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  • marsupilami - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    OT but the website is getting more and more of a pain to read with all the ads everywhere, and what worries me is that it' getting worse by the day. I know that you guys have no control over it but hopefully someone that does will read this and come to his senses...
  • rtho782 - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    This is why I no longer turn off adblock even for sites I like.
  • shabby - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    Ads? What are those!
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    The feedback is always appreciated. In the meantime, we haven't had any major ad changes in the last couple of months. Was there something in particular that was bothering you?
  • marsupilami - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    Maybe it's because of the proxy we use at work (not sure, I didn't set it up) but the giant banner on top and video ads in particular seem new to me.

    Anyway, have to agree with rtho782 on this one, it might be time to turn adblock back on.
  • Ariknowsbest - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    On mobile the ads a fine. From the web section on the other hand don't ad any value.
  • Dahak - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    Yea, I am getting the similar thing. Getting the video ad at the top and bottom of the page and then just above the comments section a big ad that is about the the same size as the article with "From the Web" 3x3 grid
  • shabby - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    I just disabled my adblocker and the fake news ads are the worst, the video ones too, the rest of the ads are acceptable but the video/fake news ones have to go.
  • Dr. Swag - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    The from the web ads are just annoying, though I know you guys already know that. What really bothers me is that on my desktop and laptop if I open anandtech without adblock and wait a minute or so, scrolling stutters horribly. It's so bad that I've been forced to turn on adblock to keep this from happening. Doesn't happen on mobile though.

    Also anandtech uses like 600 mb of ram when I'm on the home page, which is kind of insane for a web page.
  • Sivar - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    I have the same experience. I turn off adblock every so often because I want to support my favorite hardware review site, but even my 6-core i7 with 32GB of RAM and a gaming card stutters horribly, often freezing for seconds at a time, as I try to load and then scroll the site.
  • Dr. Swag - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    Yeah I have a 6700k+16gb ram (usually less than 30% usage) and a GTX 970, so DEFINITELY not an issue with my pc.
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    Might be good to mention OS, browser, what add-ons, and what version. Software impacts performance quite a bit. On current non-Insider Edge the site seems OK even on a lowly 860K. It's definitely faster with the ads blocked but it's decent enough with Adblocker disabled, so I leave it off to support them. Tom's Hardware is a bit worse but even that is good enough to navigate so once again I disable Adblocker to support them.

    Performance aside, it DOES chew up a lot of RAM with the ads on, almost 800MB with three AnandTech articles open at once. But I don't leave my browser running while gaming and I've got 16GB of RAM so in the scheme of things... not an issue. If I was using a tablet or compact laptop with limited RAM I would absolutely run Adblocker 24/7.
  • mukiex - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    Hey Ryan. I can't speak for everyone, but for me:

    1. On my desktop (i7 6700K + GTX 1080) I haven't had too many problems.
    2. On my laptop (Late 2015 15" Macbook, i7 + Radeon m380x?) scrolling down on articles became so ridiculously inconsistent (and my chip temperatures while using the site got so high) that I eventually just disabled javascript site-wide. This was probably months ago, however, so I don't know if the adcode causing it is still present.
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    Very unspecific, but i'm trying to disable Adblock here every few months. But mostly the site feels just too sluggish and loads annoyingly slow, so eventually I block again. Using an i7 3770 and i3 6100, with Win 8.1 and 10 with Firefox (whatever's current).
  • rscsr90 - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    I don't mind most ads, but on Anandtech, when I don't block the ads I usually get forwarded to dubious sites. And usually the performance is awful with ads enabled. And every couple of seconds something gets transfered to and from adap.tv and couple other pages. So at this point it feels dangerous to not to block ads on Anandtech.
  • TeaMat - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    On mobile (iOS) I have occasionally had issues where ads auto play (I think), which causes my music to pause. No sound comes from these ads, but there is audio auto playing which pauses my music. Annoying, but it should also be fixed by iOS 11 blocking auto play.

    I've also had issues where some stupid "you've won <something>!!" alerts pop up and you get redirected to another page if you hit okay (only seen this on iOS). It's so bad that you have to completely close that tab to get rid of it (used to have to kill safari when JavaScript alerts opened a system level alert).
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    "I've also had issues where some stupid "you've won <something>!!" alerts pop up and you get redirected to another page if you hit okay (only seen this on iOS). It's so bad that you have to completely close that tab to get rid of it (used to have to kill safari when JavaScript alerts opened a system level alert). "

    That one in particular is outright malicious, and it means one of our ad suppliers is being lazy and feeding us junk. If you can reproduce it, please drop me a line. If we can find the ad network that served it to us, we can block them.
  • icrf - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    I've always run a middle ground. I don't run Adblock, but I run Disconnect whose goal is just to disable tracking. A surprising number of ads refuse to load with it, and I've even been caught by some adblock detection routines, too.
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    When you sell your site to internet media groups, that's what happens, they still don't know how to make money off internet sites without annoying their viewers.

    ublock ftw.
  • mikegrok - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    For adds that make browsers go slow, just turn off flash.

    That way the adds that don't make the browsers slow and support the site still run.

    As a site benefit, that large single process security hole is not available to compromise your computer.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    I'm really curious what the max write numbers for these are going to be. Back in the 2d era we saw predictions as low as only a few dozen writes/cell. OTOH enterprise MLC had max write numbers much higher than consumer MLC, so there clearly was some room to push it (presumably at the cost of making it more expensive); and 3d NAND has much larger cell sizes and should be better than high density planar NAND.
  • bill.rookard - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    That's what I thought as well. I know that the physics involved with the tiny (sub 20nm) process made it difficult to keep a decent endurance, but the switch to 3D NAND allowed a large process (40nm) and still allow for higher capacities. And the larger process allowed for better endurance, so it was a win-win.

    Unless they've done something rather foolish and scaled the process BACK down into the sub 20nm process with the 3D NAND. I get it - capacity is important. But when a company can stuff 20TB into a 3.5" drive using MLC NAND, I don't see that as a problem. Heck, half the 512GB drives only utilize one side of a half-board inside a 2.5" drive.
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    They're not primarily pushing for finer chips to physically shrink them, but to reduce the cost per bit. with 3D NAND they ARE also pushing towards smaller cell sizes, as it helps again. But so far scaling the numbers of layers is cheaper, so they're focussing on that for now. But eventually the cells will get smaller again.

    Personally I think this is no problem. Enterprise has it under control (just pay more and get the high endurance stuff) whereas consumers generally don't need huge write endurance numbers. And endurance in terms of TBW or PBW scales with capacity. I.e. you can write more to a 4 TB TLC drive than to a 128 GB MLC drive (ballpark estimate), despite the lower endurance of each cell.
  • Rocket321 - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    I'm looking forward to a review of a consumer unit in the coming year to see if it can actually hold up to the rated endurance. I find it hard to believe it will last 1,000 P/E cycles.
  • Hurr Durr - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    So, another reason not to buy WD Green, okay.
  • name99 - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    I've been seeing these complaints about how THIS ROUND of flash has unacceptable rewrite capabilities since flash first became known to the public, in the early 2000s.
    I expect at some point it might even become true, but right now I'm rather more inclined to trust engineers who know something about error correction codes and the properties of their devices over J Random "I'm scared of change, any change, but I mask my fear as 'cautious concern'" Internet User.

    "OMG flash is about to fail" ranks up there with
    "I have no use for this faster WiFi standard" and
    "this new cellular standard means I can use up my data cap in 5 seconds" and
    "no replaceable battery/SD card/3.5" jack/DRAM/CD-ROM drive/floppy drive/printer port -- no buy"
    as rants that, believe me, no-one is interested in hearing.
  • Hurr Durr - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    Oh so typical. What makes you think anybody here is interested in another port reductionism worship sermon from a crapple zombie?
  • shabby - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    Buy i needs the printer port...
  • shabby - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    But
  • ZeDestructor - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    "this new cellular standard means I can use up my data cap in 5 seconds"

    To be fair, in places like Australia where there's both 1gbit LTE and <5GiB data caps on the same network, it's a valid point to make.
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    FINALLY, I can enjoy reading comments about the subject matter!

    I hate scrolling across the entire page to find ZERO comments about the subject at hand

    Nothing but worthless comments on advertising on that last page

    Now then,..........um.......what was the subject?
  • jasonelmore - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

    i don't read ads, i contribute to the website by giving everyone my knowledge in the comments! you guys really owe me! /s
  • edzieba - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    If the layer count remains the same, why does adding an additional bit per cell not result in a straight doubling in capacity per die? Do the cells themselves have to be physically larger to handle the finder differences in charge required, or are more cells dedicated to parity checking?
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    that's what happened with SLC to MLC flash. TLC to QLC is 3 bits/cell to 4 bits/cell; or 33% more capacity. It might be clearer if you work a tiny example. If you have 8 flash cells, with SLC you have 8 bits or 1 byte of capacity. MLC is 16 bits/2bytes or 100% more. TLC is 24bits/3bytes or 50% more. QLC is 32 bits/4 bytes for an additional 33%.

    That's the raw gain anyway, end user products will potentially have less due to using more of the die as spare area and potentially needing a more data intensive ECC mechanism.

    You might need a bit more control circuitry too; not sure on that but a countvailing factor is that a significant chunk of it is fixed in size to communicate with the controller chip which is why a chip half the capacity at a given process is more half the size of the bigger one. (This limits parallelism in lower end devices and is a major factor in why minimum SSD sizes grow with each new generation. A minimum of parallelism is needed for reasonable performance and the smallest commercially viable flash chip size keeps getting larger.)
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

    I'm all for QLC for a secondary drive. I wouldn't use it for important stuff, I've got my OS and games on an Evo... but for mass storage it's perfect. Even if it's not quite as reliable as a good TLC drive, it will still be far more reliable than the vast majority of mechanical drives (which I am currently using for mass storage).

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