Best posts made by creayt

@scottalanmiller said:

The answer is... they are much better now. Way better. Useful, actually. But are they great? Nope. Good enough, sure. Useable. But flaky, slow and hard to use. They require way too much "desktop expertise" for basic tasks. With Windows and Linux you never have to do things like "Google how to rename a file." They have obvious, graphical, on screen clues for things. Mac is "if you aren't a Mac expert, go away." Least inviting OS ever.

Agree. Only I think that even if you are a Mac expert, you're still fundamentally constrained in a lot of usage scenarios and forced to do things more slowly and less efficiently than on Windows. On top of that the interface/OS performance in general is just palpably slower in almost all situations. Some things are pretty, others are nightmarishly ugly ( like the new dock and icon set ), but in the end, none of that matters to me personally as much as the ability to do things as close to instantly as possible, while working for money, at least.

@tonyshowoff said:

This isn't the worst thing I've ever seen, but again feels too XML-like for my taste, and in fact aside from return x, this whole thing is XML parse-able; though I imagine less strict XML engines would allow an argument without value.

Right, I think most people would probably opt for the script-based syntax for a class, but the point was it doesn't encourage one thing or another, you can do everything you want to in either of the two ways, the art becomes prudently judging when to use which:

class {

  function doSomething( a ){
    return x;
  }

}

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt that seems really crappy to me, we have a huge fleet of plastic fantastic Dell Latitudes and they take HUGE abuse. Drops, spills (of weird chemicals on occasion), bodily fluids.... just the worst possible stuff you can imagine. We do suffer some attrition but it's typically because I refuse to clean it (human hazmat I am not) or someone has one stolen.

That's impressive. The day the very first retina MacBook Pro came out I got one and took it to my office, and someone spilled some coffee on it ( the lid was shut, thank god ) and it permanently nuked the displayport jacks ( can't remember if they were Thunderbolt or not yet ). Had to pay a pretty penny to get stuff replaced at the Apple Store.

@tonyshowoff @thecreativeone91

Good to know, thanks.

I actually use that box as a local web/app/database server atop a Raid 0 of SSDs, so if it dies it dies anyway.

Drives are deployed. Benchmarks attached.

The left is a Raid 10 of 10K 6 Gbps SAS drives, to the right is the Raid 10 of 6 Gbps SSDs. Thanks to everyone for the help.

Upgraded: 4320x2560.

@scottalanmiller said:

The role thing really gets people. There is no such thing as running HyperV on Windows Server, it looks that way but technically cannot happen. The "role" is not a role but is just a tool that introduces a shim and installs HyperV to the bare metal and then runs the Windows Server that you are looking at in a VM. It's all on HyperV, nothing on Windows. There is no exception to this. It just looks like something else.

Do you have some links to documentation on this?

If what you're saying is true, there are some weird implications:

1. The host OS "vm" has the special privilege of seemingly-unvirtualized/full access to its hardware resources and does not allow for any granular allocation/limitation on things like processor weighting or RAM ( for example, this special VM can see the real network adapters, not virtualized ones like all of the VMs do ).

2. All other VMs are dependent on this new host VM to run. They cannot run if the host OS isn't up and running. Correct me if I'm wrong.

3. The underlying files that run the host VM's OS are still on the main-level of the drive hardware, so not encapsulated into a .vhd, right?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that it's fascinating and I'd like to learn more. It's especially interesting because Windows 8.1 ( even Home I believe ) supports Hyper V so if it's converting the existing host OS into a VM it somehow maintains full, unthrottled performance in that new host VM and fully utilizes the real hardware drivers ( such as video ).

@Nic said:

If she likes RPGs, then Divinity: Original Sin would be a good choice. It has co-op with an interesting mechanic when you don't agree on which path to choose.

Just watched some reviews of this. Looks like it may be exactly what we're looking for, thx.

Pretty new to professional workstations and want to get some feedback from any peeps here that have made purchases like this ( maybe even recently ).

My goals/requirements:

• I'm a responsiveness snob. It's what keeps me from using OS X or being able to not tear my hair out on a dual-core. My end-game with any new computer purchase is to get as close to 0 ms as possible on my budget for all non-long-running tasks.

• I run a full web development stack w/ a web server, various app servers, a handful of databases. Planning to start virtualizing more and will be digging into learning Linux ( Docker and containerization is the first super compelling reason I've come across to finally dig into it past the shallow end ) in the next year. I'd prefer to do so from inside Windows and try out a handful of different options, at first at least.

• I multitask way too much, it's unavoidable at my job. Main developer of a very small company where I need to pinball around between departments and make various things happen as quickly as possible, I'll often be carrying on 3-4 simultaneous Slack conversations and working on 3-4 separate codebases with a thousand windows and tabs open, and it's only going to get more complicated moving forward w/ a new virtualization workflow. I have hit various usage scenarios ( though it's not a daily thing ) where 16GB, in past experience, proved to not be quite enough RAM, hence the what may seem like overkill quantity of RAM in my configs.

• Cores. As you'll see below, the workstation I'm looking at purchasing has way too many cores for a mortal like myself. That said, I've been working on a hot new web app for a very long time now and am thinking of hosting its perpetual private pre-release at my home, where I have very high speed fiber. If I do that, it'd be extremely nice to not have to maintain a separate system and to just port-forward to my workstation and be able to monitor everything about the usage all from the same box, hence where I think an excess of cores and RAM might come in handy.

• My lifelong dream is to get into industrial design and make some things. I toyed around with 3D modeling a bit in college on a few leisurely nights, but have never invested time into it, and plan to in the next year. Hence the desire for a rig that can handle that kind of workload ( my 5750 most definitely can't ). My knowledge of 3D modeling and ID software is pretty limited, so for all I know an abundance of cores might come in invaluable here too ( or it may be 100% graphics card, IDK ).

Current setup: a mutilated T110.2 that I Frankensteined
Xeon E3-1240 v2 ( 4 cores, HT, 8MB cache, 3.4-3.8 Ghz )
32GB DDR3 1600
Radeon 5750 Pro ( you can laugh, it's the only card I could get to run on this motherboard that could support 3 monitors, 3 other much more current and higher-end ones just killed the ability boot when plugged in )
Add-in SATA III card w/ 2x Samsung 840 Pros in a Raid 0
Price: $1038 on sale w/ about $70 in add-on cards ( SATA III and USB 3, graphics card was left-over from another system and free ) and I had the SSDs leftover from other projects.

The system I'm leaning towards: Precision T5810
Xeon E5-2697 v3 ( 14 cores, HT, 35M cache, 2.6-3.6 GHz )
32G DDR4 2133 ECC
Quadro K2200
2x 512GB SSDs ( these may be PCIe, the refurb listing doesn't specify )
3 Year Hardware Service with Onsite/In-Home Service After Remote Diagnosis
Windows 8.1 Pro license
The price after taxes and a massive coupon is a little over $4k.

So my questions are:

1. Is $4k a decent price for this hardware given my preference to not assemble my own? Can I do much better? If so how/where?

2. Is it pretty capable of handling my requirements above? I believe it can take a 2nd K2200 card, so if that's the one weak point I could theoretically pop another one in, I think Dell sells them for under $500.

3. Does anyone see any glaring misallocations of $ with this setup? Would I be better off buying a cheaper setup w/ a professional graphics card and going w/ something like the new Intel PCIe SSD? Do I desperately need an add-in RAID card? Is the K2200 overkill? Underkill?

4. What am I missing? Fast processor, ample RAM, professional graphics card instead of a gaming one for a decent modeling station. Is that about right?

5. Scott recently schooled me on how installing a type 1 hypervisor silently converts the host os to a VM behind the scenes and accompanies a performance hit. If I want to run Hyper V, is that going to reduce the host vm's performance to the point that I can feel it? If that's the case am I better off running a 2nd box ( probably my current T110 ) for all virtualization?

6. Do you think I'll feel a responsiveness drop going from the baseline 3.4 Ghz to 2.6? I'm very, very scared of that scenario.

7. Any general feedback that may benefit me on this. I'm definitely a newb to hardware in a lot of ways.

Thank you!

My new laptop just came in the mail today. I've been pretty excited. It's a mobile quad w/ 32GB RAM and a 980M. But.... since Best Buy literally struggles with every single thing imaginable... they sent me a laptop w/ 24GB.

Their web site is riddled w/ errors, their employees know less about the simple questions I ask them than I do, and, well, their prices aren't even competitive.

Challenge: Name a worse company than Best Buy.

@Dashrender said:

The problem with running a hypervisor is that you're not meant to SIT infront of it anymore, generally.

For example, if you installed ESXi (any version) you can't actually work directly on the machine, you'd have to have another machine to remote into the server from.

I don't know how this will work if you decided to go with Hyper-V? Even if you went with Windows 2012 R2 server instead of Windows 8.1 Pro, I have no idea how responsive the system will be on the local display.

Thanks.

To clarify, I don't mean running Hyper V Server as my host OS. I mean Windows 8.1 as the host, which supports running Hyper V atop it. It just adds the Hyper V management tool and enables VM creation and management, so it's a supported use case for 8.1, in fact it's just a few clicks to turn it on:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/hyper-v-run-virtual-machines

@JaredBusch said:

Why would you ever buy something non-basic form Best Buy? That just amazes me.

In two words: Discounts and flexibility. The laptop I ordered is on sale for $320 dollars off:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-17-3-laptop-intel-core-i7-32gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-256gb-solid-state-drive-black/8962308.p?id=1219697995031&skuId=8962308

And on top of that, you can apply a 10% off coupon at checkout, saving you another $220.

On top of that, being an elite member I get another $46-ish back in Best Buy gift certificates a week or two after purchase.

Almost $600 total off. On a laptop this expensive, that's pretty legit. It'll pay for my GTX 970, the motherboard for my Xeon, and the power supply. Not bad.

As far as flexibility, I also have 45 days to return anything I buy at Best Buy with no restocking fees whatsoever for being an elite member.

That's pretty much it.

I'm just super annoyed that I'm going to have to call them tomorrow and have them ship me the replacement.

The good news is, I cracked the thing open and it's actually an M2 SSD, so that's a pretty epic surprise.

The screen is also 75Hz and has GSync. Excited about the laptop itself, just annoyed at the incompetency of such a big company.

I think I've found my case...

@johnhooks said:

I needed to get some RAM in a pinch. I looked online and they had some for like $50. I went to the store to pick it up and it was $65 in the store. So I just did an online order while standing in the store and only paid $50.

Doesn't really have anything to do with your situation there. I just found it amusing.

Nice. Yeah, that's happened to me plenty of times. This is another glaring example of a poorly-run company. Their online prices very often don't match their in-store ones, but here's the kicker, they'll price match their web site but... wait for it... it's a completely loose, at-the-discretion-of-the-employee policy. Which means that you can flash something on your phone ( which I did accidentally a few weeks ago ), and have it not even be the same product, and have them price match it to literally whatever you say sometimes. They didn't have the graphics card I went to purchase in-store, but had one whose box looked similar and was about $100 more expensive, and price matched it to the lower card because it rang up way more expensive. I didn't realize until I got home that I'd gotten the much better card for the cheaper card's sale price, which of course made me feel guilty and terrible so I returned it haha. But the point is: shitshow.

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt Massive overkill commence: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zYM9ZL
6c 12t (overclock this hard)

Though I have no expertise w/ OC-ing at all, and it's been probably 7-8 years since I assembled a rig myself, the T5810 has arrived and its performance is very disappointing, on top of that the SSDs are plain jane and generic looking SATA. So it's going back to Dell and I'm going to get savvy on self-assembly and go your suggested route.

I think I'm going to wait for the new processors in August, and spend the time up until then learning how to do all of this stuff again.

In the meanwhile, does anyone know how I can tell ahead of time what graphics cards will be compatible w/ my T110.2? It has a Thermaltake Tr/2 600W power supply, but none of the modernish cards I tried would boot. The pre-boot screen would sit and hold a solid underscore on a black screen or flash the underscore.

Thanks!

@RojoLoco said:

@creayt said:

@RojoLoco said:

@creayt said:

Dear Best Buy, you've outdone yourself.

After more research and looking the exact model up by code in other suppliers, it turns out that the laptop Best Buy sold me is imaginary. It's made up. The model I ordered actually IS 24GB of RAM, both on Amazon and Asus.com, and they don't sell a 256GB PCIe SSD, 4720HQ, 980M laptop w/ 32GB of RAM, they're all 24.

So Best Buy is just listing the lapto they are selling w/ 8GB more RAM than it actually has anywhere on Earth in the real world. I've been duped by the ineptitude of their web developers yet again.

Fool me once...

The worst part is the 2 accessible slots are taken, so in the inaccessible slots there's just one empty, so I can't even upgrade to 32 myself.

F, ML my friends. F. M. L.

Crazy AJ sells the 32GB model.... but shipping from Panama can be steep.

There's a 32GB model w/ a 512GB PCIe SSD, but it's $3000. It's not the one I'm talking about.

(there's not an actual Crazy AJ...)

Hahahaha. Was multitasking and the Panama bit made me believe you.

I think I'll discard the unchewed bullet and stick it out until I build the new system as-is. I'm technically able to run all 3x 2560x1440 monitors w/ the 5750 running one through display port and a D3100 dock running the other 2, but the 2nd monitor through the dock is only running at 50 Hz and it's killing me. Some people say it shouldn't be perceptible ( some programmers even claim to work on a 30Hz 4k setup, wtf? ) but to me it's completely palpable w/ the cursor tracking and keyboard input appearing. I'm going to hunt down a dual-link DVI cable and see if the 5750 can't power 2 at 60Hz.

But then as soon as the new procs and mobos are out, it's upgrade time.

For the record, the 14 core Precision actually felt less responsive than this t110.2. It was very noticeable for me. So SCREW any processor w/ a baseline speed of less than 3.3.

Again, thanks everyone for your help and input on this. @MattSpeller, I'll definitely be spamming you for advice and insight as I dig into the puzzle of jaw-dropping performance on a budget.

@scottalanmiller said:

@johnhooks said:

Amazon with a prime membership is probably the best thing ever.

It really is.

With the exception of how terrible the streaming library is. I mean don't even bundle it, keep it shipping only. If it included their Netflix for books service instead, that'd be something.

Did a bit of soldering and wired 4 of those M2s together into a Raid 0.

JK. That's an 850 Pro in rapid mode.

i7-4720HQ quad w/ HT
GTX 860M w/ 4GB DDR5
16GB DDR3L 1600
17.3" anti-glare multi-touch 1080p
512GB SSD
AC 2x2 wifi

$1099 after $700 off coupon, and if you have a Discover Card you can get another $100 off.

Normally wouldn't mention something like this but this'd but 45% off-ish is rare.