Überclok Reaktor

edit 19 July: Apparently, the technicians over at my pc store have at last begun assembling my pc. However, at 1300 hours, GMT -08:00 Pacific Time, my sales representative phoned me and blurted out something I didn't want to hear. He said in a Chinaman accent,"Hi, is this Felix? Our techs have begun building your pc. But your sound card isn't gonna fit into your motherboard. Since the sound card has to be installed into a PCI slot, I'm afraid that there's gonna be heat problems." (I have dual double slot graphics cards that require a slot beside each card to be free for sufficient airflow - I found this out later) Argghh! Darn, I've always wanted a dedicated add-on sound card to avoid crappy on-board audio. But it seems I don't have a choice since I insist on having Crossfire. In fact, my motherboard has already got what it seems an add-on sound card, the SupremeFX II. But there's nothing to cheer about. It's merely a riser card for the sound output ports as Asus couldn't manage to cram them onto the board's PCB itself. So, it's plainly still crappy on-board audio :(

looks can be deceiving

(Image from http://www.sweclockers.com/imagebank/200803/AsusRampageFormu001.jpg)

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edit 18 July: Again, I'm changing a few components. I'm through with waiting for my Gigabyte motherboard to be available again. The descripition says that it will be "In Stock Soon" as "This product is currently in transit from a supplier. Expect 2 to 5 days processing time when you order it." It seems like more like 2 to 5 weeks! More stock just never comes! Anyway, I'm moving back to my original plan to get an Asus motherboard (Bryan is highly supportive of this change). This time round, it's an Asus Rampage Formula with the same Intel X48 chipset as the Gigabyte. You may be thinking that I should get a DDR3 motherboard and DDR3 RAM to compliment it as over the months, their prices have been gradually plumeting. But I feel that real world performance gains are too diminutive to merit an upgrade. Also, my graphic cards, the ATI HD 4870s, will be reverted back to HIS from Diamond. The HIS models have become available again after my long and futile wait for my Gigabyte motherboard. Fingers crossed, this will be my final configuration :)

And Amos, this space is for you. In the tagboard, I mentioned about adding another 8800GT. Yes, this is argubly the best performance per dollar setup. For roughly 299 US for both of them, you can get the equivalent, or even exceed the performance of a GTX 280. Which is the most formidable single GPU card out there right now. I know that you have an Intel X38 motherboard, so this isn't possible. Well, in that case, your only option is go for a single Nvida or ATI card, or ATI's Crossfire. Your single 8800GT is still good enough though.

(benchmarks courtesy of anandtech)

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edit 8th July: Wow! Great find there, Amos! You spotted something that I myself overlooked when I uploaded the WIC picture. You do keep a sharp eye, ha! For those of you who still do not know what went wrong, the word "trial" is misspelled "trail" in the graphic. I suppose banner designers should use spell-check and re-read their sentences before posting the banners up, lol. Plus, I left out my monitor and speakers (I purhased them separately from the computer) when I originally posted the article. The manufacturer of my ATI video cards has also been changed due to availability issues. It has since been updated.

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That's it!

After seemingly endless delays, my new rig has finally been acquired. It won't be rated among those "Extreme Editions" though. But at least it gets the job (gaming) done. It will be ready in a week or two.

Now for some comments on my new build.

Surprisingly, I have defected to ATI from Nvidia for my video card, or more specifically, video cards choice. Mostly due to the apparent bang for the buck (BftB) advantage ATI has over Nvidia. See, what I picture Nvidia is a company with an endless supply of resources that relentlessly pumps in raw horsepower into their graphic cards. If you take a glimpse at the number of transistors and physical size of the GTX 280, you'll know what I mean! Whilst ATI is a company with notably less resources that aims to keep their graphic cards slim and at the same time, beefy enough for the mainstream market. It seems that ATI has made the right move this time round, targeting the mid range rather than the enthusiast level. With the unparalleled success of ATI's 4800 series, ATI has gone for a little dip in the high end level with its upcoming dual GPU 4870 X2. It will blatantly target the GTX 280 and the 9800GX2 for supremacy. The 4800 series has even forced Nvidia to push their GTX prices lower. But this is a particularly tough pill to swallow, due to the massive number of transistors they feature.

"Darn!" ATI's performing better than expected! - featuring Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia

Also, for a dual GPU setup, I have no choice but to get an Nvidia motherboard chipset if I want SLI. While for ATI's CrossfireX, I have the option of getting an Intel or AMD one. According to various forum entries, I know that the Intels are a tad more stable than the Nvidia models. Plus, with recent news that Nvidia's stock taking a plunge due to their faulty chips, I have gradually lost trust in the company. Anyway, it's great to have you back in the game, ATI!

For my sound card, I have picked an Asus model over a Creative one. Why? It's simple. Creative X-Fi drivers just has a thing or two against Microsoft Vista. They are highly problematic when installed together. But what about EAX? I'm glad to say that Asus has the solution. Their Xonar DX model has the capability to emulate EAX 5.0. Neat huh. Though it will seldom perform as well as the original X-Fi. (the differences will be negligible anyway)

A free copy of the game, World in Conflict, goes along with my Intel quad core. There's also a 10 day trail copy of the game for a friend. Any takers? Haha.

(Again, take note of the typographical error)

My Vista will be in a 32bit flavour. I know of the 4GB RAM limit and all, but I fear for compatibility issues when I take the leap to 64bit. And err, forget about Windows 7. It's out of my league at the moment.

Aright then, this is what most of you will be looking for: the final components. Here goes...

CPU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz 12MB cache
CPU Heatsink
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 Direct Touch 4 Heatpipe Heatsink
Motherboard
Asus Rampage Formula Motherboard (Intel X48 chipset)
RAM
Corsair XMS2 Dominator TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-15 (with fan)
Video Card
(x2) HIS Radeon HD 4870 in CrossfireX
Enclosure
Antec P182 Black
PSU
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad 750W
OS
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition 32BIT
HDD
Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB
Optical Drive
Samsung SH-S223F 22x
Sound Card
Asus SupremeFX II
Speakers
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 digital
Monitor
Dell 2407WFP-HC 24 inch widescreen

Still won't be able to play Crysis at 1920x1200 with 4x AA, 8x AF and details pushed to the max with this config, I guess. I'll see to that when I get ahold of it.

At long last, finally,
T'ang


(Jen-Hsun Huang image from http://www.tgdaily.com/index.php. WIC image fromhttp://www.ncix.com/go-intel-wic)

A Review of Hellboy II: The Golden Army

I watched the film yesterday with a couple of friends. Well, it's an okay movie, with nothing to write home about. Honestly, I didn't enjoy the film (I despise the titular character in the first place).

The movie encircles round a predictable, "end-of-world" plot. Where an evil elf wants to awake a long dormant army to wipe out humanity. And the red devil arrives just in time to save the day. The film features a panoply of mythical creatures and lovely eye-candy, while the fighting scenes are well-conceived with lots of martial arts and firepower (gotta love the mega-revolver). However, the ending had me questioning: why didn't the elf heroine do that earlier? I'll leave that for you to find out yourself. Plus, we may even get to see two Hellboy juniors in the next installment. And yes, the couple got busy.

Simply put, fans of the character certainly won't be let down by this sequel. But the bland storyline has left me wanting for more.

Oh yeah, one more thing. The young Hellboy featured in the opening of the movie is HIDEOUS! urgghh...

T'ang

(image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellboy_II:_The_Golden_Army)

This Is Where Science Defeats Belief

I think not...

It is generally accepted by audiophiles that vinyls sound better than CDs. However, science has proven them wrong.

Well, through a certain point of view.

If one deems "sounding better" as music that most accurately replicates the original recording, then, sorry to say audiophiles, but CDs does the job better. Before you audiophiles rant and rave, let me give a brief explanation to how vinyls work. Data is stored in the vinyl through grooves that are engraved by a needle. For the "most accurate" sonic experience, the needle that reads the record has to be the exact same shape as the needle that has engraved the grooves. This, however, is sensibly not probable. CDs, on the other hand, encodes the data mathematically. This almost gives an exact replica of the original recording. Therefore, it is safe to say that CDs should be rightfully prized by discerning audiophiles.

Others say that vinyls give a "warmer and fuller sound". However, this claim is probably due to an artifact of harmonic distortion and signal compression. See, what the turntable needle does is that it picks up vibrations of the spinning vinyl and turns them into what I call, "extra notes" in the tune. Then, in this case, the defects are a virtue.

So which is better? CDs or traditional records? Honestly, not many of us have golden and acoustically tuned ears. The minuscule differences between them can't even be picked up by average ears. After all, it all boils down to personal preference. Not to mention the psychological effects that clouds our final decision. If audiophiles believe that CDs can never reach the standards of vinyls, then, to them, this discovery would mean nothing.

Besides, I still prefer MP3s :P
T'ang


(With references from http://www.popsci.com/entertainment-gaming/article/2008-07/are-records-really-better. Image from http://recordbrother.typepad.com/imagesilike/images/big_vinyl_rules_1.jpg)

Notes From The Lab

I was reading a couple of magazines from my school library the other day, and this was what caught my eye:


Cruelty-Free Bacon
Scientists in the Netherlands have grown minced pork in a dish by adding water, glucose and amino acids to pig stem cells. Expect artificial ground meat by 2012 and bacon within the decade. (Rena Marie Pacella, from Popular Science)


What?! We can now grow meat? This is something unheard of! Darn, we are messing with mother nature big-time I assure you. I presume that in the next 5 years or so, we can be expecting something called "home-grown meat" lying in the "Instant Aisle" of a grocery store. Inside the pack will include all the necessary nutrients, conditions and space for harvesting your very own slice of meat. On the 'Instructions' at the back of the packaging, it'll simply read, "Just add water!" I guess animals can prep for a sigh of relief.

Another note, the US military have a new weapon at their disposal (what a surprise indeed) - a humongous flying laser turret. It is a laser cannon built into a C-130 Hercules. It uses a mixture of iodine and oxygen to produce a pernicious beam of light. After the beam has been readied, make sure nothing other than the intended target gets in its way. For everything in its path will be sizzled and obliterated within seconds. My sympathies, birds. To the pilots in the plane, fret not. The beam of laser itself isn't hot, and is only capable of heating things up.

A mean little sucker huh

If you're interested, feel free to read more on this here and here.

Well, that's it for another weird day at the office. Your comments are greatly appreciated.

T'ang

(image from http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2008-03/how-it-works-airborne-laser-cannon)

The Way It’s Meant to Be Heard: A Review of the Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 Pro

I was supposed to leave this review for later, perhaps after my exams. However, I just can’t help it! My pleasurable experience with my new earpieces has forced me to blurt this out right now. In short, it truly has been a lovely start for my online shopping trend.

The payment and selection process was easy enough that’s for sure. I just had to pick a seller with my product and one which offered the lowest price. Of course, I can’t trust the seller just because his price is the lowest. You may never know if the product is an imitation model from China. So, I had to look at the feedback given by previous buyers. I was flabbergasted. It was a grand total of 47,900+ ratings and 99.7% of them were highly positive. Wow! The description of “Power Seller” given by eBay is spot on! The seller, Yogi Computers, gained my trust in a matter of seconds. The next few steps couldn't be simpler: just pay the fees via Paypal and an email confirming payment and shipment is sent almost instantaneously.

The shipping cost was certainly not cheap (US$26.99 to be exact). However, I have none but one choice: I had to use United States Postal Service’s (USPS) Express Mail International shipping. This is USPS’ fastest shipping method. It seems a little pricey for a product weighing in at merely a few hundred grams though. Nevertheless, the package’s ETA was within 3-5 days and it had to be sent from Pennsylvania all the way to Burnaby, BC (that’s more than the entire width of North America). The estimation was dead right. Within 3 short days, I came across a note from the post service. It said an attempt to send me a parcel has been in vain, and recommended me that I pick the parcel up myself at a post office nearby. And so I did.

The packaging itself was aesthetically pleasing. A matt blue and white paper bag with a quality leaflet attached to its side indicating all the necessary postage details. Also, I noticed that the package made a stop at JFK airport, and then Jamaica before arriving at its intended destination.

Upon opening the bag, I was immediately confronted with a stench of foul smelling gas. It smelt like the odor found within plane cargo (of course!). And there you have it, the very box housing my earphones.


After reading numerous articles on reviews of these earphones, I couldn't wait to try them for myself. However a ridiculous impediment stood in may way: the hard plastic box was a hassle to open. The plastic was so reluctant to break itself apart. I had to resort to brute force ripping with a set of DIY tools! By the time the box finally gave way, I ended up with blister-ridden fingers. Darn, this box could have even withstood a ton of C4 explosives! I guess quality products go hand in hand with quality packaging.

The box neatly housed a bag of ear tip sleeves; a ear-junk cleaning tool (LOL); a sound volume attenuator; a chic and elegant looking metallic case; a ¼ inch adapter jack; and of course, the earphones themselves. I had a fair bit of time sampling the myriad of sleeves and adjusting the reinforced cables so that it loops round my ears securely. The intended method of wearing these ‘phones aren’t the normal one of simply letting the cables dangle from your ears. These required the cable to be wrapped round the back of your ear, perhaps to attain a more secure fit and to minimize the microphonic effects (cable thumping noises).



Without a moment to lose, I seized my iPod and booted it up. I first song that I played was Jay Chou’s 发如雪 (hair like snow). To me, this is the perfect song to test my new earphones. It starts of with a clear and sparkly drizzling sound and later climaxes to produce a deep bassy sound. Besides, the song is encoded in Apple Lossless. To make a long story short, the sound was absolutely stellar! The detail of the Super.fi 5 Pros outstripped my Sennheiser CX300 by a mile! Bass reproduction was deep and tight. When directly compared to my Sennheisers, the bass was clearly less muffled and muddy. The midrange was also proficiently controlled too. In other words, the lows, mids and highs were flawlessly balanced. It was a definite upgrade for my now aging Sennheisers. As expected, the upgrade in sound quality was certainly not as radical as moving up from the despicable pair of iPod pack-ins to my Sennheisers. But the stepping up from my CX300 was a profound difference nonetheless. With twin balanced armatures per earpiece, the reason for this can’t be too hard to comprehend I guess!

Additionally, the ear loops worked exactly as advertised. No matter how hard I shook my head, they kept the earpieces from falling off. The earpieces go deep into my ear canals, but never felt overly intrusive.

So at long last, after agonizing lengths of earphone testing in a store over in Singapore, I have finally found the perfect model that satisfied my cravings perfectly. As I recall, I have tried various models from Shure and Etymotic, but none them seemed to entice me. With above average comfort levels, superb sonics and a relatively low price tag, the Ultimate Ears Super.fi Pro 5 is one earphone which justly lives up to its name!

The complete package

"The Ultimate in Super Fidelity", that is what it stands for.
T’ang

The cause of sensor noise

I'm back after my long hiatus due to heavy school commitments. Yes, JC life is real tough, especially with useless subjects like project work. Anyway, the purpose of this post is to discuss the causes of CCD (Charged Coupled Device) noise. For those that do not know, sensor noise is what causes grainy images when pictures are taken at high sensor sensitivities, for example, ISO1600.

Sensor noise is more visible in images with uniform areas of colour and brightness

To understand how sensor noise comes about, we must first understand how a CCD captures an image. Light is made up of discrete particles of energy, photons. When these photons come into contact with the photosites, aka pixels of the CCD, a voltage is produced. More photons reaching the photosite result in more voltage produced. As such, the camera is able to distinguish bright areas from dark areas, to create an image.

How is the noise produced? Basically photons are quantum particles, they adhere to the laws of quantum mechanics. It is not possible to count the number of photons hitting the photosite with 100 percent accuracy , there will always be a certain amount of uncertainty. This is one of the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principal. This uncertainty creates what we call shot noise. One way to counter such noise is to increase the amount of photons used to make the image. This can be done by simply increasing the exposure, letting more light into the camera. With more photons, the noise will increase but at a slower rate than which the signal increases. Thus, the signal to noise ratio increases, resulting in a cleaner image which is less noisy.

Another major factor of sensor noise is sensor read noise. After photons are captured by the photosite on a CCD to produce a voltage, the voltage is then amplified by an amount proportional to the ISO gain set in the camera, and digitized in an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Each step in the signal processing chain from counting the number of photons captured by the photosite, to amplification of the voltage, to digitization results in noise added to the image. None of the electronic components are perfect. All of them contribute noise to the final image.

One other facet of the sensor noise problem is thermal noise. At the crux of the issue is that at higher temperatures, electrons have a higher kinetic energy and are more likely to be accidentally released by the photosite . This causes the voltage produced by the photosite to be higher than it actually is supposed to be. To alleviate this problem, one should not take extremely long exposures as the thermal noise increases proportionately with the length of the exposure.

And that's all for my discussion on sensor noise, hope you enjoyed it. For those of you who would like to find out more on this technical subject, feel free to visit http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/index.html#shotnoise to find out more!
Look out for my next post on my new in ear canal phones, the ATH-CK52.

To cleaner images,
Bryan

I Need A Vacation

I sincerely regret to announce the following... I'll be taking a short break from posting articles, due to my impending provincial exams. They'll officially be over by 25th June though, so it shouldn't be too long a hiatus. Hopefully Bryan will be able to fill the empty spaces in, but I doubt it. We've haven't seen a post from him for months now lol!

Anyway, before I take my leave, I would like to post something about my life in Canada for a change (credit goes to my buddy, Mok). My high school prom was on May 10th (a little too little too late to point this out I believe, but better late than never! XD). In case my fellow Singaporeans aren't able to comprehend what in the world a 'prom' is, here's a little scoop of enlightenment: A formal dance held for a high-school or college class typically at or near the end of the academic year. (Source: thefreedictionary.com) Ha! Like the definition said, it's formal! So no shorts and flip-flops are permitted! Hmm.. I've never been able to envision myself in a suit back then. But after my first hand experience, at least I now know I don't look too bad in it, don't you think? (pictures coming up in just a moment) LOL! But don't get me wrong, I assure you, I'm not a narcissist.

Like I promised:

From left to right: myself; Darren Pereira; Robert Straw

Gino Lara; myself

Simon Chiarello; myself

Also, I just had my graduation commencement (ceremony) on June 1. A really boring one I must say! No one 'cept for my brother to watch me shake the hand of my vice-principal! I've managed to graduate with Honors too :P It's a fine goal to be sure! Plus, I've won some British Colombia Science Council Medal for having the best overall score for the 3 sciences. Again, I emphasize: I don't mean to boast. You guys want to know more about me in Canada right? Well, here you go then!

A grad breakfast was held earlier today. Though the food was not the best I've tasted (yuck!), it's free, so who cares?! The 'best' from the smorgasbord of dishes served has definitely got to be the french toast. It was close to eating stale bread that has been laying around in the arid open for an entire week to solidify. Yes, in other words, it was rock hard. We had a rowdy time of marking one another's yearbooks soon after. I count roughly 20 autographs so far.

One last thing. Permit me to digress back to tech stuff, I apologise. I had just purchased an Ultimate Ears Super fi. 5 Pro earphones from ebay. This is the first product that I have bought online too. It is well on the way onto my grasp, with an anticipated shipping time of 3-5 business days, sent from Pennsylvania, USA. The procedure has been pretty smooth so far, with paypal giving 'speedy' confirmations and all. I'll see how well it goes. A review of this product will be arriving shortly, perhaps after my exams. So keep a weather eye on the horizon.

See ya soon!
T'ang