I'm starting to hate AMD again.
The DreamPC is now back together and cooler and nice then ever before I
guess except perhaps gaming performance.
So far all games are runnable at 30 fps.
Not all games because DX is missing but that will probably be fixed in the
near future.
Anyway the AMD CPU fan is spinning at 3000+ RPM and it's probably the source
of noise !
It's pretty annoying even with ear plugs in... though the case is still
open... hopefully that noise will go away when the case is closed.
If not I will have to find a way to lower it's RPM... however I fear the
motherboard has no futures for this.
Also there is now so much cool air going into the case that I must now worry
about hot, cold, hot, cold cycles which could burst chips or something.
So perhaps I should even set inlet fans at lowest speed which would be real
nice for noise... but I can't hear them already... too low air speed might
result into dust settling so that wouldn't be too good.
I also tested the USB 7-in-1 card reader and it's fricking working which is
really nice ! I connected it correctly the first time ! cool.
However it also worked the first time on my old dream pc hardware and then
stopped working... so will it continue to work ?! Time will tell !
=D
So far I saw 3 demos from nvidia all run:
arienna, froggy, smoke
It was all cool, especially the adrienne and especially froggy... which was
awesome... but slapping frogs is a big no-no you bunch of animal molesters !
LOL.
I made video of it all to prove it.
Also to my surprise Quake 3 run pretty much perfectly at 1920x1200 at 60 fps
so I am happy about that...
At least I can quake well !
=D
The transparent gui is also supported after installing the drivers so that's
working nicely... so far GT 520 tested.... the radeon gpu not tested yet...
The GT 520 is very interesting since it apperently supports 3D Vision !
Which is a big plus in my oppinion this allows me to probably enjoy 3D
movies like avatar and play 3D games or something... at least this allows me
to experiment with it... though I would need to buy glasses, which I will
probably do just for the kick of it ! So I don't need a tiny little fricking
nintendo 3DS to experience it ! COOOOOLL.
So the prospect of viewing 3D movies is pretty cool... Haven't tried playing
a movie yet, except my own H264 or x264 tank smasher video which didn't
play... not sure why.. maybe it needs dx drivers, this will probably be
resolved in near future.
Manuals were in pdf so couldn't read those since no acrobat on windows 7
yet... it needs to be installed first.
Also the asus cards comes with GamerOSD "on screen display" ??? I have no
idea how it works... I started it but then nothing... it's maybe for
capturing video of games.
The asus gt 520 silent card also came with "smart doctor" which is pretty
cool it allows easy overclocking/underclocking of graphics and it comes with
temperature meters which is real nice ! Now I can keep track of heat !
=D
It did see that it goes up in heat quite fast to 40c or so... and the X-Fi
soundblaster is right below it so this is a bit worrieing... though the new
power supply sucks lot's of air too so perhaps it will suck some heat away
from the card... what it's exact temperature is during game still need to be
seen, the idea of under clocking the card for safety seems pretty cool to
me... I could then also use this for running cuda applications a long time !
The motherboard's software is also able to underclock the CPU and shows
wattage... for power efficiency... this is cool, unfortunately it does not
lower the cpu fan speed, cool n quiet in bios was on auto I set it to on...
the tool could probably change this itself... but still it doesn't control
the cpu fan.
Also 3 TB harddisks are probably supported which is nice info's for others
but for me I'm probably maxed out.. though I could still replace one HD
which had a bad sector... so I could still stuff 6 more GB into it by buying
new HD's if I want too or even wait for bigger hd's which is pretty cool.
Cables to power supply were detachable so nicely cleaned up it has enough
power cables for more harddisk/sata power cables as well as old ide power
cables, though sides have to be cut of from connectors if those are to be
stuck against the back motherboard plate to tuck them away.
I have plenty of sata cables... I got so many sata cables it's almost insane
=D
Also I couldn't actually see 3d vision in action it requires setup first...
of glasses maybe I could skip or fake it... I also tried red/green glasses
but didn't get past the setup screen... probably colors a bit off... but
it's probably doable.
Soundblaster also works nicely... I haven't tested yet with 4 GB enable in
windows... so far 2GB enabled...
I will test this later ofcourse as well to see if crackingly gone... maybe
if power sockets in wall are replaced the crackling will be gone... who
knows...
So far so good... no slow restart issue's so that's nice.
I will probably continue testing with booting into windows xp instead of
windows 7 to be able to test my old software configuration which was huge...
this would allow me to test a lot of stuff...
First I need to figure out how I want to do this.. via real hd which has a
bad sector or via vdh/virtual disk which has a copy of it... I haven't made
up my mind about that... I think it would be best via vhd but then I first
have to fix the boot menu which for some reason complains... it will also be
better via vdh I think since then I can proceed using that.
First I have to go stick cables against the back plate and then try and shut
(with doors) the pc for safety. I'm probably not gonna stick every cable
like last time... just that cables that need sticking.
So far everything is pretty good.
Only two things I am slightly disappointed about:
1. cpu fan spinning at full speed.
2. doom 3 run at 15 to 30 fps at 1920x1200 or so.. maybe even slower... but
that's not so bad for a passively cool card... it will probably run faster
at 640x480 or 800x600 or 1024x768 etc.
Bye,
Skybuck.
