Upgrades for a long time friend?

Not so much. I managed to procure to a fairly cheap Athlon TF-20 a few days ago. I can now say with confidence that I give up on making this LT3103u any more powerful. My unlucky clock generator chipset has plagued in my quest to overclock and even in my quest to reduce power consumption through underclocking. And now it has returned to haunt me in this latest cpu endeavor.

I pried the little thing open carefully (quite easy, actually), and swapped the TF-20 in. Put things back together quickly and hit that power button. Nothing. No post. Pulled the ram out, no change. Swapped the L110 back in to make sure I didn't fry anything on the way in, and it fired right up and into Windows. Bummer eh. I was excited about this.

So to anyone looking for a cheap cpu upgrade, if you have the unoverclockable clock generator (the one that only gets to 1.43GHz and is unstable during clock changes) don't bother. Be happy at 1.43GHz I guess, it's still more powerful than an Atom :P

Consider them greased.

I caved under the pressure, again. Bought myself an eReader. I drove 45 miles to the nearest Borders store last weekend in the middle of the day and bought an Aluratek Libre. If $140 for me was nearing impulse buy price, then $100 for me was like buying a stick of gum.

I've read a few books on it so far and my overall impressions after a week can be summed up in the phrase "good but not great."

I compared it side by side to the Kobo they had in the store, and the eInk display is by far the better looking technology. I'm not calling the Libre's reflective LCD bad, but it can't shake a stick at the contrast eInk delivers in any lighting. That's my only real negative point. After all, I did decide on the Libre.

The positives flow on for paragraphs, so I'll save them for another long winded review post. With pictures. I haven't found any real in depth reviews online of the Aluratek Libre, so I'd like to get one up for the Google spiders to crawl across once or twice.

Until then, I'm off to find an AMD TF-20 for this Gateway. That'll be fun.

Justification, sweet as nectar.

Looking back, for the first time in a long time, I can say that was money well spent. This Core i3 rig blazes through anything and everything I throw at it. And the 10k rpm drive isn't hurting it either. So I posed a question for myself last post. Is the extra money worth the extra system performance?

In short: yes, absolutely. Intel, you have wowed me.

This rig now runs cooler, quieter, and much faster. My video card is no longer waiting on the cpu and can perform like it should. I've spoken in the past about my love for AMD, but I feel that I am not being fair this time around to them. I am comparing apples to oranges here. An old 65nm Athlon x2 and Phenom x4 to a brand new 32nm Core i3 is not a fair comparison to make. So I cant knock AMD here, let's get that straight. With some spare cash lying around I'd throw down and buy a Phenom II x2 for a duel. But spare cash, unfortunately, isn't simply lying around.

So I have to use the cash I have for meaningful purchases and not just to satisfy my curiosity. That's why I'm thinking of getting some sort of eReader. To satisfy that other part of me: my sometimes irrational consumer obsessed with small electronic gadgets that I'll rarely use.

Sure, I have an old android phone that could be used as an eReader with a bit of software and squinty eyes (2.8" lcd, heh), but it wouldn't be new. Or shiny. Now argue to me why either of those things are not important to any purchaser of small electronic gadgets. Try, I'll wait.

With the surprisingly cheap and well received Kindle 3 on backorder for the time being, I've started looking for alternatives. Cheap is what I'm concentrating on here. I read quite a bit and something cheap to fill the spot in my bag usually reserved for a paperback mustn't be something I'll be afraid of breaking. A near-disposable appliance is what I'm after, and even the Kindle 3 at its 139.99 price point is close to being just that. Hell my new phone was $300 a month ago and I cradle it like a newborn.

Speaking of my new phone. Why is it that the Blackberry App world has not a single free pdf viewer or ebook reader? Not that I'd want to any extended reading on a device as small as my new Curve 8530 anyway, but still. It's the principle of the thing.

So I've been using my netbook, the Acer Aspire One AO150, for a bit of eReading lately. And as small as is to carry around, it is still cumbersome enough to warrant the purchase of a dedicated eReader.

So this post I've justified my purchase of my latest computer build successfully. Its astounding speed increase over my previous components was justification enough. Then I am attempting to justify the purchase of an eReader. I feel I am slipping here though. It's just outside the range of "impulse buy cheap" at this point. Maybe I'll wait until I get paid this week. Maybe that'll grease my fingers enough to let the cash slip. Maybe.

The beginning of a new one.

I've been thinking for a while about building myself a new desktop. I tend to build and rebuild my machines every month or so, but always with old components. I take things apart and put them back together in different patterns until I get bored of it. Well it's about that time that all of my hardware has surpassed it's useful life in any build pattern I could manage.

So naturally, I've got a few parts coming from Newegg. I deliberated about which parts to buy for a long time. Let me stress that again, a long time. Normally I'm pretty much an impulse buyer when it comes to electronics. This must have been a record for me. It literally took two weeks to decide on this build.

So I've ordered:

-Core i3 540

-Biostar 1156 mobo

-2 x 2GB GSkill DDR3-1333

-150GB 10,000RPM WD Raptor

-Thermaltake Silent 1156 cooler

-and a new SATA DVD-RW drive to top it off

while reusing:

-Antec 300 case -3 x 120mm Antec, 1 x 140mm Antec fans

-PC Power & Cooling 500w Silencer PSU

-ATI HD4770 GPU

In the past I came across as an AMD fanboy. Well let me tell you... That is completely true.

Why Intel this time around? I've been asking myself that for the past two weeks. I think the sheer performance increase over a comparably priced dual or triple core from AMD was what did it. I was initially hovering over the buy button of a Phenom II x2 555 and a water cooler. In fact, the AMD route this time would have been an incredibly cheap upgrade. My current motherboard was flashed to support AM3 Phenom II's all the way up to the new x6. The problem came in the DDR2 my motherboard requires and the power consumption.

"Power consumption? What kind of hippie BS is this?" flew around my head for a while. But it had practical implications as well. Less power consumed means I can feel better leaving the machine on 24/7. Especially if it consumes about what a 70 watt light bulb does when it's at idle like all the reviews show. My low wattage Athlon X2 consumes more than that at idle, and it's designed to consume less power.

Another practical advantage this power consumption crap has is in overclocking. I love overclocking things until they burst. I love the idea of pushing my budget system into monster Core i7 performance territory. Overclocking the x2 4850e to extend its life? Near impossible on my boards. I can't manage to get it past 2.9GHz without voltage increases. At that point it stops being a low wattage processor anyway. Plus, even overclocked my Athlon x2 4850e looks to be about HALF as powerful as a stock Core i3 540. Overclocking a Phenom II x2 555? That's what the water cooler was for. Again though, reviews showed the Core i3 to be a crazy overclocker with performance that blows the Phenom II x2 away.

Then you must be asking, "why not an Athlon x3 or x4 then?" My answer: power consumption. And practicality. I had a quad core. Did I ever use all 4 cores? Never. I was never doing enough at any one time to really push that CPU to its limits. Don't read that the wrong way though. I was constantly aching for more MHz on that quad. None of the applications or games I played could use more than a single core anyway. Even today the proliferation of multi-threading in games is quite small (but growing). That's where a fast dual core with hyper-threading comes in. The best of both worlds? From what I can tell at least.

After all this power consumption nonsense subsided price came into play. The Phenom II x2 555 was hanging around $99 when I was considering it. The Core i3 was lingering at $125. This made the Phenom upgrade choice more attractive from the start. Then the price of the Core i3 on Newegg dropped to $115. A 10 dollar difference made me completely abandon the Phenom upgrade path and reconsider my entire plan.

The Athlon x3 440 sitting at a lowly <$80 price only muddied the waters for a short time, as the 95w TDP kept creeping back.

So my total price went from a smidge under $180 for a Phenom + water cooler to $325 for a CPU, mobo, RAM, cooler, and optical drive. The WD Raptor was actually free, but that's for later. For this price I'm getting a fast dual core with HT and a sky to overclock up to, a cooler to enable said overclock, and new fancy RAM with room on the mobo to upgrade. Finally, I'm hoping this will enable my HD4770 to reach its full potential.

Is the expectation of far superior system performance worth the extra cash? I hope so. I've been trying to justify it since I ordered Saturday. Parts should be in this week. I hope I'm right.

Mad battery life, yo. RMClock and all that.

I've been meaning to do a short tutorial on how to undervolt/underclock my humble LT3103u. So here goes I guess.

First, go download RightMark CPU Clock Utility (RMClock). It's the 5th box from the top of the page. Either the rar or the exe will work, they both install the same software.

Once you install it you'll see this.

If you don't see it after installing, it'll be in the task bar. It looks like a small cog or gear.

First thing you'll want to do is to check that RMClock does NOT start up with Windows. If it starts up every time on a bad setting, you'll have to hit safe mode to change it back. Think of it as a preemptive safety measure for now. Go to Settings on the left, and make sure "Run at Windows startup" is unchecked.

Before you start, remember: RMClock is a powerful and capable piece of software that can change the way your computer functions very easily. That can be both positive and negative. So as always, be careful. The steps I've taken here got me to a reliably working undervolted and underclocked machine, but not without a few scary hiccups along the way.

Let's begin.

The real meat of the program lives in the Profiles section on the left.

Mine is already configured, but it will work for explanation.

Step 1. Change P States and set Profiles:

The 5 boxes in the lower part of the main pane are P States, or power states. The FID is the multiplier of the cpu. For our cpu, the Athlon 1.2, our P States are rather limited. 4x equates to 800MHz and 6x equates to 1200MHz (1.2GHz or stock frequency).

The VID is the voltage the cpu will draw at each frequency (FID). This will take some tweaking, as every cpu and motherboard react differently. Mine are set to right above the lowest I could get them while still being stable under full load. 4x (800MHz) is at .6875v and 6x is at .8000v. These are actually one step above the voltage I tested full load at, for stability's sake.

The P States in between will automatically adjust, so you shouldn't have to change them at all or even select them.

The Profiles above the P States are simply choosing which profiles you'd like to use under which circumstances. So on AC power I have the Maximal Performance profile selected and on battery I have the Power Saver profile selected. Make sure to click apply on every pane you change settings on.

Step 2. Adjust Profiles to use the new P States:

Start by selecting on the left the profile you chose for AC Power. In my case it is Maximal Performance.

Select under AC Power "Use P-state transitions (PST)" and select the multiplier you'd like to use while plugged in. I chose 6x or 1.2GHz as battery life isn't a concern while sipping power from an outlet. Make sure to press apply on the bottom right. Your cpu should immediately undervolt to .8000v at 1.2GHz if successful. You can check it by hovering over the cog icon in the task bar. It should be colored (probably red). If not, go back and check your settings again. If it did, put some load on the processor to stability test it. If it crashes, don't panic, see Step 3.

Next select the Power Saving profile on the left.

Do the same thing on this pane. Under Battery check the use P-states box and select your desired multiplier. In my case I wanted maximum battery life so I went with the 4x or 800MHz box. Hit apply and that's it. Unplug the AC cable and check the task bar icon. It should change to green. Now run your favorite heavy application to put some load on the cpu. A favorite of mine is Hulu. Watch a show or two. If it crashes, no problem, just reboot and no harm done.

Step 3. If it crashes:

Say your rig crashed under load. Blue screens, lock ups, or anything not normal. It's usually a simple fix. If you have the bad clock generator that I have, these settings will work great. If you can overclock past 1.43GHz you have the better clock gen and your settings can get much more fancy. I'll just assume you have bad luck like I do and bought the bad clock gen equipped model.

Solution: raise the voltages. Go up one notch. If you used my settings: 4x @ .6875v and 6x @ .8000v, go up a single click on each back at the Profiles pane. My settings, like I said, are quite conservative and shouldn't need tweaking. I did get success at lower voltages so your mileage will vary if you go below my settings. I've read of people getting 4x 800MHz stable at .6000v but mine wouldn't do it.

Step 4. Cleanup:

If you're like me, you don't like a cluttered task bar. RMClock adds many little icons down there that annoyed me heavily. The Settings pane can fix that with a bit of tweaking. The Battery Info pane also helps. It allows you to disable Windows' battery icon to use RMClock's, which I recommend.

If you are successful with the P States, then go back and make sure RMClock is set to start with Windows, preferably minimized (in Settings).

This is only the tip of the iceberg with RMClock, it is a very advanced piece of software. It has more options than I'd feel comfortable checking off. I've seen far too many blue screens and lockups simply getting this far. jAnd that was ust by playing with voltages and settings. Again, be careful.

Good luck! If you have any questions or trouble, leave a comment and I'll check back pretty often.

My soul is prepared.

Is yours?

This semester is coming to a slow, painful end. After that I get to enjoy my summer (three weeks off). And more school. Ah the things we do to get out on time.

I’ve run into a small snag with my undervolted LT3103u. Instead of undervolting/changing frequencies to save battery, I attempted to use RMClock’s built in voltage/frequency scaling setting (power on demand) while plugged in. It ranged from .675 volts @ 800MHz to .750 volts @ 1.2GHz with a few p-states in between for smooth scaling. Unfortunately my clock generator didn’t agree.

If you recall from a past post of mine, I was only able to overclock to 1.43GHz because of the “bad” clock generator in my unit. That clock generator also disagrees with voltage and frequency switching. I started getting BSODs and lockups at seemingly random times. Not at startup when the CPU was pegged at 1.2GHz. So fortunately it was painless to change back.

At first I thought my CPU was going out, because I’ve been working my new tech job and I’ve been running into bad CPUs and the symptoms associated with one for a while. I almost ordered a used Athlon TF-20 from eBay. That’s when I Googled around a bit and found that it’s my clock generator that is simply not a mod friendly piece. Sad.

So now I have it just set to undervolt on battery power and to stay at 1.2GHz on AC power. I was also able to get the system stable at .675 volts @ 800MHz while on battery, which should help with battery life a bit more. So far the battery life while undervolted is vastly superior to stock. Surprisingly though, it doesn’t feel handicapped on battery power like you’d think 800MHz would make it. Still plays YouTube (as long as you don’t full screen it or turn it up past 360p). It struggles with Hulu at 800MHz though. It allows me to chat on Skype while typing notes, reading RSS feeds, or browsing just fine.

So this little thing has just become a school-tote machine again. I think I’ll have to make a dock for my desk. I have some plexiglass sitting around somewhere that would do nicely. Hmm.

I also might post a small tutorial for anyone interested in using RMClock to undervolt the LT3103u. If not for anyone else, possibly for me to refer to in the future. Early onset of Alzheimer’s in kids these days eh.

Twitter shitter.

I am facing another conundrum I fear may tear apart the fabric of my sanity. Smartphones. No, not which to get or why one’s better than another. My parents want to get them. For what? Good question, I don’t think they know either. That commercial with the parents on Twitter suddenly hits me and I flinch.

Enough of that, back to computers and stuff that helps to keep my brain inside my head. Ubuntu 10.04 hit the internet recently, have you heard? It’s fantastic. Assuming you have hardware that cooperates with it. I decided to give it another try on this LT3103u, as I was running the beta before. I figured it’d be a bit nicer, maybe they’d iron out some bugs that I specifically had. Hopeful, I know. But hey, if we didn’t have hope, where would we be? Using Windows, ha.

I kid. I’m actually typing this on Windows, but that’s a story for later. On this page I mean.

The 10.04 install went smoothly, with all the usual stuff working out of the box: sound, wireless, graphics, touchpad, etc. Even Compiz was turned on by default, which is nice. However, things tend to turn sour for me very quickly. And things did. The graphics started glitching again. Annoyingly. Surfing the web was a nightmare. I’d scroll down and the whole page would suddenly attract horizontal lines of different colors. A quick Ctrl-Alt-Left to switch workspaces would fix it, but still. I attempted, to no avail, to install different drivers. I read online somewhere that the RadeonHD open source drivers would work better for this specific chipset (x1270). But I couldn’t figure out how to work them. Normally you’d install them, pop over to you friendly xorg.conf file and change a few letters. Not in 10.04. So I gave up on that.

Then came the battery life. Is it really necessary to install a specifically built kernel to get throttling? Apparently. Even with throttling enabled, the battery life never creeped above 3 hours at idle.

But damn if Lucid Lynx ain’t pretty and extremely usable. This AMD chip and ATI chipset just aren’t ready for full time Linux duty, sadly. So I’m back in Windows. The dreaded Vista. I had a spare Vista Business license, so I’m running that now. With working throttling and undervolting via RMClock.

Battery life is much improved (over Linux). Right now I’m on battery with the CPU locked at 800MHz, listening to Pandora, typing this, with WiFi on (obviously), backlight at lowest and RMClock’s battery monitor is bouncing between 4:20 and 4:55 remaining at 97% battery. That’s not 12 hour Acer Timeline battery life, but it lasts me through my couch surfing sessions.