Why I won't make a CPU buying guide (although this post kinda is one)

 So, I've spent a lot of time on discussing GPUs, what's good to buy, etc. I considered doing the same for CPUs, but won't. There's a big reason for this. When you buy a CPU, you aren't buying one in a vacuum. You need a motherboard to put it in, and RAM to go with it. While CPUs used to be relatively straight forward, varying and volatile platform costs make it hard to plan a build. On the low end, we can put together a Ryzen 5 5500 with 16 GB DDR4 RAM build for $250, on the other extreme, you got a 9800X3D with 32 GB DDR5 for almost $1000. 

Generally speaking, if you live near microcenter, consider their combos. They're generally the best bang for the buck, although significantly less good than they were than I bought (not their fault, it's RAMpocalypse). If anything, their 6 core X3D bundles probably are the best bang for your buck you can get for gaming. On the intel side, the Core Ultra 5 250k+ is solid, but less good for gaming, although you get more CPU power.

That's another thing. CPU power scaling is weird, and the spectrum is a lot flatter than GPUs. As I indicated the difference between a $100 GPU and a top of the line one is a scale of around 37x performance, with an average gamer having a CPU around 8x as powerful as the weakest one.

The difference between a ryzen 5 5500 and a 9800X3D is only going to be on a scale of around 3x performance, going from the worst to the best (use the ryzen 5 3600 to estimate the 5500's performance). And most CPUs fall in the middle between them, with anything less than the 5600x being an outdated architecture, and anything more than the 7800X3D or 14900k being an outlier the other direction. Most games seem to differ only around 60% between say, the 5600x and the 7800X3D, with most modern mid range CPUs performing in between. Cheaper DDR4 compatible CPUs will perform a bit lower, whereas more expensive chips with DDR5 perform a bit higher, but yeah, most CPUs perform pretty close to each other.

This is largely because CPU tech has stagnated, with Ryzen 5000, 7000, 9000 and intel core 12-14th gen and modern core ultra processors all performing similarly to each other. Only AM5 X3Ds and really low end/dated processors stand out from the pack either way. Most just kinda perform similarly. Core counts don't matter as much currently. While higher core count processors MIGHT come in use in the future, odds are at this rate that current architectures will become dated before you see a difference. As it stands, factors like latency, cache, clock speed, and IPC matter a lot more than raw power. X3D proceessors are rather unimpressive on traditional computing tasks, but are phenomenal for gaming. Intel processors loaded up to the gills with cores might be impressive workstation systems but are kinda average at gaming. As such, it's hard to offer straightforward recommendations. 

 If I were to try, at the low end, I'd generally recommend AM4. You can get an Ryzen 5 5500, a motherboard, and 16 GB DDR4 for around $250-300. 

If you stick with the platform, a better CPU generally gets more expensive, with a 5600x, 5700x, or 5800x costing another $100-150, bringing the total up to around $400ish give or take. if you go up to 32 GB DDR4, you can spend $500, and if you get a 5800X3D, you can be spending up to around $600-700. 

Some would say a 5800X3D build in unattractive because you could just buy AM5 at that point. You can spend $200 less on a processor, but spend maybe $200 more on expensive DDR5 RAM instead, and have a viable long term upgrade path. And if you go all out, again, it's like $1k for a 9800X3D style build without sales. 

Where does intel fit into this? Well, sadly, it kinda doesn't. While LGA1700 used to be an attractive option, the CPUs have gotten expensive, it's only worth investing in with DDR4, at which point you can probably save money and go with an AM4 build instead, as they perform about the same. In order to get the most out of a higher end intel processor, you need a Z series board, which is expensive, and even then with DDR4 memory, you're gonna be held back by the RAM itself. I wouldnt recommend going LGA1700 on DDR5 at all at this point. Not cost effective.

For DDR5 intel, you want to go for a core ultra 250k+ or 270k+. But then you're spending $400 on RAM, and while you get a stronger processor in real terms than AMD's, it won't matter in gaming, which are limited to 6-8 core / 12-16 thread processors anyway.  Honestly, I'd only go this route if you really care about productivity more than gaming performance, or you otherwise have a legit bias against AMD (for example, I went intel 3 years ago because AM5 was a notoriously buggy and unstable platform at the time). 

With that said, if you want a budget experience, go for a cheap AM4 processsor with cheap DDR4 RAM. if you want a premium experience, go for an AM5 X3D processor with DDR5, and if you want a middle ground option, you can go either way. Given a choice between a 5800X3D or Ryzen 7600x/9600x/7700x/9700x build, I'd probably go for the latter at a similar price point, but this is where the individual parts you want matters more than the CPU itself. Down below I actually find the 5800X3D to be more affordable. 

And yeah, that's basically it. 

And again, the budget experience is gonna be...well...a budget experience, a premium experience will be 3x as good while costing 4x as much, and a midrange experience will be somewhere in between, while costing something in between the other two.  

If I were to provide a few sample builds, I'd provide the following:

Ryzen 5 5500- $253

Ryzen 5 5600x- $359

Intel Core i5 14400f (equivalent to 5700x/5800x)- $417 

Ryzen 7 5800x- $436

Ryzen 7 5800x 32 GB- $516

Ryzen 7 5800X3D 32 GB- $634

Ryzen 5 7600x- $687

Intel Core Ultra 5 250kf+ (no OC/XMP ability)- $748 

Ryzen 7 7700x- $755

 Ryzen 7 7800X3D- $907

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- $1058

Of course, do your own research, I just threw these together, you might find a better deal, or you might find parts go better with other motherboards, etc. I know AM5 X3D CPUs in particular have problems with certain motherboards (Asrock and Asus seem most affected) so keep that in mind too. 

I did throw a couple intel CPUs in where they made sense. The problem is, they often don't. Higher end ones require expensive Z series boards to get the most out of them. While they perform similarly to the 7000 series CPUs on DDR5, on DDR4, they're more comparable to the 5000 series. The 14400f makes sense here, but otherwise they largely don't.  

And yeah. It's a rough market, but this is the best I can do. And again, to do the whole how many X the lowest end one is:

 Ryzen 5 5600x- ~1.3x  R5 5500

 Ryzen 5 5800x- ~1.3x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 5800X3D- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 7600x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7700x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7800X3D- ~2x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- ~2.2x R5 5500

For that I tried to use techspot/hwunboxed's data to get averages. 

But yeah, as I said, it's a lot flatter than the GPUs are. While I would recommend going at least midrange (5600x-7700x tier performance) if you can afford it, there's no shame in getting the 5500 and it's a great budget CPU for the money. Beats the crap out of the GT 1030 on the GPU side of things that's for sure (seriously, that's like having core 2 quad tier performance still on the market in comparison, it's a joke).  

Anyway i guess this did turn into a CPU buying guide, but it's a brief one and like always, do your own research before buying components, I dont want any responsibility if what i recommend ends up kinda sucking, I'm just throwing builds together on PC part picker with minimal research.  

If you can't vote for Abdul El Sayed, please leave the democratic party part 3

 So....this has become an ongoing series. Part 1 had me blasting centrists who think he's too extreme, part 2 had me blasting communists who think he's too moderate, and now I'm blasting zionists who think he's "anti semitic." 

Yeah...a lot of the time I see people who say they can't vote for El Sayed these days, it always seems to come from zionist types who scream he's "anti semitic." I've also noticed post primary everyone seemed to come around to supporting him, except for some Jewish organizations. Apparently his israel position is enough to piss them off. Well, here's how I see it.

America is a secular democracy. We have freedom of religion, along with constitutional prohibitions on establishing religion in government. What qualifies as 'establishing religion' has been debated over the years, but I tend to go with the interpretation that we should have a separation of church and state, with criteria resembling the Lemon test from lemon v kurtzman. This means laws should have a secular purpose, neither advance nor prohibit religion, and try to keep religion and politics as unentangled as possible. 

With that said, Jews have every right to practice their religion, given they don't violate secular laws or harm other people. However, when they do harm other people, or entangle church and state, then that's a problem, and that seems to be what's expected from our government here. It seems like people want us to cater to their religion and its doctrines, to be super pro Israel and show sympathy to their religion, and someone who simply says "no" and that they're not gonna fund a genocide in the middle east is considered "hateful" of their religion.

We're not. If you're an American Jew, I wish you all of the happiness in the world. Go to synagogue, practice shabbat, do your holidays, I don't care. Whatever makes you happy and doesn't harm other people. But that doesn't mean that the government has to have  explicit sympathy toward your religion, to the point that we just unquestioningly fund a genocidal apartheid state that is doing harm to others in the middle east on a moral basis that seems straight out of the book of Joshua. Muslims have rights too, and deserve their own happiness too. And while yes, Israel has a right to defend itself...within reason....their current policies do not align with that qualifier. Which is why many on the left have taken harsh stances against Israel. 

People need to learn that not enabling a religion's worst impulse to harm others does not equal religious persecution. And honestly, if you can't get behind that, go join the republican party. They're full of Christian nationalists who also have persecution complexes and a weird reverence toward the state of Israel on the basis of their religion that I find creepy as hell. We are the party that wants religious pluralism for all. Not religious domination against all other religions. We do this to protect minority rights, including the rights of Jews. Because everyone deserves to practice their religion without being harmed or persecuted by others.

And btw, that includes Muslims too. I know a lot of the hate toward El Sayed is because he's muslim. It's weird. We seem to expect everyone to default to this judeo-Christian worldview while deeming muslims as "the other.' Meanwhile, Muslims are just people too, and the same rules apply to them. Since El Sayed is following those rules, i have no quarrel with him. I have a quarrel with the people who explicitly wanna inject religion into governmental policy, whether it be domestic policy or foreign policy.  

Really, how can you not vote for this man? This is why I have no sympathy here. If you cant vote for him, you should probably join the party of religious extremism and authoritarianism. This is my candidate. These are my values. I apologize for nothing. Listen to what a candidate SAYS, not what other people acting in bad faith SAY about a candidate. It would solve so many problems. 

Having a brutally honest discussion on "Woke 1"

 Ok, so...I notice some leftists on my youtube feed are attempting to defend "Woke 1" and blasting Bernie and AOC for distancing themselves from Francesca Hong. And...I find it cringe. I admit, I sub to different people for a variety of perspecives. But yeah, these takes, I hate disagree with. 

Look, NO ONE LIKED THE WOKE 1 CRAP. It was a weird hugbox of leftists and virtue signallers that came off as cringe to anyone with any normie instincts. Some people dislike the attempts to laugh it off by saying it makes people look insincere and how it "throws people under the bus", but I'm going to be honest, I believe that this stuff WAS insincere among a lot of people. Maybe not DSA types, but liberals? hell yeah. A lot of it was weaponized cynically to attack economic progressives and distract them from focusing on economic issues. Like, my big critique as a "non woke" leftie has always been that it sucks the air out of the room and stops us from having political discussions about anything else. It also came off as extremely pharasaic. Ya know, like the pharisees? And the bible? And the whole virtue signalling moral gestures that are superficial and fake. A lot of people did that stuff for the social approval. the SJW cult was to liberals and leftists what church is for conservatives, an overt display of external moral superiority followed by a lot of internal social games and hierarchies among the participants. And yeah, the second that stuff became radioactive, a lot of people started distancing themselves from it. 

Of course, this alienated the true believers and the like. YOURE GONNA THROW US UNDER THE BUS! Oh boo hoo. Like really, I'm tired of this. It's the same guilt trip I've heard since 2015 and I've been immune to it. I swear that's another thing. A lot of people in these communities who benefit from this stuff end up being mentally unstable narcissists who use their underprivileged status to get a lot of free internet affection, and if you DARE break their little hugbox, they'll attempt to mod you, punish you, etc. I had this happen last year when the first signs of it ending were happening and I basically told someone that they need to stop making politics all about them. Again, you see where I'm coming from? I HATE this stuff, I've ALWAYS hated this stuff. It's always been fake, it's always been a distraction, it's always been enforced by a lot of weird social hugboxing and heavy internet moderation. And again, normally, I wouldn't mind sharing a coalition with people with other interests, but when the hug box literally sucks the energy out of the room to focus on anything else, it gets old. 

And you know what? I'm not alone. Most normies hate this stuff. A vast majority of people hate it. Not just the right, but also the center and even more blunt and honest members of the social "center left" like me. It appeals to like 1/6 of the population, it turns off about 2/3 of them (1/6 being neutral arguably). And here's the thing. We need to win elections. So....if you went off and went on some online screed about how thanksgiving sucks because colonialism, and the people look at you and think you're a whacko, well....yeah. I get it, inside those hugboxes there's heavy social enforcement where a lot of people were goaded into saying some straight up insane crap at the time, but that's always why I've tried to be that dude in the asch experiment who is like "no, you guys are choosing the wrong line, are you blind?" Social hugboxing will make people blind, socially, where they dont understand how crazy they come off to people outside of their little clique. 

And for people who are true believers who say that they shouldnt have to give that stuff up to run for office...well...DON'T. You can be an influencer trying to change the moral landscape, I am myself. But let's be blunt, do you think me, the autistic unemployed anti work guy would make for a good political candidate? I'd be Doreen Forded and I know it. And I dont wanna give up my perspective ever, so I dont run for office. I just say what I wanna say and try to inspire the world to change. And maybe, someone like Andrew Yang will run for office on views similar to mine. And you know what? Despite having similar views on UBI and even work to SOME degree (more so than most others in society at least), yang can at least sell those ideas to moderates. He's far more electable than say, I am in that regard. Even if I do think he has a lot of shortcomings. But that's the thing, I'm trying to push things where I wanna see them. Im not looking to run for office myself as I know I'd be unpopular to some degree, as Id have lots of baggage in the form of this blog, reddit comments, etc. Rather, I'm trying to win the battle for ideas.

When you run for office, you gotta try to be electable. When you have unpopular opinions, you gotta "hide your power level" as some say on the left, or otherwise do the equivalent of dog whistle politics. You know how the right wing did that? They couldnt just show how racist they were so they hid behind terms like forced bussing, or welfare queens, blah blah blah, Reaganism actually formed as a form of this politics, where small government was actually originally a dog whistle to screwing black people but they had plausible deniability.

Now we're getting to the point we need that on the LEFT. If you wanna do the "anti racist" stuff, you need to distance yourself from woke 1 rhetoric, which was what AOC was trying to do with the "woke 1 was crazy" comment. It's smart politics, and if anything she was trying to cover for Hong with that. She read the room and adjusted her rhetoric to meet the moment. As much as those of us on the left would love to move the overton window to be more blunt (I mean, I'm like this on economics), sometimes you gotta be a little more opaque. Graham Platner understood this trying to distance himself from his reddit history. "Oh I was in a dark place, I dont think like that any more." Maybe he does, maybe he doesnt. People grow and change, but sometimes it is just hiding one's power level. Idk. But yeah, you gotta play that game sometimes. And if you cant do it, well, dont run for office. I sure as fudge aint running. We gotta understand, elections are popularity contests. Leaning into your ideology can help you...if your ideology is popular. But if it's not, well...youre gonna lose. And Hong just had that SJW cringe all over her where she couldnt win elections, and where even Bernie and AOC rightly read the room and refused to endorse. Sorry, not sorry. 

Discussing last night's primaries

 So...last night had some rather contentious primaries, one of which went to 2:30 AM in terms of counting and much like michigan's last week, came down to the wire when it was supposed to be close. Unlike last week though, the moderate won, and the progressive lost. Now, a lot of centrists are rubbing it in our faces, but quite frankly, I'm okay with this one. If we were gonna lose one, I would hope it would be this one. This one wasn't the one I'd wanna win. Now, I didn't formally endorse anyone on this one, and I didn't for a reason. Because I understood that the progressive running was a terrible candidate, and if she won, she'd probably blow the general. We're talking about Francesca Hong and David Crowley here. 

I'm gonna be honest. While I like Hong and her policies on a personal level, she....couldn't win the general. The thing is, she ended up being one of those twitter brained SJWs who couldnt keep her mouth shut (like I'm one to talk, right?) and has a history of posting awkward screeds about proximity of whiteness and how she hated holidays like thanksgiving because native american genocide. And....that stuff comes off as unpalatable with a significant portion of the electorate. As AOC said, "Woke 1 was crazy', and she's who she was referring to. Btw, you notice Bernie and AOC didn't endorse this lady? That's why. The writing was on the wall. She was politically toxic and would have likely cost the democrats a governorship during a blue wave year. RCP had her down by 3 (the 1.7 accounts for a new poll i didn't see) and my election prediction model had her at a 23% chance of winning. Admittedly, that last D+1 poll would've improved her to 34%, but still, not looking great in a year where democrats are supposed to be dominating. Mandela Barnes, when he was in the race, was AHEAD by 3, and that would have given him a 77% chance in my model. Kind of Hong but in reverse. Id rather be on the 77% side of things than the 23%.

Still, I didn't endorse David Crowley either. While Barnes was a decent candidate in the "McMorrow progressive" lane, David Crowley is more a "Haley Stevens" centrist. And he kinda has his own cringe moments, like saying "establishment is a slur". Still, I don't like Crowley as a candidate. I dont like establishment moderates. And I dont care if hes offended by the term. Still, while I have zero polling data on Crowley, I'm guessing he would perform more similarly to barnes so in my election model, I'm going to just use Barnes' data as a placeholder until I actually get some decent data on him. Which means I'll tentatively shift the race to lean D from lean R. 

Speaking of polling, wasn't Hong supposed to win in a literal landslide? How did this end up getting so close in what should've been like a Hong+18 race? Well, look at the data carefully. Hong performed about exactly where she was supposed to, it was everything else that was off. See, Mandela Barnes was the original candidate running against Hong, but he kinda crapped the bed and couldnt get the base behind him. So last minute, Barnes dropped out, and Crowley jumped in instead. And the polling never really picked up for Crowley. The other 60% of the base was deeply divided between Crowley, Barnes, and other candidates. There were LOTS of undecideds, and everyone just ended up coalescing around Crowley. Hong got around the 39% or so she was supposed to, Crowley just ended up ALSO getting around 39% and won by like 3000 votes. This is a problem with these primary polls with 3+ candidates, you can see a lot of movement between candidates between the polls and election day as the race shifts and polling just didn't account for that. The result was a normally unthinkable result suddenly becoming possible. This is why both Michigan and Wisconsin were so far off, we had 3 person races turn into 2 person races and then the polling didn't pick up how people actually were gonna vote leading to margins that were MASSIVELY off. 

And again....I might not like Crowley, but uh...I also was reluctant to support Hong, for all the obvious reasons. Quite frankly I'm low key relieved Hong lost. Here's the thing. We shouldnt mourn this loss. If she won, she'd go onto the general, lose, and we'd never hear the end of it and how progressives arent electable. As smug as centrists are today, they'd be 10x worse if she choked on the general with a more moderate candidate having a 6 point electability gap here. SO yeah, let them have this one. We got a lot of wins this cycle, we dont need this one and this one would have been bad for our movement long term. 

At least Flannigan won in Minnesota. I didnt pay much attention to that race, but apparently she was the more progressive candidate and people are happy about that. 

Seriously though, we REALLY didn't need Hong winning here. Take the L, support crowley in the general, and we support our progressives in other races where we CAN win. 

Explaining GPU power scaling in GT 1030 terms

 So, just a dumb idea, but given all the GPU talk, it might be good to contextualize how powerful GPUs I'm talking about are. I'll use the GT 1030 as a baseline given its roughly on par with modern integrated and given it's the cheapest card I recommended. Should give you an idea of how powerful the cards are relative to each other. 

Steam deck- 2x GT 1030

Arc A380- 3x GT 1030 ($140)

RX 6400- 3x GT 1030

GTX 1650- 3x GT 1030 

RX 480/580- 4x GT 1030 

RX 5500/6500 XT- 4x GT 1030

GTX 1060- 4x GT 1030 

GTX 1650 Super- 4x GT 1030 

RTX 3050 6 GB- 4x GT 1030 ($210)

GTX 1660 Ti/Super- 5x GT 1030 

RTX 3050 8 GB- 5x GT 1030 ($260)

RTX 2060- 6x GT 1030

RX 5600 XT- 6x GT 1030 

Arc A580- 7x GT 1030 ($200) 

RX 6600- 7x GT 1030

GTX 1080 ti- 8x GT 1030 

RTX 3060 12 GB- 8x GT 1030 

RX 6600/6650 XT- 8x GT 1030 

RX 7600- 8x GT 1030 ($260) 

RTX 5050- 9x GT 1030 ($310)

RTX 4060- 9x GT 1030 

RX 6700 XT- 10x GT 1030 

RTX 5060- 11x GT 1030 ($360)

RTX 2080 ti- 11x GT 1030 

RX 6800- 12x GT 1030 

RX 9060 XT- 12x GT 1030 ($370/470)

RX 7700 XT- 13x GT 1030 ($410)

RTX 5060 ti- 13x GT 1030 ($430/600)

RX 6800 XT- 14x GT 1030 

RX 6900/6950 XT- 15x GT 1030 

RTX 5070- 16x GT 1030 ($700)

RX 9070 GRE- 16x GT 1030 ($530) 

RTX 3090 ti- 16x GT 1030

RX 9070- 18x GT 1030 ($650)

RX 9070 XT- 20x GT 1030 ($710)

RTX 5070 ti- 21x GT 1030 ($1000)

RTX 5080- 24x GT 1030 ($1280)

RTX 4090- 28x GT 1030

RTX 5090- 37x GT 1030 ($4100)

It's kinda like measuring in raditzes in DBZ abridged. And while I'd say, your typical gamer is around a 3060 or 7600 tier card, so around 7-8, yeah, it scales up as you pay more. This is why I said that yeah, even an A380 can be a huge boost. All things considered 5x GT 1030 is around the minimum acceptable performance for modern games, although I'd still recommend getting 7-8x for the same price. 

Anyway just a dumb thought experiment i thought of before bed. 

EDIT: Added more GPUs and bolded relevant GPUs  that are available today for clarity. Jesus christ no wonder I'm biased toward AMD these days. Outside of the 5060, most nvidia offerings arent worth the money tbqh. 

Discussing HWunboxed's RX 6500 XT video in light of my GPU recommendations and praising of the RX 6000 series

 So, Hardware Unboxed did a video on the RX 6500 XT 4 GB in light of AMD bringing back 4 GB cards with a RX 9050 OEM model, and uh...I wanna discuss it. This has been kind of controversial.

Some think that it's unfair to criticize the new card given the 6500 XT is...well...as weak as it is. No, not really. Here's the reality here. I know I low key gave it SOME praise recently, but that requires A LOT of context.

Right now, the sub $200 GPU market is more or less nonexistent. You buy anything less than that RX 7600 I recommended basically and youre getting a paperweight for NEW games. You can play older ones, or even lower spec newer ones on SOME cards I suggested, but really, there's a reason I emphasize the RX 7600. It's because if you want a decent gaming experience, you need a RX 6000 or RTX 2000 card with at least 8 GB RAM and decent horsepower. Period. While the RX 7600 isn't as low as you can theoretically go and meet that, given the RX 6600, RTX 3050 8 GB, and RTX 2060 super exist, it's the cheapest card on the market worth the money. RX 6600 and 2060S arent sold new at decent prices any more, and the 3050 costs as much as the 7600 while being around 33% weaker. 

When you go below those cards, you get a compromised experience. The RX 6500 XT is anemic. It's only like half as powerful as a RX 6600 XT, and maybe around 60% of a RX 6600. It comes with 4 PCIE lanes, which with older PCIE 3.0 systems (ie, the kinds of old systems you'd put this card in to begin with), it loses a lot of performance. And it has 4 GB VRAM. 

The reason most games dont run well AT ALL in HW Unboxed video IS the VRAM. If you have enough VRAM, your card should scale down to SOME playable experience. However, if youre stuck at 30 FPS with horrible lows even at like 720p with FSR enabled, yeah, that's VRAM. You're not gonna run games on that. And even a newer card like a theoretical 9050 4 GB will get crap frame rates due to the VRAM bottleneck. RAM in general is all or nothing with gaming. If you have enough, the experience is smooth. If you don't, it's miserable. While I cant say theres NO in between, the amount of in between that exists is minimal. 

8 GB is a hard requirement for new games. I am die hard on saying "you need 8 GB" for new games for a reason. You do. If you have less, they're gonna run like crap. Even 6 GB is too borderline in some situations. And honestly, the GTX 1060 6 GB will probably outperform the 6500 XT  4 GB in most games for a reason, despite having similar amounts of power. 4 GB is just crap for new games. it reached its limit in 2022, and starting in 2023, we got past the PS4-PS5 "cross gen" phase and started seeing the first true "next gen" games not compatible with the older hardware. At that point, 8 GB started being a hard requirement, and playing on a 4 GB card in 2026 is gonna be a bad time in most games.

Some games, they showed that if you scaled the game down enough you can get 60-80 FPS. Those are the games where you DONT get VRAM bottlenecks. And yeah, some still work...and the RX 6500 XT is just an anemic card for those.

Like really, the only reason I gave the RX 6400 and 6500 XT any praise was because they're better than nothing. My praise was conditioned by "in a sea of GT 1030 tier ewaste, these are actually compelling options by comparison." I mean, compared to THAT card, which has 1/4 the horsepower and 2 GB VRAM, the 6500 XT actually is a relatively decent offering. It's on par with an old RX 580 4 GB or like a GTX 1060 in theory. It's just that...those cards are a decade old now, they're not good for modern games, the 4 GB VRAM no longer cuts it since it's not the mid 2010s any more, and the 4x PCIE lanes are just....wtf, why? Like, seriously, you just lose 1/3 of your performance on old systems for no reason with it. 

Again, better than GT 1030s, GT 740s, and similar cards, but....yeah, basically crap too. There's a reason I'm like "yeah dont go below the RX 7600" these days if you wanna play new games. Even that 3050 6 GB is gonna have compromises due to VRAM and not a ton of power. Not to mention Arc and their drivers, bleh. The entire low end of the market below $200 is just literal ewaste at this point, the 3050 6 GB is like...just short of what I'd say the reasonable minimum is, and you need to pay $260 for a 7600 or 3050 8 GB to hit it, and given the 3050 8 GB is pointless next to the 7600, yeah...again, see why I keep saying it?

I mean, these cards were the worst the 6000 series had to offer. They were cut down borderline ewaste at the time, they're basically ewaste now, and the only reason i say maybe we judged them too harshly is because the only modern equivalent card that exists is an intel card that has its own host of issues. The market is just crap and if youre forced to choose between bad options, my goal here is to navigate to the absolute least of the evils. Generally speaking the 6000 series was only good with the 6600 and above, and while I will glaze the 6600, 6650 XT, and 6700 XT until the end of their lifespans and possibly beyond at this point, that doesn't mean everything is a winner. The 6500 XT is just better than what exists now on the market at that price point.  My attitude is that if you can't afford a GOOD GPU capable of playing modern games, you should still buy the best you can get your hands on. Something like a 6500 XT, or 1650 super or something would at least get you up to 2022 era games or so. And isnt that better than literally nothing? Beats integrated...or a 1030 at least. Even if it is crap. In theory, it's 2x steam deck performance. 

And that's something to think about too. The RX 6500 XT is...2x as powerful as the steam deck. ya know, that handheld that everyone glazes for being able to barely run AAA games at 30 FPS on minimum with FSR on? If it can even do it? Yeah. Well...the 6500 XT is 2x that performance wise. Just to put things in context. Is 2x the steam deck a good experience these days? Hell no. Again, you want at minimum like a 3050 8 GB if you wanna do modern gaming at all. Which is...40-50% better than a 6500 XT, even ignoring the VRAM. And ideally, you probably want more than that, like a RX 6600 or 7600 or something to COMFORTABLY run games. Yeah...

That's also why i dont find the steam deck compelling fyi. It's basically ewaste thrown into a game gear type form factor. Sure, it'll run the old stuff decent, but it's not really good for AAA games. But yeah. Again, this is why i dont do PC handhelds. Too much money for too little performance. Id rather have a PC and an android device dedicated to low end android games and retro gaming.  Ya know, but I digress. Just wanted to contextualize things a bit. 

Discussing "woke 2.0"

 So...AOC made a strange comment talking about Francesca Hong's old posts, and her response was basically "woke 1 was crazy." The comment seems to have invoked a firestorm from those who still adhere to "woke 1", but looking into it, "woke 1" was the kind of idpol politics that I despised, where everything is super sanitized and tone policey. A lot of Hong's brainrot comments were "woke 1" stuff, like her going on about indiginous people and Thanksgiving being of the devil. 

Woke 2, on the other hand, seems more up my alley. It's the "dark woke" politics of people like Kyle Kulinski (who often refers to himself as "dark woke"), and even myself. It's more the politics of provocation, "when they go low, we hit them in the nuts" and triggering the cons. basically, it means fighting back. Dont do the whole "ERMAHGERD HOW DARE YOU" type crap that quite frankly makes us look like a bunch of losers. It's more "shut the #### up you dumb ####" when dealing with morons on the right. And now THEY get all ERMAHGERD HOW DARE YOU! while we just continue triggering them. 

If you notice the energy shifting since 2024 on that, yeah, you're not the only one. Even people like Nick Fuentes pointed it out. Republicans were the cool ones and now they're the offended snowflakes and we're pushing THEM around. And quite frankly, that's how it always should have been. We won during the Obama era with that strategy, and quite frankly, woke 1 was a mistake and source of much of what has been wrong with the modern left. Note how we barely backed away from any policy positions on marginalized people either. Because we dont have to. We just need to change up our rhetorical strategy and meet people where they're at, and meet the right where THEY are at. Rather than getting offended, we seek to offend.

Honestly I'm 90% for this. The only thing I will say in opposition to it is we gotta be careful with the most extreme stuff though. We live in an era of NSPM7, trump declaring left wingers terrorists, and directing law enforcement to investigate prominent progressives and the like. Honestly? I'd be careful about getting TOO spicy and doing stuff like sharing those luigi memes, or gullotine memes, or quite frankly, anything that advocates for or celebrates violence. Ya know? Youre just gonna get yourself potentially in trouble with that stuff. And that aint gonna age any better than woke 1. 

Also, I wanna avoid the escalation trap that the alt right got into. They started out with dark and edgy humor, but then they kept taking it seriously until we ended up with an outright fascist, and its hard to tell if people actually support fascism or if they're just joking, or both. Ya know? Remember, I'm for a left wing TEA PARTY, not a left wing MAGA movement. One is about getting back to our roots, and the other is about escalating authoritarianism that threatens the fabric of our society.  

It's fine if we add a little spice to our politics, but too much is problematic, ya know? Just saying that because it seems like part of the thrust of these politics does seem to be going in the whole "let's joke about violent actions" direction and uh...yeah. That's too spicy even for me. Being offensive without threats of violence can be funny, but yeah, we shouldnt cross THAT line.

And, let's face it, I don't want a literal communist revolution either. I know some on the socialist left seem to be edging that way, but I wanna make it clear, I'm a reformist. The point of criticizing capitalism isnt to abolish it, it's to implement the correct reforms that solve the problem. Ya know? Just because I feel like we gotta clear THAT too, and some of the ones most likely to lean into the extremist stuff are...well...extremists. We shouldnt celebrate or give cover for those guys. Yeah, again, we need a little spice to our politics, but we gotta be careful who we enable here. It's about balance. 

So yeah...just wanted to discuss this. It seems like woke 1 died with 2024, and good riddance. The one silver lining of that mess. And while woke 2 is better, again, we should avoid the extreme impulses that some have with that stuff.