Saturday, 4 July 2015

Dava's Hitchhiker's Guide to Digital Information.. or the Magratheans get iTunes..

[I hope you enjoy this lighthearted look at the modernization of transferring data. now please imagine hitchhiker's guide voice in your head for the remainder of the article*]



Sometime around 1900's of 'Earth', the transfugulation of the Betelgeusians, and Slartibartfast's 'Memoirs of Triumphant Galacticism'  book-signing, the primarily ape-like species of 'earth' realized information could be more than just words and baking recipes for fruit tarts.


Once they realized this it was pretty hard to stop them, even though it is rumored the Magratheans tried in the 1940's, however they were told 'Don't you know there's a war on?!' and told to go home, embarrassed, reluctantly they did so. It didn't take the humans of earth very long to make the information do things, and new social status of 'boffin' emerged in the 1960's.. they invented a metallic tape that could make the information back into words, they did this, of course, for their own amusement, but eventually they got bored and in the 1970s started making wireless technology over radio waves & storage devices for said radio information. 


Some of the humans even today think this technology is a type of 'magic', an archaic system using stones and crystals and compact discs, but these are also the ones who buy many internet downloads & marvel at the result, so no-one tells them how it's done or we might all lose money. shh!



Some time around the 1990's the technology was ready, humans had invented a record player style device called a 'hard drive' which was neither hard nor drove anywhere, but they seemed fond of the name so kept it. The device was a metallic plate that span while a very tiny needle read and stored the information, this, in the history of the human race was an important technology as the internet was coincidentally invented and people urgently wanted to listen to music while seeing more boobs.

In the 2000's the internet was so popular it became 'roaring', people wanted more and more storage devices to fill with cluttered files about who was the best Star Trek captain and photos of retro 80's cars.


However this was all to change, in 2007 The Apple Corporation released a device that was in fact not an apple, but an intelligent cellular device, which became known as a 'smartphone'. To the surprise of the inventors people actually used it, for what it was designed for, phoning people and listening to music, also the attractive calculator function, once famous in the 1980s made a victorious comeback, with one Apple employee noted as commenting 'oh! they like it again!'.

These treads continued well into the 2070's and were the cause of the black-year of earth, also-known-as the 'Rise of the Overlords'. 


Where as you know, the Synodyne Conglomeration, whilst trialing the 'Laser Telepathy' device, meant simply to replace smartphones, the test subjects escaped, and became Overlords of Earth.

Now if you'll just stare into the light we can transfer your consciousness into a jar for a bit, while I pop your body in a cryotube for safe keeping ..oh Don't Panic!! I've done this five times already.. and twice successfully :D ..not bad for my first day eh!? ;)







Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Why do I Overclock the way I do? .. or Dava's Kitchen Nightmares of OC

Hi Guys

firstly

       

We all prolly have our own reasons for the way we overclock.. and here's mine.

I recently mentioned in a post in FTR, I shifted the weight to the bus to ease up CPU useage, and while I don't know what's 'really' happening under the hood, I can give an educated guess.

Weight to the Bus

Ironically, the CPU is being backed up by the low transfer from the bus, it's being both held back and overworked all at the same time. Think of an office worker with loads of piles of paperwork on his desk, he could work faster and clear the paperwork, but everytime he does more paperwork comes along in chunks that he has to send out at the correct time for everything to make sense. Moving the weight to the bus, is like telling the mail room to hurry up with the information, allowing our worker to do his job more efficiently.

Northbridge OC

The Northbridge is the chip responsible for the PCIE bus.. the PCIE bus is the lane(s) in which ALL your info runs*. Overclocking the Northbridge will obviously have a big impact how things are done inside your system. Less so for Intel than AMD, but still can ease the system data transfer in both system styles. I OC to 2600Mhz and match the hypertransport in my AMD system, but from what I gather QPI (Intel's Hypertransport) should not be messed with, however on some Intel systems NB OC can make a difference. your RAM is here too, now while i'll touch on RAM OC, OCing the NB *can* up RAM usage.. think of the scene in 'Bruce Almighty' where he puts post-it's everywhere. but that's fine as long as you have 'much ramz'! RAM is always more dependant on capacity than speed itself. Not saying speed doesn't help.. just high capacity will always trump lower capacity + higher speed. ala~ 2GB of 2400mhz vs 16GB 1600mhz.. the 16gb will win out in the end, because RAM is designed as storage, the 2GB is too small and gets choked.

to sum up: NB OC increases throughput of data.

RAM Overclocking

RAM OC is unimportant for most desktop applications, however in games and in general windows desktop performance.. RAM speed can quickly become important. Everything else uses capacity before speed except these two things. Large file moving in windows is dependant on drive speed, kernel tightness, and RAM speed. Having the NB/bus/RAM OC'd can improve your windows experience dramatically but also because these things depend on the correct data stored, problems can occur if the parts are not up to the task or have not been configured correctly to work at that speed.



Kitchen Nightmares

Flash

FLASH HATES Ram OC..hate-hate-hates it! *shakes fist*
Flash is a tech highly dependant on a stable system, since that's where your flash video is going to end up, in the ram. being stored correctly becomes vital to the programs and so the system, have you ever been watching YT and got an instant BSOD? it was prolly flash's fault in a way, or your's for not setting the correct timings for that speed.


PCIE Overclocking

IMHO Never mess with this guys, it will slowly destroy your drives, can fry your cards.. all sorts of bad stuffz. but IF you don't mind the risk.. erm I hear *some* OC by 5mhz. last time I OC'd my PCIE bus I fried 3 drives.. I had dialed in a 10mhz OC in the bios... wonder if that's what fried* my Gainward Phantom?? *.*

With a PCIE OC the data NEVER gets stored correctly afaik.

Windows

Windows while OK for the most part.. hey stop laughing!!.. okay for the most part OCing your system can mean it.. 

1. 'eats' your bootloader.
2. Misunderstands how to control the power of your graphics cards.
3. Forgets how data works and how to store it correctly.
4. partially 'eats' the registry, usually graphics drivers. (they disappear)
5. Forgets kernel instructions associated with media.
6. gets 'drive confusion'.. forgetting how to assign drive letters and skipping drive detection and forgetting previously installed HDD/SSD drivers.
7. Forgets you have an ethernet port. (disappears and won't detect or install the driver)

..and many more hit's like these!

peace

Dava


Music!




*( in the past PCIE was handled by the Southbridge but not nowadays) the Southbridge still does PCI and Audio.
* I had three of them GTX560, the first one.