The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Finding and posting a picture isn't easy while travelling, I'll post one later

 

hahaha - yeah, that's fine. Sorry Sam, I was more thinking - maybe you would post a picture of your own laptop, with your cell phone camera. Nothing fancy.

So you're out and about on the trains again?

By the way, I did the fonts transfer just now and hopefully my xp outlook express will behave.

Installing fonts into xp is wayyy easier than vice versa. I browsed to the windows 7 partition, there were 597 fonts in there, and it got about 80 or so - I just kept hitting enter meaning "No don't delete the identical font that I already have" as it slowly progressed through all those w7 fonts, installing the ones that I didn't have.

Now my font folder on xp has 635 fonts in it. I don't know why xp has 38 more fonts than windows 7, but it's not fun to go in the other direction - I think I have to copy and paste them all, and then basically it's the same after that.

But if that fixes those pesky "Do you want to download the fonts - usually it's okay" that sometimes crashes my Outlooks Express - then I did a good thing just now.


As opposed to a frustrating day yesterday trying to create a raid mirror. That vantec card didn't work. My compaq dc5800 is 3-4 times faster than my p4, but the bios is pure crap - pardon my french.

I could see the hdds attached to the little sil3132 raid card, boot to either one of them, but when I put two empty ones together to make a raid volume - then I could not even get into setup much less boot to windows. Fortunately I made a full clone of the drive before messing around.

I RMA'd the card back to newegg, and wrote a lukewarm 3-egg review - it's mostly the fault of my bios, but they had some unfriendly things, compared to intel matrix manager soft raid - like not letting you delete the raid metadata that was written on a drive, without doing a low-level formal that destroyed all data on the drive. Intel lets you turn a raid drive into a non-raid drive - they go in and delete the metadata they just wrote - not this sil3132.

 

Does this make sense?


As for RAID, doing it on an Si3132 is brave. The support for those cheap cards is practically non-existent.

 

Yes, I can afford the rent. My take home averages over $1000 a month, my rent is $480, and my electric shouldn't be more than 20 - $30. Trust me lol And my place of work is only 5 miles away. My gasoline shouldn't cost more than $50 a month. I've factored it all. So as long as my whiskey bill doesn't go up, I can live on Ramen noodles and make it just fine LOL! Just joking, I'm eating better than that!

Well, I've only been moved in a week, so haven't been gaming much. Some Nintendo 64 emulation (ocarina of time), and angry birds since yesterday. But I suspect I'm ready to play some GTA V again

My internet speed of 8MB translates to roughly 800kB/s. 5MB translates to roughly 500kB/s. 56K dialup translates to ~5kB/s. I once read about why speeds are 1/10th of the advertised. But I forget. Perhaps something to do with binary language...

 

They aren't a tenth of advertised. They're advertised in bits per second, and you're writing bytes. 8 bits to a byte.

In practice the MB/s tends to be around 1/9 of the quoted Mbps due to the transmission protocols.
Always remember, megabytes = capital B, megabits = lower case.

When dealing with interfaces (bus speeds, networks etc.) bits are used. When dealing with files, bytes are used.

 

Good explanation. Appreciate that!

 

There are a fair few links in the chain which can slow things down. My connection is billed as 'up to 80/20' Mbps. Since it uses VDSL technology from the local street cabinet to where I live and I am a fair distance from the cabinet (maybe 400 metres or so) I am able to attain sync around 67Mbps downstream and the full 20Mbps upstream. In raw terms those sync rates would provide 8375KB/s down and 2500KB/s up. In practice due to the way the data is actually carried, it's really about 8150KB/s and 2175KB/s. However, you may not find websites some distance away are able to achieve anything like those speeds. There's always the possibility of congestion at the local side with the ISP, but even if all is well, the equipment that carries data across the atlantic to the US is busy and ultimately many connections to US sites can end up at 1MB/s or less, of the possible 8.

 

Figured I'd give Chrome a try seeing as it's been a few years since I took a serious look at it. After a solid month of usage I can honestly say either Firefox has been streamlined a lot or Chrome has become bloated. I really didn't notice a performance difference and it uses just as much memory if not more. Functionality-wise Chrome has caught up an awful lot. It supports more plugins with a better level of integration. I was able to customize it to my general tastes, which I couldn't do in 2012 or 2013. It has proven a solid browser, but Firefox has caught up and closed the performance margin.

Stability-wise both are interesting. When Firefox fills its 32-bit address space, it simply fails to load pages. Chrome affects the whole PC. I commonly have 3 or 4 windows with about 30 or 40 tabs open in each and Firefox simply seems to handle it better for me. Both browsers develop memory leaks at that level of saturation.

I have switched back to Firefox for now. For my personal needs, the user interface is a lot more powerful. Have given thought to one of the few 64-bit distros of Firefox such as WaterFox, and they seem to keep pace with updates pretty well so extensions and plugins support should be okay. I only use a few essentials.

Also this motherboard is fantastic. The last board I've had anywhere near this caliber is the good old X38-DS4 itself. I'm never buying anything but the very best from now on. Better to have outdated hardware with the finest quality and features than new hardware with the bare essentials. This PC is the best I've ever had relative to when I put it together. Only the 8800GTX on the 2407WFP gave such an awesome first impression.

 

Why in the world would you need so many web pages/windows/tabs open simultaneously? LOL!

 

I do the same, but can often exceed 40. I prefer Chrome's interface to Firefox generally, the add on support isn't as good but it's still usually sufficient for me. I'd say it's pretty common knowledge that chrome eats memory but on a PC with enough I haven't noticed any issues. When working with large tab sets (e.g. 80+) having 12GB RAM means that even with chrome using several gigabytes, it makes absolutely no difference to PC performance until the machine starts paging out. On a more modern system where 16 is pretty much the standard, you'd be hard pressed to ever get chrome to cause any issues from memory usage alone. Generally speaking I find chrome quite reliable and poor reliability is what caused me to migrate from Firefox to chrome in the first place.

 

Chrome develops memory leaks with large amounts of tabs open, especially those with flash content. It flogs the paging file constantly sometimes, requiring a reboot because the PC is literally too unresponsive to navigate task manager and close the offending process. I have seen all of my RAM used several times with Chrome. Firefox has proven a bit more stable in that regard. Memory leaks, but only until the address space is full, then only Firefox crashes. I have a hunch that a 64 bit Mozilla distro might reduce or eliminate that issue.

Of course, this is more likely pointing to an issue with Flash, of which there are many. But regardless, Firefox handles it better. Firefox has taken giant leaps in stability since the dark days of 3.5. Its current form is very polished and continues to improve. Chrome no longer holds a huge advantage in that regard, if any.

Why would I need that many tabs open? Game modding. I use the internet as a resource, and routinely pass 40 tabs in a single window, all actively needed for the project at hand. I leave them open for days at a time as well, which exacerbates any present issues.

Interface is a bit more personal, but I will mention that the simple inclusion of a menu bar makes Firefox absolutely superior for me. Like no comparison at all.

All that being said I'm going to give Waterfox an honest try and see how it fares. It's supposed to be a totally updated Firefox distro only configured and compiled for 64 bit. Custom distros usually lag behind a bit on updates or add-on support though. Currently Waterfox straight up detects my plugins, bookmarks, other settings and simply migrates my Firefox stuff directly from the settings files. No import dialog either. Just start it the first time and everything is immediately present.

My last foray with a custom distro was Chromium Comodo Dragon, which was solid but at the time had even worse support than Chrome. Comodo basically makes one of the more competent free PC security suites out there. They aren't a bad company.

 

Can't remember the last time I ever had a PC go fully unresponsive due to memory. I don't think I've seen it since owning an SSD to be honest, and that's even when more than doubling the memory capacity in commit (e.g. trying to call 19GB on an 8GB machine)...

 

Wow, you browser techies!!!! Forty plus tabs open for Jeff - days at a time on a modding project - up to 80 for Sam trying to test the limits of page in page out. I'm with Kevin - "TURN OFF YOUR MACHINE ONCE IN A WHILE" - just kidding.


I have a relative - the sister of the Valve animator - who keeps an enormous - I call it "Ignormous" amount of tabs open at all times, or used to, when she had a big following on etsy. "Why is my computer running slow?" - and this was on her i3 pentium 2-core all-in-one gateway 1080p machine. She has "only" 4 gigs of Ram, so she doesn't have the big 16 gig cushion that Sam has.

I switched over to chrome when internet explorer was hogging my cpu load on one of my weak p4 machines, but I have noticed the huge amount of memory per tab - like what - 30-50 MB? So it trades memory for speed. I never really gave firefox much of a chance, but after your endorsement, Jeff, I'll have to be more open in considering it.

I distrust free products, and with all the money I spent on chrome - wait a second. Never mind.


THANKS FOR THE PICTURE SAM.

I totally see what you mean. So your little gizmo is on the left with tiny touchscreen monitor and keyboard - and you have the nice big keyboard, mouse, and what - 24" screen set up on your desktop? Is that a cell phone shot, or something from the internet - it's a good shot and I imagine it's your own setup - is that correct?



A CHICKEN A DAY...
Ramen noodles are nothing to sneer at Kevin. I'm eating very simply these days, and healthier for it - basically a piece of chicken in the morning for my protein - a chicken thigh - I buy enough for 180 pieces when it's on sale at 99 cents per pound, cook it all at once in 7 hours with two toaster ovens, freeze it, then microwave a piece each morning - about 50 cents for the chicken. I eat a bowl of rice and a bowl of steamed frozen vegetables each evening. The rice lasts for a week in a big plastic bowl sitting in the fridge on ice! I would guess the chicken is about 50 cents - the frozen vegetables are $5 for 5 pounds, and it lasts about 8 bowls - so that's 65 cents or so. Add to that some vitamin C, some greens - 50 cents a day - frs juice diluted down - about $1.30 a day - I think I'm eating on $5 a day.

In between there is Trader Joe's plain corn tortilla chips, 2 pounds for $3 - beats anything at Costco in my opinion, maybe some fruit here and there - and Costco Monterey Jack cheese which I take in thin slices on Triscuits from Big Lots - $2 per box - as good as candy - oh, and Trader Joe raisins at $3/pound - just a handful here and there - again like candy. Oh, and Trader Joe chocolate chips - just the chips - about $2 a bag - okay - that REALLY IS CANDY - but just a few chips once in a while, maybe with raisins. (Yum!)

With $520 a month needing to cover utilities, you need to factor, besides gasoline, also car maintenance, $25/mo, fees $10/mo, insurance, $30/mo., clothes, $15/month, toiletries $15/mo, whiskey $30/month (is that Jack Daniels? - or maybe get off the whisky and try FRS). It's undoubtedly a tight budget, but the best things in life are free, like peace and quiet, privacy, sunshine, rain, beautiful scenery, and spraying zombies with AK assault rifle fire - watching their little heads explode in a colorful burst of red.

(You can thank my close relative - lol.)


HELP!!

DO ANY OF YOU GUYS KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT DISK IMAGING AND RECOVERY?


Cloning is so much simpler. Here's my big dilemma:

I dirtied up my main 1 TB (with a solid week's worth of effort on it, with two O/S's, plus xp mode - but I can recover the xp mode by copying over the 50 gig virtual drive) in trying to use that sil3132 to create a raid volume. That sil3132, as you said, Sam - is garbaaaaaage (well you didn't say it, but I am.) Soft raid with intel matrix manager is so much better - but my no-name northbridge doesn't use the intel support chips.

So, as I say, I got some sil3132 raid metadata put on my drive, and now my other sil3132 power over esata card, with the exact same sub-bios, will not let me see the drive, other than during post in the sil3132 sub-bios, because it considers it part of a raid set. The drive won't come into windows, and doesn't appear on the bootup menu. When I put a different drive on the esata, it appears in the bootup options, and it comes into windows. So if I could get rid of that metadata .......


I COULD get rid of the metadata through a low-level format, but that would erase all my data. The sil3132 does not have what the intel Matrix manager DOES have - a bios submenu option to "convert raid disk to non-raid disk" which means deleting the metadata. I was shocked and deeply offended to see that option missing!!!!

The problem the metadata is causing me, is that I have discovered that even with this primitive bios, I actually COULD connect through my other sil3132 power-over- esata card that I have had for a long time (the new Vantec sil3132 raid card with two internal sata ports got an RMA - this other has two esata ports, including power-over-esata, but it's built on the same 3132 chip with the same bios sub-menu.)

I could connect and I could boot from it - (my bios wants on-board sata to be on port one - but it will boot to SCSI sata - meaning an hdd on the sil3132 esata card) - IF I didn't have the metadata. The advantage would be that I would not have to keep taking the side cover off my PC to verify that I have made a good, bootable and clonable clone.


I cloned my one and only main drive, hoping the metadata wouldn't be there, but of course it is there - it's a perfect clone!

So am I destined to live with this metadata FOREVER??????

No way is it important enough to run a low-level format and delete the entire drive.

So that's where, hopefully, disk imaging comes in - copying an image of the XP partition and another of the Windows 7 partition. I am a total newbie, knowing nothing about it.

I want to put those two partitions on a third 1 TB drive, and have a bootable disk, minus the metadata.

Can I do it?

I am doing a lot of reading - but if you guys know a bit about this stuff - don't be shy!



A RAID ALTERNATIVE?
Alternatively, since you know, Sam, that sil3132 is crap, what would you suggest as a bonafide raid card, even hardware raid, using pci-e 1x, let's say for under $200, that might put together a raid that a compaq DC5800 simple-minded ide bios might be willing to post with? It will post with drives on the sil3132 card, the one I sent or the one I already had, but when I created a raid volume, it would not post. I couldn't even get into bios setup.


For reliability, I totally believe in Raid 1 mirroring, as the best backup of all - real-time backup every second - for maximum peace of mind. Then clone the volume once a month.


There was an adaptec card at newegg, $177 - but one of the reviews said "No xp drivers are available." It must be able to run xp.


I could do more of a google search for one.


Should I even bother to try the cheap Newegg rocket raids with the Marvell chip? It's very unlikely that my bios would tolerate any of them.


But a hardware raid card that didn't even allow my bios to notice individual drives once the volume was built - would that work? Well, with sil3132 the answer was no. But that wasn't hardware raid.


Or should I just forget about raid, learn to use the Acronis backup software, perform regular incremental backups to my on-board second 1 TB enterprise, and then clone the thing once a month to the third enterprise? (And take the side cover off when I do, to test the clone, and forget about the dirty metadata.)


Maybe that's my only real option until I get a grown-up non-gaming computer one day. This compaq 6 gig core 2 duo E7300 dual core microtower, is not much more than a toy with a crappy bios ....


.................. but it's a fast toy! Very fast!

 

I'm not really sure I fully understand what's happened from that post, but here are a few points:

1 - some RAID 1 mirrors allow you to separate the disks, plug one into a non-raid controller (e.g. a USB dock or your motherboard's normal disk controller) and read all the data anyway.

2 - always check diskmgmt.msc for your disks, don't rely on them showing in my computer

3 - are you not virtualising XP? If you are, you don't need XP drivers for the raid controller, as it'll be using a 'guest' partition, e.g. VMDK or VHD file sitting on the (presumably windows 7) host machine.

4 - why are you even using raid in the first place exactly? Rule 1 of RAID - 'RAID is not a backup'


Yes the photo is from my phone taken in the office (nexus 5). The monitor is a 23".

 

That is a nice cell phone picture - thanks again for posting it. You have a pleasant setup there from what I can tell - I like the frosted glass window, privacy and light!


As far as Raid 1 not being the same as backup - I guess I see what you mean, as Raid 1 only protects you from disk failure, not from data corruption.

So ...... which of these 2 systems do you like better?

1. second drive in machine used for daily incremental data backup, with full clone to 3rd drive once a month

2. second drive in machine as part of Raid 1 mirror, with clone to 3rd drive once a month.​

QUICK SUMMARY OF LAST POST
I am running a straight xp partition, as well as a windows 7 partition, with a virtual xp within windows 7. The reason for the straight xp partition - speed - and as yet unforeseen advantages of not working through the virtual environment. That's why I need xp drivers for that adaptec $177 card. I kind of figured the virtual xp wouldn't mind - but thanks for confirming that.

The virtual only gives me a one-core machine, and I have allocated 3 gigs of memory to it. The straight xp gives me a two-core machine, with 4 gigs (of the 6 installed).

I am not quite ready to rely on the virtual xp to fill all my needs - so far it seems pretty good, almost perfect. But again, one core only, and smaller screen size (although I could run it full-screen - but I haven't done that so far.)

Remember, this was the machine I thought I might run xp-only, but you guys convinced me that I should not consider windows 7 as something I use ONLY for gaming - that I should get more involved with it for business use - it could prove to be important as more applications move away from defunct XP (like that $177 adaptec raid card.)

So - two partitions, xp and windows 7.


TODAY'S CHALLENGE
Now how do I use disk imaging (Acronis 2014 or Acronis 2009) to copy/backup each of those partitions, put both of them on a third clean wiped drive that does not have the sil3132 raid metadata, making sure that 3rd drive is bootable?

(Advantage: I could see the drive on the sil3132 esata card - I sent back the sil3132 raid card.)

Today's assignment for myself is to read GroverH's tutorials in the acronis forum and see if I can figure this out.

 

Ideally neither, if you're backing up to a second disk, it should really be off site to protect against environment failure (e.gg. flooding / fire) or theft, but failing that it should at least be in a separate hardware device. All it would take is for the PSU in that PC to go bang and both disks would be toast.

As for virtual XP, there are applications to assign multiple cores to XP with, I'm struggling to envisage what you're still using XP for that actually requires a lot of processing power. Furthermore, I might add that current CPUs are more than twice as powerful per-core as the cpu you're using, so having even inexpensive dual core but up to date hardware would solve this issue I imagine.

I'm not an acronis expert but it should be fairly self explanatory if you're just looking at cloning a disk to another. Alternatively have you looked at clonezilla?

 

Hmmmm, well, in case of that kind of power failure - you're right - both mirrored hard drives up in smoke. However, barring that - since I do clone to a third drive which is kept somewhere else, I like a mirror in that it does protect against disk failure. But it does not protect against file corruption - which I suppose is where data backup would come in. I never had much interest in it, but in studying acronis backup, I am now slightly familiar, and I may do the incremental backup approach, and a clone once a month.

After all - I paid good money for enterprise drives rated at 55 degrees, so they can take the heat in this trailer, and I assume they are more reliable - supposed to be.

Regarding twice as fast - well - a relative with an i3 dual core re-branded pentium, gets 450 on the speed test, while I get 380 on native xp on the speed test, or 365 on windows 7. Her computer is not the very latest processor - it's already 2-3 years old, and it's about 35% faster as you can see.

But it's not speed, this thing is fast compared to my one core p4 at 202 frames per second. So 380 X 2 cores /202, is nearly 4 times faster than what I had. As an example, I can print from the web to an xp application called paperport. If I print 10 pages, I sit and wait while it processes, then if I printed in landscape, I have to rotate the pages to be vertical, and I sit and wait for that, at the old rate of about 6 seconds per page. So the whole process might take a long twiddle your thumbs 2 full minutes for 10 pages, where this dual-core processor does it all - print and rotate - in a relatively swift 25 seconds.

You are so used to the blinding speed of your ssd, that you forget how slow the p4s used to be. Did you ever even own a p4? hahahahaha

==========================================
​

Anyway - I have good news - it worked!

I booted through their recovery CD as the guide said to do, and then I used the Add disk feature to add my wiped drive that was ready to receive the two disk images of my two partitions. Using the add feature - which they recommend to wipe the drive (but I had already wiped it through disk management) there was a button "Add MBR." So I added the master boot record through that button.

Then when I went through and placed the two partitions on the empty drive, instead of having 3 items including the old MBR, I left off the old MBR, so I only had two items. I figured that if the metadata were anywhere in my disk images, it would most likely be in the MBR image, certainly not in the XP or W7 partition images. And since the Add Disk feature had already allowed me to place an MBR on the drive, I thought it was already assured to be bootable - so I didn't need my old MBR - at least that is what I was hoping.

And I have good news as I said! Success!!

It worked - booted right up to the recovered drive - and then I put the recovered drive on the power over esata cable, and I was able to boot to that meaning that the metadata is gone - in fact I checked it in the sil3132 sub-bios, and it is not a raid drive - so yes I was able to boot to it.

I am typing this on it right now.

I recovered to a non-enterprise drive, a clone backup of the i7 that is in the sunroom, so tomorrow I'll clone back to one of the enterprise drives, and remake the sunroom clone.


BUT I HAVE GOTTEN RID OF THE METADATA!

DISK IMAGING - MORE VERSATILE THAN CLONING!
This is the very first time in my life that I ever worked with disk imaging, and I see that it can be handy. They say that it offers more options and more flexibility than cloning, and I see that is very true.

In my case I got rid of metadata in the MBR, but if I had known about disk imaging, when I wanted to create the one drive with xp and windows7 in two different partitions - I already had the two partitions, but on two different drives. I cloned the xp over, then completely rebuilt the windows 7, installing all the programs and printers again. (I didn't have to rebuild the xp mode - I just had to install it, then take my 45 gig virtual hard drive and copy that file over.)

But with disk imaging, I could have imaged the w7, imaged the xp, then recovered the two images to one disk. That would have saved me about two days worth of rebuilding time. I had the tools already, two different versions of acronis, acronis true image 2014, and acronis true image 2009.

And here's another example.

In switching to this fast little dual core computer, rather than starting from scratch, there is a wizard allowing you to recover to new hardware - you use recovery partitions from your prior computer, in my case the P4 that animated Left 4 dead - and then in their wizard you can add drivers at various points for the new motherboard. There is probably some cleanup, but that would have been so much easier than what I did - start from scratch.

So this little pain in the butt project opened me up to a whole world of disk imaging possibilities that I never knew about.

Thanks sil3132 for infecting me with your crap raid metadata - it worked out okay.

 

ACRONIS - GOOD PRODUCT -- IF YOU FOLLOW THE USER GUIDES
Sorry for the double - but I wanted to mention. There are a lot of haters in the Acronis forums. But when you read GroverH's tutorials on how to do stuff, or you read Tuttle talking about it - you see that there is a way to make the program behave.

I resisted the idea of using rescue media - and they preface their advice with: "It is strongly suggested...." Strongly suggested, my ass, if you don't do it that way, it just plain will not work!


You have to follow this simple set of rules:

While you will use windows to create your backup
Use the rescue disk to do your recovery.​

Unbelievable but true, the product doesn't really work in windows. I am not talking about cloning which is straight-forward, and which DOES work as it is supposed to.

I am talking about recovery - the more sophisticated and elegant use of the product. You simply have to drop all resistance, and burn the CD (or create a boot usb thumbdrive.)


I tried to do the recovery the way the program tells you to do it, following the "recovery" link, and it told me "cannot recover the selected disk."

What? Why not? What's wrong with the disk that you cannot recover it?

When I googled cannot recover the selected disk, I came upon the forums. They "strongly suggested" that I create a rescue disk " As Tuttle and Grover say, if you haven't done so yet, do that now."

When you boot to the rescue media then the environment behaves properly, and you can do magical things - things that would have saved me ENORMOUS amounts of time over the last two weeks if I had known about them.

I certainly appreciate the frustration of people who think the software should work properly, but these guys, especially GroverH, have written brilliant guides that are easy to follow. So we really need to drop our attitudes about - "this is how it SHOULD work" and just follow the user guides.

Sam, that's like you and Jeff. With the help of guys like you, on forums like AfterDawn or the Acronis forum, everything becomes much more manageable.

 

Never owned a P4, but I did have a 450mhz P3 with a 5400rpm hard disk, and an Athlon XP that followed it. They were however retired in 2004 and 2006 respectively. (Let's not get into yet another old hardware contest )

Venture, the desktop that was built into my old fileserver chassis in the NZXT Whisper using the E5200, X1600 Pro and old X38 board (basically spare bits) has not survived the year's storage. The 3008WFP thankfully has, though since my boss insists on trying to run it at 100% brightness being used to glossy LED panels, the backlight still occasionally overheats (design flaw, they all did that from new). Will take a look at what happened to the PC at some point when I get time, to see if I can salvage any from it, but it's all pretty much end-of-life stuff now.

Forums are useful the world over, for all sorts of niche things. One of the main reasons I was happy to post. When I find really unusual, annoying things, you posting about them might save somebody else the same hassle.

 

You think that's old.

Let's try a 25 mhz 386, finally upgraded to a 35 mhz 486 - oh wait - we weren't supposed to get into that kind of a contest. Sorry! (But it's plain to see that I win hands down!)