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1651

Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 20, 2011, 03:48 PM »

7200 rpm

1652

Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 20, 2011, 08:49 AM »

Bummer - I wish I had just gone for SATA II drives now 

1653

Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 20, 2011, 07:30 AM »

I think this is getting confusing (at least for me):

Two different systems:

1) SATA II interface / SATA II drive - Windows rating 5.9 (in IDE mode)

2) SATA III interface / SATA III drive (64Mb cache) - Windows rating 5.9 (in AHCI mode)

Surely I should see SOME improvement otherwise what is the point of paying for SATA III drives?

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Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 20, 2011, 05:37 AM »

hanks for the comments - helpful.

Still don't really understand why SATA III drives on a SATA III interface don't see an improvement in system rating ???

1655

Living Room / SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 19, 2011, 06:49 PM »

Just finished setting up my new system which comprises of:

Antec 300 case (2 large case fans which are pretty quiet)
Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H motherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T CPU
4 x 4Gb Crucial PC3-10600 RAM
2 x 1 Tb WD1002FAEX SATA III drives
2 x Pioneer DVD+-R DL writers
650W Corsair PSU
Sapphire Radeon HD6570 1Gb graphics card (to replace onboard graphics as I want to run 3 Samsung B2430H monitors)
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Microsoft Comfort Desktop 5000 (wireless keyboard and mouse)

Set up went well and everything worked first time.

I have now moved my old Creasive Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum PCI card into the box and found the rather shoddy drivers on Creative's website and am thinking of going back to the onboard sound with my 7.1 speakers.

Also added my old Hauppauge TV card - which seems to work much better now and also works well through Windows Media Center.

Having done all this I looked at the system rating by Microsoft and it pegs at 5.9 because the drives are the lowest value. (Graphics rate at 7.0 and CPU and memory at 7.5).

I just set up a barebones system for a customer and installed a WD SATA II drive on a SATA II interface and that also pegs at 5.9.

The question is why do SATA II and SATA III drives peg at the same value? How can I get more speed out of the SATA III drives without resorting to striped arrays?

I have enabled AHCI mode in the BIOS so it isn't stuck in IDE Mode.

Enabling AHCI Mode in Windows 7

I had the devil of a job to find out how to stop the system BSODing as a result - FWIW here is the simple solution:

Set the following registry value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci]
"Start"=dword:00000000

For some reason this is set to 3 at normal setup (even if you supply an AHCI driver during setup) which means AHCI is disabled. Setting it to 0 allows the system to install the drivers on the next boot. The process is as follows:

1) Set registry value
2) Reboot into BIOS and enable AHCI mode
3) Reboot into windows - allow the drivers to install
4) Reboot again.

If you miss booting into the BIOS it doesn't actually matter as the drives in WIndows simply stay in IDE mode - which begs the question why was it disabled in the first place?

The only other minor disappointment I have is that the stock AMD CPU cooler isn't exactly silent. It isn't bad but it is louder than I want - anyone know of a good AM3 coompatible silent CPU cooler that will keep a 6 core CPU nice and cool. (I don't want to splash out for water cooling!).

 

1656

General Software Discussion / Re: How long can PC stay in Standby Mode in XP

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 16, 2011, 03:17 AM »

The other issue I have had with hibernate is that it sometimes doesn't renew local IP addresses when starting up and you end up with a network conflict. Not a big issue but irritating.

1657

Living Room / Re: One of my cats, Titch, passed away yesterday

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 11, 2011, 03:29 PM »

  If she did she never told me.

She was a lovely character but always reminded me of a cross between Winnie the Pooh (the bear of little brain) and the Dish of the Day (H2G2).

The two of them together were fascinating - both from the same litter so exactly the same genetics but Titch (who was the runt of the litter) was into absolutely everything and had a real intelligence, Crackers was almost the opposite - fascinated by her sister she could watch for hours.

She was called Crackers because as a kitten she used to love top chase butterflies in the garden (that year we had a plague of cabbage whites so she caught lots). She leaped around the garden like a mad thing with a spring in the tail. In the last 10 years she has steady become more and more stately!

1658

Living Room / Re: One of my cats, Titch, passed away yesterday

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 11, 2011, 01:14 PM »

My wife is taking one of our dogs (17yr old Boston Terrier) to the vet today to discuss his current "quality-of-life".

-Stoic Joker (February 11, 2011, 11:47 AM)

You have my sincere sympathy - it is not an easy thing to do and it isn't easy afterwards.

1659

Living Room / Re: My New DVD is ALL Regions =D YAY~!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 11, 2011, 09:20 AM »

Tell me the make and model number of the DVD player and I'll see what I can find out.

Some models you just use a strange sequence of key presses on the remote control, others you need to buy or hire a special remote control to do it. I have done this now on 6 or 7 DVD player/recorders and never had a problem. FWIW next time you buy one buy it region free - there are loads of sellers out there!

WRT the Mac drive not sure what you can do about that but on Windows boxes there are loads of software tools that fake the multi region approach. I used to use one that worked well called DVDidle but I don't think it is available any more (the same people that make DVDFab produced it). You could try http://www.dvdfab.com/passkey-lite.htm (which is free) which will probably work with older DVDs or buy http://www.dvdfab.co.../passkey-for-dvd.htm which should work with all DVDs (but costs $40).

I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives for Windows but I'm not sure what. A well respected application is http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html but that costs 49 Euros.

PS: A much cheaper alternative for Windows is to buy a second DVD drive - make the main drive set to your region and set the second drive set to region 1 (which is what most people want). You could probably do the same with the Mac if it is a tower type computer - or use an external USB or Firewire based DVD drive for the other region and use it on the Mac and windows.

1660

Living Room / Re: One of my cats, Titch, passed away - and now her sister Crackers has gone!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 11, 2011, 07:43 AM »

Now her sister Crackers has gone to join Titch. Her kidneys were shot and last night she lost the ability to coordinate her back legs and so kept staggering and falling over. Even so she remained cheerful and affectionate to the last moment and ate a hearty breakfast (albeit semi prone with me feeding her). Enough was enough and the vet let go to the long rest in a very dignified manner.

She would have been 20 in May - seems very sad she missed that landmark birthday.

I am going to miss them both terribly and have had to start on the horrible task of clearing away kitty clutter from the house.

I will have cats again in the future but I am going to leave it a while so that I can travel without worrying about kittens trashing the place while I am away.

It did strike me as a lovely way for life to end - no pain and suffering just go to sleep. Its a shame that it is illegal to help humans but also illegal NOT to help pets in the way in the UK.

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Living Room / Re: My New DVD is ALL Regions =D YAY~!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 11, 2011, 07:37 AM »

Can't you simply unlock your player - I have managed to do that with every player I have owned.

1662

General Software Discussion / Re: Upgrading RoboForm from v6 to v7: worthwhile?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 10, 2011, 03:14 PM »

I've yet to find a site that it won't work with, though.

-Darwin (February 01, 2011, 09:02 AM)

I found a few so far - but mostly they are to do with imports from RoboForm. LastPass seems to be a bit more specific on URL than RoboForm so that just having the root page of a website stored isn't sufficient to fill in a deeper login page - you need the actual page.

Actually one of the things I am finding hugely good in LastPass - and means I won't be going back to RoboForm - is the "My LastPass Vault" button (I use the toolbar version in Firefox).

Clicking opens up all of your login cards but all the common ones are listed under Recent at the top - just clicking on the link takes you to the webpage and logs in automatically. If you are looking for a specific non-recent login just type a couple of letters from the site name and up pop any cards associated with the site.

1663

General Software Discussion / Re: Should MS open up Windows Update to 3rd parties?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 08, 2011, 02:36 PM »

I have to confess I am not that interested in MS cloud services! Been badly bitten in the past with the community stuff they produced (ie. they lost all of my content and on complaining I got a shrug and couldn't give a damn episode). Also can't stand the way everything gets bound to Internet Explorer or you suffer from their oddities.

1664

Living Room / Re: which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 08, 2011, 12:45 PM »

I was going to get a Phenom x6 but got a bit confused as the spec on the site I bought it from said the board only support Phenom x4. It will be plenty fast enough for what I want with a x4 - and I can always buy a new CPU later on and relegate the x4 to a second box.

I have 2 x24" monitors at the moment but am thinking of adding a third!

Maybe I'll do a Terry Pratchett one day and get six monitors - sooner or later you can hide form the world entirely!

1665

General Software Discussion / Re: Should MS open up Windows Update to 3rd parties?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 08, 2011, 11:37 AM »

It works out great...and takes up no space at all!

-Stoic Joker (February 08, 2011, 11:26 AM)

You are right of course - I just object to wasting my bandwidth on downloading DVD images when I have better things to do. Its fine when you super fast internet access but when it takes half a day per file ...

1666

General Software Discussion / Re: Should MS open up Windows Update to 3rd parties?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 08, 2011, 10:50 AM »

Yes - they were supposed to send out 4 mailing a year but in the past 12 months they haven't really released much and what they have released they haven't bothered to send the media packs. It beggars belief that they won't send out Windows 7 64-bit in DVD format !!

1667

General Software Discussion / Re: Should MS open up Windows Update to 3rd parties?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 08, 2011, 05:55 AM »

MS might supply WHQL drivers but they are often feature limited and on more than one occasion recently I have had to recover a computer where MS have supplied a driver that bricked a system (well at least introduced a BSOD screaming cycle).

Vendors such as nVidia seem to supply WHQL drivers (at least when they release final non-beta drivers).

1668

General Software Discussion / Re: Should MS open up Windows Update to 3rd parties?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 08, 2011, 04:36 AM »

Not sure about software updates but major vendor driver updates would be nice.

One of the things that really annoys me is that MS update supplies crappy out of date drivers and often tries to push them over proper manufacturers drivers.

It would be good if MS just did quality control on manufacturers drivers and issued those rather than the limited and out of date versions they often offer.

Having said that the biggest problem with any 3rd party involvement with MS is one of cost. MS likes to screw as much cash out of its 'partners' as possible* and you can bet your life that if they did open up to 3rd party they would put some mechanism in place to force all updates through their system which would kill off small developers.

*

rant

I am miffed that I have a MAPS subscription with MS and stupidly opted to pay to have DVDs delivered at some exorbitant price rather than download and burn your own DVDs. So far this year they have only sent out 2 DVDs (which I didn't want or need) and haven't sent out any 64 bit copies of Windows 7 since it was released - so I have to download those and burn them despite paying for physical delivery. What a ripoff!

1669

Living Room / Re: which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 08, 2011, 02:26 AM »

Plus you can guarantee with AMD systems that you activate VM technology - with Intel it is hit and miss even within the same product series.

-Carol Haynes (February 07, 2011, 06:18 PM)

How bad is this, really? Don't you just have to look up the CPU model on Intel's site?

-f0dder (February 08, 2011, 01:45 AM)

Apparently not - Intel chips seem to come randomly with or without hardware VM support - even the same product lines vary. Maybe things have changed but it was the case not so long ago.

Given that I am going for 16Gb of RAM to run multiple VMs simultaneously this is something I want to guarantee will be available. AMD have a simple policy - all CPUs have VM support.

I don't really understand Intel's rational - sure it costs them more to have plants tooled for mutiple versions of the same thing? Can it really be economically sensible to restrict access to parts of chips on a random basis?

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Living Room / Re: which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 07, 2011, 06:18 PM »

I like building with AMD chips - and feel Intel is the chip manufacturing quivalent of MS !! Plus you can guarantee with AMD systems that you activate VM technology - with Intel it is hit and miss even within the same product series.

1671

Living Room / Re: which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 07, 2011, 06:04 PM »

My 2p would be:

RAM and hard disk as these seem to be the major bottlenecks in most systems.

Just building a new system and contemplating using a solid state hard disk for the system drive - probably more bang for the buck as memory upgrades or CPU upgrades provided you are happy with a smallish system drive.

Off topic

New system is going to be:

Motherboard: GigaByte GA-890GPA-UD3H
CPU: AMD PHENOM II X4 965 3.4GHZ BLACK
PSU: CORSAIR HX Series 650 Watt ATX EPS12V
Graphics: SAPPHIRE R5670 HD 1GB PCI-E 2.0 HDMI
RAM: Crucial 4 x 4Gb DDR3-1333
Windows 7 Pro (64-bit)
2 x WD 1Tb SATA600 drives

 - going to be fun!

Worst bit is I need to use the same box - so I HAVE to sort out my XP system finally - and with 8 chocker hard disks in a complete mess that might take a month on its own!

1672

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple Photo Resizer - Please Give Feedback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 06, 2011, 06:45 AM »

Good grief... Carol - you have an unnatural talent for making me work~!

Sigh... Back to work...

-Renegade (February 05, 2011, 10:08 PM)

LOL - sorry but you know it will be worth it

Now all you need is an 'apply this to a whole folder of photos' button

1673

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple Photo Resizer - Please Give Feedback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 05, 2011, 06:55 PM »

Nice little app. Couple of suggestions:

• How about adding an option to save suitable for a webpage just a single tick box will do (ie. set the right DPI without asking about details).
• As well as showing the size of the output how about including the file size output - if you are resizing to email a photo the file size is useful to know.

1674

General Software Discussion / Re: Upgrading RoboForm from v6 to v7: worthwhile?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 30, 2011, 07:32 PM »

I could never get Roboform to fill in flash based websites ???

1675

General Software Discussion / Re: Upgrading RoboForm from v6 to v7: worthwhile?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 30, 2011, 06:58 PM »

Not had that problem with LastPass except for a couple of Roboform imports that had to be hand edited. Other than that I have found it works as well as RoboForm and is truly cross browser.