Edward Snowdon reads a spec sheet
Wait, did the guy refuse to call AMD’s 9070 by its official name out of spite there at the end? Is this a weird tech The Onion thing?
AMD, as usual, misses an opportunity here. The 5xxx series is exactly Fermi again (they even removed hotspot data so reviewers would miss the throttling). AMD could leverage the nostalgia of one of ATI’s best gens and call the cards 9700 and 9700pro. Damn, those were the days. (since 4750 conflicts with current scheme)
Probably a mistake, considering the current generation follows the RX 7X00 naming pattern.
What type of news editor for a hardware review outlet gets that wrong? That’s as weird as the Snowden thing. If you have that job you’ve surely been joking about AMD’s shameful “we just want to use the same name as Nvidia” thing for ages by now. This thing is so surreal.
Kamoulox
So now we care what Edward Snowden says about vram? We need him to tell us that it should be 24 gigs?
That headline is so stupid that I refuse to read the article
An infamous former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower has unexpectedly shared his opinion on the state of the graphics card market.
Man who did big cool thing once also has opinions on unrelated thing, news at 11.
What is even this ?
Edward Snowden doing GPU reviews? This timeline is becoming weirder every day.
I’ll keep believing this is a theonion post
Legitimately thought this was a hard-drive.net post
I bet he just wants a card to self host models and not give companies his data, but the amount of vram is indeed ridiculous.
Exactly, I’m in the same situation now and the 8GB in those cheaper cards don’t even let you run a 13B model. I’m trying to research if I can run a 13B one on a 3060 with 12 GB.
I’m running deepseek-r1:14b on a 12GB rx6700. It just about fits in memory and is pretty fast.
You can. I’m running a 14B deepseek model on mine. It achieves 28 t/s.
You need a pretty large context window to fit all the reasoning, ollama forces 2048 by default and more uses more memory
I also have a 3060, can you detail which framework (sglang, ollama, etc) you are using and how you got that speed? i’m having trouble reaching that level of performance. Thx
Ollama, latest version. I have it setup with Open-WebUI (though that shouldn’t matter). The 14B is around 9GB, which easily fits in the 12GB.
I’m repeating the 28 t/s from memory, but even if I’m wrong it’s easily above 20.
Specifically, I’m running this model: https://ollama.com/library/deepseek-r1:14b-qwen-distill-q4_K_M
Thanks for the additional information, that helped me to decide to get the 3060 12G instead of the 4060 8G. They have almost the same price but from what I gather when it comes to my use cases the 3060 12G seems to fit better even though it is a generation older. The memory bus is wider and it has more VRAM. Both video editing and the smaller LLMs should be working well enough.
Ty. I’ll try ollama with the Q-4-M quantization. I wouldn’t expect to see a difference between ollama and SGlang.
Oh nice, that’s faster than I imagined.
Swear next he’s gonna review hentai games
“Some hentai games are good” -Edward Snowden
Note that this is from 2003
“Whistleblows” as if he’s some kind of NVIDIA insider.
Yeah that does seem a bit weird, my four year old RX 6800 has 16 GB VRAM already
Yes but that’s from a company that builds decent cards at an acceptable price, and not from the HypeLords of the Lesser Return on Investment Unless You’re a Farm.
(Getting ready for the downvotes!..)
How could Snowden get a hold of one of these in Russia? Maybe through an intermediary in Kazakhstan?
Then again it’s hard finding one here even in the US since they all went out of stock within 5 minutes of being listed.
According to russian over at r/hardware GPUs have become cheaper in Russia since the ban as they are now being smuggled instead of imported via Europe with all extra cost that implies.
That doesn’t make sense or I’m reading it wrong
Legal weed is more expensive sometimes
Smugglers take less money than government apparently
Shut the fuck up, Snowden.You had everyone behind you until you defected to Russia. There’s no free lunch and you had a lot of info Putin would like to have. Oddly enough things really started getting bad shortly therafter.
Think of it from Snowdens perspective. You get to choose: either be tortured for the rest of your life, or chill in Russia and pretend Putin is a nice guy. I know what I’d pick.
He is not simply pretending Putin is a nice guy, he is clearly collaborating with russian security services. Just look at his comments on internal US politics. And he also was spreading misinformation that russia wasn’t going to invade Ukraine in Feb 2022.
He might be a hero for many, but if you’re Ukrainian (like I am), he is clearly a piece of shit.
I totally get it, I live next to that big pain in the ass as well. Luckily, he hasn’t invaded us yet, but I feel it’s only a matter of time. And what Snowden does here certainly doesn’t help.
But he could have just done nothing and lived a very happy life. Instead, he chose to give up his happy life to uncover the NSA scandal, knowing full well that it will absolutely wreck his life.
Personally, I think he did enough for the greater good there. This isn’t his war, and if he has to post some lies to get a bit of normalcy back in his life, I can understand that. I wish it wasn’t that way, but I can understand it.
The issue is that he is supporting russian genocidal imperialism. His messaging clearly aligns with russian propaganda goals.
Is it not reasonable for me to consider him my enemy (he directly supports doing harm to me, my family and my fellow citizens)?
As far I am concerned, I hope Snowden and his family will one day be on the recieving end of russian brutality.
I don’t buy the logic of “he did one good thing, so it’s fine for him to promote russian genocidal imperialism”.
If he can’t stay consistent, he should have never got involved in the NSA issue in the first place.
He clearly enjoys the attention (just look at this post). He could have simply shut up and not worked with russian security services (the russians wouldn’t kill him, they need him alive).
His messaging clearly aligns with russian propaganda goals.
Well yeah, he’s in Russia. What’s he supposed to do?
He did one good thing. Now he’s in Russia, so ignore pretty much anything he days says that could in some way benefit Russia.
Why do they need him alive? Any information he has is a decade old at this point. He’s only useful to them alive while he has a platform.
Russia killing him is probably the only thing worse than them having him in the eyes of the USA.
Only we get to persecute/prosecute our own, its a mindset most sovereign nations have fwiw.
No, he had a choice to keep quiet, but instead he chose to support russian genocidal imperialism. That makes him a bad person.
He is a PR win for russia, they are not going to harm him as that would undermine their interests.
Were you there? Were you privy to the circumstances? It could very well be the case that he was threatened. We don’t know, I just think it’s super sus that he started spewing pro-Russia nonsense only after his importance uncovering US govt documents was waning.
I think it’s highly likely he was pressured to make those statements.
He did the wrong thing for the right reasons and hasn’t made many right choices since.
He really ought never have been a hero.
Still it’s 100.0% USAs decisions that pushed him to Russia, it’s not like he went there immediately (2013), he was on the run and in shitty conditions for years before he finally had enough and went to Russia (2022).
USA still wanted to disappear (torture) him, not even allowing him to stay in other NATO or non-NATO countries.
A USA hero is safer in Russia, and Putin had nothing to do with setting that situation up (safe for not deporting him to USA ofc, which otc lol).
Snowden took a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow on June 23, 2013, and he’s been in Russia ever since. Don’t know who told you he went to Russia in '22, he’s been there for a long time.
And how does this justify Snowden promoting russian genocidal imperialism in Ukraine?
He did a good thing, so now he is an untouchable saint?
I’m guessing that was a deal Russia made with him, he gets to live as long as he’s useful to Russia.
I don’t think anyone is calling him a saint. He’s a whistleblower whose best option was to defect to Russia, after a period of trying not to do that.
Treating him as a saint; because he revealed the NSA stuff, all his subsequent actions are justified and he should not be subject to criticism.
This is an extremely common view in some part of the English speaking internet.
I reject this approach. As far as I am concerned, I hope him and his family get to experience what they the wish upon Ukrainians in the occupied territories (getting sent to to a torture camp for speaking Ukrainian).
I hope him and his family get to experience what they the wish upon Ukrainians
Ah yes, an eye for an eye, certainly the way to advance humanity.
all his subsequent actions are justified
You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m saying his actions are understandable. He has no chance of returning to the US, his only real chance at a somewhat normal life is playing into Russia’s hand.
Whether someone thinks those actions are justified is an opinion. I’m merely stating the most likely explanation for his actions.
As far as I’m concerned, his usefulness to Americans concerned about government spying ended as soon as he exposed internal NSA docs. Everything else is merely him trying to survive. Make of that what you will.
things really started getting bad shortly therafter
Things started getting bad waaaaay earlier than that.
He was being chasen by the US government, and Assange proved that being in an US allied country will still get your arrested/tortured. What other options did Snowden had other than escaping to Russia?
IMO don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Yeah, I thought the same thing too at the time and that’s why I wrote it off. But the problem is that knowing how Putin is and what he does, what makes you think that he would let Snowden stay there in Russia without demanding any of that information as payment?
And if Snowden was so hard up for places to go that he had to go to Russia to escape extradition to the US what position would he be in to even say no if Russia demanded it?
Think about it. If someone came to the US to escape persecution in Russia for whistleblowing, you can damn well believe the US gov’t would demand info. They brought all those Nazi rocket scientists over to work rather than sending them to prison because of the knowledge they posssesed. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
without demanding any of that information as payment?
Can Putin not read The Intercept?
Does Putin even need to?
Snowden deleted all traces of that stash once he delivered it to the reporters. He’s in Russia 'cos it’s a way for Putin to annoy the US.
You’d fit squarely as the village idiot in a 1984 sub plot.
Is that the reply you meant to write? Why don’t you try again, but think first.
Snowden goes to Russia and there’s no way Putin is letting him stay there without demanding that information.
If the shoe is on the other foot, the US would do the exact same. They brought Nazi rocket scientists over after WW2 and had them continue their work rether than putting them in jail to rot.
The video card monopoly (but also other manufacturers) have been limiting functionality for a long time. It started with them restricting vGPU to enterprise garbage products, which allows Linux users to virtualize their GPU for things like playing games with near-native speeds using Windows on Linux. This is one of the big reasons Windows still has such a large marketshare as the main desktop OS.
Now they want to restrict people running AI locally so that they get stuck with crap like Copilot-enabled PCs or whatever dumb names they want to come up. These actions are intentional. It is anti-consumer & anti-trust, but don’t expect our government to care or do anything about it.
So to put the likelihood of this in perspective, let me just repeat it to see if I understand the claim.
You’re saying that one of the big reasons of Windows’ market share is how artificially inefficient it is to install Linux, spin up a Virtual Machine, run Windows inside THAT and then run a game?
That’s the mainstream use case that is propping up Windows adoption in this scenario?
The main thing propping up Windows as the main OS (meaning it is running at the root layer) is exclusive hardware GPU support which is used for gaming & many apps. Otherwise, automating running Windows apps & Windows on Linux would have become much more mainstream.
This is demonstrably wrong on a scale where it loops around to becoming hard to explain, so that’s a neat trick.
There are enough people who have never heard of or don’t understand the concept of virtual machines to keep Windows as the biggest mainstream OS several times over. There isn’t a “root layer” in computers as far as normal humans are concerned. They’re computers and then a Windows pops up and that’s how that works.
At the very most, they understand conversion layers on the basis of having gone from an old Macbook to a new Macbook, and even that is like a tenth of the market (still several times bigger than Linux adoption, though).
The idea that a mass of people are waiting on the sidelines, chomping at the bit for direct GPU access through an extra layer of software fine tuning to be able to run some brand name Windows app with no Linux version is absurd. Even games are not the problem, as evidenced by that being mostly solved via Proton and not changing much.
I don’t mind either way, but man, consider what other assumptions you may be making that are wildly off, particularly if they’re on something more important than your hopes for relative OS market share on home computers.
You know what is wrong, is that you come along & talk about how no one wants to use virtual machines because it is difficult. I just got done saying someone would have automated the process. You act like no one would have the choice but for it to be cumbersome & difficult. That is called a tiny brain thought process…
They can’t do it right now cause vGPU is not supported on almost all consumer cards. There is absolutely a “root” layer BTW, in this case it would be the Linux kernel. It is far more technical than computers & then Windows “pops up.” Seriously, it is obvious you have no clue what you’re talking about, yet you’re here spewing false information, for what purpose?
People are waiting on the sidelines for a better OS, where they can feel less invaded by Windows bloat & invasiveness but where they can still play their games & run their Windows apps, which Wine doesn’t support everything. Thinks like Adobe products or Office solutions, a lot of users rely on these for work. Proton doesn’t solve everything. I appreciate optimism, but then there is also the real world.
Consider your assumptions, that you believe developers are so dumb that if users could use virtual GPUs on consumer cards, that developers wouldn’t be able to automate a solution that makes it simple.
Was this written by AI? The headline word salad contains all the buzzwords.
Whistleblows on poor performance is actually insane lol
Edward Snowden PILEDRIVES the Nvidia RTX 50 series into a crowded bitcoin farm
“Trash fuckin cuck card kys”
Don’t that distract you from that fact that in 2025 Edward Snowden threw Nvidia’s RTX 50 series off Hell In A Cell and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.
Snowden added, “As someone who wants to sweep away corruption, there’s a lot to like in the new ShamWow. And for those really tough, dirty stains, there’s OXYCLEAN!!! With ShamWow and Oxyclean, you don’t need to be Rushin’!”
He’s not wrong
