AMD Madness with Windows 8

So I’ve installed Windows 8.
I didn’t install any driver manually.
Windows found almost everything using Windows Update.

And I like that 🙂

I don’t like hunting down drivers.
It’s stupid, consumes hours of precious time, and most of all: really boring…

Today, in my quest for good video editing software, I stumbled upon Sony Vegas 12.
So…

After downloading the 30-days trial, all I got was this lousy loading screen…
And a crash report…
Which was useless…

http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1225949

Because the most valuable crash report mentions something about “gpu acceleration”. I started wondering if its corresponding Windows driver was up to date…

I knew, from issues in the past, that AMD/ATI stopped supporting my -not that old- radeon 4870 in Windows 8…
Rendering my gpu legacy 2 years after purchase date… (see what I did there? 😛 )

Anyway, things like that have been overcome for years thanks to guru3D (modded mobility drivers anyone?)

And again, they came up with modded drivers for legacy graphics cards…

windows update driver

guru 3d’s DriverVer=07/03/2012, 8.970.100.3000

Nevertheless, after installing this “seemingly” older driver, Sony Vegas still crashes…

And even better!

Now I have this as well:

 

Rolled back the driver to it’s “Windows Update” alter ego fixed one of the above issues.
But not all…

Stupid amd…

Getting used of Windows 8

I’m getting used of it.  😎

I’ve bought myself a Crucial M4 two weeks ago, and took the opportunity to install a fresh copy of windows 8 on it. Installation itself took about 15 minutes, and is running ever since.

So anyway, the screenshot above gives a rough look how I use Windows 8.

Microsoft tries to push metro, but I’m just not using it

I reinstalled most of my regular desktop application: firefox, itunes, windows media player (with ccc), picasa, …
And I’ve changed almost all of the file associations to use these applications instead of their metro counter parts

Metro never shows up, only when I want to start a new application (and even then, my favourite apps are pinned to the taskbar 😀 )

So, after these couple of weeks, I surely can recommend W8 to all of you!

It has build in dlna/upnp (which actually works pretty good), a beautiful task manager, superb copy handler, and overall performance even got a little bit better then W7!

Just uninstall/replace the metro apps, and you’ll be fine 🙂

 

Only the most annoying things persist: run as admin is a disaster, getting to the start menu is a big issue (fixed it with this), shutting your computer down is a hassle, and searching in settings and apps should be the same action.
So you actually have to move your mouse a lot!

And I hate AMD for dropping support for my (not toooo old) 4870 graphics card… 👿

Intel vs AMD

The big guy vs the little dude, and why we love them both 😈

It all started when IBM created the PC platform: it wanted to use the Intel 8086-series, but one of the IBM corporate policies was to require 2 sources of its chips. So AMD took a licence on Intel’s intellectual property… And IBM could create the first PC.

So, let’s talk about Intel first.

It’s simply the largest semi-conductor manufacturer in the by man known world. They produce network-products, nand-chips, cpu’s, gpu’s and much much more… And they are the original inventors of the x86 instruction set.
And this is why I love them: they simple create the fastest cpu’s available for home usage 😀 The downside: they cost a lot… 👿

Second, Advanced Micro Devices.

The second producer of x86-cpu’s. What they do, is offering the best price/value ratio on the market. Their cpu’s are simply pretty performing, and actually doesn’t cost that much! Especially when you compare AMD’s prices to Intel’s… (you already have a AMD hexacore for about €200. 😎
Also a great thing they do, they don’t change socket as much as Intel, and every change in socket requires a change in motherboard, and hey! A motherboard costs money… Since I’m aware of computers Intel used lga 775 (latest pentium’s and first core2duo’s), lga 1156 (i3/5), lga 1366 (i7), lga 2011 (sandy bridge)… And this while AMD still uses am2 and am3, which is backwards compatible  😎 (Both 775 and am2 are from 2006)
It’s also the main innovator in it’s business… First 64 bit, hexacore, …

Personally, I made the mistake of buying a Intel core2duo e6600 socket 775…
Mmm… You can’t really call it a mistake, but see why: I could use an upgrade from this dual-core to a more performant quad-core, for example an Intel Q9550. The only problem: socket 775 is a death technology… They’re no new cpu’s being developed for… So… That makes the current versions “unique” and thus “expensive”… 👿 If I bought a am3 motherboard back then, I could now easily replace my first generation phenom with a nice 1090T hexacore from AMD 🙄

But since I don’t have a donkey sh*tting money for buying an upgrade, let’s not think about all this ^^

0x0000007E

Weer een computer stuk, deze keer een bootloop die blijft hangen..
Nochtans boot hij wel gewoon in safemode starten, maar dus niet normaal…

Om te beginnen de optie uitgeschakeld dat de pc moet rebooten bij een foutmelding, zo krijg ik tenminste men mooi blauw schermpje te zien 🙂

Na een beetje te googlen kwam ik al op ideen…
Services uitschakelen, displayadapters verwijderen, andere drivers dumpen…
Nou, niks wou helpen 🙂
De trut bleef rebooten!

Uiteindelijk deze site gevonden (volledige credits voor men oplossing naar deze!)
Het kwam er op neer dat er bij een bepaalde update van windows een aantal instellingen naar de vrats gaan en dat enkele AMD’processoren herkend worden als Intel’s of zoiets…
In alle geval, het bestand “intelppm.sys” komt fameus dwarsliggen…

Nu heel het probleem is op te lossen met een simpele registery key…
Uiteraard voor de gefascineerde lezer hieronder de bepaalde regel om de key toe te voegen vanuit cmd.

“reg add HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm /v Start /d 4 /t REG_DWORD”

Dus nu wetet, het is een mogelijkheid om u pc te fixen als ge nen amd hebt! :p