It is so simple to just admit something is off, like admitting that any one of 5 slots can be an x16 slot, but only one can be used as an x16 slot at a time. If you only need one x16 slot that is a feature, but if you need two, it is a bug. The first rule in marketing should be ‘Don’t piss off your customers’, but too many hardware companies don’t understand that.

Nothing worth doing can be done quickly outside of combat, so take it as it comes. 😉

ASUS QA sucks, it always has. I’ve had three ASUS Maximus VI Extreme boards, and each gives me different results and issues. And ASUS still tell *half-truth’s*. Like on that board, they stare they have 5 PCIe x16 slots. But the fact is, only ONE will work with 16 lanes. If you have two or more cards, the others will all be x8 lanes (so essentially unidirectional, rather than bi-directional). ASRock do make boards with 2 x16 slots, so if you have two vid cards in SLI (Nvidia) or Xfire (AMD), they will both run at full speed (that was a big problem with previous boards with 1 x16 and 1 x8 slot, the cards were not synced properly and it had to be dealt with in the software (drivers) which more often then not, would glitch now and then). 🙂

Yeah, ASUS still have RAM compatibility problems, though they have eased them somewhat with their new T-Topology design between the CPU & DIMM’s. But their rated spec’s generally work properly (on the Haswell CPU’s at least) with only two sticks rather than 4, and 2 or 4GB sticks, not 8GB (at the higher frequencies). Part of the problem is the RAM makers. They get cute with the timings or volt’s to make them look good on paper. *shrug*

Ah well… I’ll have a lengthy review for my blog… assuming I ever get time to finish it!

Yes, they all protect their cash cows from internal competition, even if it means limiting newer products. It’s all about maximizing profits, and it’s only going to get worse with AMD floundering.

The one technology they disabled in the ‘K’ chips proves to me they are really afraid that people will buy these for $350 rather than the $1100 old fuddies! 😉

TSX-NI (Transactional Synchronization Extensions New Instructions) are a set of instructions focused on multi-threaded performance scaling. It essentially helps make parallel operations more efficient and improves control of locks in software.

It’s only been disabled in the ‘K’ model that can be O’C’d. If that had been enabled, some of the areas where the 3970X still has an advantage (multi-threaded op’s) would all but disappear with the 4770K @ 5GHz! Since the locked versions have it, it was disabled on purpose, and the only legitimate reason is because it made their expensive CPU’s look bad. *shrug*

No worries Juanita. 😀 I figured you understand me somewhat by now. Just thought I’d take the opportunity to put things in perspective. I had a suspicion the pink boots weren’t gonna be on the shopping list! 😉 😆

I love Red Dwarf (well, the early series. the past couple have been… not up to the standard. Just seem to have been produced to capitalist on the success, ya know? Plus, when they started, they had an effects budget of about $500! Which made it even funnier! 😀 (and they had to get pretty creative). Now, the seem to rely more on money to solve effects issues, and less creativity. And it shows. Oh well… That’s the way it goes sadly. *shrug*

Here’s the second half of that sketch, if you are interested. 😀

Smee heee – Red Dwarf – BBC comedy

Well Bryan, spent a couple days with the guys in Melb. I really wasn’t a very happy camper. I tested a lot of products, and for the most part… they are absolute garbage! Look pretty, spec’s on paper are impressive… and that’s about it! I showed them what the problems were, and asked if they really wanted to sell a system with them in it as they could guarantee heaps of support calls and RMA’s! And some of the worst were big name brands (ASUS for one, Corsair for another!) Then I read the ASUS Warranty (and this is for a top of the line, expensive, Motherboard) and you would swear the warranty was written by M$! If you get a faulty product, even DOA, you have to ship it back at your expense PLUS some legal/admin fee, and wait (an unspecified time) for them to eval the board and *Maybe* send you a replacement, eventually. Maybe!

I told them I’ve lost interest. This is why I got out of this crappy retail game in the first place. You get screwed by both sides, suppliers and customers! Anyway… they twisted my arm (they are a nice family and staff, otherwise I’d have called it quits, plus they are paying me), so I’ll have one more go at it. But this is absolutely the last. It shouldn’t be this crazy. *shrug*

One of the problems is Intel. They have a really nice CPU in the new Haswell chip (i7-4770K) at least it would be if they got rid of their garbage GPU (Graphics processor) that takes up half the chip and power! And you can’t disable it, that would have been at least something! I know why they didn’t, because it would have absolutely killed their high-end 6-core crappy $1,100 CPU for a measly $350!! Heck, I managed to get it clocked to 5GHz, and it ran most benchmarks better than the i7 3970X! 😆 Imagine without the burden of the GPU, some extra cache… maybe a couple extra cores… I am sure they will replace the current old Sandy Bridge-E CPU’s with ones based on the new Haswell cores, and charge accordingly! And they have disabled some featured in the ‘K’ series4770 (this is the one with the unlocked clock/pwr so they can be overclocked. The others can’t). Mostly to do with Visualization and management (VT-d, Vpro, TSX-NI). So you HAVE to decide if you want to O’C & game, or do Visualization & remote management. (You can still do that with the ‘K”, but it’s all s/w and you loose out on useful technology that’s been disabled in the micro-code). But since it is in the micro-code, maybe someone will come up with a ‘patch’ to fix that. 😉 Wouldn’t be the first time. 😀

Meeeeh! I’ve always hated the way Intel does business, and now AMD seem to be trying to follow suit. Good luck with that!!

Ahh well… back to testing more h/w!

Ya know… this used to be fun… once.

And Kryten, as much as I admire the writer at Juanita Jean’s, pink cowboy boots may not exactly be my style. 🙂 And yes, I do get your humor, that “honest” part was a bit of my own. Thanks for the Red Dwarf clip, it was worth the trip! Yes, a little light relief comes in handy.

Even when you worked in teams on a project it was a major PITA keeping people to the specs so that every team was receiving the input they expected, and produced the output that the next team required.

If you don’t have the expertise to write the specs, you won’t get what you need, and the only way you get that expertise is by being able to do it yourself.