So...what happened to my laptop buying plans?

I was hoping to upgrade my almost 5 years old laptop soon, but both Microsoft's and Apple's pricing screwed things up.

The Surface Book with Performance Base starts at a whopping A$3,599. The MacBook Pro 13" starts at A$2,199 (although it could be had for less than $2,000 for a limited time from The Good Guys, which is much lower compared to Microsoft's offering, but still that's too much money for the return. These are using dual core CPUs from last generation.

I want a laptop with a touch screen. I would love a detachable screen so that I can use it as a tablet to read stuff. There aren't many options in that category. Surface Pro 4 is a good option, but that's last year's tech and goes for almost $2,000 for a decent specced model. I could get the last year's Surface Book for much cheaper than the new one as well, but still it is over A$2,000.

I don't need a dedicated GPU. I am fine with the integrated GPU. I do not plan on gaming on it. I have a desktop for that, if I can find time.

If I want a pure laptop (not a convertible), the Dell XPS 13 was a great option (the Skylake model, not the KabyLake model as it is pretty expensive too) until I found out that it was plagued with a hissing noise (like a coil whine) which is noticeable. Otherwise, I was really impressed with it when I tried one out at the JB Hi-Fi. It is beautiful, fast and lightweight. Well, it is not cheap either.

Upgrade plans for my desktop PC

The Small Form Factor PC that I built last year is quite fast for almost all the things I do with it. But I love upgrading my PC just to experience what the latest and the greatest hardware has to offer. Sadly, things do not usually live up to my expectations, but that is a different story.

This story is about the potential upgrade path this particular PC offers.

Sadly, my options aren't vivid. The PC is built in such a way that a tangible increase in performance requires a substantial amount of spending, which sometimes defies the reasoning behind "building" a desktop PC.

Let me explain.

Video card

Let's look at the video card first, because as you probably know, I am a gamer. The video card is the most important component in a gaming PC. But, I am not the typical gamer you would find elsewhere, but that is for another discussion.

Right now, I have an overclocked MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G in my PC. To see a tangible increase in performance, I have to at least get a GTX 1070 and overclock it, which would give me 50% performance gains over my current card. But it would cost me close to $700 if I want to buy locally. $100 or so cheaper if I buy it from outside Australia, but it will make claiming for warranty painful. The GTX 1080 would give me twice the performance but it would cost me a whopping $1000 if bought locally! I am not going to spend that sort of money on a single piece of computer hardware, probably ever! But the GTX 1080 can be bought for less than $900 if I look to import it from outside.

So… how’s that phone upgrade plan going?

It’s a mess, I tell you. My phone upgrade plan is a mess. I just don’t know which phone I should upgrade to. I am scared to go with any phone.

Why? Because I cannot really test-drive the phones long enough to see if any issues are there before buying one. My Nexus 5 performs superbly after a reboot. (Until I want to snap a photo of my kid indoor or do something in a hurry. Today my wife asked me to show a photo of our son to someone and it took at least 30 seconds to load my photo albums on Facebook. So embarrassing! But what drives me insane is when I get errors like “Cannot connect to Camera” which requires reboot to resolve. )

I will have to trust the reviewers, but they can be biased.

I have shortlisted three phones to buy but none of them are out yet. They are

• the next Nexus phone from Google,
• Galaxy Note 7 from Samsung and
• iPhone 7 from Apple.

If I must buy a phone today, I would get the Galaxy S7 Edge.

I don’t like some of the design decisions Samsung have taken with their phones, both hardware and software such as the back button on right, cartoonish Touchviz UI (the upcoming Grace UI for Note 7 would fix some of the issues though) and reinventing the wheel with regards to certain apps. But the amazing camera performance (mostly focusing performance) and being the fastest Android phone as of yet appeal to me. It’s not fun not getting frequent or quick OS updates, but at least it eliminates an update messing the phone. For example, my Nexus 5 ran very well with KitKat which it originally shipped with, but the issues mostly came up with Lollipop and Marshmallow.

Do you think that I have upgraded my PC too often in the last 5 years?

I had an idea in the morning. I wanted to know all the PC parts that I have bought during the 5 and a half years I have lived in Japan. I think I have spent a lot of money on the PC!!!

But hey, it is my hobby and just because one might feel that it is a total waste of money, it is called life. And I have sold everything that I do not use, albeit at a much lower price than I bought. I think I probably have wasted like JPY 200,000 if you calculate the deficit between the total amount I have spent on buying these items and the total amount I have sold them for.

There are two ways you can go about buying a PC. Either spend a fortune and get something that might last 3 or 4 years without any trouble. Or buy something spending half that price and keep upgrading the components every year and selling the old components. If you keep the total cost the same, you would definitely have a much faster, efficient and capable system in 4 years than the high-end system you would otherwise have built 4 years ago. I follow the second path.

Anyways, here is the list I came up with.

CPU

1. Intel Core i5 750
2. Intel Core i7 2600K
3. Intel Core i7 4770K
4. Intel Core i7 4790K x3 (Yes, I bought three of them and settled with one)

Motherboard

1. Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
2. ASRock Z68 Extreme 4
3. Asus Maximus VII Hero
4. Asus Maximus VII Gene
5. Asus Z97i Plus - current

The possibility of upgrading my PC to a Haswell-E setup

Couple of days ago I posted on Facebook how I chickened out from delidding my Devil's Canyon chip. A friend told me that it would be beneficial for me to upgrade to Haswell-E instead. Haswell-E die is soldered to the IHS so it shouldn't run at a temperature as high as Devil's Canyon. And I get at least two more cores to play with.

There is a huge barrier for entry due to price

I checked the prices of the Core i7 5820K (because the 5930K is useless and the 5960X is out of reach), ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini-ITX motherboard (the only X99 Mini-ITX board out there) and 16GB of DDR4 2666 sticks.

• CPU: ~ JPY 50,000
• Motherboard: ~ JPY 37,000
• RAM: ~ JPY 18,000

That would total out to around JPY 105,000. Expensive, but that’s what you have to pay for cutting edge. But it all depends on how much I can make from selling my existing stuff.

I checked the offers on Sofmap store and  it was disappointing.  Very disappointing. I would only receive around JPY 50,000 in total for my Core i7 4790K CPU, Asus Z97i-Plus board and A-DATA DDR3-2400 16GB memory. That’s an insanely low amount. No way I am going to sell my stuff to these shops.

However, shops aren’t the only place I can sell them. I can auction them online. However, since these are all used parts, I bet I won’t be able to extend this to JPY 70,000 mark. JPY 60,000 is possible, but it will take a long time because I have three components to sell. And if I sell at least one of them, I would have passed the point of no return.

[Rant] Is upgrading from the GTX670 really worth it? (for 1440p)

I’ve been thinking of upgrading my Palit Jetstream GTX 670 since I bought a new 1440p display. There are three cards that I had been looking at. The AMD Radeon R9 290, NVidia GTX 780 and NVidia GTX780 Ti. Even though I don’t want to buy, I had been keeping a close eye on the prices of GTX 770 and R9 280x.

Photo courtesy of The Tech Report

Last night I had some free time and I checked the reviews to see where each card stood again each other at 2560x1600 (which is close to 2560x1440 on my display).

※This is for my current card.

 

The rating at stock clocks were taken from the GTX 780Ti review posted at TechPowerUp. The overclock results were also taken from individual reviews for different cards posted on the same site. Of course the final overclock results can be different from card to card, so this is just a rough estimation. But it is good enough approximation.

 

[Rant] GPU upgrade plans–2013/2014

I’ve had my current graphics card, the GTX 670 for about one and a half years. While it is not slow or outdated by any means, I would like to upgrade before the value of the graphics card drops too much.

Ever since the new graphics cards from AMD came out, I’ve been keeping my eyes on the prices of the GTX 780 and the R9 290 here in Japan. The R9 290 is priced $399 in USA but the cheapest card is priced JPY49,800 (Sapphire branded reference card) here. That’s basically $499. Sucks! It’s even worse for the GTX 780. After the recent price cuts, it is priced at $499 in USA, but the cheapest GTX 780 (Gainward Phantom) is priced JPY 61,480 (or $615).

Note: These prices are for 2013/11/17 only. When you read it, it would be higher or lower than that.

Since I have like $63 worth of points on Sofmap, which is the shop selling both cards, this make things even better.

Even though I am tempted to get a R9 290 now, I won’t. I will have to wait for the cards with 3rd party coolers because these cards get really hot and the fan is very noisy.

[Rant] Why upgrade your phone every two years?

The smartphones are essentially PCs. PCs become outdated pretty quickly. So are mobiles phones. But in most countries you have to enter a two year contract period when you buy a mobile phone. They will subsidize the price of the phone, but there is no such thing in reality. They will cover up the full price of the phone over the two year period.

Now in Japan, especially when it comes to the iPhone offered by Softbank, you essentially pay zero money up front. If you keep the phone for two years, you will not have to pay a dime “for the phone”. Like I said, they always make up for it by heavy monthly charges. So for example, the iPhone 5S which I recently bought costs about JPY6,700 per month. That’s for a 24 month period. The phone itself doesn’t cost a dime – if you settle for the lowest capacity (i.e. 16GB) model. But you are paying about JPY160,000 over the two year period. That’s a huge amount of money, especially when 3G was performing pathetically. With

There is another way you can buy the phone. You pay the whole price of it upfront, and that amount will be discounted from your monthly bill. In the end, you are paying the same amount of money. Basically, you will pay like JPY3,900 per month if you bought the phone paying upfront.

Let’s get to the real point of the article. If you didn’t upgrade to a new phone after two years, you will still have to pay the same monthly price. If you paid upfront, your monthly charge will increase to JPY6,700 after 24 months. Basically if you bought a new phone or not, you are going to pay the same amount of money every month. So why the heck wouldn’t you upgrade?

I cannot speak for other countries though. In other countries, the phone is not always free. Especially a high-end phone that just got released. The newest iPhone would cost $199 and above. For that scenario, maybe you don’t want to pay that amount every two years. But how much is your monthly bill? I’m sure it is close to $100. So paying $200 additionally every two years won’t go noticed.

[Rant] I'm not going to delid my 4770K

Why? Because there is no point. My chip is voltage limited. I cannot get 4.4GHz stable with below 1.3V and I don't want to feed it more volts. Sure some people don't care but I do. I don't want the power consumption of the CPU to increase by 50% just by getting that last 100MHz stable. Sure, if you run the CPU cooler, you can reduce the power consumption. In that sense it is worth delidding because that would allow you to du  the CPU cooler at the same settings. Plus, I have the Liquid Ultra thermal paste with me.

But, no.

I'm going to do it differently. I'm going to see what Intel is going to with Haswell Refresh that's coming in next year. I'm sure it wont be much faster than what's available right now. But it might clock better. Again, there is good chance that I would lose the silicon lottery once more. That's become a bad habit of mine. But I will no do anything else with this CPU. I wont try to tweak it anymore. I wont buy faster RAM because it would not be noticeable. I won't add another CPU fan to make it run cooler. All those are diminishing returns. I would put all best I have towards the G710+ keyboard, G602 wireless mouse and a R9-290X graphics card.

Oh btw, I ordered a new set of headphones. It w's neither the AD700X nor the G430. It's the AD500X. I felt that I was not audiophile enough to notice the difference between the 700X and the 500X. the 500X is about half the price of the 700X. These e are Japanese prices, so usually much less than rest of the world. I'll right about them on a separate post.

[Article] iPhone 5S is awesome.

Well, at least compared to my old iPhone it is million times better. I'm sure people with the iPhone 5 won't notice the difference.  Or the hardcore Android guys or Windows Phone guys. I love Windows Phone, but I cannot get one in Japan, so I have no choice.

The biggest improvements I see are in the areas of UI fluidity, app launch speeds, network speed and battery life. Screen is largeer but it is not that noticeable. 

The A7 processor in the iPhone 5S is almost 4 times faster than the iPhone 4S's A5 processor. I'm sure the improved GPU is helping with the fluidity of the UI animations  I thought the animations of iOS 7 were so slow but I don't feel that with the iPhone 5S. I don't play games on the phone so I really cannot comment on the gaming performance. However, I'm sure I will get used to the speed and start feeling that this is no big deal after all. That happened with the iPhone 4S as well.

The biggest difference I see is with network speeds. LTE is way better than 3G - especially 3G on SoftBank because it SUCKED. With LTE, now I can stream YouTube, webpages open super fast and download apps quickly. For example, the Coursera courses page took ages to open on my 4S, but it opens within a couple of seconds on the 5S. On the day that I bought the 5S, I downloaded almost 700MB of apps on the way home from work, on the train. I wonder if that 7.5GB limit won't be sufficient for a month. It's possible that the amazing LTE speeds that I see are because most people are still on 3G and that the network is not congested. Or it could be a feature of LTE. I have not looked into LTE, not even a bit. (I should!) The quality/speed might change in the near future though because of all the people upgrading from their iPhone 4S to iPhone 5S.

Then the battery life - it's way better than I expected. If I leave home with a 100% charge, I can return with a 25-30% charge remaining. On the 4S, maybe because of the terrible 3G speeds, I couldn't get by a day with a full charge. Because of that, I had to charge the phone at work almost every day. It could be because its battery was worn out. But it could also be because LTE is so fast that it can go into idle state quickly. Besides, the iPhone 5S has a much bigger battery that the iPhone 4S. However, if I drain the battery, I won't have a charging cable with me. I wonder if the cheap Chinese rip-offs can at least charge the phone. I don't want to access the content of the phone from the PC.

Other than that, the finger print reader works really quickly. I thought you would get a lot of false positives with it but that is not the case. But I'm still not used to the whole idea of it, and I only remember I can use the finger almost half way through to entering the passcode lock. 

I haven't had time to use the camera yet. Hey, I am not a photo guy. I don't think it will be as good as the PureView camera in the Nokia Lumia 1020, but since they say it is better than the previous generation, which was even better than the 4S's, I'd take that as a "vastly improved camera". Hehe.

[Rant] Got my iPhone 5S - the 16GB Space Grey model that is

Yesterday they asked me to bring the passport if I wanted to use the installment based subscription. Today I took my passport. As soon as the bell indicating the start of the lunch break rang, I was off to SoftBank store on the first floor. I didn't even have my lunch. 

I had to wait like 20 minutes before my turn. Then it was time. It took longer than I expected. The processing is very slow. They had a lot of explaining to do as well. There were few campaigns and some of it was not what I was expecting. 

For example, if they were to waive off the remaining installments, I had to give them my iPhone 4S. That's not going to happen. I am hoping to sell the phone. I wouldn't give them the phone for a mere ¥5,760. 

Then there was the "shitadori" campaign. This means, they take the phone and pay us money for it. I only qualify for ¥10,000 and out of that, I have to pay ¥5,760. The hell! We'll, it is better than the first option because I get something out of the phone. 

Then there was the option to put a new SIM in the phone and get charged for it only if you use it. It's called the Family Discount campaign. No fixed charges (for two years). If you don't use internet, and only call/SMS between SoftBank numbers - which are the majority of our friends - you won't have to pay a dime. At first I thought that would be another way of them to steal our hard earned money. So I said no. 

So she brought the new phone and put it on the table. I checked the time and it was 12:50PM already. And I have to be at the office by 1:00PM. Plus, I haven't had my lunch!! I asked them how long would it take. They said they sure cannot complete it by 1:00 M. I asked them if I could come back later. The girl went and asked some guy and she said OK. Since I had signed many papers already, it wouldn't take that long if we resume the whole procedure from that point. I told them I would come after 5:00PM.

[Rant] Couldn't get the new iPhone yet

My iPhone 4S contact expires this December. I will have to upgrade the phone because if I don't upgrade I would still have to pay the same monthly subscription fee. That's how things work here. 

I have two options. iPhone 5C or 5S. Since the 5C is same as yesteryear's flagship model, if you know me, I wouldn't set my eyes on that old outdated electronics. So iPhone 5S it is. But I cannot update yet, otherwise I will have to pay the potion of the original price of the phone for the remaining months (you don't pay that if you are using the phone for whole 26 months of the contract period). That's about ¥1,920 x 3 moths if I upgrade the phone now. 

But good news is, just like when I upgraded to iPhone 4S from iPhone 5S, they are waiving off the remainder if we upgrade now. This probably is to keep the existing customers with them. With Docomo getting the iPhone 5S from this year, these definitely is a lot of competition. So if they didn't let the existing iPhone 4S users switch, there is a good chance that once their contract expires, they would switch to Docomo. Docomo is the biggest mobile carrier in Japan with the widest coverage. 

The big issue is that they are asking the same ¥1,000 hiked fixed monthly subscription fee as the previously year's iPhone 5 for the iPhone 5S. So even if I upgraded today, I would pay ¥1,000 more than what I pay for my iPhone 4S. However, for upgraders, they are going to charge the same iPhone 4S for the first year. Paying ¥14,000 is better than paying ¥26,000. (Not sure about the exact figures - it could be ¥12,000 vs ¥24,000 if they don't charge for the first two months)

Plus, I can sell my iPhone 4S as well. 

Anyways, I went to the SoftBank shop in the office building during the lunch break on the iPhone 5am launch day. I asked for the Gold model. They said I had to reserve it because only the Space Grey model was available for purchase on that day. I didn't ask whether they didn't have them right from the beginning or whether the stock ran out. So I had to reserve the phone and come back. Sucks! When I asked how long the ETA is, they had no clue. I hope they will get the new stock back in a week or so. Otherwise you will have one pissed off Sri Lankan riding the train from Nakanoshima to Kosugi in the next few days. Sometimes I wonder if I should have bought the black model because you have to cover it up in a case anyways. Now I have to find a case that can show off the new color. At least I can order it early do that I have the case by the time  the phone is my possession.

At least I got a chance to play with the new iPhone 5S at the SoftBank store. It's so fast compared to my iPhone 4S - there's no doubt about it. I just want LTE and at least stable coverage around the places I commute often. And Touch ID worked perfectly as well. I was skeptical about it at first. Not anymore. 

[Guide] Installing Windows 8.1 from MSDN on DELL Latitude 10 Essentials tablet

The biggest changes in Windows 8.1 are coming to Metro interface and that is a notable upgrade for tablet users. But since Microsoft isn't releasing the update for another month, I was desperate. I wanted to try out the one available on MSDN.

I talked about how you can activate Windows 8.1 using your Windows 8 key in this post. But I didn't know what the key that DELL used in my tablet. They usually paste a sticker with the key on the body of the PC. But they didn't do that for my tablet. That's a good thing actually. That would have looked horrible. So I had to find a way to extract the key that they have used in the installation that shipped with the tablet.

The OEM key was easy to find. I used this VB Script. It saved a text file with the key and product ID in the same folder as the folder you ran the script from. (like below)

Product Name: Windows 8.1 Pro
Product ID: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
Installed Key: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

The other issue with the tablet was that I didn't want to break the recovery functionality. So I decided to install it as an update - "keep all my files and settings" option. Since I didn't have any applications installed (not apps), I wouldn't have any dangling folders in Program Files. Windows folder will be backed up as Windows.old though. You cannot delete it the normal way. You have to use Disk Cleanup to get rid of Windows.old and other setup related file.

Remember, you still cannot install Windows 8.1 with your Windows 8 key. So you have to use the method 1 of this post to install with the default Windows 8.1 key, then change the key to the one you extracted from the VB Script (i.e. the Windows 8.1 key).

That worked really well!

In case you forgot to extract the OEM key before upgrading, you might still be able to find the OEM key. The key is usually embedded in BIOS, and you "should be able to" read it using this application, but it didn't work for me on my tablet. (Go to this link and read the part from "But if not". I could not get it to read the ACPI tables. So in that case, you can use Recovery or Refresh to go back to the original state, and use the VB Script to extract the OEM key.

Upgrade SandyBridge to IvyBridge-E this September?

Haswell for desktops was a flop. Now it is time to leave that sad incident behind and move on. Moving on means, looking forward to the next launch. The next launch from Intel is IvyBridge-E. IvyBridge-E CPUs are coming out this summer - September to be precise. That's only couple of months away from now. Fun times!

 

The IvyBridge-E CPUs

 

There are 3 models announced. The Core i7 4820K, 4930K and 4960X. Contrary to SandyBridge-E, all the CPUs are fully unlocked this time around. If you remember, Core i7 3820 was only partially unlocked.

The following is a detailed list of specifications of the upcoming IB-E CPUs. (image courtesy of Xbitlabs article)

 

 

Some more facts

The heat spreader is soldered to the die:

IB-E CPUs will have the die soldered to the heat-spreader. (Well, they have only confirmed it for the 4960X) IB didn't. IB simply had a thermal paste interface between the die and the heat-spreader. This caused IB to become hotter than SB when overclocked. Hence IB-E will have more thermal headroom for overclocking, which means it would be possible to overclock it higher than IB. Having a larger die (i.e. more surface area to dissipate heat) and having no iGPU would also help.

No x89 chipset:

It looks like there is no X89 core-logic coming out with IB-E. Intel's chipset roadmaps show X99 after X79 and X99 is for Haswell-E. The issue with X79 is that it lacks a lot of newer tech, such as native USB3.0 and more than two SATA-III ports. And a die Shrink would have improved thermals as well. This is good news for people who are running a Core i7 3820 because they can upgrade to a 4930K and enjoy a massive performance increase without spending a lot of money. You'll only need a bios upgrade at worst case. People running 3930K's or 3960X's won't see much of an improvement though.

 

So, upgrading to IB-E would be worth it?

 

The question remains. Is IvyBridge-E going to be a worthwhile upgrade from SandyBridge? You can receive a 50% increase in core count, unless you are stupid enough to get the 4820K. And there is 10% or so IPC boost. That would translate to about 60% more performance boost.

You will lose QuickSync support, which is not a big deal because Handbrake doesn't support QuickSync yet.

There will definitely be newer motherboards but sadly with the same old X79 chipset. I prefer having the controllers integrated with the chipset. I always disable the 3rd party controllers because they are not fast enough and I don't need that many ports in the first place.

But for most people, other than for bragging rights, this won't be a necessary upgrade. Games wouldn't benefit much for having two extra cores. But it would, if you are using quad GPUs, because the x79 platform provides 40 PCI-E lanes from the chipset (but this would be CPU in the case of IB-E), which allows you to use Quad GPU setups with hardly any performance drop or lag. Generally speaking, only the video editors will benefit from the added horsepower.

I guess I will wait and see how badly these Japanese shops will price the new CPUs. If I've learned something from the history, the pricing would be really bad. A 3930K costs ¥58,000 these days. That's about $580. Even if Intel releases 4930K at the same price, these bastards would sell them for like ¥70,000. Spending that much money only on the CPU is not going to happen in my book. When you think of it, I'd probably be stuck with my 2600K for eternity. The ugly truth!

Wait! I will have to renew my Internet connection in January. That means, I will get like ¥40,000 or so discount on select items when purchased with the internet connection. I hope the 4930K will be in that group of select items. :)

To upgrade to Haswell from Sandybridge or not! That’s the question.

With Intel’s Haswell release being right around the corner, the upgrade itch is crawling back into me. I currently use a Intel Core i7 2600K CPU and ASRock Z68 Extreme4 motherboard (i.e. Sandybridge) in my PC and they are quite capable even in the demanding tasks. The CPU is overclocked to 4.5GHz, which makes it way faster than the current (3rd) generation flagship CPU in every task. Probably, it would remain the same when Haswell CPUs come out as well, because the rate of increase in performance with each new generation of CPUs has dropped to single digit percentage numbers in the last few years. If the rumors are true, Haswell won’t be any different (this, this and this). If you checked that last link, you will see that most of the performance improvements come from the GPU side. I don’t care about that because I would always be using a discreet graphics card. (But knowing that Handbrake would get QuickSync support in the future, makes things a bit more interesting.) All in all, my CPU at 4.5GHz would still own the flagship member from Haswell at stock – at least in most benchmarks.

But the question remains, why am I even considering upgrading to Haswell? That’s because Haswell itself will overclock and once overclocked, it would leave my current overclocked CPU in the dust. If the rumors are true, you might be able to hit 6GHz with proper cooling with a Haswell CPU. That would make it about 50% faster than my current CPU. No concrete information is available about the overclockability of Haswell CPUs so I cannot really make a decision until the official reviews are out. But I am hopeful. We’ll find all about it in a month.

Haswell is not only about performance. It is also about power efficiency. Haswell CPUs will be able to do more work with less power. And the idle power usage seems to have dropped by 10 times. This is not anymore a rumor, but it seems that most of the crappy CPUs won’t be able to deliver the low currents required for Haswell CPUs when at idle. We always looked at how the PSU copes with high power demands and never at how the PSU copes with low power demands. Seems that crappy PSUs cannot deliver low power “stably”. That would probably give BSODs. I checked on Intel’s website and seems like my PSU is supported after all (Corsair 75-001311 aka 850TX). So I don’t need to change the PSU. But even if I had to, I wouldn’t be to displeased about it because I get to buy a PSU with modular cables and also something more efficient that the one I have.

But, an important question remains: how important is power efficiency improvements in a desktop environment? Not so much, right, because there are so many other things that would be using up the power. The video card is the biggest culprit. Then there is RAM, hard drives, audio card and fan.

Then there is this USB issue with the early chips. With the buggy chips, when your PC goes into standby and you have a storage device plugged into USB3.0 ports, you will have to disconnect and reconnect the device to make it work after you resume from standby. It’s a nasty bug, but it is fixed in the latest chips. But the bug fixed chips won’t make it to the first motherboards. Rumor is that it would take about a month before the bug fixed versions of the motherboards hit the market. I would definitely wait for that.

When Haswell CPUs go on sale in Japan, the second hand market value of my current CPU and the motherboard would drop. I don’t know by how much, but it will definitely drop. I will have to evaluate the situation against those figures. I don’t want to receive only 1/3 the price of what I’m paying for the Haswell upgrade when I sell my current CPU and motherboard. That just doesn’t seem right.

All of these have to align, if I am to go ahead with the upgrade. The CPU has to overclock well; the bug fixed motherboards have to hit the market; I need to get something valuable from selling off my old stuff. I’m mostly concerned about the latter. Because even right now, I’m getting only about JPY 22,000 if I sell my CPU and mobo. :(

One important thing I forgot to mention. I currently use the Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B air cooler, and it is not the best out there, especially because it is so loud when the fans are running at full speed. I might upgrade this cooler to something decent with the Haswell upgrade. All depends on the overclockability. Too bad this case doesn’t support most of the hot (not literally) coolers out there. :(

Finally, let me list up the reasons for the upgrade.

• 50% performance improvement over my current gear – when overclocked
• Reduced overall power consumption
• Better Windows 8 compatible hardware (motherboard site perhaps)
• I only have to upgrade the CPU and the motherboard. (unless speed of RAM makes a difference; I only have ones running at 1600MHz)
• Native USB 3.0 support (IvyBridge brought this to the table, but I don’t have an IvyBridge rig, do I?)
• PCI-E 3.0 support. (Again, IvyBridge brought this to the table, but I don’t have an IvyBridge rig, do I? Besides, I already have a PCI-E 3.0 graphics card.)

When is iPhone 5S coming? I cannot wait! :)

Well, I don’t want the iPhone 5S just because I want another iPhone. I want LTE mainly. I can go with the iPhone 5, but why bother, when the next one is coming out in a couple of months. Or, at least, that’s what the rumors suggest.

I know my contract doesn’t end before that, but I want the new thing as soon as possible, so that I can use it for a long time without getting it outdated soon. Just like when I got my iPhone 4S. :)

I would probably upgrade my wife’s iPhone as well, because it would make things easier, especially because of the new lightning cable. The current plan is to sell the old iPhone 4S(s), for cheap – unfortunately, because they are carrier locked. Nobody would want to buy them in Sri Lanka, right? Hmm… But the phone would have much higher value if an unlock would come around someday. I can give it to a relative then than sell it off cheaply.

I should probably get it from Sofmap or Dospara, instead of directly from SoftBank because then they would have an easier way for me to trade in my old phone and get a new phone. SoftBank also offered such a deal when the iPhone 5 came out, but you had to mail the phone to their HQ and get an evaluation and then receive the cash back. It felt tedious.

The decision right now is the get the iPhone 5S whether it comes with drastic differences or not. I need LTE and a speed bump would be a bonus. If the rumors are true, the iPhone 5S will come with a Quad Code CPU, 2GB RAM and a 12MP camera. I don’t really care about the latter, but I wouldn’t mind the improvements. But I really hope that iOS7 will have a lot of good things up in its sleeves.

My next phone – looks like it’s gonna be another iPhone

Seems like it's going to be yet another iPhone. That's means it's going to be my 3rd iPhone. Hopefully I will be able to get the one that's coming out this year as soon as it comes out. "Hopefully", because it all depends on what SoftBank have to say about upgrading my existing iPhone 4S. The current 2 year contract period - which is actually 26 months - is only going to end at the end of November. And the rumors are that the new iPhone is coming out in July. That's about 4 months before my contract period ends.

Wasn't that the same with 3GS to 4S upgrade?

Something similar happened when I got my iPhone 4S. There was a long way to go until the contract period for my iPhone 3GS was over, but at that time SoftBank launched a campaign to waive off the remaining contract months if I switched to the iPhone 4S straight away. I'm sure they did not do it for us. They possibly wanted to keep the existing customers loyal to SoftBank because KDDI was also getting the iPhone 4S. But it was a win for me. I hope they will come up with a similar campaign this time too.

Why do you need to upgrade your phone this soon?

Some people must be wondering why I wanna upgrade an iPhone 4S, which performs pretty well for most people. Two reasons.

1. You can get the iPhone for free in Japan. At least, the base model is free. So why not get one while we can?
2. Once my 2 year contract ends, SoftBank will renew the contract for another 2 years. If I need to get out of the contract, I have to pay a fine of JPY10,000.

Note:

If I renew the phone before the 2 years, the contract gets renewed for another 2 years. While I don’t have to pay for early termination – because there is no termination – I have to pay back the discount (Remember, the phone is free. That’s the discount.) otherwise we would have got if we used the phone for the complete 2 year period.

Are you upgrading to Haswell? Improved iGPU will be the killer feature.

Would you upgrade especially if you are already running a 2nd generation or 3rd generation Core i-series CPU? The leaked benchmark scores aren't that great. They maybe for early engineering samples but I don't think the final chip will be much faster than the chips used in the leaked results. Intel won't be making big last minute changes.

I'm running a 2nd generation Core i7 2600K CPU and it's overclocked to 4.5GHz. We don't know how high Haswell CPUs will clock. You would expect an increase in overclock potential because of process shrink but IvyBridge didn't work that way. So you won't know until the full reviews are out. But if these CPUs can hit 5GHz easily, the increase on IPC will carry the performance delta past 30% mark. That's a healthy increase in performance these days.

(Image courtesy of Anandtech) 

One more issue I have with the leaked specs is that the TDP has increased from IvyBridge (84W vs. 77W) contrary to the popular belief. Haswell was supposed to bring significant power savings to the table. Why has the TDP gone up by 7W? I wonder if most of that power is resident in the iGPU. The biggest performance improvements in Haswell will come from the iGPU which doesn't mean much to most enthusiasts. The only thing you might want to do with the iGPU is video transcoding using Intel's QuickSync technology. Even then, the options are pretty limited. The application support for QuickSync sucks at best.

BUT...but...it looks like the drought is going away. You know what Handbrake is, right? Anandtech just reported that Handbrake is about to get QuickSync support. That would be awesome!!! That would be the reason to upgrade to Haswell, especially I'm only using a 2nd generation Core i-series CPU.

(Image courtesy of  wccftech.com)

Upgraded to iOS 6.1.1 which fixed 3G connectivity issues (and already jail-broken)

We all knew that iOS 6.1.1 was just around the corner as Apple released a beta version to the developers few days ago. Yesterday, all of a sudden, the final version of iOS 6.1.1 came out - just for the iPhone 4S. I didn't expect it to come out this soon but it seems like there was a major problem with the iPhone 4S. Even Vodafone in the UK told people not to upgrade to 6.1.

Looks like the problem was with 3G connectivity. I too had problems where the webpages would take forever to load and calls taking a long time to connect. But I never suspected the problem was with the OS. I blamed SoftBank for their ever-so-worsening quality of connectivity.

OK, so this sounds like a critical update, but what about jailbreaking? Will it break the evasi0n jailbreak? Will I not be able to jailbreak again? Haha! Apparently there was nothing to worry about. Evasi0n jailbreak tool had been upgraded to version 1.3 which can be used with iOS 6.1.1. How awesome is that?

The iOS 6.1 upgrade afterthoughts

So, it's been a week since I upgraded to iOS 6.1 and I have few things to share. Thus this is the part 2 of the article.

 

Apple can come up with 200 new features, but I had trouble finding even 10 things that I might call a new "feature".

 

Maps

The biggest change that came with the upgrade was the new maps app from Apple. But like most people, I don't use it. In fact, I didn't have to use the maps app the whole week. But if I want to use maps in the future, I will use Google Maps. Basically, I wish I could simply get rid of the Apple Maps app and replace it with the Google Maps app. Apple Maps look prettier though.

Apple maps app

 

 

 

Google maps app

 

 

No YouTube?

 

Just like the old maps app, they also removed the old YouTube app. But they didn’t substitute it with a new app of their own. Instead, now you have to download and use Google’s newly designed “full-featured “ YouTube app, which is more functional anyways. So this is really a non-issue.