"The Pentium Killer" "Is this the end of x86?" That's all you heard back in '94 when the PowerPC first came out. Even Microsoft was dabbling in non x86 versions of WinNT, just as they are now with Win10 on ARM. And for several years, PPC was faster than x86, especially at floatin...
Dedicated theater rooms are great fun to build! Man, I started mine out with a CRT projector and a laserdisc player back in the day, but it's seen a couple of upgrades since then. :) I'm just going to go ahead and recommend the projector that I currently use: a JVC DLA-NX7. It replaced a ~2011 Epson...
Hey guys, I've been using VNC to remote in to an Ubuntu machine at work, but find that the wallpaper on it really slows things down. Just wondering if there's a way to have VNC disable wallpaper over a remote connection?
I used to do a ton of 3DMark2001 benchmarking back in the day. It's a great single-threaded CPU test, and yeah...Core 2 is well over twice as fast as Netburst clock-for-clock. Here's a Core 2 Quad Q6700 overclocked to 4GHz with a GTX 680: https://i.imgur.com/NaT1BVp.png And here's a Pentium D 935, a...
I previously owned a CLD-D701. It was prone to needing the rubber drive belts replaced fairly frequently. My current LD player is the DVL-700. Yep, I've had belt and tray issues with my previous LD players. From what I've read, the red lasers used in combination DVD/LD players do a better job of re...
https://i.imgur.com/6xaAQOD.png Honey, I blew up the DVD! I picked up this Pioneer CLD-D701 laserdisc player and 7 laserdiscs for $50 CAD at a garage sale last weekend. The player and discs are all in pristine condition. The lovely amber VFD is still very bright and evenly lit. Even better, the pla...
That 65w 3700x looks delicious. That might be the CPU going into my next build. I'm still on Ivy Bridge, itching for an upgrade, and Intel keeps not delivering Ice Lake desktop CPUs.
I’ve always had a morbid curiosity to try to coax the most modern OS possible into running on a dual-processor Pentium Pro 200 setup with maxed out RAM and some sort of fanagled SSD, and then see how it does. Right after Win7 launched, I was able to get it running on a P2-300 w/ 512MB of RAM. Didn'...
Ran the test on some of mine. I only ran the multi-threaded benchmark, as ST was taking too much time on the older machines. Core 2 Duo T5600 - Merom 2C/2T - SSSE3 1.83GHz, 3GB dual channel DDR2-667, Win7 Score: 187 Core 2 Duo E8600 - Wolfdale 2C/2T - SSE4.1 3.33GHz, 8GB dual channel DDR3-1333, Win7...
I wonder how my old but carefully tuned x79/Ivy-E system would do. It's a 4930K at 4.6GHz with quad-channel DDR3-2400 CL10 memory. I'd especially like to know how single-threaded performance stacks up against Ryzen at say, 4GHz. But it only seems to be available through the Windows store? Guess I wo...
As I've finally started backing up my small but growing UHD BD collection to the file server, I've been able to do some high bit rate 4K HEVC testing. Some notes on testing: -I packaged the audio and video streams into an MKV file. No re-encoding was done. -Playback was through MPC-HC 1.7.13 x64 -Th...
I'll open it up and take a look at the caps today. It's a little disheartening that Marantz is using cheap caps and/or not cooling their products adequately. This thing runs much hotter than my Sony and Denon (I know Denon and Marantz are built in the same factory, but the Denon at least has a coupl...
So I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the speaker while the receiver was on and didn't hear anything unusual. However I noticed something interesting. When the receiver is connected to a silent source, the loud bang doesn't occur immediately. The amplifier relay will close, but the left speaker ...
The last two weeks have been cold, around -20 to -35C. The furnace is getting quite a workout and just sucking the moisture out of the air. Humidity is sitting at 20%, and I'm getting zapped by every metal object I touch. Last week, my five year old Marantz receiver started sending a loud POP to the...
You could turn it into a stylish Windows or Linux machine. I have an early 2006 iMac (32-bit Yonah processor), which only supports up to macOS 10.6. However, it runs Windows 7 and even 10 just fine. And though I haven't tried it, I'm pretty sure it would also be able to run the latest version of Ubu...
I think it's Google trying to force the market away from patented stuff. All very nice in theory, but not when in practice it hurts end users. Don't hurt me! What is love? I think it's bitrate that's really important. Those old procs will be a lot less happy when given a 50Mbps file (basically UHD ...
I don't think it's hurting too many users, when even a 12 year old E8600 can handle 1080p/60 or 1440p/30 without GPU acceleration. Anyone using a processor older than Core 2 probably isn't too concerned about 4K streaming anyway.
Did you turn off GPU decoding completely in MPC? Most stuff I use hits the NVEncoder on my GTX 1080 these days. also, I tried going through some of my stuff to find an HEVC file real fast, god Windows Explorer sucks. Yeah, and I even slotted in my old GTX 970 to make sure that no hardware decode wa...
I started testing software HEVC decode performance on a few of these processors. So far, I've only tested the playback of a 10-bit 1080p/24 HEVC encoded file, but will eventually add 720p, 1080p/60, 2160p/24, and 2160p/60. The results are quite interesting, and it looks like SSE4 really helps out. A...
I replaced the blown line filter capacitor in my IIe's power supply today. Fortunately, it didn't kill the motherboard when it let the magic smoke out! She lives!
You’re clearly hitting a CPU bottleneck there. I wouldn’t want anything slower than Sandy Bridge for gaming these days. I believe that even Core 2 is faster per clock cycle than that A10 in lightly threaded workloads. Not helping is the fact that AMD video drivers tend to hit the CPU a little harder...
From a fellow guy that was stuck with that dilemma some time ago (also had an E8400), I will give you a fourth option you weren't expecting. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/LGA775-slot-Xeon-E5450-3-0GHz-12M-1333-CPU-close-to-Core-2-Quad-Q9650-CPU/2041514744.html Replace your processor with this and...
I have a spare GT 640 that won't work in newer machines running in pure UEFI mode. That GPU only works when CSM/Legacy mode is enabled. If your board is currently running in legacy BIOS compatibility mode, it might not POST with a newer, possibly UEFI-only graphics card. Try this: boot the system wi...
Netflix, through the Win10 App or Edge, can stream in 4K, but for some bizarre reason it requires 3GB of VRAM in order to do so. The GTX 1050 in my HTPC is limited to 1080p because it only has 2GB.
Got it installed today! I went with a Mitsubishi triple-head system that can also do heat. Would've preferred a pure AC unit, but out of the models my dealer carried, only the single-head system was available in a cooling-only config. I probably won't use the heat function at all, since gas is so ch...
An ancient laptop, just because. Core 2 Duo T5600 (1.83GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB L2) 4GB of DDR2-667 (CL5), some of which is shared with the IGP Win7 x64, SSE2 WS/thread MB/s Mops/s ns ------------------------------------- 1048576kB: 197 524288kB: 196 262144kB: 161 131072kB: 4265 40 133 65536kB: 3879 59 ...
Just got the weekly e-mail from the utility. If their numbers are right (and how would I disprove?), running both outlets of a 30K BTU Mitsu split for a week of 95F/70F temps (at 65F/68F thermostat settings) cost me all of an extra $13, and that's at $0.1484/kWh. I knew they were efficient, but day...
As long as you can get the Matrox past that whole BIOS emulation thang your motherboard's gonna subject it to, it should display the Win10 desktop just fine--special effects and all. Unlike in Win7 and earlier, Win10 forces desktop composition. On systems without compatible video drivers, it does th...
The problem is, not only is the single-speed motor in the furnace unsuitable for AC, but apparently the ductwork would have to be resized as well. All of this seems overkill for 1.5 - 2 months of hot weather. Natural gas is fairly cheap where I am, so I'm not too concerned about replacing it yet. a ...
