I spent Friday evening/night and a majority of Sunday hooking up my new Pioneer VSX-820-k receiver, rewiring A/V cabling, rewiring computer cabling and troubleshooting issues with all the above.

After all of that, I’m still not done yet.

It turns out my initial vision with HDMI cabling wasn’t going to work:

Computer (via 5770′s HDMI out) –> Pioneer A/V Receiver –> Sony HDTV

It doesn’t work because the screen would flicker non-stop. I thought this 2D clock fix would remedy the problem, but no dice. I then tried connecting straight into the HDTV like this:

Computer (via 5770′s HDMI out) –> Sony HDTV (via digital optical output) –> Pioneer A/V Receiver

That worked. I used HDMI cable to send both audio and video signals to the display and the HDTV’s digital optical output to pass the audio signal to the receiver. Unfortunately, I am not able to figure out how to get a 5.1 audio signal through to receiver; all I get is a stereo signal.

What’s Next?

I’d like to know why my initial vision didn’t pan out. It seems to be an ATI/AMD video card or video driver problem. If there’s no way to get the video card and the receiver to play nice, I would love to get 5.1 audio signal through.

Where to find the answers though? I guess I will start with the AMD/ATI forums and then probably some of the other tech sites out there. Hell, I’ll probably try NeoGAF as well.

Still Lots to Do

Even though everything is hooked up, I’m still not settled with it. There’s still lots of tweaking to be done. Am I going to play Borderlands at 1080p60 while sacrificing dynamic shadows or should I try 720p60 with everything enabled. That latter will remind me of the Xbox 360 the most.

And then there’s the receiver itself. With the new automatic configuration of MCACC, things sound different. We’re not sure if it’s right or not, so that’s something we need to experience and test.

Oh, boy. The slippery slope of getting back into PC hardware has resulted in more PC related posts.

Today’s interesting tidbit comes in the form of a Radeon HD 6000 launch rumor. According to an HIS senior marketing manager, we should expect the next video card series from AMD/ATI to be anounced around the fourth quarter of this year. Excited? Well, not really.

We can expect bumps in performance, but forget about landscape altering new technologies. This is more about getting more performance while lowering power consumption — “efficiency” is the word I’m looking for. I’m all for more performance at a lower power (and hopefully monetary) costs, but I doubt I’ll be upgrading any time soon.

Update: Settled on 950 MHz for the GPU core and 1300 MHz for the memory. Let’s see how well it reacts in a game.

It hasn’t even been a week yet, but I’ve already decided to overclock my Radeon HD 5770 video card. Things have changed a bit since I last overclocked anything.

In my 2006 PC, I overclocked my Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13 GHz to a nice 3.2 GHz. That thing is still rocking at that speed thanks to rigorous Prime95 testing.

In 2010, however, I will not be overclocking my CPU. It already has a bit overclocking thanks to Intel’s Turbo Boost. But even though Turbo Boost isn’t as effective as good old fashion overclocking: what is the point when it comes to gaming? Most modern games are not at the mercy of the processor: it’s the video card which makes the tangible difference at regular gaming settings.

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Update: PC Cyber canceled my order. No new PC for me.

This may seem out of the blue after I’ve denounced my intentions of getting a new PC any time soon. But drastic sales is a great motivator.

The Intel Core i5 750 went on sale for $150 (~$60 off). At that price? I couldn’t delay the purchase. I purchased it along with a case, motherboard and power supply. For the curious, I’m going to lay out some component details and the reasoning behind each choice.

Processor: Intel Core i5 750 – $149.77
Info/Review(s): AnandTech & TechReport

A quad-core Intel CPU running at 2.67 GHz for $150 cannot be beat. It was already one of the most attractive quad-cores at $210, but the $60 price cut makes it an absolute steal. Great price/performance/power consumption ratio!

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 – $119.77
Info/Review(s): Gigabyte, HardOCP

It performs well, it sports the latest Intel chipset, it has decent overclocking potential and it has USB 3.0. What more can you want? A low price? It’s got that too. It’s my first Gigabyte board. Hopefully, it won’t disappoint me.

Case: Antec Mini P180 – $97.77
Info/Review(s): Antec & SilentPC

Silence, style and cooling performance under $100? That’s what this case supposedly has and I look forward to it. It has two optional 120 mm fans which I may or may not use depending on how hot things get.

Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts EA 650 – $79.99
Info/Review(s): Antec

It’s quiet, efficient and affordable. Three qualities I look for. I also hear that it’s reliable and knowing Antec, I don’t doubt it.

Those are the confirmed parts. The video card will be a AMD Radeon HD 5770, but I’m still looking for the right one. The same goes for the RAM. I know it’ll be 4 GB DDR3, but I’m still looking.

As for cooling? I’m looking for quiet and efficient operation, so I’ll most likely look for an after market CPU cooler as well.

Hard drive will most likely be my 36 GB Raptor as an OS drive and possibly another 150 GB Raptor as the secondary. Or perhaps a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB? I don’t need Terabyte hard drives for storage — I have NAS for that.  Needless to say, I still need to ponder this one over.

I didn’t think I’d be buying my new PC so quickly, but all it took was an enticing CPU sale to spur me into a purchasing frenzy. After it’s all said and done, I’m hoping this rig will cost less than $800. So far the running total is $505.45.

I’ll post updates on this build next week, so stay tuned.

Having purchased Torchlight and looking ahead towards Mass Effect 2, I began contemplating building my PC once again.

The last time I thought this over, I was looking for a Micro ATX PC for the sake of downsizing, but now I want this PC to be small enough for the home theater set up. I want to turn this PC into a console if it needs to be; playing PC games with the Xbox 360 controller if I can. The Antec Mini P180 can still achieve this sitting beside the HDTV; that’s not a problem. The problem, as always, is the amount I wish to spend on a video card.

• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 (~$114)
• Processor: Intel Core i5 750 2.66 GHz (~$220)
• Video Card: AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5850 (~$320)
• Case: Antec Mini P180 in White (~$90)
• PSU: Antec EarthWatts 650W (~$90)
• Memory: 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 (~$100)
• Hard Drive: 500GB – 1TB SATA HDD (~$60 – $100)
• Optical Drive: Most likely none

The Radeon HD 5850 costs approximately $320. That’s more than a console and while the video card can mop the floor with this generation’s console, from a purely entertainment standpoint, I cannot justify that price. I do have a solution to this problem though. I either wait for price drops or I settle for a AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5770 which I can get for about $175.

Decisions. Decisions.

What is it that I wish to play though? Mass Effect 2? It’s coming to the Xbox 360 as well and by the time I’m finished with that there’s a whole lot of other games coming out to consoles. Was this all for nothing then? Nah. If I keep going through this exercise enough times, I’ll eventually find enough reasons to pull the trigger. But for now, I will go play Torchlight. If only more games ran on older hardware like this game.

The video card I was waiting for last week was finally reviewed and it turns out that it is the video card to get. Both AnandTech and The Tech Report have their reviews up for your viewing pleasure. So if you’re building a PC today you cannot go wrong with the second fastest single GPU video card in the world.

Well, unless you live in Canada.

These video cards are priced between $300 – $350 CAD. That’s out of my price range by a fair margin. The MSRP is $269.99 USD so I don’t know where that crazy premium comes from. I guess I’ll just have to sit on these PC plans until prices come down.

Still, it’s still nice to see a well rounded video card out there.

With the release of the Intel Core i5 & i7 (Lynnfields) and AMD/ATI’s Radeon HD 5870 video cards, it’s now time to plan my next rig. Not all the pieces are in place though. I’m still waiting on how well the Radeon HD 5850 performs along with its Canadian price tag. Nevertheless, I do have an idea of what I want my next rig will be.

It will be smaller, quieter and faster.

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