PCMan911's tech blog

Still out to prove I am not an AMD or Intel fan boy I bring in my two Quad core systems.  The first of which will be an AMD.  Right now with a lot of people asking about whether to wait and see if Sandy Bridge will be fixed soon and whether all the problems will truly be fixed, they want alternatives.  The other problem that people get upset about is the constant change of sockets in the Intel side where AMD is a little better at making backwards compatibility.  Already a few motherboard makers have proven you can run older Core i5 series chips in the LGA 1156 on the 6 series chipsets.  Why did Intel change the socket to 1155?  Many people believe it was to force a whole new hardware change.  I for one had not jumped into the Core series because I kept hearing of a socket change.  Intel had already did it once when the came out with the first Core chips that required LGA 1366.  People who jumped onto the X58 chipsets and boards were met with ...

Currently the Sandy Bridge recalls are in full swing and it looks like March or later before early adopters will be getting fixed chipsets back. I was fortunate enough that someone needed a fairly inexpensive computer and preferred reliability to the latest and greatest.  Socket 775 is vastly still available and at a great value as well. The value machine was going to mainly run office software and surf internet.  Multiple cores are pretty much a given anymore and I would not recommend less than a dual core. Earlier in my blog I also spoke about the difference between the Celeron value chips compared to the more expensive Pentium, now Core 2 and Core series chips.  Intel went and changed things again in the Core 2 and Core series by reintroducing a value chip and calling them Pentium Dual Core.  Now talk about some confusion. The other pretty standard item seemed to be DDR3 instead of DDR2 which was fine because DDR3 prices have fallen.  250GB and larger har...

Now with Sandy Bridge out although many boards are being recalled due to a chipset bug, I have some components that are within 2 generations. The components here are close to one of the latest Socket 775 chipsets and one of the newest dual core models of the Intel Core 2 Duo processors.  Socket 775 was somewhat replaced by Socket 1366 and 1156 and Sandy Bridge uses an all new Socket 1155. Socket 775 was also the last socket that had multiple chipset vendors.  NVidia had several chipsets that ranked above the Intel chipsets.  In graphics if you wanted SLI you needed the NVidia chipset based 775 boards. Socket 775 processors did not have video integrated as well, it was still on the chipset. System Components: CPU  Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz, 2 Cores/2 Threads (Dual Core), 6MB Cache, 1333Mhz Rated FSB Socket 775, Wolfdale 45nm, Stepping A, Revision E0, Multiplier 9x, FSB-333Mhz MMX, SSE 1,2,3,3S,4.1, EM64T, VT-X Board  OEM (Dell) Intel Q45 / 82801JD (IC...

Up until this system all of the components have been Intel processors on Intel Chipsets.  Maybe I have spent  many more hours repairing, replacing, and upgrading Intel systems than AMD.  Possibly the amount of actual AMD hardware I have laying around is much less. I am always an equal opportunity builder and recommender when it comes to Intel and AMD processors.  Intel has been many times the software vendors recommendation and AMD always brought excellent value to the table. If the vendor recommended or only certified Intel, then that is what a customer got.  If not, I always tried to prove how valuable an AMD system could be at a better cost. AMD has many times brought innovation that made Intel rethink strategy.  The 64-bit AMD processors was one instance where Intel said no one needs 64-bit on the desktop and then went and started adding 64-bit instructions to the processors to compete. The following hardware was one of AMD's answers to Intel's P...

As a consultant for many years of business systems, it always seemed better to recommend multiple processors when specifying server or high end workstation equipment.  Long before the Dual Core CPU came about were the multi-cpu boards and systems.  One of my favorite boards that hung on the wall for a long time was a dual 386 processor board.  It had two Intel 386, 33Mhz processors built onto it.  The board came out of an early server used in bank and financial transactions. Intel and AMD both have a huge business market for multiple processor systems.  Recently it was shown that personal computer shipments were down last year, but Intel made a huge profit primarily due to the server market. Even in todays multi-core CPU world, multiprocessor systems play a huge role, especially in virtualization.  I recently got to drool all over some servers we ordered.  The servers were only 1U rack space, 1.75" tall.  The amazing part were these servers hous...

In late 2004 Intel and AMD both were having huge battles in processors to see who could reach the top speed.  AMD stopped labeling their CPU speeds and instead started using rating numbers as names.  So instead of what we normally expected with an AMD Athlon 2.8Ghz to compete with an Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz, we now had an Athlon XP 2800+ supposed to be rated at 2800, but ran at around 2.1Ghz. Intel was reaching the four gigahertz speed barrier.  Without overclocking it seemed that neither company could reach or break the magical 4Ghz range.  At the end of 2004 Intel released a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition that reached 3.73Ghz. A true 4Ghz chip is listed on http://ark.intel.com, and a few engineering samples saw the light, but were canceled for the Dual Core chips.  AMD started banking on 64-bit and so the Althon 64 brand started to come about, but still kept the rating name instead of actual speed name. The name game starts at Intel in early 2005 with the Dual C...

So many times I have been asked this question throughout the years "Why not buy a Celeron?" and try to explain the answer in easy terms to someone. So in the great car reference so many times used in the computer world, I ask a person "Would you buy a car that part of the engine or transmission did not meet spec and so part of it is shut off?" The car will still get you from point A to point B, just not as fast or smooth as the same car with all the fully functioning parts. Only a few people would every decide that they could wait for the few dollars saved even though I tried to show that time is money and spending the extra could save in the long run. First chip binning, reusing, and relabeling has been going on in the processor industry almost since the beginning. Do you just throw away a working CPU that may not reach the intended speed or that part of the cache is not 100%?  No way, that would waste money and end up costing the consumers more per chip. You ...

The components of the following were OEM as well, but they are HP Compaq instead of Dell.  The nice thing about this board, it is pretty much a straight Intel board just labeled for HP. The board was repaired by replacing blown capacitors in which several manufactures around the same time frame were getting bad caps from their sources.  Unsolder and replace about 6-9 caps and we are up and running like new.  I prefer Rubycon capacitors, but will settle on Panasonic and a few other top names if the Rubycons are not available.  After a solder job the boards are put through a 24 hour burn test using the old Prime 95.  This test heats the components up pretty warm to test if there are going to be any more caps fail or a weak solder joint. The other thing I would like to say about this board, it is still quite popular today in the new form of an Intel Atom board with the chip soldered on.  Nothing like reusing 5+ year old technology all over again. Funny at t...

The next system I grabbed was more OEM Dell pieces.  Did I tell you I repair and replace a lot of Dells? I again assure you that the main components were running well.  I upgraded the Dell to a Core 2 CPU and Mainboard. System Components: CPU Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HT, 1 Core/2 Threads (Hyperthreading), 1MB Cache, 800Mhz Rated FSB Socket 775, Prescott 90nm, Stepping 1, Revision E0, Multiplier 14x, FSB-200Mhz MMX, SSE 1,2,3 Board OEM (Dell) Intel 915G / 82801FB (ICH6), Socket 775 2 * SATA, 1 * IDE, 8 * USB, 2 * PCI Video i915G Chipset Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA900) Revision B1, 130nm, PCI, DDR2 128-Bit, DirectX 9, 8MB Dedicated / 128MB Dynamic Memory, 333Mhz GPU RAM  2GB (2 * 1GB) Kingston DDR2 800 (PC2-6400) Running at 266Mhz Dual Channel Mode (DDR2-533), CAS 4-4-4-12, 1.8V 2039MB Total, 1760MB Free after Clean install Not in use for testing: Sound ADI 198x SoundMax AC97 Audio (onboard) LAN Broadcom BC5701 NetXtreme Gigabit (...

The first system I grabbed hold of may not be the oldest, but one of the older ones still running well. When I used to host LAN parties, this was always the faithful backup.  I removed the add in graphics card to get back to the bare root of the system. System Components: CPU Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz, 1 Core/1 Thread (no HT), 512KB Cache, 533Mhz Rated FSB Socket 478, Northwood 130nm, Stepping 9, Revision D1, Multiplier 21x, FSB-133Mhz MMX, SSE 1,2 Board OEM (Dell) Intel 865G / 82801EB (ICH5), Socket 478 2 * SATA, 2 * IDE, 6 * USB, 1 * AGP, 4 * PCI Video i865G Chipset Integrated Intel Extreme 2 Graphics Revision A2, 130nm, PCI, DDR 128-Bit, DirectX 7, 8MB Dedicated / 96MB Dynamic Memory, 266MHz GPU RAM 2GB (2 * 1GB) Crucial DDR 400, Running at 333Mhz Dual Channel Mode, CAS 2.5-3-3-7, 2.5V 2039MB Total, 1738MB Free after clean install Not in use for testing: Sound ADI 198x SoundMax AC97 Audio (onboard) LAN Intel Pro 1000/MT Network (onboard) Common Components t...

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional 32-bit with SP3 V5.1.2600 Default Install, Screensavers & Power Management disabled Components removed: Games, MSN Exporer, Outlook Express, Windows Messenger All updates installed through January 2011 Internet Explorer 8 (8.0.6001.18702) Media Player 11 (11.0.5721.5280) DirectX 9 (9.29.1962) .NET 3.5 SP1 (Required for Handbrake) Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (Required of PC/3D Mark) Information Gathering Software: CPU-Z v1.56 (http://www.cpuid.com) GPU-Z v0.5.0 (http://www.techpowerup.com) Testing Software: 3DMark03 v3.60_1901 (Older systems would not run 3Dmark06) 3DMark06 v1.20_1901 7-Zip v9.20 (172 Files, 20 Folders, Zip file, Ultra Compression) CrystalDiskmark v3.0.1 HandBrake v0.9.5 (110MB VOB file to M4V High Profile) PassMark Performance Test V7 Build 1020 (Total System Score) PCMark05 (CPU, Memory, Graphics, and Disk Scores) SiSoft Sandra v2011c 17.30 (CPU Arithmetic,CPU Multimedia, CPU to Memory...

So one of the things I like to do on occasion is benchmark different machines and look back at whether it was worth upgrading or not.  I usually try to get rid of most of my older computers, but somehow between repairing and upgrading other people's computers, I end up with old ones lying around. I read daily to keep up with the current computer and networking technology to be able to recommend to other people as well as think about my next upgrades.  All the buzz lately has been Intel's Sandy Bridge and the upcoming AMD platforms Bulldozer, Fusion, and other. I recently got myself a new laptop for Christmas.  I had been holding off on the latest and greatest but the wait was getting longer and longer and the then current laptop I was using was not cutting it.  I use most of my computers for a variety of tasks.  Most of the evenings it is web surfing, flash games, and watching video.  But quite often I am doing website publishing, photo, and video editi...