Windows 10....one year later....disscussion, thoughts.

[Gingerbread Demon]

Having no real issues with W10 on my desktop. But I do need some GPU advice.

Current card Radeon R9 380 4gig, but I want to pull that and replace it. What is good that's around the same price as this one?
Or should I keep it?

 

[Marc]

Having no real issues with W10 on my desktop. But I do need some GPU advice.

Current card Radeon R9 380 4gig, but I want to pull that and replace it. What is good that's around the same price as this one?
Or should I keep it?

Why not toddle off to sites like anandtech, tom's hardware, ars technica and read some of the reviews then to places like msy.com.au or newegg.com.au and look at the prices. Or you can look at them first, see what's in your price range (because we can't recommend something that's around the same price as the current card when we have no idea what you paid).

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Why not toddle off to sites like anandtech, tom's hardware, ars technica and read some of the reviews then to places like msy.com.au or newegg.com.au and look at the prices. Or you can look at them first, see what's in your price range (because we can't recommend something that's around the same price as the current card when we have no idea what you paid).

I will........ I am........ I got this card back in June from PC Case Gear for 388 including shipping. I've seen a few similar cards like the Rx 480 which has similar specs to mine and 4gig of ram but I think I might in the long run be OK to hang onto this for a while. The specs seem too close to not bother with some of the cards I have looked at, and power consumption on mine is great.

 

[John Clark]

Yeah, I'd keep it for a while if it's still works well enough.

I'm running a card that seems to be about three and a bit years old (though I got it slightly later) and so far, it's handled everything I play well enough. Perhaps if I were 4k game playing, my view might differ, but for the moment, it's fine.

(I'm running the R9-290 4gb though)

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Yeah, I'd keep it for a while if it's still works well enough.

I'm running a card that seems to be about three and a bit years old (though I got it slightly later) and so far, it's handled everything I play well enough. Perhaps if I were 4k game playing, my view might differ, but for the moment, it's fine.

(I'm running the R9-290 4gb though)

Yeah I guess, and it also depends on what games you run. For me Just Cause 3 has lots of issues running but that's I think mainly because it was a terribly ported game and not optimized well for the PC platform. Runs fine on consoles but not PC. I only just started that this year and that one game has frustrated me with lag and lots of hard disk caching.. I thought it was my graphics card. But I have been fiddling and farting and researching and it's not the graphics card but the game itself. Lots of people have had issues with this badly ported game.

Everything else I run I have zero issues with and to me 4k and stuff, well to be frank it feels like a gimmick.

 

[Random_Spock]

Damn. The beep came back today while listening to music on trntbl (a Tumblr music site). I'm wondering if it's due to my video game systems being on the table near it? But the only other guess is that my ram is running a bit high. Been noticing it running around DRAM Frequency 665.6 MHz and higher lately. So I'm a bit worried on that end.

 

[Amaris]

I wish Microsoft would fix their disk data transfer speeds. When I would use my Linux partition, transfers were blazing fast. With Windows 10, it will leap off the start, and about 5 seconds in, will utterly peter out until I go from 190 Mbps transfer rate to 11, then 10, then 3. I have optimized it everywhere I can, but no dice.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I wish Microsoft would fix their disk data transfer speeds. When I would use my Linux partition, transfers were blazing fast. With Windows 10, it will leap off the start, and about 5 seconds in, will utterly peter out until I go from 190 Mbps transfer rate to 11, then 10, then 3. I have optimized it everywhere I can, but no dice.

I have noticed this when I do something like copying all my music folders from one drive to another drive. It will start super fast for like the first 20 or 30 percent of the copying then it will slow down a lot and will then finish in a few minutes instead of the approximate time given when it first started.

I've set my windows to give me a graphic of the copying process by clicking that bit in the tab that says "more information" but yeah this happens a lot with some file copying processes or other disk transfers.

 

[Marc]

I wish Microsoft would fix their disk data transfer speeds. When I would use my Linux partition, transfers were blazing fast. With Windows 10, it will leap off the start, and about 5 seconds in, will utterly peter out until I go from 190 Mbps transfer rate to 11, then 10, then 3. I have optimized it everywhere I can, but no dice.

Well part of the boast at the beginning is comes about by various caches and can also be impacted by the size of the file being copied (doing lots of small files and they can be cached, big files not so much). That said there could be some other issues at play.

Just did some quick tests on my system and even when copying to an old 500GB Seagate drive, using a 1.4GB ISO image speed didn't drop anywhere to anyway near what you're seeing so you could have other issues at play.

Track down a copy of a program call Crystal Disk Info (freeware). It will talk your drive and give you a report on the underlying hardware. It's possible the drive is developing faults that aren't manifesting themselves at a higher level yet.

suspect that NTFS is probably too well entrenched for Microsoft to make any major changes especially when they would could have serious impacts on the system stability and it's probably majorly hamstrung by it's origins in the FAT file system.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Caching. I think some of this is due to caching as the system ram is used to hold files while they go from drive A to drive B, and when you start the copying process things move along like a rocket but as ram fills up it will slow down, then other caches start to be used such as the paging file. That's the best sort of answer I have found on google.

Funny though copying stuff between two SSD drives doesn't seem to be affected as much, but that may be due to the fact that those drives have zero moving parts and aren't as bottlenecked as mechanical drives.

Anyway for me I don't usually have issues with this unless it's a large file that's over 5 gigs in size or a large folder of stuff like my music folder which I back up every so often.

 

[Amaris]

Well part of the boast at the beginning is comes about by various caches and can also be impacted by the size of the file being copied (doing lots of small files and they can be cached, big files not so much). That said there could be some other issues at play.

Just did some quick tests on my system and even when copying to an old 500GB Seagate drive, using a 1.4GB ISO image speed didn't drop anywhere to anyway near what you're seeing so you could have other issues at play.

Track down a copy of a program call Crystal Disk Info (freeware). It will talk your drive and give you a report on the underlying hardware. It's possible the drive is developing faults that aren't manifesting themselves at a higher level yet.

suspect that NTFS is probably too well entrenched for Microsoft to make any major changes especially when they would could have serious impacts on the system stability and it's probably majorly hamstrung by it's origins in the FAT file system.

Thank you! I downloaded it and ran diagnostics. Here were the results for the C> Drive:

* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 137.770 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 126.014 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.809 MB/s [ 197.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.141 MB/s [ 278.6 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 137.993 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 124.368 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.347 MB/s [ 84.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.098 MB/s [ 268.1 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 42.1% (392.1/931.0 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/03/25 22:34:17
OS : Windows 10 [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

And the D> Drive:

* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 129.343 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 126.650 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.821 MB/s [ 200.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.058 MB/s [ 258.3 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 129.403 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 125.608 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.342 MB/s [ 83.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.157 MB/s [ 282.5 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [D: 88.4% (823.1/931.5 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/03/25 22:41:57
OS : Windows 10 [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

For context, here's Speccy's info on my storage drives:

---------------
DRIVE C:
---------------
Manufacturer Western Digital
Heads 16
Cylinders 121,601
Tracks 31,008,255
Sectors 1,953,520,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ACS2
Firmware Version Number 03.01A03
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 986 times
Power On Time 280.0 days
Speed 7200 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., NCQ
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Interface SATA
Capacity 931 GB
Real size 1,000,204,886,016 bytes
RAID Type None

---------------
DRIVE D:
---------------
Manufacturer Western Digital
Heads 16
Cylinders 121,601
Tracks 31,008,255
Sectors 1,953,520,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ACS2
Firmware Version Number 80.00A80
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 1054 times
Power On Time 650.0 days
Speed 5400 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., NCQ
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Interface SATA
Capacity 931 GB
Real size 1,000,204,886,016 bytes
RAID Type None

Also, yes, I'm a Western Digital fan, have been since the mid 1990s.
I know SSDs are much faster, but I can't afford them because the technology, for the size I need, is way too expensive. I need terabytes of storage, as I do a great many backups for myself, and for several websites. Transferring that kind of data gets frustrating after a while, because while it will start off in the 130+Mbps range, it quickly trends downward. If Linux's journal file system is superior, I suggest Microsoft eat crow and switch to it, because NTFS is reaching its limits on modern hardware, IMO. FAT was around for 30 years. NTFS is 25 years old. Time to update.

 

[Santaman]

SSD's are not for data storage so having HDD's isn't a bad thing, read speed of SSD's are great, write speeds meh.

In your case I'm a bit puzzled, I've got a little Am1 machine with an old 750Gb Samsung and even when I copy 60+Gb from a USB3 external HDD to this Samsung I get about 50Mb/s sustained, sometimes faster and with little files a little slower, I run Linux Mint on the thing and use bog standard Ext4.

NTFS has been updated several times during its existance but its far from fast, should be quite a bit faster on what you say.. I assume you've got the whole Intel storage driver thingy up to date?

 

[Amaris]

SSD's are not for data storage so having HDD's isn't a bad thing, read speed of SSD's are great, write speeds meh.

In your case I'm a bit puzzled, I've got a little Am1 machine with an old 750Gb Samsung and even when I copy 60+Gb from a USB3 external HDD to this Samsung I get about 50Mb/s sustained, sometimes faster and with little files a little slower, I run Linux Mint on the thing and use bog standard Ext4.

NTFS has been updated several times during its existance but its far from fast, should be quite a bit faster on what you say.. I assume you've got the whole Intel storage driver thingy up to date?

Yes. I keep it up to date, and like you I am cornfuzzled.

 

[Santaman]

It can't be a hardware problem, else booting the computer would also take ages, your software is up to date so maybe its another fuckup by M$, their track record so far this year has been really awful..

The only other thing I can imagine is chipset drivers or sata controller drivers, you're might be better off downloading the ones from the website of your mainboard manufacturer than to rely on M$ update, maybe that will speed up stuff otherwise a real longshot would be to try Total Commander to test if that will copy the files faster. http://www.ghisler.com/

 

[Marc]

I know SSDs are much faster, but I can't afford them because the technology, for the size I need, is way too expensive. I need terabytes of storage, as I do a great many backups for myself, and for several websites.

But how many of those backups are kept offsite?

 

[Amaris]

It can't be a hardware problem, else booting the computer would also take ages, your software is up to date so maybe its another fuckup by M$, their track record so far this year has been really awful..

The only other thing I can imagine is chipset drivers or sata controller drivers, you're might be better off downloading the ones from the website of your mainboard manufacturer than to rely on M$ update, maybe that will speed up stuff otherwise a real longshot would be to try Total Commander to test if that will copy the files faster. http://www.ghisler.com/

I downloaded Total Commander (which reminds me of Norton Commander in every way), and ran a few file copies from one drive to another. I averaged 120 MB/s for the first 10 seconds, then it started dropping until it got to about 67 MB/s.

But how many of those backups are kept offsite?

None. When it comes to websites, I use the free options, which let me download and store it on my own system, or I can pay for online site backup, which I can't. As for my own backup for my system, I store it on a secondary hard drive. I don't use offsite backups because: (1) I have a 30Mb connection, and backing up 450GB of data is mind numbingly slow, and (2) I don't trust my private data on an offsite system, even if I zip and encrypt.

 

[Santaman]

67Mb/s is a lot better than 10 or 3Mb/s .. maybe that does mean that the M$ filemanager either is buggy or causes a gigantic overhead for some reason.

I'm not really up to spec with knowledge about Windows 10...

 

[Marc]

67Mb/s is a lot better than 10 or 3Mb/s .. maybe that does mean that the M$ filemanager either is buggy or causes a gigantic overhead for some reason.

It's alwasy been a bit of an abomination but there's gotta be more at play than that.

It's my main tool for copying small groups of files around (larger quantities or for copying only changed files I use SmartSync) and the only time I see the sorts of results experienced above is writting to a flash drive.

None. When it comes to websites, I use the free options, which let me download and store it on my own system, or I can pay for online site backup, which I can't. As for my own backup for my system, I store it on a secondary hard drive. I don't use offsite backups because: (1) I have a 30Mb connection, and backing up 450GB of data is mind numbingly slow, and (2) I don't trust my private data on an offsite system, even if I zip and encrypt.

If you're so worried about your backups you need to overcome your paranoia and look to some sort of offisite backup even if it's an external drive stored a friend's place.

Backups kept onsite aren't worth jackshit in the event of fire/flood/act of $deity. Something even some businesses have taken a while to learn.

 

[Amaris]

67Mb/s is a lot better than 10 or 3Mb/s .. maybe that does mean that the M$ filemanager either is buggy or causes a gigantic overhead for some reason.

I'm not really up to spec with knowledge about Windows 10...

Yeah, plus Total Commander has that nice nostalgia feel to it. Even the setup window reminded me of the old Windows 3.0 installs.
So I'll probably buy it, anyway.

It's alwasy been a bit of an abomination but there's gotta be more at play than that.

It's my main tool for copying small groups of files around (larger quantities or for copying only changed files I use SmartSync) and the only time I see the sorts of results experienced above is writting to a flash drive.

If you're so worried about your backups you need to overcome your paranoia and look to some sort of offisite backup even if it's an external drive stored a friend's place.

Backups kept onsite aren't worth jackshit in the event of fire/flood/act of $deity. Something even some businesses have taken a while to learn.

Reliability I'm not concerned about. I have 3 onsite storage locations for all of my data. Like I said, I can't afford offsite backup, and only two friends who live within two towns of me, and neither have the capability to store my data. Hell, one of them thinks his computer stores the internet inside of it. That said, one of those onsite storage locations is my phone, which packs the largest storage card I can afford. It can't hold all of my data, but it can hold the bare essentials (roughly 64 GB). Since I can take it with me anywhere I go, that is a somewhat viable solution.

 

[Random_Spock]

I HATE Microsoft and their updates. Heard that their KB4013429 had bad issues, and now I've found out that the patch for it (KB4015438) has issues as well. I'm not too happy right now, as I'm not made of money if this screws things up too badly. Screw you, Microsoft!

Source: techworm.net