Just a simple upgrade


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Last week I got the bright idea to upgrade my graphics card to be able to do native triple monitor. My motherboard only had a single x16 slot, so I went looking for a new AMD card, as they seem to have better support for three monitors on a single card. Just a simple upgrade I said, it will be quick and painless I said.

    I am not a gamer. Video performance does not effect me beyond the point when I can playback HD video. Hell, I am replacing a 7600GT if that gives you any idea. For a long time, my third monitor has been a bit of a kludge using a USB adapter, but it worked as long as I did not try to play HD video on that particular screen. So I ordered:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161444

    The price was right at ~$150. It comes, I remove the Nvidia drivers, power down and install the new card. As soon as I install the drivers and reboot, nothing but a black screen after Windows does its driver load. Shit. Reboot in safe mode, go in to the CLI interface of PnP and manually remove all .inf files that reference Nvidia. Same result. Damn it.

    Check my power supply to make sure it is powerful enough, it is a 700w Antec, should not be a problem there. I start looking up compatibility. PCI-E should be backwards and forwards compatible, but I find a few references saying that Nvidia cards are, but AMD cares precisely fuck-all about maintaining compatibility. Not exactly reputable sources, but that would explain what is happening...sort of. It runs fine on the generic Windows driver, but all AMD/ATI drivers cause it to shit itself as soon as the drivers load.

    Off to Fry's, where I pick up a spanking new motherboard. A new MSI board that will do core unlocking. My current processor is getting a little long in the tooth, but is still doing the job fine and it is a Phenom II X2 that at the time I bought it AMD had a glut of quad-core processors and were only selling dual-core. So for 60% less you could buy a dual-core and be almost guaranteed to be able to unlock the extra cores, which I did.

    New motherboard will only unlock cores on newer chips. God...damnit. So now I am down to a dual-core chip. OK, on with the rest of the stuff. I install the new motherboard in a Lian Li case that I have had sitting around, burn a new install DVD because I cannot find an empty USB stick that is large enough and I cannot find the 8.1 DVD that I burned just last week because once again I forgot to take a Sharpie and mark it (which, now that I think about it, I did not do to this one either...). I put everything together, scavenge parts from the old case to make it work (because everything was working well enough, no complaints), 16GB of RAM, power supply, DVD burners, etc.

    I fire it up with a spare 2TB drive I had laying around, install Windows 8.1 Enterprise (because I have been wanting to toy around with some of the new Enterprisey features before a client asks us to set them up for them and I go in to it blind and bid the job for 20% of what I should have, because...how hard can it be??). Windows installs fine, I install all of the drivers and as soon as I reboot...black...fucking...screen. Not like before, just a completely, absolutely, black screen. Like, monitors do not even try to come on. No POST screen (even though I can hear the drive working its way through boot), just nothing on the displays.

    Card is dead. Like, fucking dead. Mother...fucker.

    So I file an RMA, put my old 7600GT in and fire it back up. My crappy little USB display adapter does not work under Windows 8 because...of course it doesn't. Why would it? So now I am down to dual monitors. I have fucking downgraded.

    After I file the RMA, I get back on NewEgg and order and FX-8370, 32GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, a new card (that cost a lot more money), and a few other things. All told, my $150 upgrade is now up to about $900, not including the $150 for the original card that I have to wait to get back after my RMA is processed.

    In for a penny, in for a pound I guess. Next time I think, "I have not heard of that brand before", I will fuck off and buy from a brand that I am familiar with instead.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    FWIW I bought an HIS 5670 a couple of years ago and it worked great.

    I notice your card's now marked out of stock.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I saw that also. I wonder if they marked it OOS because they did not have a classification for POS?


  • FoxDev

    I refuse to by ATI.

    I've had too many ATI cards [excrement] the bed on me when i installed a driver, or a new game, or even an OFFICIAL driver update that ATI said was for my card!

    also i on occasion run linux natively on the box and ATI has crap, if any, support for linux drivers.


    I've also had "upgrades" that ended up like that.

    I just went in to update the RAM but that meant i needed a different MOBO because i was already maxed out on ram, then that meant i needed a new CPU because new MOBO hated old CPU.... when i was done all i had to do was buy a used case ($20) to put the old computer parts in and i had two computers and twice the problems as when i started!


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    As soon as I bought a new motherboard, I was planning on making another computer out of this. My Linux box needed an upgrade anyway. I am still running a Core2Quad on it, with 8GB of RAM and a 300GB Velociraptor. This morning I went ahead and ordered another SSD for it. If the card is out already, might as well go all the way. No half measures, right?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPk3TN81y_c

    Sorry, I know I have posted that video at least one other time, but it is one of the best pieces of TV history.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Yeah, if you're going to do anything more than fill empty RAM slots, you basically need to replace the RAM, CPU, and motherboard all at once, because it's really not worth getting a different CPU that fits in the same socket, unless you're replacing a Celeron or something, heh.

    The POS computer I use at work, for example, is like that. I have a Pentium e-5700 and there's nothing worth replacing that CPU with. (Sure I could theoretically get at couple hundred MHz boost, but why bother?)



  • I've had both AMD and NVIDIA cards and never had any serious troubles with either camp. Currently I run AMD only because I got into the LiteCoin mining thing last year and AMD cards were good at that. I've since kept the best one (Radeon R9 280X) for my desktop and sold the rest, mostly to friends in need who wanted a cheap card.

    And I've definitely done some shenanigans with PCI-E ports. If you can make the card fit, it will work. I've even trimmed off the leading edge of PCI-E x1 slots to make an x16 card fit, and they worked fine.


  • FoxDev

    @mott555 said:

    trimmed off the leading edge of PCI-E x1 slots to make an x16 card fit, and they worked fine.

    wait, what? that works?

    even for a GPU?

    ... if so daaaaang they designed PCIE right.


  • FoxDev

    @Intercourse said:

    As soon as I bought a new motherboard, I was planning on making another computer out of this

    it was about the time i needed the CPU that i bit the bullet.

    the MOBO was only 8 months old and of current generation so i thought i could get away with same CPU.... nope!



  • @accalia said:

    wait, what? that works?

    even for a GPU?

    Transfer across the PCI-E bus is obviously slowed down, but yes it works and if you don't need a lot of PCI-E bandwidth it's not even much of a hindrance. For basic desktop use or light gaming you'll never notice, also works well with some GPGPU tasks that hit the GPU hard but don't transfer a lot of data (cryptocurrency, Folding@Home, etc.)


  • FoxDev

    /me is impressed.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @FrostCat said:

    Yeah, if you're going to do anything more than fill empty RAM slots, you basically need to replace the RAM, CPU, and motherboard all at once, because it's really not worth getting a different CPU that fits in the same socket, unless you're replacing a Celeron or something, heh.

    In this case I am replacing an AM3 processor with an AM3+ processor. On CPUMark, the new processor is over 3 times more powerful, but in day-to-day use that is not really noticeable. Of course, now that I am down to 2 cores, I notice it...

    @mott555 said:

    And I've definitely done some shenanigans with PCI-E ports. If you can make the card fit, it will work. I've even trimmed off the leading edge of PCI-E x1 slots to make an x16 card fit, and they worked fine.

    I once put 2 video cards in an PowerEdge 1900 by trimming the back of the x8 slots. I am not surprised that you could do the same with an x1 slot.

    @accalia said:

    wait, what? that works?

    even for a GPU?

    ... if so daaaaang they designed PCIE right.

    Yes they did, unless you ignore the fucking standards like it appears AMD/ATI did. Bastards.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @accalia said:

    wait, what? that works?

    even for a GPU?

    ... if so daaaaang they designed PCIE right.

    Yup. I discovered this independently just this weekend but x4 and x8 slots can come with the end already missing so you can put in a bigger slot. AFAIK all of them will work with as many serial lines are available--there's sense lines or something for each serial line so the card and motherboard can negotiate.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @accalia said:

    the MOBO was only 8 months old and of current generation so i thought i could get away with same CPU.... nope!

    There's all kinds of weird reasons that can happen. My MSI Trinity motherboard can take a Richland proc, but only if you do a BIOS upgrade first and I've seen Intel mobos with the equivalent issue.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Intercourse said:

    I once put 2 video cards in an PowerEdge 1900 by trimming the back of the x8 slots. I am not surprised that you could do the same with an x1 slot.

    AFAICR any card should work in any slot, more or less, possibly with the exception of video cards running at x1[1]. I did some reading on this a while back, and like I said to accalia, there's logic and possibly pins in there so everything can negotiate how many lines are going to be used.

    It's obvious, if you think about it, from the fact that video cards are basically all x16 but the limited number of total lanes on most setups mean using 2 or 3 cards drops you down to x8 or even x4.

    [1] and now I see mott555 explicitly mentioned this works.



  • @Intercourse said:

    It comes, I remove the Nvidia drivers,

    Why?

    @Intercourse said:

    Reboot in safe mode, go in to the CLI interface of PnP and manually remove all .inf files that reference Nvidia.

    What OS are you using that's so stupid it can't tell the difference between a ATI and NVidia video card?

    @Intercourse said:

    It runs fine on the generic Windows driver, but all AMD/ATI drivers cause it to shit itself as soon as the drivers load.

    If you're using Windows, why the hell are you dicking around with removing driver .inf files? I found the WTF.

    @Intercourse said:

    Card is dead. Like, fucking dead. Mother...fucker.

    It was dead before. It just happened to still barely work in VESA mode.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Why?

    @blakeyrat said:

    What OS are you using that's so stupid it can't tell the difference between a ATI and NVidia video card?

    @blakeyrat said:

    If you're using Windows, why the hell are you dicking around with removing driver .inf files? I found the WTF.

    Because, at least in the past and from prior experience, changing video card manufacturers has caused issues. Something to do with the way that their drivers interacted with the OS. I know it was a problem with XP, but this is the first time I have changed video card manufacturers under Win7, because as I said...

    @Intercourse said:

    I am replacing a 7600GT if that gives you any idea.

    So yeah, there is that.

    @blakeyrat said:

    It was dead before. It just happened to still barely work in VESA mode.

    I realized that, as soon as it shit itself for good.



  • @Intercourse said:

    Because, at least in the past and from prior experience, changing video card manufacturers has caused issues.

    Well I'm not going to deny that, but it certainly wasn't due to having wrong drivers on your system. Windows 8.1 has about 700+ drivers for hardware I don't own, and guess how many problems that causes?

    Folk wisdom ain't no way to maintain computers, boy.

    @Intercourse said:

    I realized that, as soon as it shit itself for good.

    I gotta buy you a gift certificate for some Occam's Razor classes. Before you go out and buy more motherboards.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Windows 8.1 has about 700+ drivers for hardware I don't own, and guess how many problems that causes?

    Yeah, and how many of those include the full load of horseshit like "Nvidia Control Center"?

    @blakeyrat said:

    Folk wisdom ain't no way to maintain computers, boy.

    No, we should all learn every single nuance of all of the versions of Windows and commit them to memory. Every single bit of minutiae.

    I was going to purchase a new motherboard at some point anyway, this was just going to be an incremental upgrade, so the money was not really pissed away. I just forced my hand on doing it more quickly than planned.

    @blakeyrat said:

    I gotta buy you a gift certificate for some Occam's Razor classes. Before you go out and buy more motherboards.

    Hmmmm, you have an OS that is known for shitting itself when you change video card manufacturers because their installers do not remove everything when you uninstall them and the problem presents itself at the exact moment that Windows loads its drivers. I also found somewhat conclusive evidence that AMD cards do not adhere to the PCI-E specs for backwards compatibility and I running a v3.0 card in a v2.0 slot when AMD itself has said that their 3.0 cards may not work in anything less than v2.1 slots (I failed to look in to that before I purchased the card).

    Yet, my simplest explanation is that I received a brand new card that straight from the box is failed just enough to shit itself when drivers get loaded? Gotcha. You should change your screen name from @blakeyrat to @SherlockMotherfuckingHolmes.

    This is not my first time around the block. I fully admit that there are a lot of things you know about tech that I do not, but that also likely works the other way around. No one can know everything. We work off the best information we have at the time. The great thing about technology is that there is always something new to learn and you really do learn something new everyday.



  • @Intercourse said:

    Yeah, and how many of those include the full load of horseshit like "Nvidia Control Center"?

    If you said you uninstalled the NVidia apps, instead of the drivers, we would not be having this discussion.

    @Intercourse said:

    No, we should all learn every single nuance of all of the versions of Windows and commit them to memory. Every single bit of minutiae.

    Correct.

    Although the error you think you experienced hasn't existed in any version of Windows. So you also have to make sure the weird imaginary shoulder-alien shit is out of your head.

    @Intercourse said:

    Hmmmm, you have an OS that is known for shitting itself when you change video card manufacturers because their installers do not remove everything when you uninstall them and the problem presents itself at the exact moment that Windows loads its drivers.

    Which OS are you referring to? Windows certainly isn't that way.

    BTW, you seem to be missing my point which is: why the holy shit would you uninstall the driver in the first place? Especially if you think their uninstallers cause problems, this only raises further questions.

    @Intercourse said:

    Yet, my simplest explanation is that I received a brand new card that straight from the box is failed just enough to shit itself when drivers get loaded? Gotcha. You should change your screen name from @blakeyrat to @SherlockMotherfuckingHolmes.

    Considering how many dead-on-arrival video cards I've seen, especially from those no-name Chinese makers, yes. I do believe that's the most common explanation for what you initially saw.

    @Intercourse said:

    This is not my first time around the block. I fully admit that there are a lot of things you know about tech that I do not, but that also likely works the other way around.

    Not possible, because I know everything about everything. And if I don't, it's because it doesn't matter.

    @Intercourse said:

    We work off the best information we have at the time. The great thing about technology is that there is always something new to learn and you really do learn something new everyday.

    Well now you've learned that video cards are, by far, the most likely component in your computer to be dead-on-arrival.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGMyBwRtkto



  • Single review on NewEgg

    1 Star
    Pros: great, budget card.had amazing graphics while it lived.
    Cons: it lived for 38 days.


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @intercourse said:
    Hmmmm, you have an OS that is known for shitting itself when you change video card manufacturers because their installers do not remove everything when you uninstall them and the problem presents itself at the exact moment that Windows loads its drivers.

    Windows certainly isn't that way.


    Are you just going to pretend that every version of windows before W7 didn't exist?
    Windows 7 and 8 (and even Vista) do a pretty good job with drivers and swapping shit out nowadays, but on older Windows versions this was certainly not the case. People didn't create a billion 3rd party NVIDIA Display Driver uninstaller/cleaner apps for no reason.

    To blakeyrat's point, I don't think those types of driver issues have been a problem since Vista and up. I swapped to a different motherboard and RAM (from DDR2 to DDR3) on a Vista pc and it booted to windows just fine and let me update the drivers then. Honestly I was kind of surprised, I thought I'd be doing the windows repair from cd dance for sure.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Although the error you think you experienced hasn't existed in any version of Windows. So you also have to make sure the weird imaginary shoulder-alien shit is out of your head.

    You really are fucking retarded aren't you? You live in an MS Reality Distortion Field. Where nothing MS has ever done was wrong, except not implement HyperCard as the defacto programming method.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Which OS are you referring to? Windows certainly isn't that way.

    BTW, you seem to be missing my point which is: why the holy shit would you uninstall the driver in the first place? Especially if you think their uninstallers cause problems, this only raises further questions.

    Do a quick browse around the internet. People who test video cards for a living will have two hard drives with two installs of Windows just to get around the problems you are saying do not exist. Switching between video card manufacturers can cause a tremendous amount of problems. Does it every time? No, but it can and does, you insufferable fucking asshole.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Well now you've learned that video cards are, by far, the most likely component in your computer to be dead-on-arrival.

    Oddly enough, this is the first time it has occurred to me. I have had a lot of RAM that was DOA, more than a few power supplies that were flaky out of the box, seems like there have been a motherboard or processor in there also. But this is the first video card.

    @darkmatter said:

    Are you just going to pretend that every version of windows before W7 didn't exist?

    Yes he is. He is like the Germans who pretend like nothing of consequence happened in their country from 1939-1945.

    @darkmatter said:

    People didn't create a billion 3rd party NVIDIA Display Driver uninstaller/cleaner apps for no reason.

    And they are still around, because it is still an issue. Not as much of one, but still an issue.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @WernerCD said:

    Single review on NewEgg

    1 StarPros: great, budget card.had amazing graphics while it lived.Cons: it lived for 38 days.

    Yeah, I probably should have looked at that before I purchased it. ;)



  • @darkmatter said:

    Are you just going to pretend that every version of windows before W7 didn't exist?

    I've never done that.

    EDIT: I do call-out Linux users who compare a, for example, 2013 release of Ubuntu with a 2001 release of Windows and "somehow" come to the conclusion that Ubuntu is so much better. That's some bullshit right there.

    @darkmatter said:

    Windows 7 and 8 (and even Vista) do a pretty good job with drivers and swapping shit out nowadays, but on older Windows versions this was certainly not the case.

    Bullshit. Back when I used Windows 2000 and XP, I switched out video cards nearly every 6 months, switching from AMD, NVidia, AMD, both brands installed simultaneously, etc. I never had a single problem caused by a NVidia driver being present on a system with AMD hardware, or vice-versa.

    @darkmatter said:

    People didn't create a billion 3rd party NVIDIA Display Driver uninstaller/cleaner apps for no reason.

    No; they made them because idiots who only service computers via folk wisdom think they're necessary. And so there's a demand. From idiots.

    People also sell magical magnetic crystals that cure cancer. That doesn't mean the crystals actually do anything, that means there's enough idiots that believe they do to sustain a business.

    @darkmatter said:

    To blakeyrat's point, I don't think those types of driver issues have been a problem since Vista and up.

    Well I can't argue that. Although I heard somewhere (I haven't tried it myself) that having both AMD and NVidia cards on a single machine causes much more performance loss now than it did in previous Windows as a side-effect to the driver model change.

    @Intercourse said:

    You live in an MS Reality Distortion Field. Where nothing MS has ever done was wrong, except not implement HyperCard as the defacto programming method.

    I love how people say this about me all the time, utterly ignoring the thousands of Microsoft products I've griped about on these very forums.

    Look, hate me if you want, but please try not to be delusional, ok? Try to keep your brain working at this tricky "reality" problem and not drift too far away from it, ok?

    @Intercourse said:

    Switching between video card manufacturers can cause a tremendous amount of problems.

    That's true of doing virtually anything. That's not really the point. The point is, "does it cause problems 90% of the time? Or does it cause problems 0.5% of the time and none of them have occurred in the last 10 years?"

    The statistics are the important thing, not the "can cause problems." Everything "can cause problems."

    @Intercourse said:

    Yes he is. He is like the Germans who pretend like nothing of consequence happened in their country from 1939-1945.

    I read an auto-biography from a Kriegsmarine submariner... hang on a sec, lemme look it up... http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Boat-Iron-Hearts-Crewmans-ebook/dp/B004E9UB5M/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1413391063&sr=1-1&keywords=Steel+Boat+Iron+Hearts%3A+A+U-boat+Crewman's+Life+Aboard+U-505

    Anyway, what's amazing about it is that Goebeler was goddamned proud as hell to be a Nazi and fight for the German nation, even decades later. He purposefully avoided the "de-Nazification program" after the war. Kind of weird and shocking. Great memoir, though.

    Sorry, what were we talking about?


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Bullshit. Back when I used Windows 2000 and XP, I switched out video cards nearly every 6 months, switching from AMD, NVidia, AMD, both brands installed simultaneously, etc. I never had a single problem caused by a NVidia driver being present on a system with AMD hardware, or vice-versa.

    In my experience, the types of failures it usually causes are not 100% failwhale failures, they are generally things you would only notice as a gamer or when running stupid 3dMark for e-peen scores. Likely because some random hidden feature fails to enable because some random hidden inf files are screwing things up. But if you just mean, boot to windows in general and have some sort of functional display, swapping video cards will mostly work just fine.



  • @FrostCat said:

    there's sense lines or something for each serial line so the card and motherboard can negotiate.

    I worked with PCI-E at [big semiconductor company whose name starts with I]. It's been a few years, but let's see how much I remember.

    IIRC, each serial line is 4 wires — data +/- in, and data +/- out. During negotiation — after power-up or hot-plug — each end looks drives a specific pattern of wiggles on each pair of outputs, and looks for the same pattern on its inputs. If it sees a valid pattern on its inputs, it uses them; if not, it ignores them from then on (until the next time it negotiates). The negotiation isn't even a driver or firmware thing; it's built into the chip logic, at least on the chips I worked on.



  • @WernerCD said:

    Single review on NewEgg

    1 Star
    Pros: great, budget card.had amazing graphics while it lived.
    Cons: it lived for 38 days.

    @Intercourse said:

    Yeah, I probably should have looked at that before I purchased it.

    @WernerCD found TRWTF.


    Two takeaways here for @Intercourse:

    1. Read the reviews before purchasing something. If the reviews say it's shit, then it's probably shit. This would have saved you a good chunk of money.
    2. Be wary of brands you are unfamiliar with.


  • @darkmatter said:

    In my experience, the types of failures it usually causes are not 100% failwhale failures, they are generally things you would only notice as a gamer or when running stupid 3dMark for e-peen scores.

    Right; I switched my video cards every 6 months or so but I wasn't a gamer.

    @darkmatter said:

    Likely because some random hidden feature fails to enable because some random hidden inf files are screwing things up.

    I'd like to hear even a theory of how that can possibly happen.


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said:

    I'd like to hear even a theory of how that can possibly happen.

    Clearly if I actually knew what was actually happening to cause discrepancies in the e-peen scores, then I would have used a real example instead of saying "likely" and making up a bunch of random BS



  • Clearly.


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Clearly.

    Clearly your anecdotal evidence must be superior to all other anecdotal evidence ever, huh?



  • Clearly.



  • BTW, Discourse bitches at you if you submit the same text twice. Unless, apparently, that text is "Clearly." Then Discourse is perfectly fine with it. WTF.



  • One thing I noticed is the time-stamp of the first review: 9/24 (Noticed yours is up now as well lol). Just over three weeks ago.

    Depending on turnover time, that review might not have been there when you researched before purchase.

    But, on the same token amazon.com has 3 5 star reviews on the card.



  • I miss the days where it was cheaper to build your own computer. Now, you spend so much time researching this junk that if you count your time invested, you're better off to just buy a pre-built one.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Bullshit. Back when I used Windows 2000 and XP, I switched out video cards nearly every 6 months, switching from AMD, NVidia, AMD, both brands installed simultaneously, etc. I never had a single problem caused by a NVidia driver being present on a system with AMD hardware, or vice-versa.

    I call bullshit on that. I tried briefly to run two dissimilar video cards under W7 and it never did work. I could get the Nvidia drivers to load, but the ATI card just shit itself and run off of default VESA drivers. It absolutely would not load the drivers from two different manufacturers.

    @blakeyrat said:

    No; they made them because idiots who only service computers via folk wisdom think they're necessary. And so there's a demand. From idiots.

    I have said it before, your worldview does not extend past your nose.

    @blakeyrat said:

    That's true of doing virtually anything. That's not really the point. The point is, "does it cause problems 90% of the time? Or does it cause problems 0.5% of the time and none of them have occurred in the last 10 years?"

    Ten years ago we were still on XP, and it was a HUGE fucking problem there, so perhaps you should think before you speak? Pipe down now, the grownups are talking.

    @abarker said:

    Read the reviews before purchasing something. If the reviews say it's shit, then it's probably shit. This would have saved you a good chunk of money.
    Be wary of brands you are unfamiliar with.

    Fair enough, but when a product only has one review and it is negative, that really might not mean anything. People are most likely to leave reviews when they have negative experiences. Hell, that is the only time I do. So in theory I could have been the first person to buy the best thing since sliced bread and I by luck of the draw end up with the 1/100,000 that fails and I will leave a negative review.

    But in this case it was accurate, and I could have saved myself time and a trip to FedEx. 😄

    @chubertdev said:

    I miss the days where it was cheaper to build your own computer. Now, you spend so much time researching this junk that if you count your time invested, you're better off to just buy a pre-built one.

    For me it is not about saving money. If that were my thinking, it would be silly. It is more about getting a better machine for the money. I would imagine it is hard to find a decent-priced machine out there on the pre-built market that will handle 32GB of RAM, but you can buy mid-priced motherboards today that will take 64GB. Plus all the boxes on the market are typically Intel or low-end AMD. I prefer the high-end AMD because for me that is where the best bang for the buck lies. 8-cores at 4.0ghz for under $200? Yes please. A comparable i7 would be closer to a grand.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117404

    $1,050 it seems. That i7 will outperform the FX-8370 in benchmarks, but for my purposes I would never be able to tell the difference except having ~$850 still in my pocket. Plus, I like to root for the underdog and I have liked AMD since I overclocked my first Athlon XP from 1.8ghz to 2.6ghz. I don't overclock anymore, because I do not like having a hair dryer running on my desk. It is still a fond bit of nerd nostalgia though. 😄



  • @Intercourse said:

    I call bullshit on that. I tried briefly to run two dissimilar video cards under W7 and it never did work. I could get the Nvidia drivers to load, but the ATI card just shit itself and run off of default VESA drivers. It absolutely would not load the drivers from two different manufacturers.

    Right back at you. I've definitely had NVIDIA and AMD cards installed side-by-side and fully operational.


    Filed Under: War of the anecdotes


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @mott555 said:

    Filed Under: War of the anecdotes

    Touche.



  • @Intercourse said:

    I call bullshit on that. I tried briefly to run two dissimilar video cards under W7 and it never did work. I could get the Nvidia drivers to load, but the ATI card just shit itself and run off of default VESA drivers. It absolutely would not load the drivers from two different manufacturers.

    Right; but that's the new driver model. Like I said, I'd read somewhere it had issues with cards from different makers, so your experience doesn't surprise me.

    Windows 2000 and XP had the old driver model, which supported cards from different makers much more cleanly.

    So I don't understand what you're calling bullshit on exactly.

    @Intercourse said:

    Ten years ago we were still on XP, and it was a HUGE fucking problem there, so perhaps you should think before you speak? Pipe down now, the grownups are talking.

    I'm confused. Do you want me to answer the question? Or... not? Or...?

    @mott555 said:

    Right back at you. I've definitely had NVIDIA and AMD cards installed side-by-side and fully operational.

    So have I, but only in 2000 and XP. I haven't tried it in Vista and 7.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So have I, but only in 2000 and XP. I haven't tried it in Vista and 7.

    XP and 7. This was at my last job where I wanted three screens and had to scrounge. I ended up with a Quadro and a FirePro at the same time.



  • @Intercourse said:

    I call bullshit on that. I tried briefly to run two dissimilar video cards under W7 and it never did work. I could get the Nvidia drivers to load, but the ATI card just shit itself and run off of default VESA drivers. It absolutely would not load the drivers from two different manufacturers.

    I've been seeing some reports that this may be due to intentional sabotage on NVidia's part. From what I've been hearing, they have been doing what they can to make it difficult to impossible to have both graphics systems on a single machine.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Or perhaps to replace one, which might explain why all of the advice I saw on the internet was about how to clear out Nvidia software. Next to nothing about how to clear out AMD/ATI software. This is pure conjecture of course. I have no idea for sure. All I can be certain of, anecdotally, is that I have had issues when switching. And it appears others have also.

    But I am just a big fucking idiot according to @blakeyrat.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said:

    The negotiation isn't even a driver or firmware thing; it's built into the chip logic, at least on the chips I worked on.

    That sounds right. I was going from memory of wikipedia or somewhere, and not bothering to be precise (chipset v video card, etc.)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    Read the reviews before purchasing something. If the reviews say it's shit, then it's probably shit. This would have saved you a good chunk of money.

    It's also good as a starting point to look at the nature of the curve of the ratings. 60%+ 5 stars, nearly no 1 stars? Probably good--now read some of the actual reviews. As many 5s as 1s? Probably bad, you should probably move on to the next product.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    Now, you spend so much time researching this junk that if you count your time invested, you're better off to just buy a pre-built one.

    I prefer to still do it anyway, because it's hard to get exactly the mix of components you want.

    You can buy a Dell Core i7, but it will probably only have two memory slots, or only 1 PCIe x16, for example...which, admittedly, generally only matters if you're a gamer.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Intercourse said:

    Plus all the boxes on the market are typically Intel or low-end AMD.

    ...or cost a lot more because you bought "a gaming rig".

    @Intercourse said:

    I don't overclock anymore, because I do not like having a hair dryer running on my desk.

    You know there's other solutions, right? I OC my i5-3570K by about 600Mhz, but I replaced the stock fan with a larger, quieter one. The only thing noisy on my desktop is the GPU fan, and if it really bothered me I could replace the heatsink on that, too.



  • Is yours fan-cooled? My i5 (IBuyPower built my PC originally) is liquid-cooled, I thought that was the normal configuration.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Is yours fan-cooled?

    Yeah, I use a Hyper 212 Evo, but probably any heatsink with a 120mm or larger fan will be much quieter than the stock fan. I figured if the fan wasn't quiet enough I could watercool, but the GPU drowns the CPU fan out so it's moot.

    I'm not sure if I want to get into watercooling. It would have to be both significantly quieter and also cooler, but you can't really tell in a store how it will sound at home (Micro Center and Frys both have watercooled demo rigs.)



  • @FrostCat said:

    I'm not sure if I want to get into watercooling. It would have to be both significantly quieter and also cooler, but you can't really tell in a store how it will sound at home (Micro Center and Frys both have watercooled demo rigs.)

    The self-contained loops are decent. I have a Corsair one, H70 or H80 or something like that, with a pair of quiet 120mm fans on it. Can't even hear it over my GPU.


Log in to reply