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Dumpshock Forums _ General Gaming _ Boots faster than anything else
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 14 2013, 06:10 PM
OK, i figure where else to ask but in a den of gaming nerds?
Has anybody dealt with UEFI based Computer Systems, especially in terms of GOP and Ultra-Fast Boot from an SSD into Windumb 8?
Anybody have a combination of Mainboard and GPU that actually does work with this?
Posted by: Ryu Apr 15 2013, 04:23 PM
So is this ultra-fast-boot stuff a windows 8 thing? I have to wait some 13secs on a cold boot of win7, seems like there is room for improvement.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 15 2013, 04:25 PM
it's an windumb 8 thing, yes.
but if you are at 13 second cold boot from win7 already, you won't see much in terms of improvement . .
how'd you get it to that time?
Posted by: nezumi Apr 15 2013, 04:34 PM
I have Windows 8 and UEFI on my motherboard. I'd have to double check if I actually have it enabled. Right now the system boots pretty fast (including the splash screen, on the order of 15 seconds).
For the record, this isn't a great machine. i3, something like 8GB of RAM.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 15 2013, 04:39 PM
Enabling it after having installed win8 won't change anything.
It has to be enabled before installation of the OS.
And the GPU has to support GOP for it to work.
And how the hell do you people get your computers to boot that fist?
I have Win7, 8 Gigs of RAM, Samsung Series 830 SSD with 256GB for the OS.
Q9650 as the CPU, MSI GTX580 GPU, BIOS Board, not UEFI from Asus.
P5E64 WS Evolution . .
And it takes 1 Minute till i get to the Password field at least x.x
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 15 2013, 04:49 PM
That's .... sad. My Intel 520 series SSD lets me cold-boot in .... wait, let me check Puget's records ... roughly 28 seconds.
(The SSD is 240GB nominal; I also have 16GB of Kingston DDR3-1600 RAM and an 8-core CPU.)
Posted by: Bigity Apr 15 2013, 05:43 PM
Windumb?
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 15 2013, 05:44 PM
The MicroSucks OS Line?
Posted by: Bigity Apr 15 2013, 05:46 PM
The last two OSes have been pretty good, universally speaking.
What's wrong with 8? I think it's the bee's knees.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 15 2013, 05:52 PM
It's mostly the MetroUI that sucks.
Win7 is good, but i still call it Windumb.
Posted by: Bigity Apr 15 2013, 06:41 PM
Eh the UI isn't all that great for PC use, but I make use of several of the apps (mail, skype, weather, etc) and just hit Win+D for my desktop.
Once you learn the keyboard commands, you don't even really notice, and some of them a pretty damn handy, like a keyboard shortcut to see all of your attached devices for example)
Posted by: nezumi Apr 15 2013, 08:44 PM
Windows 8 is an OS for tablets and phones, not PCs. I got it on supersale and I'm still half regretting it (half because of general windows problems -- refusing to read drives and crippling "disk errors" linux walks right over). But Win8 is crazy fast and much smaller than previous versions.
If you're shopping for an OS, I'd probably choose 7 over 8 (but my getting 8 for $40 probably was the right choice).
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 15 2013, 09:16 PM
if they had not fucked with the UI that much, i'd have installed it by now . .
there were ways to get it for free, basically turning a pirated windumb copy into a legit Win8 one for example . .
and i still refused <.<
Posted by: Ryu Apr 15 2013, 09:34 PM
but if you are at 13 second cold boot from win7 already, you won't see much in terms of improvement . .
how'd you get it to that time?
ASUS z-77 board with SSD, system and all "basic" programs on the SSD. Also, no fancy RAID stuff, interrupt time ore anything.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 15 2013, 09:54 PM
No other HDD and no optical drive i suspect?
Posted by: nezumi Apr 16 2013, 12:38 AM
I clocked in at 25-35 seconds (after several repetitions). I don't think my graphics card supports UEFI, but everything else does (no speed difference between on and off). But I don't know that cutting my time from 35 seconds to say 15 seconds is worth the $150.
All I can say is that Windows 8 boots up VERY fast, and is a pretty small performance footprint.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 16 2013, 07:00 AM
It's not really worth it to me either, but it's my hobby, so i invest money into it anyway . .
And for me, it'd go from this computers about 1 minute to about 15 seconds, which is a quarter.
That's a pretty big difference there. if i could get a computer to boot that fast without it, i would not even consider windumb 8 a viable choice for me, because of the MetroUI.
The only thing positive i suspect about that thing is the fact that it looks like it would be easy to control using a remote instead of mouse and keyboard.
This is supposed to be an HTPC connected to a TV with a master/slave multi power socket system. And when i power up one, they shuld both start up that fast together too.
Posted by: Thanee Apr 16 2013, 08:34 AM
I never measured, but my Win 7 PC boots up pretty fast, too. Surely much less than a minute. 
I will check the time it requires, when I get home. -- Yeah, definitely under 30 seconds.
ASUS Deluxe Mainboard
Intel Core i7-2600K
MSI Twin Frozr II GeForce GTX-560ti
Corsair XMS3 8 GB RAM
2x 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS SSD
2x 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black HDD
Bye
Thanee
Posted by: Ryu Apr 16 2013, 08:50 AM
AHCI, Agility 3 SSD on a 6GB SATA port and two hot-plug HDDs plus one optical drive on 3 GB ports.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 16 2013, 09:24 AM
Hmm, strange and ever stranger . .
Posted by: Thanee Apr 16 2013, 09:32 AM
Well, there are quite a few reports about slow SSDs.
Just google "ssd slow" to see some other reports about this.
Bye
Thanee
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 16 2013, 09:35 AM
every test i do on my SSD tells me it's in the upper 5% . .
Posted by: Mach_Ten Apr 16 2013, 12:59 PM
I "think" I managed to get AHCI confidgured correctly on my PC ... win7 boots in about 25-30 seconds from Intel SSD.
SATA 300 not 600 either
it could be any number of things, BIOS may need an upgrade, SSD may be faulty, some form of conflict or config error
or just windows hates you! .... there are just so many variables.
it's why I gave up tinkering once the damn thing boots, I have other things to do rather than take apart a watercooled PC to figure out one component issue.
Chrysallids don't kill themselves ya know ! 
Posted by: nezumi Apr 16 2013, 01:23 PM
The metro UI takes one extra click (click "DESKTOP" or "CHROME" or whatever I'm jumping to). Now and again it's still more invasive than I'd like (for instance, I can't go to netflix.com and watch a video, I have to use the special app, then click on the search "charm" on the side, and go through that.) But it's minor enough that it's worth the $100 savings I got over Win7.
My issues with windows have been with the non-sensical upgrade schema (you can't upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit, and they don't ever warn you, so I sunk a day in finding a 64-bit OS to upgrade from and re-formatting the whole disc), and general windows failures (windows had an irrecoverable boot error after 6 months, and even a second windows disc couldn't read the data. I had to load Linux off a DVD, then pull the data from one drive to another.) That, and general windows licensing nonsense. Right now I'm finding Linux to be more user-friendly and require less computer knowledge and troubleshooting than Windows.
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 16 2013, 01:48 PM
Speed when booted doesn't necessarily mean speed booting. Maybe your SSD is just extra-slow to get started in the first place, but once it is, zoom?
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 16 2013, 01:50 PM
Really, though, what your computer boots to, should be a user-controllable setting.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 16 2013, 02:09 PM
Actually, i picked up rumors about a possibility of booting directly to desktop under windumb 8, because a bit of code has been found in an .dll file of windumb 8.1(windows blue) it seems.
Posted by: nezumi Apr 16 2013, 05:55 PM
Yes, it's called Linux ;P
Posted by: Ryu Apr 16 2013, 09:20 PM
What is your time to the windows boot screen (the hardware boot) and time to desktop/login screen (system boot)?
The first part does not really benefit from SSD speed, even if my HDDs need a moment to spin up if I use them, this should be a few seconds at most. I had trouble with the RAID configuration of my fathers PC a few years back, those caused a ton of waiting time until I disabled "Auto" settings as far as possible. Your motherboard seems to have a ton of features, too. Have you turned everything unused off?
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 16 2013, 09:38 PM
yeah, i have, but i can't turn off the raid, because my old system is still on a raid0 of 2xVelociraptors . .
Posted by: Ryu Apr 16 2013, 09:51 PM
Go SSD for your system. It΄s worth the effort. I actually had the SSD lying around for half a year before installing it, and would have done so early if I had known the difference.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 16 2013, 09:53 PM
My Win7 Main System is on a Samsung Series 830 256 GB SSD.
My Vista Old System is on a Raid0 of 2x74GB WD Velociraptor 10k rpm
Posted by: Ryu Apr 17 2013, 06:28 PM
What are you keeping the Vista around for? To many installations to loose?
Is it the hardware boot that is taking the time?
Posted by: StealthSigma Apr 17 2013, 07:43 PM
My overall boot time is about 15-20s.
The time spent on BIOS is 11-16s.
The time spent booting Win7 once BIOS has POSTed is 4s.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 17 2013, 08:02 PM
yep, too much stuff i'd lose with the Raid0.
And yes, it's taking pretty long to get into the windows boot image screen.
and that takes quite long till the password prompt appears too <.<
Posted by: Bigity Apr 17 2013, 10:10 PM
If you don't like the Metro UI, just hit Win + D and get to desktop..?
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 18 2013, 02:32 AM
It's not just that I dislike Metro, Bigity. It's that I dislike having to boot INTO Metro. I want to be able to boot straight to my desktop ... like Win7 already allows me to do.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 18 2013, 09:30 AM
as i mentioned before, there are rumors floating about in the IT crowd thatWin 8.1 will allow booting into desktop and maybe even bring back the start button/menue . .
if that is the case, then yes, i will consider it a valid option for a new OS . .
Posted by: Thanee Apr 18 2013, 12:49 PM
With Windows Blue everything will be good again!
Windows Blue is to Windows 8 what Windows 7 was to Windows Vista.
Bye
Thanee
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 18 2013, 01:46 PM
if they can repeat that, then it will be a good OS to use.
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 18 2013, 03:07 PM
And, they will be perpetuating the cycle: "Do not early-adopt even-numbered iterations of Windows. Wait for the second Service Pack, and/or, wait for an odd-numbered iteration."
Win95: okay
WinME: not so good
WinXP: okay
Vista: not so good
Win7: okay
Win8: not so good
WinBlue: ...?
Posted by: nezumi Apr 18 2013, 04:40 PM
I'd probably include 95 as the 'not so good' and 98 as the 'okay'. But yeah, my understanding is that (excepting XP), most of those are the first version (which is terrible) followed by the revision. 98 is 95 updated, 7 is Vista updated, etc. XP is the odd man out, but only because it was based on Windows NT, which wasn't made for consumer PCs.
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 18 2013, 05:40 PM
I think the pattern is one where:
For one generation, Revolution - MS introduces amazing new features and abilities .... which don't always work out so well in the real world, as they did in their staffmeetings.
For the next generation, Refinement - MS refines, polishes, and generally improves upon what already exists ... fixing what can be fixed, leaving alone what works fine, and dumping the rest.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
See, for example IMO Vista was just fine .... after Service Pack 2.
Posted by: Starmage21 Apr 18 2013, 07:39 PM
For one generation, Revolution - MS introduces amazing new features and abilities .... which don't always work out so well in the real world, as they did in their staffmeetings.
For the next generation, Refinement - MS refines, polishes, and generally improves upon what already exists ... fixing what can be fixed, leaving alone what works fine, and dumping the rest.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
See, for example IMO Vista was just fine .... after Service Pack 2.
I agree with this assessment.
Posted by: Bigity Apr 18 2013, 08:11 PM
I gotta say that I'm not seeing many valid reasons for classifying Win8 as 'not so good' other than a dislike to hitting an extra couple of keys.
But hey, I know alot of people like the Win7 interface more than 8.
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 18 2013, 08:40 PM
Bigity .... I can't give you more reasons, because I haven't used it.
When it came time to build this PC, I knew two things. One, I had seen Win7 in action, and it clearly would do everything I ever needed. Two, I dislike the Metro interface intensely, but Win8 insists on presenting me with it at every boot-and-login.
So. I had reason to avoid Win8, but no reason to avoid Win7. Guess which one I went with?
Posted by: Bigity Apr 18 2013, 08:45 PM
And that's fine, but I'm saying I'm not sure that quantifies it as 'not so good' outside of your opinion. Just bantering around here some.
Posted by: CanRay Apr 18 2013, 09:29 PM
*Looks at old case* "Let's see how fast I can get this to boot." *Kicks it off a bridge* "Acceleration of gravity, apparently."
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 18 2013, 11:13 PM
Mr.Clarkson, is that you?
Posted by: CanRay Apr 19 2013, 12:06 AM
He was told to boot his system. "I HAVE BOOTED THE SYSTEM AND IT IS NOW ON THE FLOOR!"
The person I did that to later thanked me as he came close to having the same issue when working numerous times.
Posted by: nezumi Apr 19 2013, 12:41 AM
But I do have Windows 8. I wouldn't say it's a bad OS overall, just unnecessarily mediocre.
The metro interface is goofy, and you DO have to use it for some things (for example, search, Netflix, some control panel options, and it's the default for viewing images, videos, etc. That last part is fixable, but its an unnecessary PITA.)
The upgrade process is broken.
Windows 8 also destroyed its boot sector somehow, and was generally useless at either repairing windows, or recovering the data on the drive. (To be fair, Windows 7 couldn't recover the data either, and I don't know that it was Windows 8 specifically that broke it or that its repair feature was any worse than Windows 7, but it's been a while since I'd hit such a drive error, and it only took windows 8 two months.)
So right now, I don't trust it, I don't like it, and it's not intuitive. I'd say those are pretty heavy marks against it.
On the upside, it does move pretty fast, and it seems to run lighter than XP (that could be bias, because it LOOKS like it should run faster). Its little compatibility tool is handy too. I plan to put it in a VM and use it to run Windows games. It seems the perfect choice for that. But it's not my first choice for my primary, workhorse OS.
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 19 2013, 02:43 AM
Good, not so good, even "utter crap" .... it's all nothing BUT personal opinions.
Some of them may be shared by many people. Others ... not so much.
But they're still just personal opinions.
(OTOH, I have seen what truly objectively horribad software looks like ... SotS2 .... I'm still mad about that pile of crapware ...!!)
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 20 2013, 12:32 PM
If 8.1 permits booting into desktop again, i will be getting me some of that.
Even if i have to cheat me a start button and start menue via classic shell.
Posted by: StealthSigma Apr 22 2013, 06:41 PM
And yet... some PCs will be started up and ready for you to log in to before it hits the ground.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 22 2013, 08:39 PM
and that's what i want <.<
in reasonably sized please.
if needed be and i can get it silent, i will take a big huge powerfull monstrosity of a computer for 3000 too, but i'd prefer a computer in small, tiny, cheap and not needing it's own thermo nuclear power plant . .
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 22 2013, 08:48 PM
in reasonably sized please.
if needed be and i can get it silent, i will take a big huge powerfull monstrosity of a computer for 3000€ too, but i'd prefer a computer in small, tiny, cheap and not needing it's own thermo nuclear power plant . .
Tiny yet powerful .... Puget's ECHO II: http://www.pugetsystems.com/nav/echo/II_Intel/customize.php
(Mini-ITX smaller than some textbooks)
Silent ... Puget's Serenity: http://www.pugetsystems.com/serenity.php
(potentially quieter than a standard light-bulb - 11dB for the Serenity SPCR, 13dB for the light bulb!)
Silent, AND small? Serenity SPCR Mini ...!
You're welcome.
Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 22 2013, 10:08 PM
Echo II: 1350 Bucks if done to my specs, and i can't even swap the intel boxed cooler . .
Serenity: 2240 Bucks if done to my specs, and it's a pretty mediocre system in my eyes.
Oh, and don't forget: i am in germany, these american things don't work for me over here.
it's close but no cookie.
Posted by: _Pax._ Apr 22 2013, 11:27 PM
Serenity: 2240 Bucks if done to my specs, and it's a pretty mediocre system in my eyes.
It's $1.31US to 1, keep that in mind.
So that EchoII would be only 1050 (and, did you look at the size of it? 96mm by 222mm by 328mm ... about the size of two softbound SR4A core rulebooks!) ... while the Serenity is just under 1,710. WAY under your stated budget limit. As for the Serenity being "mediocre" ... did you go for the SPCR version, or the Professional version? The SPCR is all about QUIET, at the expense of all else. And "Quiet" generally pulls in teh opposite direction of "Power".
Keep in mind, the Serenity SPCR is as noisy as a standard lightbulb, and that's under full load; at idle, it's QUIETER than the bulb.
Hmm, I'll grant you that, but they might still be able to accommodate the differences - largely in terms of the power grid there, yes?
Anyway ... if you wanted to email them and enquire, they'll arrange just about ANY build. You'd be paying the American OEM markup of 30% to 40% over raw parts, AND then international shipping, so it's probably not the most economical way to go about it. But regardless ... if there's a place here that can do those kinds of machines ... I'm pretty sure there must be someplace in Europe that can, too.
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