Ashtefere

Just got myself an m14x last night, as I only play LoL nowadays.

To be honest, I am extremely impressed with it. It is an incredible little machine, and the GPU OC's like a beast.

I will be doing a review of it when I get the time, in a week or two.

-Ash

Dont know if you are still wanting an answer, but I no longer have the m18x, so I can't check. There are only 3 ports anyway, however.

-Ash

FYI - only blizzard accounts with a purchased game will get beta access from opt-in.

Those 35 accounts will need sc2, d2, wow, etc bought for them to be eligible.

-Ash

Kidnap their children. It's amazing how quickly that will speed things up. Works every time.

-Ash

Yeah, people will understand that this isnt any stock intel or dell heatsink, it would be akin to the higher end air coolers that people buy for their gaming PC's. Same thing, but more complex to build. I am sure you will be able to sell more than 30 of these at $100USD, especially on ebay.

-Ash

I would pay $100USD plus postage. Happily.

-Ash

I knew that single heatpipe heatsink was gonna be a piece of shit.

Anyone know the part number for it and if we can get it sent separately?

-Ash

Nuff said really.

-Ash

Yeah, sounds like the AU config isnt too bad after all.

Base config on AU website + aftermarket CPU and aftermarket RAM upgrades will be the go for me I think.

-Ash

Au, Uk, and I think Canada all have it so far.

-Ash

I would love to see the throttlestop results with this CPU.

If it works well, I will have to pick up an m18x - especially now that in Aus we get the 6990m xfire. While I like the idea of the 580m sli... it just isnt worth the extra cash.

Also, for everyone worried about random reads/writes with your crappy h67 chipset - I have a solution of sorts.

FancyCache Overview

Install and run. Give it 2-4gb (or more if you got it) of RAM (but make sure your PC is STABLE first!) and you will get some pretty ridiculous speeds, as while the CPU is slowly ramping up to get the HDD reads up to scratch the ram cache is already there and waiting, and it largely mitigates the performance problems of the H67 chipset.

For a base config with the 6990m, it will cost me 3.2k AUD - still a lot more than the US price but I am unsure of what the 6990m crossfire will cost yet, as it hasnt hit the US site.

-Ash

It is virtually impossible for a VRAM module to overheat, even when bare naked. A VRM module though, can but this is very rare. Two very different circumstances separated by just 1 letter.

Toms hardware guide get this mixed up way too fucking much. So do a lot of online hardware stores.

-Ash

Looks like the 580m is gonna drop tomorrow.

Shown running crysis2 at 1080p, max settings and max tesselation at 60fps+. Nothing special I know, but interesting nonetheless.

-Ash

Im going to steer away from all of this generation's sandforce drives TBH.

They have a linear auto-throttle that is constantly kicking in depending on the amount of writes left on the flash.

One of the key features about sandforce drives is that they can use "cheaper nand" for the same performance - and believe me they all do. This cheaper nand has less write cycles, so before 5 years is up the drive will actually be throttled as low as 20% of its "new" speed.

Not a typo. 20%.

This isnt including the trim bug that still exists on the new sandforce drives. If your drive ever gets totally covered in dirty blocks trim STOPS WORKING, and you need to secure erase the drive to restore it. Which reduces writes. Which kicks in more throttling.

All the tests I can see show the king of the hill to be the Crucial M4 and Crucial C300... Hilariously, they are about the same performance - c300 being better for randoms, M4 being better for sequentials.

In iometer benchmarks a pair of 120gb m4's is actually faster than a pair of V3's in raid 0 by a good 20%.

All the benchmarkers for sandforces new drives had to ask for a "Special" firmware version that switches off the throttling, but also disables the warranty on the drive. The IO for 4k reads on a retail drive is no ~80k like the marketing department says. Its actually closer to 5k.

Thats just woeful performance.

CDM uses purely compressible data so the sandforce drives run at max theoretical performance with CDM. Real world data loads dont get even close to this.

-Ash

Mw86, they all use the same database for virus scanning, some just have more (redundant) features than others. Just go with the cheapest one.

-Ash

Yeah, lot of tests I have seen have had 90+ 4k write in CDM.

-Ash

Basically, make a list of all the ports that you and your family use. Find everything. Then, block everything else and unblock as needed. AVG link scanner will be useful.

Personally, I don't actually use an antivirus any more. I know the actions an antivirus will take to remove a virus, and can do it manually just as good (and take up no system resources doing it).

I dont go to porn sites or warez sites and run fanboi's list in adblock and dont open EXE's/etc in emails. Simply doing that has meant I have not had a virus in the last 6+ years.

-Ash

Thanks for testing this Michael.

So it looks like HM67 is 50% slower in 4k writes than P67. That is powerfully disappointing for me in my line of work. I guess I have to wait for the R2 and hope for Z68.

-Ash

Yeah Mcaffee has been doing it for years, mainly to small startup sites they can prey on. Ignore them, they dont matter. They wont remove you from the list until you give them money, no matter how hard you beg.

Panda historically has used a lot of resources for its heuristic scanning, as it is very powerful and very thorough - hence the "uninstall" comment. Panda is like the godzilla of AV. No where near as much as norton mind you, but still noticeable.

Panda cloud AV is much lighter in resources, but I dont think it hooks in as deep as Panda non-cloud (speculation, could be wrong).

Stay away from software firewalls. You have a DSL or cable modem - thus, you have a hardware firewall already, and it works for your whole home. Log into it and tweak it to your heart's content.

-Ash

Yeah, decent is good, but actual is better. I am getting more serious with my Dev and need every little bit of performance. I am still curious at the results of your tweaks on the SSD too.

-Ash

The mcaffee thing is a well known scam used to make you buy a "license" to be put on their "whitelist". All they are doing is trying to scam you out of their cash. To be perfectly honest, the kind of people that use mcaffee should be coming to TI anyway.

You wont get off their block list unless you give them their "licensing fee". Not sure why this is even legal, but whatever. America Fuck yeah.

Norman is just another Norton competitor designed to fool old people into thinking they are buying Norton. It is given to PC stores to bundle with PC's which shortly afterwards begins it's scarware routine "WARNING YOUR PC ISNT PROTECTED RENEW YOUR LICENSE" garbage like all in-box AV's do.

The detection rate for Norman is laughable. Most of their time and effort is spent on marketing and UI.

MSSE is a great suite, and Panda is the highest detection rate of live threats bar none. The best part of Panda is its heuristic engine which is the highest detection rate and the lowest false positive number. In our real world use, we could not find a machine we couldnt fix with panda, no matter how far gone.

But yeah, Norman is just another consumer con.

-Ash

Haha, I had to get a desktop instead to get my higher 4k reads.

While I game a lot, I do game dev even more and the slower 4k's add up to a few hours each week. Trust me, I would love nothing more than an m18x, but I need full HDD speed for the price I would be paying.

From what Brian has described, the mod should be similar to the R2. Make sure that the VRM/MOSFET/Chokes/etc dont sit in the way of the heatsink as well. They should not be touching the heatsink at all. If they are, its pushing the heastink away from the core.

A solution to this is to take out the heatsink, and mark the areas of where the voltage stuff contacts the heatsink. Then, drill out and clean up these ares so they simply poke through the heatsink - making sure to keep away from any vapour chambers and heat pipes.

I did this to my R2, and the temps dropped another 4-5 degrees C over the standard retention mod.

-Ash

Dont fucking touch Norman please.

If you need to quickly get rid of a virus, please use MSSE or Panda, then uninstall the software afterward. This is part of the particular field I work in, and we have done extensive testing on the performance of antivirii and similar softwares.

-Ash

You will need to enable vsync + triple buffering for directx using radeon pro, like brian mentioned.

Also, you should run fraps and use its microstutter measure technique to determine just how bad it is.

-Ash

Have you tried changing crossfire drivers? It could be a crossfire volt control issue or something?

-Ash