1329 replies to this topic

[Vulpesveritas]

DV^McKenna, on 19 May 2012 - 11:49 PM, said:

Thats you and not everyone else, your posts on the matter try to force your values on others, not every user needs to be questioned over who they buy from on an ethics standpoint.

We understand and respect your viewpoint, but the constant defensive posting and questioning people like above over weather they want to buy from ethical companies or companies who commit crimes is not required, you are perfectly knowledgeable to argue your points (very convincingly) on a technical level.

The thing is though, I don't think that purchases should ever be taken on a technical level alone, but also one should also consider ethics and what long term effects come from the purchase (and hence the chain of others purchasing) of a product from a less ethical business, which is in turn giving corporations the okay to not care about ethics and can just sell regardless of the cost to other sentient beings. Quite honestly, I don't think many people really consider what their purchases do beyond what they do for themselves. And if possible I'd like to change that and try to help people make conscious decisions of their purchases.

I'd like to quote Edmond Burke; "The surest way for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
So long as people feed a system of corruption, whether intentionally or simply being ignorant of it, then it is simply allowing that corruption to spread and strengthen.

So yes, ethics are a big thing to me in every portion of my life. I have yet to meet a person who doesn't think that the world could be better, I don't know a person who hasn't wanted peace on earth and goodwill towards others. For people to get along with each other, and for governments to actually care about their people. The thing is though, most people at the same time in my experience, are either ignorant of or in denial of the fact that every individual has to take responsibility for the future into their own hands.

Pardon my rant. But to me, technical aspects are only one part, and the less important part of the overall equation. I understand that some people prefer to not care, and to just go about life without being conscious so to escape responsibility... but I don't agree with that choice that they make, as it leads to the suffering of others.

So I do my best to influence people online and in person to try to simply be awake, because even the simple act of buying a product leads to long term effects on the whole.

If it's wrong for me to try to get others to try to think about the long term effects of their purchase, and that their purchase effects others than themselves... then I am somewhat afraid to ask what you think is right. The only reason I can think that a person wouldn't want to is either they happen to be one of those that simply don't care about how their actions effect others, or that they don't know about it.

That is the core of my ethical value - to try to make a better future. Whether it is a computer part, a car, food, whether it is a protest against corruption, whatever I can do to try to make the world a better place. On this forum, my way of doing so is by recommending an ethical choice first and foremost, despite being put down for trying to explain to others that their actions have consequence and that they should such into account.

Is it better then, to promote ignorance? To suggest a product fully based upon that product, and not too the long term effects which may come due to the purchase of said product, which will effect many more than just the one who purchased the product in the first place?

I do apologize for the lengthy and possibly somewhat off topic post, however ethics is a rather touchy subject for me. And there's more to the world than the present. There is the future to consider.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

That's cool, but what you have to respect is that is your choice, and your values. Some other like minded people out there look at ethics the same as you do, but lets be frank if we are going to talk about better futures, the whole process of computers is not environmental friendly from start to finish, from the mining of metals to the smelting the production, usage of chemicals within said production ...right the way down to the pay of the poor little people at the bottom of the chain that are buried through so many third parties companies like AMD have no influence over.
Its a fact of life, and the society within the world we live, and that will never change globally, you simply can not find enough people who care.

Im not saying you should not reference your preferred brands and why, that is good information for people. But you shouldn't try to question people over their ethic morals for buying what is to them a computer component for a hobby.
People come into forums like this with posts of "I want the best bang for my buck computer spec me" they never mention anything about their concerns for ethics or the little people or it has to be green (yet)

TL;DR Version

Be informative, don't preach else you become as bad as the people that stand on the street demanding you convert to their religion or the end of the world will happen.

[Catamount]

Charles Martel, on 19 May 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

Actually my thinking is the result of a very basic logical axiom, "Past behavior is indicative of future behavior".

With that in mind, I do keep an open mind, but that will be colored by past experience. Everyone is influenced by past experience. So an open mind, but not so open it falls out.

Except that that's hardly axiomatic at all. It doesn't necessarily follow that any particular past behavior will be repeated by an entity in the present or future, just because it was a past behavior. Once upon a time, your ancestors could breath water; can you?

When one can judge present behavior now based on present observations, one doesn't then say "oh, well now we have to modify those results because past behavior was different, so therefore this thing really isn't presently behaving the way we observe". I pity anyone who honestly thinks empiricism works anything like that.

Furthermore, even if that was a logically sound way of looking at things, which it isn't, given present information, your evidence is still anecdotal, which means it's appropriate for judging neither past, nor future behavior.

There is simply no evidence that anything you're saying was ever remotely correct, let alone that it is in the here and now. Your personal experiences mean little; that they're strictly from a decade ago, and so strictly concern products not even more than vaguely related to those in question, make them manage to mean even less.

You're still free to buy what you wish, but again, this is a thread about facts, and thus far, the statements you have made are either incorrect, or imply things that are incorrect, and since this is a thread about hardware myths, I feel obliged to point that out.


If you're going to make a statement about hardware, make one that fits available evidence. Thus far, the only thing you've claimed that's reasonable is that ten years ago, you had some computers stop working on you. You can try to rationalize it any way you like, but anecdotal evidence is still anecdotal evidence, and your "axiom" is nothing of the sort.


I suppose you should be thanked for bringing it up, because "X doesn't work because I had a bad experience with it", or put another way, making judgements on how something is likely to behave based on a small, statistically insignificant number of trials (forgetting that these are a decade old, and irrelevant anyways), is one of the most common failings in thinking people have.

Anecdotal cases can go either way.

Here are two reviews for Athlon XP chips that are terrible:
http://www.amazon.co...howViewpoints=1

Here are three reviews for a chip not terribly different (slightly older) that are glowing:
http://www.amazon.co...howViewpoints=1

Here are 16 reviews for the aforementioned "bad" processor that are also all glowing:
http://www.ebay.com/...055092#pbe-rvws


And while they demonstrate just how irrelevant your personal experiences are (and my personal experiences, and Vulpes', and McKenna's, etc etc etc), they're also equally irrelevant to answering the question of just how good present AMD processors are, along with the motherboards made for them.

If you want to see what actual evidence would look like, here's a good, statistically significant sample:

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103961

495 reviews has a maximum possible sampling error of about four and a half percent (at the 95% confidence level), even assuming that every person int he united states bought one (in other words, I assumed a population size of 310,000,000). No, that's not usually relevant or necessary to look up; it's enough to simply know you have a sample of hundreds to judge from, which is a solid indicator of behavior for a chip.

I didn't bother looking at all 495 reviews, but out of the first 100, only one was a serious complaint relating to crippling system behavior (BSODs). The next worst review complained about a faulty fan (okay, so a maximum of 1% of the fans are bad... whoopee). Most of the remaining complaints relate to performance, usually relative to what these people think they'd get from Intel (in other words, they're "this CPU is teh suckzorz" reviews). A lot of AMD CPUs have disproportionately high negative reviews because of Intel fan boys coming on and flaming the chips. It still averages five stars, and that's keeping in mind that bad experiences are disproportionately represented.


...and at this point, I'm not even sure why I continue to drive this point home with further examples...

So the point is, your logic is flawed, feel free to purchase based on it, but everything you've said still amounts to incorrect information. There's no evidence AMD chips today are any worse, in any regard than Intel chips, that their motherboards are any more finicky, or anything of the sort, and neither anecdotal cases, nor statements relating to unrelated products give useful information on the hardware in question.


As for the ethics debate the rest of you are going back and fourth with (or trying to not do so with), McKenna is right. It's not relevant to the OP or the discussion at hand, because it does not concern hardware.

Edited by Catamount, 20 May 2012 - 11:11 AM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Catamount, on 20 May 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

As for the ethics debate the rest of you are going back and fourth with (or trying to not do so with), McKenna is right. It's not relevant to the OP or the discussion at hand, because it does not concern hardware.

I would argue otherwise, but to prevent further conflict and derailment of the thread I'm going to just put this to rest at agreeing to disagree.

Meanwhile, anyone else have any ideas for anything I might have missed?

[HeroicTofu]

I think I read at one time or another that stand alone soundcards can help system performance by off loading strain from the CPU. I'd be curious about this one.

[Vulpesveritas]

HeroicTofu, on 21 May 2012 - 07:10 PM, said:

I think I read at one time or another that stand alone soundcards can help system performance by off loading strain from the CPU. I'd be curious about this one.

Given that I don't know of any modern motherboards which don't have a dedicated (embedded) sound processing unit... I don't know of any modern examples.

In any case, motherboard onboard sound is enough for most users so eh.

Anyone got any ideas on this?

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Vulpesveritas, on 21 May 2012 - 07:13 PM, said:

Given that I don't know of any modern motherboards which don't have a dedicated (embedded) sound processing unit... I don't know of any modern examples.

In any case, motherboard onboard sound is enough for most users so eh.

Anyone got any ideas on this?

In old computers yes it used to make a difference as onboard was CPU heavy for past processors, in terms of difference between onboard and PCI it would only increase a marginal amount of FPS (2-110).

In todays wonderfully modern CPU's nope, its not going to make a single bit of difference

[HilaryPL]

Nice! : D
Let me send a sort of inspiration, for me it is impressive, though, "I'm in this business."
http://youtu.be/26enkCzkJHQ

[cipher]

Vulpesveritas, on 16 May 2012 - 08:59 PM, said:

Myth 5: Futureproofing-
Let me simply say, it can't be done. While you can make a system that will still play games in say, 6 years, you really won't be able to push it past that without an upgrade to the GPU given DirectX changes. Eight years is generally going to be your maximum you can push your system even with a GPU upgrade. Even still, you're going to hit a huge wall on framerates past 4-6 years, and some newer games you may not be able to run. The general recommended system replacement time is every 2-4 years. Past that and unless you spent thousands of dollars on your PC, then budget retail (sub $700) desktops are going to start equaling if not being faster than your PC, (though your GPU may still be faster than what is in them, depending on how much you've paid. It's still not a great place to be. At such a point for $700 you can upgrade your Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and GPU and get a faster system as an upgrade however, and so long as ATX remains the standard you should be able to reuse your case in most situations.)

I just wanted to chime in on that point...

It really depends on how much "futureproofing" someone is trying to achieve. I don't think anyone in their right mind would try to shoot for 6-8 years out of a gaming PC. That's insane.

Most builders shoot for the 3-4 year mark instead. For example, I did a new PC build when the Core i7 line arrived (Bloomfield), before Core i5 and i3. That was in 2009. And now in 2012 my 920 at 3.6GHz overclocked (4.1 stable) is humming along with solid gaming systems even to this day. My last upgrade was a GTX 680 video card. I doubt I'd ever upgrade until the next intel enthusiast chipset beyond X79, since X79 doesn't offer much more than the X58 except SATA III, quad-channel memory, and PCI-Express 3.0. None of that improves my overall performance that much. I'll wait until we can get more than four SATA III ports on the Intel chipset.

And certainly that's on the high-end. You can always futureproof a little on the high-end. On mid-range and low-end systems that becomes increasingly more difficult.

[supertrieuper]

This is great, because I desperately need a new computer and have decided that I'm going to find exactly what I need, throw some cash down, and work on building my own with the help of some buddies.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Vulpesveritas, on 20 May 2012 - 02:14 PM, said:

I would argue otherwise, but to prevent further conflict and derailment of the thread I'm going to just put this to rest at agreeing to disagree.

Meanwhile, anyone else have any ideas for anything I might have missed?

I just thought, a sub section under Ram about how your 32 gigaquads of ram is going to net you nothing more over mr 8GB over there would probably be good. ( In a pure gaming machine of course)

Edited by DV McKenna, 23 May 2012 - 11:23 PM.

[Thorqemada]

Its an excellent post the OP did!

Regarding Sound, choosing between discrete Soundcard and Onboardsound, the last time i tried Onboardsound the bad driver did cut sounds compared to the X-Fi Titanium i use now and a PCIe Soundcard is a one time investment for the next 10 or more years if its a reliable one.
There is no fault in buying an X-Fi (but dont buy the new Soundblaster Recon - that is utter crap!).

Edited by Thorqemada, 23 May 2012 - 11:44 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Thorqemada, on 23 May 2012 - 11:43 PM, said:

Its an excellent post the OP did!

Regarding Sound, choosing between discrete Soundcard and Onboardsound, the last time i tried Onboardsound the bad driver did cut sounds compared to the X-Fi Titanium i use now and a PCIe Soundcard is a one time investment for the next 10 or more years if its a reliable one.
There is no fault in buying an X-Fi (but dont buy the new Soundblaster Recon - that is utter crap!).

Well, if there was a bad driver you can always get a new driver.
As far as the Soundblaster Recon... they're made for gaming... and that's about it. They're not audiophile cards in quality, they're made to give pinpoint sound in games direction wise. And for an Audiophile card I would say go with a HT Omega Claro 2. But that's me.

[Xee]

Great post Vulpesveritas. This should be posted on every game's forum.

[Vashts1985]

Quote

Myth 1: AMD / ATI only, Intel / Nvidia only-
This is one of the myths I've heard more of the time, in that Radeon GPUs are best with AMD motherboards, and Nvidia GPUs are best with Intel boards, and there are issues if you put one on the other system. This is simply false. Both GPUs work just as well on either platform, regardless. End of story. Ask any professional system builder, manufacturer rep, or reviewer. Though you might be suggested to use Intel by Nvidia as they have better performance CPUs and PCI-E 3.0, but otherwise you won't see a difference.

ive heard that this is not true for multi gpu setups (read as Multi card setups, not dual GPU cards), or at least was not true until AMD's new line of chipsets that can deal with either crossfire or SLI.

[Barbaric Soul]

Vashts1985, on 24 May 2012 - 01:04 AM, said:

ive heard that this is not true for multi gpu setups (read as Multi card setups, not dual GPU cards), or at least was not true until AMD's new line of chipsets that can deal with either crossfire or SLI.

Not intirely true Vashts. Before AMD bought out ATI, you had to have a AMD or Intel chipset motherboard to run crossfire or a Nvidia chipset motherboard to run SLI because Nvidia would only licence thier SLI technology to thier chipset. ATI had thier crossfire technology licenced out to both Intel and AMD so Intel's chipsets and AMD's chipsets could support crossfire.

[cipher]

Barbaric Soul, on 24 May 2012 - 02:45 AM, said:

Not intirely true Vashts. Before AMD bought out ATI, you had to have a AMD or Intel chipset motherboard to run crossfire or a Nvidia chipset motherboard to run SLI because Nvidia would only licence thier SLI technology to thier chipset. ATI had thier crossfire technology licenced out to both Intel and AMD so Intel's chipsets and AMD's chipsets could support crossfire.

QFT. It's a good thing that has changed with the chipsets for the Core i-series CPUs. Back in the Core 2 days we were stuck with the 500, 600, and 700 series NVIDIA chipsets in order to do SLI, like the 680i and 780i. Granted, those chipsets rocked!, but it narrowed our choices.

[Canzara]

While its obvious you have SOME knowledge, reading this just really sounds like an AMD admin trying to convince people that AMD is competing.
In the CPU world they are not.
I have been building and repairing PC's almost as long as you've been alive and I was a die hard AMD user until recently.
Price performance? have you even looked at the BD reviews? Its sad how pathetic AMD is doing in the processor department, I wish this wasn't the case, but it is. I don't need to supply you with 4 sources to say this because I don't really care what you believe to be true, I just hope people reading this take some of it with a grain of salt and not just at face value.
I was buying a BD until it was released, I waited with my 1100T until release date, couldn't wait for the monster, until I found it wasn't a monster at all, but was really rather pathetic for all the raving they did promoting it.
I ended up with i5.
Your comparing AMD TOP O THE LINE to an i3 and consider that valid? WOWOWOW
I'm just glad you don't build my computers.

[Vulpesveritas]

Canzara, on 24 May 2012 - 08:07 AM, said:

While its obvious you have SOME knowledge, reading this just really sounds like an AMD admin trying to convince people that AMD is competing.
In the CPU world they are not.
I have been building and repairing PC's almost as long as you've been alive and I was a die hard AMD user until recently.
Price performance? have you even looked at the BD reviews? Its sad how pathetic AMD is doing in the processor department, I wish this wasn't the case, but it is. I don't need to supply you with 4 sources to say this because I don't really care what you believe to be true, I just hope people reading this take some of it with a grain of salt and not just at face value.
I was buying a BD until it was released, I waited with my 1100T until release date, couldn't wait for the monster, until I found it wasn't a monster at all, but was really rather pathetic for all the raving they did promoting it.
I ended up with i5.
Your comparing AMD TOP O THE LINE to an i3 and consider that valid? WOWOWOW
I'm just glad you don't build my computers.

I am comparing an AMD FX-4170 CPU to an i3, when they have the same system cost. Price versus price.
FX-4170 vs i3 (price - price) http://compare-proce...e-i3-2100/3247/ (AMD 25% faster, AMD CPU 15% more expensive [$20] vs Intel, same system cost)
FX-4170 vs i5 (quad - quad) http://compare-proce...-i5-2500k/3542/ (25% faster Intel, 50% more expensive Intel CPU [$70] vs AMD, $80-90 more expensive system Intel vs AMD CPU)
FX-8120 vs i5 (value - value) http://compare-proce...-i5-2500k/4373/ (AMD 5% faster performance vs Intel, Intel 15% faster gaming vs AMD, Intel 33% more expensive [$50] vs AMD, $60-70 more expensive system Intel vs AMD CPU.)

I have been building and repairing PCs since I was six, and have been selling them for the past two years.
In real world performance, AMD is still winning in price versus performance. It doesn't take a genius to take a look at benchmarks, and take a look at CPU prices to see that.

Bulldozer was a disappointment, but not a complete failure. It's selling wonderfully, isn't it? That's because while not as fast as upper end intel i5s and i7s, they're faster than i3s, and about the same price as an i3, but all the FX line of chips have overclocking enabled. Furthermore the AMD AM3+ socket has a longer lifespan with future CPU upgrades. Clock-for-clock bulldozer is about 20-40% slower than Intel offerings, while offering more cores and 10-20% higher baseline clock speeds.

And I've read about every BD review out there, I was quite disappointed when it came out, which is why I'll be using a good ol' 1055t until AMD comes out with the FX-8350 Vishera core, based upon Trinity's IPC gains shown in reviews, as well as the expected 4ghz base speed.

Perhaps you should read in context rather than listneing to propaganda and overly negative reactions created largely due to the failure of AMD's marketing department to be honest with customers and thus the overhype which ensued?

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 26 May 2012 - 10:58 PM.

[Canzara]

LOL I'm a fanboy because you don't like what I said?
This is my first intel CPU in almost 10 years. If thats how you would describe a fanboy, while OKILY DOKILY.
BD is selling well because some people would rather pay 50 bucks less for a subpar product, then to get thier money's worth. I'm not one of them.
A Fanboy LMAO thats soooo hilarious.
I HOPE that AMD starts to compete again, but right now, they are not and I have very little hope at this point since they're recent announcements on CPU roadmap.

Oh ya, are you aware of Intels overclocking warranty?
Lets see AMD offer that and then come talk to me about how long they last in comparison.

Again, don't take it so personally, I'm not brand loyal to ANYONE...I buy whats best for the money at the time and right now the i5 is the best price performance you can get HANDS DOWN.

the previous phenom II series outperforms bulldozer in many cases, doesn't that speak for itself?

I realize you chose bottom of the barrel for comparisons, but that seems unrealistic to me, people only buy the cheapest because they have to, not normally because they want to. So lets do a more fair comparison.
FX8150 vs I5 2500k. AMD's best against Intels midrange.
The i5 is about 20$ more..Look at the reviews, I'm sure I can find lots but I would rather you went to your trusted review site and used that.

Perhaps you should ensure your advice is accurate instead of fanboyish?
You admit they were dishonest with the end user and still promote them? Hmmm
Remember I didn't say they were dishonest, you did.

Edited by Canzara, 24 May 2012 - 08:43 AM.