Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[Arakhor]

Firefox will sometimes crash if I use the Forget function, but nothing else recent repeatable of which I'm aware.

 

[shadowplay]

Has anyone else had recently the case of repeatedly crashing Firefox?

I do have the updates installed (OS is Ubuntu 12.04). Just wanting to know if this is something particular to my machine or a common phenomenon.

I use Firefox as my main browser and I haven't had this problem (Windows 7 user here, though.)

 

[Loppan Torkel]

My Firefox crashes now and then, sometimes more often. It was good for months, but it has crashed a few times the last week or so. Think it has something to do with keeping many tabs open, coupled with videos playing and perhaps some add-ons like no-script. I'm mostly on MacOS.
There seems to be some issue with auto-update too.

 

[dutchfire]

Have you tried a clean reinstall of firefox? and then add back the add-ons one by one to see if it stays okay.

 

[shadowplay]

I had to make a video to send to a company to get warranty service, and making and uploading videos isn't something I normally do, so I'm kind of learning as I go. The problem I ran into was the video I made (an mp4) ended up being 112MB in size, although my gmail account (which is all I really have) has a 25mb attachment limit. Is there a simple way to shrink the video down in size?

Any recommendations on what I should do (other than "get an email account that lets you send larger attachments?") For now I'm going to upload the video to vimeo and send them a link. Is there a better way to do it?

 

[cardgame]

That's probably the best way to do it, as shrinking an mp4 over 4x will result in very poor quality.

 

[Souron]

Has anyone else had recently the case of repeatedly crashing Firefox?

I do have the updates installed (OS is Ubuntu 12.04). Just wanting to know if this is something particular to my machine or a common phenomenon.

I've had this happen, especially on certain web pages. I think it's a problem with video ads that leads to Firefox running out of memory in my case.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Have you tried a clean reinstall of firefox? and then add back the add-ons one by one to see if it stays okay.

I've made a clean install of the newest version and added all add-ons at once. For me it's stable to the point that I don't mind.


I do have a more techy question that I'm more interested in.
I've got this pc:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
RAM: 8Gb
Disk 1: C300-CTFDDAC128MAG ATA
Disk 2-4: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 ATA
Graphics: 2x AMD Radeon HD5850 - I believe there's 1GB in each

It's now 5 years and I have to turn down the graphics a good deal. I've learned that I can put newer videocards in old PCIe slots. So, I think getting a new GPU with 4GB would be a reasonable upgrade. ..or is it something else that would bottleneck it?

edit -
found this nice video

Link to video.

Searched a bit more. Seems like a good idea to upgrade.

 

[cardgame]

That processor will probably bottleneck any new card, to be honest. AMD's cpus aren't great, only ones worth mentioning really are APUs (mostly for laptops or tiny form factor) and the FX series.

You'll probably want a new mobo, cpu, and gpu for a significant upgrade.

 

[leif erikson]

Don't really agree with that assessment.

Please have a look here, Tom's Hardware Gaming CPU Performance Guide.

The 1090T BE is right up there with the FX's and the APU's are down a notch or two. Think it depends more on what Mother Board he is running.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

GA-890GPA-UD3H is the motherboard.

I think any of these cards would be good and reasonable:
Sapphire Radeon R9 285 Dual-X 2GB
MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB
MSI Radeon R9 380 4GB
For approx €220-€250

 

[leif erikson]

Motherboard looks fine to me.

Check out the video chip comparisons at Tom's Hardware.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Thank you. Great links!

 

[leif erikson]

One other thing. If you purchase a new video card, please make sure to check its power requirement to ensure your power supply can handle the new load. Upgraded my son's and we had to replace the power supply.

 

[Formaldehyde]

That is pretty much a given unless you built your own system. PC vendors typically put the bare minimum PSU into their system assuming people aren't going to do any upgrades other than possibly add another hard drive or two and some additional memory.

You might also want to think about increasing the cooling by adding a fan or two, or even buying a new case. This may be necessary due to the size of the graphics card anyway.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

It's a custom built pc, not built by me.. (I altered the parts 5 years ago from an existing build, they mixed up three pc:s in transfer, and I ended up with another guy's and kept it, basically. Three 2TB HDs, two that I never use..)

I think the case is good. The psu should be good given I'll have one graphics card less after the upgrade. It's a 750W Chieftech 2x6pin. The graphics card I'm looking at atm is one Radeon R9 380 XFX which requires 1 6pin + 1 8pin connector, but there's one 8->6pin converter included... Seems okay.. ..or doesn't it?

 

[leif erikson]

I think the case is good. The psu should be good given I'll have one graphics card less after the upgrade. It's a 750W Chieftech 2x6pin. The graphics card I'm looking at atm is one Radeon R9 380 XFX which requires 1 6pin + 1 8pin connector, but there's one 8->6pin converter included... Seems okay.. ..or doesn't it?

At newegg, under specs, it says that a 500 watt is minimum and that a 650 watt power supply is recommended. You seem to have it covered.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Actually, using a 8->6 pin converter isn't recommendable, I've learned. Or so spracht the internet.

The AMD R9 380 card seems like a great card, and better than the Nvidia 960GTX in direct comparison, but apparently Nvidia cards strain cpus less and since I've got an older cpu, good but old, the 960 card might be a better solution in this particular case.. ...but directx12 and the new Vulkan drivers will be able to use multicore cpus to a much greater degree, and here AMD has the advantage. ..so I decided to keep my stuff for a bit longer and see how things turn out. Still, thanks for your help.

 

[Quintillus]

As I understand it, it's the GPU that requires 6 + 8 pins - I wouldn't personally try connecting it to a 6 + 6 pin PSU. I'm no electrical engineer, but it doesn't appear that the PSU is designed to handle that powerful of a GPU.

I was reading a TechReport review of Skylake today and was surprised to be reminded just how close the Phenom X6 1100T is to the FX-8300 CPUs in performance. The 1090T would also be right up there. Bulldozer was a great disappointment, and the Phenoms could outperform it in some cases, but I'd forgotten how close they were even to Vishera.

I've also been considering upgrading my GPU; I have a 6870, which would be roughly equal to a 5850, though lesser than the pair you have in cases where CrossFire could be used. I agree that the R9 380 (and its predecessor, the 285) are great options; other than the Furies, they're also the most recent cards AMD has tech-wise. I've stayed so far (and returned the R9 290X I had) after determining that the actual visually noticeable difference wasn't that great for what I was playing, even if the frame rates were vastly different at max settings.

DX12/Vulkan is interesting, and AMD's DX12 performance in initial benchmarks is surprisingly strong. I wouldn't put it as a major factor in deciding what to buy myself at this point, since it's still so early going, but if you plan to keep the card for several years, it may prove a good investment in the end, particular since from what I've read AMD's advantage is due to the hardware architecture (wish I'd saved the link to the detailed explanation - might be able to dig it up again if requested).

 

[r16]

so ı have been playing Panzer General Forever lately and the modders declare it's all to easy tinker with it , everything is an excel file . So , having the completest of all kinds of ignorance about computers how do ı get to open those excel files ? Will "wordpad" or "notebook" do ?