Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I am an executive producer for I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and I'm just back
Speaker 1: after a week off on vacation, and I nearly forgot
Speaker 1: how my intro goes. So that shows how my brain works.
Speaker 1: But enough of that. So I follow a lot of
Speaker 1: gamers and streamers, and there's some folks I just, you know,
Speaker 1: find really entertaining, and when their love of games comes
Speaker 1: through on top of them being entertaining, I know I've
Speaker 1: really hit something that appeals to me. And in mid
Speaker 1: September twenty it seemed like every single person I followed
Speaker 1: was chatting about something called the r t X thirty
Speaker 1: ninety or in some cases, the thirty eight. And the
Speaker 1: gamers elt they're already know exactly where I'm headed on
Speaker 1: this one. But while I love video games, I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly dialed into the heart of hardcore competitive gaming. And
Speaker 1: so I had no clue what the heck this thing was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had an inkling, but I had to
Speaker 1: look it up. And it's a new high performance graphics
Speaker 1: card with a graphics processing unit or GPU. So today
Speaker 1: I thought we would talk a little bit about GPUs
Speaker 1: in general, where they originated, why they're important for modern games,
Speaker 1: and why they can be so hard to get hold
Speaker 1: of as well as so expensive. And here's another interesting tidbit,
Speaker 1: the main reason they're hard to get hold of has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with video games. Will also cover why
Speaker 1: the r t X thirty eight and the thirty nine
Speaker 1: cards have had a well, let's call it a troubled launch. Now,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that graphics cards have been around for
Speaker 1: more than two decades, there's still something that I have
Speaker 1: only had limited experience with. And here's where the grumpy
Speaker 1: old man Jonathan comes out to, you know, shake his
Speaker 1: fist at a passing cloud. See. I come from a
Speaker 1: time when your CPU, the amount of RAM your computer had,
Speaker 1: and the operating system you were running were really the
Speaker 1: only things that mattered when it came to which games
Speaker 1: you could actually play on your machine or how well
Speaker 1: those games would perform on your PC. Heck, I remember
Speaker 1: when games first started requiring that your PC run on Windows,
Speaker 1: and I was a Windows holdout. I preferred the fast
Speaker 1: responsiveness and lighter framework of DOSS. The doss user interface
Speaker 1: consisted of command prompts. You would actually type in stuff
Speaker 1: in a line command to change directories and navigate to
Speaker 1: where a file was, and then type out the execute
Speaker 1: file to really get it started. Now, it wasn't actually
Speaker 1: hard to do, but it also was not intuitive at all,
Speaker 1: and it stood as a barrier for the average person
Speaker 1: to you know, embrace computers. Windows made stuff easier to understand.
Speaker 1: You just, you know, move your cursor to the picture
Speaker 1: that represents whatever it is you want to do, and
Speaker 1: then you click on it. That was super simple. But
Speaker 1: Windows also required more processing power from the PC, and
Speaker 1: so I was of the snooty opinion that I would
Speaker 1: rather set aside that power for the stuff I was
Speaker 1: running on the computer, apart from the operating system. That's
Speaker 1: how old I am. Also, Eventually it didn't matter. Eventually
Speaker 1: games started requiring Windows and I had to give in.
Speaker 1: Over time, game developers began building out games that required
Speaker 1: more umph from the PCs that were running the games,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that meant you just had to have, you know,
Speaker 1: a pretty recent CPU to run the game, which meant
Speaker 1: that if you were relying on a computer that was
Speaker 1: a year old or older, you might be out of
Speaker 1: luck unless you could upgrade your machine, or you know,
Speaker 1: and really severe cases, you'd have to go out and
Speaker 1: buy a whole new one. But one thing that PCs
Speaker 1: had that really opened up some opportunities were expansion slots
Speaker 1: built into the motherboard. Now, these are standardized slots that
Speaker 1: are that are built into that mother board. There's been
Speaker 1: a couple of different standards over the years, but pc
Speaker 1: I expresses the current one. The motherboard is the main
Speaker 1: circuit board of a PC. That's where you'll find components
Speaker 1: like the CPU that connect to other components like memory
Speaker 1: or the power supply will connect to the motherboard to
Speaker 1: supply power to all the components. So motherboard manufacturers would
Speaker 1: frequently include slots that would allow for additional cards to
Speaker 1: plug into the circuit board, thus expanding the capabilities of
Speaker 1: your PC. All the wiring, all the circuitry was there
Speaker 1: to work with the other parts of the motherboard. So
Speaker 1: if a card manufacturer, you know, a company that makes
Speaker 1: expansion cards, as long as they adhered to the standard,
Speaker 1: then you could buy the card, you could open up
Speaker 1: your computer case, you could plug the card into one
Speaker 1: of those pc I express slots. These days, on the motherboard,
Speaker 1: you reassemble the case, you know, make sure everything's lined
Speaker 1: up properly with the backplate of your case, and voila,
Speaker 1: you've got added functionality to your PC without having to
Speaker 1: replace the whole darn thing. And manufacturers made all sorts
Speaker 1: of cards, and I think I first really became aware
Speaker 1: of this upon the release of various sound cards, which
Speaker 1: would allow PCs to produce all sorts of wondrous sounds, music,
Speaker 1: and spound special effects, that kind of thing. The early
Speaker 1: PCs could essentially just beep. I mean, even R two
Speaker 1: D two had a more extensive vocabulary, but sound cards
Speaker 1: allowed for virtual orchestras to play on your machine. By
Speaker 1: the way, if you seek out videos of early sound
Speaker 1: cards playing computer music, you're probably gonna laugh at my
Speaker 1: description because it definitely sounds primitive compared to what a
Speaker 1: PC out of the box can do these days. Now.
Speaker 1: Graphics cards followed close behind sound cards. The first card
Speaker 1: to be described as having a graphics processing unit was
Speaker 1: the G Force two fifty six from in Video in Videos,
Speaker 1: the same company that's behind the recent rt X thirty
Speaker 1: eight cards. By the way, more on that later. But
Speaker 1: what the heck does a graphics card actually do well.
Speaker 1: It's first good to remember what a CPU or central
Speaker 1: processing unit does. It's the CPUs job to execute instructions
Speaker 1: upon data. The data flows into the CPU from input
Speaker 1: devices like a keyboard or a touch screen, as well
Speaker 1: as from stored locations like a computer memory or hard drives,
Speaker 1: and the instructions come from programs or input devices. And
Speaker 1: instructions are mathematical operations, So it might be something as
Speaker 1: simple as add this one really big number to that
Speaker 1: other really really big number, and then compare the result
Speaker 1: to this other number, whereupon a specific outcome will follow
Speaker 1: based on that comparison. Really, everything your computer does is
Speaker 1: a result of processes like this. You could think of
Speaker 1: it as I choose your own adventure book, which I
Speaker 1: guess also kind of dates me. But by that I
Speaker 1: mean you can think of a path that branches into
Speaker 1: lots of other potential pathways, and the results of a
Speaker 1: math problem determine which of those potential pathways you actually
Speaker 1: go down. Now, we describe the speed of a CPU
Speaker 1: as terms of clocks. Speed that refers to the number
Speaker 1: of pulses the CPU generates every second, and these regular
Speaker 1: pulses synchronize operations on the computer, and they determine the
Speaker 1: speed at which the CPU can carry out instructions on data.
Speaker 1: So generally speaking, the higher the clock speed or clock
Speaker 1: rate of a computer, the more instructions CPU can carry
Speaker 1: out per second, and the quote unquote faster the processor is.
Speaker 1: We express this in terms of hurts h E R
Speaker 1: t Z. That refers to cycles per second. One pulse
Speaker 1: would be one cycle. So if you have a computer
Speaker 1: with a three point two giga hurts processor, that processor
Speaker 1: is pulsing three point two billion times every second. As
Speaker 1: game developers began making more sophisticated games, particularly as the
Speaker 1: era of three D graphics dawned, meaning you know, graphics
Speaker 1: that appeared to be three dimensional rather than a two
Speaker 1: dimensional representation, you know, the more like cardboard cutout looking stuff.
Speaker 1: Before the three D graphics era, that's when CPUs were
Speaker 1: starting to hit a choke point. The CPU has to
Speaker 1: handle pretty much all the processing, though in some cases
Speaker 1: you might have what's called a coprocessor to tackle specific
Speaker 1: subsets of mathematical problems. Graphics cards would become another type
Speaker 1: of coprocessor. They would shoulder the work of processing the information,
Speaker 1: specifically relating to presenting graphics on a display and remove
Speaker 1: that responsibility from the CPU, freeing it up so it
Speaker 1: could continue to work on you know, other stuff. Together,
Speaker 1: the CPU and the GPU could handle all the processing
Speaker 1: that the game required and create a really cool experience
Speaker 1: for the player, you know, for a price. It was
Speaker 1: right around this time, in the late nineties when I
Speaker 1: got out of PC games for a pretty long time. See,
Speaker 1: I had grown frustrated with the need to update my
Speaker 1: machine on a regular basis if I wanted to play
Speaker 1: the latest games. I hated the idea of having to
Speaker 1: buy an expensive graphics card every so often and then
Speaker 1: also upgrading my entire computer, or at least replacing the
Speaker 1: CPU every couple of years. On top of that, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, these these components are expensive. Buying a new
Speaker 1: computer is even more expensive. And in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: I was what we like to call poor, or at
Speaker 1: least I wasn't making enough money to be able to
Speaker 1: keep up with that cycle of upgrading if I wanted
Speaker 1: to play the latest games. So I fell off of
Speaker 1: PC games for a really long time, and instead I
Speaker 1: saved up my money and made a switch over to
Speaker 1: consoles like the Nintendo sixty four. That kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: because one thing you can depend upon with consoles, at
Speaker 1: least until more recent generations have proven otherwise, is that
Speaker 1: a game that's released on launch day of a console,
Speaker 1: the day the console comes out, and a game that
Speaker 1: is released at the very end of a console's life
Speaker 1: cycle should both run just fine on that console. Now,
Speaker 1: the later games should be better as developers learn how
Speaker 1: to optimize for a console's hardware, but both games should
Speaker 1: run just fine. You you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: your console not having the capacity to run the game.
Speaker 1: Consoles aren't designed to be upgraded generally, and so game
Speaker 1: developers have to work within those limitations and optimize their
Speaker 1: games to run on standardized hardware. PCs are totally different.
Speaker 1: PCs can come in up entire spectrum of capacities and capabilities,
Speaker 1: and generally speaking, game developers want to make the coolest
Speaker 1: stuff out there, so they're taking aim at the heavier
Speaker 1: hitting end of the PC market. Usually there are ways
Speaker 1: to reduce settings so that you can at least play
Speaker 1: more advanced games on more modest hardware, but at some
Speaker 1: point you just feel like you're no longer giving the
Speaker 1: experience you want and you feel obligated to upgrade now.
Speaker 1: Even though I got out of the whole PC gaming
Speaker 1: thing for a long time, it turns out that the
Speaker 1: PC game industry was going strong without me, which I
Speaker 1: personally find very insulting. Developers were making increasingly impressive games,
Speaker 1: and GPU companies like in Video followed suit by creating
Speaker 1: more capable graphics cards, and that was really a necessity
Speaker 1: that ties into a Rye observation about computing power. Okay,
Speaker 1: so a lot of folks have heard about Moore's law,
Speaker 1: which we usually use in reference to how computer processing
Speaker 1: speeds improve over time. The original observation Gordon Moore made
Speaker 1: decades ago was that, due to market factors, silicon chip
Speaker 1: manufacturers were cramming about twice as many components onto a
Speaker 1: single square inch of a silicon wafer as they had
Speaker 1: two years previously, and they do this by shrinking down
Speaker 1: those individual components so they're about half the size as
Speaker 1: they had been, and that as long as the market
Speaker 1: continued to place this kind of demand on an increase
Speaker 1: in processing power, that trend would likely continue until it
Speaker 1: would become physically impossible to achieve because you just could
Speaker 1: not reduce the components in size any further due to
Speaker 1: the limitations of physics. Now these days we dumb all
Speaker 1: that down to say essentially that computers double in processing
Speaker 1: power about every two years, So a typical computer in
Speaker 1: twenty has about twice the processing capability of a typical
Speaker 1: computer from However, there's another observation called Worth's law, and
Speaker 1: it's named after a Swiss computer scientist named Nicholas Worth.
Speaker 1: The Worth himself credited another computer programmer named Martin Riser
Speaker 1: with the idea. Worth's law states that the demands of
Speaker 1: software grow faster than the increase in capability of hardware.
Speaker 1: So while processing speed was doubling every two years, the
Speaker 1: demands of software were such that this otherwise incredible increase
Speaker 1: in capability was hard to detect because the software of
Speaker 1: the time that people were writing was growing more demanding.
Speaker 1: This also would feed into the perception that a computer
Speaker 1: would become obsolete super fast. Like you know. The joke
Speaker 1: was that by the time you got a computer home
Speaker 1: from the store and you got it out of the
Speaker 1: box and you plugged it in, it would be outclassed
Speaker 1: by a brand new PC unveiled at the very same
Speaker 1: store where you bought yours. From and while that was
Speaker 1: an exaggeration, it often felt like it was pretty close
Speaker 1: to the truth. The software bloat was forcing people to
Speaker 1: either rely on older programs that could still run on
Speaker 1: their PCs, or else cough up the cold hard cash
Speaker 1: to buy a new computer or upgrade their current machine. Now,
Speaker 1: this cycle was felt throughout the entire PC community, but
Speaker 1: gamers felt it particularly acutely Worth observation or you know,
Speaker 1: risers if you prefer, though truthfully, people were already kind
Speaker 1: of becoming aware of this general trend around that same time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that observation was published in the first graphics card to
Speaker 1: have what in video called a g PU would debut
Speaker 1: a couple of years later. The GPU U was in
Speaker 1: many ways a response to the problem presented by Worth's law.
Speaker 1: Game developers were coming up with lots of new tools
Speaker 1: that allowed them to build more spectacular games, but that
Speaker 1: in turn placed increasingly heavy demands on computers. Graphics cards
Speaker 1: were a necessity to meet those demands that the games
Speaker 1: were placing on the computer systems, and it in turn
Speaker 1: helped perpetuate this cycle. I'll explain in more detail how
Speaker 1: graphics cards help out, but generally speaking, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: simple concept. The graphics card has its own microprocessor, similar
Speaker 1: in many ways to a CPU, but a CPU is
Speaker 1: a general purpose device now. That means it needs to
Speaker 1: be able to handle a wide spectrum of different tasks,
Speaker 1: and processors are a lot like people in this way.
Speaker 1: If you dedicate yourself to learning how to do one thing,
Speaker 1: like really focus on just one thing, then eventually you're
Speaker 1: likely to get super good at that one thing. You've
Speaker 1: blocked everything else out. If, however, you decide you want
Speaker 1: to be a jack of all trades, you want to
Speaker 1: learn lots of things, chances are you will not reach
Speaker 1: the same level of expertise with any single task as
Speaker 1: you would if you had just focused on that specific task.
Speaker 1: You can do all of them, and maybe you can
Speaker 1: even do them well, but not at the same level
Speaker 1: as if you had specialized. Well. The GPU is like
Speaker 1: a specialist. It doesn't have to handle all the other
Speaker 1: tasks that a CPU has to perform. It can focus
Speaker 1: on more specific types of operations, which means chip designers
Speaker 1: can create a more efficient architecture to carry out those
Speaker 1: specific processes. Specializing allows the GPU to perform a subset
Speaker 1: of tasks far more efficiently. Than a typical CPU could day.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'll go into this a little
Speaker 1: bit more, but first let's take a quick break. Before
Speaker 1: the break, I talked about the motherboard. You know, the
Speaker 1: primary circuit board in a computer. The motherboard has the
Speaker 1: circuitry that connects the CPU to the different components in
Speaker 1: the system, like memory and stuff. Well, a graphics card
Speaker 1: is at its heart a printed circuit board that in
Speaker 1: many ways is similar to a motherboard. It's smaller and
Speaker 1: it's designed to connect to the mother board itself, but
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of the same stuff you will
Speaker 1: find on a typical PCs motherboard. At the heart of
Speaker 1: the printed circuit board in the graphics card is the
Speaker 1: graphics processing unit itself, or the GPU, but you'd also
Speaker 1: have RAM dedicated to the GPU, just as the mother
Speaker 1: board has its own AM dedicated to the CPU. So
Speaker 1: I guess I should give you guys as a quick
Speaker 1: reminder of what RAM is. RAM stands for random access memory,
Speaker 1: and it's a type of temporary computer storage. The purpose
Speaker 1: of RAM is to hold information that the CPU, or
Speaker 1: in the case of the graphics card, the GPU needs
Speaker 1: to reference frequently. So RAM access kind of short term
Speaker 1: memory a quick reference for these processors, and RAM helps
Speaker 1: reduce the weight time for a program to complete an operation.
Speaker 1: So when your computer is running a program, it will
Speaker 1: load some information into RAM. This is the stuff that
Speaker 1: the processor is going to need most frequently to do
Speaker 1: whatever the program needs it to do. Now, RAM has
Speaker 1: a limited capacity with most PC manufacturers, including you know,
Speaker 1: some RAM, but they don't max it out. They leave
Speaker 1: it up to the end consumer who can choose to
Speaker 1: purchase more RAM and then in to all it on
Speaker 1: the motherboard. Typically, not all motherboards allow you to do this. Uh,
Speaker 1: some companies are less open to you adding more memory
Speaker 1: to their systems. Cough Apple cough. The motherboard itself will
Speaker 1: have limitations to how much memory it can support. There
Speaker 1: is a top cap. You can't just keep adding RAM
Speaker 1: chip after ramchip. You will eventually cap out. And that
Speaker 1: also means that eventually you have to do a more
Speaker 1: extensive upgrade to keep up with evolving technology, as you
Speaker 1: will eventually encounter components that the old motherboard just can't support,
Speaker 1: so you'll have to you know, go up a step.
Speaker 1: You could, I guess keep pulling parts out of your
Speaker 1: PC and replacing them bit by bit but sometimes it
Speaker 1: just gets to a point where it's better to go
Speaker 1: ahead and build a whole new machine. By loading information
Speaker 1: into RAM, the computer limits how frequently the processor has
Speaker 1: to send a command to retrieve information from the longer
Speaker 1: term storage like a hard drive disk, and that process
Speaker 1: takes a little longer, actually much longer in computer terms,
Speaker 1: than accessing information that's stored in RAM. So you've likely
Speaker 1: heard that one way to speed up your computer is
Speaker 1: to add more memory. Now the computer itself isn't actually
Speaker 1: operating faster. Rather, it can load more information into that
Speaker 1: temporary memory that RAM, and thus reduce the need to
Speaker 1: go hunting for the information in long term storage. That
Speaker 1: cuts down on delays and lags. So the processor isn't
Speaker 1: going faster just because you added RAM to it, It
Speaker 1: just doesn't need to send as many retrieve requests for
Speaker 1: data that's stored on a hard drive. For example. Graphics
Speaker 1: cards typically have a decent amount of RAM on them,
Speaker 1: sometimes beyond decent. Some of some of those graphics cards
Speaker 1: have way more memory on them than my current PC
Speaker 1: has in it, and that's just on the graphics card.
Speaker 1: But that allows the GPU the same sort of benefits
Speaker 1: that the CPU enjoys with the RAM that's on the
Speaker 1: PCs motherboard. Another important component is the connections between the
Speaker 1: processor and the memory. This is what we call a bus.
Speaker 1: A bus is sort of like a data pathway. The
Speaker 1: capacity of the bus and the actual distance between the
Speaker 1: processor and the memory can have an effect on how
Speaker 1: quickly information can move from one component in the system
Speaker 1: to the other. And really, when you start looking at
Speaker 1: computer speeds and you're looking at, you know, the the
Speaker 1: edge of computing, like the cutting edge, it really becomes
Speaker 1: a game of find where the bottle neck is. Is
Speaker 1: the bottleneck the processor, well, then you need something that
Speaker 1: has a higher clock rate, or is it a limitation
Speaker 1: in the system's memory. Then you need more RAM or
Speaker 1: is it the actual connection between the components. Then you
Speaker 1: might even need an upgraded motherboard with a more robust
Speaker 1: bus between processor and memory. So it all comes down
Speaker 1: to figuring out where's the slow point, where's the weak
Speaker 1: link in this chain. The RAM on a graphics card
Speaker 1: tends to have a dual port design, meaning the system
Speaker 1: can both read and write to RAM simultaneously. Now, in
Speaker 1: the simplest design, you could do one or the other,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't do both at the same time. With
Speaker 1: older graphics cards, the RAM also connects to a component
Speaker 1: called the digital to analog converter or DACK d A C,
Speaker 1: and then together you would sometimes find both of these
Speaker 1: terms smush together. You would have RAM and DACK together
Speaker 1: to make RAM DAK. The purpose of that component is
Speaker 1: to take digital information, which at its heart is binary,
Speaker 1: you know, in the form of zeros and ones, and
Speaker 1: then convert that into an analog signal, which is continuous
Speaker 1: and a changing signal that is capable of sending information
Speaker 1: to like CRT monitor. However, today we have plenty of
Speaker 1: digital displays and digital cable stuff like h d M
Speaker 1: I that carries digital signals, and that makes the converter
Speaker 1: component less critical. It's not really something that you would
Speaker 1: necessarily hear much about with graphics cards these days because
Speaker 1: it's just not necessary. The hardware people are buying doesn't
Speaker 1: require the converter. Modern graphics cards typically support multiple displays.
Speaker 1: You know, chances are a lot of you out there
Speaker 1: have systems where you have at least two displays. I've
Speaker 1: got two in front of me right now. The pc
Speaker 1: I Express connector on modern motherboards allows for support for
Speaker 1: up to four monitors, though not all graphics cards can
Speaker 1: actually do that, not all of them have four connections
Speaker 1: for displays. The r t X thirty nine, the monster
Speaker 1: card that kind of prompted this whole episode, that one
Speaker 1: can support up to four monitors, and it as a
Speaker 1: maximum resolution display of seven thousand, six hundred eighty by
Speaker 1: four thousand, three twenty pixels, which we tend to just
Speaker 1: you know, it's say, is an eight K resolution. In
Speaker 1: other words, and just in case you need a refresher,
Speaker 1: resolution refers to the pixel density on a screen. Pixels
Speaker 1: are points of light, so generally the more points of
Speaker 1: light you have per square inch to to make an image,
Speaker 1: the smoother the image will be. I often talk about
Speaker 1: using like think about wooden blocks that a kid plays with,
Speaker 1: and think of them in different colors, like just nice
Speaker 1: primary colors. If you were to try and make a
Speaker 1: picture out of those blocks, it would be very blocky.
Speaker 1: You would see the edges of each block as they
Speaker 1: were up against each other, and it wouldn't be a
Speaker 1: very smooth image. You might be able to make something
Speaker 1: people could recognize, but it wouldn't look very smooth. If
Speaker 1: you reduce the blocks size and half and you increase
Speaker 1: the number of blocks, you can make a slightly less
Speaker 1: blocky looking image. You keep doing that over and over,
Speaker 1: reducing the pixel size and cramming more pixels in, and
Speaker 1: you create smoother images up to a point, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: you get a point of diminishing returns where it can
Speaker 1: be tricky to detect a meaningful difference when you're getting
Speaker 1: to ultra high resolution displays. For instance, I remember looking
Speaker 1: at two K, four K, and eight K displays at
Speaker 1: CS and not being able to really tell the difference
Speaker 1: unless the screens were truly enormous, like huge displays. Uh,
Speaker 1: and if I had the benefit of, you know, holding
Speaker 1: a magnifying glass so I can look at the pixels
Speaker 1: up close. But hey, at eight K resolution, you could
Speaker 1: take a tiny section of a screen shot, you could
Speaker 1: blow that tiny section up to a full screen size
Speaker 1: and it would probably still look pretty good. Anyway, Let's
Speaker 1: get back to the more general discus of graphics cards.
Speaker 1: The early graphics cards were really dedicated to creating three
Speaker 1: dimensional images out of binary data, and that involved building
Speaker 1: out a wire frame for the image with straight lines
Speaker 1: that would end in little points, you know, connecting to
Speaker 1: other straight lines, and the more straight lines. You use
Speaker 1: the smoother you can make the edges very much like
Speaker 1: the resolution of displays, and then on top of that,
Speaker 1: you would fill in all the pixels that would exist
Speaker 1: between those lines. You would add in effects like color, texture,
Speaker 1: and lighting, and you would have to do that many
Speaker 1: times per second, which is made more complicated by the
Speaker 1: fact that these images are not still images. They are
Speaker 1: changing over time, and in the case of video games,
Speaker 1: you might have a ton of things happening within the
Speaker 1: field of view simultaneously. You also get into a pair
Speaker 1: of terms that are easy to get mixed up, refresh
Speaker 1: rate and frame rate. The refresh rate is how frequently
Speaker 1: a computer display will refresh an image on screen. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the Razor Raptor twenty seven gaming monitor. By
Speaker 1: the way, none of this is part of like sponsored
Speaker 1: content or anything. I'm just using specific versions of things
Speaker 1: to kind of have concrete examples. Anyway, this this particular
Speaker 1: gaming monitor has a refresh rate of a hundred forty
Speaker 1: four hurts, and that means that the pixels on that
Speaker 1: display refresh one forty four times per second. Now, on
Speaker 1: top of that, you've got the demands of how smoothly
Speaker 1: the video game runs and you can think of the
Speaker 1: action of a video game being kind of analogous to
Speaker 1: film or just playing video. And you may know that
Speaker 1: movie film consists of a strip of film onto which
Speaker 1: you have a sequence of still images. Standard film playback
Speaker 1: speed is twenty four frames or images per second, meaning
Speaker 1: that for every second of movie, you are looking at
Speaker 1: a sequence of twenty four pictures. And the speed of
Speaker 1: this playback is sufficient to fool our dumb, meaty brains
Speaker 1: into thinking that we're watching stuff that's actually moving. It's
Speaker 1: the illusion of movement. Well, video games create the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and that you're watching a series of
Speaker 1: very quick instances of pixels that represents something going on,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, Pacman fleeing from a ghost or something.
Speaker 1: Though I'm told by the besties that we've come a
Speaker 1: long way since Pacman. But we described this as the
Speaker 1: frame rate of a video game. How frequently the graphics
Speaker 1: card generates the frames that are shown on the display
Speaker 1: in terms of frames per second. So while the two
Speaker 1: terms refresh rate and frame rate both deal with graphics,
Speaker 1: they are separate concerns. Generally speaking, you want more frames
Speaker 1: per second to create a smoother experience, though Again, once
Speaker 1: you get above a certain amount, you are to encounter
Speaker 1: diminishing returns, meaning that you get to a point where
Speaker 1: if you increase the frame rate you really can't tell
Speaker 1: the difference, but at lower levels we definitely can spot
Speaker 1: the difference. The same is true resolution. A game that's
Speaker 1: running at twenty frames per second or less is going
Speaker 1: to appear choppy. It's probably unplayable because gamers are going
Speaker 1: to miss key information and thus be incapable of reacting properly.
Speaker 1: Games running at around thirty to forty five frames per
Speaker 1: second are pretty good. I mean, they're okay, though elite
Speaker 1: gamers who have you know, crazy refined skills would probably
Speaker 1: find it insufficient. And these are people who can see
Speaker 1: faster than I can based on my observations of viewing
Speaker 1: their live streams. Though again, to be fair, I'm viewing
Speaker 1: a live stream which includes the compression of their video
Speaker 1: image before it gets to me, so what I see
Speaker 1: is not exactly the same thing that what they see. Anyway, However,
Speaker 1: most serious gamers really want frames per second rate of
Speaker 1: at least forty five, and preferably sixty or even more.
Speaker 1: But as I said, once you get above sixty, it
Speaker 1: becomes harder to tell the difference, and it means that
Speaker 1: the graphics card has to work super hard to keep up.
Speaker 1: So it might make use of a frame buffer, which
Speaker 1: is sort of like a holding space in memory that
Speaker 1: can serve up a corresponding image when it's needed, but
Speaker 1: it still has to work super hard. Because you can
Speaker 1: just imagine how much work it is for a processor
Speaker 1: to generate the information necessary to create a high resolution
Speaker 1: image complete with complex textures and lighting effects, and to
Speaker 1: do so at least sixty times per second, perhaps for
Speaker 1: sessions that can last for hours. You realize that graphics
Speaker 1: cards need a good amount of power. As they got beefier,
Speaker 1: the power requirements of the graphics card exceeded what the
Speaker 1: cards could draw using the motherboard connection through that pc
Speaker 1: I express slot I was talking about. Those are did
Speaker 1: to providing up to seventy watts. Graphics cards frequently need
Speaker 1: an excess of two fifty maybe three wats of power,
Speaker 1: so that necessitated the inclusion of a separate power port
Speaker 1: that would plug directly into the PC's power supply itself.
Speaker 1: That also meant that gamers often needed to upgrade their
Speaker 1: power supply on their PCs to supply the juice that
Speaker 1: the graphics card needs. As the GPU does all this
Speaker 1: work with this much power, it generates a lot of heat.
Speaker 1: And that's because no machine that we create is perfect.
Speaker 1: Every machine we humans make experiences some conversion of energy
Speaker 1: from one useful form into another form, like heat, which
Speaker 1: we typically think of as lost energy, because remember, energy
Speaker 1: can neither be created nor destroyed. You can convert it
Speaker 1: from one form into another, and if the energy converts
Speaker 1: into heat, that heat tends to just dissipate into other
Speaker 1: parts of the system, or out of the system into
Speaker 1: the bigger system around it. That energy is effectively gone.
Speaker 1: You have lost it. But on top of that, heat
Speaker 1: and electronics don't get on very well. Overheated electronics can
Speaker 1: cause lots of failures, and for that reason, high performing
Speaker 1: graphics cards have heat mitigation and management systems built into them.
Speaker 1: One common component is the heat sink, which is kind
Speaker 1: of what it sounds like. It's an object that disperses
Speaker 1: heat away from the heat generating object. A common heat
Speaker 1: sink is a series of fins made of a thin
Speaker 1: thermal conductor. So the fins provide a larger surface area
Speaker 1: for heat to move across it. Moves out from the
Speaker 1: processor and starts to go through these fins and it
Speaker 1: dissipates more easily. But GPUs and often CPUs generate way
Speaker 1: too much heat for fins to handle without a little
Speaker 1: extra help. Usually that help comes in the form of
Speaker 1: a fan, which circulates air across the fins and pulls
Speaker 1: heat away from them. High performing graphics cards are truly
Speaker 1: beasts these days in large cases that have their own
Speaker 1: fans that are built into the case of the card
Speaker 1: itself in order for them to help pull heat away
Speaker 1: from the heat sink. More advanced forms of heat control
Speaker 1: include things like water cooling systems, in which tubes of
Speaker 1: water move underneath various components and absorb heat from those
Speaker 1: components and carry the heat away from the processor to
Speaker 1: go through a heat exchanger, essentially a radiator also made
Speaker 1: out of fins. So these fins take the heat from
Speaker 1: the water, cooling the water down so that it can
Speaker 1: continue to circulate through the system, pull more heat from
Speaker 1: the processor, take it to the fins, et cetera. Typically,
Speaker 1: the fins are also cooled by a fan, so there's
Speaker 1: like multiple elements to this particular system. There's lots of
Speaker 1: points of failure too. So these things not only are
Speaker 1: they expensive and complicated, they can they have more points
Speaker 1: of failure. Doesn't mean that they're less reliable, just means
Speaker 1: that there's more opportunities for stuff to go wrong. However,
Speaker 1: it might be necessary if you're really running some of
Speaker 1: these graphics components at their highest capabilities, and you can
Speaker 1: kind of think of this as the circle of life,
Speaker 1: or at least the circle of a heat exchange system.
Speaker 1: I've got some more to say about g p U s,
Speaker 1: but before I get to that, let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: So one thing I haven't really touched on in this
Speaker 1: episode yet is the practice of over clocking. So remember
Speaker 1: when I said that we measure processor performance speed and
Speaker 1: part by talking about the clock rate. Well, process or
Speaker 1: manufacturers typically set an upper limit on a processor's clock rate.
Speaker 1: Usually this is to make sure that the processor is
Speaker 1: going to perform reliably under what's considered to be normal
Speaker 1: operating conditions, and sometimes it can get a little more
Speaker 1: icky than that. There have been some processor companies that
Speaker 1: have used the exact same chip with different limiting factors
Speaker 1: on the clock rate in order to offer up a
Speaker 1: range of products at a range of prices. So you
Speaker 1: can have an entry level chip and then maybe a
Speaker 1: moderate chip, and then maybe a premium chip, each with
Speaker 1: a different clock rate. But it turns out all three
Speaker 1: or the exact same chip. It's just that the manufacturer
Speaker 1: has put a kind of artificial limit on how fast
Speaker 1: the chip can run. That doesn't happen all the time,
Speaker 1: but it has happened before, and I personally find that
Speaker 1: kind of weird because the capability was there for all three.
Speaker 1: It's not like the price of the premium chip for
Speaker 1: the manufacturer was greater than the entry level chup. It's
Speaker 1: the same chip cost the same amount to make it anyway.
Speaker 1: That's another topic. So the fact is most processors can
Speaker 1: operate at a higher clock rate than what manufacturers rate
Speaker 1: them for, and with a little tweaking, you can make
Speaker 1: those processors operate at that faster rate. That is, you
Speaker 1: can if the motherboard and processors that you have are
Speaker 1: the right models. Some systems put really hard limits on
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff and prevent you from changing the
Speaker 1: clock rate on a processor to any real degree. But
Speaker 1: if your system allows for overclocking, you would make the
Speaker 1: changes in the computer's bios. Maybe you're using some special
Speaker 1: software to do it to make it, you know, easier
Speaker 1: to manage, and you would essentially be increasing the clock
Speaker 1: rate and probably also boosting the voltage that is going
Speaker 1: to the processor. Essentially you push more voltage through more
Speaker 1: pressure to the processor, it will work faster. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of loosey goosey way to explain it. Overclocked processors
Speaker 1: can lead to better results when it comes to stuff
Speaker 1: like you know, rendering graphics at a high frame rate,
Speaker 1: but it can also cause stability problems with a PC,
Speaker 1: and it also generates way more heat. Serious gamers who
Speaker 1: over clocked their systems really should look into water cooling systems.
Speaker 1: In the competitive overclocking scene, I mean like these people
Speaker 1: are pushing the limits to what overclocking can do, It's
Speaker 1: not unusual to see competitors use extreme cooling solutions like
Speaker 1: liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen has a boiling point of minus
Speaker 1: three degrees fahrenheit or minus one degrees celsius. That means
Speaker 1: that at that temperature, nitrogen would boil off into a gas.
Speaker 1: So you have to keep it colder than that to
Speaker 1: keep it liquid, or you have to keep it under compression.
Speaker 1: But neither here nor there anyway, that's that's pretty dang frosty.
Speaker 1: It's also, by the way, not recommended for practical everyday use,
Speaker 1: even for hardcore gamers. Now, if you do wish to
Speaker 1: experiment with overclocking, there are a lot of useful resources
Speaker 1: online for you to follow, and it's important to look
Speaker 1: stuff up with your particular hardware because the process is
Speaker 1: not uniform across all pieces of hardware. The one bit
Speaker 1: of advice I would give anyone who wants to overclock
Speaker 1: their system is to do so in very small increments
Speaker 1: and run tests frequently to check to see what the
Speaker 1: heat levels are and checking your computer stability. And then
Speaker 1: you can gradually bump up the overclocking rate bit by
Speaker 1: bit as a test. And then once you start to
Speaker 1: see a dip in performance or you see temperatures going
Speaker 1: above a certain threshold, you can then back off a
Speaker 1: little bit and say, okay, this is my new peak
Speaker 1: for where my my my processor can work. And that
Speaker 1: applies both to the CPU and the GP you. Now,
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that the first generation of dedicated graphics
Speaker 1: cards were really about handling some of the heavy lifting
Speaker 1: when it comes to three D graphics. These days, there's
Speaker 1: a lot more to it than that, and you've got
Speaker 1: speed and detail and color representation all being a big deal.
Speaker 1: But perhaps the most buzzy of buzzworthy terms to emerge
Speaker 1: in the graphics seen lately is ray tracing. Ray tracing
Speaker 1: ultimately is about how a computer system handles the display
Speaker 1: of light, like how does it portray light on the display?
Speaker 1: Not how does it get the image to your eyeballs.
Speaker 1: But when you are playing a game where there are
Speaker 1: you know, light is playing across the scene, how does
Speaker 1: it handle that. The goal of ray tracing is to
Speaker 1: create graphics systems in which light in the virtual world
Speaker 1: behaves the same way it does out here in the
Speaker 1: real world, complete with how light bounces off of objects,
Speaker 1: how attos are created, what reflections look like, and more so,
Speaker 1: imagine that you're walking through a real world forest and
Speaker 1: sunlight is occasionally breaking through the forest canopy overhead in
Speaker 1: some places. In person, this kind of experience would have
Speaker 1: a lot of really subtle details in light that older
Speaker 1: graphics cards just couldn't really replicate. So with those games
Speaker 1: where you might be like in a jungle or in
Speaker 1: a forest, you would typically have a more uniform approach
Speaker 1: to how light was presenting itself. Within the game, you
Speaker 1: might have some areas that are darker than others or
Speaker 1: brighter than others, but the graphics cards weren't really able
Speaker 1: to get super subtle and detailed about it. Now a
Speaker 1: card that supports ray tracing might be able to do
Speaker 1: a better job of that and other stuff as well. So,
Speaker 1: for example, a rain soaked street might reflect a neon
Speaker 1: signed back at you in a really realistic way, and
Speaker 1: as you move around own the light behaves just as
Speaker 1: it would in real life. This is actually a really
Speaker 1: tricky thing to do. It requires a good deal of horsepower.
Speaker 1: It also requires support from the software side. The game
Speaker 1: has to include rate tracing for this to be a
Speaker 1: thing after all, But the latest graphics cards often tellt
Speaker 1: raid tracing as a big feature now. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: the big buzzworthy term was HDR or high dynamic range.
Speaker 1: HDR refers to the spectrum of luminosity that a display
Speaker 1: can provide, which deals with both the range of colors
Speaker 1: that the display can create as well as the range
Speaker 1: of brightness per pixels. So it's a combination of color
Speaker 1: and brightness and the the variety that the display can create,
Speaker 1: and a system that supports HDR can typically create really
Speaker 1: spectacular images. And this also reflects the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: image resolution is not the end all be all for
Speaker 1: a long time, especially with camera man you factors, the
Speaker 1: use of megapixels was the way to really push a camera.
Speaker 1: More megapixels equals more good. That's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of other factors that play a part,
Speaker 1: like contrast and color representation. Anyway, if you hear about
Speaker 1: ray tracing, that's really what it comes down to, trying
Speaker 1: to simulate within a virtual world the way light behaves
Speaker 1: in the real world. Now, I mentioned earlier that graphics
Speaker 1: cards at the top of the line ones can be
Speaker 1: hard to find, and why is that. Well, not only
Speaker 1: are they sought after by you know, real leite gamers,
Speaker 1: but they also are often used by people who want
Speaker 1: to do a lot of parallel processing with a networked
Speaker 1: system of computers, typically to do something like bitcoin mining
Speaker 1: or sometimes even breaking encryption. So let me explain. And
Speaker 1: I've talked about parallel processing in previous episodes, including some
Speaker 1: fairly recent ones, which it's all involved using two or
Speaker 1: more processors or two or more processor cores to divide
Speaker 1: up tasks so that it takes less time to complete
Speaker 1: the overall task. You're breaking it down into parts, and
Speaker 1: it's faster to solve the parts and is to solve
Speaker 1: the thing as a whole. Not all computational problems can
Speaker 1: break into a parallel approach, but for the ones that can,
Speaker 1: parallel processing can speed things up considerably. One application of
Speaker 1: parallel processing involves working out the potential answer two difficult
Speaker 1: math problems, which happens to be the way cryptocurrencies like
Speaker 1: bitcoin verify transactions and subsequently reward the system that solves
Speaker 1: the problem with some cryptocurrency. So, in other words, people
Speaker 1: use bitcoins to make a transaction, right they pay for
Speaker 1: something in bitcoin, The record of that transaction goes into
Speaker 1: a block of data, and when that block is full,
Speaker 1: when it's hit as many transactions as that can hold,
Speaker 1: it has to be verified before it can join the
Speaker 1: chain of previous blocks the block chain. The bitcoin system
Speaker 1: devises a difficult math problem that will verify the transactions
Speaker 1: and thus make the block the most recent in the
Speaker 1: chain of transaction blocks. The first computer system to provide
Speaker 1: the correct solution to this hard math problem gets some
Speaker 1: bitcoins in return, and as long as the value of
Speaker 1: the bitcoin reward is greater than what it cost to
Speaker 1: get to that reward. There's an incentive to build out
Speaker 1: faster computer systems to try and solve the problems before
Speaker 1: anyone else does. Now, these high end graphics cards aren't cheap.
Speaker 1: The founders edition of the rt X thirty nine, that is,
Speaker 1: the version of the card that's actually built by Nvidia,
Speaker 1: would set you back about one thousand, five hundred U
Speaker 1: S dollars if you could find one. But as I
Speaker 1: record this, the value of a single bitcoin is more
Speaker 1: than ten thousand, seven hundred U S dollars, and if
Speaker 1: you solved a block, you would actually net twelve point
Speaker 1: five bitcoins, so that means one solution is worth more
Speaker 1: than a hundred twenty five thousand dollars. And new blocks
Speaker 1: joined the blockchain every ten minutes. So if you have
Speaker 1: the fastest system trying to solve these bitcoin problems and
Speaker 1: you're able to solve a significant number of them for
Speaker 1: whatever span of time you're looking at, you're looking at
Speaker 1: a fortune, which means there is a huge incentive for
Speaker 1: bitcoin miners to sweep up powerful processors that could give
Speaker 1: them the edge when it comes to solving those problems
Speaker 1: and netting a ridiculous amount of money, virtual money, but money.
Speaker 1: So they really want the those processors. They could buy
Speaker 1: a hundred of these Nvidia cards and they could pay
Speaker 1: it off by solving two blocks. Not that this is
Speaker 1: particularly easy, but you get the point. There's the incentive there, YAWLSA,
Speaker 1: and that means that actual gamers are competing not just
Speaker 1: against each other to get hold of these graphics cards,
Speaker 1: but against bitcoin miners. And on the positive side, it
Speaker 1: means that if you aren't absolutely determined to have the
Speaker 1: state of the art hardware in your machine, you can
Speaker 1: probably settle for a card that comes from the previous
Speaker 1: generation or maybe two generations back, because bitcoin miners really
Speaker 1: have no option but to embrace the fastest hardware, because
Speaker 1: if they don't, the odds of them having a system
Speaker 1: capable of solving a Bitcoin problem first reduced down to
Speaker 1: near zero. One of the interesting things about bitcoin is
Speaker 1: that the complexity of the math problem is actually dependent
Speaker 1: upon the amount of assessing power being dedicated to solving
Speaker 1: the problem. So if the Bitcoin system and if it
Speaker 1: detects that computers are solving the problems too quickly, it
Speaker 1: will automatically increase the difficulty of the math problem for
Speaker 1: the next generation of transaction solutions. Now we'll likely see
Speaker 1: this whole cycle continue until it becomes more expensive to
Speaker 1: scoop up the graphics cards. Then you would make in
Speaker 1: solving the blockchain problem. So every four years or so,
Speaker 1: the number of bitcoins that are released per solution reduces
Speaker 1: by half. When bitcoins first appeared, you would get fifty
Speaker 1: of them when you solved a blockchain transaction problem. These
Speaker 1: days it's twelve point five. There is a finite number
Speaker 1: of bitcoins that will ever exist, So eventually we're gonna
Speaker 1: reach a point where the reward you get for solving
Speaker 1: a blockchain problem will be relatively low, and it won't
Speaker 1: justify hoarding and operating a suite of GPU cards in
Speaker 1: various computer cases that are all network together. It would
Speaker 1: be more expensive to do that then you would make
Speaker 1: from solving blockchain problems. Now, you could still do it
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, but you would lose money in
Speaker 1: the process, So it doesn't make sense. But for the
Speaker 1: time being it is incredibly frustrating. Building on that frustration
Speaker 1: are some recent problems with those r t X thirty
Speaker 1: eight and thirty nine D cards. Now, I mentioned a
Speaker 1: Founder's card earlier, and that that is a card that's
Speaker 1: made by Nvidia itself, but in video also license out
Speaker 1: the design the specs of the graphics cards to other manufacturers,
Speaker 1: essentially saying, here are the components you need to put
Speaker 1: together to make one of these cards, and then these
Speaker 1: other manufacturers it's up to them to actually follow instructions
Speaker 1: essentially and make their own version of the thirty eight
Speaker 1: and the thirty cards. Some of these companies will end
Speaker 1: up putting their own little spin on the card designs,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately that can sometimes result in cards that have
Speaker 1: poor reliability or other performance issues. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that seems to have happened with the r
Speaker 1: t X thirty eight and thirty nine cards. It didn't
Speaker 1: take long for people to report that they were having
Speaker 1: some problems while running games on systems that had these
Speaker 1: new graphics cards in them. Sometimes they would get kicked
Speaker 1: out of a game and back to the operating system.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the whole system would crash. Sometimes they would get
Speaker 1: weird artifacts and lines that would show up on screen. Now,
Speaker 1: this would all be unacceptable for just a modest graphics card,
Speaker 1: but it's really hard to forgive for a high end
Speaker 1: model like say the thirty nine. And while it's early
Speaker 1: days and it's difficult for me to point a finger
Speaker 1: on any one specific problem or cause of this, what
Speaker 1: appears to be the issue is that some of these
Speaker 1: companies that are manufacturing this kind of graphics card have
Speaker 1: taken some liberties with the design that ultimately have hurt
Speaker 1: the stability of the card's performance. In particular, the Founders
Speaker 1: version of the card has a series of small capacitors
Speaker 1: that some card manufacturers have replaced with a single, cheaper capacitor,
Speaker 1: and that in turn seems to create some electrical interference
Speaker 1: issues that create an unstable environment. And it also makes
Speaker 1: talking about specific graphics cards more confusing because while Nvidia
Speaker 1: is responsible for the card design as well as the
Speaker 1: manufacture of the Founders version of the card, other companies
Speaker 1: are making the same type of card, but potentially with
Speaker 1: tweaks to that design or with less expensive components. That's
Speaker 1: why you can actually find a range of prices for
Speaker 1: the same type of graphics card. Some companies are using
Speaker 1: more premium components, which in turn drives the price of
Speaker 1: the finished card up. Other cup these are using lower
Speaker 1: cost components in an effort to bring the price down
Speaker 1: enough so they can sell a high performing graphics card
Speaker 1: but at a lower price than their competitors are offering. However,
Speaker 1: the danger of that is that the lower price components
Speaker 1: may not be as reliable as the ones that come
Speaker 1: stock with the Founders edition. Of course, some companies might
Speaker 1: even go the other way. They might include even more
Speaker 1: expensive components than the Founder's version does, and then those
Speaker 1: cards will be more expensive. But if the manufacturers can
Speaker 1: sell consumers on the benefits of those more expensive components,
Speaker 1: it can pay off in the long run. It becomes
Speaker 1: a real game of deciding what is going to be
Speaker 1: most important and most profitable. In the end, these cards
Speaker 1: are necessary if you want to get the most out
Speaker 1: of a gaming experience, and it also is necessary to
Speaker 1: revitalize your machine every so often. UM. I know some
Speaker 1: people who update their machines maybe twice a year, which
Speaker 1: to me is incredible. I can't like. I still love
Speaker 1: the mindset that that's way too much money to be
Speaker 1: spending on a single device over and over and over again. UM.
Speaker 1: But I'm also not a pro gamer and I'm not
Speaker 1: a streamer, so there's that I would be more likely
Speaker 1: to buy a more modest graphics card and hope that
Speaker 1: it gets me through the next couple of years and
Speaker 1: then upgrade from there. But then again, I'm not doing
Speaker 1: it for a living, so I'm I'm a different consumer anyway.
Speaker 1: But I hope that this helps illustrate what graphics processor
Speaker 1: units do, what graphics cards are meant for, why it's
Speaker 1: hard to find them, and you know what's going on
Speaker 1: with the current craze with the graphics cards that are
Speaker 1: on the market today. I am going to sign off now.
Speaker 1: We're gonna wrap this one up, but if you guys
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, send me
Speaker 1: a message. The best way to do it is on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We use the handle text stuff h s W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.