Jump to content

VMaxMuffin

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    534

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by VMaxMuffin

    AMD Withdraw KitGuru's Fury X Sample over "negative stance towards AMD" (Updated with response from AMD)

    in Tech News

    Posted

    Source: http://www.kitguru.net/site-news/announcements/zardon/amd-withdraw-kitguru-fury-x-sample-over-negative-content/

     

    I find this to be really disappointing, and I don't think I really need to explain why. The article title pretty much says it all.

     

    A few key quotes from the article:

     

    She (Christine Browne, Senior Manager of EMEA Communications - who called KitGuru) said that with limited product they wanted to focus on giving the samples to publications that are ‘more positive’ about AMD as a brand, and company.

     

    I (Allan Campbell) will continue to try and work with AMD if I can, however I simply cannot let any company or corporation try and dictate or change our independent ability to cover news, or to share our opinions – even if this means losing product support for big hardware launches such as this.

     

    If we become unable to share our genuine views and opinions out of fear of a company withdrawing product samples then I see no point in being here at all. 

     

    Will LTT still be getting an AMD sample? Linus has said a lot of negative things about AMD lately.

     

    I also wonder what this could mean about the Fury X. We've seen some leaked benchmarks that have seen it performing well agaist the 980Ti and Titan X, but if AMD are worried about people who have been making negative comments about AMD receiving a card - could it mean it doesn't actually perform that well? I find that hard to believe, but then again I find the article itself hard to believe.

     

     

    UPDATE:

     

    eTeknix has published their own article about this, after reaching out for comment from AMD.

     

    Source: http://www.eteknix.com/things-go-from-bad-to-worse-for-reviews-of-amd-radeon-fury-x/

     

    This article contains a couple of interesting pieces of information. Firstly, there's this:

     

     

     

    the Fury X will only have 10 samples for the whole of the EU. This may not sound too bad, but when you consider the scope of our industry, from print magazines, YouTube reviews and the wide range of enthusiast technology sites that span this region, it’s barely enough to scratch the surface. It’s certainly not what you would expect of a flagship product, of which you would normally expect a big set of reviews and testing to entice consumers into a purchase.

     

    They then move on to comment on the KitGuru situation, talk about journalistic freedom and so on, and say that while they knew they'd at least not be getting a sample in the first one, it is apparent they probably won't be recieving a Fury X at all.

     

    They reached out to Christine Brown (AMD's Senior Manager of EMEA Communications, as mentioned previously) and recieved the following response:

     

     

     

    I’m sorry to say that AMD is generally reducing the press events we host, invitee numbers for any events, sampling numbers, etc. Our decisions are based on a number of factors that I’m unable to go into. However I can only assure you that we will involve you in events and sampling when we feel it is appropriate and we are able. With regards to specific sampling of Fiji, I’m afraid our current allocation means we will not be able to sample you prior to launch. I realize this may not be the response you were hoping for but I can only reiterate that we will keep sharing information and more when we can.

     

    They also reachded out to Corporate VP and General Manager of EMEA, Darren Grasby, and got a very similar response:

     

     

     

    Thanks for getting in touch. I appreciate all the support you’ve given us both in the past and moving forward. As I think the team have explained, there are a number of factors behind the planning for our launches and unfortunately that sometimes means we’re unable to accommodate every request, as much as we’d like to. I’m sorry to say that AMD is generally reducing the press events we host, invitee numbers for any events, sampling numbers, etc. Our decisions are based on a number of factors that I’m unable to go into. However I can only assure you that we will involve you in events and sampling when we feel it is appropriate and we are able.

     

    All of this "reducing numbers" is a little worrying for me, it seems like the sign of general cost cutting, which in turn could be the sign of a struggling company.

    29 inch 1440p 21:9 ?

    in Displays

    Posted

    As far as I know, no 29" 21:9 monitors are 1080p. This is because the height of a 29" 21:9 monitor is about the same as a 23" 16:9 monitor. This means that the pixel density of a 1080p 29" 21:9 monitor would be about the same as your current 1080p 23" 16:9 monitor. Since we don't get 1440p screens in 23" or 24" size, it also makes sense that we don't get 1440p screens in the 29" ultrawide size.

     

    Basically, a 29" 1080p ultrawide would still be an upgrade from your current monitor - in terms of more horizontal real estate - however I think you probably would be better served by a 27" 1440p.

    GPU sagging, causing games to crash

    in Graphics Cards

    Posted

    Hi everyone,

    I've been trying to diagnose an issue with my brother's PC - it started randomly crashing in games, and I seem to have made it stop crashing by reseating the graphics card and putting the PC on its side to prevent sagging.

    The card is an Asus DirectCU II GTX 760, case is a Fractal Design Node 804 and motherboard is a Gigabyte H97M Gaming 3. I can't remember the rest of the specs exactly but it's something like an i5 4590 cooled by an NZXT air cooler, 8GB G.Skill RAM, Corsair RM PSU (550W IIRC), Samsung 840 Evo SSD and WD Blue HDD and a PCIe wifi adapter.

    Anyway, I can't leave a PC on its side forever so I'm looking for suggestions to prevent the GPU sagging. I'd like to put a backplate on it but I don't want to void warranty - particularly as it's not my PC - and I can't find one for that card anyway.

    Looking for a great overclocker

    in Graphics Cards

    Posted

    Not entirely, the G1 970 is binned, so you have a much much better chance at getting one that overclocks further than other cards.

     

    Yes true. I just meant that you can't guarantee that a G1 970 will have more headroom than any other 970 or 290. That said, it should have more headroom on average.

    Looking for a great overclocker

    in Graphics Cards

    Posted

    Of course when it comes to overclocking headroom it depends on the "silicon lottery" so there's no way to tell how high you'll get unless you're buying used and the previous seller can tell you.

     

    That being said people have been getting very good results with the GTX 970, and because it runs cooler than a 290 you have much more thermal headroom.

    gtx 780 or 970?

    in Graphics Cards

    Posted

    I don't know why people are even bringing up the VRAM issues here, even if you considered the 970 to have only 3.5GB of "useful" VRAM, that's still more than a 780...

     

    EDIT: Go with the 970 unless the 780 is significantly cheaper, in which case you can decide if you want more performance (970) or to save money (780)

    HDD Switch: Putting Laptop HDD into my new desktop

    in Storage Devices

    Posted

    What you want to do is certainly possible

     

    Firstly, putting the new SSD into the laptop: the easiest thing to do would be to clone the current drive to your new SSD and install it into your laptop, which would not require a reinstall of Windows. Basically, to do this you need to delete/move everything you don't want off the 1TB HDD (so that only the amount of data that will fit on the SSD remains), then clone the drive using software such as EaseUS Todo Backup or other free cloners available. This will require a SATA to USB adapter, which can be bought inexpensively. Alternatively, if you want to start fresh, then you can make a bootable Windows 8.1 USB (you can find out how to do this easily), and install onto the new SSD. Depending on your laptop, the product key may be embedded into the UEFI BIOS, but first I would recommend using a product key finder such as ProduKey to find and record your key.

     

    Secondly, putting the Laptop HDD in the desktop: Basically, just put it in, connect it up and reformat it with Disk Management (built into Windows) as NTFS. This will effectively erase the drive (although if you prefer to actually remove the data, then you will want to do a secure erase -

    ).

    CPU Error on Asus Z87-A with i3 4160

    in CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory

    Posted

    i think you guys forget one more step

     

    you need to run BIOS updater for New 4th Gen Intel Core Processors

     

     

    http://www.asus.com/sg/Motherboards/Z87A/HelpDesk_Download/

     

     

    look under BIOS Utills

     

    this is to be done on the Windows OS itself

    I just updated the BIOS within the BIOS itself, using the EZ Update utility. Is this any different than using the program you refer to? I just thought it was a different way of doing the same thing...

    Tomorrow when I go back to my friends house I'll try the utility just in case. Couldn't use my own motherboard because that would require having my CPU, which I left with my friend so he could set up windows, install drivers etc...

    CPU Error on Asus Z87-A with i3 4160

    in CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory

    Posted

    Hi guys,

    Today I built a computer with my friend, which he has been saving up for. Firstly, I'll explain that the reason we went with a Z87 motherboard with an i3 processor was that it was much cheaper than H97 alternatives, and of course unlike the H97 motherboards it leaves room for an upgrade to an overclockable CPU in the future.

    Anyway, we updated the motherboard's BIOS to the latest version (2105) using my CPU (i5 4570), then put in his new Haswell Refresh i3 (that should now be compatible, according to Asus) but we were greeted only with a red CPU LED, which points to a CPU error. We reinserted my CPU and it was fine.

    I see two possibilities:

    1. There's some setting that needed to be changed in the BIOS to boot with a different CPU and we didn't see it.

    2. The i3 is DOA.

    Anyone have any ideas?

    Thanks

    High end APU as a regular CPU

    in CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory

    Posted

    Hi everyone,

    I'm just starting to select parts with a friend to build him a new PC. Within his current budget, we might be able to squeeze an i5 and R9 280, possibly a 285 or GTX 960 (depending on other factors and exact costs). However, in about a month he will be getting some more money to spend on further upgrades. I was wondering about starting him off on an APU (one of the A10s probably) and then using that just as a regular quad core CPU with a more powerful GPU (290, 970, possibly 980).

    Basically I just want to know if there's any significant disadvantage to this - particularly if it were to be a major bottleneck. I'm struggling to find A10 benchmarks against CPUs like the i5 4460 or 4690k when they're both paired with a high end GPU.

    Thanks for your help.

×