run an Ask GN episode; it seems that our definition of “week” is “4x.” With travel once a week for that past month, almost always aligning on the days we normally film Ask GN, we hope that you’ll forgive us. This episode contains some great discussion topics as submitted by our YouTube viewers and Patreon supporters (via Discord), including Ryzen topics (naturally), VRAM consumption vs. visual quality, differences in motherboards, and more.

That last question is a bit of an interesting one: It does sometimes feel like all motherboards are the same when just scrolling through spec sheets on a retailer, but we assure you that there are still relevant points of differentiation between motherboard vendors. We’ll talk about a few of those in this episode.

Video below, timestamps below that:

0:45 – Does the Nintendo Switch still work?

1:37 – Walter Faber: “Why are modern games using more and more VRAM? The textures don’t seem to look any better.”

6:20 – Joe Gibbs: “Hey GN, a friend wants to build a new PC on Ryzen. He wants 32GB of RAM and when asked why he says he wants it to do graphic design. I think he should buy 16GB and then maybe upgrade in the future if he runs out. Do you think 16GB is still enough in 2017 and when should you go for 32GB?”

9:40 – Streetguru: “Will you work on a Ryzen overclocking guide? Maybe with Buildzoid?”

10:00 – Steve Streza: “Why is VRAM a fixed component on GPU (not user replaceable) as opposed to CPU RAM which is standardized and replaceable?”

11:50 – Dayne_ofStarfall: “Question for AskGN: How much of a quality difference is there in general between motherboard manufacturers and where is the difference the biggest? Sometimes it seems like all the motherboards are exactly the same.”

15:05 – MrDerrikk: “Do you foresee Intel becoming much cheaper in future as a result of Ryzen? Specifically with the X99/X199 lineup that is?”

18:00 -  Donald G: “Any chance we can get a chart showing your cat’s base speed vs overclocked on cat nip?”

See you next week, hopefully!

Host: Steve Burke
Video: Andrew Coleman