4K MONITOR PRICE FROM DELL SHOCK

Well this is somewhat astounding to read.

A 4K monitor, so instead of 1,080 pixels down the screen you actually have double across and down so 2,160 and 3840 across, which is less than $1,000?!

It gets better still as you may be thinking "oh so $999.99 then but no! How about $699?! Now translated into British Pounds this is, oh crap where is the 'pound key on this keyboard, so should be about GBP450?! Though it never quite works out like that as companies just love ripping off us Brits. Even so at the GBP700 its likely to cost it is still incredible.

When I built my last rig I paid around that price for my 1600x1200 Viewsonic monitor. The size of it was 20 inches in diameter and I should really tell you that this Dell 4K monitor is 28 Inches across! So your talking about something with perfect visuals like that of Apple's retina display but in 28 inches?!

Now of course this has a bit of a quandary for the use in TV. Now maybe the Blu-Ray upscale players are good enough and I simply do not know. But you will likely be in for a bloody long wait to see TV in 4K. Luckily in some cases TV's would double as computer monitors for gaming and this will be true for my system if I ever build it.

There is however one other thing and that is the new CPUs, or more correctly APUs made by AMD who are about to release their new kaveri APU in a mere few days.

I have been waiting for this particular chip fr quite some time now with its Steamroller Cores and its GCN graphics bolted onto the same chip. There is one thing I had been hoping for and that is at least a six CPU core with a GPU core bolted on. Better an 8 but then there was this talk about hUMA and Mantle. The very idea that the GPU cores could be used as CPU cores has the potential to be one hell of a game changer.  Hmm now let me think...I think there are 13 cores on the GPU side?! So added to the four steamroller cores that would be a CPU, when NOT playing games, with 17 cores thereabouts?!

EDIT: AMD KAVERI HAS FOUR CPU CORES AND EIGHT GPU CORES SO CAN BE CLAIMED TO BE A 12 CORE CHIP!

Now of course I do not know whether this will perform as well as a steamroller core, core to core? But even if they are half the speed what you have is something of the equivalent speed of a CPU with no less than ten and a half steamroller cores?! If it is about 50% the speed that is. Similar speed and your talking 17 cores!!

EDIT: AMD KAVERI HAS FOUR CPU CORES AND EIGHT GPU CORES SO CAN BE CLAIMED TO BE A 12 CORE CHIP!

These are the types of things I think about when there is talk of new tech.

The trouble is all this sounds great but can you run a 4K monitor with one? As for Crossfire does all the new toys work when it is on crossfire? Can you now add any other card in crossfire and not just an equally powered card.

Hopefully this will be answered in the next few days. It will also be very interesting to see what else will come out of the AMD APU stable throughout the rest of 2014?!

[Updated] Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2014/01/07/dell-wasnt-joking-about-that-28-inch-sub-1000-4k-monitor-its-only-699/

PLAYING LOOSE WITH TECH NEWS

I was looking very briefly for the latest information on AMD's next generation of Radon graphics cards, codenamed Volcanic Islands, when I came across Semi Accurate and a page of them bitching.

This was because they had produced an image of the Volcanic Islands architecture to explain something, stupid thing to do and even more stupid is to put it on the public domain, and this was taken up by...

XBit

WCCFTECH

TOM'S HARDWARE

HARDWARE INFO

EDIT: OOPS FORGOT LINK LETTER FROM GOOGLE ARRIVED, LOL...

... http://semiaccurate.com/2013/05/20/amds-volcanic-islands-architecture/

This was then posted around and reported as a bonafide image.

I do not have it nor have I seen it and nor do I particularly want to see it either, well not now!

Now I am not sure what has entirely gone on here and whether or not someone cried foul and then everyone started pointing the finger at Semi Accurate or not.

But what this IS, is a prime example of not just HOW the Internet is most unfortunately mostly misinformation but also how desperately many sites are scrabbling around in the dirt for any titbits of information to attract viewers and build up hits.

Hmm how can I cut that down to a bite sized bit of information?!

How about ... Competing over BULLSHIT?!

It has become very sad and makes searching for anything more and more shit with each week that goes by not helped by the rigging of search engines to support those that benefit them most.

You would think that someone could come up with a search engine that could not only disregard some of the worst depravities found on the Internet (and lock them up) but to filter the wheat from the crap?!

Instead of just everyone rigging everything to suit themselves, lol.

I often sigh loudly at the very idea of someone going through the trouble of producing an image regarding CPUs or GPUs that is fake. Just very sad it really is but whatever the truth is regarding this incident I do not know and I am sure all involved will have a different opinion.

It is in s small part why I started this blog in the first place. You will see no road maps are architectural images posted by me as you just cannot take the chance.

Well unless these manufacturers decide to use me as an outlet which I could not see happening any time soon, lmao.

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Well I thought I would just post here about my feelings for Ubuntu and haw they have changed since those first few frustrating and failed attempts to dual boot.

Yes it is bloody annoying that you should, 15 years on, be able to achieve that very easily. Yes it appears you get a Ubuntu dual boot menu when you only used to get a Windows one. Yes this SHOULD mean it would NOT matter which order you installed them but something tells me otherwise.

The truth is the more I use Ubuntu the more I like it. Yes every now and then I think of something I would want to do in Windows and look up the Linux equivalent. Yes GIMP is driving me nuts and is really badly designed interface and not intuitive at all that is despite the fact I DO like it and am aware it is powerful.

The truth is that now it is running it is painless and no more locks ups occur and yes i STILL have not got the ATI drivers installed but unless Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Need for Speed appear on Linux I will not really care much.

Also the and truth is that in Linux, or Ubuntu, if something goes wrong with it I can have it up and running again in a matter of minutes, an Open Source and FREE Operating System?!

This is despite my love of the Windows 7 interface and being by far the BEST version of Windows EVER released EVER, yes it is the 25th March 2013 and I AM AWARE Windows 8 is out and I call it Windows H8!

The odd thing is my stab at the Linux lot recently is closer to the truth than I first realised?! I will reiterate...

This is good...very good. There is only a couple of things to work on and one is kicking AMD's butt! The other is some tinkering with the GUI. The last and most important is probably out of their hands and that is that Linux is supported by the gaming community...

It does not have to be many just, say, three of the big players would be enough to start a tidal wave of adoptions to Linux. For me if I could have the games I play the most on here (Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Need for Speed, X Reunion, Flaming Cliffs 3 Oh OK I have not got that last one...YET)

Now I am an old veteran at this but have been out of it awhile. So you could argue that I am a beginner when I started this but am an old veteran when it comes to seeing it through?!

I was unfamiliar for the most part with Ubuntu and knew my way around Windows and yet out of these TWO Windows has been a bloody headache. I chose my C: drive as the swap folder when I installed Ubuntu. This now looks like a mistake and I seem to lose my Windows installation after that, though it appeared to be there.

Other than that Windows seems to have an insistence, by all accounts, on throwing its toys out of the pram if it is not on the C: drive?! Umm STUPID! Hmm I wonder if the £2,000 Windows Server edition, or whatever its cost these days, has this issue? STUPID!!

So out of Ubuntu overwriting some Windows files or Windows just refusing to plaay fair, despite the humongous cost compared to Linux, lol, Ubuntu has been far easier to work with and this is BACK TO FRONT!!!

This realisation has been an utter shock to me, it really has and likely why and over time I kept putting it back on my laptop...BECAUSE I CAN?! When i finally got Windows 7 on my laptop my games and files had GONE and it would not connect to the Internet?! Ubuntu fecking did this from the DVD BOOTING?!?!

Result? Windows can feck off!!

The very meaning of an Operating System is so that you can Operate your .... SYSTEM!! Instead Steve Ballmer sees it as an excuse to meddle and feck about with users to sweep up any loose change his customers till possess! Nice. It does not matter that we may lose vital, important or sentimental files in the process they will continue to change things so that they can TIE you down to them and put up brick walls to everyone else.

To be honest they have been at that a very long time and probably the reason Bill Gates walked away from Microsoft. That was my immediate feeling when there was talk of him walking and still my feeling today.

It seems that military tactic to dominate everything and destroy all others many are under the impression that this is how it works in business. I have known for sometime that it is not...

The trouble with war is that you build bigger weapons that the other guy until one day you both have the weapons to annihilate each other so no one can win...

...what has happened in the world today is that businesses have been so focused and destroying their enemies and contempt for their own customers that the customer base is now saying FECK YOU!! In other words no one wins!

Ooh but wait! Linux is free and a very decent PC can be built for reasonable money today!! The last time I built a rig it was an SLI Rig with 2 x Gigabyte GEFORCE 6800GT cards Denovo Keyboard Proper Laser Mouse, Lacie Monitor Raptor RAID 0 drives the complete works and at £3,500 a steal?! *Cough-cough* Yes OK I went a bit mental and it was not the first time and was not the last and I dare say I will do again one day.

That was one of the first SLI systems built in the UK and it was something like 8 weeks before Custom PC Magazine (an good and unbiased magazine back then before Bit-Tech infiltrated) did an feature on it.

When I think of what I could build today for under £1,000 it boggles my mind. My eyes water and I am chomping at the bit.

The odd thing is I can look at Geforce 660 cards and Radeon HD7790 and HD7850 and think no?! I want a Radeon HD7970 or a Geforce 680. Seem a bit much? Well actually I am the kind of person that would have, 5 years ago, said 2x 690s or 2x7990s?! I kind you not! I was originally thinking or RAID 0 SSDs for my next rig?!

When I think about all this technology and how people make statements like SSD Raid 0 not worth it as it is temperamental I cannot think why. How can it be that nearly ten years on RAID 0 is even harder to do than when I FIRST did it?! Someone at Scan (www.scan.co.uk) told me that!

Or is it just Microsoft and Windows?

I stated not long ago that Linux has a perfect opportunity and that was because I was angry with Microsoft. Angry as they had RADICALLY changed the next iteration of Windows that only served to show that they cared not for their end users and only after the money trail! What is more is it is not even FINISHED!!

Even more bizarre was a guy locally I know who makes his money working on people's PCs told me on the phone that he has played around with Windows 8 and that it was FANTASTIC and far better than Windows 7?!

Jerry you was obviously very pissed, mate?! Exactly which bit was you on about? How if you have not got a touch screen monitor the tiles things is crap and a wast of space? Or that you do and most of the programs, software and apps are NOT designed for touch screen?! Did you take a payment from M$ to say that?!

No it was a rush to get it out because of the tablet market and that is what it was for, it should NEVER have been released for the PC at all in my opinion. Also I buy Micro Mart Magazine a week ago as it refers to another release called Windows Blue?! Oh but guess what...I see the word 'tablet' amongst the first couple of lines of text and I flick straight over the page!

Anyone else notice that they are WAY over-priced for what you get?! Tablets I mean?!

I hate the Intel Ultrabook idea and thnk they are way over-priced but forced between Ultrabooks and Tablets it would be Ultrabooks all day long...

...but you have SLEEKBOOKS now! An AMD CPU that has a powerful graphics chip built into it than can play the latest games at fairly good resolutions! In just two months the AMD CPU, sorry APU, code named Richland will be released and this will be more powerful still! This will be called the AMD A10-6800K for the top of the line desktop model and AMD A10-6700 or 6500 for the laptop model.

Now the AMD A10-6800K sound like the perfect tool to match up with a Linux PC!! If AMD get their thumbs out of their proverbial arses that is?!

Low cost, all in one CPU/GPU that uses less power and added to this the talk that the GCN graphics core to be placed in the new generation can do regular computational tasks which offsets the fact that the CPU side only has FOUR CORES?!

Or there is the mouth watering prospect that IF the get around to a die shrink you can have an 8 core APU?!?!

Or better still a motherboard with a twin FM2 socket so 8 cores and Crossfire GCN?!?!

Then there are the improved Piledriver cores and the Steamroller cores?! Oh and Jaguar?! Oh and likely GCN2?!?!?!?!

...

What?! Where am I?! ....Oh yeah I was typing out a post about...

What?! Where am I?! Who are you?!

LMAO!

Seriously though and later in 2013 and into early 2014 it is, or at least I bloody hope it is, going to be quite interesting and VERY EXCITING?!?!

If a twin socket FM2 is EVER releases i will but it, or bloody hope to, IMMEDIATELY!!

Back to the point and the conclusion...

...never ever in the history of Linux OSs have they EVER been able to see the whites of M$ eyes before!! Now I am going to suggest and likely put in place a couple of Ubuntu installations on computers belonging to friends.

Now let us see if it catches on?!

I BROKE UBUNTU

Well after three says if messing around with UBUNTU I have broken it.

The last two attempted boot upes have failed and freezes on the screen that is all purple and says Ubuntu with the little dots and does it right after the little drum noise it makes.

Indeed it had stayed on that screen the whole while I have been typing this on my faulty smart phone lol.

Unfortunately I have finally decided it comes off. These Linux people really should keep abreast of what their creation works with and does not and issue warnings as should thre magazines.

In fact Computer Active only stated there were issues reported with Windows 8. You would think that worth only two companies producing GPUs that they would all get to hear of issues?! Especially when there us all this error reporting parts of operating systems theses days.

Cine to think if it I don't think the Windows error retiring ever really did anything other than make users think the next version would be really ace. Oops, lol.

Right I have forced a power off now and booting into Windows. A shame that and really frustrating as I thought I had it sussed a few times only to break it completely.

I will have to remove it now to regain the 19GB I awarded it. I think in future I will not bother with LINUX unless I have a complete list of compatible hardware so u can build a rig for it.

Waaaaah! SOB SOB!! Really liked it and wanted to use that SMS really depressed it went the way it did.

I do not have the time to spend days on ends trying to get it to work I'm afraid do it gets ignored now for a few months.

:(