Be Excellent To Each Other

Uhh, there's absolutely no way of knowing that.

What do you mean?

The instructions for flashing to 3.004 are dated

http://patriotmemory.com/software/Appli ... _3_004.pdf

This tells me they claim to have improved performance by an unspecified amount. Whoodeedoo.

Well I'll be sure to bench the buggery out of it when it arrives

What's the ratio of:

time spent installing hw : time spent benching hardware : time spent using hw to play games

?

"Bad".

The same could be said of race cars. Or my pushbike.

Right, I did some jiggery pokery last night. It seems that poor performance is caused by two things. Firstly it doesn't like the cheapo Intel chipsets with everything onboard. Probably down to the SATA controller. It also doesn't like Jmicron controllers at all.

So far two people have reported their findings. One of them is using an Intel controller and got this with the latest firmware.



The other said this.



Now if we compare that Crystal result to say, the Intel X25v then the results (for £70.49) are quite miraculous. Simply as the best the Intel can do is 170 read and 40 write. And considering the Intel is £90 and only 40gb unformatted (and the Patriot is 60gb formatted) it's quite a bargain. However, that Crystal bench was done with the drive 70% full. It was also a firmware update from 2.000 which did not support TRIM. And I know from experience to get TRIM working properly you absolutely must format and reinstall Windows properly and not just run a clone image from the Windows you had before TRIM was enabled.

As I say, I will post benchmarks because that takes about 30 seconds to do and I need to flash the firmware over (meaning I need to go into Windows to do it with my Corsair as drive 1) so I can bench it before I flash the firmware and after.

I want it to install my games on. If it outperforms my Corsair Extreme (which it probably will) then I may put the Corsair in the silver bullet and keep the patriot in here.
And the bios was released on the 11th of August, not the 29th July. 3.000 was released on the 29th of July.

The date is obviously barse ackwards because it's an American forum. I'm going to join up soon, but even on the older cack firmwares these drives seem to perform as they are advertised on AMD chipsets.

Stop looking at sequential read and write speeds. You don't ever do that to your computer, unless you spend a lot of time restoring database backups. Normal desktop computer use scenarios like loading a program from a moderately fragmented filesystem is much closer to the 4k block random read test in terms of access patterns. If you must focus on one number, focus on that one.

For what it's worth, my OCZ Vertex II just achieved 18.3Mb/sec across a couple of 4K block random read test.

These drives are cheap for a reason. I'm not saying they are a bad buy, but I don't think they are a screaming bargain either, particularly in light of how fast the SSD market is moving.

Oh, and:
John, we discussed TRIM at length in October: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4926&p=324096&hilit=trim#p324096 and then you knowingly bought a drive that didn't support it anyway: viewtopic.php?p=362681#p362681
What are you on about? "Utterly full"? "Tradeoff"? "Windows causes... that"? I would have thought someone who had "become quite an expert on SSD drives" would know all about why a 74GB drive would report under Windows as formatted capacity of 69GB. Do you? Still, we can always run Oracle, I suppose.

Quoting from another forum just to argue with a point only made there seems a tad less than excellent to me.

It's not pleasant, I'll grant you. But the wider issue is that JC is urging us to spend money based on conclusions founded on his faulty understanding, which extends to even very basic topics. That's very non-excellent in my opinion and should be corrected. Furthermore, I wasn't about to register on that other site and start having it out with him over there, as that'd be even worse.

Well that was a fucking dick move by me. JC, I'm very very sorry, I hit Edit on your post instead of Reply, and then blew your post contents away thinking I was replying to something. I'm sincerely sorry. I don't seem to have a copy of the old post contents in my cache -- do you?

No worries.

Seriously it's not that important. It's just me getting very excited over some old shit as usual, it's what I do.

It's not been anywhere near as bad as it normally would but I got a lovely horrible stress trigger yesterday (with the license thing) and to be honest didn't even know what the fuck I was doing.

It's nowhere near as bad as usual of course (thanks to the meds, you'll notice I have been buying a lot less shit lately ) but yeah, it's kind of like a compressed 'high bit'.

I did actually think at the time that I shouldn't post about that SSD. Not because I wasn't all happy and excited but because it is pretty mundane. You're right, it's nothing special really it's just me getting terribly excited over a load of old shit

Well I wouldn't say it was shit. I'd say it was probably a reasonable buy for that money, based on some (slightly sketchy) forum posts. I'd like to see a proper site put the new firmware through the wringer.

I chose the Vertex II, BTW, because of testing (principally by Anandtech but replicated elsewhere) that shows it's remarkably resilient under sustained writes. OS X has no TRIM support, y'see. I'm aware it's not the last word in performance.

Ohhhh you got it for a Mac. I see.

I hadn't even thought about using one in a Mac tbh.

Is there a garbage collection util for Mac? I'm surprised they haven't added some form of it to OSX.

TBH whatever the deal with the Patriot I really should stop buying computer crap. Even more irresponsibly I have gotten one of these on order through a mate in the USA.







Which was only £18 and supports RAID and hotswapping.. But I just wish I could kick this fucking habit

I so nearly got a high end Zalman case yesterday but managed to stop myself from ordering it. The last thing I need is a spare chassis because I know it would end up with yet another PC in it.

Urgh, need to kick this addiction !

Hubba hubba. Looks like I'll be making the switch before long, Intel won't be alone so existing prices should collapse around Q4.

Bye Alienware. It was nice using you.

I must kick this addiction (for two days at least!).

£72 delivered for a £200+ Silverstone Temjin?

I couldn't resist. My new SSD has nowhere to go in the Alienware's current form and I am all out of space.

What model? You're going to be pissed if you've bought the (£60) Temjin micro tower.

Is that a hamster tube at the bottom?

Does it pre heat them?

TJ06. It's full tower. Takes something mental like 10 hard drives, 5 5.25 drives and so on.

Zardoz that's the CPU tube. Basically it sits over the top of your CPU's heatsink and has a 120mm fan at each end. It isolates the CPU and blasts air through it so the heat doesn't end up in the case.

Only fucker is I might need to buy new SATA cables as mine may not be long enough.

heh

Most people found that case temperatures actually improved if they took the wind tunnel out.

Well I may be fitting a Noctua NH14 soon so it would have to come out any way. That thing is a serious lump

So, not kicking the habit today then.

I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.

LOLAGE, COLLEGE.

It decimates my Corsair.

It reduces it by a factor of 10%?

Right. One PC for sale. Silver Alienware 2.0.

Specs.

CPU - AMD Phenom X4 9950 @ 2.6ghz.

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalo ... 8wIwADgA#p

Cooler - Corsair H50 liquid cooling

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Corsair- ... AM3-NEW-V2

RAM - 1GB of Patriot (PDP) 800mhz DDR2, 2gb OCZ platinum 800mhz DDR2 (3gb total, X86 max) Cost now would be around £40 est for the OCZ.

Motherboard - Asus Crosshair 2 Formula ROG edition.

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalo ... 8wIwADgA#p

Triple SLI, Supreme FX sound, supports the latest Thuban X6 hex cored, bios already flashed.

Hard drives. Pair of 250gb SATA 300 Seagate Baracudas. Can be set in RAID.

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalo ... 8wIwADgA#p

Remember, there is a PAIR of these.

Sony Optiarc 20x DVDRW (two weeks old)

http://www.saverstore.com/product/20050 ... ilver-Bare

That's the going rate.

ATI Radeon 3870X2 twin 512mb GPU. Able to spit out Fallout 3 on max as well as Mirror's edge (will everything on ultra detail and full Physx enabled)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ATi-3870X2-PCIE-1 ... V_Cards_TW

Is about the going rate. However mine is boxed and a Sapphire, so has the full back strut to stop it warping (and inevitably dying).

One EVGA 8800 Ultra in slot 3 as Physx card. However I won't price that because you can consider it a gift.

Power supply. Alienware (Newton) 750w 80+ cert PSU. This is at least £70 worth.

Edimax wireless LAN

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edimax-EW-7128G ... 676&sr=8-5

OS - Windows 7 professional SLIC loaded Alienware. DONT rely on this, but right now it's doing what it should. HOWEVER. I shall include a genuine licensed version of Vista Home Premium. The PC is non SSD so therefore fine.

Pics on request, NO OFFERS. £400 COLLECTION ONLY FROM W SUSSEX. I am not going to ship it because it WILL get fucking broken.

You forgot to add totally dust free!

How can an ATi card do PhysX?

Other than that, seems like a good price for all that.

he has the nvidia 8800 as physx accelerator.

Yeah the Ultra is running GenL's Physx mod.

Is cheap tbh. There's a black one on Ebay ATM and mine shits on it. 9600GT SLI, core 2 duo @ 2.4ghz and he wants £450 for it

Heh.

Woo yeah. It's as close to silent as silent gets. Need a mod on the duct, will get that done tomorrow. It fouls the fucking clips on the fans.

thats biiiig

Fitting hardware is like throwing a sausage down Regent Street.

It's exactly like that.

It's like a free ride when you've already paid.

Is this the best place to sell your PC, given that we get a front row view of how they go disasterously and life alternatingly wrong every few days?

Is the BIOS already flashed?

[edit]Oh Christ, it is

Yes considering that one has never gone wrong. Ever.

Doesn't matter now any way, have decided not to sell. Mate of mine wants it but then when I got into bed last night and was watching the TV etc I realised I'd be a bit sodded without it.

Nothing to do with gaming, but does anyone know if it's possible to disable the HDCP on an nvidia card?

It's been ages since I messed about with my PC (I built it around 3-4 years ago, it was the first and probably the last PC I'll build), and I used a thermaltake tsunami dream which looked quite big but proved to be a bit fiddly in places. Your case looks way bigger than that in the pic.

JC could we get a picture of your PC with some everyday things next to it for reference pls. No real reason, I just wanted to get an idea of the size of it.

Like hard drives?

I don't tend to handle hard drives too often (I have two internal ones), as when I get them I put them straight into the computer and then don't really touch them. So while I'm aware of them and their rough size, I was after something I personally can relate to more easily.

I was thinking more of things like a can of drink, loaf of bread, some lego bricks....

Here it is with a 360 controller at the bottom. It's also next to an Alienware

It is big. So big it really needs to go on the floor tbh. Not finished it yet because I'm waiting on some parts from the USA and I need to cut the fan duct to fit.



Don't get one if you are not good with a solder iron though. I found that out the hard way. I wasn't very happy about using Silverstone's adapter thing so I cut and soldered it.



Only to find it still didn't reach. Normally I would blame the PSU but with wires like this I couldn't.



So by that point I was almost in tears. In the end I had the brainwave that there was a 350w psu under my bed so I cut the 4 pin off that and used that. It doesn't help that my motherboard has a ghastly socket position tbh. Most boards have the 24 pin on the edge but mine has it bang slap in the middle of the board.

I only just got that

Actually the hilarity is yes, it pretty much does just that