pc performance

Digital Foundry investigates why Resident Evil Village on PC runs worse with Capcom's Denuvo DRM than a cracked version. They benchmark and confirm performance and frame-pacing differences.

Linus Tech Tips tests whether chaining many PCIe riser extensions causes loss of GPU performance. They keep adding extensions to see how far the signal will go.

Shawn Hymel of DigiKey introduces KiCad and explains how printed circuit boards are manufactured. It is the first part of a beginner series that builds a 555 badge project.

Linus Tech Tips argues that big air coolers beat AIO liquid coolers for most PCs. They compare quietness and temperatures, using the Noctua NH-U12A as the example.

Linus Tech Tips replicates the Threadripper workstation Linus Torvalds built for himself, discussing the parts such as the CPU and cooler.

Kaze Emanuar explains how he rewrote and optimized the Super Mario 64 source code so it runs far faster on real N64 hardware. He covers performance bottlenecks and fixes in detail for his ROM hacks.

mitxela shows his KiCad plugin that rounds PCB tracks to give circuit boards organic, melted-looking layouts instead of rigid geometric ones.

Area 5150 is a demoscene production for the original 4.77MHz IBM PC with CGA graphics and PC speaker. This is the Evoke 2022 party version, captured from real hardware, and it won the Alternative Demo compo.

LGR reviews the weeCee, a tiny mini PC that boots MS-DOS and Windows from a microSD card. It offers Sound Blaster Pro and General MIDI compatibility with VGA output, and the video tries it with DOS and Windows 98 games.

A short clip of the Super Mario Bros 3 proof-of-concept PC port built by id Software's founders to pitch Nintendo on a PC version. Nintendo passed, and the same technology led to Commander Keen.

LGR reviews the Book 8088 and Hand 386, newly built DOS retro PCs sold on AliExpress that use real legacy chips on custom boards. He covers what is neat about them and their compromises and odd design decisions.

A compilation of Apple's 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' ad campaign from 2006 onward.

Greg Law's 15-minute CppCon 2015 lightning talk shows what GDB can do beyond basic use, including its text user interface and reverse debugging.

A capture of Second Reality, the real-time audiovisual demo by Future Crew first shown at Assembly 1993, recorded from a 486DX2-66 with a Gravis Ultrasound. It showcases the peak of early 1990s PC demoscene techniques.

A Tiny Desk concert in which pianist Dan Tepfer plays with a Disklavier player piano driven by a program he wrote that responds to his playing. He performs four pieces from his Natural Machines project.

A solo performance of Steve Reich's Piano Phase, with one pianist playing both parts, recorded in 2004 with Reich in attendance. It is a 15-minute minimalist phasing piece.

The Who performing Won't Get Fooled Again at Shepperton Studios in 1978, filmed for The Kids Are Alright. It was Keith Moon's last performance with the band.

8088 MPH is a demoscene production for the original 1981 IBM PC with CGA graphics and a 4.77MHz 8088, shown with real composite output. It competed at Revision 2015 and pushes the hardware well past what it was thought capable of, breaking emulators.

Footage of Stefani Germanotta, later Lady Gaga, performing 'Captivated' and 'Electric Kiss' at NYU's Ultraviolet Live talent show in 2005-era college days. It shows her singing and playing before she became famous.

The winning demo from Revision 2015's oldskool competition, running on a real 1981 IBM PC with CGA at 4.77MHz. It uses extreme tricks to produce effects, graphics and sound far beyond what the hardware was thought capable of.

The first-place PC demo at Assembly 1992, Unreal by Future Crew, showing real-time effects such as palette-based wormholes.

Casey Muratori's first refterm lecture lays out philosophies of optimization, distinguishing optimization from non-pessimization, which means avoiding needless work. It uses his fast terminal renderer project to show how fast computers really are.

A ten-minute card-magic act by Dani DaOrtiz performed on Penn & Teller: Fool Us in 2022. It is built on timing, misdirection and psychology, and the method defeated the show's hosts.

A live, overdub-free performance of 'Lingus' by Snarky Puppy, from the 'We Like It Here' DVD recorded in Utrecht. It features a Cory Henry keyboard solo.

Stevie Wonder performs 'Superstition' on Sesame Street in 1973, with kids dancing along. It is a feel-good live music performance.

Tom Wildenhain's SIGBOVIK 2018 presentation of WordTeX, a Microsoft Word template that mimics LaTeX typesetting output. It is a joke research project executed with serious effort.

Matthias Wandel tests old and new code on a range of PCs, including a new mini PC, to measure how much faster modern hardware really is. He also shows optimization techniques such as branchless code, with benchmark programs on GitHub.

The famous Alec Baldwin monologue from the film Glengarry Glen Ross, where his character Blake berates salesmen with the 'Always Be Closing' speech. It is a short, profane scene about sales pressure and motivation.

A hobbyist compares vertical bifacial solar panels against south-facing angled panels using winter production results. It tests whether the usual mounting approach is actually best.

Reggie Watts performs at TED 2012, blending vocal looping, beatboxing, poetry and comedy across musical genres in a larger-than-life improvised set.

Home video from 1993 showing Future Crew members at Mika Tuomi's home finishing the PC demo Second Reality shortly before release.

Yo-Yo Ma performs Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major at the BBC Proms in 2015. It is a full solo cello performance of the suite.

A short FoundMyFitness explainer on the trade-off between growth hormone/IGF-1 and longevity. Higher IGF-1 helps muscle and cognition, while lower levels are linked to longer lifespan and stress resistance.

A hobbyist builds a prototype full-frame CCD camera from scratch, with open-source design files and a custom PCB. The video shows the first, still rough prototype.

carykh demonstrates a script that speeds up the silent parts of a video while leaving speech at normal speed, to condense lectures and similar footage. It later became the Jumpcutter tool.

Linus Tech Tips' rant on Intel's X299 platform and Core i9 launch, criticizing how Intel segments the market by limiting PCIe lanes and charging for features like VROC keys.

Steve Jobs's WWDC 2005 keynote segment announcing Apple's move from PowerPC to Intel processors, and revealing that Mac OS X had been secretly built for Intel all along.

The 8-Bit Guy covers IBM's 1981 CGA graphics system, including how composite output and artifacting produced extra colors beyond the nominal palette. He argues CGA looked better in period than it does on RGB monitors.

Bisqwit writes a NES emulator in C++ in about 15 minutes of tool-assisted, sped-up coding, narrated with captions. It shows an accurate emulator built with a compile-time generated 6502 instruction table. Part 2 covers compiling and running it.

Drummer Danny Carey performs Tool's 'Pneuma' live in Boston, in a Vic Firth session with close views of his playing.