Celeron J1900, can it play 1080P videos / twitch streams SMOOTHLY?

[waltchan]

I do also have a Biostar TA970 mobo that I picked up Open Box from Newegg for around $60. I had though of offering him that, and 8GB of DDR3. He could use his existing CPU for now, and then I could sell him my Thuban 1045T, or he could get an FX-83xxE CPU from Newegg or MC, and upgrade to an 8-core.

He keeps saying he wants to do streaming, but he doesn't have the hardware yet, and I don't think his PC, as it is currently, would be up to broadcasting 1080P streams, if it can barely decode them.

Give him that Biostar. I have the TA970 as well. It also can go 4.00 GHz overclock with no problem on stock voltage. You need at least a Radeon HD5450 video card at minimum for basic tasks.

The Gigabyte does indeed have an inferior 760G chipset, but it includes a built-in Radeon HD3000 GPU plus HDMI output, which avoids you buying a separate graphic card. On whole, the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 is an excellent value priced $35 lower than the boards without any GPU built-in.

 

[escrow4]

Buy a G1840 for $35, an H97 mobo for $80 or so (don't gimp the chipset and ports) and a stick of RAM. Will blow away any craptop or a tired old Athlon. That 760G is rubbish. Mystery why you'd buy a board from 2007 in 2015 with an obsolete chipset no matter how cheap it is.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Buy a G1840 for $35, an H97 mobo for $80 or so (don't gimp the chipset and ports) and a stick of RAM. Will blow away any craptop or a tired old Athlon. That 760G is rubbish. Mystery why you'd buy a board from 2007 in 2015 with an obsolete chipset no matter how cheap it is.

Uhm, why is spending $80 + $35 = $115 for a non-overclockable CPU, a better deal than a G3258 + H81 mobo combo for $90? The chipset makes zero difference for (CPU) performance. It's not like my friend wants to have a six-disk RAID-0 of SATA6G SSDs...

 

[VirtualLarry]

I finally came to a stark realization. I'm no longer interested in fixing / upgrading my friend's PC.

You see, he wallows in misery and self-pity. He loves to be miserable and complain. I made the mistake of thinking that he actually wanted to fix his PC up. Now I realize, he just likes to have things to complain about. If he didn't have anything to complain about, then how could he be miserable? I'm too good a friend of his to take away his object of misery. If that's what he wants, let him be miserable. And if he ever wants a new PC, let him buy one.

Mods, you can lock this thread.

 

[waltchan]

I finally came to a stark realization. I'm no longer interested in fixing / upgrading my friend's PC.

You see, he wallows in misery and self-pity. He loves to be miserable and complain. I made the mistake of thinking that he actually wanted to fix his PC up. Now I realize, he just likes to have things to complain about. If he didn't have anything to complain about, then how could he be miserable? I'm too good a friend of his to take away his object of misery. If that's what he wants, let him be miserable. And if he ever wants a new PC, let him buy one.

Mods, you can lock this thread.

Sorry to hear that. Well, how about a used or refurbished board instead? Still, I think the most cost-efficient and lowest-price is to upgrade his board to a refurbished $35 Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 (I stand behind it), despite the obsolete 760G chipset it uses. It's still going to perform a lot faster than the DDR2 board he has now.

No need for you to get greedy in selling him a Pentium G3258 combo. Maybe $90 is too much for him.

 

[VirtualLarry]

No need for you to get greedy in selling him a Pentium G3258 combo. Maybe $90 is too much for him.

I was going to just give it to him. But he would have had to endure a Windows re-format. (Which, it's probably time for, but any ways, he doesn't like change.)

I went over there today and had lunch with him, and looked at his current PC. I don't know what he's seeing, but to me, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I opened his favorite forum, in Firefox, and it popped up instantly. Went to current stream (embedded in forum), other than a 1-2 second pre-buffering delay, that came up fine, no apparent lag on his PC. Even went to twitch via a link, had both streams running at the same time, no noticeable lag.

Downloaded and ran HWMonitor, temps are fine, for both CPU and HDDs and SSD.

He said, "I haven't used it much today. Use it for three hours, and then it gets laggy."

My guess is that he never re-starts Firefox, unless he has a severe problem and has to reboot, and never reboots his router either, so it could just be that.

Edit: Just a note, he used to swear that he could "feel lag", when connecting his PS3 through a router. Even though I tested it with his PC at the time, and there was 1ms or less difference in terms of latency, over 1000 pings, with the router in-place.

 

[waltchan]

I went over there today and had lunch with him, and looked at his current PC. I don't know what he's seeing, but to me, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

That's good to hear. Athlon II X4 640 is 80% identical to FX-4100 and FX-4130 Bulldozer, and I see no reason why it would suck. Give him a new board with DDR3 capable, and it will be just as good as FM2 Trinity.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's good to hear. Athlon II X4 640 is 80% identical to FX-4100 and FX-4130 Bulldozer, and I see no reason why it would suck. Give him a new board with DDR3 capable, and it will be just as good as FM2 Trinity.

I gave him an A85X / Trinity FM2 APU PC with 4GB DDR3 and a 90GB SSD last year, he doesn't use it.

 

[maddogmcgee]

Is this a troll thread designed to educate us as to the vagaries of the common man?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Try this, Acer i3-4160 with Windows 7 from Acer outlet store, lowest price you'll find in this country:

$239.99

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251878172122

Already purchased two for myself. Sold both the i3-4160 processors for $118 shipped each and replaced them to Celeron G1840 for $35 each at Micro Center. Now only cost $155 each for me.

Play it smart, this is the best deal you can find. A Celeron G1840 for the same price as J1900 with future upgrades.

Thanks for the tip, I picked up one of these refurb PCs. Not 100% sure what I'm going to do with it, whether I'm going to hook my friend up with it, maybe if I get his old PC(s) in exchange, to sell / refurb / whatever with them. Btw, price dropped to $219.99 now. Plus like $15 for tax, when I ordered it.

Or maybe I'll just keep it for myself, it's faster than my 3.6Ghz G3258. Pity the SFF though. Maybe I'll remove the CPU like you did, and plop a cheaper one in there.

 

[waltchan]

Or maybe I'll just keep it for myself, it's faster than my 3.6Ghz G3258. Pity the SFF though. Maybe I'll remove the CPU like you did, and plop a cheaper one in there.

Pentium G3258 overclocked at 3.60 GHz is just as fast as Core i3-4160. They both have the same clock single-thread speed, only difference is better graphics in i3, faster memory RAM speed at 1600Mhz, and hyperthreading (4-threads). That's all, like it helps any.

I still think your G3258 can be overclocked up to 4.30 GHz easily, Have you set the memory RAM speed to 1066 MHz before you do bus-overclocking, which then goes up to 1600 MHz when it reaches 4.30 GHz or near.

I currently have a Celeron G1850 2.90 GHz inside it right now, so it brings it down to $144.99 ($75 difference between Celeron and i3).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks for the tip, I picked up one of these refurb PCs. Not 100% sure what I'm going to do with it, whether I'm going to hook my friend up with it, maybe if I get his old PC(s) in exchange, to sell / refurb / whatever with them. Btw, price dropped to $219.99 now. Plus like $15 for tax, when I ordered it.

Or maybe I'll just keep it for myself, it's faster than my 3.6Ghz G3258. Pity the SFF though. Maybe I'll remove the CPU like you did, and plop a cheaper one in there.

I got the PC today. It's similar in size to my SFF Gateway G630 Win7 PC.

However, I'm really surprised, but mine seemed... new? No cosmetic blemishes whatsoever, no fingerprints, nothing. The front bezel still has the plastic protection on it. It even smells new. I've bought refurb PCs before, and they seemed, well, used. This one doesn't, at all.

Maybe I should check SMART once I power it on.

Edit:

Seller Notes: “This item is Manufacturer Refurbished. It has been professionally restored by an Acer approved vendor and comes with a 90 day manufacturer warranty. Units are usually cosmetically indistinguishable from New products, but some may show signs of light use. Functionally, these units are equivalent to New. Manufacturer Refurbished units may be shipped in non-retail packaging.”

Interesting.

Mine even has USB3.0, one with a charging port, on the front. That's different than the Ebay pic, which shows USB2.0 ports on the front.

Edit: Newegg has them too. My unit matches the pics on Newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883101112

 

[waltchan]

However, I'm really surprised, but mine seemed... new? No cosmetic blemishes whatsoever, no fingerprints, nothing. The front bezel still has the plastic protection on it. It even smells new. I've bought refurb PCs before, and they seemed, well, used. This one doesn't, at all.

A lot of them are like that. Most of these refurb Acer PCs came from Walmart stores nationwide as returns, and customers only have 15-days to bring them back. Some new, never removed from box, and some pre-owned, but with defective hard drive inside and etc.

Downgrade it to Celeron G1840 if you want to lower its cost. Core i3-4160 (and it's the highest-end model) is selling well for $115 shipped right now with fan/heatsink taken from Celeron box.