Tech Things You Dont Know But Are Too Afraid To Ask.

[Glenwing]

Why do GPU memory clock speeds always change? For example GPU-Z says my 680 has 1502MHz memory speed whereas EVGA precision says 6008MHz. I see this with specs when listed on websites, sometimes they say the memory clock speed is like 1200MHz when it is actually 5000MHz.

 

I don't get it. 

 

1502MHz is the actual memory operating frequency.  It completes four operations in each cycle though, so it is effectively running as if it's at 6008MHz.  Hence, 6008MHz is the effective memory clock.  While 1502MHz would be advertised as just memory clock.

[TRCornishboy]

Why did I see a PC with 2 different GPU's in the other day, an older 550Ti and a new 780. Is this even possible? 

[rashdanml]

Why did I see a PC with 2 different GPU's in the other day, an older 550Ti and a new 780. Is this even possible? 

Yes, it is. Doesn't need to be SLI'd, it can run individually. Bitcoin mining setups are usually like that, but don't often use Nvidia cards.

[Glenwing]

Why did I see a PC with 2 different GPU's in the other day, an older 550Ti and a new 780. Is this even possible? 

 

You mean both installed at the same time?

 

It's possible of course, although they won't be capable of running in SLI with each other.

[TRCornishboy]

Well that's news to me. Thanks for the information guys!

[Ineko]

1502MHz is the actual memory operating frequency.  It completes four operations in each cycle though, so it is effectively running as if it's at 6008MHz.  Hence, 6008MHz is the effective memory clock.  While 1502MHz would be advertised as just memory clock.

 

Thank you. :)

[Tech_Dreamer]

Would keeping the motherboard & its components upside down going to cause issues with the components in anyway? :blink:

 

( i know it's a crazy question :mellow: . but most of the expansion cards have their good looking sides facing down when "properly" oriented , so if one wanted to flip the board over *not the cabin* will it work on long term?)

[spwath]

Would keeping the motherboard & its components upside down going to cause issues with the components in anyway? :blink:

 

( i know it's a crazy question :mellow: . but most of the expansion cards have their good looking sides facing down when "properly" oriented , so if one wanted to flip the board over *not the cabin* will it work on long term?)

I believe not

[-iSynthesis]

What does a Hyper Threading do?

It simulates double the amount of cores. It will not be as powerfull as a real core, but it will generally give you about a 25% increase in Performance. Thats why a true 8 core fx processor will beat an i7 in applications that use many threads like crysis or live streaming.

[LukaP]

Would keeping the motherboard & its components upside down going to cause issues with the components in anyway? :blink:

( i know it's a crazy question :mellow: . but most of the expansion cards have their good looking sides facing down when "properly" oriented , so if one wanted to flip the board over *not the cabin* will it work on long term?)

It will all be fine. There are cases where the motherboard is upside down (prodigy m) or horizontal (prodigy) and it all works fine. Motherboards these days are solid state anyway

[MG2R]

Would keeping the motherboard & its components upside down going to cause issues with the components in anyway? :blink:

The inverting of motherboards is purely a marketing trick. The idea is that you help cooling by "working with natural convection" (hot air rises). While it is true that hot air rises, the moment you add active air cooling (fans), the aerodynamic forces of the fan are orders of magnitude bigger than the aerodynamic forces from convection. So, basically, once you add fans to the equation, the natural convection doesn't matter at all anymore.

 

So, to put a long story short, putting your components upside down will do nothing, except change looks.

[WinNut]

bump much but...

 

What is CUDA?

[MG2R]

What is CUDA?

CUDA is nVidia's proprietary GPU computing API. It is used to make GPU computing available to the general programmer and is straight competition for the open-source OpenCL that AMD is optimising their graphics cards for.

[FranktheDinosaur]

How exactly does a kill-coil stop bacterial growth? If it's dissociating in water, doesn't that defeat the point of distilled water?

[elecxonica]

Why are people fine with steam as DRM, but origin and Uplay are horrible (UIs aside)?

[peters.11]

What's with cherry mx green switches?

[ItsComrade]

Hyper Threading is a way to create virtual cores. It is a bit tricky to explain, but I'll try to put it as easy as possible. Take for example an i5 quadcore and an i7 quadcore processor. Both are quadcores, but the i7 has Hyper Threading (HTT) which means it has 4 extra virtual cores. Of course those virtual cores are not real cores, but it is a way to make 1 core process two different threads at the same time by sharing the CPU parts which are idle because they are not used by thread 1 but can be used by thread 2. So basically the i7 is faster (most of the time) when processing a lot of data.

 

WOw, that's real helpful.

[ItsComrade]

personally I am a shy people, I afraid to ask, talk, and say. But, I find out typing on forum is quite fun. Mabye you can locate my location but you dunno where and who am I.

 

How big, exactly, is Malaysia?

[ItsComrade]

What does a power supply do, exactly? And why are there different voltage ones?

[MG2R]

How exactly does a kill-coil stop bacterial growth? If it's dissociating in water, doesn't that defeat the point of distilled water?

The point of distilled water is to not have any living organisms in it. Taking it a step further,

you can use demineralised water, which has all of its minerals (basically food for organisms)

removed as well. Demin water is basically pure H₂O.

 

Silver indeed dissociates in water, but it acts as the opposite of minerals: it's an antimicrobial

additive. It inherently kills organic life in the water, making it not gunk up as quick compared

to plain water.

 

 

WOw, that's real helpful.

Complete answer: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/27950-tech-things-you-dont-know-but-are-too-afraid-to-ask/?p=402727

It basically says the same, but goes into more detail

 

 

What does a power supply do, exactly? And why are there different voltage ones?

The PSU in a computer makes sure that a computer receives DC power at the correct voltages. These voltages need to be as

tightly controlled and as stable as possible. If the voltage isn't stable, it can cause the electronic circuits inside a computer to

fail. Too low of a voltage and things become unstable, too high of a voltage and things get fried/blow up.

 

The PSU does these steps sequentially to convert the 120/230V AC signal coming in to a low voltage DC signal:

1. Use a transformer to lower the AC voltage coming in too an easier to work with level. This transformer used to be an

   actual big-ass metal brick, but PSU manufacturers are steadily decreasing the size of it, or doing the transformation

   electronically.

2. Use a rectifier to convert the AC signal into a DC signal. In this step, there are also huge capacitors used to get heavily

   reduce the ripple on the DC signal. From this point on, the PSU has a stable DC rail.

3. From that DC rail, the necessary voltages for the computer are converted, using a DC-to-DC converter.

That's a very basic overview of what a PSU needs to do to convert the mains into usable voltages for a computer.

 

The reason multiple voltage levels are used, is because there are different power requirements for all the different components.

To understand why this is necessary, it is important to understand that electrical power (in a DC system) is the voltage multiplied

by the current (P = U * I). So, to deliver a given amount of power to a device, you can either deliver a high voltage and a low

current, or a low voltage and a high current. You also need to know that the gauge of the wire used to transport the electricity to

is solely dependent on the current flowing through it. The higher the current, the thicker the wire that carries it needs to be. One

last thing to consider is the voltage drop seen in wires. The higher the current and the lower the wire gauge, the higher the loss

in voltage over that wire will be.

 

Now you should be able to understand why there are different voltage levels in a computer. For high power stuff, like the motor

of the hard drive, 12V rails are used to lower the loss in the wires. The, for small things like a CPU, you need very low voltages

because the silicon will blow if a high voltage is used.

 

Like that, lots of different voltages are needed for lots of different electronic components, which is why an ATX PSU will output

a number of different voltage levels. There is a definite trend to put more and more devices on the twelve rail, and than converting

the voltage to a lower one on the device itself, if needed. That helps to keep efficiency higher, as the power losses in the cables

will be lower when using 12V.

[TetraSky]

Why are people fine with steam as DRM, but origin and Uplay are horrible (UIs aside)?

A main is reason for the hate of Origin, is how horrible it is.

For weeks, many gamers couldn't play online because EA servers didn't work properly/if at all for example. (Not sure about other games, but Dead Space 3 was one of the affected games)

[spwath]

what is wled and how does it compare to tn/va/IPS?

[Yummychickenblue]

bump much but...

 

What is CUDA?

While we are on the topic of graphics cards what Stream Processors?

 

Also how does AMD achieve CFX through standard PCI-E X16?

[WinNut]

While we are on the topic of graphics cards what Stream Processors?

 

Also how does AMD achieve CFX through standard PCI-E X16?

The data is sent through the PCIE lane, then routed to the other GPU at the PLX chip/PCIE controller.

Are you sure you are not talking about the bridge?

[Yummychickenblue]

The data is sent through the PCIE lane, then routed to the other GPU at the PLX chip/PCIE controller.

Are you sure you are not talking about the bridge?

But wouldn't motherboard manufacturers need to design firmware that is compatible with PCI-E CFX?