Transitional Transistors Torment / Sanders Salvation
A few days ago I recieved back my parts from vendor after being tested with "No Fault Found" (and also paying the testing fees due to no fault found).
I spent the weekend and yesterday (monday) slowly installing components, testing, if it passes, install more components so on and so forth until it was almost completely assembled...only on a piece of cardboard!!! I should have taken a picture but I was too hacked off to even tidy up properly let alone clear things up for a photograph. Obviously I had to now get the bits into a PC case which is no simple job when you are trying to have tidy cables.
So far, it seems to be a-ok but I have not fiddled with anything in the BIOS. I have left the BIOS as it is from when it returned from vendor after bench test.
So far I have successfully re-installed Windows XP but on the wrong HDD. The HDD I wanted to use it on has data on it and fearing the worst I used the larger HDD that was supposed to be used for data storage, as it was empty. So the 500GB WD HDD which has 5 partitions is now the data HDD and the 750GB Samsung F1 HDD is now the OS drive (2 partitions). What a mix-up but it works so probably keep it that way. For now.
Last night I got as far as managing to install video and audio codecs to watch anime again AND managed to install Clive Barker's Jericho and play that with max settings at 1280x1024 resolution. That game looks good.
So what's left to do? Alot. Patch up windows, install anti-virus, install firewall, install web browser firefox, install drivers for the wireless keyboard & mouse, install the games I want to play, copy contents from my old PATA HDDs to one of the two larger drives, index all the data, review the indexed data and re-organise, verify the files against files already burnt to DVD, install CD/DVD burning software and most importantly install winamp 2.81. Yes, 2.81 because anything newer looks crap and is bloated. There is probably more to do but right now I can't think of it.
I read an article today that baffled me, as a general consumer of PC goods. As a general consumer I use a PC for various tasks ranging from video and audio editing and encoding, playback of music and films, web browsing and gaming. In reference to gaming that is mainly GPU (graphics card) limited, generally speaking the more expensive the card the more oomph it has...the current king is the AMD ATi Radeon HD4870X2 and that costs between £330 and £400! Expensive. Even more so as you can add two together in what is known as Crossfire setup. In reference to most other jobs a PC does that is driven by the CPU (the brains of the PC as it were). My old setup reached its limits when tasked to decode h.264 encoded 1080p material; at times it stuttered and lagged. So I upgraded my PC (actually almost built a new machine) and this is the one that has been giving me hassles. Anyhow going back to the article I mentioned, it's about the upcoming CPUs being released by Intel at the end of this year. Take a look at the article for yourself here, http://www.hexus.net/trk/rt.php?item=15015&company=198. I cannot for the life of me fathom why I would need a CPU THAT powerful. I barely make use of the potential sitting in the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 I have in my current machine. Technology is moving at a rate of knots far greater than what is needed by the general consumer, or at least that is how I feel. This is why the article baffles me. Unless I am going to run benchmarks all day to brag about how great and fast my pc is there is little other reason why I need something with that much computational power. Remember I said games are reliant on the GPU which leaves your run of the mill jobs to the CPU. You certainly need something powerful if you are into video editing, audio sampling/mixing etc. but those are all specialist stuff that you can buy external parts to do those specific jobs (and do the job better to boot). I'm sitting here thinking, "Why Intel, why?". Simple answer I suppose is that there is a market for it and it just stamps down their authority on the ailing AMD offerings.
Rolling back on to the subject of my PC...it'll be a lottery to see how long it lasts in a stable condition.
I am thankful that Paul decided to visit the weekend just gone after flying back from Bahrain. His company has been most welcome and appreciated by me. Gaming, chatting, hanging out; the weekend flew by and reminds me how well we get on ever since university. It's a shame his job takes him all over the world but probably a good thing as we can then spend hours chatting about events. Hoping I can persuade him to goto Japan with myself and Tee; it'll be a fantastic trip. \\(^_^)// We should plan to do stuff for this coming weekend; after all he will be flying off to his next job soon after that.
Time to sign off for now, enough of wasting company time by writing on here (well in notepad in preparation for upload at lunchtime).
I spent the weekend and yesterday (monday) slowly installing components, testing, if it passes, install more components so on and so forth until it was almost completely assembled...only on a piece of cardboard!!! I should have taken a picture but I was too hacked off to even tidy up properly let alone clear things up for a photograph. Obviously I had to now get the bits into a PC case which is no simple job when you are trying to have tidy cables.
So far, it seems to be a-ok but I have not fiddled with anything in the BIOS. I have left the BIOS as it is from when it returned from vendor after bench test.
So far I have successfully re-installed Windows XP but on the wrong HDD. The HDD I wanted to use it on has data on it and fearing the worst I used the larger HDD that was supposed to be used for data storage, as it was empty. So the 500GB WD HDD which has 5 partitions is now the data HDD and the 750GB Samsung F1 HDD is now the OS drive (2 partitions). What a mix-up but it works so probably keep it that way. For now.
Last night I got as far as managing to install video and audio codecs to watch anime again AND managed to install Clive Barker's Jericho and play that with max settings at 1280x1024 resolution. That game looks good.
So what's left to do? Alot. Patch up windows, install anti-virus, install firewall, install web browser firefox, install drivers for the wireless keyboard & mouse, install the games I want to play, copy contents from my old PATA HDDs to one of the two larger drives, index all the data, review the indexed data and re-organise, verify the files against files already burnt to DVD, install CD/DVD burning software and most importantly install winamp 2.81. Yes, 2.81 because anything newer looks crap and is bloated. There is probably more to do but right now I can't think of it.
I read an article today that baffled me, as a general consumer of PC goods. As a general consumer I use a PC for various tasks ranging from video and audio editing and encoding, playback of music and films, web browsing and gaming. In reference to gaming that is mainly GPU (graphics card) limited, generally speaking the more expensive the card the more oomph it has...the current king is the AMD ATi Radeon HD4870X2 and that costs between £330 and £400! Expensive. Even more so as you can add two together in what is known as Crossfire setup. In reference to most other jobs a PC does that is driven by the CPU (the brains of the PC as it were). My old setup reached its limits when tasked to decode h.264 encoded 1080p material; at times it stuttered and lagged. So I upgraded my PC (actually almost built a new machine) and this is the one that has been giving me hassles. Anyhow going back to the article I mentioned, it's about the upcoming CPUs being released by Intel at the end of this year. Take a look at the article for yourself here, http://www.hexus.net/trk/rt.php?item=15015&company=198. I cannot for the life of me fathom why I would need a CPU THAT powerful. I barely make use of the potential sitting in the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 I have in my current machine. Technology is moving at a rate of knots far greater than what is needed by the general consumer, or at least that is how I feel. This is why the article baffles me. Unless I am going to run benchmarks all day to brag about how great and fast my pc is there is little other reason why I need something with that much computational power. Remember I said games are reliant on the GPU which leaves your run of the mill jobs to the CPU. You certainly need something powerful if you are into video editing, audio sampling/mixing etc. but those are all specialist stuff that you can buy external parts to do those specific jobs (and do the job better to boot). I'm sitting here thinking, "Why Intel, why?". Simple answer I suppose is that there is a market for it and it just stamps down their authority on the ailing AMD offerings.
Rolling back on to the subject of my PC...it'll be a lottery to see how long it lasts in a stable condition.
I am thankful that Paul decided to visit the weekend just gone after flying back from Bahrain. His company has been most welcome and appreciated by me. Gaming, chatting, hanging out; the weekend flew by and reminds me how well we get on ever since university. It's a shame his job takes him all over the world but probably a good thing as we can then spend hours chatting about events. Hoping I can persuade him to goto Japan with myself and Tee; it'll be a fantastic trip. \\(^_^)// We should plan to do stuff for this coming weekend; after all he will be flying off to his next job soon after that.
Time to sign off for now, enough of wasting company time by writing on here (well in notepad in preparation for upload at lunchtime).
posted by Sleepyhead at
12:09
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