Root Access

allquixotic

16:00

@r.tanner.f unlocking cores that were disabled in manufacturing is a bad idea... you can get hardware faults, rendering artifacts, random errors, etc

they seem to have binned my HD7970 with at least a few bad shader cores enabled out of manufacturing as it is; unless I underclock significantly, I get random artifacts during any heavy 3d rendering

r.tanner.f

@allquixotic Yeah I've had to resort to severe underclocking myself, although the crummy fan doesn't help much either.

paradroid

That's expected on Radeon cards. You need to get a FirePro with the same GPU, but pay way more, to avoid it.

FirePro sacrifcies framerates for accuracy and no artefacts

allquixotic

then why do consumer-grade nvidia cards generally not have artifacts?

paradroid

and you also pay for the development of the unlocked certified and optimised drivers for certain 3D and CAD programs

I don't know. They're probably pushing them harder.

allquixotic

speaking of FirePro, did you see the release of the FirePro S10000? Aside from having a ridiculous 5-digit product name (which also makes it seem "over 9000"; hee hee), it's pretty crazy-sounding as far as performance

I'd love to have a FirePro S10000 rendering to my motherboard/IGP's display output using LucidLogix Virtu MVP

paradroid

16:05

No. I used to be a CAD consultant before the financial crisis, but I don't keep up any more.

allquixotic

5 TFLOPS of single-precision floating point

375 watts of TDP

r.tanner.f

@paradroid What are you up to now?

allquixotic

three huge fans

two Tahiti cores

6GB GDDR5 with ECC

$3600 price tag

paradroid

@r.tanner.f Pure IT. I'm a qualified architect, but going into IT now gives the chance of actually being able to afford to build my own hose some day, instead of design them for other people.

allquixotic

hehe :)

must have been cool being a CAD consultant... get to design some pretty ridikerous rigs

did you ever design >32GB onboard RAM? dual Xeon kind of deal? in a workstation?

dual Xeon, quad S10000, hardware RAID10 of SSDs... just contemplating it makes me hungry... hungrier than I am when I can smell pizza baking and haven't eaten in 12 hours

paradroid

16:09

@allquixotic In 2006 I spent £2000 on a new CAD workstation (monitor not included). It's one of the stupidest things I have ever done. A few months later it was outclassed for far less cash.

allquixotic

xD

paradroid

You can always get 80% of max performance with 20% of the money

allquixotic

so... what? you usually lowball the specs?

paradroid

No. There's a sweespot, which also depends on how long you plan to keep using it.

Hennes

Or get a system with left over expansion capability.

allquixotic

16:11

truue

Hennes

E.g. only populate 3 out of 6 ram slots. Leave the second CPU socket empty etc

allquixotic

there is a sweetspot, but for certain things where the highest-end part isn't significantly more expensive than the lowest-end (or the price difference is peanuts to the customer), why not? :P

for example, if the difference between the low-end part and the high-end part is $50 vs $150, most businesses, and even most home users who happen to be PC enthusiasts, won't care about the extra hundred bucks

but if it's $800 vs $3600, most people will think a bit more carefully

paradroid

Performace RAM is a waste of money

allquixotic

well, generally yes.. but higher RAM capacity isn't

paradroid

Hgh end <strike>FireGL</strike>/FirePro/Quadro

allquixotic

16:14

with the OSes we have these days (provided they are 64-bit!) more RAM is like having SSD performance for recently-accessed files in the page cache... squared because it's RAM which is even faster than an SSD

r.tanner.f

@paradroid --- is strike ;)

allquixotic

I generally don't scrimp and save on things like RAM capacity, storage capacity, peripherals, CD/DVD/BD-(ROM/RW), battery cell size, and so on... what I do sometimes lowball on are things like buying a graphics card that's within the highest performance category but not the highest clock (e.g. Radeon HD7950 instead of HD7970)

paradroid

Oh yeah

r.tanner.f

Figured that out last night =D lol

Hennes

But but... if I push my RAM is get a windows performance index of 7.6 rather and 7.5!!!! eveletyone!!!11! ;)

HaydnWVN

16:16

@BenBrocka Majority of those Dells/Hp's that look impossible to remove the HDD's from when opening the side... Take the front off and you'll find it slides forwards... :)

allquixotic

@Hennes faster RAM can matter if you are using integrated graphics for performance gaming or OpenCL, which is becoming a more realistic proposition for certain workloads (read: not CAD or scientific computing), since the iGPU of recent Intel CPUs uses system memory for VRAM

HaydnWVN

@BenBrocka They have to have them to sell the cases as 'ATX' as i think the standard governs the case has the cutouts, not the mobo shipping with an 'adaptor'... Like 99% of them do these days

Hennes

My CPU does not have an intergrated GPU yet (it is a nehalem i7 920)

allquixotic

i was reading some benchmarks of the Ivy Bridge CPU's iGPU, and the combination of mild overclocking, mild overvolting, and faster RAM made a much bigger difference in performance than extreme overclocking with the same RAM

Hennes

But I have used my graphical card (AMD 5870) to crack forgotten passwords

allquixotic

16:17

Haswell's GPU is going to be another enormous leap for Intel's iGPU performance, so that should be extremely interesting

Hennes

I really hope that openCL gets pushed succesfully.

allquixotic

OpenCL is successful... for the most part

Hennes

and not just because it makes AMD APUs more interesting (competition is good!)

allquixotic

I am really hoping that HSA takes over the whole market though

Ben Brocka

@HaydnWVN Really, didn't think of that! thanks for the tip.

@HaydnWVN ...Really? That seems like a terrible idea

Standards from a past age, I guess

allquixotic

16:20

long term vision: your motherboard has your display heads, period... no matter what, you want to plug in a monitor, you plug it into your motherboard. K. now with that resolved: all CPUs come with two types of cores: traditional cores with high throughput but small in number, and SIMD massively parallel cores with low throughput but very numerous. Then you have addon boards (PCI-e) that simply extend the number of available SIMD cores.

Ben Brocka

If I get two types of RAM (both matched pairs) is there a way to make sure my system uses the faster stuff first or will it be random?

allquixotic

Given this hardware picture, with HSA, your operating system and compiler work together to determine the best "place" to run whatever code you wrote, whether it's on the SIMDs or the traditional serial path.

Then all "hardware accelerated 3d rendering" becomes raytracing on the SIMDs

Hennes

not random

Most likely the lower common specs for both pairs

allquixotic

@BenBrocka what different types are we talking about?

Hennes

As in; I never saw a single CPU setup do differently

Ben Brocka

16:22

@allquixotic Two pairs of 133 with different latencies

allquixotic

oh... it's practically guaranteed to be as @Hennes said

all the RAM will be normalized on the lowest common denominator

Hennes

I assumed he meant same DDR specs, else boom!

allquixotic

you can't have different RAM operating at different speeds in the same coherent system tied to the same MMU

RAM requires very precise synchronization with the CPU to operate correctly, and it can't handle multiple different rates of synchronization for different RAM chips

Hennes

Though it might be interesting if you have a dual CPU setup (as in dual sockets and separate memory channels) and different specced RAM.

Not something which you find in most home desktops though

allquixotic

@Hennes right, but any system that isn't memory coherent or cache coherent between CPUs is basically called one of three things: a "mainframe", a "supercomputer", or a "cluster"... i.e. logically separate environments

r.tanner.f

16:24

Check out the ranges on these speakers... they trying to make my dog go nuts or something?

newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882120088

allquixotic

even on the quad-CPU server boards I've seen, all the CPUs are memory coherent

@r.tanner.f lol... they're trying to skirt FCC guidelines... if they go up into the 725 MHz range, you can use them as an LTE transmitter ;D

Hennes

Mainframe/supercomputer aye. I did not consider a cluster because I saw that as two separate nodes with a 1 socket setup.

Ben Brocka

K. Would the difference between cas latency 9 and 7 be noticable enough to bother? I've got cas 9 in my PC, I have a chance to sell that to my parents and re-buy 4 sticks of cas 7 for like $30 more. Both are DR3 1333

Hennes

No.

allquixotic

@BenBrocka noticeable for what?

r.tanner.f

16:26

@allquixotic I like all my subwoofers to handle frequencies that are seven and half times above human hearing range ~_~

Hennes

You can measure it with benchmarks

But you will most likely not notice it

allquixotic

@r.tanner.f rofl... for that extra tinny base, yeah? :)

Ben Brocka

@allquixotic Gaming, recording and video processing and the only real memory hogs. And I doubt any of them have memory as the bottleneck

@Hennes That's what I figured

Hennes

Ben: You might even get better performance with one pair (even with theworse latency) than with two pairs since speeds drops if your CPU/northbridge has to address more memory ranks

The clearest information I found on ranks is here:

6

Q: DIMMs: Single vs. Double vs. Quad Rank

What difference does the 'Rank' of DIMMs make to server memory? For example, when looking at server configurations I see the following being offered for the same server: 2GB (1x2GB) Single Rank PC3-10600 CL9 ECC DDR3-1333 VLP RDIMM 2GB (1x2GB) Dual Rank PC3-10600 CL9 ECC DDR3-1333 VLP RDIMM G...

But for al practical purposed; MOAR RAM is better.

Ben Brocka

@Hennes That's an idea, 2x 8GB isn't as expensive as I feared

Hennes

16:30

The sole exception to that are synthetic benchmarks, and huge matrix multiplications and other science stuff which happens to use much more data than fits in the cache, and hence gets memory bound.

Ben Brocka

What's the "PC3 10666" designation mean on RAM?

allquixotic

huge matrix multiplications ---> GPU

Hennes

PC3 is DDR3 RAM

10666 indicates the speed.

allquixotic

that isn't 10,666 MHz, though, right?

Hennes

no, it is RAM with a maximum (peak) transfer rate of 10666MB/second

allquixotic

16:32

they should give the MHz instead of the throughput... that's weird that they do it that way

Ben Brocka

@Hennes Well I was thinking 2x 8GB instead of 4x 4 GB. I have a chance to sell the current ram for cost

allquixotic

i hate that "PC" nomenclature

Ben Brocka

@Hennes I thought the 1333/1600/2400 was the speed

Hennes

Using a IO bus of 667Mhz. And since it effectively reaches double speeds by using both clock flanks 667Mhz is sold as 1333 (2x667). So PC3-10666 is the same as DDR3-1333

Ben Brocka

like this: DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)

r.tanner.f

16:34

> when the word "load or loads" is in the subject line, emails go directly to spam

that made me lol for some reason

Hennes

People use that PC1/2/3 nomeclature. So it is useful to recognize it

allquixotic

@r.tanner.f no comment

Ben Brocka

@Hennes Oh, I see. So the differences in PC3 # are slightly different clock rates?

Hennes

Basically yes. There are a lot more factors, but most of those have minor performance impact

Ben Brocka

Sounds like most of it is pretty minor, which isn't too surprising. I might spring for 2x 8Gb just because then I can expand easier if I ever need 32 GB...which probably won't be for a good while

Hennes

16:37

First you need the right type (Fastpafe, SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, ...) else it is not compatible. Second you want the minimum bus speed or more. (e.g. if you CPU can access the memory at '1333MHz' (actually 667Mhz) then you want RAM with is at least as fast. (So -1333 (used at 1333), or -1600 (used at 1333), ...)

Often you can use faster RAM speeds, but unless both your memory controller (which is on the CPU these days) and the RAM and the motherboard support it that is not guaranteed to work.

allquixotic

being able to use faster-than-spec speeds depends on how the RAM was binned

if they binned it conservatively, you have headroom to overclock

if they binned it so it just barely runs at the speed they sell it at, you won't be able to do that without errors

Hennes

Aye. I think it works most of the time if you use a minor OC

Ben Brocka

@Hennes I'm sticking with 1333, the fastest my board runs without OC

Hennes

But that is never guaranteed

IO speed also gets lower on many boards if you add more memory.

Ben Brocka

More GB or more slots filled?

Hennes

16:41

E.g. I can add one set of DIMMs (3 for a i7 920) and use DDR3-1333, or use two sets (6 DIMMs) and run at -1066

Because the memory controller has to drive more chips.

Ben Brocka

Ah

Hennes

Which is stated in the manual, and which is cutting corners.

For the actual details, see that SF link I posted.

The consumer stuff just seems to assume all DIMMs are dual rank.

allquixotic

yeah, and never run a 32-bit OS with >= 4GB of RAM because PAE kicks in, which means they have to use an extra level of page tables and also bounce buffers for the graphics aperture, which slows everything waaaay down

use 64-bit............. yeah

Hennes

64 bit is old In use since 1979

Ben Brocka

I hate shopping for cooling stuff on newegg. Without fail half of the reviews say it's loud and half say it's quiet

I only use 32 bit at work, and we only use it so we don't have to test everything on x64

Hennes

16:44

I never used newegg. (US only?), but the same is true on amazon and manyu other shopping sites

paradroid

quietpc.com tend to have decent stock, so look there and then buy it for less on eBay. SilentPCReview.com is really good for the reviews and forums

Hennes

Draty. I was checking http://www.silentpcreview.com

paradroid

I have a silent rack mount system from doing what I said above

Hennes

Hmm, I needd to add h t t p : / / twice in chat

Ben Brocka

All I want is a cheap-ish CPU cooler. The stock one on this one whines and I don't want to do an RMA (I have no idea if it's broken or it's just this loud)

Newegg reviews are generally pretty helpful. But they never agree on loudness

Hennes

16:46

I went with a nehalems cooler.

Which is not cheap, but is silent. And darn heavy (900 grams!)

Ben Brocka

The Corsair H60 is only $40 but I hear they're loud. Or quiet. Or both

Hennes

Which CPU do you have ?

Ben Brocka

A 135W 4.2Ghz AMD zambezi

The stock cooler doesn't seem terrible except for the noise, but the fan isn't replacable

Hennes

Ugh, Nice max TPD. As bad as mine (thogh comparing intel and amd TPD is comparing apples to oranges)

Ben Brocka

Uses some weird plastic mount I wouldn't be able to swap fans with

paradroid

16:50

AMD better get their act together if they are going to survive in the low-power portable future

Ben Brocka

@Hennes heatwise it hasn't been too bad. It has a weird, bulky heatsink which seems to work

Hennes

AMDs stuff is not to bad if you compare it with Intel stuff on the same size (e.g. compare AMD 45nm chips with Intel 45nm chips)

But Intels fabs are one step ahead

paradroid

It's going to be more about Intel Atom vs ARM from now

Hennes

Meh

E350/E450 vs ARM

paradroid

Isn't that the new Atom?

Ben Brocka

16:52

TBH I wanted a cheap, powerful processor I could abuse without feeling bad, so I don't really mind. Worst case I have to upgrade. I'd rather find out the $100 CPU is crap than the $300 one

Hennes

Atom is one Intel part I really do not like

Ben Brocka

Also I wouldn't dare start OCing with a $300 proc

paradroid

I've been planning on building an ARM powered 1U server/router for ages

oops, I meant Atom

SuperMicro motherboard with Dual Core Atom, Dual Intel NICs

Running VMware ESXi

Hennes

A Prolimatech Panther seems nice. Fin spacing is 1.8 mm, which is larger then most coolers. This is good for quiet operation (but not for maximum cooling). If you do not OC but want quietness than this is good

Ben Brocka

@Hennes Was that the giant silver heatsink?

Hennes

16:55

I think all prolime techs are giant heatsinks. But it is a successor the the nehalems I have

Let me grab links

silentpcreview.com/prolima-megahelams

allquixotic

@paradroid does recent Atom have EPT?

Ben Brocka

With the 4.2 Ghz I'm not as inclined to OC, I'd rather keep it at that level but quiet. As is I might underclock to make the fan STFU till I get a better one

paradroid

@allquixotic Erm.. remind me what that is again?

allquixotic

@paradroid Extended Page Tables, essentially version 2.0 of the virtualization instructions, which eliminates the page table overhead of guest virt, improving performance by 20 - 50% by drastically reducing memory read/write latency

Hennes

(That was the old one, 900 gram). the panther is this one silentpcreview.com/Prolimatech_Panther

allquixotic

16:57

eliminates a context switch per memory write AFAIK

EPT initially hit with the Nehalem generation of mainstream Intel CPUs

Ben Brocka

@Hennes So that's better than the panther?

Hennes

Different.

Tom Wijsman

code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31482

Hennes

The panther has larger spacing between the fins. Which means less turbulence. (less efficient cooling which is not good, less noise which is good)

paradroid

@allquixotic I don't know, but I doubt it. That reminds me of the stumbling block I have with my Atom powered router/server long-running plan that I keep rediscovering every time I look into it again. Only the laptop versions of the Atom have VT-x at all.

allquixotic

16:59

@paradroid VT-x != EPT

paradroid

I know.

allquixotic

VT-x is definitely a huge boost, but EPT takes guests to the point where their performance is "near-native"

paradroid

I said it reminds me of the problem.

allquixotic

without any hardware virt: sloooooooo......(times infinity)......ooooow

VT-x only: slooooow

Ben Brocka

Bleh. I need some virtual reality crap to try these out so I know how loud they actually are

allquixotic

16:59

VT-x + EPT: slowish

native: wheee

paradroid

VMs runs close to native speed on ESXi and Hyper-V

allquixotic

uh... ESXi and Hyper-V are just bare metal hypervisors

Hennes

@BenBrocka I got the nehalems with a nexus fan. It is nice and quiet, but the rest oif my computer still makes a lot of noise. You can spent a lot of effort to quieten a single component, but for a quiet PC you will need to quieten all of them.

allquixotic

they still use full virtualization technology

Ben Brocka

@Hennes So was the old one noticably loud?

Hennes

17:02

No, it was quiet. It did a very good job compared to the other coolers of the same generation.

allquixotic

even if they have very good paravirt, it can't stand up to the performance of hardware virt, unless you go to something like containers where the guests have a very narrow window of what they can do and essentially run within the host OS's same kernel

Ben Brocka

Currently my case fans (which are fairly quiet 220mms) are the loudest thing until the CPU fan whines

Hennes

And combined with a nexus fan is generates less sounds than my drives

Ben Brocka

My main drive's an SSD :P

allquixotic

@paradroid, I just checked all the Cedarview Atom processors, which (AFAIK?) are the latest launched Atoms, and none of them have any VT-x: ark.intel.com/products/codename/37505/Cedarview

and VT-x is a prerequisite for EPT

Ben Brocka

17:03

I was tempted to grab one of those 500GB+ SSDs...but they're still quite expensive

But they could hold my whole Steam collection...!

paradroid

@allquixotic There is no significant performance difference when I benchmark. There are lots of benchmarks on the web for you to look at as well.

Hennes

Heh

I got a 76GiB SSD (intel G2 80GB) and 4 1TB SATA drives and a 15k RPM SAS.. I would love to replace that with a 2 or 3 TB SSD, but unless I win the lottery...

Ben Brocka

15k RPM? That's gotta be loud

allquixotic

@paradroid on an Atom with no VT-x, you're benchmarking ESXi guests and finding that they have the same performance as a native OS?

or you're saying that paravirt has the same performance as VT-x + EPT?

Ben Brocka

I have 2 128gb SSDs and 2 2TB HDDs

Hennes

17:05

Actually the 15K RPM drive makes less noise than the 7200K RPM SATA drives. Those newer generation server drives are getting quiet

allquixotic

@Hennes do 2 TB SSDs even exist? I mean if you chain together a bunch of separate ones, probably, but not as a single unit

Ben Brocka

And luckily just enough sata channels for them all, I didn't realize my board only had 5 sata channels when I bought the 4th

@allquixotic Not for consumers, the best of the best are 500ish

paradroid

@allquixotic No. I don't have an Atom. I said I have been thinking of building an Atom server/router for a while, but the problem is the lack of VT-x on the server chips (not looked at the latest generation).

Hennes

@allquixotic I think they exist. But not SOHO. And not affordable.

paradroid

I mean type 1 hypervisors in general

allquixotic

17:06

I've seen 1TB SSDs, never seen 2+

paradroid

...on regular server hardware

Ben Brocka

1TB SSD would be great but I'm not spending $1000+ on one

paradroid

those big SSDs are actually split up into logical drives

Hennes

Aye.

allquixotic

Oh. Yeah. If you have VT-x and EPT it's pretty close

Hennes

17:07

Or come in 19" rackmounts with RAM backing all of the SSD

paradroid

no, physical drives made into one logical drive, I meant

Ben Brocka

this one was almost three thousand: newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227515

Hennes

paradroid. I think you are thinking about the PCIe -> PCI-X to RAID -> 2x SATA drives on a plugin board

FusionIO IIRC

But a few producers also made enterprise class access. Price: Astronomical

paradroid

@Hennes No, I'm thinking of some ridiculously expensive thing someone linked to on reddit.com/r/sysadmin or ##/r/sysadmin on Freenode

Yeah, FusionIO rings a bell

Hennes

Get a SSD controller. Max it out at 500MB. put two on a board and add a RAID chip (for striping). The cheapest RAID chip came with a PCI-X interface, so tag on a PCI-X to PCI-e chip. Profit

allquixotic

17:12

thing I don't get is, if it costs X amount to make an SSD at capacity p, why does it cost 4X or 8X to make an SSD at capacity 2p ?

Hennes

Somehow that seems a kludge, but a working one

Because of two reasons:

Ben Brocka

@Hennes how do you mount the fans on those giant heatsinks? Could you mount one on each side?

Hennes

1) Flash chips have a limited capacity.

2) SSD controller chips only support X number of flash chips/channels

The controller chip need to keep track of where blocks are allocated. Just adding more does not work

paradroid

@allquixotic 'supply and demand' and 'economies of scale'.

Ben Brocka

@allquixotic most flash memory is the same; see SD cards and similar. Though the price for high end has come way down

Hennes

17:13

@BenBrocka I have clips to mount up to two fans. But I just added one for less noise

Ben Brocka

Though in the case of SD card and flash drives I think they've mostly just stopped at 64GB

paradroid

1

A: Why are ECC/Registered 8GB DDR3 DIMM's so much CHEAPER than regular ones?

Yes, it's due to basic economic principles in effect. Supply and Demand: The demand for such large RAM capacities on a single stick is mainly for servers at this time, and the amount manufactured (supply) will be higher. So, both Supply and Demand are higher for 8 GiB ECC RAM sticks than they a...

allquixotic

@BenBrocka I wonder how big of an array you could make with a bunch of 64GB SD cards :D

Ben Brocka

@Hennes how would you do two fans anyway? One fan for intake, taking intake from the cooler side, then one on the other side for exhaust, facing the case's exhaust?

Hennes

nods.

allquixotic

17:16

I saw a product at some point while shopping that had slots for like 24 SD cards o_O

and treated them all as one logical device to the OS

Ben Brocka

@allquixotic If they're all distinct logical drives that would be fun to operate...

allquixotic

you can get 64GB *micro*SD for $60, and full SD is even cheaper

Hennes

Ben Brocka

@Hennes If you just have one fan which is preferred, exhaust?

Hennes

Since I already got two fans to drag air from the case (the translucent ones) I just added the white one on the CPU cooler)

Graham Wager

17:18

i haven't read everything from the last hour but the mentions of flash and arrays reminded me of this:

►

Hennes

My entire setup is air in at the front, out at the rear. Both for front fans, GPU, CPu and PSU)

Ben Brocka

I have a HAF X so the airflow should be fairly good without a second, I like the idea of being able to add another if one isn't enough though

HAF X is air in at the front and side out at the top and rear

Hennes

With a pull and a push fan most cooling gets more efficient, but do read the reviews first

How well it works depends per cooler.

Ben Brocka

@GrahamWager He's got those ball fan things, I hear people get cut on those little fins

I love that they just leave the drives in a pile

Graham Wager

I've got one of those fans, and never had a problem :/

been cut on cheap chassis' far more

Ben Brocka

17:24

I've got a scar on my thumb from a cheap chassis actually

Who needs rounded corners! Razor sharp edges!

I could see into my thumb a little bit, that was fun

Graham Wager

ouch! never ended up with a scar luckily... do have one from the boot (/trunk) of my car being shut on my hand by a friend once though...

Ben Brocka

Right on the joint too, but it's not too stiff

Trunk? Ouch

Graham Wager

yeah, right where the latch is too :(

Hennes

My PCs have not drawn blood from me since we moved away from ISA slots. Those cards always drew blood.

allquixotic

@GrahamWager lol and it reminds me of that episode where Data is messing with SDcard-sized chips at superhuman speed to save the enterprise :D

@Hennes punch-out metal on the chassis where the expansion cards go...

Hennes

17:39

Ah, that one with the alcoholic water

allquixotic

remove them with anything less than heavy gloves and you'll be bleeding all day

Hennes

I have had the same tower for ages. (Since the Athlon MP time)

A good tower lasts a while :)

sidran32

Quick random question: I figured that to upgrade a laptop hard drive, you just need to buy a new 2.5" drive. However, I went onto TigerDirect and saw they had separate categories for 2.5" SSDs and "laptop drives". Is there a difference? Or is it entirely the same and they just apparently wanted to segregate SSDs from HDDs?

paradroid

@sidran32 There are two different thicknesses, and non-laptop ones may use more power.

allquixotic

@sidran32 there are different heights of 2.5" and you need to make sure it's compatible with your laptop

sidran32

17:41

@allquixotic Ah, ok. Thanks. That's what I was wondering.

Sathya

@sidran32 they work fine, but often the 2.5" SSDs are a bit short on length and often slide out during travels (happens to me)

sidran32

@Sathya Good to know.

allquixotic

also, true laptop drives often (or at least sometimes) come with full disk encryption and may be designed for better mobility (moving around the unit while the HDD is in operation)

for SSDs obviously movement is not an issue unless you impact it on a surface

sidran32

nods

allquixotic

</cue Surface jokes>

sidran32

17:42

badum. :P

I didn't even catch that :P

Hennes

Note that there are also 2.5 inch laptop drives which are thicker than usual (some 1TB drives are 10.5mm instead of 9.5)

sidran32

nods I am thinking of recommending an SSD to my brother to upgrade his laptop since he feels like it's a bit slow these days, though I think it's still good and just needs some maintenance. I just wanted to make sure that any recommendations aren't erroneous.

paradroid

@allquixotic forums.wpcentral.com/surface-windows-rt/202040.htm

5

sidran32

Holy crap, that's impressive!

Hennes

If you have the space in the laptop: 80GB SSD for OS and almost all applications, and a HDD in the CDROM bay for movies and music

sidran32

17:46

@Hennes He uses the DVD drive, so it'll probably just be a single SSD.

Of course, if he is willing to buy it :P

Hennes

Wow.

Someone using optical media

I used a CD (actually DVDdrive) once in two years

paradroid

I use them on my HTPC, for watching films

Hennes

I love SSDs, but the larger ones are expensive.

sidran32

Hehe. Yeah, mainly it's for watching movies for him.

He brings his laptop to work sometimes. As he has a custodial job, he needs it for entertainment on occasion :P

Ben Brocka

@Hennes I bought a CD drive just to be able to install an OS on my new PC (little did I know my external CD drive actually works as a bootable device...oh well)

Hennes

17:48

If I buy a movie I used to RIP it and store the DVD in a safe place. These day I just buy the DVD, put it in a rack and torrent it (faster than ripping)

r.tanner.f

@sidran32 Oh yeah, did he actually end up staying all night during the hurricane?

paradroid

hmnn

sidran32

@r.tanner.f He got home late but since it wasn't too bad, it wasn't as much of an issue.

allquixotic

@paradroid that's cool, but I don't know if I really believe the story

it's easy to type some words and imagine something up, but it's basically heresay

the damage to the tablet could've been intentionally done with common house tools

r.tanner.f

@allquixotic Welcome to the Internet =D

sidran32

17:50

forums.wpcentral.com/1751738-post15.htm

I wanna see who picked it up

paradroid

@allquixotic Well, magnesium alloy is a lot stronger than aluminium. It's used to make road wheels.

sidran32

That's what they used?

Also, given some demonstrations of Gorilla Glass, I'm not surprised the display survived.

paradroid

"VaporMg" or something. Some new process they came up with.

allquixotic

@sidran32 look up VaporMg... they built most of the exterior of the unit out of it

sidran32

Ah, neat

paradroid

17:52

Mg is the periodic table code for magnesium of course

chemical symbol, rather

allquixotic

i think Microsoft's marketing department hired Steve Jobs' marketing department: microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-rt/vapormg

Word. Antonym.
Adjective. Noun.
Attribute1. Attribute2.

Periods. Cool.

paradroid

Heh

As long as they don't start putting twee music in the adverts. That'll make me go crazy

sidran32

Apple was always about using minimalism to make bold statements.

:P

paradroid

Not in their cheesy software interfaces though

allquixotic

@sidran32 yeah, and strangely enough I think Steve Ballmer is starting to accrue a bit of a reality distortion field

that guy has really, profoundly changed his image and along with it, the image of his company

he lost some weight... he stopped with the monkey business... and he speaks like a President

it's hard not to be inspired by him

sidran32

17:55

Hehe. People really always liked Ballmer, if only for the hilarity of seeing him jumping around onstage. :P

Cool, I actually haven't seen anything recent by him.

allquixotic

@sidran32 yeah, but he threw away the jumping and screaming and plowing through fake brick walls and sweaty armpits in blue dress shirts

paradroid

Perception has certainly changed. Being the underdog is endearing

sidran32

nods

I suppose that's true

Isn't competition grand? :)

allquixotic

it's not that he's the underdog -- it's just the way he behaves is completely reinvented

I think he (or his handlers at MSFT) realized that a more controlled and stately personality would get a better response than a hyper, fat guy

paradroid

I think he just a had a bit of a crack habit during the Vista era

It would explain a lot

sidran32

17:59

Haha

allquixotic

@sidran32 you should watch MSFT's unveiling ceremony / whatever for Windows 8 and Surface...

sidran32

@allquixotic I actually haven't. I suppose I should.

I meant to but when they were broadcasting, I was at work. :P

r.tanner.f

whoa

allquixotic

the one for Surface is pretty terrible when Steven Sinofsky stumbles all over his words and the Surface software bugs out on him

but Ballmer was great

sidran32

Hah, sort of like when Windows 98 bluescreened during their unveiling press conference? :P

r.tanner.f

18:00

@paradroid no onebox pl0x: xkcd.com/323

allquixotic

@sidran32 Sinofsky's fail during the Surface unveiling is, imho, worse than Steve Jobs' "I'm sorry guys, I don't know what's going on"

sidran32

:o

paradroid

@r.tanner.f Ha, not seen that one. Cheers,

sidran32

I'd like a Surface, but it'd have to be a Surface Pro. As much as I hate x86, the compatibility is important to me. But my Sony does the job.

I just can't really hold it with one hand very comfortably. But my hands don't grip on Gorilla Glass well, since they tend to be dry much of the time. Which is good when using it, but it means it slips when holding it with one hand. :P

paradroid

@sidran32 Have you got a WP8 phone yet? I think I've seen you around the WPSE site

Graham Wager

18:13

speaking of WP8 I wish they'd hurry up and make available the SIM-free black Lumia 920 in the UK...getting bored of waiting now!

paradroid

@GrahamWager I'm exactly halfway through my Lumia 800 contract with Orange, so I think I may wait a while, even though they have an early upgrade thing. I like everything about the 920 apart from its size. It's massive.

I think I'll wait and see if Nokia manages to pack all that into something the size of my 800.

Graham Wager

yeah, the size did put me off a little but the camera tech and example shots brought me back round...

shame about the exclusivity to EE/Orange/T-Mob though, I'm on O2 and happy with them so sim-free it is

0

Q: How does one access TFS from an iDevice?

Sometimes I need to access a document from TFS on my iPhone/iPad (for example, in a meeting), but the web interface is so clunky, it's nearly impossible. Specifically, I can't bring up any attachments. Is there an iDevice client that has been known to work well? I've seen 2 on the App Store bu...

iphone ios team-foundation-server

^^ can't decide if it's off-topic or not really...though i do think there are better places to ask

sidran32

18:35

@paradroid I have a Windows Phone 7.5 phone (Nokia Lumia 900). Not planning on upgrading to a WP8 device for a little while. I'll be running 7.8 until then.

paradroid

@sidran32 Same here, until Nokia comes out with a smaller 920.

sidran32

Partially holding out because I paid for this thing off-contract ;)

$450

Sathya

didn't know Siracusa dropped by Super User

John Siracusa, Newton, MA

981 2 6 9

mac osx time-machine tips mouse open-source dpi

sidran32

Who's he?

Also, yay Massachusetts :P

Oh, an Arsian. :)

Sathya

yep

known for his epic reviews of OS X - arstechnica.com/author/john-siracusa

sidran32

18:38

Ars does have a partnership with SE. They regularly post articles covering chosen questions from SO.

For instance: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/…

arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange

Aha

allquixotic

19:26

figured out why I couldn't access chat on this computer... you all will roll your eyes

clear cookies, fix problem

sidran32

Haha

allquixotic

figured out why I couldn't access chat on this computer... you all will roll your eyes

sidran32

19:57

4

Q: How to set separate Home and Work network locations in Windows 8?

I use a laptop both at home and work. On my Windows 7 laptop, it let me specify the work network as Work and my home network as Home, and associated sharing settings and default printers accordingly. Now I am using a Windows 8 machine and I don't see the ability to separate Work and Home network...

networking windows-8

nhinkle

@r.tanner.f so, where's the spammer party at?

r.tanner.f

haha, gotta wait until I'm off work to set this shindig up

Transcript for