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.

Heatsink Upgrade to Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus on AM3+ Review

The Girlfriend does a lot of video recording and editing internet companies. She runs an i7 processor and an Nvidia 970 video card with 16 gigs ram. She uses Camtasia software for a lot of her work. During the phase of compiling, we noticed sometimes her pc would crash, or lock up. After we installed speedfan we realized that she was hitting 180+ degrees so her intel was peaking high.
Until we could find her a new heatsink for her work horse, we tried to get by with my Athlon II X3 445 (Tri-core cpu) and my AM2 6 core which I bought for $5 at Epic A resell store.

This was a hard fact to face. The i7 is flat out a beast, and my AMD machines were completely useless for her. Except maybe recording. Rendering a video that she just compiled normally would have taken 10-17 minutes on her machine (when working right) ended up saying it would take 45 minutes on the AM2 and approximately 3 hours on the tri core.

So we took a trip to the computer store and bought the best heatsink they could advise, and what has the best/most reviews on line. We bought her computer a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. Her temperature now stays in the 110s while compiling. Oddly there is no noticeable damage to the cpu or motherboard.

PcCooler Heatsink

PcCooler Heatsink

IMG_1218 My AMDs that I was proud to have had running for so little investment, were crushed in the dirt and now useless for every function in the house. Between her video work and my autoCAD work, it was time for an upgrade. So I (being the true AMD Fan I am) took a trip to the local computer store and brought home an AM3+ 8320 processor, 16 gigs of pny Anarchy 1866 ram, and an MSI 970A-G46 motherboard. of course a new case. Dropped my Geforce GTX460 Video card in and slapped on the factory heatsink, installed a spare power supply we had. Installed windows 7 and pushed the computer to her and said “well, try it out”.

We head back up to the computer parts store and buy a $21 heatsink.  Give it one test and find that it was time to take another trip to the computer store to buy the exact same heatsink we bought for her intel cpu. Within 1-2 minutes of rendering, the temperature of the processor jumped from the cool 98 degrees up  near 140 degrees and was climbing faster every second. The PCcooler heatsink is great for dissipating heat, at idle. but it was as if there was a threshold of like 115 degrees before it’s method of absorbing and dissipating heat become utterly useless. I will not throw it away. I will be installing it on another pc, but I’ll have to add an extra fan or something experimental.

Since I remember the instructions for the girlfriend’s computer came with instructions and spare parts for an AM3+ processor, I decided to search for the same heatsink.

I found the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus sounded like and looked like the same heatsink. Chased down the reviews and found everyone complaining about the install instructions but praising the cooling. Bought it for $35 and got free shipping.

DSC_0002It took all of about 10 minutes to install the new heatsink. I admit I cheated and watch this guy’s video though. I had to remove one side case fan for clearance, the processor heatsink was just too tall for my ENERMAX case.
Right away I went to rendering a video I compiled last night . When I tried to render the video last night, though the new computer made light work of the task, my cpu temperatures got to 145 degrees.
but now with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus heatsink, re-rendering the same video took less than half the time it did last night and temperatures never exceeded 116 degrees.

The build is finally a success. and total cost under $600. and so far nothing runs slow, nothing hangs so far and it seems my autocad is flying. even using the knock off brands of cad design like bricsCAD, nanoCAD or ProgeCAD. They all run smooth with no pausing, no “thinking”.

Temperatures while in autocad never exceed 113 degrees.

I even ran a windows benchmark.
tempsidle
Sorry about the screenshot with in a screenshot. Only way I could think to get both scores up at once.

Review score for the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Ease of installation: 10/10
visible appeal: 10/10
effectiveness: 10/10
noise factor: 9/10

Final score: 10/10

Extra score = Instructions booklet usefulness: 1/10

Processor benchmark scores up to date

looks like passmark just updated today .
Steak and Bj day of all days.
Seems they are married people. lol
That’s the Assgot Ring Effect
put a ring on her finger and her assgot bigger and her mouth got smaller.
but here is the scores from their site.

High End Cpu scores

Mid Range Cpu Scores

Low End Cpu Scores

Common Processors

Now For the one we really wanted to see.
Over Clocked Processors

Looks to me as of today 3/14/09 Amd Is the best “right out of the box” central Processing Units
but when you overclock, Intel i7 stomps.. Very good job guys, thanks for the scores.