The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Sorry, did I miss the first half of this conversation?

 

Ripper linked me to Chrome. Which means he recommends it over Firefox

 

I certainly would. Apart from lack of extensions it's a better browser because it actually supports multiple processes. Firefox is still locked to a single master process so if one tab crashes, you lose everything. Chrome is somewhat less vulnerable, though of course it suffers from the instability of flash no less than other browsers.

 

Indeed. I disagree with the lack of extensions comment, but perhaps then I just don't use very many in my browser. Chrome does support loading scripts in .js format which is nice, off the top of my head anyway.

@omega: I've experience the same freeze up you mentioned with Firefox on an otherwise very smooth build and that smashed any past standing that it once had with me into little pieces. Firefox has been the master of its own demise unfortunately.

 

People don't use chrome because of google privacy policies, not because it isn't as good as other browsers...chrome+adblock>ff+noscript

 

I haven't gone a day in a very long time in which I haven't used a Google service - even my University here in the UK uses Google services (mail etc) and just manages them - so I think Google have my proverbial (and literal!) number unfortunately. Haha.

 

I'm currently running Chrome. Seems a bit smoother. I like the ability to open more than one address on startup

I'm not doing anything illegal. So google can spy all they want And even if I were, how could that hold up in court? If I'm not mistaken, obtaining information illegally does not hold up in court...

 

Ya, I agree, and green drives don't fail that often, the true percentage last I checked was under 1% if I remember correctly.

 

Adobe Flash hasn't had any problems in my Palemoon browsers and they are just FF with some redundant code removed, some rarely used code removed, and some moderate performance optimization. I'll try stock FF again to see if I have a problem with it, but I haven't had any such problems in months.

 

Great info as usual Blaze.

Which brings me to this question, considering that the modeler/animator whose i7 was "burning up" until we dramatically underclocked it, just took delivery of his new rig with the bent hard drive cage (probably a Lian Li aluminum that is easily straightened out I suspect) including 32 gigs ram, and an i7-3930 Sandy Bridge $555 6 core 2.3 billion transistors monster cpu. He'll never need that much ram or that much cpu power. Anyway, they also threw in a 256 gig SSD, which Ripper has identified as probably a Samsung 830.

Should he put all of windows 7 on the SSD, and move the paging file to the D hard drive, as well as turn off indexing? When he does a firmware upgrade he can push everything over on the 2TB hard drive I guess. You're putting firmware on in the bios - but wait - how do you put everything back on the SSD afterward?

Do they give you the tools at Vertex, something like an acronis iso copy once the firmware is in place? Do you have to run another os on the hard drive, like xp, just to put the SSD back together? That would be okay, I'm just curious as to how it works.

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CRYSIS KICKS BUTT!!

By the way, Crysis is alive and well at 30" gaming, 2560x1600, 32fps, 7950 at 99%, ultra settings (very high.) I have never seen anything so gorgeous! It is breathtaking!

Just turn back to page 80 here, post #4500, and you'll see Jeff's fabulous crysis pictures. I have been picking up sand crabs, chicks, full size chickens, and last night a frog. They all had an interesting animation except for the frog.

But I got to a stupid part in Crysis last night that takes a little bit of luster off the game for me.

Spoiler alert - if there is anybody left beside me who hasn't played this 2007 game don't read the next line:

All along they have been saying "We have to vaporize - we can't let the Koreans get hold of this suit." Right? They vaporized that first guy, and then later the other one. That only leaves Nomad, Prophet who just got snatched and is most likely dead, and Psycho. So I have been playing at Delta difficulty, just for the challenge, and I just played at Fubar through spec ops: the line. So I figure - no problem - I've got the magic suit and I've got my mad skills. LOL Just kidding.

So last night, I patiently worked my way down the river and got to the LZD in the cemetery. Then I'm looking at these 3 or 4 guys walking around in these nano suits, jumping up on high rocks, turning on their cloaking. I thought - well of course - those are my guys who are also down here at the landing zone. I hate to commit friendly fire. A minute of this and suddenly they started shooting at me.

WTF! Are you telling me that the North Koreans have my same suit!!!

Then why are we vaporizing everybody instead of giving them a proper burial. "Oh we can't let the Koreans get hold of this suit." So who are these clowns at the cemetary. Guess what, prophet, they already have the damn suit!

I jumped on google and visited a walk-through and the guy says, "you come to the cemetery and there are 4 Koreans in nano suits - work close and finish them with four shotgun blasts, while they hang on the outside with their fancy sniper rifles."

Well, guess what - I didn't bother to pick up a shotgun. But I do have a fully loaded tank buster rocket launcher with 3 rounds. Guess what again, a blast right next to one of the monkeys doesn't even phase him. If I could only kill one guy I would have some confidence. Their armor is better than mine. I also have a grenade launcher with 10 rounds. Likewise, they don't even blink.

But on me, even on "full armor" their stupid little SMGs take out my armor and kill me faster than any Korean and his AK. This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. If I knew the Yerli brothers I would tell them to their face.

But I did check just before the game crashed again last night, on the XFX card, and you can reduce difficulty at any time - so I'm just going to set it at down to dumb-f**k EZ to get past this ridiculous charade. My respect for Crysis the game just dropped from 98 down to about 68. LOL

Serves me right for starting right out with full-on Delta, who the f do I think I am - but the quick save feature also gave me confidence that I wouldn't have too much trouble. Until I stupidly ran into 4 clowns with exactly the same magical clown powers that I have, and the same godda*n suit we're trying so hard not to let get into North Korean hands.

Bullsh*t!!!! Hahahahahaha

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End of tirade.

So other than that, the 7950 crossfire project is going well, but no crossfire so far. The HIS IceQ is superb as the main card at slot 3, and next year's 3 gpu mobo will probably get a second IceQ. It has been pulled out of the case and is waiting in its resplendent box (most impressive packaging you ever saw!)

The challenge now is to find a good IceQ partner. The Power Color, a good heatpipe solution, was okay - it was my fault that the vram got fried. This XFX though, runs too hot - hitting 83 degrees as I played Crysis. I dropped clocks back to 850, memory to 1300, vddc to 987, and temps dropped to 78. My fps dropped from 38 to 32, but I could not detect any lag. As soon as the gigabyte 3-fan card arrives on Tuesday, that will go into the case for testing, and the XFX will go into its box for return to Newegg - I already have the return shipping label and it is good through next Friday.

So by the end of next week, or beginning of the following week, I might have crossfire working. So far, gpu is 99%, and the 9450 with 3.334 overclock is running maybe 30% load on each of 4 cores. I am beginning to suspect that I will not be cpu-bottlenecked even on crossfire on some of these very graphically-challenging titles, like crysis.

I restarted the level to about 3 hours back, to get a shotgun, but I think I'll just try to find roughly where I was, and just set it to easy, and see if the rocket launcher will work this time, lol. I wonder if Cevat just put that in there to be a dick for any idiot who thinks they can play Delta.

Jeff - you play delta - how did you beat that section?


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Ultra Low Power Saving. How do you disable it - a quick link would be great. Lots of google stuff that nobody can turn it off. Anyway, I haven't had the problem repeat itself. I had to reduce clocks on the XFX down to 850 to run crysis stably without 83 degrees, so the card is going back with a $40 restocking fee and $10 shipping.

My quick-check to see if my card is running at full power, is about 20 seconds of Heaven. I found that the 5 minute Unigine Heaven bench (versus the 11 minute 3dmark11 bench) shows me a score of 1616 running core at 975 which was what the Power Color and HIS IceQ scored at at that core clock. However, I only need to run Heaven for 20 seconds, because if I get around 50 fps going down the first street, that will turn into a 1616 score 5 minutes later. In fact, I did have another problem with poor XFX performance - I take it back - I did have the problem repeat. The fps going down the street was only 44. I logged off and went back in, same problem. So I rebooted, and then back to 50 fps. If it is ULPS acting up, I wonder why, and so far why only on that card?

Hahahahaha. Amen!!!

Actually I take it back. I was up in LA with the animator/modeler, and his 6 year old precocious daughter was playing all these games on the iphone. Man! This alien bounces along, and a farmer yells "Get the hell off my land" and the alien drops a giant claw down and snatches up people. These little tiny iphone people are yelling - "oh no" - "run" and the exciting music is playing, and the hunters are shooting at us. When I asked miles about the "get the hell off my land" he told her "Honey we never use that type of language, right?" She said "Yes daddy." LOL

I told her to see if the alien could drop rocks on buildings. We tried it and the buildings were smashed. We could lift up cars, even a truck. Some of the cars were vintage, like 60's mustangs. We actually tried smushing the alien himself down on a partially smashed house, and the house completely collapsed. Then an army tank came and fired heat-seeking missiles and killed us. She never had that happen before, lol.

She showed me some others - she has about 20 of them that they let her play all the time. Miles told me that three of the top guys at his company quit to make those games for the iphone. He said that the Angry Bird guys got super rich. No more jokes about Kevin. What are facebook flash games?

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Nothing like the voice of experience talking!

I think you're dead-on right, Steve. Except in Blaze's case with the SSDs - but I would say that is new technology that is still breaking itself in. I am very suspicious of new software, Microsoft updates, or anybody's better thing if what I've got works. But sounds like the SSD updates are a good idea. I too like chrome.

Good eyes Ripper. Well now that Blaze has opined that some of the non-sandforce controllers work very well, your Samsung is probably the new great thing, or at least as good as vertex 4. Yes I will report back.

Meanwhile I'm loading up with arctic cooling freezer pro 7 and 13 coolers, intake fan filters, scythe fans, vantec fan cards for HDD cooling like this picture below and flush mount sata cabling to allow the vantec cards, if he lets me mod his cases so he never gets the heat problems he got before, and positive pressure to keep out the dust.

Jeff I think you're right in the first place about cpu degradation.

In which case you should just go ahead and lap the cpu. What do you have to lose? It's out of warranty anyway, and what could you possibly hurt? You're just taking off the top layer of nickel or whatever. If it has hot spots, lap it, and no more hot spots.

Hell, Blaze has me convinced that next year I'll be taking the entire IHS off the ivy bridge to defeat the thermally insulating paste that intel put on it to hold back overclocking to allow high end chip sales. And he says, "Then when you're done repasting, go ahead and lap it and the cooler."

I don't blame Intel - they made it relatively easy for the enthusiasts to wack off the paste - but it takes time. Lapping the IHS is certainly easier than wacking it off from the underlying silicon. If you think it's degraded, go for it, and see what happens.

You shouldn't be getting those temps, as you point out, so be aggressive about it! Anybody who goes out in the freezing cold to shoot his AK at the local range until his fingers stop working, or who sits in the chilling morning temps for hours in a blind until a whitetail decides to mosey by, can handle some cpu lapping. LOL

Sam, what do you have 31 disk drives for? How many servers are you running over there - what are you a miniature google?

Rich

 

31 drives! That's all? LOL! I could see the need for that many actually. I like the convenience of loading a drive over an optical disk these days 13.5Tb Though I used to have more :S

 

Did you ever have one of those days, where for some strange reason, you are waiting for the other shoe to drop! Yesterday was my day. Some hacker managed access to Win32/Services.exe, remove the entire AntiVirus and Malware removing tools from AVG, without so much as a cough from AVG or Windows Security. I can't cut a stinky fart, without getting all sorts of ads for an air purification system! LOL!! This hacker walked in on AVG's watch and took over my entire computer from M$ and AVG. They wanted to charge me $319 to remove it!

I'm going to wipe the SSD in the morning and start over. Win7 has proven to be a pita to use. The standard with Win7's user interface is, there isn't any standard! It and the Control Panel are a disgrace to common sense. I particularly dislike the fact that these geniuses managed to remove just about everything that was good about XP's user interface, and crippled it down to nothing, while changing many of the familiar titles, and icons that have been around as long as windows 3.0! Moved keys, like the space bar will pause any video, but you have to use the mouse to make it play again with Win7 in WMP and PDVD-12. Win7 wants you to do things it's way. The people have other ideas, and I think they will win this one!

I do have a question about the SSD. Anything special I need to know about wiping the drive with KillDisk?

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Are you sure you didn't click on the wrong download link? LOL!

 

ever use your win7 disk repair options? use the diskpart utility and clean the drive. no need for killdisk.

 

Rich, 83C is not too hot for a GPU in games - most coolers are optimised to run the load temps around the 80C mark.

 

Russ,

Have tried the Windows Restore feature prior to the date you experienced these problems?

Best of luck.

 

This whole 26 letters in the alphabet thing is starting to become a problem!

 

Madness. Do you keep backups of backups of backups? But seriously, what have you got on there?

I hadn't actually considered ever running out of drive letters personally, but what is the solution to that problem? Other than having a clear out.

 

I agree you don't have to use killDisk but you don't have to use Win 7 disk repair either. Just Install new but wipe out your boot partition under Advance Tools with the Win 7 Install disk and you'll be fine. It will take the old partition away and re-format a new one, clear-clean-and-free.

Everything from XP Control panel is in the new Win 7 Control panel but some of it is buried and/or renamed. Yes it is awkward going from XP to Win 7 but you still have the tools once you find them.

Stevo

 

You basically have to use Symlinks or network shares without drive letters, e.g. manually going to \\hostname\sharename rather than mapping said share as, e.g. Z:\

With the exception of H:/ I:/ and J:/ which are the hot-swap bays for the backup disks (which make up a substantial proportion of the 31 WD Greens), the rest is live data.