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Coltaine

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Posts posted by Coltaine

  1. Just now, Levent said:

    you might want to do a complete AMD driver cleanup with DDU then reinstall the latest WHQL driver, if that doesnt work you gotta reinstall windows because your card supports DX12.

    I did do a complete DDU clean and fresh install of the GPU drivers when I installed the 17.7.1 drivers, finally caved and installed ReLive, it's been nagging at me for long enough. Anyway, as I mentioned to the other guys, I'll just not bother, it's an old card, it'll only run DX12 features emulated and it's not that long until this GPU is in the recycle bin.

  2. 3 minutes ago, Levent said:

    AMD drivers are always shit, I know for a fact that HD7XXX (gcn cards) series and confirm they support dx12 as I played few DX12 games with my 7850. Check your if your card supports DX12 with GPUZ

    I did, there's pictures of GPUZ...

     

    AMDs drivers haven't been worse than Nvidias recently from what I've been able to tell, and AMDs drivers are far better at DX12 than Nvidias have been. Particular in the way the use the CPU. (Which opens a whole other can of worms regarding intel's lead in gaming because of stronger IPC, but that's another discussion for another time.)

    46 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

    I know, maybe bug or something? Try use Crimson 16.9.1 since the video also use that version.

    Yeah, I'd rather not have to mess around with re-installing drivers. I guess I'll just not bother since it'll only run in emulated mode anyway. Thanks for your time though.

    41 minutes ago, Cyracus said:

    not always, a new driver may fix certain things and break others accidentally

    I think I've tried this before on older drivers and it didn't work then either, this was on DX:MD which did have many complaints about DX12 not working when I was actually playing it. But, again I think I'll just give up on this and just enjoy DX12 when I build my next rig instead.

  3. Just now, xAcid9 said:

    7970 support DX12 but with feature level 11_1 only.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_levels_in_Direct3D

     

    Try use older driver.

    That seems counter-intuitive. Shouldn't the more recent drivers have all the same support just with even more support on top of that?

    2 minutes ago, Nickathom said:

    all gcn supports dx12. have you tried looking in your drivers?

    I have been looking at my driver and in the crimson software, couldn't find anything.

  4. So, for a laugh I decided to test if my old crotchety XFX 7970 GHz edition could reap any benefits from DirectX12. Now, from what I've been able to gather all GCN AMD GPUs should support DX12, even if AMD lists the 7000 series as "laptop" cards these days.

     

    According to dxdiag DirectX12 is installed however it only shows my card functioning up to DX11.1, as such no games are drawing any frames on screen if DX12 is set as the renderer in game!(AKA just a black screen) I have no idea why this doesn't work, it should. It's worth mentioning that I am really bad at googling.

     

    Anyway, here's a random video that apparently shows that dx12 is working on a 7970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2gmLS8QLm4 the menus are in Cyrillic so I have no idea, but the performance number overlay says dx11 and dx12 so, I guess? Obviously not much of a performance increase, but I'd like to test for myself.

     

    Is it simply a case of the card being so old that it doesn't support DX12 on a hardware level and that's why it's not showing in dxdiag properly? Could it be because I've messed too much with Win10 to minimise the level of big-brother going on? Should i just give up on my dreams of gaining maybe 0.5fps in some DX12 enabled games?

     

    Anyway, system specs:

     

    http://imgur.com/a/SQWlP

     

    Pretty crusty and old, but still. Again GPU-Z tells me that DX12 is supported but has 11.1 in parenthesis.. So what the heck is going on? Why does it not work?

     

    Thank you for your time and any replies!

     

    P.S. Current ETA for planned new HW T-4 months.

  5. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/07/24/russia-tor-privacy-nsa/

     

     

     

    The Russian government is offering almost 4 million rubles (about USD $100,000) to anyone who can devise a reliable way to decrypt data sent over the Tor anonymity network. A mounting campaign by the Kremlin against the open Internet, not to mention revelations in the United States about government spying, have made Tor increasingly attractive to Russian Internet users seeking to circumvent state censorship.

    Developed as a project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory more than a decade ago, Tor anonymizes Internet traffic by sending it through a unique configuration of nodes known as an onion routing system. Now in the hands of a nonprofit group, the project continues to receive federal funding but boasts approximately 4 million users worldwide, among them many tech-savvy digital activists in countries where technical censorship and surveillance are prevalent. Even the U.S. State Department supports programs that train foreign political activists to use Tor to protect themselves from the watchful eyes of authoritarian governments.

    Tor has encountered problems in Russia before. Indeed, the country’s principal security agency, the FSB, lobbied the Duma last year to ban Tor. Deputies expressed support for the initiative, but it never got out of committee.

     

    Russian Pirate Party leader Stanislav Sharikov says the Russian government’s renewed interest in cracking Tor might have more to do with genuine police concerns than political repression. The $100,000 contract (a relatively small amount of money by global industry standards) is being offered not by the FSB but the Interior Ministry, which according to Sharikov is more interested in fighting child pornography than anti-Putin dissidents.

     

    Of course, Tor is a “dual-use” technology. By providing people with the means to escape censorship and spying, the network is also used by people engaged in organized crime, drug trafficking, and the exchange and sale of child pornography. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden prove that the U.S. National Security Agency has devoted significant resources to hacking Tor, in order to grab personal data about the people who use it.

     

    The U.S. government cites precisely these worrying uses of Tor when justifying its own efforts to decrypt users’ data. But the anonymous nature of the network makes it difficult to know precisely who uses it, and for what, at a global scale.

    Although unlikely, should Russia’s decryption project succeed, it could endanger millions of Internet users whose interest in online anonymity is far from nefarious.

     

    Welp, go Russia I suppose?

  6. If you had ECC on, this would definitely cause lockups as the memory controller is looking a parity chip and cannot find it. Do not enable this setting unless you are using ECC unbuffered DIMM modules.

     

    Yeah, I totally forgot to turn it off as I think it defaults to ECC On, I'm at least sure I didn't turn it on myself.

     

    As a few have mentioned, having ECC enabled on non-ECC RAM can cause issues.

    Another possible cause for the freezing in the UEFI BIOS is incompatible Keyboard and/or mouse.

    I too will get a similar freezing issues when tinkering with the EUFI BIOS on my own Crosshair V Formula. I've looked into this issue in the past, and I ran into a thread on the ASUS ROG forum, saying incompatible keyboard/mouse can cause this. I'm using a Logitech G110 and G9x for my system.

    ...I guess this is why Corsair has the "BIOS" switch on their newer K70 and K95 (and upcoming RGB) keyboards.

     

    Hm, I have a CM QuickFire TK Green and a Logitech G502. But at least for now it seems to be pretty stable, so hopefully it was just the ECC thing I'd forgotten to switch off. I'll tinker with the RAM settings a bit more and see where I end up and how it goes etc, I'm not that comfortable with UEFIs yet, and I can't say that I think they're an actual upgrade to the traditional BIOS.

     

    Thanks for the replies.

  7. @Coltaine

     

    AMD boards do not use the XMP (Intel Extreme Memory Profile) but use a similar

    called AMP (AMD Memory Profile). ASUS uses DOCP which tries to convert XMP

    to a scaled entry for DRAM timing conversions. not 100% but can get you in the

    door. it'd be an easier method to change the speed, timings and command rate as

    specified by the module manufacturer.

     you get there like this:

     

    advanced mode>extreme tweaker>ai overclock tuner>DOCP or scroll down to

    manually config the DRAM Timing control

     

    Ah, that's what I get for not paying attention to PC stuff for a few years :P

     

    I set the DRAM to 1600, and went in under the North Bridge settings to disable ECC, things seem to have stabilized, so for now I'm crossing my fingers. Thanks for the answer though, I'll look more into it tomorrow after work.

  8. So, after a long time and a good number of issues I finally have my, now dated but, barely used gaming PC together and functional, I think I just solved the last problem now, but I'd just like to have a bit of a troubleshooting session to be safe.

     

    Specs:

     

    Mobo: ASUS Crosshair V Formula("BIOS" 1703)

    CPU: AMD FX8150(no OC)

    GPU: XFX 7970 3GB "Black Edition"(1GhZ stock OC)

    RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 (Non-ECC, not OC)

    HDD-OS: WD Velociraptor 600GB

    HDD-storage1: WDC Black 1TB

    HDD-storage2: WDC Black 2TB

     

    Now it wasn't until recently I got this thing up and running properly, quite a few problems to get the damn thing to run, BIOS woes, cpu cooler woes etc etc, but now I'm good. So today I think I figured out the last problem which was that the UEFI defaulted to ECC on the RAM, and since the RAM is non-ECC that caused the system to BSOD on launch when I put it at 1600, now it's on 1600 everything is fine. But when I was looking through the UEFI to see if I could find an XMP option or something for the RAM the UEFI would freeze after about 45-60 seconds, which was rather annoying. This wouldn't happen every time, I've been in and out of the UEFI quite a bit today, and so far after turning ECC off it hasn't happened again. I hope that turning ECC mode off has solved it, but I'd like some input on what else might cause the UEFI to freeze.

     

    Also does this MoBo even have an XMP setting? I can't seem to find it if it does exist.

     

    Thanks.

  9. So, I had a couple of drives that died on me, well one was technically salvageable but there wasn't really anything worth going through the effort for. So I decided I'd take them apart, because I need more fridge magnets, and the platters are really shiny and... that's probably useful.. For something. Also it's a roundabout way to destroy everything on the HDD if you're really concerned about that sort of thing. So, here we go.

     

    First off you'll need a couple of things.

     

    • A broken HDD, or a not broken one you want to destroy
    • A TX-8 screwdriver or bit or one of those angled keys,
    • (A TX5 screwdriver or bit or one of those angled keys, not sure about this one, I almost never use torx that small)
    • A pair of needle nosed pliers if you don't have the required TX screwdriver for one of the screws
    • A flathead screwdriver
    • About 10-20 minutes of time

    Now secondly this WILL BREAK YOUR HARD DISK DRIVE, do NOT do this unless you're willing to DESTROY the drive.(Unless you for some reason have a clean room and all the required things to avoid permanently breaking a drive that is.)

     

    Now, most of the pictures I took are pretty blurry, I didn't put much effort into that, but I've added annotations where necessary, and there will be text to go with each picture.

     

    The first step is to remove a bunch of labels and little stickers that hide the bolts, it's a bit manufacture specific but for the most part the screws should be in about the same place as shown here.(Note: two screws are removed, but it's kinda obvious where they go) This is the point of no return, once you've taken off even one of the screws there are no guarantees that your HDD will ever work again.

     

    illustrasjon_boltplassering_edited.jpg

     

    It's pretty hard to tell from the picture, but all except one of the gray blurs are little TX-8 screws, the only one that isn't a screw is the one that is just below the top right one. Just remove all of these, and the one in the middle has its own explanation.

     

    Now, the lid should be ready to pop off, shouldn't be too tricky, just use a flat head screwdriver or a knife or something to help it along, if you can get a good grip you should be able to tear it off with just your hands.

     

    demonteretoppdeksel.jpg

     

    Now, once that's off you'll be greeted by something like this

     

    toppdeksel_av.jpg

     

    So yeah, that's what a HDD looks like on the inside. Those platters are real tough things, it might just be a WD thing, but I've shot a couple of similar drives and unless you hit dead center the platters will absorb a shot from a S&W 1911 .45" ACP and .357" magnum shots from a revolver.(Incidentally so will a stock AMD heatsink, well from the Athlon series at least, haven't shot any other heatsinks..)

     

    Now the parts I want, the magnets.

     

    ovremagnet.jpg

     

    You'll, I'd say, definitely need something to pry those suckers loose, afaik they're neodynium magnets and they're damn strong, at least when you stick them together like they are inside a HDD-

     

    overmagnet_demontering.jpg

     

    Trusty old flathead screwdriver should do the trick.

     

    ovremagnet_demontert.jpg

     

    Takes a bit of fenangeling but it'll come right off, no screws holding it down. Next up is the end stop for the read/write head. Again the flathead screwdriver comes in handy, or pliers if you prefer that.

     

    endestopper_leseskrivehode.jpg

     

    Should pop right off enabling you to turn the read/write head far enough to the side to lift it off.

     

    lese_skrivehode_demontert.jpg

     

    The black connector is loosely glued in place, or just slightly stuck to the rubber grommet/seal. The final magnet is held down by a single screw, in some older drives and maybe some other manufacturers drives it might be glued in place. (I don't know why this picture has the wrong orientation, it just has for some reason no matter what I do, re-uploaded, changing orientation on photobucket.. Just nope)

     

    nedre_magnet_skrue_til_opplasting.jpg

     

    Now the platters, these are by now completely screwed and unusable for most people without very specialized equipment. So no worries about smearing them with fingerprints and whatnot.

     

    The stack is held in place by a central flange which is held down by a bunch of little screws. I think these have a TX size a step down from TX-8, but I managed to get them out by applying a good amount of pressure on the screwdriver.

     

    platter_holder_skruer.jpg

     

    You're gonna get a lot of fingerprints on the platters now, the easiest way to avoid the whole thing to rotate is to just put your thumb on the outer edge of the platter and then undo the screws. Once you've gotten the hold down flange off you can take the first platter off.

     

    platter_holder_demontert.jpg

     

    Now, to get the rest of the platters off you need to remove one more screw, this is a TX-8 head screw.. Not really sure what the bits it's holding in place does, I can only assume it's some kind of anti-wobble device(Again, no idea what's up with the orientation on this picture.. .. It only says TX-8 head bolt anyway)

     

    antiwobbler_skrue_edited.jpg

     

    Just for context:

     

    antiwobbler_demontert.jpg

     

    Once you've undone that screw you can just turn the entire thing upside down and the platters should come out, it might take a few attempts to get all of them out, but there's nothing holding them in place anymore. Between each platter there's a spacer ring.

     

    Now if you're really paranoid you might want to destroy the PCB as well, you can remove this first or last, doesn't really matter, just a few screws holding it in place.

     

    pcb_demontering.jpg

     

    All the screws undone, just pull the sucker right off.

     

    pcb.jpg

     

    There. Now you have some really expensive fridge magnets, or a very shiny wind chime, or the option to melt the platters.. Or something, in any case, this is pretty easy and straightforward and anyone can do this if they have the tools for it at least.

     

    NOTE: In some drives, (this might just apply to really really old drives not really sure) the platters might be made of glass or ceramics, try not to break them because you'll probably cut yourself real bad and make an incredible mess that will leave you with glass/ceramic shards all over your room for years. AFAIK most modern drives have aluminium platters with a magnetic oxide layer on them, but do be careful.

     

    So yeah, the best way to destroy all data on the disk? I'd say take an angle grinder to the platters and grind off all the oxide, or a blowtorch, or ... Something, be creative :D Or you could just tie a string to it and hang it on a frame and use the platters as a wind chime. Do whatever you want.

     

    Also, I'm in no way responsible for anything that happens because you opened your HDD. :)

  10. Well, now we have this: https://twitter.com/FUNCreators/status/434477824758382592

     

     

    FUN Creators @FUNCreators 

    Ok guys, we are working on email now: It will be from TB to EA asking for a job. Just wait, then you will understand :D

     

    They are accusing TB of photoshopping the screencap of the e-mail...

     

    I'm half tempted to just download the Guise of the Wolf research stream from Twitch and upload it to a "fake" YT account, or on blip or something.

  11. So @funcreators denied taking down our Guise of the Wolf videos. This email from them shows otherwise. http://imgur.com/47f4jt6

    (Copied from Twitter, I somehow screwed up the Quotes, guess I've forgotten how to do them manually. Original Tweet here. )

     

    Soo yeah, we have another Garry's Incident on our hands it seems.

     

    For those wondering, Christian(AKA Zooc from ZoocDoesStuff on YT) is TotalBiscuits PR guy.

     

    In any case.

     

    JkKU0gv.gif

     

    EDIT: Screwed up a bit in posting this.

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