Steve

Interesting. The upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 was almost a no-brainer installation... save that immediately after reloading and setting itself up the video driver pooped out and left me staring at a black screen until I decided that enough was enough. Rebooting into "safe" mode and reinstalling the Catalyst utilities solved that problem. I'm wondering if the installer choked on my CrossfireX setup, though it's running beautifully now.

The system does feel snappier under Windows 7, and the memory footprint is down by about a quarter. I'm also noticing a lot more multi-core activity in routine work, though I'll admit that may be from me watching for it.

Oddly, though, upgrading means a demotion in my Windows Experience ranking... not because my hardware's running slower (it's most decidedly not) but because MS raised the bar on their rankings. Overall the system rates a 5.9 out of 8... but only because I didn't RAID the hard drive or use an SSD or something. Ignoring the drive read/write speed the system would be a 7.3 out of 8. For reference, Vista also rated my system a 5.9... out of 6.

The taskbar previews are very handy, and fast too. I'm definitely going to enjoy the "pin to taskbar" feature. IE8 renders extremely quickly, as well.

-- Steve's off to explore the Internet a bit more now with this thing to see what surprises await.

I'm about to take the plunge and upgrade to Windows 7.

Firstly I have to uninstall some software; two Catalyst utilities from ATI, and OneCare. (The latter is the biggie, as that's my antivirus at the moment. I'll have to download Security Essentials after the upgrade.)

Then insert Win7 disc into drive and faithfully obey all directions.

Then reinstall the Catalyst utilities and download new antivirus software.

And then check this sucker out.

-- Steve'll triumphantly post back when the upgrade is complete... or will post with wailing and gnashing of teeth if it duds outs.

I arrived home to find my upgrade copy of Windows 7 in the mailbox. I won't fire it up tonight, but I'm firing up the backup now and pushing the files off to my external hard drive.

Tomorrow night I'll do a full virus sweep and clean up... and then I think I'll wait until the weekend to do the upgrade itself.

-- Steve wants plenty of time as the upgrade advisor recommended uninstalling some pretty important utilities (including my ATI control utility) before upgrading.

Lousy night's sleep last night, to the point that I'm dragging my tail right now and am going to bust out some Emergency Coffee to reinforce the mug I've already drunk, but I did get something to grin about in my inbox this morning.

Microsoft just shipped my Windows 7 disc and sent me my tracking numbers. The estimated delivery time is in 10 days.

-- Steve'll be glad when it arrives.

I'm overjoyed with the performance I've seen on "Dark Knight" at home, whose Core i7 processor seems to take everything I throw at it and ask for seconds. It's easily the most powerful computer I've ever owned^*, and I'm glad I bought it.

News out today boggles my mind, though, in that Intel just announced they've released a mobile version of the i7 that Dell (through its Alienware marquee) and others will build into desktop-replacement and gaming laptops. This 8-core CPU is a vast leap up in mobile processing power... though I suspect that the batteries on these devices will be mostly for show, as even the mobile version of the i7 will draw 55 watts under load. (My CPU peaks at 150W.)

-- Steve thinks there'll be a lot of waste heat coming off of these things too. Maybe "laptop" is the wrong term...

edited to add the following footnote:
^*This phrase annoys me now that I've had some time to reflect. The only computer I've ever bought that wasn't a step up from its predecessor is my Origami UMPC... which I bought for reasons other than horsepower. What I should have said is that "Dark Knight" is the most powerful computer I've owned with respect to its generation of hardware and in relation to the software available; I tend to buy second-rung to avoid the price premium at the top, but this system performs like top-rung hardware for a lower dollar cost than my previous second-rung systems. That's what leaves me breathless.

MSI's motherboard support software is a lot more mighty than I anticipated.

There's a utility you can install called "OverClock Center" that gives you real-time access to performance numbers on the motherboard (temperatures, voltages, clock rates, fan speeds, etc) and adjust settings right from Windows... no need to exit to BIOS or set DIPs or jumpers. You can create user profiles of your own, or use (or adjust) six different pre-set profiles according to your expectations of the system. (Game mode, Cinema mode, Silent mode, etc.) On top of that, OverClock Center can run autonomously and change values on-the-fly according to system load; under low-demand circumstances this morning, just browsing some html sites, I noted it'd underclocked my system by 50% without perceptably affecting the browsing experience.

I knew it overclocked on demand, as I saw it drive my 2.66GHz chip to 3.0GHz when running Crysis, but I didn't know it could underclock/undervolt to save wear and power when the extra resources aren't needed.

-- Steve loves living in the future.

While poking about on "Dark Knight" I noted that there were two icons for Internet Explorer, one of which was labelled "64-bit". Curiosity struck and I clickied it... and found that an already snappy Internet experience got even snappier.

However, I don't think I'll make it my default quite yet... YouTube and Silverlight content don't function in that browser. I'm not software-wonkish enough to know why.

Oh well.

-- Steve'll use the high-bit version for stuff with lots of text and images, then swap to the low-bit version for video and audio content.

Well, I guess I had to at some point or another. I downloaded and installed the Crysis demo yesterday evening just to see how this system would handle it.

As it turns out, rather well. I used the demo's auto detection and it suggested that everything be set to "high"... though it defaulted to 1024x768 instead of 1280x1024 resolution. I bumped up the resolution to the latter and turned of Anti-Aliasing, then gave it a shot.

Mechanically it was excellent; though there was no built-in frame counter I didn't encounter any slow-downs or stuttering. There was an awful v-synch artifact (horizontal lines scrolling down the screen) that I couldn't address in the settings (poor form, Crytek; poor form indeed) but it disappeared when I switched from full-screen to windowed view. Odd. In any case, though, to my eye it appeared to support a framerate higher than 30fps even in the tight-and-crazy action. (I did try it with anti-aliasing and did find some stutter in cutscenes, though.)

Case temperature remained under my scare value, with the CPU reaching 50°C, the mo-bo 49°, and the system hotspot (the southbridge) staying below 72°. And that's with a game notorious as a system crusher... so I guess I shouldn't worry so much about heat build-up.

As far as gameplay goes... well, I didn't like the earlier Far Cry very much and Crysis is basically the same game in a prettier wrapper. It's competant as a shooter and the "open world" approach does grant the illusion of freedom, but the AI seems woefully artificial to me (though I'll grant its intelligence) and I found the story pedestrian; the combat is involving, but it's just an exercise in sneeking and use of iron- (or reflex-) sights. I won't be buying the retail version any time soon.

-- Steve did find it very pretty, though, and it actted as an excellent "proving ground" for "Dark Knight".

I just finished filling out my order form for the free Windows 7 (64-bit) Home Premium upgrade. I didn't realise that I had to fill it out in advance; it's a good thing I was browsing through the boxes looking for the "Intel Inside" nameplate that I seem to have misplaced, and noted that the upgrade card wasn't a standard download code but was an order form for a DVD.

Microsoft right now is showing that my DVD will ship on November 5th; presuming the usual Canada Post delivery times I'll get it the following Wednesday. That would actually be convenient, as I have the Thursday and Friday off and can spend at least part of that time upgrading the system.

-- Steve'll now go back to looking for (and hopefully finding) that vanity plate.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/gaming/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=091&active_tab=systemRequirements

According to my former Dark Masters at Mount Doom, I can unplug the controller from my Xbox360 and plug it into my computer. Plug n' Play, too, so the drivers'll just autoinstall and away I go. Now, I wonder if it'll work with that copy of Freespace...

-- Steve was browsing online for joysticks and finding them thin on the ground these days. Maybe this is why.

So I got my bonus last night, and it was even bigger than I expected. Almost enough to make my system come under the "50% of the loot" budget, even. The extra money came from a reserve fund from last winter; each year an extra lump of cash is set aside to cover possible "spikes" in service expense for our Roadside Assistance division, for instance in case of an ice storm the size of the one that hit Quebec and Ontario a decade ago. This contingency fund often gets tapped into during the winter, but this year apparently the cold snap led to more battery boosting (which is cheap to provide) than towing (which ain't) and folks took their driving seriously... so when last year's fund matured at the end of last quarter it was rolled over, so operational money didn't have to go in, so extra profit, so bigger profit-share bonus for everyone. Yay!

Which means, of course, that my impulse control slipped last night and I picked up a new game for "Dark Knight", Dawn of War 2.

Gosh, it's pretty. It also provided the first real measure of what "DK" can do, as I ran its configuration test; at 1280x1024 resolution (the maximum I'm willing to put through my ancient monitor) with 4xAA/4xCF, all details and effects dialled up to maximum, and full Havok™ physics invoked, it returned the following framerates.

Minimum: 33fps
Average: 61fps
Maximum: 140fps

Checking with the motherboard's temperature sensing utility showed a peak CPU temperature of 48°C, a peak system temperature of 49°, and the southbridge just stayed in its usual 62°-66° range. Alas, I didn't think to log the CPU usage to tell how much of its horsepower it used, but I don't think it actually broke a sweat. I think that the Phys-X support on my multiplexed pair (total 2GB RAM) of graphics cards took a lot of the burden away from the rest of the system there.

I am pleased.

-- Steve does note that DoW2 does run under DirectX 9, so in retrospect perhaps it wasn't a good test of the system's limits.

PS: I'm still in the early stages of the singleplayer campaign and I haven't tried any multiplayer at all, so I'll hold off on reviewing the game until I have more experience with it. So far, though, it's been fun... though it peeved me somewhat to find that I had to install Steam™ before installing the game. WTF? It's a Games for Windows Live™ title on DVD, not a Valve title or a download. Also, having to write down a second product key for multiplayer provided by Steam™ did not endear this form of DRM to me.

Well, final unless my other nefarious plan comes to fruition and I decide to take a shot of that. But in any case, here's a large (600x450, 80k) photo of the last cabling I did.

( Behind a cut to spare folks on narrow screens or bandwidth )
Not as neat a job as I'd hoped... the disadvantage of this power supply over the Cooler Master I'd originally planned on installing is that this has fixed (instead of modular) power cabling. So the gigantic Power Kraken had a lot of tentacles that had to be nylon-tied together and stuffed into the leftover optical bays. That, and the cables' outputs are linked four or five to a line (aside from the PCI-e, CPU, and motherboard dedicated cables) so the extra connections along the line made the bundles lumpier. Also, there's a bit of a dearth of good anchor-places inside the Sileo 500 case, and given the titanic lump of surplus cable I didn't trust the peel-and-stick hooks supplied to support the weight.

Still, I've got good airflow in the case (save for the annoying but unavoidable problem of having the southbridge heatsink, already somewhat hot, right under one of the video cards) so the machine runs cooler than even my little 40W Samsung Q1; the only after-market cooling I'm considering would be an extra clip-on fan to boost airflow over the southbridge/VGA collision.

And here the Dark Knight is in operation, in the dedicated tower slot of my faux-maple desk. Please excuse the fish-eye effect as I had to use a wide-angle zoom; the next stage is getting rid of the boxes and other detritus.

-- Steve feels a certain pride of accomplishment in designing and building his own system from scratch. Maybe he'll do the same next time... in six or eight years, hopefully.

Regarding my desktop "Dark Knight", those who've been following along may have noted my lament that the third PCI-e slot on my motherboard, into which I'd planned to fit a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium card, is masked by the coolling fan of one of my graphics cards... I didn't realise during planning that Sapphire had changed spec and made their HD4850s double-width to improve air flow.

It's not that the slot is *occupied*, mind you, just that there's a honkin' big fan overtop it so that a card won't fit into that slot. But a cable would... is there such a thing as a ribbon cable that I can slot into a PCI-e x4 expansion slot as an "extension cord", and then screw-mount the X-Fi card into a vacant bay while connected to the mo-bo by this cable?

-- Steve's Google-fu is weak, but that may be because he doesn't know the terminology to describe such a device in a technical fashion.

All hail OneCare, from which I have just managed to recover to my replacement hard drive every document from a total, physical hardware failure of the first water. I will never, ever begrudge the backup routine ever, ever again.

-- Steve hates that it took an afternoon and evening to rebuild the entire system, but at least nothing got lost save for one, lone game-save.

Just back from the store with a brand new hard disc. Apparently, the previous one physically failed in use and was actually digging the heads into the lower platters. Total write- off, and the service guy says he's never seen this model fail this way without being smashed by an outside trauma....which wasn't evident in my case.

So, back to square one on setting up Vista... let's hope I can save some time on the rest of the restoration.

-- Steve's glad he's not out-of-pocket on this, at least.

My primary hard drive in DK just absolutely failed, to the point that BIOS doesn't even recognise it. Just in case I swapped cables, power, and ever SATA port but no-go... and I was halfway through backing it up when it crapped out.

Dammit.

-- Steve'll take a shower, grab a quick lunch, and take the silly thing back.

It takes quite some time for MS OneCare to scan 1.1TB^* for viruses and defrag it. I was hoping it'd be able to take advantage of the multi-core processor to speed things up, but it looks like it's hammering one core at a time and leaving the rest alone... which in a way is nice, because that leaves me the other 7^** for my own Nefarious Purposes.

-- Steve can deal with the wait under these conditions.

PS: Using MSI's own reporting tools, it looks like I made a good choice in case; at idle the CPU's running at only 30°C and that's only with the bog-standard cooler included with the chip. Alas, the system's a bit warmer at 36° and the I/O hub is a disturbing 62°... I may want to look at an after-market cooler for the chipset. And that's with the case fans running at a whisper-quiet 830rpm... so quiet that the traffic noise is now drowning them out.

^*Two physical drives, one a 1TB SATA, the other the 120GB IDE from my old computer that's partitioned into two virtual 60GB drives.
^**The i7 has 4 physical cores, but it supports Hyperthreading™ which supports two threads per core so Windows sees it as an 8-core system.

I found the source of the ticking noise in my fan... I'd left one cable tie un-snipped in the case, and it was brushing the CPU fan. *Ooops*. All fixed now... Dark Knight isn't quite silent now, but it's vastly quieter than my previous computer and my Xbox 360, and indeed is quieter than the distant traffic noise out my window. Very pleasant.

Speaking of my 360, I've got Windows Media Centre chuckling along in the background here collating my pix, songs, and vids for pushing to the 360 whenever I want to see them on a bigger screen and in true 5.1 surround sound; my current computer speakers "fake" 4.1 sound by interpolating from a stereo output surprisingly well, but not perfectly. Something else for the Christmas list, I guess, would be true 7.1 surround sound speakers. But I won't be suffering too much until then pushing the audio through my home theatre receiver.

Disappointingly the drivers for the 4850 video cards aren't entirely stable; Dawn of War: Dark Crusade sometimes freezes, and Good Old Games' Beyond Good and Evil sends me a nag note that my video drivers aren't up to date even though I have the latest signed drivers right from ATI. Hopefully that'll get ironed out soon... Dawn of War with the settings maxxed out looks sweet and runs a steady 60fps on this thing. (Until the next crash, that is.)

Well, it's been a long day of recovering settings and reinstalling software and pounding my head on absurdities. (Mine and the software's, truth be told.) Time to do a quick tidy up and head for bed.

-- Steve's oddly tired for having done so little physically.

Da-na-na-NAAA-naaaa....

This here is the first post from my brand new computer, nicknamed "The Dark Knight" for its black, acoustically-damped case and its Core i7 quad CPU. Yes, I finally got it up and running.

A few quibbles, though. There's a bit of fan noise from the exhaust fan I need to deal with, more annoying than serious though it may be from the blade brushing the housing which would be not good.

A seriously-annoying roadblock was MSI not including Vista (or Win7) drivers for the Ethernet port on the disc... boo, hiss, making me dash over to the laptop and download them. Bad form, that; what OS did they expect folks to be running on a 64-bit multicore board anyway? Man, they even had legacy drivers for Win98 on there...

Still doing the updates as I go, so I'd probably be best returning to this task.

-- Steve does like how fast this new thing is, and he hasn't even fired up any games yet.

... which means I'll feel less guilty about spending the bulk of it indoors. *chafes hands*

I guess I'm still a bit excited. I woke up at 7 on the dot this morning, despite a self-promise to get lots of sleep, remembering computer dreams... some pleasant, some not so pleasant including one rather spectacular one ending with vigorous application of a fire extinguisher. (Yes, I have one. It's a little kitchen-sized one my Dad got me a few Christmases ago... I still check the pressure guage every now and then.)

I'll spend a leisurely morning with breakfast (not bacon-and-eggs with an open computer cabinet on the dinner table... toaster waffles and an apple involve much less risk of contaminating current-bearing circuitry) and coffee, maybe catch the news on TV, do the usual ablutions, and then set up for the power-on test. Which involves taking the monitor off of this computer... and if the test goes well, it involves opening up the old case to implant its floppy drive and hard disc into the new one. So barring disappointment this'll be my last blog post from my old silverback Pentium 4. *sniff* Ave atque vale, loyal servant.

-- Steve will most likely donate the remaining components to a local charity that restores them for non-profits... does them good, and keeps all that solder and stuff out of the dump.