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.

Farewell Steve Jobs

If you didn’t know already, Steve jobs has passed away. The Steve Jobs from Apple, is gone from us on this day.
The page on Apple’s websites Commemorating Steve Jobs

A message to Steve,

You sir are the reason for competition, the motivation that kept everyone evolving and growing. You Steve jobs were the one that everyone had to beat. A legend, a leader and a motivator. Steve Jobs, this is a better world because of you. We as humans found room to grow our minds because of your ideas and your inspiration.
We thank you Steve jobs, you will be missed.

We hope that everyone that follows, tries to be an inspiration in the technology world, and we hope they will all follow in your footsteps to continue to grow our minds. Thank you Steve Jobs, it was the greatest of pleasure living within your time.

Feel free to ad your farewell below. We all know Steve will never see it, but what matters now is the feelings of the people left behind.

Intel buys McAfee for just under $8b

McAfee sold to Intel for $7.68.
These are two companies I do not like. They are the center of everything bundled with crummy computers. They are the generic item that everyone gets with their new “outa the box” machine. And since so many people have these two, everyone assumes they are the best. ” More people buy Intel than AMD so it must be better” . Well no it’s bundled more often because it’s mass production junk.
Think about it, more people in the world shop at wally mart…………. Why? because it’s there. and convenient.
Mcafee is bundled in everything you buy.
Remember when AOL disks showed up in your mail on a weekly basis? People actually installed it years after broadband became common.
Mcafee calls it’s self an “antivirus” truth is, there is no such thing. There is just software that tell you when you have an active virus on your computer… The virus scanner installs it’s self so deep that you the computer owner can’t unintsall it. So most virus programs are written to attach themselves to the “antivirus program”. This in turn causes the “antivirus” to ignore the virus, because removal of the virus would be suicidal for the antivirus. So let’s just call it a “virus alerter”.

This merger/sell is just a nice way to get all the garbage in one spot.

Now I have to go use a-squared to remove 1829 trojans off of my bosses computer. Neat how symantec 360 has only detected (or notified me of ) one virus while 1728 variations of the virus are directly attached to symantec.

Will Your Computer Handle GTA IV?

The current estimated specs for optimal running Grand Theft Auto IV Is 2 gigs ddr ram,7200 nvidia with 128 megs ram, 3 gig processor/cpu . Direct x 9, but ten will give you more,so you might want a dx10 video card. All resource hogging junk in vista turned off. Basically you are better off with XP and heading to black viper’s site and use his method of turning off themes and everything else you do not use when you are a gamer. 800mhz fsb . Broadband internet.

Be sure and run the best cooling on your machine. Pretty much all of what is out now, is going to get hot as hell when you are playing the game (GTA IV) on your computer.

The water detail is amazing, with trash floating in the water, not on the water, but really swirls around in the water as you walk or drive in it.

There is no official announcement of grand theft auto IV being out for pc gamers as of yet, but there is no opposing info. So let’s not completely rule this out. So yeah, I have hope.

I have a spot where you can vote for a pc version at iworkwithtech.com/gtaiv It’s better than a stupid petition.