Sorry for the lapse

I just want to say to anyone that actually subscribes to this or continues to read content on this, that I am sorry for the huge lapse in time that has come since my last post.

Things at my full-time job have become extremely busy lately and I have not had the time to put any new content together for this blog.

I hope to soon be able to bring more content to the blog in the way of more in-depth reviews of some of the equipment that I have and use everyday (though some of it is older now) and some things that I have coming to me.

I am also planning some things for my home network that I will try to document the trials and tribulations that I face during the setup on this blog as well.

Thank you for sticking with me and if you are a first time reader, welcome and thanks for stopping by.  Hope you will come back again.

TimmyTechTV AMD A8-5600K Unboxing and Overview

Here is an unboxing and overview of the AMD APU that I have in my home system that was done on the TimmyTechTV YouTube Channel.

New Smartphone

I finally upgraded my mobile phone from a now archaic LG Decoy (which I was using due to having broken the screen on my HTC Droid Incredible) to a Motorola Droid Razr (XT912).

I was used to the HTC Sense overlay of the Android OS, but the Motorola version is pretty straight forward.

The phone is running Android 4.0.4 and has a decent feature set on it. It features the 4G LTE (or 3G if not available), Bluetooth, and WiFi.

There is an 8MP still picture camera that in video mode is capable of shooting in 1080p.  16GB of internal storage, which I have extended with my old 4GB microSD card.

I'll try to get more information regarding my experience with the phone and the apps from Google Play as I get to mess with the phone more, but for right now I am very happy with being able to just install any apps that were on my Incredible by just logging on a computer and clicking install.

Fallout New Vegas Gameplay

I have been playing Fallout New Vegas on my rebuilt system and found no lag at 1080p Ultra High settings.  I installed Fraps to get an idea of my frame-rate versus the laptop (2.4Ghz Dual-core with 6GB of RAM without discrete graphics) that I was using before.

I was averaging about 20 FPS on the laptop on Low settings at 720p.  With the new system, I am averaging around 60 FPS during gameplay and noticed a few times that it dipped to 20 FPS for a very short time.

Overall though, the game is much more playable.  I realize that this is an older game, I may try to get results from demos of newer games to get some better (or current) benchmarks on the A8-5600K APU.

TimmyTechTV Unboxing of MSI FM2-A75MA-E35

Here is TimmyTechTV's YouTube unboxing and overview of the motherboard that I used in my home PC rebuild.  I should have done this myself, but I did not get the time to do the unboxing and I found this video that is a good overview of the board and what comes with it in the box.

TimmyTechTV Unboxing

I have watched some of his other videos as well and encourage people to subscribe to his channel.

New vs Old Components

Those of you that have been reading this blog know that I recently replaced the motherboard, 2.8Ghz Dual-core Pentium, and 2GB of DDR2 RAM in my old Gateway GT5404 with an MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 board, 3.6Ghz Quad-core AMD A8-5600K APU, and 8GB of G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866 RAM.

I had run Cinebench and the Window Experience ratings on the system before and after the upgrade.

For Cinebench the old CPU score 0.79 and OpenGL would not even run.

The Windows Experience had the following scores:

Processor                   4.6
RAM                          5.3
Graphics                     3.3
Gaming Graphics         3.3
Primary Hard Disk      5.9

The new system shows 2.44 for the CPU on Cinebench and 33.46fps on the OpenGL test.

The Windows Experience scores for the new components were:

Processor                   7.2
RAM                          7.3
Graphics                     6.8
Gaming Graphics         6.8
Primary Hard Disk      5.9

I am not surprised that there was no chance with the drive, as I am temporarily continuing to use the hard-drive from the original system configuration.

I am in the process of porting my lone Steam title (Fallout New Vegas) from the laptop to see how it runs on the new configuration.  So far, I am pretty impressed with the speed that the system is showing to have at this time.  I know that the numbers above will not compete with a lot of systems, but I was trying to build this on a budget and for what I spent, I am pretty happy with the results so far.

YouTube Channel

I have not added anything new yet, but be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/Metman2J) and to this blog to stay up to date on all my latest posts.

It will also keep me motivated to make more content for both.  Feel free to send me a message about what you would like to see on either the blog or the YouTube feed.

New PC is Built

This is an update on the progress of my personal rig.

I was able to get the new parts put into the old Gateway GT5404 case that I talked about in previous posts and in my YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieZY7QLgAuo).

I am working on getting all of the drivers and BIOS updates installed before comparing benchmark numbers from Cinebench and the Windows Experience to the old configuration of the system.  I have successfully installed Windows 7 64-bit on the system and believe my only bottleneck at this time would be the HDD, which I will be replacing in the future with a Solid State Drive.

I am trying to think of different things that I may want to try to do with this computer in the future, including running AMD Dual Graphics or a water-cooling solution.  But I think those will be determined by the final choice of case I make.

New Parts Are Installed

I was able to get the new motherboard, processor, and memory installed and checked that the system will POST and boot to the BIOS.  I just need to reinstall the OS and then I will be able to run a few simple benchmarks that I was able to run on the old configuration to see what the difference will be in performance between the old and new.

I am not expecting astoundingly fast performance out of new processor, but I should see a nice boost, as I will be going from a 2.8Ghz Dual-core Pentium D with 2GB DDR2 to a 3.6Ghz Quad-Core A8-5600K with 8GB DDR3.  Also, while I did not play Fallout: New Vegas on this machine with the older parts installed, I will do a simple Fraps comparison to how it runs on the new machine vs. the laptop that I have been playing it on.  This PC is a 2.3Ghz Dual-Core Pentium T4500 with 6GB DDR3.

(Some) Tools of the Trade

This list is by no means a "best of" list or anything of the sort.  These are just some of the software tools that I have come across and/or used.

Glary Utilities - This is a nice tool that I use the portable version of from a flash drive.  It will check the registry for bad entries, tell you how much space your temporary files are taking up, find shortcut errors, and then fix all the errors that it finds with a single click.  You can get the free version at: http://www.glarysoft.com/glary-utilities/download/

Crystal Disk Info - This tool will take a look at the disk drives on your system and let you know how healthy they are. http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

AVG - On my work computers, I am provided with Norton Internet Security, but for home, I have found that AVG offers pretty good protection for being a free program.  I would recommend also running something like Super Anti-Spyware or MalwareBytes with any AV program.  http://free.avg.com

HWInfo - There are times where the customer does not know what components are in their PC because it is a second-hand unit or it is not fully disclosed in the OEM build sheet.  This can give you a run down of all of the parts that make up the system that you are working on, which can sometimes help discover incompatibilities. http://www.hwinfo.com

CPU-Z and GPU-Z - These utilites show information about the CPU, Memory, and GPU in the system and can also list the speed that they are currently running at. http://www.cpuid.com/  http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Google.com - There will be times that you come across a unique problem or an issue with something that you are not familiar with.  In these cases, Google (or even Bing, if you prefer) can be your greatest ally.  Chances are, someone has come across something similar and you will be able to put their information to use to solve the problem you are facing.

I hope this helps you find some useful tools for troubleshooting, detecting, or preventing issues with systems that you work on.  I know there are some that I use and have used that I have missed on this list, but I will cover them in future lists such as this.

Update On Unboxed Parts

I did not get a chance to really stop and document the process of replacing the daughterboard on the Dell Inspiron 1750 laptop like I had hoped.  I wound up replacing it on a whim when the old one failed fully leaving us unable to charge the laptop at all.  I do have a picture of the laptop disassembled on the kitchen table that I will upload later.

Here is the new part that is in the laptop now.  The center portion of the power connector was broken off and the metal pins bent and then one finally broken.

I was able to get the laptop reassembled and it working order with only one real hitch.  I wound up taking it back apart the next day to better secure the connector for the power button, which had come loose.

This photo shows why techs charge so much to do a laptop repair.  This is right after the old broken part came out.

I have not yet done anything with the DD-WRT or component installations yet and still hope to film at least a portion of them for YouTube and take pictures for here.

Personal Rig Upgrade NewEgg Unboxing

Here is a link to a quick video I made talking about the parts I ordered for the upgrade of my home personal computer.  This is my first attempt at an unboxing on camera and pretty much at YouTube uploading in general.  I did not do any editing to the video and I apologize for the shakiness and off centeredness of things at times.

I am going to try to do an overview of some sort and at a later time a review on the parts, but I do not yet know if it will get recorded for YouTube or not.

The part for the laptop was installed over the weekend, but I did not get a chance to film it.  I ended up doing it quickly because it is currently the only really good computer in the house and the battery was not able to charge at all.

Other than that, I hope you are able to enjoy it and I look forward to at least updating the upgrade process on the blog, if I do not get to film it.

Personal Rig Rebuild Phase 1

My delivery from NewEgg came today with the first phase of the rebuild of my personal rig.

The rig is starting life as a Gateway GT5404 which is as it was from the factory except for having 2GB of DDR2 upgraded from the 1GB that it was shipped with.

The first stage of the build will reuse the case, power supply, and hard drive, which I plan to upgrade in the 2nd phase of the build, which will be when funding permits.

For now, the motherboard is going to be replaced with the MSI FM2-A75MA-E35.  I chose this board based on past experience I have had with MSI and it is a low-cost FM2 socket board that has an HDMI port.  This was not meant to be any high dollar build with hugely exceptional performance, but as a good budget rig that I can use for gaming.  The gaming is where the HDMI comes in, as this will allow me to easily use my living room TV as the monitor.

For the processor and memory, I chose the AMD A8-5600K APU, which is a 3.6Ghz Quad-core processor with a Radeon 7560D GPU built into the processor, and G.Skill Sniper 1866 memory.  The 1866 memory is the max speed that the MSI board supports without overclocking and I know that it will be important to have that extra speed since the GPU will be using this memory.  With the memory sharing in mind, I chose the 8GB (2x4GB) kit.

The last piece of hardware in the NewEgg box was a Rosewill USB wireless adapter.  This may only get use until I setup DD-WRT on an old Linksys WRT54G I have laying around, but will allow me to get connected prior to having the DD-WRT'd router setup as a wireless bridge.

There was also another delivery of parts that consisted of a component board with USB, VGA and AC ports for my family laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1750.  This is to replace the current part with a damaged AC power connector.

I hope to get the chance to have unboxings, overviews, and reviews of all of these products on the blog and possibly YouTube soon.  I am also hoping to have some pictures or video regarding the removal of the old components and installation of the new components on both PCs.

Explaining RAID

RAID or Redundant Arrary of Independent (originally Inexpensive) Disks is a technology that combines multiple disk drives into a single logical unit.  The way that the drives are used in the array depends on the level of RAID that is used.

RAID 0 - Provides higher performance and additional storage, but does not include any redundancy.  If any drive in the array fails the array is destroyed.  This risk increases with the addition of drives to the array.

RAID 1 - Commonly referred to as striping; data is identically written or mirrored to two drives.  The read requests are service by the drive with the least seek time plus latency from rotation.  The write performance will be determined by the slower drive. RAID 0 will continue to operate as long as at least one drive is functioning.

RAID 5 - Requiring at least three disks to operate parity and data is distrubuted and the array is not destroyed if a single drive is lost.  Reads following a drive loss are calculated from the parity causing the drive to be masked from the end user. The rebuilding of an array after a failure will add stress to all of the working drives as all areas of the disk considered in use will need to be read to rebuild the redundancy.  This can result in other drives that were close to failure to fail before the rebuild is finished.

RAID 6 - Providing fault tolerance of up to two drives RAID 6 is more practical for larger groups of drives. The larger the drive capacity, the longer amount of time it will take to recover from a drive failure, which will also reduce performance of the entire array until the failed drive is replaced and the array rebuilt.

RAID 10 - Is somewhat of a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1 with all data being written across the primary disk in a striping fashion and mirror on the secondary disks.

There are also other types of RAID (2,3, & 4), but they are either theoretical or rarely used or not considered a "standard level."

Cellphone Unlocking Law

After over 100,000 people signed a petition to the White House regarding the January law that made it a federal crime to unlock a cellphone to allow them to be used on different wireless networks without the current carrier's permission, the Obama Administration is pushing to have the prohibition reversed.  This may need changes to the federal copyright law to occur.

“Neither criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation,” wrote R. David Edelman, White House Senior Advisor for Internet, Innovation, & Privacy. “This is particularly important for secondhand or other mobile devices that you might buy or receive as a gift, and want to activate on the wireless network that meets your needs — even if it isn’t the one on which the device was first activated. All consumers deserve that flexibility.”

“The Obama Administration would support a range of approaches to addressing this issue, including narrow legislative fixes in the telecommunications space,” Edelman added.
Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/03/05/obama-administration-mobile-phone-unlocking-should-be-legal/#ixzz2MgcYhZrM

Sound Blaster Cinema on MSI Motherboards

MSI is looking to take over the title of Best Onboard Motherboard Audio by incorporating Sound Blaster Cinema audio technology into their mother boards.

MSI ‏@msitweets

Coming Soon! The New Audio Standard For Motherboardshttp://fb.me/2CuirUEVU 

For more information the features of the Sound Blaster Cinema audio, please visit MSI at http://emm.msi.com/display.php?List=31&N=2348

PlayStation 4 Specs

During a reveal event Sony gave the official information on the specifications that will make up the PlayStation4 console, which is to be released "Holiday 2013".

The unit will be powered by an 8-core 64-bit x86 AMD "Jaguar" CPU and a Radeon GPU.

Also included, Blu-ray drive, 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM, 802.11n WiFi, USB 3.0, Bluetooh 2.1, optical audio ports, HDMI, and legacy analog AV connections.

There will be an internal HDD for storage, but Sony did not release details on the space.

The unit will be controlled via the new DualShock 4 contorlloer with features a touchpad, headphone jack, and share button.  The controllers will also have built-in Move functionality.

Photo sourced from JoyStiq.com

The system will not be able to play legacy discs, but will stream PS1, PS2, and PS3 games through the PlayStation Cloud.  The Vita will also be able to connect to play PS4 games remotely.

So far the list of games coming to the PS4 are:
Knack
Killzone: Shadow Fall
Driveclub
Infamous: Second Son
The Witness
Watch Dogs
Diablo 3 (also coming to the PS3)
Destiny

Linus Tech Tips Look at NVIDIA GTX Titan

If you are interested in graphics cards at all, you may have heard about the NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan card, which is the fastest single GPU card currently available.

While, I do not quite have the pull with NVIDIA to get ahold of such a card, Linus Tech Tips was able to and posted some videos about the Titan, including an overview, a PC build, LCD monitor overclock guide, and a test bench tour.

Unboxing & Technology Overview of the Titan from Linus Tech Tips

GTX Titan Small Form Factor PC Building from Linus Tech Tips

LCD Monitor Overclocking Guide

GTX Titan Test Bench Tour

Big thanks to Linus for putting this information out there!  Be sure to check out his other videos and LinusTechTips.com to allow him to keep getting us this information.

Why US Internet Access is Slow, Costly, and Unfair

I saw a link about this video on TekSyndicate and after listening to it, it really makes sense.

Check it out and let me know what you think. Do you think we need a change in how America connects to the Internet?  Here is a link: http://vimeo.com/59236702

There is a also a Whitehouse Petition to make Susan Crawford the chair of the FCC.

There was a note that there was recently a spike of 1 star reviews on her books, that were highly detailed that were trying to disprove the material in the book.

Vishera Getting a Second Look

When AMD's Vishera platform was first released, the benchmark tests were fairy underwhelming for a 4.0Ghz 8-core processor (FX-8350) when it was put head-to-head with Intel's best bang for the buck 3.5Ghz quad-core (i5-3570K).

This seems to be swaying toward the favor of AMD now that the new BIOS updates and Windows CPU scheduling hot-fixes are available.  Starting with some gaming benchmark tests with overclocking that were done by Tek Syndicate that showed the Vishera beating the i5-3570K and in cases the i7-3770K, especially when streaming.

FX-8350 vs i5-3570K vs i7-3770k vs i7-3820 with AMD Radeon HD 7870 Benchmarks:
http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-vs-intel-3570k-vs-3770k-vs-3820-gaming-and-xsplit-streaming-benchmarks

i5-3570K vs FX-8350 with GTX 670 Benchmarks:
http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-oc-vs-i5-3570k-oc-battle-continues

New Budget Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs

Intel has launched new budget Ivy Bridge desktop CPUs for the LGA 1155 socket, with pricing as low as $42 for a 2.6Ghz Dual-Core.

The seven new models include two low power consumption in 2.3Ghz dual-core (Celeron G1610T) and 2.5Ghz dual-core (Pentium G2020T), 2.6Ghz (Celeron G1610) and 2.7Ghz (Celeron 1620) Celerons, three new dual core Pentiums in 2.8Ghz (G2010), 2.9Ghz (G2020), and 3.2Ghz (G2130), and a new Core i3-3210, which is a 3.2Ghz dual-core with Hyper Threadingand support for AVX.

All processors feature Intel HD graphics with the exception of the i3-3210, which houses the Intel HD 2500 Graphics chip.

The TDP for the lower power models is 35 Watts and all others are 55 Watt processors.