Hardware Discussion Thread

ShadowHearth

kenyard wrote: »

oO wow those would be incredible
at the rate we are going though im not surprised alright.

wasnt there a huge problem was to get 3tb hdds to work. it will be a while untill we see 10TB hdds.

though SSDs start to hit a really nice spot now. i just wish 512gb versions would drop in price sooner.

Serephucus

Forgot 512GB SSDs, I want an affordable (~€400) 1TB SSD.

RE HDDs: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/122921-seagate-hits-1-terabit-per-square-inch-60tb-drives-on-their-way

marco_polo

Serephucus wrote: »

Forgot 512GB SSDs, I want an affordable (~€400) 1TB SSD.

RE HDDs: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/122921-seagate-hits-1-terabit-per-square-inch-60tb-drives-on-their-way

TDK announced they have cracked the required 2TB platter densities a few days ago so all systems go for 6 TB HDDs in 2014

kenyard

ShadowHearth wrote: »

wasnt there a huge problem was to get 3tb hdds to work. it will be a while untill we see 10TB hdds.

though SSDs start to hit a really nice spot now. i just wish 512gb versions would drop in price sooner.

yeah apparently its to do with how stuff works in computers it wont recognise stuff above 2tb... similar to how 32bit systems only worked with 4gb ram

marco_polo

kenyard wrote: »

yeah apparently its to do with how stuff works in computers it wont recognise stuff above 2tb... similar to how 32bit systems only worked with 4gb ram

You are 100% correct that non 64 bit cannot use the ultra large hdds, however the difficulties in manufacturing over 2TB hdds was more a result of approaching the limits of current platter storage technologies.

Gbear

I'm getting a HD 7950. Will it be able to run eyefiniti? Do I need any software to do it?

Tea_Bag

I remember when 32gb was a limit. was a fecking nightmare.

problem with the 2tb HDDs was/is the partition table in the master boot record. it can be fixed providing you have an EUFI bios and gpt system.

hopefully we'll see a new revision of ntfs soon. as it stands, its got a limitation of 16tb, which we'll fast be approaching by the end of next year I imagine. but worse, is the cluster size. it can't compress anything over 4k.

people don't realise how much space is wasted (and inaccessible) when you're stuck on 4k. it largely depends on what type of data you have though. 4K is fine if your files are typically small and generally remain the same size. But if your files are generally much larger (media etc), try increasing the cluster size on your drives to 16K or even 32K to compensate. That will reduce the amount of space you are wasting on your drives and will allow files to open slightly faster.

Anatidaephobia

I'm not sure if this is the right for thread for this, but can anyone recommend a cheap set of speakers from Amazon or wherever? I'll be using a headset for anything gaming related, so they don't need to be fancy.

ShadowHearth

Anatidaephobia wrote: »

I'm not sure if this is the right for thread for this, but can anyone recommend a cheap set of speakers from Amazon or wherever? I'll be using a headset for anything gaming related, so they don't need to be fancy.

i got these for my second pc in dining room.

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/9255045/Trail/searchtext%3ELOGITECH.htm

very good speackers for the price. i bet you could get cheaper online too. i bought these on sale they were like 35eu i think.

Nazata

Anatidaephobia wrote: »

I'm not sure if this is the right for thread for this, but can anyone recommend a cheap set of speakers from Amazon or wherever? I'll be using a headset for anything gaming related, so they don't need to be fancy.

How cheap are we looking at?
I've heard great things about the T20s, but they're probably out of your preferred price range.
The T10s are a step down, but I've also heard they are quite good...

deceit

Gbear wrote: »

I'm getting a HD 7950. Will it be able to run eyefiniti? Do I need any software to do it?

Yea it will run eyefinity and will run most games perfectly. You will have to make sure you have a monitor with a display port or purchase an active display port adaptor (Active being an important part). You can usually get hold of them for about 30-40 euro.

Eboggles

Nazata wrote: »

How cheap are we looking at?
I've heard great things about the T20s, but they're probably out of your preferred price range.
The T10s are a step down, but I've also heard they are quite good...

I'm using the T10s at the moment, picked them up in argos for €35. I was only using my monitor's speakers at the time so it was a good step up.

Kinda wishing I had just waited and saved up for the T40s, now I'm kinda stuck in the middle

Anatidaephobia

Nazata wrote: »

How cheap are we looking at?
I've heard great things about the T20s, but they're probably out of your preferred price range.
The T10s are a step down, but I've also heard they are quite good...

Cheap as possible really. I'll only be using them for watching youtube video's and stuff. Those T10's look pretty good.

glynf

Gbear,

Your 7950 might come with an active display port adapter. an easy way to find out is to search newegg for your exact card, the usually post a picture of the box contents for stuff on their site.

livEwirE

Anyone know how long it will be until HWVS start supplying FM2 based mITX boards? I'm considering getting one for a new HTPC build. They only have the Trinity APUs right now. Are they likely to eventually offer good m-itx trinity bundles?

Tea_Bag

itx boards haven't been released yet. HWVS is pretty quick to stock new products when launched though. I doubt they'll do bundles, they don't normally.

livEwirE

Cheers for the info Tea Bag, pity about the lack of bundles, was hoping to pickup a bargain

dwighet

livEwirE wrote: »

Cheers for the info Tea Bag, pity about the lack of bundles, was hoping to pickup a bargain

Im in the same boat.waiting for release of a mITX..there on the way.but how long is the question.SEE HERE

If there not in by the end of the month I will go I3...

livEwirE

Cheers for the link dwighet, which APU do you think would be best for a mitx build? I don't want to break the bank and will not be gaming on mine, will be using this case

Just seen ASROCK'S mitx board here!

dwighet

livEwirE wrote: »

Cheers for the link dwighet, which APU do you think would be best for a mitx build? I don't want to break the bank and will not be gaming on mine, will be using this case

Just seen ASROCK'S mitx board here!

To be honest im not really up to speed with AMD gear...
I will be going for the a10-5700 though which goes for around 115e.

Its getting some good reveiws and thought id give it a go.

Monotype

You'd be mad to get the 5700 when the 5800K is pretty much the same price!

dwighet

QUOTE=Monotype;81142742]You'd be mad to get the 5700 when the 5800K is pretty much the same price![/QUOTE]

hmmm your right again:o
Which board would suit 5800k..Im useless at compatability

Also pm me those details we were talking about and I`ll send it out.

Brian

Samsung 840 review - http://www.anandtech.com/show/6337/samsung-ssd-840-250gb-review/

Monotype

Hmmmm... I expected it to be a bit more interesting. I don't think I'll go near those 840s until the guys at extremesystems test how fast they wear down. Write speeds don't bother me as much as quality and endurance.

N64

Lads, you probably aren't going to be surprised to hear this, but yet again there appears to be a problem with my GPU .

Now having a dodgy card is not unheard of by any means, just like anything a dodgy card could slip passed by quality control but I have gotten so many dodgy cards in succession - Something must be up!

Basically , when playing a graphics demanding game (I have been playing Skyrim, for example) Quite randomly, in game assets will flash black for a fraction of a second (I have also seen it flash a green/blue colour also). I thought it was just a bug with the game, but I was also playing some source engine based games (black mesa source) and the same thing happens!

I thought it might have been a dodgy driver, so I rolled back to 12.6, tried the 12.9 beta driver (all with using driver sweeper to remove the driver) and nothing has changed at all!

Seriously, what the hell is going on??. I replaced my motherboard and power supply and tested my memory with memtest. Its extremely unlikely that my CPU is busted since its unheard of CPU's to cause problems like this .

Monotype

OK, first of all it's "dodgy".

Second, how could anyone REALLY have that kind of bad luck? Or are AMD doing what nVidia did there a while back and cover up that all their cards of a set were faulty?

Is the electricity in your area 'clean'? Do you normally have other electrical components dying early?

A bit of a stretch, but is the monitor okay? I've heard of them flash randomly once in a while if they're on the way out. Frequency of flashes increase slowly.

Edit: Games assets - so it's not the whole screen - probably not the monitor so.

N64

Monotype wrote: »

OK, first of all it's "dodgy".

Second, how could anyone REALLY have that kind of bad luck? Or are AMD doing what nVidia did there a while back and cover up that all their cards of a set were faulty?

Is the electricity in your area 'clean'? Do you normally have other electrical components dying early?

A bit of a stretch, but is the monitor okay? I've heard of them flash randomly once in a while if they're on the way out. Frequency of flashes increase slowly.

Edit: Games assets - so it's not the whole screen - probably not the monitor so.

Yeah, my monitor is fine. I never had any problems with it. It never happens while watching youtube videos or browsing the web either :-\ . While my house is over 150 years old, the wiring was redone about 20 years ago and I live close enough to Dublin city centre, so the electricity in my house should be okay. I never had any problems with any other electric appliance before.

Sometimes, a large black rectangle will pop up as well for a second (not in the same place) Looks like its RMA time? Reviews also seem good for my card so I doubt there are many other users experiencing issues with it

Furmark runs okay as well, so if there was a power supply issue, I'm sure it would definitely cause problems in the stress test.

I seriously want to snap the card in half out of sheer frustration, but I doubt they will accept the RMA if I do :pac:

Monotype

Could it be something wonky in your windows install? I presume you reinstalled when you got a new motherboard?

Perhaps, you should try nVidia for a change. I had an nVidia card though at the time I was playing oblivion and there were a lot of bugs associated with that where it black screened and stuff. I don't suppose there's anything specifically wrong with the skyrim engine - something that also affects the source engine? Do a quick search on tesnexus to see if there's any graphics card patches just to make sure.

Tea_Bag

at this stage I'd be looking at the psu myself. thing that furmark can't test is varying power draw. it just does 100%, all the time. a game will cause dips up and down frequently, and maybe the psu isn't able to handle it, burning out the silicon over time. you said you switched psu, but was that after it started happening, or at the same time as receiving your new card? if the former, it could have been too late and the damage already done.

N64

I was playing Skyrim on the AMD 6xxx series card for a while and I never experienced anything like this before. Even the previous 7850 card I had played it absolutely perfectly. I did indeed do a fresh windows install when I got this new mobo. Do you reckon I could bring it to a PC repair shop to be tested, or would I just be wasting my time?

The previous PSU I had, a super flower amazon also never exhibited any signs of being wonky - well apart from whine, which won't wreck your PC components (well at least I hope! )

ED E

This reminds me of some weird stuff that went on with TF2 for me before on the aul 8800GTX. Said GTX was unstable though.

Can you try a bigger selection of games and see if many bug? Right now it could still be software.

N64

I installed the card on my second x16 slot on my motherboard. I will report how things go after some testing.

A test with the samsung ES-TOOL came back with an all clear for my HDD (just to rule that out)

N64

Right so I did a bit of gameplay and it still happened :-\ Bear in mind this is after 30 minutes of just exploring the wilderness - I thought it was the PCI top slot since nothing out of the ordinary was happening but then, I was talking to an NPC standing stationary and the sky flashed black (so its not a case of the game loading in assets)

frozenfrozen

I'm still having problems with my computer. I removed all drivers, then restarted in safe mode, did a driver sweep, restarted again and installed newly downloaded drivers, and im getting the exact same problems. It's like that when I leave my computer long enough that it would go onto screensaver or something - my display drivers seem to crash and neither display gets any info and go to sleep and can't be woken up, and at this stage unplugging the monitors and their cable to the graphics card doesn't help at all.

I really really really don't want to have to reinstall windows as it would take a full day to get everything installed again, and I don't have the installers for all of the autodesk products anymore, and that's like 10 gigs to download again..

Anyone have any ideas what I could/should do? I might try a different graphics card and see if it's my 580 which is the problem

Monotype

Mess around with the AA settings and stuff. Try different detail. Bethesda's engine can be as buggy as feck sometimes with various settings. Sometimes just disabling something in the game menu and enabling it on the control panel or vice versa can work wonders.

cherryghost

N64 wrote: »

Right so I did a bit of gameplay and it still happened :-\ Bear in mind this is after 30 minutes of just exploring the wilderness - I thought it was the PCI top slot since nothing out of the ordinary was happening but then, I was talking to an NPC standing stationary and the sky flashed black (so its not a case of the game loading in assets)

What settings you play the game at? Maybe you're ran our of Video RAM? It's happened to me but only when the game was over 1440p... I checked my VRAM usage and noticed there was less than 10mb free whenever this happened.

N64

cherryghost wrote: »

What settings you play the game at? Maybe you're ran our of Video RAM? It's happened to me but only when the game was over 1440p... I checked my VRAM usage and noticed there was less than 10mb free whenever this happened.

I play it on the highest settings. It generally runs fine but occasionally it can slow down at times (especially in the cities) but this is from my aging 1090t

Having the official Bethesda HD texture pack installed does increase the frequency of the flashes a fair bit, which may indicate a video memory issue. I should also mention that there is a weird checkerbox style fade in/out pattern when I lock windows. Happened with the other card as well.

Funnily enough the previous 7850 ran skyrim fine even with that HD texture pack installed. Its such a shame though, I absolutely love the card - both the ascetics and cooling are top notch.



Guess I may as well switch over to the green side now? :eek:

cherryghost

Green side? Pfft, I've been trying to escape them :P Their driver support is terrible lately. Switch to Matrox!

Beez

frozenfrozen wrote: »

I'm still having problems with my computer. I removed all drivers, then restarted in safe mode, did a driver sweep, restarted again and installed newly downloaded drivers, and im getting the exact same problems. It's like that when I leave my computer long enough that it would go onto screensaver or something - my display drivers seem to crash and neither display gets any info and go to sleep and can't be woken up, and at this stage unplugging the monitors and their cable to the graphics card doesn't help at all.

I really really really don't want to have to reinstall windows as it would take a full day to get everything installed again, and I don't have the installers for all of the autodesk products anymore, and that's like 10 gigs to download again..

Anyone have any ideas what I could/should do? I might try a different graphics card and see if it's my 580 which is the problem

This is more than likely a common issue with computers locking up when it tries to go to sleep or turn off the hard drive.

Go to Control Panel ----> Hardware and Sound

---

> Power options

Go into whatever power plan you have enable and change settings.

Disable 'Put Computer to sleep'

Disable 'Turn off Hard disk'

and see if this happens again.

freeze4real

Hi ll,

I got rid of my 4890 to get a ati 5850 but my monitor has a vga output what dvi connection can I get for the gpu.

Would a dvi - d be okay, which is better dvi i or dvi d ?

thanks

ShadowHearth

freeze4real wrote: »

Hi ll,

I got rid of my 4890 to get a ati 5850 but my monitor has a vga output what dvi connection can I get for the gpu.

Would a dvi - d be okay, which is better dvi i or dvi d ?

thanks

which ever fits!

freeze4real

ShadowHearth wrote: »

which ever fits!

I dont know which one fits.

On the ati manual it mentions a dvi adaptor but no specifically a dvi-d or DVI I

ShadowHearth

freeze4real wrote: »

I dont know which one fits.

On the ati manual it mentions a dvi adaptor but no specifically a dvi-d or DVI I

dont you have any of them? i got like 3 laying around my house. best thing is just to put it on and check if it fits.

i am prety sure you need DVI-I

marco_polo

freeze4real wrote: »

I dont know which one fits.

On the ati manual it mentions a dvi adaptor but no specifically a dvi-d or DVI I

A DVI-D adaptor only carries the digital signal so would be no good for conecting to a VGA monitor. If you need to connect the GPU to a VGA monitor then the adapter must be DVD-I as this can carry both an analogue VGA signal and the digital DVI signal.

Any old DVI to VGA adapter/cable will be DVI-I anyway or else it wouldn't work.

freeze4real

ShadowHearth wrote: »

dont you have any of them? i got like 3 laying around my house. best thing is just to put it on and check if it fits.

i am prety sure you need DVI-I

I dont have any of them I used to ut gave it all away.

Monotype

I can post you one. I'm pretty sure I have a few. PM me your address.

Yep, I have a spare. Layout is as the second one below:


If your monitor is VGA only, you'll have to use an adapter, but if you do have a DVI connection on the monitor, you should use that instead. Reason being is that you have conversions to analogue and back again, so you'll be bound to have some quality loss.

N64

well fair play to dabs anyway. They agreed (once their engineers have diagnosed the problem) to give me a full refund and have booked a courier pick-up already.

I know they get a lot of stick for bad customer service, but I have so far have a good experience with them

would the gtx 660 be a good alternative? Its a pain in the ass that I am going to have to use a netbook for the two or three weeks it takes for me to get the card :-\

Monotype

Yeah, the GTX 660 seems like a reasonable card to match with the 7850 region, slightly better too. I thought that it seemed slightly dear, but that's because I've been spoiled by hardwareversand prices. In actual fact, it's reasonably well priced relative to the 7850s on there.

dwighet

N64 wrote: »

well fair play to dabs anyway. They agreed (once their engineers have diagnosed the problem) to give me a full refund and have booked a courier pick-up already.

I know they get a lot of stick for bad customer service, but I have so far have a good experience with them

would the gtx 660 be a good alternative? Its a pain in the ass that I am going to have to use a netbook for the two or three weeks it takes for me to get the card :-\

I think the lighting of a candle and a quick prayer from everyone here is in order for your next card...

Your not having a good run at all are ya?

Monotype

dwighet wrote: »

I think the lighting of a candle and a quick prayer from everyone here is in order for your next card...

Your not having a good run at all are ya?

Well, you know what they say, "Fourth time lucky!"


... no wait, that's not what they say at all. :pac:




Just so I have the count right, it is the third 7850 that you're returning?