The opinionated ramblings and muses of a weary web victim.
Published on February 3, 2015 By Jafo In Personal Computing

Following on with ID's thread re new PC build.... and I'd only hijacked Starkers' one to describe what I'd been doing to date...so here's my own thread with the ins and outs of what's what.

My old machine [also home-grown] was a [then] reasonably OK machine....

Lian Li PC-A6010 case [black]

Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w PSU

ASUS P6T-se  X58 i7 MoBo

Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz LGA1366 CPU

12G OCZ Triple [6x2G] PC12800 DDR3 Gold Ram

CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler

Vantec EZ2 Sata hot-swap racks [x2][black]

1TB Seagate Sata2 7200 HD [x2] [redundancy backup/data]

2TB Western Digital Caviar Green Sata2 HD [x2]

500G WD Sata2 7200 HD [game backups]

250G Seagate Sata2 7200 HD [x2] [secondary/alternate OS installs in racks]

240G SanDisk SDSSDX240GG25 [for OS]

ACR-105 Multi card reader

LG Sata DVD-RW [x2][black]

ASUS GTX590 3GB GPU

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit RTM.

 

That was its final specs...having doubled the ram from 6 and adding a 'faster' GPU.

The stumbling block was really 'just' the CPU.  For FSX  it's a case of 'the faster the better' - so just before Xmas I started researching....

 

More to come...

 


Comments (Page 13)
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on Nov 01, 2015

Well....I now have the correct NVidia driver installed...so that solves 'most' of the problems...

Edge is still a dog...and doesn't show/have Favourites when importing from IE.

IE is crashing again...[thought I'd solved that one]... so back to researching I go....

 

I replaced Terry's 'old' 32" TV used as a monitor at 1360x768 with a newer 32" TV - same res ... but text has a white halo which suggests a contrast issue....or simply poorer quality Teev.

Her eyesight means the ideal solution is a low res TV at native res rather than a similar sized monitor 'pushed' to a lower res from it's default.  Bottom line is 'stuff' needs to be big...

on Nov 01, 2015

Yep...as psychoak mentioned....Edge is rubbish.

I have a feeling Chrome will be my weapon of choice on 10.....

on Nov 01, 2015

Windows 10 FULL REBOOT time on the i7 920 = 21 seconds.

That's with Fences, Object Dock, Start 10, etc.  It's a normal BIOS, not UEFI.

on Nov 02, 2015


Windows 10 FULL REBOOT time on the i7 920 = 21 seconds.

That's with Fences, Object Dock, Start 10, etc.  It's a normal BIOS, not UEFI.

That's a good startup time, especially on an older PC with a Legacy BIOS.  I have an older setup with a Legacy BIOS that hopefully will boot in a similar time.  It has an AMD Phenom 1150T @ 3.2ghz and 32gb of RAM.  I haven't quite finished putting it together as yet [some parts are still packed away somewhere], but there's no hurry as I have other operable machines and have no urgent need.

With regard to low boot times, my little 2-in-1 just booted in 16 seconds.  Usually it took up to 20 or so, but I disabled a few more startup non-essentials to reduce times a little more.  Before investigating more thoroughly I didn't realise just how many updaters and 'phone home'  things started with Windows.... like 2 for Adobe, 3 or 4 for HP and a couple for Intel.   I guess that's the issue with buying propriety machines... non-essential bloatware.

As for Stardock apps, I only have Start8 and Fences running at startup - being that WB and IP are more integrated into the shell - and others I start manually as/when required.

on Nov 02, 2015

When XP came out, it was a marked improvement over 98SE, not to mention ME.  It was based on the highly advanced NT platform, which was far more stable under load than the consumer kernel previous home user iterations were based on.  It wasn't limited to 1 GB of ram, or FAT32 and 137 GB hard drives.  It sold great, and became the dominant OS inside two years as hardware outstripped the capabilities of 98.  When Windows 7 came out, it was a marked improvement over XP, with far greater utility in a multi-core 64-bit environment that XP simply doesn't function in, it replaced it as the dominant OS inside two years as hardware outstripped the capabilities of XP entirely.  Vista sold like shit, it was far more advanced, but hardware wasn't, so all it came with was poor overhead.  8 sold like shit too, for different reasons, a horrid gui instead of poor performance, but the lack of advancement was the same, and 7 still isn't failing to deliver on modern hardware.

 

They're essentially looking at a market purely driven by packaged sales, and performance gamers, anyone that puts their own together has absolutely no reason to buy a new OS unless they're playing DX12 games on it.

 

Your internet browsing isn't worth nearly enough to make up the cost of a free OS, what they're doing is giving you one you don't need for free and probably wouldn't have bought anyway, so you'll buy your next machine with Windows 10 having gotten used to it.  It's the same reason they wont put DX12 onto the old operating systems, they need it to sell the new one because there is literally no point in upgrading from 7.  XP plateaued near 80% market share, 7, even with it's huge advantages, around 55%, and unless they can get people off of it without anywhere near the same reason to switch performance wise, 10 will do even worse.  XP obliterated every predecessor, and Microsoft would kill for that kind of success again, but their obstruction is their own damned product.

on Nov 02, 2015

Oh dang and blast.....here I am agreeing totally with psychoak yet again.....

 

....something's seriously wrong with reality....

on Nov 02, 2015

Edge does have favourites imported...only the text is blank in the list....and if you squint right and pass a cursor over it bits become visible....

....entertaining....

on Nov 02, 2015

Edge, wasn't he a WWE wrestler?

Seriously, that's another pet hate of my sister... the fact that Edge is a POS 'browser' that crashes/freezes regularly; has few to no decent addons to block adds and popups, etc, and is a proper bitch to use because often it hangs and/or does not connect to requested addresses.

Thankfully, that's a problem I'll not have because FireFox is my browser of choice... everything just works and is easy to use.

on Nov 02, 2015

Followed a squillion 'fixes' for a dud IE11 continuously crashing....no luck.  I am likely going to have to safe mode it and delete the dll in the crash logs....

Meanwhile Edge is 'beginning' to behave - at least I can see the favourites now...

 

on Nov 03, 2015

Hehe, come the weekend I'll be able to set up my man cave with my 3 big rigs and other stuff.... at long last.  It has been a long and frustrating time, but I now have a house of my own to call home.  Who knows, maybe next year I can revisit the 2011v3 upgrade and really kick some arse.

In any event, I won't be having any IE or Edge problems.  I'm happy with Firefox and I'll stick with that.

on Nov 05, 2015

The NVidia drivers really didn't want to install...got the Graphic driver...but the rest still didn't.

Used the cleanup but not in safemode....and the install worked...

Typical....

That resolved the issues with Edge...so things are looking up....

on Nov 06, 2015

FDSFSFBF

I have inquired about both the titanium and black versions and neither are available anymore.  For the Titanium version, only 5000 were ever manufactured, and according to what I'm hearing, all have been sold.

Titanium = 500...

on Nov 07, 2015


That resolved the issues with Edge...so things are looking up....

Spoke too soon....WAS resolved....now it crashes instead....

on Nov 07, 2015



Quoting Jafo,

That resolved the issues with Edge...so things are looking up....



Spoke too soon....WAS resolved....now it crashes instead....

See, told ya 10 was/is a pig.  They take a sow's ear [IE] and try to turn it into a silk purse [Edge].  Didn't work, did it.  What with a crap browser, advertising and snooping/phone home abilities, yeah, the whole walled garden thing, Win 10 has little to nothing going for it.  And all those millions grabbing the free lunch with both hands when there's no such thing as a free lunch.... makes me wonder what the world is coming to.

I think MS has put a hypnotic thingy in with the updates, and once installed it emits subliminal messages "Get Windows 10, Get Windows 10", and when subjects are sufficiently hyponotised the click the install Windows 10 button, all while completely oblivious to what's going on.  Thankfully, I'm not smart enough to be hypnotised... read a bit too thick, and thus remain unscathed/Win 10less.  In other words, see what trouble people can get into when they're smart!  Yup, they're hypnotisable and end up with crap installed on their computers.

Oh, and if anyone detects a hint of frivolity and tongue-in-cheek here, I'm as pleased as punch cos I took possession of the keys for the new house this morning.  It was the last bit of business to conclude prior to shifting everything in on Sunday morning.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get the power on 'til Monday morning [no biggie] so I'll be staying  here for the night to eat, shower, watch a bit of TV, etc.

on Nov 07, 2015

If you're a gamer, 10 is an eventuality.  If you're using other new technologies with poor support in 7(which wont be getting improved because it cuts into their sale of the new OS) you have the same problem.  7 is end of life already, they wont be fixing things like flaky M.2 drives.  If you've already got 8, your OS is ass to begin with, so a free upgrade to ass isn't really a downside...

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