777color jili games
Atiku, Obi, Others Celebrate AUN’s Monumental MilestonesBuilding or ordering a custom high-end gaming PC continues to be an increasingly expensive endeavor thanks to ballooning component prices across the board. While the GPU takes up the lion’s share of one’s budget thanks to both significant price increases and focus shifting from mid-range to enthusiast-tier options, CPUs still constitute an important component of one’s PC. While GPUs are at the forefront in terms of performance gains, other components have not kept pace, often resulting in bottlenecks that need to be addressed to get the most out of your gaming PC. This is true for CPU-bound titles especially when the highest-end GPUs (such as ’s RTX 4090) are used and what CPUs such as the aim to address. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an 8-core 16-thread CPU that is indisputably the fastest gaming CPU money can buy currently – on a shelf physically or virtually. It marries ’s performance gains on the newer Zen 5 architecture with its proven 3D V-Cache enhancements that offer significantly better performance in games that overwhelmingly benefit from the added cache memory in play. Finding The Elusive AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D AMD’s fastest gaming CPU to date also holds the slightly less desirable crown of being one of the most price-gouged CPUs at the moment with both retailers and PC builders quoting lead times above three weeks to source one on average. This has users opting for various approaches to secure one, including camping outside retailers such as Microcenter, using third-party applications, and even Discord servers to for the 9800X3D. While it is the current king of the hill, it also faces off against excellent competition from ’s higher-end CPUs as well as AMD’s last-generation offerings. The former offer higher clock speeds and more cores, which allow them to, at times, surpass AMD’s offerings in certain titles. The latter ups the ante by offering better value for money and in the case of AMD’s last-generation X3D CPUs, similar performance. So which are alternatives you should consider right now? Let's look at a few in detail. AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D: A More Readily Available Option Gamers who are unable to find the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D can turn to the next best alternative: its predecessor, AMD’s Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7800X3D. It clocks in at approximately 10% slower in most FHD benchmarks designed to show what the 9800X3D is capable of but dips down to low single-digit percentages (2-5%) when one bumps up the resolution or graphics preset. While AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D remains hard to find, pricing for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D has also gone up considerably as it continues to be the world’s second-best CPU for gaming, edged out only by its Zen 5-based successor. The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D has seen its prices push upwards of the $350-400 mark where it routinely traded for most of 2024, to sub-$500 levels. This is even as it continues to be a bestseller at where it commands fifth place at the time of writing – CPUs that sell better are half of its asking price or lower, proving its strong position in a market hungry for credible 9800X3D alternatives. The 7800X3D is no longer the fastest CPU that money can buy for gaming but it does hold its own against all of its competition, often within spitting distance of the 9800X3D in benchmarks on most titles, making it a viable, if somewhat expensive alternative to the latter. Intel’s Core i9 14900K CPU: The Raptor Holding the Line While Intel’s current-generation Arrow Lake CPUs offer significant improvements in efficiency and do not have the problems that plague older Raptor Lake / Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs, the Intel Core i9-14900K is still the weapon of choice for gamers even as it runs up to 15% slower in some gaming benchmarks. The 14900K also at multiple retailers (including and Newegg). With single-core clock speeds of up to 6GHz (6.2GHz on the 14900KS), it does hold its own in most titles, even as the 9800XD (and its predecessor, the 7800X3D) edges it out in most benchmarks. The 14900K is more than a one-trick pony, however. The 24-core, 32-thread CPU offers a compromise between AMD’s highest-end Ryzen 9 9950X (which leads in most productivity tasks) and AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D which currently commands a lead in gaming benchmarks. While it comes a close second in terms of productivity versus AMD’s 16-core Zen 5-based juggernaut and remains Intel’s most performant CPU for gaming (the newer Arrow Lake CPUs are great in terms of efficiency and productivity but fall behind when it comes to playing games). The 14900K is an excellent option for users wanting to stick to Intel as a platform or wanting a more all-round performer in 2024 even as a 16-core Ryzen 9000 X3D CPU remains under wraps for now. If the pricing convention holds, the yet-to-be-revealed Zen 5-based X3D CPU could go for as much as the $699 the Ryzen 9 7950X3D commanded at launch. Intel’s best does come with a set of disadvantages, however: the LGA 1700 socket is now due to be sunset and the 14900K happens to be the best chip one can expect to buy on the socket for the foreseeable future. This makes the lack of potential upgrades down the line a particularly sore point for most gamers looking for a future-proof option. The 14900K is also notoriously demanding, both in terms of power and cooling; while the former does not bother gamers thanks to titles not engaging all cores of the 24-core behemoth, the latter still applies with even the best CPU coolers often being brought down to their knees in a bid to cool what is one of the hottest desktop-class chips this decade. AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D: A Well-Priced Hexacore Dark Horse AMD’s Ryzen 5 7500F/7600, and 7600X CPUs are some of the most popular CPUs available to users at the moment. The latter is the second-best seller on Amazon currently, powering thousands of PC builds each month thanks to a mix of value for money and performance in the same package while allowing for an upgrade path for those who need it down the line thanks to the AM5 socket. The Ryzen 5 7600X3D is one of AMD’s lesser-known hexacore CPUs and is primarily by design. The but has Newegg, albeit at a premium. While it holds its own thanks to its extended L3 cache, it does score below both the 9800X3D and the 7800X3D in gaming benchmarks in general, with games requiring beefier multi-core hardware favoring the latter. It does however come close to, and often narrowly beats intel’s top CPU for gaming, the Core i9 14900K in many games. The Ryzen 5 7600X3D is also, by far, one of the most efficient CPUs for gaming, even routinely beating the 7800X3D and 9800X3D in efficiency benchmarks thanks to its lower power draw per frame in tests. Despite this, the Ryzen 5 7600X3D isn’t out there to win any performance awards, and given its price positioning, it doesn’t need to. It offers users excellent value for money at its price point, an upgrade path to the 9800X3D or a next-generation AM5-based CPU, and decent single-core performance, all of which make it a viable alternative to both the 9800X3D and its relatively (to the 7600X3D) more expensive alternatives. What Other Options Should You Consider? While other options do exist, such as the best-selling, but dated AM4-based (and its higher-end sibling, the ), only the seems to offer the best of both worlds, with solid performance in gaming and productivity workloads. It does currently trade for an eye-watering asking price however ($700) as dwindling supply seems to result in price gouging with third-party sellers on Newegg asking as much as $860 for a unit. Likewise, while the 5600X3D offers excellent value for money for its performance, it does not feature in the same performance class as the 9800X3D by a large margin, and its reliance on the aging AM4 platform makes it a relatively poor choice. For those who can wait, most rumors point to a 16-core AMD Ryzen 9000 series X3D CPU (Ryzen 9 9950X3D if the nomenclature holds) being in play for CES 2025, which should replace the 7950X3D as a more all-round “for creators” CPU as AMD markets it currently. All in all, there are no bad choices in a CPU market that is significantly more competitive today, but some options are more compelling than others, especially when one wants to focus on gaming and neither the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Ryzen 5 7600X3D, or the Intel Core i9-14900K will result in a meaningful bottleneck for most gamers at higher resolutions or graphics presets for the foreseeable future, making them all viable choices with their respective pros and cons.
Stock market today: Wall Street hangs near its records despite tariff talk
As we age, our cognitive and motor functions degrade, reducing our independence and overall quality of life. Research efforts to mitigate or perhaps eliminate this have resulted in technologies that hold a lot of promise. Now, scientists led by Friedhelm Hummel at EPFL have identified an important factor affecting an individual’s responsiveness to atDCS. The team looked at how native learning abilities determine the effect of brain stimulation applied while learning a motor task. Their findings suggest that individuals with less efficient learning mechanisms benefit more from stimulation, while those with optimal learning strategies might experience negative effects. Among these is non-invasive brain stimulation: a term encompassing a set of techniques that can affect brain functions externally and noninvasively, without the need for surgery or implants. One such promising technique, in particular, is anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS), which uses a constant, low electrical current delivered via electrodes on the scalp to modulate neuronal activity. However, studies exploring atDCS have produced inconsistent results, which has prompted researchers to explore why some people benefit from atDCS while others don’t. The problem seems to lie in our understanding of factors that may influence responsiveness to brain stimulation, leading to responders and non-responders; among these, age has been suggested as one important factor. Some studies suggest further factors such as baseline behavioural abilities and previous training might be important considerations, but an interplay of these factors with behaviour has not been determined in detail, pointing to the need of refined predictive models of the effects of atDCS. The researchers recruited 40 participants: 20 middle-aged adults (50-65 years old) and 20 older adults (over 65). Each group was further divided into those receiving active atDCS and those receiving placebo stimulation. Over ten days, participants practised a finger-tapping task designed to study motor sequence learning at home while receiving atDCS. The task involved replicating a numerical sequence using a keypad, trying to be as fast and as accurate as possible. The team then used a machine-learning model trained on a public dataset to classify participants as either “optimal” or “suboptimal” learners, based on their initial performance. This model aimed to predict who would benefit from atDCS, based on their ability to integrate information about the task efficiently early during training. The study found that suboptimal learners, who were seemingly less efficient at internalizing the task at the early stages of learning, experienced an accelerated accuracy improvement while performing the task when receiving atDCS. This effect was not limited to people of a certain age (e.g., older adults), with suboptimal learners being found among younger individuals as well. In contrast, participants with optimal learning strategies, regardless of age, even showed a negative trend in performance when receiving atDCS. This difference suggests that brain stimulation is more beneficial for individuals who initially struggle with motor tasks. As such, atDCS seems to possess a restorative rather than an enhancing quality, with important implications for rehabilitation. “By leveraging different methods in Machine learning, we were able to untangle the influence of different factors on the individual effects of brain stimulation,” said Pablo Maceira, the study’s first author. “This will pave the way to maximize the effects of brain stimulation in individual subjects and patients.” The study implies that, in the long run, personalized brain stimulation protocols will be developed to maximize benefits based on an individual’s specific needs, rather than a common trait such as age. This approach could lead to more effective brain stimulation-based interventions, targeting specific mechanisms supporting learning, especially in the view of neurorehabilitation, for which the main basis is the re-learning of lost skills due to a brain lesion (e.g., after a stroke or a traumatic brain injury). “In the future, clinicians could apply a more advanced version of our algorithm to determine whether a patient will benefit from a brain stimulation-based therapy, to enhance the effects of neurorehabilitation and personalize treatment,” said Hummel. (With inputs from ANI)NATO and Ukraine to hold emergency talks after Russian attack with hypersonic missileUruguay's voters choose their next president in a close runoff with low stakes but much suspense MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Uruguayans on Sunday voted in the second round of the country's presidential election , with the conservative governing party and a left-leaning coalition locked in a close runoff following level-headed campaigns widely see Nayara Batschke, The Associated Press Nov 24, 2024 3:50 PM Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message Claudia Noble stands outside the Broad Front's (Frente Amplio) election night headquarters after polls closed for the presidential run-off election in Montevideo, Uruguay, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Uruguayans on Sunday voted in the second round of the country's presidential election , with the conservative governing party and a left-leaning coalition locked in a close runoff following level-headed campaigns widely seen as emblematic of the country's strong democracy. As polls closed Sunday evening, turnout stood at 89.4% — around the same as during the first round last month in which the two moderate coalitions both failed to win an outright majority. Voting in Uruguay is compulsory. Depending on how tight the vote turns out to be, electoral officials may not call the race for days — as happened in the contentious 2019 runoff that brought center-right President Luis Lacalle Pou to office and ended 15 years of rule by Uruguay’s left-leaning Broad Front by a razor-thin margin. Álvaro Delgado, the incumbent party’s candidate who won nearly 27% in the first round of voting on Oct. 27, has campaigned under the slogan “re-elect a good government." Other conservative parties that make up the government coalition — in particular, the Colorado Party that came in third place last month — notched 20% of the vote collectively, enough to give Delgado an edge over his challenger. Yamandú Orsi from the Broad Front, who took 44% of the vote in the general election, is promising to forge a “new left” in Uruguay that draws on the memory of stability and economic growth under his Broad Front coalition, which presided over pioneering social reforms that won widespread international acclaim from 2005-2020, including the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and sale of marijuana . With inflation easing and the economy expected to expand by some 3.2% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, surveys show that Uruguayans remain largely satisfied with the administration of Lacalle Pou, who constitutionally cannot run for a second consecutive term. But persistent complaints about sluggish growth, stagnant wages and an upsurge in violent crime could just as easily add the small South American nation to a long list of places this year where frustrated voters have punished incumbents in elections around the world. With most polls showing a virtual tie between Delgado and Orsi, analysts say the vote may hinge on a small group of undecided voters — roughly 10% of registered voters in the nation of 3.4 million people. “Neither candidate convinced me and I feel that there are many in my same situation,” said Vanesa Gelezoglo, 31, in the capital, Montevideo, adding she would make up her mind at “the last minute.” Analysts say the candidates’ lackluster campaigns and broad consensus on key issues have generated extraordinary indecision and apathy in an election dominated by discussions about social spending and concerns over income inequality but largely free of the anti-establishment rage that has vaulted populist outsiders to power in neighboring Argentina and the United States. “The question of whether Frente Amplio (the Broad Front) raises taxes is not an existential question, unlike what we saw in the U.S. with Trump and Kamala framing each other as threats to democracy," said Nicolás Saldías, a Latin America and Caribbean senior analyst for the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit. “That doesn't exist in Uruguay.” Both candidates are also appealing to voter angst over the current government's struggle to stem the rise in violent crime that has shaken a nation long regarded as one of the region’s safest, with Delgado promising tough-on-crime policies and Orsi advocating a more community-oriented approach. Delgado, 55, a rural veterinarian with a long career in the National Party, served most recently as Secretary of the Presidency for Lacalle Pou and promises to pursue his predecessor’s pro-business policies. He would continue pushing for a trade deal with China that has raised hackles in Mercosur, an alliance of South American countries promoting regional commerce. "We have to give the government coalition a chance to consolidate its proposals,” said Ramiro Pérez, a street vendor voting for Delgado on Sunday. Orsi, 57, a former history teacher and two-time mayor from a working-class background, is widely seen as the political heir to former President José “Pepe” Mujica , an ex-Marxist guerilla who became a global icon for helping transform Uruguay into one of the region's most socially liberal and environmentally sustainable nations. “He's my candidate, not only for my sake but also for my children's,” Yeny Varone, a nurse at a polling station, said of Orsi. “In the future they'll have better working conditions, health and salaries.” Mujica, now 89 and recovering from esophageal cancer , turned up at his local polling station before balloting even began, praising Orsi's humility and Uruguay’s famous stability. “This is no small feat,” he said of Uruguay's “citizenry that respects formal institutions.” Orsi planned no dramatic changes, and, despite his call for a revitalized left-wing, his platform continues the Broad Front's traditional mix of market-friendly policies and welfare programs. He proposes tax incentives to lure investment and social security reforms that would lower the retirement age but fall short of a radical overhaul sought by Uruguay's unions. The contentious plebiscite on whether to boost pension payouts failed to pass in October, with Uruguayans rejecting generous pensions in favor of fiscal constraint. Both candidates pledged full cooperation with each other if elected. “I want (Orsi) to know that my idea is to form a government of national unity,” Delgado told reporters after casting his vote in the capital's upscale Pocitos neighborhood. He said that if he won, he and Orsi would chat on Monday over some yerba mate, the traditional herbal drink beloved by Uruguayans. Orsi described Sunday's democratic exercise as “an incredible experience" as he voted in Canelones, the sprawling town of beaches and cattle ranches just north of Montevideo where he served as mayor for a decade. “The essence of politics is agreements,” he said. “You never end up completely satisfied.” ___ Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Villa Tunari, Bolivia, contributed to this report. Nayara Batschke, The Associated Press See a typo/mistake? Have a story/tip? This has been shared 0 times 0 Shares Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message More World News Jannik Sinner leads Italy past the Netherlands for its second consecutive Davis Cup title Nov 24, 2024 10:40 AM Poland's conservative opposition party taps historian as candidate for 2025 presidential run Nov 24, 2024 7:42 AM Israel says rabbi who went missing in the UAE was killed Nov 24, 2024 12:06 AM Featured Flyer
Sinn Féin's sunny side It's all blue skies for Sinn Féin as Mary Lou McDonald said the mood on the ground is now "very reminiscent" of the last general election, during which Sinn Féin enjoyed a surge in support. "I think the weather reflects our mood. You know, this might be a winter election, but we have sunshine today. "I know, talking to people, particularly over the last week, this sense of purpose now, this sense of energy has come back very, very strongly." Red line on the red line Green Party leader Roderic O'Gorman braved the cold alongside Patrick Costello at the Luas Red Line terminus at the 3Arena on Sunday morning, making it clear that a €10 billion investment in public transport will be an essential commitment in any government formation talks. A Luas system for both Cork and Galway, metropolitan rail services in Limerick and Waterford, Dart West, as well as increased local links around the country, are key demands. "This is a red line issue for us. For too long in the previous decade, public transport was the poor relation when it came to transport spending in this country. We can't allow backsliding on these... Elaine Loughlin & Paul Hosford, political staffThe New Tablestakes, AI Tools That Go To WorkUruguay's voters choose their next president in a close runoff with low stakes but much suspense
