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Mr.Meerkat

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About Mr.Meerkat

  • Birthday Aug 18, 2000

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Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    A Scottish airfield if not relaxing in Japan :D
  • Interests
    Flying, flying and ummmm, electronics!
  • Biography
    Meeeeeeeeeep :D
  • Occupation
    Someone who blows up capacitors for a living. Also crashes, I mean land aeroplanes :P
  • Member title
    The flying Meerkat

System

  • CPU
    R7 1700@3.9GHz, 1.36V
  • Motherboard
    MSI Mortar Arctic B350
  • RAM
    Crucial Ballistix sport LT 2x8GB 2800MHz@1.37V
  • GPU
    AMD Fury (sapphire Trixx)
  • Case
    Corsair Air 240 in white
  • Storage
    Crucial MX300 1TB
  • PSU
    XFX XXX 850W with blue extensions
  • Display(s)
    benq XL2410T (24 inch 120hz 1080p) and a benq BL(something) 1440p 24 inch :D
  • Cooling
    XSPC Raystorm, EK Fury block, DDC pump, dual 240mm rads
  • Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow 2013 edition, Cherry MX blues
  • Mouse
    Logitech G402
  • Sound
    Beryerdynamic custom one pro, Sound Blaster Omni, hyperx cloud 2
  • Operating System
    Windows 10
  • Phone
    Sony Xperia 1 :D

Recent Profile Visitors

73,941 profile views
  1. D'oh, how could I have been so stupid? 

     

    So I no longer have broadband at home meaning I had to hotspot with my iPhone. However, the 4G is unusable so I have to leave my phone in a specific place so it gets 5G.

     

    iPad mini or old phone, works perfectly, connects via Wifi 6 and there's minimal speed/ping penalties. However, my desktop would get stuck at 2.4GHz and I would struggle to get more than 10Mbps with horrible ping (connection is between 40-80Mbps depending on time of day). However, I did figure out that if my old android phone is connected to the iPhone hotspot, I can just hotspot my Android (one great thing about Android, hotspotting a wifi or ethernet connection) to my desktop and it works fine enough (caps out at 30Mbps and adds about 20ms of ping however). 

     

    After going at it with the janky setup for 1.5 months, I realised something...why don't I just USB tether my old android phone...phone happily stays Wifi 6 and desktop is now happy...The solution has been there all along 🤣

     

    Mind you, I still haven't worked out why the intel 9260 is okay with my iPad's hotspot (150Mbps on iPad's 5G no problem) but hates my iPhone's 15 hotspot (it won't connect to anything other than 802.11n). 

  2. Huh...neat. Complaining to the communications ombudsman really was worth spending the 5 minutes to upload your complaint (ctrl+c/ctrl+v my email complaint to network) and the two 5-minute phone calls, assuming you can establish sufficient proof 🙂 

     

    Decision:

    1. Obtain the promised 20% discount onto my sim contract

    2. This gets backdated to start of contract (about £35~) 

    3. A £75 credit on-top after all of that as well. 

     

    £110~ for 15 minutes of forms and calls is pretty sweet. Of course, I'm deffo dipping from O2 once my contract expires but who do I go with...I need that (more than EU) inclusive roaming (for work) alongside O2's international calling add-on (get it for free, again for work, does actually make a difference). 

     

    If only I could get a pre-2021 Three UK unlimited sim-only contract...best inclusive roaming (for me) and their EU-to-EU calling is technically cheaper than calling domestically within the UK...🥺

  3. image.thumb.png.5685c9553fe74af9a227c378620cef7d.png

    Out of 10, why have I been scammed 🤣

     

    I have a funny feeling it was supposed to be £1899 but let's see if it arrives anyway or not...

    1. djksm

      djksm

      3 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

      image.thumb.png.5685c9553fe74af9a227c378620cef7d.png

      Out of 10, why have I been scammed 🤣

       

      I have a funny feeling it was supposed to be £1899 but let's see if it arrives anyway or not...

      its 2199 at best buy near me. you probably got scammed

    2. Mr.Meerkat

      Mr.Meerkat

      13 hours ago, djksm said:

      its 2199 at best buy near me. you probably got scammed

      Oh, deffo a scam. eBay terminated their account and cancelled the order 🤣

       

      Decided it was worth a try given there's always eBay's buyer protection and if absolutely required, amex section 75. 

  4. Late 2022, I upgraded my Fury (with a few CU's unlocked, 3840SPs) to a Sapphire 6900XT Toxic EE. It's AIO was replaced by Alphacool's block, which apart from it being incredibly restrictive (compared to my Fury's EK block...), performs very nicely. With a gaming load or stress test (Heaven, Timespy extreme and Furmark), the GPU works just fine. No crashing, no artifacts, absolutely no oddness. Not even a driver crash. Sadly I can't say the same about hardware acceleration/compute loads however. Back in 2022, I did notice that occasionally, I would get half a dozen white pixels scattered across the screen whenever I was doing something that involved browser hardware acceleration (namely YouTube). Originally thought it was just Chromium being funky so kind of disregarded it. I also did notice Capture One starting to crash once every 25th time opened, but for that, I blamed it on the Corsair 3200MHz DDR4 kit that couldn't even run at 2400MHz. Fast forward to 2023, I get Topaz AI, intending to denoise and upscale a bunch of photos from the noughties and 2010s. Unfortunately the hardware acceleration rears it's ugly head again, but this time making it unusable. Whenever I try to denoise or upscale an image, the output image would have all kind of artifacts, from purple pixels to lines to weird circles shapes, making the image unusable. Tried various drivers and whatnot to no avail but with my laptop having a 3050ti, I kind of ignored it...until two weeks ago. Friend hosted an university event and for fun, I photographed it. It was a dark venue and couldn't use flash so all the images were shot between ISO6400-12800. 900+ photos reduced to 150~ final images and with Capture One's denoising tool being useless old fashioned, I tried Topaz with the 6900XT again. Still artifacts on the output images but as it takes the 3050ti 30-40s/image with Topaz, the time saving with the 6900XT would have been substantial as it only takes 2-3s to process each image (i.e. 1.5hrs vs <10 mins). Now with new drivers (including trying AMD pro), different PSU for testing (old XFX XTS 1kW), new Micron DDR4, reinstalling the GPU block, fresh windows install, undervolting/underclocking (core only as for some reason VRAM is locked to 2000MHz min), basically all thee troubleshooting steps that exists, I could not get the artifacting to go away. As there's nothing left to do, I randomly selected 1500MHz on the core and 2200MHz on the memory...the artifacting was gone. 1500 core/stock 2000MHz mem, artifacting is there. Stock 2375 core/2200 mem, artifacting is there. After playing around, I managed to get it to 1915 core/2100 mem without it artifacting in hardware acceleration loads. As I do like 5hrs of gaming every 3 months nowadays (and it's 2560x1080p anyway), the underclock is completely fine but huh? Is this a software issue? GPU die issue? Memory issue? The underclock I can understand but why do I have to overclock the memory as well to make it not artifact during compute loads? Don't suppose anyone here has any ideas? TL;DR Sapphire 6900XT Toxic EE, completely fine in gaming and stress tests (including timespy extreme, heaven and furmark) but artifacts during H/W acceleration and compute loads. After troubleshooting with every single method under the sun, found a remedy which involves underclocking GPU core from 2375MHz to 1915MHz (not as bad as it sounds as stock 6900XT is 2015MHz) whilst also overclocking VRAM from 2000MHz to 2100MHz. If core is any higher or memory is any lower, it causes artifacts in compute loads. Anyone have any ideas? It straight up doesn't make sense to me... Hey, on the brightside, with the underclock (and undervolt), it's now a 160W GPU instead of 320W under full load (and sub-50C temps!). Also, just in case someone is thinking, why 6900XT, especially the most expensive version (Toxic Extreme Edition), it was cheaper than a 6900XT nitro, cheaper than 6800XTs and was roughly the same price as 6800s back in 2022 so had no doubt in my mind to buy which card.
  5. Huh...recieved the crucial kit today and the default is 3200MHz@CL22. Not 2133 or 2400MHz but 3200 (with not so good timings). XMP profile is 3200@CL20 so again pretty poor timings but it's much better than 2133MHz, regardless of timings. 

     

    Seems to be Rev.B so should be interesting to see how it compares to my old Rev.E kit. Maybe try pushing it to 4000MHz? 👀

  6. image.png.ee144c2f311cb61cd2001563f577b39b.png

     

    When you get given a £100 voucher to "test" a photobook so you collate your 50~ favourite photos and arrange them into 30 pages 👀

     

     

    Only problem was I left it until the very last moment to use the voucher (30 day expiry, got given it 27th January so had less than 15 minutes to use it...🤣) so might have missed a few photos and the layout probably isn't perfect but ya know what? I'm still very excited for it. 

     

  7. Omg, omg, omg, omg, I actually found a new Rev.B/E 3200MHz 2x16GB Kit again! Can't wait for Crucial to be back in my life 🥺 

    Imagine, 3200MHz XMP/AMP actually being stable...something Samsung's A-Dies do not know what is...2133MHz being the only stable clockspeed, even manually tuning 2400MHz could not get it remotely stable 🤣

  8. image.png.7f224bea7c4d9f5bdd551babc005bf7c.png

    Huh...TIL Spotify's Windows App will utilise 4 cores at 25-50% each when it needs to buffer the current/next song 🤨 (is a 3700X for reference, not an intel "atom")

     

    Now it all makes sense. Back when I actually played video games, that's what caused the random FPS dips whenever I would listen to songs whilst playing something demanding. 

    1. da na

      da na

      this goddamn app COOKS my Core 2 laptops, regardless of streaming quality...

      Even when a song isn't playing, boom, 100% CPU usage for like 20 seconds loading the app.

      What is it doing that needs that much horsepower...

    2. Dillpickle23422

      Dillpickle23422

      11 hours ago, da na said:

      this goddamn app COOKS my Core 2 laptops, regardless of streaming quality...

      Even when a song isn't playing, boom, 100% CPU usage for like 20 seconds loading the app.

      What is it doing that needs that much horsepower...

      they gotta load the fucking ads

       

      despite me having premium, podcasts have ads in them. Not sponsorships, not ads read by the podcasters, but actual ad spots from spotify and stuff. Pisses me off, but at least I can skip over them

  9. Uh huh...6900xt trips the OCP of a SF750 😅

     

    Wait huh? Insert confusion 

    1. Skiiwee29

      Skiiwee29

      I mean, my 3090 tripped OCP on my HX850, so even high end PSUs aren't immune. Had to put in an HX1200 to resolve it. 

    2. Mr.Meerkat

      Mr.Meerkat

      8 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

      I mean, my 3090 tripped OCP on my HX850, so even high end PSUs aren't immune. Had to put in an HX1200 to resolve it. 

      Yeah, that's true. Suspect a specific program is making the GPU spike well above 500W, tripping the OCP. Am a bit perplexed how no matter what stress test, gaming load or really anything else won't trip the OCP but the second I try to use DXO PureRaw, PSU goes bye-bye, I'm out of here. 

       

      I'll heed the trial's advice of not getting DXO PureRaw I guess 😅

  10. Uh huh…otterbox actually makes the case I’ve always wanted and it actually looks thin! Unfortunately, there’s only an iPhone 14 Pro version 🥲

     

    It’s the folio MagSafe attachment and although there’s no 15 pro version, it is just a MagSafe attachment so in theory, I should be able to pair it to an otterbox 15pro case. Amazon warehouse has the 15pro symmetry case and folio (damaged boxes) for £19 and 12 so maybe it's worth a try regardless.

     

    I have tried two detachable flip cases off Amazon for my 15pro but oh mai, dey be thicccccccc (current flip case is thinner than the silicone cases alone, never mind the folio part 😂).

    1.   Show previous replies  5 more
    2. da na

      da na

      2 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

      Buy a BMW so you can add your car keys to Google Wallet 😉 

      ...for a $20/month subscription

    3. Senzelian

      Senzelian

      Just now, da na said:

      ...for a $20/month subscription

      Well now you can lose 4 things at once:

       

      Your cards, your phone, your keys and a metric butt ton of money! 🙂 

    4. Mr.Meerkat

      Mr.Meerkat

      9 hours ago, Senzelian said:

      I will never understand people who put their cards on the back of their phones. 🫠

      Funnily enough, bank cards are the one type of card that I don't usually put in my phone case. The only time I have a bank card in it is when I'm travelling and I know contactless won't be an option. Instead, I usually chuck my commuter pass in there (bye bye pass holder) and I usually only keep a single card in a flip case (as otherwise it starts getting thicccccc). Also, it's a nice business card holder when you aren't expecting one (I use a card holder as my wallet so not really ideal for receiving business cards). 

       

      Other reasons for flip case, most acts as a nice stand in a pinch (especially nice for filming or long exposures), acts as a screen protector (anecdotal but zero cracked screens so worth something to me) and honestly, I find it fun flipping the cover. Who needs a foldable phone when you can just slap the case cover 😉 

  11. Completely forgot I even created an adobe stock seller's profile and added 7 images 2.5 years ago. Login today and I find 7 downloads 😳 worth a grand total of...$10 😂

     

    Two coffees, nice 

  12. Erm, been wanting an Astron for many many years and when Seiko released the new SSJs last summer, I wanted one even more. Got a random recommendation from Google and it was a seiko authorised retailer offering this, a SSJ019 with a 40% discount (making it cheaper than grey market even before import tax)...my impulsiveness clicked in before I could stop myself No regrets. Guess my prospex (that's gone to hell and back x10) finally has a partner!
  13. Sadly my phone has to the ledge of a specific window so I'm able to receive 5G as otherwise I'm stuck with unusable 4G (broken mast). The only devices connected to the hotspot is my old android phone and my desktop (iPad has it's own connection, only connected to the hotspot for testing). The tests were ran multiple times with both only one device connected the hotspot and phone+desktop connected. It's odd and honestly doesn't make sense to me. Googling seems to suggest there's been something about Windows and iPhone hotspot not playing nice with each other for a while however.
  14. I'm so confused, since I have no broadband these days, I'm hotspotting my mobile data (300GB allowance so plenty to go around) but I'm getting some funky results hotspotting to my desktop with my iPhone. iPhone 15 mobile data - 30ms ping, 34/11Mbps Xperia 5 connected to iPhone- 34ms ping, 30/11Mbps iPad connected to iPhone - 32ms ping, 31/10Mbps Desktop connected to iPhone - 83ms ping, 10/3Mbps This is all using speedtest.net, connected to the same server. No real reason why the speeds should be so much worse connecting to my desktop so I test a little. First I try hotspotting my iPad's connection to my desktop. iPad mobile data - 15ms ping, 70/20Mbps (sadly only 40GB so can't just permanently use it) Desktop connected to iPad - 20ms ping, 65/19Mbps Works just fine connected to my iPad. Since Android allows you to hotspot a wifi connection, I try connecting my desktop to my Xperia's hotspot, which the xperia is connected to the iPhone's hotspot... Hotspot-ception - 40ms ping, 26/8Mbps Same mobile data connection, is slow when I directly connect to the iPhone's hotspot but when I connect it via an android phone, it works normally? The only thing I can think of is my phone's network throttling "desktop" traffic, which when it goes via my Xperia, it tricks it into thinking it's traffic from a mobile device. However, that seems horribly convoluted and unlikely (or maybe it is the cause). I'm very confused, I don't suppose anyone has any ideas? TIA!
  15. Huh? I'm genuinely so confused...since I have no broadband these days, I'm hotspotting my mobile connection (300GB so more than enough). 

    iPhone 15 speed test - 30ms ping, 34/11Mbps

    iPhone to Xperia 5 - 34ms ping, 30/11Mbps 

    iPhone to iPad mini 6 - 32ms ping, 31/10Mbps 

    iPhone to windows - 83ms ping, 10/3Mbps 

     

    iPhone connected to my desktop is randomly much slower but it gets better. 

    iPad mobile connection - 15ms ping, 70/20Mbps (sadly only 40GB so can't just permanently use it) 

    iPad hotspot to windows - 20ms ping, 65/19Mbps 

    So it's okay with my iPad hotspotting but not my iPhone? HUH?

     

    Confused yet? Fear not...it's even better! Since android allows you to hotspot ethernet or wifi connections...hotspot-ception!

    Desktop connected to Xperia's hotspot, which is connected to my iPhone's hotspot - 40ms ping, 26/9Mbps 

     

    Can someone explain to me why Windows/intel 9260 isn't liking my iPhone hotspot? 😅

    1. Origami Cactus

      Origami Cactus

      Same issue when directly hotsoptting my Samsung s23 connection to windows lol.

      At least usb tethering works somewhat fine, until it crashes the task manager in half an hour and screws with a few other features.

       

      So if you can usb-tether on the iphone, try that and then use the windows hotspot feature, should also give interesting results. 

    2. Mr.Meerkat

      Mr.Meerkat

      5 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

      Same issue when directly hotsoptting my Samsung s23 connection to windows lol.

      At least usb tethering works somewhat fine, until it crashes the task manager in half an hour and screws with a few other features.

       

      So if you can usb-tether on the iphone, try that and then use the windows hotspot feature, should also give interesting results. 

      I think I cracked it! Noticed from additional testing that my android phone is connecting to the iPhone with WiFi 6.

       

      The Intel 9260 is not a WiFi 6 NIC whilst both my old android and iPad (mini 6) supports WiFi 6. Looking around, noticed how for some reason, the desktop connection using n or even g sometimes (not ac). 

       

      When I hotspot to my desktop via the xperia, that's connected to my iPhone, it's using ac/WiFi 5. Same applies to iPad hotspot, ac connection. 

       

      It actually makes sense now. Worse protocol is being used. It does however beg the question of how to force ac...

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