To be more precise: Expresscard is one PCI-e lane and one USB plug

@OliverSalzburg Misinformation? Why people create lies?

@OliverSalzburg Seems you can say anything online or make up meme and everyone believes it.

@Hennes So if laptops have PCIe only at 1x and latest desktop GeForce supports PCIe 16x that would mean I will lose significant amount of speed? That kinda defeats the purpose. Better just buy desktop PC.

@Hennes well hey, all you have to do is install one and a half USB 2.0 ports and you'll have USB 3.0!

also, you can get Windows 8 by installing Windows 1.0 side-by-side with Windows 7

gstreamer wins the confusion war. actual version numbers: 0.1, 0.1.1, 0.1.10, 1.0, 1.0.10

@allquixotic That's not confusing, he just apparently versioned in binary...

@JimmyHoffa no, they are all decimal digits

there's 0.2, 0.3, etc.

0.1.3, 0.1.11, 1.0.9, etc

@allquixotic you didn't say that...

@JimmyHoffa no, it's true!

I omitted that info because I figured you'd know it's in decimal -- the thing that's confusing about it is how version 0.10.10 comes after version 0.10.9, and many people seem not to consider the zero at the very end as indicating "we're moving up a decimal place" for some reason, and they download version 0.1.1

ASCIIbetical sorting on HTTP directory listings for mirrors doesn't help the problem

list of versions: 0.10.1, 0.10.10, 0.10.2, 0.10.20, 0.10.3, etc.

user: "I want the latest!" scrolls down ahhh, nice, version 0.10.9 :-)

@allquixotic It's a fair point, 10.9 > 10.10

I would think the same

@JimmyHoffa especially if you're thinking about actual numbers and not version strings, 10.9 is the same as 10.90, and 10.10 is the same as 10.1

but the version string isn't trying to be a decimal number; it's trying to be three completely separate numbers that happen to be delimited by periods

so the latest version of X.Y.Z is basically: max(X), then max(Y) within X, then max(Z) within Y

@allquixotic The list monad is for non-determinism, if you want historical backtracking that's the Cont monad or better represented as an arrow

Uhm is this one supposed to be funny?

/moved 5km and one IP

@Boris_yo Yes, that is how PCI-e works. Both the slot and the plugged in card negotiate to use their greatest common number of lanes. This is why you can also use PCI-e x1 cards in x16 slots and vice versa.

@Hennes So desktop PCIe is a bus that has 16 lanes but in laptop it has only lane?

No, a PCI-e bus has a few common pins and either 1,2,4,8 or 16 lanes

Same on the card

Wikipedia has a nice list of those. And superuser.com has some nice answers on that in which I quote Wikipedia. ;-)

@Boris_yo PCIe has different lane counts. Most motherboards have one x16, and multiple x1, whenever mobo's talk about being "crossfire" supporting or SLI supporting what that usually means that sets them apart is they have 2 x16 slots which is not the norm.

Aye. that is usually what marketing means that SLi or crossfire means.

In my case the motherboard has 3 slots of x16width. I can use one, or two at x16

'course, there is a distinction between mobos that can do 2-way, 3-way, and 4-way crossfire.

Expresscard as a format is an 1 lane slot, and expresscard is the fastest expansion slot most laptops come with ergo the best expansion card you can attach to a laptop will be a single lane

But when I use the third slot than slot 2 and 3 fall back to x8 speeds

Aye.

ePCIe (external PCI Express) would be a funny (awesome) standard for laptops

@Hennes Nay

just hook up a GTX TITAN to your laptop

Thunderbolt comes close (also x1, x4 or x4 speeds atm). But with more overhead

You can.

Anyway. Dinner

(it'd have to be for compute obviously, since the display framebuffer would render from something inside the laptop)

@allquixotic Yeah there's more to it than just what I said, but sthe simplification is that generally SLI/CrossFire is the only time you see more than one x16 slot

@Hennes But 3rd slot is also 16x

@JimmyHoffa it won't be long, I think, until RAID cards and PCIe SSDs can use 16 lanes

I've seen them use 4 and 8 lanes already

@allquixotic The problem is the power. That device Hennes linked requires you put your own PSU inside the enclosure to power the card, that's the trouble with laptops + crazy GPUs

@JimmyHoffa yeah, except for the "m" variants of crazy powerful desktop GPUs that are clocked down and cut down just enough to fit within the power envelope of the laptop's PSU, and get throttled down even further on battery power to meet the battery's max voltage output

What would be awesome is if like EVGA or other board manufacturers started selling express-slot GPUs that have their own built-in enclosure + PSU, just a box with an attachment that goes into your expresscard slot

with A/C power, those can get up to pretty good performance though

and if you use custom cooling to enhance the laptop's builtin cooling you can run the clocks harder and get almost desktop-like performance

@allquixotic Yeah my 7670m does decent, has the iGPU which it uses except in very specific circumstances where you've configured it just right to swap to the discrete GPU

(which is an enormous pain in the ass and thus why the laptop was so cheap, it advertised having a nice discrete GPU but I guarantee the vast majority of folks never had the ability to force their systems software configuration to use it)

@allquixotic And experience 15 times less speed?

@allquixotic This brings up an interesting thought: I could tear my laptop to bits, put it into a modern case, replace all the cooling components with desktop grade stuff, load the case with fans and use the laptops connection-plates to get inputs sense the monitor/keyboard would all be gone, and I could probably crank the clock way up on CPU/GPU as the chip components are likely safely capable of far more than they're allowed within their typical power envelope.

@JimmyHoffa What are connection-plates?

@JimmyHoffa that's called an iMac

iMacs use 17" laptop-grade hardware

@allquixotic I said computer case, not boat anchor.

I'm just saying, there are "desktop" computers out there (not only the iMac) that ship full-scale mobile hardware, mainly because it's quiet and out of the way

@JimmyHoffa I never saw connection plates on laptops.

@allquixotic Are those all-in-one systems?

@Boris_yo often

@JimmyHoffa Hmm new idea you should run out and patent quickly. Laptops with Clocking_docking , using a modular desktop inset , that also connects 20 wires up at the same time, to aleviates that issue at the same time.

@allquixotic all-in-ones are non-upgradeable?

@Psycogeek Hello

@Psycogeek ....Huh?

@JimmyHoffa By sliding the unique laptop , into our unique desktop framing module the heatsink layers are externalised, while simeltaniously connection all the major wiring/connections to you prewired desktop module.

@Psycogeek Oh so like a little laptop slide-out board? That's bloody awesome

slide it into your desktop case, slide it into your laptop case, slide it into your tablet case, it docks onto each one and automatically takes a setting from the dock to set it's clocks appropriately.

@JimmyHoffa Certannly somebody thought of it 20 years ago, it (the mobile part) just still weighed in at 20 lbs back then :-)

@JimmyHoffa What about form factors?

@AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute Wrong meme use...

@AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-most-interesting-man-in-the-world

@Psycogeek Though I still don't think it would really do the trick. You need thermal compound + a tight clamp to get the appropriate desktop cooling. The only way you circumvent this is by using a tiny heatsink that when slides into the desktop uses a super-high-efficiency cooling like water where the 100% tight conduction may be less necessary

@JimmyHoffa Big lots of slow thermal transfer can be as effective as tiny fast thermal transfers. A well designed (orignally) laptop cooling ability would spread the heat fron the 2 major sources to the base frame anyways, in a huge wide area. Just a matter of landing this already surface wide proper cooling to another well machined transfer plate. The transfer might be slow but the surface area would be 100times what it is at the cores.

But really who has to care that anything Works Right anymore :-) we just make people Believe in it, and they buy. its all about selling the idea. insert a lot of abbreviations, and cool technical jargon, and people will be lining up to pre-order :-)

@Psycogeek Good idea

Have an upgrade that adds in a bunch of cool blinking lights when people say "it dont work for crap". and have Software lots of useless software with pretty pictures. the more they complain, the more you give them a big pigload of software to download and figure out.

Before 2 years is up they will be bored , broke paying you, and move on to new things.

I'm just thinking a laptop-sized chunk of solid flat copper that the whole effing thing is encased in. just slide this solid slab of copper into different housings

fish-tank housing is the best; no fish heater required...

...alternatively, I could literally take my laptop to bits, pop it into a computer case and replace the cooling components on it and see how much it can be clocked up.

just because that would be cool.

@JimmyHoffa they dont put the buttons in the bios/uefi to do that on laptops do they? you would have to soft clock. which means more software :-)

@JimmyHoffa well you could always run it in a dehumidified freezer (and be sure to remove humidity from inside the case first...)

Jimmy not be replyin' to me.

@Psycogeek I get that, but I'm more than happy to jigger the software whichever way I need/can

ooh, another interesting thought

Radeon R9 series cards don't use a physical bridging cable for crossfire; they use the PCI Express bus to communicate between the two cards for crossfire

@Luke Welcome to Root Access chat for Super Users! I am this channel's helpful chat bot. Please don't ask if you can ask or if anyone's around; just ask your question, and if anyone's free and interested they'll help. For bot commands, type !!listcommands

if you had enough lanes exposed you could plug two of those into a laptop lol

@allquixotic 2 express-card slots for SLI radeons?

@JimmyHoffa that would work if there were enough PCIe lanes

I'm pretty sure they require 16 lanes apiece

You could do the same with the physical cable though: the cards go outside of the laptop so you can do the cable between the cards just fine..

like facebook:luke.asdf.3

(sorry to distract you from topic)

@Luke logged into skype using facebook's authentication

supposed so. thanks.

How do I connect my gamepad to laptop?

@Boris_yo you go buy a USB gamepad. cause that one is rather old, and even if it could be adapted it would probably be a waste of time and money.

@Boris_yo With that gamepad? Turn your laptop into a 486...

@Psycogeek No adapter?

@Boris_yo Try something like this...

@Sammy Is that serial to USB?

@Boris_yo No, that's gameport to USB adapter.

@Sammy You mean gameport is special port?

@Boris_yo china makes adapters for everything, but they dont always solve all the issues, make all the connections right or even work at all sometimes :-) upgrade the controller, get proper software, connect well, less delay, and be happy.

@Boris_yo Well, of course. The game port was 15 pin, the serial port was 9 pin (or 25 pin on some really old stuff).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_port

@Psycogeek i love fake cables that don't actually do anything

like eSATA to USB cable with no controller/circuit

3.5mm headphone jack to DisplayPort ;-)

@allquixotic I will send you my PATA to SATA one then :-) it had a lot of components and looked cool, course it didnt work, but it was cheap :-)

@Psycogeek lol

@Boris_yo Here's an example of a game port to USB adapter on eBay UK.

@Sammy It would make sense to buy new gamepad.

Gameport: Because soundblaster had some leftover circuits they didn't know what to do with on their 1' ISA board.

@Boris_yo Yes, yes it would. You can get a cheap gamepad online for $10-$15

@JimmyHoffa You mean Sound Blaster cards had input port for gamepads?

@Boris_yo Gameport was for all joysticks/gamepads, but yes.

@Boris_yo what did you have it connected to before?

@JimmyHoffa lol? buyincoins.com/?r=category/index&cid=0&keyword=gamepad

@JimmyHoffa now that's power over ethernet!

@Psycogeek Pentium 166MHz and all previous computers that had gameport.

@JimmyHoffa What the? Why?

That's not even one of the really old ones

@JimmyHoffa thats not a gameport, thats a midi port , and a game port its 2 in one :-)

Gravis! anyone remember Gravis gamepads?

@allquixotic I so nearly mentioned this a moment ago..

I went through a few of them... best way to play Descent :D

@allquixotic Name is familiar. Did they make sound cards too? Yes! Gravis Ultrasound!

@Boris_yo Sure, that would make sense. But I leave that up to you. I'm just letting you know that you have options.

@Sammy What? You don't offer consulting services for buying china-made gamepads?

@Boris_yo you going to get it with the extended warrenty?

@Boris_yo Back in the day digital signal processing involved in sound was pretty complex so you wouldn't do it on your CPU (you still don't, but that's not because it can't), and it was so complex that really nobody bothered doing it for anything other than gaming (or audio/video production work), and since they found most people bought their cards for gaming they decided may as well just give our users what they want: a game port with their sound card

just buy Belkin stuff -- lifetime warranty

they figure most people won't use it when their stuff breaks so they are happy to offer lifetime warranty to everyone

i'm always sending broken Belkin stuff back to them and getting replacements

@Psycogeek Speaking of warranty...

@JimmyHoffa The reason why sound cards like Sound Blaster had a 15-pin Gameport onboard was because of MIDI.

@JimmyHoffa actually, the CPU does a lot of digital audio processing nowadays, and only in certain cases (super high fidelity / sample format, or extremely strong desire to remove load from CPU, as in mobile SoC) is it moved away from the CPU

Does anyone remember MIDI?

@Boris_yo Thats why my warrenty is not much use, I already used it for purposes not intended, and modified some aspect of it already. Git The Dremel out .

an Intel HD Audio Codec is little more than a pinout that accepts a PCM stream and a pretty high quality DAC

@allquixotic That was a bit of a presumption because there's still chips on mobos these days that do the audio. I figured they do a fair portion of the audio processing in most cases since it's there

@Sammy Ah makes sense, I always presumed people buy sound blasters more for games than a/v work ergo... I didn't really think about them for MIDI because well who the hell used MIDI? A/V is bloody boring

@allquixotic lol you are anomaly

@JimmyHoffa the "chips on mobos that do the audio" are essentially comprised of (1) the physical stuff required to support the audio output connector (headphone jack, S/PDIF, etc.); (2) encoder in case the output device is digital (S/PDIF and HDMI); and (3) a good DAC for analog output jacks

@allquixotic Moved to sound card?

in fact, most non-professional audio chipsets these days can't even do hardware mixing of multiple digital PCM streams, because they have no hardware that's sophisticated enough to be able to do that

the CPU does software decoding from source media formats (MP3, OGG, whatever), software mixing (saturation sampling or something) of all the different software applications' PCM streams, for example Windows Media Player and Flash both playing audio get mixed on the CPU into a single hardware PCM stream that gets sent to the sound card

@Psycogeek What happened? What is wrong with my warranty? Replacing dedicated graphics card or motherboard would cost me same as warranty extension except with warranty extension I get 2 years coverage for free repairs and replacements.

@allquixotic Huh, suppose it makes sense. Modern CPUs can definitely do the work without even imagining sweat. Just presumed because mobos always have something on there that it was just a matter of taking the load off the CPU just because

recent Intel CPUs have HDMI audio encoders on the CPU package (not sure if on the CPU die itself or just the package) for driving audio on the motherboard's HDMI out

@JimmyHoffa well as with all media, the computational complexity is exponential as quality increases -- a 192 KHz @ 32U PCM stream takes a good chunk of I/O and processing to first decode into that format from source media and then push that over a lane into the DAC chip

so for those extreme sample formats there are pro audio cards

@allquixotic Pro stupid cards. Bewm.

@Boris_yo So your going to get it fixed, then pay to have it recertified, then have it re-insured? Because i thought you said that the warrenty was Out. Then you have to calculate the "value" of the item, the cost of the fix, the cost of the recert, and put that up agains the money you would have to do an update. But 2 years not very old :-(

Ok hey I actually want to shop up one more item

there are also hardware soundcards that will offload stream mixing and routing from multiple sources to multiple destinations, because doing it on the CPU requires that you allocate a pretty big buffer for high latency to avoid dropouts

Help me out here: I want a front-panel dial control that takes molex-in, and has 3-pin fan-outs

but on a dedicated DSP chip you can have insanely low latencies and do everything in real time because you aren't task switching

Anybody seen one of these online?

@JimmyHoffa CBA to google it....

CBA?

can't be arsed

I don't know what kind of terms would find it

I'm not even sure there is such

me neither

not sure why you need dial control

modern power mgmt architecture will actually control RPMs of case fans as well as CPU and GPU fan

@Psycogeek That's what US Dell support rep told me but in my country, Dell sent me form that offers 2 year warranty. Nothing is mentioned about recertification fee. What I want to do is extend warranty and some days later call for support.

automatically, based on temperature needs

@JimmyHoffa they have fan contollers for $15-$90 that go from controlling a few fans, and made in china with a simple PWM curcuit, to controlling Racks of fans and pumps and themal interfaces and all.

@allquixotic Oh shit you just gave me the best idea! Crap this can't work...

the stuff is so sophisticated these days that you say "this is how loud I want my fans to be" and the software determines how hot to let the chips get, and if they get too hot, throttles them down... at least CPU and GPU work that way

@JimmyHoffa I would have a tendacy to want one that at least had one thermal sencor in it to do a bit of thermal control of the fans (with the manual)

I have one case-fan out on the mobo, I plugged one case fan into it, I want to add two more fans but I need molex->3 pin fan out adapters, and at that point I may as well see if I can get one of these that has a dial on it. OR I might be able to go from that one fan-out to a chain of fans which will then let the mobo's automatic fan controller kick in, but I suspect more than one fan on that one power source wouldn't do

@JimmyHoffa MIDI was not used for audio. It was only used to record the notes and controls. You would then have a another set of audio cables like RCA cables for line input to record the actual audio. I wouldn't say MIDI was completely useless. In fact, MIDI is still used today. But the physical connector has changed. The new connectors are USB.

I know molex can be chained, but the 3-pin fan out from a mobo I don't suspect spits out enough juice to run multiple fans, and if it does it might be a damagingly large power-draw... thoughts?

@allquixotic That is if you buy expensive chassis.

Historically MIDI devices have used DIN connectors (the same 5-pin connector as used on IBM AT keyboard), then the Gameport, and now the USB port.

@Sammy That's right, I always thought of those as MIDI which is why I never put together that the gameports were MIDI

@JimmyHoffa It is possible to make such curcuitry that uses the present control to feed a mosfet that controls many more amps.

You guys churn out information fast! I can't keep up.

@Psycogeek ...mosfet? Now you're just making up words

@JimmyHoffa fet hexfet? I donno, i can Kludge things together like that given the need.

(and about 6months to get ONE done just for me that does it all the way only i want it to)

So china probably has something made that is close enough, done and cheap.

I lack a sense of pickiness. I think I'd be plenty happy with a little dial on the front of my computer because the computer is perfectly well ventilated as-is, I would therefore keep them on lowest setting just so they don't act as vent-obstructions, and then just turn the dial all the way up when I game at which point I don't care about the noise because I have head phones in

Heya

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, the same kind of port can be used for many different things. The DIN connectors and D-sub connectors in different sizes are probably the most widely used connectors for various ports throughout the history of microcomputers. This was before people started thinking about standardization.

Is it technically possible that both GPUZ and HWINFO64 are wrong by reporting it's at x1 rather than x16?

@Sammy JTAG over DIN FTW

@JimmyHoffa Which is about the only real "needs" most the time. The Cpu The GPU and all the cooling could all just have 2 Modes , slow and GO!

I reseated it and there's no change. But most of my games play fine, I think.

If it's true, it might explain why Guild Wars 2 recently has horrendous performance, but Deus Ex Human Revolution and Crysis 2 play just fine.

I could try moving it to the other x16 slot on my board, but I haven't tried that yet.

@BenRichards Sharpie, nice bold letters "x16" on the side of the card, it'll help you feel better and frankly GPU-Z and HwInfo don't speak in bold permanent marker so they are clearly less valid.

@JimmyHoffa Did you know that the 25 pin "parallel ports" were not always parallel? Serial devices came in two shapes, either as 9 pin ports or 25 pin ports. Back in the days. Then they started using the 25 pin port for parallel connections.

@JimmyHoffa I'm confused by the joke. :P

@Sammy I do recall this

Honestly though I'm confused by this in general. I hope this is why GW2 plays horribly these days. I've been off that game for a while because single digit framerates are unplayable.

@BenRichards It happens. I have had the Video card go all 1X on me from an unstable overclock. learned one thing that might be usefull. It would NOT reset ever no mater how many boots and defaults i did untill all the power was removed from the motherboard? Dont know if that atill applies.

@Psycogeek It's on a switchable power strip and I left it off overnight one night. Didn't do a thing.

I did touch the overclocking programs a little but that was to try and see if I could make sense of any CPU overclocking recently. Shouldn't have affected the graphics card.

I updated the drivers a couple times too. Once to beta, once to latest stable.

@BenRichards The "lanes" seem to be negotiated on posting somewhere. and you would not be the first person reporting that thier card got Stuck on 1X. they moved GPU card, to a different computer even, and still 1X. But they toss in another card or backup card, and the slot itself worked?

I could try that but I really don't feel like pulling it apart if I can help it. Maybe resetting the BIOS would help?

I have one of my old cards I could test with, but before I dig it out and do that, I want to exhaust software fixes

Regardless, why would most of my games play fine even if it's stuck on 1x?

@BenRichards That is all i know, would be totally interested in what fixes it, because i would swear it is not the hardware itself "Broken" but some "bit" that gets stuck somewhere?

I'll see if resetting the bios helps or something. Never thought it could be just a glitch.

Thanks, I'll give some things a shot

Hm. Could be chipset drivers.

I did recently update to 8.1. Maybe I need new drivers.

@BenRichards Testing here shows when it is at 1X shown in the CPUZ (not gpuz) thing , it is "slower" the ammount is not "linear" like between 8x and 16x there is still enough bandwidth for full operation, on PCI-e 3.

Ah

Regardless, I'll see what I can do

tomshardware.com/forum/373699-33-pcie-0x16

Was looking at this thread, btw

I'll check to see if I have drivers to install

@BenRichards If i had "nothing to lose" i would bios the GPU card itself. Again if it manages to spring back, please Beep me about it.

Ok

@JimmyHoffa Yeah... you had to make sure it said "parallel" or "serial" before making any connections. You had to be literate as in "computer literate" to use a computer. Nowdays... not so much... you just plug the connector into a hole that fits.

@JimmyHoffa In this perspective, one can really appreciate the USB standard. It made things so much easier.

@BenRichards Other people indicated information about the Motherboard bioses Lanes info in there. Like on that board it had "gen1" "gen2" and "gen3" and they adjusted that, but they were just going slow not Badly negotiated lanes.

I got MSI's live update utility which will make driver/bios updates a bit easier.

I'll report back

@BenRichards Looks like powerful computer...

@Sammy I'm still baffled that modern mobo's have LPT headers, they might as well still have an ISA slot and ask me if I want CGA or MonoChrome when I try to enter the bios

grc.com/fingerprints.htm

that's awesome

at least i know that, short of screen capture, my email isn't being sniffed

@BenRichards ahh and at that forum, the person indicated that the GPU lanes changed after a "Driver" update. (which might have included a driver clean) So the stuck bit could be in the OS software . On my motherboards UEFI it shows the lanes it is actually connected at, way back there. and that corelates with the information i get in the OS. It would not be a first time that Microsoft has in it a compatability fixer to patch things up , that is not helpfull when the fault was an overclocking.

@Psycogeek So this is odd. Good though. I had no driver updates (except for an Ethernet driver which wouldn't affect it). Regardless, I rebooted, went into the BIOS, selected "load Optimum defaults" and set it to RAID (as that's what I use), and now it seems to be fixed.

I wonder what it was. Regardless, not complaining.

@BenRichards 7970?

Yeah

nice clock

i'm getting a R9-290X for xmas

It's the GHz edition. I sprung for it because it has 4 mini-DP ports, which means I can do eyefinity + HD3D :P

Factory overclocked :P

i applied a bios update that lets me have GHz edition clocks lol

That's awesome. Hope your card works out :)

@BenRichards ok now fix mine :-) its stuck at 8x :-) a 7950amd. But the difference then is like .0002% so i am not worried.

lol @Psycogeek. :P

the R9-290X is going to get up to 95 Celsius, almost enough to boil water

I will now test GW2

Wow

it's designed to run at that temp

which is a bit crazy

Yeah

I did hear about that