How to get the best performance of an AMD


I have always been for the underdog. The guy no one likes, the team no one supports, the processor that everyone thinks is no longer in the game.
I have also always been a little under the funds and great with overclocking, cooling and mods.
I have only once owned an Intel, but have had probably 10-15 AMD computers in my time.
These computers always under performed, but got me a good, strong enough computer for the money I spent.
So I always spent about $400 on my computers total. Cheap motherboard and processor combo and wait for upgrades or low cost motherboard paired with a mid cost AMD processor.
Well, I found out AMD has been making awesome processors all along. I was just doing it wrong. I found the fix that makes your AMD run just as well as the Intel in the same class.

I ran an AMD FX8320 on a MSI 970A G46 for a couple years and came into a deal for an FX9590. So I got it. I forget what I paid, but I did okay. The problem was, the FX8320’s default watts is 125W while the FX9590’s default watts is 220W. Big difference. So I bought liquid cooling because that beast gets hot. Super hot. And, what I never expected, the 970A G46 caps at 200 watts – which explained the sudden crashes. So I go buy a Sabertooth 990 motherboard and slap the FX9590 on it and I’m good to go. I also grabbed some more RAM and a hard drive because now I have two computers; one that runs like a tank and one that gives the spank. What I saw in performance in the short time the FX9590 was on the G46 board, was outrageous difference. My girlfriend used to borrow my G46 computer to edit videos and it would take forever to render them in Camtasia. Meanwhile, her i7 2600K would do it in no time. What would take my FX8320 1.25 hours to render, her i7 2600K would do in 15 minutes or less. Often less. The FX9590 on the G46 motherboard would render the videos in just under an hour. Now the FX9590 on the Sabertooth motherboard was showing great progress. It would render the videos in just under 22 minutes. Not as wonderful as her i7, but sure was a huge difference from the G46. Well, I got curious. I pulled the FX8320 from the G46 motherboard and put it on the Sabertooth and used the same last video to render. Under 18 minutes. So, I launched my AutoCAD, opened the last drawings, grabbed the nearest PDF I could find and dragged and dropped it into AutoCAD. No problem. Faster than I have ever worked in AutoCAD with an Xref PDF in my life.

It’s the motherboard.

The whole trick is the motherboard.
Everyone thinks AMD is for cheap builds. As if you can just buy everything cheap in the same class as Intel. So they buy cheap on everything. You can’t. You have to have a solid motherboard.

Match the Intel processor price range with your motherboard. What I mean is, if you want a high, strong, mid-grade running computer, look at the i5 cost, find the nearest motherboard to that cost, turn to AMD and grab a mid-grade processor. You will perform close enough to the Intel processor that it won’t make a bit of difference. Other than that, the biggest difference is the Intel guy making the same machine will have to eat the cost of his Intel motherboard.

By the way, I sold the FX9590 on eBay and the customer loved it. I made a fair amount back for what little use I had with the FX9590.
There is good chance that I could have and should have done more with the FX9590, but I was beyond happy with the FX8320 after the motherboard upgrade.
It is still running strong, right next to my latest build…which will be in another post at another time.

The main message here is don’t skimp on the motherboard. You can save money on everything you feel safe saving money on, but you will, without a doubt, see the best performance of a processor if you do not skimp on the motherboard.
And the gf now has an i7 7700K liquid cooled I put together for her so her computer would at least be from this decade. But she still uses the 2600K. It literally is just as strong as the 7700K.
Anyhow, later post about the Ryzen machine in the works. I may do benches of all 4. Let’s see if she wants to cooperate on this.

AutoCAD LT, 2 Months Review

I have been using AutoCAD since version 2007.
From 2007 I moved up to 2011. From 2011, I moved up to 2013. From 2013 I moved to 2014. Where i have been sitting. Until January 2018,
In January my work partner got fed up with his 2011 version of AutoCAD and decided to move to the subscription 2018 AutoCAD lt.
We tested AutoCAD LT by opening all of the past files we had worked on and saw no problem. In fact, the files opened much faster and smoother.
Took me a couple weeks of having to get my work partner to convert files down to my version, me taking almost 3 minutes to open files on my Ryzen 1800x liquid cooled machine while his Pentium 4 was opening the same files in under 30 seconds. So I had to give in. The cost was low and the installation went quick and tech support was there for all of my questions before I made the actual purchase. So far I haven’t had to ask anything. Googled a couple times but that’s about it.

This Pros and cons will be between using an older full version of cad, and a new full support LT subscription version. Yes I understand how that is not a fair comparison but it is what I have.
If you are looking to change from a full version older version to the new subscription version and just want to do the LT plan to save a buck each year, here’s what I have found
Pros
Opens much faster.
Uses video card to speed up use- Acceleration far better than previous versions of full AutoCAD
Drawings look better Lines no longer have the odd zigzag that we have all come to accept.

Cons
Bcount is gone in LT
Multiline or MLINE is gone. You can no longer draw 2 inch or 8 inch walls without drawing each layer of Sheetrock separately.
EATTEXT – gone
Lisp – Gone

I find myself searching the internet trying to find alternative methods of doing my everyday stuff.
There is nothing that wont break the agreement with AutoCAD and getting my account canceled.

It looks as though I will have to give BricsCad, ProgeCAD and NanoCAD another run through to see what is missing where and how can I fix it.
Looks like AutoCAD LT turned out to be too little of of what I need for it to be of any use to me. Let’s see how the return policy (I was told about over the phone) about holds up.
I have to have all functions that full version AutoCAD 2013 had. I design fire alarm systems for fire alarm companies all around Texas. There is plenty of importance in me being able to draw everything I need to draw, use function of all attributes and block functions I have created over the years. I have a large collection of fire alarm tools, blocks, and symbols.

How to Change the Printhead for Canon IPF710

Canon Image  Prograph 710. Prints a nice fine colorful line, Excellent for design in  computer aided drafting.
It seems the printhead has an exact life predetermined. As if there is an exact number of prints it is allowed  before you have to pay your plotter dues. What I mean is, this head goes out pretty often. about once every two years where I work.
Today I got the  fine duty of removing and replacing this printhead.
So I took pictures along the way and decided I would post a “How to” for those who might want to see the process.
Fairly simple printhead to replace.

Before anything, on eyour Image  Prograph 710 (ipf710) go to the menu, and go to maintenance.
1. Select the option that says “replace printhead”.
The plotter will make a few sounds and put up a warning on the screen saying it is busy.
What plotter  is doing, is evacuating all of the ink in the printhead so you don’t make a mess and or mess up the plotter with an ink spill.
This  took about 3-5 minutes.
2.  When the  plotter has completed dumping the ink out of the printhead, you should hear some beeps and the screen will now tell you to unlock and  lift the large front  cover.
3.  The printhead carriage will now be in the center (or close enough that you can access the printhead) and the screen should be prompting you to open the  carriage cover.  Do that, it lifts from the front to the back. It’s about 3″x5 “.

carriage cover

4. Inside you will there is another locking mechanism, likely the same color. Lift that one also, it should lift from  back to the front. More like a locking arm.

Arm Lock

5.You should then find yet another locking mechanism,  likely the same color, it should lift from front to back.
When you lift this one, you should feel a click, that’s the printhead being released and slightly pushed up and outward. No more than an 8th of an inch though.

Last Lock

6. Now is a good time to put on a glove. There may be some ink.  Ours was quite clean.    Now reach in and grip the printhead tight and pull upward. Should not need much force. Be careful. Many breakable  parts in this area that can cost you plenty of downtime.

PF-03 printhead

This is what it looks like from the side Look at the image closely and look at the image above for orientation.
Put the old printhead in a bag  for  recycling. Or save it.
7. Now unbox and unbag the new print head and take the  safety covers off.

Now just reverse what you  just did, but with  new printhead.

Once everything is back together, the printer will  fill the new printhead with ink and begin testing and calibrating. This takes several minutes 10-15 minutes.

Once the calibration is complete, check the printout for anything that looks jagged or like ink blobs. If anything looks out of the ordinary, you may want to run to the menu and see if you can calibrate it again, or run the  head cleaner mode.
Mine was fine so I walked around the office with the calibration results telling everyone I have created a bar graph but couldn’t remember what it was for.
Just to see their frustration about wasted time and ink.
If you came here for drivers or manuals and made it this far, Here’s a link   .

Super Hero Symbols for Fire Alarm

As a fire alarm designer who has pretty much simplified fire alarm design, I’ve decided to make a handful of super hero symbols that resemble fire alarm symbols for autocad.
Understand that I can’t really use all of their symbols, and I can’t really figure out how to make them all relate.
So I stuck with the basic symbols.
Pull station = The Flashish looking
Smoke Detector = Supermanish looking
Waterflow = Wonder Womanish looking
Strobe = Captain America-ish looking
Horn Strobe = Green Lanternish looking
Duct Detector = Dare Devilish  looking
Smoke/Heat Combo – Dead Poolish
Tamper SWitch – Thor Hammerish looking
……And a few more

Right click and save 1600kb.

Of course the symbols do not look exactly like the actual character’s logos. That would just be weird. It’s kind of nice having them resemble the real deal.

Feel free to use these when messing around. These are not to be sold because… Well you know. Neither of us is Marvel or DC.
These autocad block for fire alarm design are also not NFPA  170 (and likely ahj) approved symbols. These do not  come with any guarantee of passing plans review at all. They do come with guarantee that I doubt they will pass but I won’t bet on that.
They are however in  their own blocks and can be dropped right in your autocad template for messing around.
Enjoy.
Here’s some more free fire alarm blocks for autocad

If you’d like to see more of my  work go to firealarmdwg.com For a large bundled set of Fire alarm symbols and blocks. About ten years of work.

 

Comment below if you have any requests or suggestions.

How to Tell the Quality of Your Computer Hardware

You want to know if you got a good deal on your processor and you want to know how to understand the classifications and how old your processor is. We all go through this.
Don’t worry, it’s a pretty easy, quick study to find and  there isn’t a whole lot to it. All of the gobbly goop stuff you hear people talking about is much easier to follow when you get the basics down. So…let’s do this. Let’s find out how fast your processor or video card is and which processors are faster or slower than yours.
I will explain this in a plain simple manor without using tech jargon. Don’t freak out.
You can click on any of the images in this post if you are having trouble seeing or reading them.

Age of your  hardware
The first digit from the left tells  how recent the technology is. Let’s say you bought an Intel CPU. That processor is a 7700K. If you look online  and you see nothing  higher at all, such as an 8700 or a 9700, then you are in the latest tech group. If you bought  an i7 5500 and you see online there are i7 7700 CPUs available, then you likely have bought a two year old  processor.

Power class of  your hardware
The second digit from the left tells you how strong your hardware is for it’s class.
If you have an i7 7700 and compare it to an i7 7600, the 7700 will be stronger.

Newer does not mean faster
If you have a 7600 and compare it to the 6700, the 6700 will be faster but incapable of doing some of the more recent tech tricks that have come out since the 6xxx models.

Is it clocked faster?
The last two digits tell you this.
All CPU makers (and video card makers) do a final push of their most recent (but soon closing out) product by shoveling out a hand full of overclocked processors. Intel, for example, ended their last batch of 6th generation i7 processors  with the 6900 rebadged and overclocked as 6950. The 6950 is the overclocked 6900. AMD did this with their FX processors, and shipped out the FX8300 rebadged as a 9590. Rightfully too. They made a beast of that processor. It sucked out more than twice the wattage the 8300 processors pushed, so you had to buy a special motherboard (of only like 5 available) that could handle so much wattage. It was a hot fickle beast, so water cooling was a must. 4.7 GHz out of the box. 5.0 GHz with turbo turned on – on 8 cores.

Now comes the last space. The lettering.
If you buy the i7 7700K, you have bought pretty much the flagship processor of 2017 Intel, but the more expensive, harder to locate and much faster processor is the X model – the i7 7700X.

AMD processors follow the same format

AMD Ryzen Classes

This is good. So we can all understand what we have without having to learn more formats.

Video cards now follow the same format.

Except, now you have to read right to left. That’s only because video cards go through the numbers faster and when they get done with the 1000’s spot, they start back over with a 3 digit identification (usually, who knows, this year may be different). What I am saying is read right to left to see what version. GT, GTX, TI, etc. Then, if it is overclocked, it will be identied by the first number from the right. Strength will be the second number from the right. The last 1 or 2 numbers (the 950GT having one number and the  1050GT having two numbers) will tell you how recent it is. Note that this number does not represent a year. It identifies a series.

Questions or complaints? Questions go at the bottom. Complaints…email those to the manufacturers.

How To Get Your Canon Pixma MG3620 Onto Your Network

Bought the Canon Pixma MG3620 printer. Installed all of the software and followed what I thought was instructions to install the Canon Pixma MG3620 printer to my network. After 4 hours of frustration trying to find some program “ij network scan”, I did what worked back at the office. Used the cell phone.
No I didn’t call someone who knows more. I connected through my phone to see what options I could utilize. on the plus side, I never had to do all of that. Set up for the phone did it all for me.
Don’t use a USB cable to set up your printer. You’ll be stubbornly clicking through all of the settings to find where you can type in your router passkey information.
Don’t bother plugging the USB cable into your Comcast modem. Doesn’t work.
That Canon Pixma MG3620 printer just won’t do any of that

The trick is to use your android or apple device. Install the canon Print Inkjet Selphy app.
Click through the setup to the point where it asks if you want to set up directly or through your router.
Select “Connect Via Wireless Router”.

after that it will ask you the password to your router.

Once the password is accepted you are done.

You can do the same by using a wireless pc,tablet,laptop.
Don’t bother using a usb cable. that just makes things more complicated. and that IJ network scan tool is useless once your

Did Houston Police Throw Away Donation

There is an image being shared by a lady on Facebook. It shows a garbage truck and a couple police cruisers under an overpass in Houston.
The image description says that the police showed up to a spot where someone was giving out food and “other gifts” with a garbage truck to throw away these items.
Here’s the exact quoted text (minus the hash-tags)

I was just informed that a group of people came to pass out free food and other gifts to the homeless in downtown Houston. Not only were the police called, but they brought a large waste management truck and are forcing the homeless to throw away their food, pillows and other items.

What this suggest is that the police have a guy in the garbage industry that can man up and fuel up a garbage truck quickly and without hesitation, and get to that location before the items scatter into different directions. As if there is a garbageman police sting set up at every intersection just waiting to pounce. Or, if the garbage truck and police cruisers are following this person around the city taking things from everyone they donate to.

I don’t know about every single spot in Houston, but most overpasses have a maximum of about 4 people under them and, when they see police, they just kind of scatter. Because, if they don’t, the police will break them up. If there is an overpass that has so many homeless and hungry people under it that it would require a garbage truck to show up, then the police have a huge issue and someone has been slacking.

Nowhere in the picture do you see any homeless people.

Nowhere in the image do you see a vehicle large enough to carry the amount of food that would require a garbage truck to be able to dispose of  it.

The police would not take the items. They would fine the donor; unless, the food was in such poor quality it had to be destroyed.

Where are the videos? Where are the photos of this? There is just this one and it looks like it is coming from someone driving past the location and later making up a story.
Where is the union complaining about the Houston Police forcing people to work after hours? Waste management unions will not put up with such things.

So, is this picture and story for real?
There are too many logical holes in this story. It has nothing to support it other than this one picture that shows less than the story says.

False until proven otherwise

Windows 10 vs upgrade to 10

I like many people jumped on the windows 10 upgrade from windows 7,8, and 8.1.
One month before the free upgrade to windows 10 ended, I drove to the store and bought myself parts and built me a new computer.
Since I had an extra windows 7 disk laying around that hadn’t been used or registered, I felt I should go ahead and save myself the money of buying an operating system since I already have one.
One month after the windows 10 free upgrade period ended, I ordered me a brand new windows 10 pro 64 bit disk.

Now comes the cool comparison.

I will be comparing windows 10 pro 64 bit full fresh install (not an upgrade) against my windows 10 pro 64 bit upgrade from windows 7.
For the sake of sanity I will just call  one computer the “upgrade” and the other the “full install”.

Upgrade to windows 10 computer
The upgrade came with a  clunky new browser that sort of looked like explorer, only dark blue. Found that explorer had been hidden in the programs folder with no shortcut. So I had to make a shortcut. Took forever to realize you can just click the start menu to get to control panel. Other than those discomforts, the computer was just as fast as it was before the upgrade. In some ways the upgrade computer ran faster and smoother. Until I started messing with new programs. Like the store or the new browser (edge). I installed my default browser, Opera. and wow that moves so much faster. For a little while. After a short while all browsers on the upgrade to windows 10 computer stopped playing videos. All videos just suddenly shut closed after about 10 seconds.
Everything just loads really fast on the upgrade computer

 

Full install of Windows 10 computer
On the full install computer, Edge runs faster but that’s it. Everything is sluggish and slow loading and running. It feels as if this computer is woking extra hard. Even edge after a while seems to get mucky and slow. Sometimes even locking up entirely.

On both versions of ten, My media players seems to cut out after a few seconds of watching video. Typically on facebook and some news website. Never on Youtube.

The eBay shipping deception

So, you go to EBAY and select to search only items within your country. Be it so you can find items that will get there sooner, or because you feel safer.
This is your choice.
This is what you selected and this is what you should find.
But there is a secret that people outside of your country know about that you might not know about.
there are companies that are built to give people from outside of your country, a mailing address to set up their ebay accounts with.
In the USA there are a few. Most common are in Compton California,Florida and New York. I will not post the names of these companies because I don’t want to pass this on to other people who want to know how this is done.

What I do want to make clear is that EBAY needs to filter this better.

Why does this bother me?
Here’s an example:
I just bought a phone from my phone carrier. Most expensive phone i ever bought. I researched everything I could on this phone. I looked up a good case for my new phone on Ebay. So i made my purchase through my phone carrier’s website, then I made my purchase on Ebay from a company stating that it is in the USA.
Shipping states that it will take 5 days for the case to get here.
6 days go by, and I have been delicately carrying my phone around. I look online to check the tracking and the information is cleared saying that it will now take three weeks for my phone case to get here. Why? because it takes forever for things to get mailed from the Philippians to the USA.
So here I am ordering yet another phone from some on that everyone seems to stating the shipping was super fast . Hoping I get a case on my phone before the week’s end.

If I wanted a case that takes forever to get here I would have paid for one of the $3 versions of the exact same case. but no. I paid $16 for it to come from the same country as the rest. Only disguised under some weird p.o. box garbage with a lay over.

Just a heads up about the deceptive mailing addresses of some of ebay’s users.
This type of  scam on ebay makes the website utterly untrustworthy and useless.

How to Talk to the I.T. Guy

I get it, you are calling someone to help you with something you are incapable of fixing yourself. You want to make sure you called the right person. Don’t confuse “Feeling a person out” with relentlessly challenging a battle of wits with a person who just wants to get the job done so he can go to the next location. You have to keep it professional.

The I.T. guy is a person who does everything like a normal person. Eats lunch, even if your job is an emergency and the puppies in the back are slowly catching on fire. The I.T. guy needs to eat. Be respectful. Move the puppies elsewhere.
Here’s a couple topics to consider when you want to talk to the i.t. guy

When you are on the phone giving them an idea of what’s wrong with your computer:
If something is broke or doesn’t work, don’t say “Nothing is working”. because you now told him your computer is not worth repairing, or you sent him on a goose chase of wasted time trying to find the problem. If everything is broke then he has to check hardware, when in the end it could mean you hit the mute button and didn’t realize it. Totally different issues.
Don’t ever say “I don’t know… You’re the I.T. Guy”.
don’t say “It was working fine before you guys came out last time”. If it was working fine, then why did they come out? Is that normal that people just come out while on the clock and hang out with you and start digging into your computers?

When someone is working on your computer:
Don’t complain on and on about anything. No one wants to work around that. Yes you all complain.
Don’t start tacking on more problems you have while the technician is still trying to diagnose what you called him out for.
Don’t ever say “I tried that”. Ever. Man, I was just reaching for the mouse…
Don’t “quiz” the technician before,during, or after repair. If you’re qualified to quiz, fix it yourself. That’s how you get “Sorry I didn’t find anything wrong, here’s my bill for trip fee and diagnosis”. You called him for a reason, tell him what the reason was. Those quizzes can turn into completely un-technical content. So having a battle of wits with a  computer guy is just dumb, he does not care how much you know about soil samples and he isn’t here to test if he knows more about it than you.
Don’t take control of the computer while the technician is still trying. It’s pretty creepy to have someone come up and slide their hand onto yours (reaching for the mouse) while you’re trying to work. Or sit in your lap for that matter.
While he is working and thinking and trying to come up with a solution, don’t start saying panic stuff like ‘OH MY GOD, DUDE!!!! WHOLY CRAP”. He is focused and you are blowing his attention.
Don’t ask him personal stuff unless you want to hear personal stuff.
Don’t rattle on and on about your problems. He is a computer guy, not a therapist.
No he can’t fix your microwave.
Don’t be over protective of your computer. He can’t work if you are constantly restricting him from doing things. Just as bad as tying a hand behind his back. Hide your selfies before he gets there if you have issues.
Give him space.
Don’t exaggerate.
Don’t pretend to understand, don’t ask for detail about something when you aren’t even listening anyway
Don’t tell him he is working on the wrong thing if your are the one who told him what the symptoms were during initial call.
Don’t bump any body parts on the guy while you are reading over his shoulder. In fact, don’t read over his shoulder. He’s not going to steal your company’s secret documents.
Don’t cough on his back,neck,top of his head while reading over his shoulder. Infact, GTF back and don’t breath on him.

The big one is the quiz game. Don’t quiz the i.t. guy.
I.t. guys have to deal with this stuff 100% of the time. Coworkers who think they can do his job and he is a waste of company money, other i.t. guys.
Anytime you hear someone talking about a problem and you want to just suggest something. You get treated like you told them their mom smells like fish and they should fix their computer with wet bologna.
It becomes tiresome that every time you go to a job you spend the first 15 minutes getting mentally felt up by the village idiot .
He got his job knowing his stuff. You don’t quiz your butcher, hair dresser, traffic cop, librarian, doctor, cab/taxi/uber driver, pilot or even your president. These are people YOU SHOULD quiz. Not the guy trying to fix your machine. Sure, you can question why he charged you for a hard drive and motherboard replacement when all he did was fix your icons. Yeah … question that for sure. but let the man start working. You’re just making it take longer
After the work is through, and you ask the the I.T. guy what the problem was, don’t follow up each answer he gives with “why”. You sound like a 5 year old.
asktheitguy

When he says “So can you tell me what’s going on with the computer?”, replying with “You tell me, you’re the IT guy”, I promise he has a million and one comebacks that would lose a customer. So don’t. It’s not even humorous, to anyone.
Be truthful, and get to the point, then get out of the way.

If you’re an IT guy who got sent here, here’s a video to watch. I.t Guy vs Sales guy.