Jack-O-Bytes Reviews

Burning Audio CD's

2014-05-05T11:01:00.002+01:00

Atrix 650w Power Supply Components

2013-08-31T23:32:00.000+01:00

Dangerous Power Supply

2013-07-02T16:34:00.001+01:00

This is a pretty cheap and nasty power supply that I found in a computer I have had for a while. I found that the power plug was rather dangerous on it. Can any of you spot why?

Splitting Amplifier RCA cables

2012-08-30T00:58:00.003+01:00

How to remove a stubborn virus

2012-08-13T15:25:00.000+01:00

Hey everyone. Todays post is about how to remove stubborn virus'. We have all been there when we have been faced with a virus on a computer that just won't let you do anything. It is a pain because a lot of virus will take over the comptuer and not even allow you to get onto the internet. Well today I am going to help guide you through how to remove these tough virus' and how to protect your self from them in the future.

1) Close down the computer.

The first step to removing these virus' is to shut the computer down. If you can't shut down properly then hold the power button until it goes off.

2) Start the computer in safe mode with networking

Safe mode is a very useful tool that windows offers to help diagnose and fix problems with your computer. In safe mode only the most important programs and services are loaded. This often means that the virus won't have the chance to load up, thus making it easier to remove as it won't be bust taking over your computer.
To boot into safe mode what you need to do is hold down the F8 key on your keyboard and then turn the computer on. It will get to a menu that looks like this

Once you have go to that menu select the "Safe mode with networking" this will allow you to connect to the internet and download the program that I suggest next.

3) Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

The next thing to do is get your self a decent anti-virus scanner. I suggest that you get "Malwarebytes" this program is free to download and doesn't take up loads of room on the computer. When in safe mode with networking don't spend any long periods of time browsing as all the time the anti-virus you have isn't active. Just go straight to www.filehippo.com and search for "Malwarebytes" or click this link if you are currently on the computer you are fixing

4) Install the program

When installing the program it will come to a menu that looks like this one

The best thing to do here is to untick the bottom option and leave the "update malwarebytes anti-malware" This means that the program will download the latest virus database. Having the latest database means that you will have more chance of the program finding the virus.

5) Run Malwarebytes

Once the program has been updated you need to then run the program so that it can scan for the virus that you have. The program should look like this.

Select the option that says "Perform Full Scan" And then click the scan button below. It will then start scanning the computer for virus' As the program scans it will display how many "Objects" there are infected. Once it has completed you have to click "Show Results"

The program will then list all of the objects that it has found. I suggest that you tick the tickbox on all of them and then click "remove selected"

The program will then delete all of the virus objects that it has found on your computer. Once that has been done restart the computer and let it boot normally.

6) Install a good virus program

Hopefully now the virus will be gone it is time to secure your self against future virus attacks. My favourite program is "Avast Anti-virus" You can also download this program for free from filehippo by following this link.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_avast_antivirus/

Install that program and then that will defend you from any further virus attacks.

Thanks for reading and I hope this has helped solve your problem.

Possible Causes of PC shutdowns and BSOD's

2012-01-15T15:02:00.000+00:00

Hey everyone, Today I am going to be looking at a few of the reasons that you can get BSOD's or random shutdowns on your computer. There are lot of things that can cause BSOD's and shutdowns but I am going to mention some of the more common reasons.

Memory or RAM

I am going to start with the RAM or Memory as it is sometimes known. The RAM in your computer acts as a buffer between the CPU and the Hard drive. It is used to store in use programs to help them perform better than if they were loading from the hard drive. Anyway, sometimes the RAM will become unstable and loose little bits of it's memory. If this happens when a program goes to the RAM to look for part of the program that is needed it isn't there. This isn't always too bad as sometimes it will just cause a program you are using to crash, If however the part of the RAM that fails is storing part of the Windows program it can cause BSOD's. You can test your RAM by downloading a program called Memtest86 from here This program can be burned to a disk or put on a pen drive so you can boot from it at start up. It then scans the RAM and tests it for damaged sectors.

RAM Can sometimes cause BSOD's due to damaged sectors

Hard Drive

The next piece of hardware that can cause a BSOD is the hard drive. The hard drive is the part of the computer that stores all of you programs and data. If a hard drive is damaged or starts to wear out it can sometimes damage the programs that are on the drive it self. Just like with the RAM this means that when the hard drive comes to load a piece of data that is needed by windows it can cause it to BSOD due to that part of the program not being there to be loaded. It can also be caused by a head crash which is where the hard drive head hits the disk platter and scratches away the data which renders that whole section unreadable and unusable. Finding out if you hard drive is on the way out is very much like finding out if the RAM is broken. All you need to do is download this program. HD Tune runs on the computer and checks the S.M.A.R.T of the hard drive and also scans the platter for errors.

Hard Drive Errors can cause BSOD's as well

Overheating

The next possible cause of a BSOD is if the hardware of the computer is overheating. There are many reasons that a piece of hard ware can overheat. The following list is some of the causes;

Damaged Fans
Blocked fans (Usually due to dust build up)
Blocked vents (Mostly on laptops caused buy covering the vents with fabric such as trousers)
Dried out thermal paste (often on older computers)
A heatsink that is not securely attached (damaged in transit or from being knocked or not correctly installed)

When a PC or Laptop starts to overheat it will often shut it self down which can sometimes cause a BSOD. You can check the temperature of the CPU by using a program called CPUID Hardware Monitor downloadable from here once this program is running it will scan all the sensors on the computer and report back the temperatures and voltages. If you can't even boot into windows without the computer BSODing then you will most likely have to go into the BIOS and go into the hardware or PC health section of it to see what temperatures that it is reporting. In the BIOS anything over 45c could be causing an issue, In windows anything over 55c will most likely be a problem once you stress the PC.

Overheating can often cause BSOD problems

Voltages and Power Supply

This one is a less likely cause of a BSOD but it is still a problem. Sometimes the power supply of a PC can go dodgy. This can be caused from stressing it too much (not having a powerful enough one for your hardware) or due to just the age of the power supply (The capacitors often age over time and don't hold charge properly) Also bad quality PSU's (generally less than $10 per 100w) can also cause problems. It is easy to check the voltages by using the same program as the temperature one above. CPUID Hardware Monitor reports back the voltages as well as the temperatures so you can kill two birds with one stone using this program. If the voltages seem a long way off their targets (Shown at the side of CPUID hardware monitor) then this could quite possibly be the cause of the BSOD's.

A bad PSU can cause BSOD's due to bad voltage supply

Now that you have read through this simple list of possible BSOD causes you can have a go at diagnosing the problem for your self. This will save you a lot of money if you find the problem and don't have to use a very expensive PC repair company.

How to fully Uninstall / Remove Drivers

2012-01-10T12:28:00.000+00:00

When changing a graphics card, sound card, or network card sometimes removing the drivers properly can be a bit of a pain. It can also be a problem when updating drivers to the newer versions as often the uninstall program will not fully delete all of the driver components and will often cause the new drivers to not install correctly which can cause crashes and sometimes even blue screens of death.

There are a couple of free programs out there though that will help you fully remove the drivers so that when installing the new ones you don't hit any problems along the way.

Firstly you will need to download Driver Sweeper once you have downloaded it simply install it and then leave it until you have started the task of removing the old drivers. (Remember to get the new ones ready on a CD or on your desktop before you remove the old ones)

Once you have decided on which drivers you are uninstalling you need to go to the uninstall panel on your computer. Find the drivers and then right click on them and click uninstall/change. Go through all of the setup program until the drivers are uninstalled.

Uninstall or Change a program window

Once you have removed the drivers that you wanted to get rid of it is time to fire up Driver Sweeper. This program will remove any remaining files/registry entries that were left by the driver uninstall program. Select the names of the drivers that you are trying to remove. In my case it was;

Nvidia - Display
Nvidia - PhysX

Driver Sweeper - Select driver window

Once you have selected the drivers that you are removing (Already removed using the uninstall or change a program window) you need to click analyze. This will scan your computer for any remaining files and registry entries that were connected to the driver. Once it has finished you will find a program panel like this come up.

Driver Sweeper Scan Results

Once you have seen all of the files and registry entries you simply click on the "Clean" button in the bottom right hand side of the screen. Once this task has been performed it is now time to install your new driver.

Thanks for reading, Jack-O-Bytes

AMD Release the HD 7970 3Gb Graphics Card

2012-01-09T14:25:00.000+00:00

The graphics giant AMD have released the new AMD HD 7970 offering amazing performance on a 28nm GCN architecture. They are currently priced at around £450 which is a very high price to pay but the performance that you get is very very good. The 3Gb of GDDR5 running at 5500MHz allows a bandwidth of 264GB/s which is some serious performance. The core of the graphics card runs at a stock speed of It supports a maximum display resolution of 4096x3112. You can find the specifications of the card here

The HD7970 looks like most of the cards that AMD have made since the 5-series having an exhaust port on the back and a blower fan on the inside. These fans are usually very loud and can be a bit annoying. Often companys such as sapphire, sparkle, xfx, and gigabyte will take the cards and fit an after market uprated quiet cooler but so far there is no sign of this happening. The 28nm architecture of the new 7970 will however be cooler running and most likely quieter than the 5 and 6 series cards that were produced by AMD using a bigger architecture.

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Stock Card

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Quad Crossfire Setup

Overall the performance of these cards is a massive improvement over most of the ones currently available and being the 7970 there is always space for a 7990 to be released yet. Roumor has it that is will cost around $850 which is a very high price but it will have some very good performance.

2011-11-09T22:59:00.000+00:00

BLOG DIRECTORY, Submit blog free, Promote Blog, Best directory

AMD Does Not Expect Thai Flood to Reduce Demand Towards Its Chips

2011-10-29T17:56:00.000+01:00

Advanced Micro Devices does not expect potential shortage of hard disk drives caused by flooding in Thailand to affect its business performance in the fourth quarter. The company projects that existing inventory of hard drives to be enough for Q4 2011 and is more concerned about its own supply problems conditioned by poor yields of 32nm chips at Globalfoundries.

"We do not see an impact in the fourth quarter, to be very honest, at least after discussing with our customers. We will have to see how this is going to impact the supply chain moving forward and into 2012. It depends on a lot of things, how long this situation is going to continue, and then how much damage needs to be repaired. But in short term, not much of an impact," said Thomas Seifert, chief financial officer of Advanced Micro Devices, during a conference call with financial analysts.

Due to flooding in Thailand, largest maker of hard drives Western Digital had to close its HDD manufacturing facilities down, while Seagate Technology suffers tight supply of components, which also reduces its output. In case there is a shortage of drives, PC makers will be unable to sell computers and will thus cut orders for microprocessors. Independent analysts believe that there will be enough hard drives for Q4 2011.

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AMD Beats Own Revenue Forecast Despite of 32nm Chip Shortages

2011-10-29T17:53:00.000+01:00

Despite of the fact that Globalfoundries could not ship enough new-generation microprocessors made using 32nm SOI process technology to Advanced Micro Devices, the latter managed to beat its own revenue forecasts. Thanks to high demand towards its multi-core server chips based on Bulldozer micro-architecture and the popularity of Fusion A-series accelerated processing units (APUs), the company even posted $97 million income.

AMD said late on Thursday that revenue for the third quarter of 2011 was $1.69 billion, net income was $97 million (or $0.13 per share) and operating income of $138 million. $1.69 billion is higher than AMD anticipated in its mid-quarter update (up to $1.66 billion), but is still lower than the company predicted originally ($1.749 billion and upwards). AMD's gross margin was 45%, lower than the company forecasted due to lower-than-expected amount of new chips in the product mix.

Revenue in the third quarter of 2011 was adversely impacted by 32nm yield, ramp and manufacturing issues experienced by one of our foundry partners, that limited supply of Fusion "Llano" A-series APUs. Additionally, 45nm supply was less than expected due to complexities related to the use of common tools across both technology nodes, AMD said.

“Strong adoption of AMD APUs drove a 35% sequential revenue increase in our mobile business. Despite supply constraints, we saw double digit revenue and unit shipment growth in emerging markets like China and India as well as overall notebook share gains in retail at mainstream price points. Through disciplined execution and continued innovation we will look to accelerate our growth and refine our focus on lower power, emerging markets, and the cloud,” said Rory Read, the president and chief exec of AMD.

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How to keep your PC computer running as fast as possible

2011-10-29T16:28:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone, In today's post I am going to be looking at how you can keep your PC running as fast as possible without having to make any hardware changes at all. This guide will show you how to keep your PC software in top condition and keep it running quickly and efficiently. I will include some free programs that I currently use that keeps my PC running at top performance, Often my cheap computer will out perform more expensive ones because I take care of the software side of my PC.

The first step to increasing the performance of your PC is to make sure that there is no junk on the computer that will take up space and slow the hard drive performance down. To do this I recomend that you download and install CCleaner and CCEnhancer. Once you have downloaded them, Install CCleaner first and then install CCenhancer after. Once CCenhancer is installed open CCleaner and then on the left hand side tick all of the tick boxes apart from "Wipe free disk space"

Once you have ticked all the boxes apart from "Wipe free disk space" click on the tab at the top of that section that says "Applications" Once you have clicked that, Tick all of the boxes in the section that appears to make sure that you are removing all of the junk on your computer. If you would like under this section you can opt not to delete "Saved form information" and "Saved passwords" under Internet explorer, Firefox, Google chome, and Opera. This means that any saved passwords will still exist after you run this program.

Once you have selected all of the tick boxes click "Run cleaner" in the bottom right hand side of the screen. This will set the cleaner to work digging out and deleting all of the rubbish documents and folders that have built up over the course of using your PC. Once that section of the program has finished you can now move onto it's next part.

Click on the big icon on the left hand side that says registry. Once you have that section open, Click all of the tick boxes on the screen so that it cleans every section of the registry.

Once all of the tick boxes are selected, click on scan for issues. Once it has finished scanning a list of damaged/broken registry entries will be shown on the screen. You can now clock on fix selected issues and it will fix all the registry problems.

Now it is time to Defrag your hard drive to help regain the performance that it originally had before you installed and uninstalled programs and files. Defragging arranges the files and folders on the hard drive so that they are all in order which makes loading times much faster. Firstly download Defraggler. Once you have installed Defraggler open it and then click on the hard drive that you would like to defrag at the top of the screen as show in this image.

Once the drive has been selected click on the Defrag button that is located at the bottom left hand side of the program. This will set the program to defrag you hard drive. It is best to close as many programs as possible when doing this as that means that more of the files and folders can be defragged. Once it has started leave the computer and just let it finish this task on it's own as it can take quite a long time on a hard drive that hasn't been defragged often.

Once Defraggler has been finished it is often a good idea to run an Anti-Virus scan as well. I would suggest that you make sure your anti-virus program has the newest updates and virus definitions (which most programs do on there own anyway) and then run the program to do the most in-depth scan you can and let it complete it. As there are many different anti-virus programs out there I cannot really show you how to do this one in depth.

Once all of those tasks have been finished the computer should be a lot more responsive and fast running. I have bought back many PC's that people have thought to have been broken by using these 3 simple programs and everyone has been surprised at what a speed improvement they got.

Thanks for reading, Jack-O-Bytes

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AMD FX-Series Bulldozer Specifications Price and Info

2011-10-27T21:25:00.000+01:00

Hey everyone, This post is going to be a simple table that shows you the specifications of the new AMD FX-Series Bulldozer CPU's

Model	Cores	Threads	Frequency	Turbo Frequency	L3 Cache	TDP	Price
FX-8150	8	8	3.6GHz	4.2GHz	8MB	125w	$245
FX-8120	8	8	3.1GHz	4.0GHz	8MB	125w	$205
FX-6100	6	6	3.3GHz	3.9GHz	6MB	95w	$165
FX-4100	4	4	3.6GHz	3.8GHz	4MB	95w	$115

Windows XP 10 Years Old Today

2011-10-25T17:46:00.000+01:00

Ten years ago, on October 25, 2001, Windows XP was released on retail shelves for sale.

Until September, Windows XP has still been the world's most popular operating system and will be, according to StatCounter, surpassed in market share by Windows 7. Born as the sixth major generation of Windows, the software was introduced in 25 languages around the globe, but did not sell well initially. Within the first three days after launch, only 260,00 copies were sold in the U.S. Windows XP only gained traction when drivers became available and system vendors began offering computers with XP preinstalled.

By 2006, XP had reached a milestone of 400 million active copies, according to an IDC analyst. The successor Windows Vista was launched in January of 2006, but enthusiasts as well as the notebook segment held on to XP and widely rejected Vista. Microsoft announced the discontinuance of Windows XP several times, but delayed the end of retail sales until June 30, 2008. OEM distribution of XP ended on October 22, 2010. Extended support for XP users is still available until April 8, 2014.

Even if it is a decade old, Windows XP is far from being dead. StatCounter suggests that Windows XP lost its OS market share leadership position to Windows 7 this month. Windows 7 has 40.41 percent of the market, while XP has fallen to 38.51 percent. This is still far more than Vista ever reached; Vista peaked at 23.60 percent in October of 2009.

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Microsoft's Youtube Channel has been Hacked

2011-10-25T17:38:00.002+01:00

Just one week after the Sesame Street YouTube channel was targeted, Microsoft's corporate channel seems to have fallen victim to some cyber tomfoolery.

Microsoft's YouTube channel was left without content on Sunday after a third party gained access to the account and removed all of the company's video. CNet reports that in their place were several short clips attempting to gather subscribers and a message that read "I DID NOTHING WRONG I SIMPLY SIGNED INTO MY ACCOUNT THAT I MADE IN 2006 :/" The Register reports that there were also some cartoon videos uploaded to the channel.

Microsoft later confirmed that it had lost control of the account for a period of time but was once again back at the helm and working to restore content.

"We have regained control of the Microsoft channel on YouTube, and we are working to restore all of the original content," a company representative told CNet. "We will continue to work with YouTube to ensure safeguards are in place for the future."

Things have been running smoothly since, and Microsoft's videos are all back up and running on its channel. However, the mystery of who gained access to the account and why remains. There's a certain amount of speculation from YouTube users commenting on Microsoft's page that the channel was once owned by someone else entirely, someone who registered in 2006, but that the handle was passed over to Microsoft by YouTube staff at some point. If this is the case, the credentials were obviously not properly changed, because the old user could still log in and out, upload and pull videos, and change settings such as the background. Neither Microsoft nor YouTube have commented on these rumors.

Original Post

Apple, Dell, Intel Expect HDD Shortage to Have Drastic Impact on PC Market.

2011-10-25T14:06:00.000+01:00

Although the high-tech market tends to recover quickly from almost all kinds of disasters and large manufacturers often try to reduce their risks, the flooding in Thailand and consequent potential shortage of hard disk drives will clearly affect the whole PC industry in the coming quarters. But while giants like Apple, Dell or Intel are concerned, they remain relatively optimistic.

Intel, the world's largest supplier of microprocessors on the planet, said on Friday that it was keeping an eye on a dynamic situation in Thailand that directly impacts that hard drive supplies, but expects existing stores of drives and unaffected sources to help keep the PC industry supplied.

"The PC supply chain has proven to be very resilient, as most recently demonstrated in the response to the earthquake in Japan," said Jon Carvill, a spokesman for Intel, reports Reuters news-agency.

Intel Starts to Sell Unlocked Core i7 Processor

2011-10-25T14:00:00.002+01:00

Intel Corp. has quietly added a new “unlocked” microprocessor into its price-list, which means that the chip is available to customers worldwide. The Core i7-2700K "Sandy Bridge" chip will extend Intel’s leadership on the market of high-performance microprocessors designed for overclockers.

Intel Core i7-2700K central processing unit has four cores with Hyper-Threading technology, 8MB of cache, integrated dual-channel DDR3 memory controller. The default clock-speed of the processor is 3.50GHz and the Turbo Boost top speed is 3.90GHz. Since the chip belongs to Core i7 family, it fully supports all of Intel’s advanced technologies like virtualization, trusted execution and so on. The microprocessor costs $332 in 1000-unit quantities.

The new processor is only slightly (by 100MHz) faster compared to Intel’s own Core i7-2600K chip and since both chips sport unlocked multiplier and can be easily overclocked, actual performance difference between the models 2600K and 2700K is somewhat doubtful.

Intel’s Core i7-2700K was supposed to ensure that Intel has the fastest chip in the $300 - $400 segment after the company’s arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices unveils its highly-anticipated FX-series microprocessors powered by Bulldozer micro-architecture. As benchmark results by independent researchers revealed, even AMD’s top-of-the-range eight-core FX-8150 CPU can barely compete against Core i5-2500K and is unable to beat the model 2600K.

What to Look for When Buying a Desktop Computer PC

2011-10-24T17:59:00.001+01:00

Hey there everyone, Today I am going to be looking at how to choose a good computer that is right for your needs. There are many little tricks out there in the PC business that makes it hard to choose a computer that is correct for you and often support staff at computer shops will sell you one that is much higher cost than you really need to pay. I am going to look at all the basic stages of computers from Office PC to Gaming PC's and show you computers that are in those ranges so you know what to look for.

The Budget Desktop PC

A lot of people don't currently have a lot of money to spend on gaming PC's or extreme computers that will do anything in seconds so there is a massive market out there for budget desktop computers at the moment.
I class a budget computer as one that costs anywhere between £180-£250 ($285-$400) When you are buying a budget computer the main thing to look for is to make sure that it has an operating system included. Often on cheap computers they will leave out the operating system which then becomes and additional cost that you weren't prepared to pay for.
A modern budget computer will usually come with either a single or dual core CPU and around 2-4Gb RAM. The hard drive will generally be around 500Gb and there will often not be a graphcics card included. Here are a couple of examples of budget computers that would do for most simple tasks such as internet browsing and office work (England) and (USA)
The computer from eBuyer has a Dual core Intel CPU that is fairly out of date now but at this price that can be expected. The Newegg computer has a very good Quad core AMD CPU and 4Gb of RAM. It will easily be fast enough for any office and internet work that you throw at it.
Both computers have Windows 7 pre-installed so you can get them working straight out of the box so long as you have a screen to go with them.

The Mid Range Desktop PC

This is where things usually start to get a bit more complicated. At a price range of £250-£550 ($400-$900) many companies start to add in things like graphics cards and SSD drives. This can often complicate the choice quite a bit.
In this price range you should be expecting to get at least a quad core CPU and a 1Gb graphics card. I would also personally expect at least 8Gb of RAM and a 1Tb hard drive. I have found a couple of current examples of mid range PC's to show you what sort of computer you should be expecting to get for your money. (England) and (USA) The English computer there features a quad core CPU and 8Gb of RAM. It also has an Nvidia GT 520 graphics card which is very good at this price. As for the Newegg computer that has a Quad core Intel CPU, 8Gb of DDR3 RAM and a HD6670 which is a very good card to find in a computer at this price range. It also comes in quite a funky looking case which will apeal to most gamers.
Overall computers at this range will usually be very good at simple office tasks and internet browsing along with HD video decoding and possibly some light-medium gaming. Not bad for £250-£550 ($400-$900)

The High End Desktop PC

This next category is where performance really starts to become more about competing with the next person rather than just having it for the fact that it is nicer to use. I would class £550-£1000 ($900-$1600) as the performance PC section of the market. In this section of the market you can expect to get at least a quad core CPU minimum. Around 8-16Gb of RAM and a high end gaming graphics card. You can also expect to get a good copy of Windows 7 instead of the basic home edition one. I have found a couple of examples of computers that you can get in this price range.
(England) and (USA) Both of those example computers come with the latest range of Intel CPU's. The Ebuyer computer has a high speed Core i5 CPU and the Newegg computer has the newest Core i7 CPU. Both of the computers have 8Gb of DDR3 RAM which is the fastest type you can currently buy and both of them have high end graphics cards in the form of an Nvidida GTX 560 and GTX 570. Both of these cards are lightning fast and will easily be enough to power through most current games.

I am going to include these two websites as well in this post as these have helped me no end when building computers and recommending computers to people that I know.

I have often found that when buying PC's the person selling them will say something such as "Dual Core 3Ghz CPU" now that really isn't that helpful as an older 3Ghz dual core will be much much slower than a modern Dual core 3Ghz CPU. I have also found that many people will sell a computer as a gaming computer even with a low end graphics card that has 1Gb of video RAM. A card such as the HD5450 1Gb Edition will be quite a bit slower than say a 5670 with only 512Mb of graphics RAM. The two websites above will help you compare the CPU's and Video cards in different computers and will show you which one has truly more performance. I will show an example of this now;

HD 5450 1Gb - 304 Points
HD 5550 512Mb - 612 Points

As you can see getting conned into buying a 1Gb model graphics card just for the RAM can leave you with a massive performance drop. Here is an example of some 3.0Ghz CPU's

Intel Core i3 2.6Ghz - 3509
Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz - 1730

As you can see, Both of these are dual core CPU's yet the lower clocked Intel core i3 has a much better performance score. This can be down to a number of things such as the amount of L1, L2, and L3 cache the CPU has and also the general architecture of the CPU die itself.

Overall there are many ways that companies and individuals can scam you when selling a computer and I hope that this guide has helped people to see where you can be caught out and what to expect when buying a computer. If you have any questions just post a comment on this post.

Jack-O-Bytes

Seagate: Thai Flooding Is a Multi-Quarter Issues for Whole Hard Drive Industry.

2011-10-23T10:35:00.002+01:00

Hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturing facilities Seagate Technology were not damaged by severe flooding in Thailand, but the company's production capacity is constrained by shortages of components. Even though Seagate moderately lowered its shipments forecast for the fourth quarter of calendar 2011, it clearly admits that the problems caused by the flooding are a multi-quarter issue.

Seagate, the world's second largest maker of hard disk drives, has two Thailand facilities: Seagate Teparuk, which produces head stack and head gimbal assemblies, and Seagate Korat, which manufactures slider, head assembly and head gimbal assembly as well as hard drives. At present, Seagate's own facilities in Thailand are running at full production, but the company experiences supply issues with third-party component manufacturers, which significantly reduces Seagate's ability to produce HDDs.

"Our business priority is to work with our external component suppliers, supporting their efforts to rebuild the supply chain as quickly as possible. We expect to experience significant impacts to our production levels, while our suppliers work together businesses up and running. Given the severity of the situation and the expense of supply constraints caused by the disruption, including those described by our primary competitor, the effects on our industry are likely to be substantial and will extend over multiple quarters," said Steven Luczo, chief executive officer of Seagate.

Sony Will Attempt to Release PlayStation 4 Ahead of Xbox Next.

2011-10-23T10:32:00.001+01:00

After failing to release its PlayStation 3 video game system at the same timeframe as Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Computer Entertainment will do its best to launch the next-generation PlayStation 4 game console ahead of its major rival. As a result, the PS4 may hit the market earlier than the Xbox Next.

"I doubt [Microsoft] will be ready for launch [the next Xbox] in 2013. Between Sony and Microsoft, we expect Sony to be first to market perhaps as early as 2013, but more likely in 2014. There is still a lot of investment for both companies to recoup in the current generation," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with RW Baird, in a brief interview with IndustryGamers.

This week it transpired that many industry players, including hardware and software developers, expect Microsoft Corp. to release its next-generation Xbox sometimes in 2013.

While it is still two years from now, one should consider that in 2012 Nintendo, who won the current console generation with Wii, plans to release its high-definition Wii U game console with innovative controller, which will automatically make the current-generation video game systems look outdated. Not surprising that both Microsoft and Sony will attempt to convince their customers not to get Wii U by revealing or leaking plans for next-generation PlayStation and Xbox.

Popularity of Intel Atom Drops Sharply: The End of Netbooks Is Coming Closer?

2011-10-23T10:26:00.000+01:00

It is not a secret that thanks to media tablets and inexpensive notebooks the popularity of netbooks is declining rapidly. It looks like in the third quarter the fast erosion of netbooks intensified and consequently sales of Intel Corp.'s Atom central processing units dropped to two years minimum.
In the third quarter of FY2011, Intel Atom family revenue, including microprocessors and associated chipsets, was $269 million, down 24% from the second quarter and down 32% from the third quarter of 2010. The result is well-below logical seasonal patterns and clearly indicates lowering popularity of netbooks, such as Acer Aspire One- or Asus Eee PC-series, and nettops.

Given the lack of major tablet design wins, sales of Atom system-on-chips cannot offset dropping shipments of microprocessors for ultra low-cost personal computers (ULCPCs). Obviously, there are still millions of notebooks and netbooks sold, but their market share is dropping and volumes are most likely lower than combined sales of popular media tablets, such as Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab.

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The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested

2011-10-22T10:58:00.006+01:00

AMD has been trailing Intel in the x86 performance space for years now. Ever since the introduction of the first Core 2 processors in 2006, AMD hasn't been able to recover and return to the heyday of the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2. Instead the company has remained relevant by driving costs down and competing largely in the sub-$200 microprocessor space. AMD's ability to hold on was largely due to its more-cores-for-less strategy. Thanks to aggressive pricing on its triple and hexa-core parts, for users who needed tons of cores, AMD has been delivering a lot of value over the past couple of years.
Recently however Intel has been able to drive its per-core performance up with Sandy Bridge, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to recommend AMD alternatives with higher core counts. The heavily threaded desktop niche is tough to sell to, particularly when you force users to take a significant hit on single threaded performance in order to achieve value there. For a while now AMD has needed a brand new architecture, something that could lead to dominance in heavily threaded workloads while addressing its deficiencies in lightly threaded consumer workloads. After much waiting, we get that new architecture today. Bulldozer is here.

It's branded the AMD FX processor and it's only available in a single die configuration. Measuring 315mm² and weighing in at around 2 billion transistors (that's nearly GPU-sized fellas), Bulldozer isn't that much smaller than existing 45nm 6-core Phenom II designs despite being built on Global Foundries' 32nm SOI process. Both die area and transistor count are up significantly over Sandy Bridge, which on Intel's 32nm HKMG process is only 995M transistors with a die size of 216mm². This is one big chip.

Read More - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested

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AMD to Launch Next-Generation Opteron “Bulldozer” Microprocessors in Late September – Report.

2011-08-06T12:49:00.000+01:00

Advanced Micro Devices plans to formally introduce its next-generation Opteron central processing units (CPUs) code-named Interlagos and Valencia on Monday, September 26, 2011. The highly-anticipated introduction is expected to mark a new beginning in AMD’s history as the new chips feature the company’s first new micro-architecture in eight years.

AMD is eyeing the September 26 release date for its new “Valencia” Opteron 4200-series chips with six or eight cores as well as “Interlagos” Opteron 6200-series microprocessors with eight, twelve or sixteen cores, according to a report from PCMag, which cites a source familiar with the company's product roadmap. AMD expects new chips to offer 35% higher performance compared to existing AMD Opteron chips with up to twelve cores.

AMD needs the new Bulldozer-based microprocessors badly as its share on the server market declined in Q2 2011 to 5.5% down from 25.9% in Q2 2006, according to IDC. At present Intel outsells AMD in terms of servers 19 to 1. It is obvious that the release of even ground-breaking chips will not allow AMD to quickly fight back the share from Intel, it will take several quarters at least. Nonentheless, the company’s shipments of Opteron central processing units will either stabilize or will even grow a bit provided that they are competitive enough.

Newegg - How to build a desktop PC

2011-07-30T11:43:00.002+01:00

This video has been created by the hardware retail giant, Newegg. They have made this video showing how to build a desktop PC and I was very impressed with how they managed to get everything into it. It is 45 minutes long so be prepared to watch it. However the detail they go into is brilliant.

Budget HD HDMI Graphics Cards - 2011

2011-07-20T23:19:00.002+01:00

Hey everyone, In this post I am going to be looking at cheap budget graphics cards. Many people don't use computers for gaming and so don't need very powerful graphics cards however if you occasionally want to watch a bit of HD video and your onboard graphics isn't quite up to it then these cards will do well for your situation. They are cheap and quiet and will play HD video. All the cards that I am going to look at have a native HDMI output.

AMD Radeon HD 5450 512mb
The Radeon HD 5450 is a very capable cheap graphics card. It will easily run HD video. You can get this cheap card at an amazing £23 ($37) which is an amazing price. You can find it here. It's specifications are as follows;

Engine Clock - 650Mhz
Memory Clock - 800Mhz
Memory Interface - 64bit
Benchmark Score - 303

Overall this is a very capable graphics card for running HD video and even some light gaming. Having looked on youtube there are a fair few people playing games with this card which amazed me to be honest. Another good thing about this card is that it only needs a 350-400w PSU for it to run correctly so quite a few branded computers could have this card fitted as an upgrade. The benchmark score for this card is not bad at all and you can tell that it has a good high clock speed from those results.

AMD Radeon HD5450 512Mb

Nvidia Geforce 8400GS 512Mb
The 8400GS has been around for some time now but at just £23($37) it is still worth a look at. You can find this card here it has the following specifications;

Engine Clock - 450Mhz
Memory Clock - 800Mhz
Memory Interface - 64-bit
Benchmark Score 139

Overall this isn't as well setup for HD video playback as there is a much lower clock speed than on the 5450. This means that you will most likely end up with slower play back and sometimes missed frames. I wouldn't recommend this for HD film watching but if you want a graphics card just for the windows aero theme and want to take a bit of load of the CPU and RAM in the computer then this cheap card will do the trick. The low benchmark score would most likely have been down to the really low Engine clock speed.

Gigabyte Geforce 8400GS 512Mb

Nvidia Geforce 210 512Mb
The Nvidia Geforce G210 is a higher performance card from Nvidia than the 8400GS. It costs £26 ($42) which is a bit more than the other 2 cards that I have looked at so far. You can find the card here. It comes with the following specs;

Engine Speed - 520Mhz
Memory Speed - 1.2Ghz
Memory Interface - 32-bit
Benchmark Score - 203

The clock speed of this graphics card isn't quite as high as the clock speed of the 5450 but it is faster than the 8400GS. The memory speed is where this card stands out with a rating of 1.2Ghz a full 50% faster than the other 2 cards. However the card is really let down by the tiny 32-bit memory interface which would most likely take away whatever performance the extra 50% more Mhz the RAM gave. Overall yes you could most likely play HD video on this card but if it was me I would rather spend a few more £/$ and get something a bit more pokey. The benchmark of this card is in the middle of the other 2 cards which proves that it really isn't worth the extra couple of pounds/dollars.

EVGA Geforce G210 512Mb

AMD Radeon HD 6450 512Mb
The new AMD Radeon 6-Series has higher performance and is DirectX11 ready which means that it is ready for all the new games for the next couple of years. This card costs just over £33 ($53) You can find this card here it has the following specifications;

Engine Clock - 625Mhz
Memory Clock - 1334Mhz
Memory Interface - 64-Bit
Benchmark Score - 376

These numbers look rather promising for playing HD video. They have the high clock speed that is needed and also the good RAM speed as well. The memory interface is nothing to rave about but it will do for most peoples needs when running Windows Aero and HD video. Overall not a bad card for the price and a good benchmark score that is higher than all the cards before it. The high memory speed matched with the good memory interface here really shows in the performance of the card.

Sapphire Radeon HD6450 512Mb

Nvidia Geforce 9500GT 512Mb
The Nvidia Geforce 9500GT is just over the £35 limit that I set for this post. This card has been around for a while but it not massively out of date really. You can find the card here. It has the following specifications;

Engine Clock - 550Mhz
Memory Speed - 667Mhz
Memory Interface - 128-Bit
Benchmark Score - 352

This card may not have the fastest memory or engine clock but it has double the maximum memory interface speed than all the other cards.This card however costs more than the 6450 but has returned a slower benchmark speed so it isn't really worth considering it if it costs more and is slower. However I do believe that this would most likely be slightly better at gaming due to the higher memory interface speed.

Inno3D 9500GT 512Mb

Overall then the best card that you can currently get under £35 ($56) is the AMD Radeon HD6450 with it's amazing benchmark score of 376 and the highest memory speed it is the best card for watching HD video on at a budget. Thanks for reading. Below are some related articles;

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