Thoughts on devices (mostly ones I plan to already purchase)

Android 2.3.6 update for SGS2

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:47:00 +0000

Played with SGS2 today (after a long time)

Finally i got around to playing with S2 and upgraded the firmware. Samsung is not releasing the upgrade in India through Kies hence had to resort to loading Australian 2.3.6 firmware.

First i backup using Kies. Took a long time to backup. During this time the XWKK2 was downloading so multitasking ;)

Steps from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1075278

First I rooted the phone and did a nandroid backup as well as Titanium backup.
Then I loaded Australian SGS2 XWKK2
Was worried about not flashing Indian CSC but Vodafone seem to work with the image. :)
Post this I wanted to change to more customized kernel hence loaded up Suyah kernel using Odin.

ROM manager does not work with the CF-root installed CWM recovery but CWM manager by chainfire works fine.

Lets see how this works out. Have been struggling with the power. must be one of tones of application I installed. Was much better with stock apps only.

PS. Also purchased Philips DVD player and Logitech 2.1 THX certified speakers. Have to write about them too.

My Gadgets (powered by Linux only)

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 11:51:00 +0000

Linux is everywhere. That’s easy to say but I decided to find out what all I have. So given above is the shot of all the Linux powered devices that I have. Also, they are all the wifi devices that I have. I as not sure if my canon sx30 is running on Linux hence not including in the list.

My Linux gadgets

In the order of size they are .

Samsung Laptop:

Bought about 4 months ago. Bought for study purpose but have not done anything till date. Also wanted some thing lighter and this is not. Couldn't get something in 11 to 13” range. Some new stuff is now launched but too late for me now. Came with FreeDOS. Currently running Ubuntu 11.11. It has seen Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuse till now and might get to run OpenBSD in some time. Have to get some time for that. Don't like the new Widget-y look of the new Oss though.

HP touch-pad 32GB:

Most recent purchase from Amazon.com. The shipper did not account for import tax and had to visit the local customs office for this. Apart from this I have no complaint regarding this. Comes with WebOS which is a nice OS. Also installed Cyanogen Mod Alpha 2 on Touchpad which runs nicely. very good performance for an alpha release of Android. But I have decided to stick to WebOS. Its nice has overclock support to 1.5Ghz and has the games that run nicely. I play bug life, Asphalt6, NFS hot pursuit, etc on this and they run great.

Recommended for everyone if they can get it cheaply. 20k Android 10" tablet. Others are nearly 30k I am lovin this one

Amazon Kindle:

Great single purpose device for reading books. Got it last year for preparing/studying for the job change. Not very useful for the technical .pdf format books that I wanted to read. but should be great for the pocket sized books that are available for casual reading. I think it should always be bought with the case, kindle is a bit difficult to hold without it. Also, it plays mp3 file and now Amazon has added Audible audiobook support as well. Am a big fan of the Audiobooks now. but most of my time is spent listening to podcasts and not getting the time now.

Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2 9100) :

After the LG Optimus one I wanted a bigger screen and this was the best handset a few months ago and surprisingly it still is. Wonderful screen, Fast processor So much memory. Optimus one has 200MB of app memory and it was a struggle to have apps and worry about app2sd and all that. This has 2GB of app memory and I have not even used 1 GB of it. Choice is a wonderful predicament. The newer handsets are just about equaling this one and it is a testament to the work of Samsung that even after nearly a year of launch the is is still the best phone. Hopefully it'll get the the ICS soon.

LG Optimus One:

Got this last year along with my car for the interviews. Having a car would increase my area of jobs to target and with no knowledge of Bangalore roads I needed maps. So this was my navigation device. A good handset which gave me no problems. Still working and is now my moms gaming device where she plays angry birds rio all the time. Coming from the normal feature phone this was a big change for me. Changing from nokia was also a big decision but they did not have any good handsets then. Soon realized that the smart phone needs a big screen for the maps and browsing. The medium sized screen was becoming a problem.

That's it for now. TC and Enjoy life.
PS. Thanks to my friend blogger who inspired me to take up blogging again.

Additional Memory: RAM and Hard Disk

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:40:00 +0000

I recently succumbed to some online temptation and did some IT shopping buying RAM and other stuff for my computer. I brought them from www.computerwarehousepricelist.com and it was delivered to home. I got extension cable for USB, Sound and LAN, Belkin Gold Series 8-Socket Surge Protector, 512 MB of SDRAM for my old machine at home. Shouldn't ignore it just because of this new machine :)

I also brought Seagate Goflex Desk 2 TB external disk drive to move my media collection from my main machine. I got this one from Ebay for 6500. I got the USB2 interface but it is possible to just purchase the FreeAgent® GoFlex Desk Desktop Adapter Kit USB 3.0 separately and upgrade tfrom 2 to 3 which I believe is very fast and near native. I asked the Ebay retailer and according to him the prices of USB 3 Goflex Desk kit should drop by year end.

Nice useful device to have and after I move the resident stuff to it and free up space I'll be able to start with fetching new data. I was struggling with disk space problem since some time and HDD and RAM solves my current problems and also provide a bit of future provisioning. No more thinking or clearing other stuff before downloading new one. Also useful when I visit my hometown.

Further Details about RAM :

Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C5C 5-5-5-18 dual channel RAM sticks. : Now my machine has a total of 6 GB of RAM running. Other is Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400.

Since I run a custom crosshair BIOS version 1304 V2 made by GinieMaster and published at computerbase for which the creator has given a warning that 4 RAM sticks might not work, I bought 4 GB in case the previous 2 stopped working.

I connected the new ones and started the machine. It started. Cool!

I added the old ones too and was not very optimistic about the machine starting. It started !!! Great! :)

The machine booted up and I checked Task Manager, System Properties, RAM status widget and other places it shows the RAM amount and speed. I was happy to see all 6 GB reported and working. Now what?

I didn't notice anything different. And then I felt that Firefox was not grinding to a halt after consuming > 1 GB of RAM. OK great, That was just the reason I bought the RAM for.

I Happy.

[My Windows Experience Index for memory is 7.1 now.]

Windows 7 at office

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:54:00 +0000

I recently got a new machine at office. I have Windows 7 loaded on it now. It is an Acer Emachine 1210 with 19" monitor.

That model originally had Vista but now they provide it loaded with windows 7 also. I was waiting for this to happen since I did not want to work on Vista. I mean, Vista is ok, I have used it at home for more than a year but at office I do not want to use my time on solving Software issues and learning the difficult method to do something which was easy in Windows XP. Furthermore the Vista installation did not have any drivers installed. The display was weird with the wide-screen monitor trying to display standard 4:3 resolution screen. I had to install the drivers for graphics, monitor, and even the mouse driver to be able to use it for a week.

The story goes like this. The support guys tried to upgrade the OS for that machine to Win7 from Vista(Upgrade is a misnomer here since there were going to replace it with blank copy of a new installation requiring all software to be reinstalled) but for some reason the machine refused to listen to him and kept rebooting in Vista.Then complete machine was replaced and he brought another machine which had Win7 already on it. That was disappointing since I wanted to see how they upgrade to Win7.

So my emachine now has Win7. It was disappointing to see that Aero was not working and hence I was not able to change the color of the task-bar. It looks so irritating that I had to change the theme to Windows classic to be able to tolerate it. It seem there is some problem with the rating system and it crashes, so the machine is not able to rate itself and turn ON the more advanced feature like Aero.

Apart from that it is better than Vista in speed and smoothness. I was not able to install Cisco VPN client on it. I have to figure out how to do it since it is very important for my work. Right now I also have another machine so it is not much of a problem.

All in all it is OK. Provides good functionality. Uses less memory and the hibernate function actually works this time around for me to resume all my open windows the next day directly. And this means that I can switch off the machine and save some power to do something good for the mother earth.

Solved: Problems installing VirtualBox 2.2.2 over 2.2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 03 May 2009 08:25:00 +0000

I use VirtualBox on Windows host with Linux running as guest. Usually it is Ubuntu, Fedora or both. I was running VirtualBox version 2.2.0 and tried to install the latest version 2.2.2 (as of 05/03/2009 ). It has a fix for the clipboard problem in which copy paste operation stopped working.
When I tried to install the new version of VirtualBox it would ask me all the questions and permissions and just about when it should be finishing the install, it rolled back the install process. Also uninstalling of the VirtualBox 2.2.0 failed with the same style. Rollback at the last step.

I searched around and they said some workarounds to install the new version.

Search in the c:\windows\inf folder and delete .inf files which refer to the VirtualBox. (Didn't like the idea of deleting files manually)
There was a registry copy paste from LOCAL_USER to LOCAL_MACHINE. (The paste part did not work for me. regedit refused to paste the .reg file)

Step followed by me as follows:

I tried to repair the setup by running the old setup file and selecting the repair option.
Then I disabled all the network interfaces of the VMs and tried to remove the VirtualBox from the old setup. Surprisingly it worked. Maybe the new Host Only networking added recently has been the problem.
Then I rebooted the machine just to be safe.
Started the install of the 2.2.2 version and it successfully finished.

I don't think the first step did any good. Had tried it earlier on another machine and nothing happened. Step 2-4 are what it seem is the solution.

Currently I'm running the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope as VM.
The Visual Effect for Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope is enabled in VirtualBox and the 3d accelaration seems to be working better now. It did not work on 2.2.0 and earlier.

Windows 7 : Windows Experience Index score -> 5.5

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:46:00 +0000

I had posted my WEI score for Vista previously here and now that the new version of windows is available(Windows 7 beta) I thought I should do that for this one also.

So. I got the score of 5.5 in Windows 7. The sub scores are as follows

Processor 6.3
Memory(RAM) 5.5
Graphics 7.9
Gaming graphics 6.0
Primary Hard Disk5.9

This is with the AMD 6000+ Processor running at an overclocked speed 3300Mhz.

The score for my previous HDD (WD 250 GB PATA ) was 5.3. This is my relatively new HDD Seagate 500 GB(32 MB cache) so the score for Hard disk has jumped a little.

Now an Interesting thing with the score is that some scores have moved up even though the hardware is the same. I mean I have not changed my graphics card, processor RAM etc. But the scores are different this time. Maybe the 64 bit OS makes some difference

My previous scores were 5.6, 5.9, 5.9, 5.9, and 5.3 respectively for Vista. The scores for Vista were capped at 5.9 so its understandable why the score graphics increased. But my Memory score has actually gone down and processor score has moved up. Very Interesting.

Since the WEI Base score is the least score out of the component scores, I got the Windows 7 base score of 5.5.
My plan to have a Hard disk setup in RAID 0 has still not materialized. Now I think Its better to have a single fast disk rather than couple of disk in RAID. Maybe my troubles with partition disappearing due to infighting between Vista and Windows 7 has something to do about my new belief. The WD veloci-raptor might be something I'd like to try out.

Also I have managed to attach three 1200 mm fans for cooling and circulating air in my cabinet now and the temperature is in control. I've got 2 intake and 1 exhaust fans.
The motherboard temperature keeps exceeding the values set by ProbeII monitoring software. Maybe my change of CPU heat sink-Fan has left little airflow over the Crosshair motherboard chip set.

The video driver is an beta provided by nvidia and available by Windows update and the other drivers are as provided by Windows 7 default. Hopefully these scores will go up when Windows 7 hits the stands and vendors provide optimized drivers for the new OS.

My upgrade wish list would be additional RAM, a new fast veloci-raptor HDD, and wireless kbd-mouse.

Cheers
Kunal

Wordpad in Widows 7 does not support .doc files

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:58:00 +0000

Wordpad in Windows 7 does not support .doc files. That means pretty much all the word documents you are likely to come across are not supported by this bundled word processor in Windows 7.

It does support Word 2007 format (.docx)though and also the other open standard formats such as .odt files which are used by OpenOffice. The look and feel of the interface has also been changed to make it look like a Office 2007 application.

Frankly I never liked the new interface of Office 2007. Confusing and frustrating for people used to the earlier interface of the previous versions of Office.

Hoping that they add the support for .doc files in the release version of windows. Another thing they should add is the support for pdf files. That would be perfect for the little applicaton called Wordpad.

Cooling Fans and their controller finally arriving

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:36:00 +0000

So many months have gone by since I had ordered my additional fans and the a controller to control them along with some other accessories. Finally it seems that I may get them. My good friend Arun Bhakthavalasalam had very helpfully held on to them in US so that he could bring them when he come to India, but fate had other plans. His stay in US has been extended and that would mean further delay of the consignment. To avoid more delay in the items I had them got couriered to my place.

It was sent using USPS service. The tracking of consignment stopped after it reached India. My parcel got stuck in Customs.

I received a notice from the customs department about the parcel and they wanted a host of documents about the items. The documents were permission from RBI and so many other permits from other ministries. The rule is something like that we are not allowed to import stuff exceeding in value of Rs 2000. This amount includes the shipping changes also. Even if I ship something of zero value the shipping itself would go above the princely limit allowed to us. Ridiculous...

I went to the customs department to explain my shipment and to get it released. At first the superintendent was very angry and gave me nice dressing down about it. He wanted me go give a technical write-up about the items in parcel and why I needed them. I asked me about why I needed 4 fans for a single computer when the computer can run for 24*7 with the normal CPU fan. I had to explain things about the over clocking the processor and how cooling is important to do it.

The second time around he was receptive to what I was saying. It seems that before me, two people had tried to fool him and had signed in place of other people to clear their consignment.

Finally he cleared my parcel...

It should be arriving this week by Indian post at home and after paying custom duty of about 1k or so I should be able to finally see the stuff I paid for so many months back.

Thanks to my friend Arun Bhakthavalasalam for holding on to it and then taking the trouble to get it shipped to me. Taking time out of his busy schedule must have been difficult.

Awaiting the shipment anxiously ...

Brought a Hard Disk finally!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:50:00 +0000

A simple activity like buying a hard disk also bring around complexity in my life. The story goes something like this.

After waiting since long I have brought a hard disk for my system. It is a 500GB model of Seagate ST3500320AS with 32 MB cache.

I had got the hard disk one week earlier itself but unfortunately it was a ST3500820AS model which is the 8 mb model. but the thing is the Seagate does not make 8 MB model of 500 GB model. I find out that it is the result of a wrong firmware from Seagate. They loaded a 8 Mb model firmware on the 32 MB model resulting in the drive only using 8 MB of the available cache and wasting the rest.

I called up the shop for a replacement and they said i will get it when ever i take the hard disk to their shop.

I thought lets upgrade the firmware and I wont need to to got to the shop. I downloaded the latest firmware which was supposed to solve the issue AD14. Spent a day searching for any floppy disk lying around. I finally had to burn a cd for the firmware. It was gonna be dangerous since my CD drive is a SATA and the hard disk upgrade might be disturbed by it.

The upgrade failed and I had a SATA brick with me remaining as a trophy for my upgrade efforts.

I went and got it replaced this week and now have it running.

Next step is another one of this HDD and RAID 0.
The performance score for my Hard disk is as follows:
The Vista experience score for hard disk is now 5.9. Now working on processor to get it to 5.9.
(5.6 score is for AMD 6000+ overclocked to 3300 Mhz from BIOS)

Got a wi-fi Adapter G-122 Dlink

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:15:00 +0000

So many days since i have written anything. My net was down as the LAN cable connecting my computer to the router got badly cut. It was connected through the window and it got cut due to ht eopening and closing of the window pane.

My mistake entirely, I should have cut a groove or something so that the cable does not come in contact with the window. Anyways, the cabling was going around the entire place very badly and was messin up the place so i decided to go wireless.

The router was already an acess point D-link dI 524 so not expense on that side. There were two options here, one was to get an internal PCI card D-510 or to get an USB variant of called the USB adapter GWL G-122 . The GWL G132 which is an 108 Mb wi-fi seemed a more future proof solution but it was not available here and it would have taken some time for it to arrive.

SO finnaly I have got the wirless thing working and finaly the net is working after a month or so. The product driver and the net monitor software provided in the package seem not to support Vista. The drivers work and the connection i available but the Vista security had messed up the net monitor software and does not work.

I searched around and found some driver/software for Vista but in all the cases the software did not work. The drivers worked though.

It would have been nice to be able to monitor the wireless connection though...

Top fan hole finally done

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:26:00 +0000

The top fan hole is done and finished on the cabinet. Now my cabinet has an 120 mm exhaust fan blowing hot air from the top of the cabinet, The perfect place for the exhaust fan to be placed. [image]The fan I have fitted there is the scythe 120 mm I had purchased long time back along with the computer parts from ABGB mumbai.

I had a tough time finding someone selling this stuff in India then but now ABGB have a website where you can buy stuff like scythe fan and thermalright heatsinks etc. Rest is the normal stuff.
Also two side holes for the intake fans are done and awaiting the fans for them. My choice is the Scythe ultra kaze range of fans the fastest of the range 3000 rpm pushing 133 CFM at 45 dba. Another fan I am interested is a very fast delta fan 127mm x 38mm Delta EFB1312VHE Case Fan (185 CFM, 55.5 dBA)

Controlling these fans would be the "KAZE MASTER" 5.25" Bay Fan Controller and temperature monitor, which is a cool fan controller with LCD display showing the temperatures of the system. It won't support the Delta fan as the fan demands lot of power but the scythe can be handled by it.

These things can be checked out at the http://www.petrastechshop.com/ which is a great online store and the people will respond to your mails. They do hide behind the nameless help mail ids and send system generated mails to you. I asked some queries and they were very helpful about it. They also ship to India but the shipping from US to India is anyway very expensive.

All the above product are not available in India and will need to bought in US and a friend of mine will be bringing it to my place. Don't think these will be ever be available in India since no one out here cares about the details.

Drill has arrived

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:18:00 +0000

In my last post I had mentioned something about improving the airflow in my computer cabinet and that i was gonna cut/drill some holes to fit some fans on the side panel.

Now in continuation of that story.

I had enquired about the drilling process with some engineering shops nearby. They said something like 2 Rs for every hole to be drill. I needed space for three fans and provision of all three sizes of fans 80mm, 92mm and 120mm on those. These itseld made up 48 holes. And we have not even started on the holes for the air to go in /out. That would asily be some 2-3 hundred holes. At that cost I could buy a drill set for myself.

And thats what i have done. I searched around the net for a home delivery type of drill set. Between indiatimes and rediff this drill from the same vendor was costing different. Maybe the typist or policies are different for the two sites.

OK so after a wait of about 10 days my drill set has arrived. Surprishingly lightweight package. One drill , pliers, wrench, screwdriver set, tape measure, drill bits 5 of each type(wood metal and something else). Nice package. Everyone should have one. Everything stays at one place and is easily accessible. No searching around.

So this week end i will be destroying the side panel of the cabinet by trial and error to do y personal cabinet modification. I also need to order some scythe fans from ABGB. Rally nice fans . No noise at all.

My fish tank filter/ Air pump make more noise that my CPU :)

Upgrading BIOS of CROSSHAIR motherboard

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:17:00 +0000

Today I finally updated the BIOS. I wanted to to do this since I got the computer but the ASUS site was not opening up the downloads page for CROSSHAIR.

You may find info about CROSSHAIR ASUS site official
Another very good site with useful info was pcstat review of CROSSHAIR.

Now after so many day of waiting I have finally got the new BIOS. The idea being that any product or software ships with bugs and they are sorted out as time progresses. I am a software engineer and I know how software's are made. Basically, the makers/manufacturers decide based on the severity of the bugs remaining and the degree of testing done whether to release the software or not. Rest are handled as updates. Also manufacturers cant simulate every possible scenario in which the product will be used.

The latest version of BIOS as of today was 904. 905 was also there as a BETA but I am using the release version. Next I downloaded the ASUS update utility from Asus site to update the bios.

Asus download site for CROSSHAIR

I tried using the EzFlash option from he BIOS itself but the thing wasn't showing my file correctly and was displaying garbage characters. Not to take that risk, I tried it with ASUS update utility. Even after downloading the latest one from the site , the little bugger found even more latest version of itself on asus site and spent a lot of time comfortably downloading it. The latest version now being 7.13.04.

Even though this version of ASUS update does not say its compatibility with Vista. I decided to use it anyway with the reason explained above.

The upgrade progressed nicely without much trouble. I had closed all other programs before I went into this.

It asked for the machine to be restarted. It restarted. I checked the setup to see any visible changes but couldn't find any.

So after the BIOS update, next few things to do for me would be:

Find the maximum overclocking limit of my machine. 6000+ @ 3Mhz now
Drill fan holes in the side panel door to fit three big fans. for cooling the motherboard-CPU.

Right now the air gets trapped inside when the door is closed and temperature crosses 60C. Though not very high, I would like to reduce it. The fans I am gonna fit is 120mm Scythe S-Flex 63 CFM. I already have two and I am gonna get some more. Super silent and mighty efficient.

My ThermalRight 120 extreme is helping a lot bit in moving heat away from the processor but it need to go out of cabinet also. Power supply doesn't feel things to be hot enough to speed up its fan. Those Corsair guys put some hot material in 620HX.

Vista not booting "bootmgr compressed" I can compress it but cant read it later

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 14:50:00 +0000

Superb thing happened to me the other day

I have installed Vista on my system drive which was only 10 GB in size, So i am always short on space since beginning. After moving all the optional things like pagefile and index location i am able to fit vista in there.

So for freeing up some space i compressed my system drive . It gave some warning regarding this but i ignored them. Very stupid thing as it turned out.

So after the days work(??) i switched off the computer and went to sleep.

Next the comp refused to boot stating that the bootmgr(a file it uses to boot) is compressed and it does not like the boot files to be touched and advised me to press ALT+CTRL+DEL to restart the comp.

Now everybody and their kids know the ALT+CTRL+DEL restarts the comp, and how is this thing gonna improve the situation is not stated. Carrying out the order takes us back to the same message. Some helpful(recursive) message this.

Now some net searching about this revealed it to be a very generic and unsolved problem. It plagues both XP and Vista it seems. They ask permission for useful things like defrag an scandisk but allow such a destructive operation to be carried out by anyone.

The solution to this as i found out here

http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-bootmgr-missing.html

was :

compact /u c:\bootmgr

compact /u c:\ntldr

from the command prompt thru XP or Vista recovery console by booting from the XP ot vista install disk.

I got to the point of entering the password for windows but failed there since i dont use password for my login and dont remember any password i might have entered while installing.

Then i tried to change the compressed drive parameter from Ubuntu but it does not seem to have any option for that.

How do you undo an operation

Best way to undo any operation is to reverse the steps done. Right.

So i took my hard disk to friends place, Attached it there, ran the above commands for my drive and also by the GUI to be sure about it.

Came back . Started comp and it STARTED.

So much excitement for a very silly thing to do . I mean when you are so short of space that you have to compress entire drive, its best to get a new hard disk.

I really need to get two HDD and get them working in RAID 0 very soon now.

Vista experience index base score of 5.3

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 15:49:00 +0000

:Windows experience index base score: Hmm...

I didn't know about this thingie, nobody seems to be talking about it while discussing Vista. Well, not many are talkin about Vista in the first place so the chances of mention of this thing would be remote.

So. I got the score of 5.3 with subscore as follows

Processor 5.5
Memory(RAM) 5.9
Graphics 5.9
Gaming graphics 5.9
Primary Hard Disk 5.3

This is with the AMD 6000+ Processor running at stock speed of 3000Mhz.

Now i cant do much about the HDD score.(WD 250 GB PATA) so i decided to play around with the processor clock speeds.

With the processor overclocked by 5% 3150Mhz. the processor score stayed at 5.5.
Overclocking by 10% 3300Mhz The processor score moved to 5.6. SS as below

Since the Vista Base score is the least score out of the component scores, i got the Vista base score of 5.3. How to get the HDD score to move up is not known to me right now but i'm sure i'll be able to do that once i get two SATA HDD to run in RAID 0 configuration but thats still a long time to go.

This overclocking was done from the BIOS menu directly without spending much thinking effort on it. Short of time and will. Just wanted to try out the effect.

I'm sure when i get some time to spend on tweaking the clocking values and the cooling subsystem. I'm planning to get a peltier junction to have the best localised cooling for the processor. Then It will be fun to overclock and to extract performance out of processor.

I would love to know the maximum score of components. But since the scoring is capped at 5.9 for some time atleast (Could take a long time for Vista to gain acceptance with XP still being OK and Vista not offering any visible benefits) i'll just have to wait.

Any hackers around to unlock the scoring???

Crysis Demo

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:13:00 +0000

I was looking since many days for a way to find the limits of my system. Quake 4 and Doom 3 don't really seems to bring the system to its knees as the saying goes.

So I installed the Crysis Game demo version from this months PC world. It say its a DX10 game and is really kick ass. Lets see I said.

The demo itself is a big one . We used to have full games smaller than this just last year or so . The demo is 1.7 gigs. Somehow I cleared some space for the game and installed it. Currently I am running Vista and the Vista comes up with a question everytime something happens. Dumb OS. Game requires some hotfix to be installed before it can be played. MS came up with a substandard OS and doesn't like people cribbing about it. No wonder people don't want to move from XP which has matured with the old bugs addressed(and new ones added).

After the install i found there was no shortcut installed by it in the start menu. So I went to the installation directory and found it. There were some benchmarks in it so i tried them. Good for us lazy ppl who want to see some action without much input.

The bench mark scenes look extremely good and really nice detailed graphics are there.

The game looks good . Haven't played it yet. Should be fun.

The nice things about the benchmarks is that you can escape into the control panel of the game and change the video/game/audio setting for the game. This helps you come up with proper settings giving playable framerates for your machine.

In the scene where our guy is running around destroying things the details can be realy noticed once you start enableing various video options. AA seems to reduce the frame rate most. With AA turned off I got the scene to move at a animation like speed. With Max AA scene became a slideshow.

download Crysis demo
requirements for the game
Official site

Moving the computer

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:22:00 +0000

Today I moved the position of my computer. The table under the computer is the folding type and ther is very little space there. The legs take up all the space(of the Table). I had a hell of the time to work( ;) ) . with the legs getting cramped(mine).

So twas time to realign the orientation of the computer with respect of the table. I mean to change the position in such a way as to make the experience more WOW.

So I changed the computer position to be aligned to longer edge of the table. This was done with the computer still on and the entire operation was done so as to not break the net connection.

Here the decision to buy an UPS was fruitful and thge entire thing was completed properly.

Some day I need to check the backup time from my Microtek 1kVA UPS. The shopkeeper/the manual says that it should be able to suport a single computer for nearly 40-50 minutes but cant really believe that can I? That is similar to believing hte milage figures of the vehicle given in its advertising flyer.

Fun while installing XFX 8800 GTS 320 graphics card

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:30:00 +0000

Installing a graphic card is really simple if you are careful about it and take proper care about the steps involved. I never thought I'd make a mistake in this department. The series of event that happened are as follows.

I cut two openings at the back of the cabinet for the card ports and fan vent to peep though.

Then i tried to install the card. A problem presented itself . Hmm.. The card is a tad too long to fit properly and all the other things i installed there before the card blocked the path of the card. I removed the hard disk.Still, some more things remain. I removed all the connectors connected there around the card area. (Suddenly it seemed to me that all the cables like that area to pass though. Lotsa cables to remove).Moved the HDD to another place got the SATA cables to another place etc. Finally the card fitsd properly.

I start the system and voila i get display. Now i try various softwares which tell me some gyan about the card and its health. Oh thats strange the card is running at 80C. I dont know what the card is supposed to run at but 80 is too much. especially when the proesser runs at 60 at full load overclocked. I fiddle around various softwares hoping that previous software(rivatuner) was worng but the new software refuses to alleviate my problem.

I look around to see whether the fan on the card is working or not and i dont feel any air flow behind the cabinet under the monitor port. I check again and the problem is there in front of me(back of cabinet) the slot i cut didn't match the air passage of the card and the air passage is covered.

I go through removing the card, cutting the slot , installing the card again and then the temp falls to 60C. Thats better but still on the higher side.

Maybe I have to improve the airflow in the cabinet to lower the temps. Put some more fans , cut holes and drill things etc.

Graphics subsystem of my computer

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:53:00 +0000

These are the components used to build the computer. After spending a long time deciding the configuration . I decided on these things. Some things had to be ordered and were not available immediately so some of the things in the pics are actually the stand-by device.

The monitor and graphic card was given as stand by for some days till the distributor brought the ordered thing.

I specifically wanted XFX 8800 GTS 320 MB graphic card.(Since it was the most i could afford). The next higher card was very expensive. The second thing which was not available right there was the monitor. I wanted the ViewSonic VX 1932wm monitor which has got better contrast and faster response times(2000:1 and 2 ms ) than the ViewSonic VG or ViewSonic VA series.

The 8800 GTS 320 is the fourth best available by nvidia and XFX is the only one sold here in bangalore. SO the decision was the XFX 8800GTS 320MB. The next available 640 MB version was 5k more than this. Anyway the more memory is useful only at resolutions greater than 16k by whatever according to your monitors ratio. Since my current monitor only goes up to 1440*900 , 320 is enough for me.

My next upgrade cycle will have the graphics subsystem as a main (and very expensive) addition to wish list.

Come to think of it, i already have upgraded my computer. From the standby system to the actual orders. So i might take easy on the upgrades right now. This machine has burnt a huge hole in my pocket and it will take a long time for the pocket to heal or maybe I'll just another trouser with new pockets.

More about the upgrade wish list later some day.

Getting the configuration right.

noreply@blogger.com (Kunal) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:55:00 +0000

When I was deciding upon my computers configuration, i was sure of only one thing. I wanted an AMD processor. All other things had choices but no choices were gonna be made in processor department. (Big AMD fan )

Simple buy the fastest AMD processor available.
So I got an AMD 6000+ dual core processor.

Now one needs a good motherboard to have a stable machine. A motherboard is like a chassis of the vehicle on which everything is attached and which is responsible for proper coordination between components.

For motherboard the requirements were:-
AM2 socket
SLI support at full 16x rate for both PCi express slots.

So from the available chipsets nvidia 590 was chsen by me.
ASUS Crosshair seemed to fit the bill. Great overclocking ability, simple BIOS navigation.
Nice lights (For fun).

So ASUS Crosshair it was.

Since i wanted to overclock my machine and did not want to depend on the stock cooler provided with the processor i got "ThermalRight 120 extreme" CPU cooler along with two Scythe 120 mm S-FLEX fans and MX2 Thermal Paste.
Getting the extreme and fans was a challenging job. As shipping itself was as expensive as the product itself. Searching for an Indian sellers took me some searching effort.
I found out that ABGB in Mumbai sell thermalright products and also ship it to various part of the country(India). Since these guys also had corsair stuff and i always wanted to buy the corsair brand in machine i also ordered some corsair products from them.

Now that i have given away a company name then the next component can be very well guessed. Right, Its the RAM. Important leg in the Tripod of CPU-motherboard-RAM. (One of Tridev if you like Mythology). I got matched set of 1 GB sticked to make 2 GB in total.
"XMS2 800 Mhz. Dual channel memory. SLI certified."

A output of any machine is very much dependent on input provided. And since a computer needs power to run, a good and robust SMPS was a must. The SMPS usually provided with the cabinets as a combo offer are not of very high quality and at best might result in BSOD and hangups or at worst could provide you with fried CPU , motherboard or both.

I actually wanted 520hx to power my rig but unfortunately it was not available so had to get 620Hx . Makes for good future proofing. I could add another Graphics card to the current one and run in SLI mode without having to worry about the power requirements.

Now that we are already on the subject of graphic card lets talk about that.
Having an excellent graphics card is imperative if you want to play any of the latest games with all eye candy turn on and having a playable framerates(Not like a slideshow). I wanted to go in for a 8600 gt at first and then adding another 8600 Gt later on in SLI mode, but my research told me that for same amount of money spent the SLI setup is inferior to a single card. Another benefit is that later on you have an upgrade path open where you can add another card (More money going away).