What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

[Korza]

First thought it was a bad chip, so got it replaced. Same issue. So figured might be a bad batch, returned it, and got another from a different place. Still, same issue. Either they've both used the same supplier and these really came from the same bad batch (unfortunately, I didn't make note of the serial numbers of the first two), or something else is wrong. I'm all out of ideas as to what, though. Right now, I'm very tempted to return that one as well, and get myself a new Haswell MB and CPU. Already wasted way too much time on this.

Are you trying to install the latest drivers?

 

[doctorrg]

Are you trying to install the latest drivers?

I've tried every driver for my integrated GPU I could find, same issue with all of them. Don't have that issue without, but running it as Microsoft Basic Display Adapter isn't very useful.

 

[nick09]

I think the other way is to check your motherboard online and seeing if anyone else is having these problems with the same motherboard.

 

[doctorrg]

I think the other way is to check your motherboard online and seeing if anyone else is having these problems with the same motherboard.

As a matter of fact, there is. I've found a guy on the MSI forum with the exact same issue. Yet, I've contacted MSI support, and they've tested everything with the same motherboard, same BIOS version, same APU and same OS with the very same drivers installed, and they can't replicate the issue. Further, I don't just have that issue on my MSI board, I've got the exact same issue on my ASRock board. Could I really have gotten three bad chips in a row from two different places? Or could it possibly be something else I fail to think of?

 

[bergauk]

As a matter of fact, there is. I've found a guy on the MSI forum with the exact same issue. Yet, I've contacted MSI support, and they've tested everything with the same motherboard, same BIOS version, same APU and same OS with the very same drivers installed, and they can't replicate the issue. Further, I don't just have that issue on my MSI board, I've got the exact same issue on my ASRock board. Could I really have gotten three bad chips in a row from two different places? Or could it possibly be something else I fail to think of?

Check to see if Overdrive is turned on in Catalyst. My friend had the same issue on his 6770 and had it RMA'd for it to continue doing the same exact thing happen thing when he got it back. After a bunch of searching we figured out that Overdrive had been turned on in Catalyst.

 

[doctorrg]

Check to see if Overdrive is turned on in Catalyst. My friend had the same issue on his 6770 and had it RMA'd for it to continue doing the same exact thing happen thing when he got it back. After a bunch of searching we figured out that Overdrive had been turned on in Catalyst.

Ok, that's one thing to look at. Thanks for the suggestion! Though in my last test I didn't even install Catalyst. Did a fresh Windows 8 install, and went to my Display Adapter to only install the drivers. Same issue. Could this still apply? Maybe I try the full driver pack again and check the Catalyst settings. Well, if there's enough time that is. Sometimes it drops out before I get to do anything.

Edit: You've got to be kidding me. Why, oh why, didn't I try that much much earlier? Figured I'd see whether throttling the GPU in the BIOS does anything, so went into the OC options which I hadn't touched yet, had a look through, and found AMD Cool'n'Quiet, enabled. Figured I'd better try disabling that one first. And what can I say... my machine has been stable for the last couple of hours. Seems my integrated GPU and driver combination in conjunction with Cool'n'Quiet simply doesn't fly. Should have tried playing with the BIOS settings, but seeing it didn't work on either of my FM2 boards, I thought it must've been something else. I bet it'll work on my ASRock board too if I disable Cool'n'Quiet. Unless it's still coming? But the most I had the display for so far was no more than 15 minutes, and now it's been well over 2 hours. Going to leave it on overnight and check back in the Morning. But man, and to think that I RMA'd two APUs.

2nd Edit: Damn, damn, damn. An hour and a bit after my last edit, and my display just dropped out again! And here I thought I had it. It's probably been working for close to 4 hours, which kind of smashes the old record of about 15 minutes, but unfortunately, it didn't quite fix it.

 

[sesselpupser]

Most of last night and most of today have been spent trying to get my Dad's laptop refreshed. Basically he wants to increase his RAM and install an SSD in his 2009 17" MacBook Pro, so I made a clone of his existing (slightly corrupted but subsequently repaired) hard drive on my Mac, bought Mountain Lion, cloned that onto a USB flash drive, swapped his HDD to the SSD (Samsung 840 Pro 256GB), installed ML... Now we have an issue because he can't find his MS Office 2011 disc or key. In an attempt to solve it I'm cloning the image I took of his drive to the hilariously spare 2TB drive in my Pro (which is taking some time) so I can manually remove apps he wanted to get rid of so we can use Migration Assistant (as it only lets you do all or none of the applications) to copy everything back on, sans redundant software and his iTunes library (which is destined for an external drive).

It's not quite how I wanted to spend my day, possibly my night and maybe even the entire weekend, to be honest!

Edit: oh and yeah, the RAM hasn't arrived yet so I'll have to crack it open again some time next week.

In unrelated news, Scan still don't have an ETA for that 680 I ordered, but it has only been about three days. It feels like a week already... Come onnnnn.

 

[iMikeTheKing]

I finally had a chance to test my 550 ti when the AC was on in the house using MSI Kombuster. My GPU is way too hot at 99% load. In a one minutes test, using the MSI logo at 1920 x 1080, I got 26 FPS and a max temp at 91 degrees Celsius.

I need a new card but I don't know what to get. I'm probably going to buy a 670 and see if I can overclock it to as close to a 680 as I can.

 

[Joel]

If you buy an EVGA GTX 670 FTW or the OC'd Gigabyte card they come factory overclocked to 680 speeds.

 

[Crash]

I bought a new (to me) laptop.

I bought a 2012 retina Macbook Pro of a friend that's trying to down size. I got a deal and I've been in the market for one for a while, so I finally bought it.

Currently, I'm trying to set it up to how I want it to be and to download programs and apps that I would need.

 

[Prince.M5]

Had my Lenovo re-formatted 3 times to Windows 8 64-bit. I first had a 32-bit version of it in my laptop but since my friend got an extra 64-bit version so he gave me a copy. Didn't went all that smooth though. First because of BSOD, second due to my WiFi cannot be enabled and third due to drivers won't install. Now it seems to be running fine but whenever I do a warm boot, my laptop seems to be displaying the wrong thing. It says I have no WiFi, no sound and all but I can still go online, play songs and do all the things normally.

Strange things going. Pretty sure all my drivers are well installed..

 

[nick09]

Get your drivers from Lenovo's website. Always best to get your drivers from the main source than Microsoft.

 

[Prince.M5]

Get your drivers from Lenovo's website. Always best to get your drivers from the main source than Microsoft.

All my drivers are from Lenovo's website and are meant for Windows 8 64-bit. Just something is wrong somewhere. I went to the Event Viewer and I see no error to any drivers.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Got ICS for my LG P999!

 

[sesselpupser]

I'm trying to back up my PS3's hard drive (ahead of a drive swap) to an external one - it's a 3.5" 320GB Hitachi Deathstar which has just been formatted as FAT32 via my Mac (never had a problem doing that before) and connected via a SATA to USB adaptor. It has just failed to back up for the second time, giving an error "The USB device cannot be accessed." It's quite hot to the touch, but I can't decide if it's the adaptor, the HDD being faulty (it is a 5-year-old Deathstar (which hasn't been used much for the past two years), after all) or the thing just overheating and switching itself off. This time the failure happened much sooner than last.

I wonder, can I back up my PS3's existing hard drive to the new one, copy the backup onto my Mac, swap the drives over, format the old PS3 hard drive, copy the backup onto that then...? Yeah, I think I'll try that. Worst case scenario; I lose my saves, but my important ones are in the PS+ cloud system.


Edit: well that didn't work either, it must be because the SATA/USB adaptor is USB 3, maybe the PS3 just doesn't like it. I have a feeling the USB ports aren't completely standard anyway, but whatever, the swap has been completed. Now to download all my games again! Great.

 

[Azuremen]

Got ICS for my LG P999!

Just now got ICS

I installed an SSD and have been working through what applications I'll be using often on it. Needless to say, the boot times and launching Photoshop have sped up quite a bit. Then I need to backup all my images and setup the two 2TB drives I ordered as well.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Just now got ICS

Short story:

LG is an 🤬

Long Story:
LG screwed us over and said we would get ICS for the G2x but we never did. Only the O2X got it. We never even got source codes. As a result, devs at XDA had to build a workaround for it to work on the G2X (they have different radio chipsets). So now, we have something called a "hackfest", where the O2X's files and the stock Gingerbread files have been compiled and put together to make ICS work on the G2x. Since nVidia is also a 🤬, they won't release their Tegra 2 drivers either, so the devs had to again get HW acceleration working on it. So now we have an ICS rom that doesn't have video camera, the browser crashes when rotating the screen/orientation, and some lag. The JB roms come in two flavours. Either you don't get cellular service, and everything works perfectly and buttery smooth, or the same as the ICS roms, and no data, no wifi tethering, or in call audio, etc.

 

[F1GTR]

Installed bootcamp drivers for my Apple wired keyboard. I was previously making do with the standard Windows drivers which kept picking up ghost key presses and used the Windows keyboard layout, now I don't have that issue (I can now type at full speed on my PC without having to keep an eye on ghosting) and I have gained the use of the media/volume/CD eject keys on the keyboard.

Current to do list:
- Back up files on my Mac and PC
- Install a SSD for the PC
- Get new monitors

 

[iaustin7]

Installed Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS. Yes, I know that is an older Ubuntu wallpaper.

 

[TB]

Last night I set up a wireless bridge for my home network. My goodness is that all kinds of awesome! My modem and wireless router are in the far north corner of my basement and the bridge is now in the far south end hard wired to the TiVo and PS3. Bonus - it gives me much better wireless coverage throughout the entire house. 👍

 

[Bopop4]

I have dropped part of a dorito into the keyboard of my laptop and can't get it out.

I don't care that it's from years ago, still hilarious.

I've been setting up my X52 flightstick using the Saitek software.
Ridiculous amount of button combos.

 

[sesselpupser]

Last night I set up a wireless bridge for my home network. My goodness is that all kinds of awesome! My modem and wireless router are in the far north corner of my basement and the bridge is now in the far south end hard wired to the TiVo and PS3. Bonus - it gives me much better wireless coverage throughout the entire house. 👍

In my house we have TP Link PA-211 Homeplug devices for this reason, so far we've bought two pairs (one for the router, one for my PC, one each for the two Netflix, etc. streaming box things we have). This was before we had a decent router though so I don't know if they're necessary any more, but I still want another pair (one for my Mac, one for the PS3) anyway. A wireless bridge would have been cheaper, but our router at the time kept dropping the wireless. And Homeplug is faster anyway.

 

[Sureboss]

I've got some Solwise homeplugs, so much better than wireless, would definitely recommend.

Well, I've just finished buying the parts for my gaming rig. 3570k, 7870 Black, 16GB of Vengeance at 1866mhz being the core (hurr) of it. Carbide 300R case, CXM 600W hybrid modular. 2TB mechanical drive, will wait until the 500GB - 1TB SSDs are affordable (3 years?) and then transfer over.

 

[Solo]

Today I received my Dad's old ZX Spectrum. It is still visually in mint condition just to find out if it still works and then have a play around with that over this summer.

 

[djinline]

Today I received my Dad's old ZX Spectrum. It is still visually in mint condition just to find out if it still works and then have a play around with that over this summer.

That's amaZXing! Have a lot fun with it (if it still responds)! 👍

 

[Submerged]

(I am in Shanghai at the moment)

Considering getting a mini motherboard for a FM2 AMD APU system, as I want to build a relatively low powered system for the parents that doesn't use too much power, still plays HD stuff and will last for a long time.

Going to put a (small) SSD boot drive and probably either put in a 1TB or a 2TB drive for media and files. They probably don't need that much storage but its just nice to have it.

AMD A10-6700 with 65W is pretty tasty actually, when you consider its a CPU and GPU inside, which will negate the use of a graphics card.

I am just trying to get a relatively low powered, quiet system so that would mean minimum amount of fans and whirry bits.

Reason for sticking with the AMD APU is that its is a good chip and making do without a graphics card is a big bonus. Also, power draw isn't too bad. Plus, I should be able to get it for a reasonable price in Shanghai, under 80 quid at least (should get it for about 70 quid or less if I bargain hard) and the whole system should not be more than 300 quid (not including the Windows tax or the case as I will get that in England (Windows in England to make sure its in English! and the case in England because I can't fit the case in my suitcase).

RAM... Apparently 2100Mhz RAM is best for that APU, however there's no overclocking to be done to the chip (unless it was end of lifed and I kept it...) so I'm guessing 1800MHz RAM is the order of the day.

Recommendations for motherboards and other systems if anyone want to point me towards something else?

 

[Luminis]

Finally solved the instability issues I had when OC'ing my CPU past 4.0 GHz just recently 👍 Runs perfectly stable at 4.4 GHz now and doesn't get hotter than 40°C while playing Crysis 3 'n stuff. So, looking good so far.

Also changed my wallpaper to this one, just using a higher resolution:

Now, I just need to OC my GPU properly. Kinda fed up with the Gygabite OC Guru, but I can't be bothered to do that ATM

Today I received my Dad's old ZX Spectrum. It is still visually in mint condition just to find out if it still works and then have a play around with that over this summer.

Now that's what I call a blast from the past 👍

 

[djinline]

Recommendations for motherboards and other systems if anyone want to point me towards something else?

I would say something with at least A75 chipset is essential, for example this one here, good for tiny HTPC cases.

MSI product information says it supports the AMD A10-6700, always remember to check the manufacturer's website for CPU compatibility if you find good deals in Shanghai.

1866MHz DDR3 RAM is perfect for non-OC'd APUs, it really boosts stuff up when compared to lower RAM speeds.

 

[dice1998]

That moment where one accidentally formats the wrong hard drive and doesn't have a backup of that hard drive.


I'm having that moment.

 

[sesselpupser]

That moment where one accidentally formats the wrong hard drive and doesn't have a backup of that hard drive.


I'm having that moment.

Ouch. I did that once back in 2004, since then I've treated drive formatting like brain surgery.

I've just sorted out some admin that's been bugging me for a while. Basically I had a website for my design work but now that I'm not a designer any more it seemed pointless keeping it, so I let the domain name expire. However the hosting company wouldn't let me cancel the payment because it was overdue, yet in the 'payments due' section, it wasn't there, so I just logged in to my banking and cancelled the direct debit, I assume that's that sorted now. I also finally changed my Apple ID's email from my site email to my hotmail one. It feels good to finally be rid of that site.