Will Artificial Intelligence End up Replacing Creatives?

At events like Adobe MAX, NAB, or SIGGRAPH, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is always a hot topic. Creatives love what it is already doing to speed up or enhance their work, but there is almost always an underlying fear that one day, AI will replace them. Is that a valid worry, or is AI just a fad that will pass?

Windows 10 Training Options

I spend a good portion of my time speaking with customers. Many times, they just recently took delivery of their new computer, and they are getting acquainted with it. For some, this is their first experience with Windows 10 because they came from the Mac or an older version of Windows.

One question I get asked often is: Where can I find good training on Windows 10?

Spending More

“What do I get if I spend more?”

This question comes up quite frequently when I’m speaking with customers, especially if they are considering upgrading from an older computer. I believe most people are referring to “more” performance, but that’s not always the case.

However Long It Takes

Fresh out of college, I entered the workforce with a lot of enthusiasm, energy and the assumption that my education had taught me everything I needed to succeed. It didn’t take long for me to realize I had a lot to learn, and that began one morning when my first manager called me into his office.

OctaneBench 2019 Performance Preview

OTOY is nearing completion of OctaneBench 2019, the first version of their OctaneRender benchmark to support the new RTX technology in NVIDIA’s Turing-based GeForce and Quadro video cards. We will do a full performance roundup when OB 2019 is finished, but for now I wanted to put out a quick preview of the performance increase that RTX tech can bring to GPU rendering.

Intels Core Xperiment i9 9990XE

Intel launched a new processor in their Core X series recently, and it is novel in many ways. It combines a fairly high core count with very high clock speeds, at the cost of power consumption and high heat output. It also is very limited in availability, being offered only to select system integrators via a private auction. We got our hands on one in the first auction, and have been putting it through several rounds of benchmarking to see if it is worth the price and hassle, as well as to determine if we will be offering it in our workstations.

NVIDIA RTX Graphics Card Cooling Issues

With the RTX series of GPUs, NVIDIA has moved to using dual fans as the standard cooling layout on their GeForce and Titan video cards. This is a big change from past generations and has even bigger implications for using NVIDIA graphics cards in multi-GPU workstations. Let’s look at what changed, what it impacts, and what can be done to work around it.

My 5 Favorite Tech Accessories of 2018

For the past five years, I’ve worked from home. At the end of each year, I like to go through my home office and clean and organize it to begin the new year. This is the time I clean out my computer, wipe down my monitors, and organize my desk and filing cabinet.

Graphite Pads vs. Thermal Paste: Which Is Better?

Rather than applying from a tube like thermal paste, graphite pads are sheets of material that you simply set on top of the CPU and throw on the heatsink. They work great, but unfortunately we found that they have issues if you try to reuse them multiple times.

Intel Announces New 9th Gen Core CPU Series

Today Intel has officially announced the launch of new mainstream desktop processors, including the first Core i9 branded chip for this market segment. We are testing these processors now, and are excited about what we have found so far, but cannot publish performance data until October 19th.