The TEST Part 4

[DKlein]

Alright, recap: making an online test on computer knowledge. Previous threads here:
The Original, The Second Part, and the Third Part.

What we're looking for now are questions for this test. Questions will be going by category and difficulty level.

The categories (so far) are:

*Gen Hardware (what is this part and what is it's function, whats IDE, SATA),

*CPU's and OCing, Cases and cooling (do I need case fans, which way should blow air etc, how big a PSU do I need etc)

*Motherboards (How to change FSB, vcore vdimm, whats DC, how to clear CMOS)

*Networking (How to, troubleshooting etc.)

*Software and Apps (How to install, restore, clone etc.)

*Video (what diff between AGP v PCI v PCI-e. Whats AA & AF)

and I have added to this

*programming/OS

*market knowledge (what's the best video card, how do the XPs compare to the P4s, etc)

And the difficulty levels are:

The 1s would basically be Amish in their computer knowledge.

The 2s would basically know a little bit. They'd understand what a monitor is, what a computer is, what a mouse is. Very basic stuff, though.

The 3s would understand basic concepts about the internet, maybe know a few shortcut keys, these are the people that can follow the directions for installations with relatively little problems, the sort of people that programmers have in mind when they design this stuff.

The 4s would be close to your average user. They can move files around, find files, set preferences, understand what a virus is, albeit their understanding would be quite basic, etc.

The 5s are the lower end of the average user. They use their computers regularly, but still don't know what "defragging" is in reference to. They could install Windows themselves, if they hadn't bought their computer from Dell. They might even understand there's this thing called "overclocking," and it makes things go faster.

The 6s are the upper end of the average user. They use their computers regularly, and maybe even run virus checks and defrag every so ofter. These are the people that actually learned something about the machine they use, but still know very little. They understand that things like MHz refer to speed, GB refer to storage size, but probably don't understand the difference between a 10GB and a 10Gb hard drive.

The 7s are the guys that have taken an interest in their computers. Maybe it's your younger brother, just starting out into overclocking or building his own system. They have a general idea of what's going on, but will still say "nVidia 6800GT is teh roxorz becus it has PS3.0, whatever that is." They overlock sometimes, but also tend to burn up motherboards and processors after a few weeks and wonder, "why did that happen? Seemed fine right after I o/c'd... maybe I should have done that hole 'stress testing' thing?" They give advice to their less-knowledgeable friends, despite knowing very little themselves.

The 8s are a lot more knowledgeable than those 7s. They are experienced overclockers or computer builders. Not quite A+ certified, not experts, but they can explain what IRQs are all about, the difference between Intel's HT and AMD's HTT, and could explain why the 6800GT roxorz so much, but with some actual knowledge. Still, they aren't perfect by any means. They will give advice to friends, correct their 7s on occasion, but will fail at figuring out harder troubleshooting problems and run over to AT to get the answers.

The 9s are the "experts." They know what the 8s wish they knew, and what the 7s don't even know they don't know. The 9s laugh at the ignorance of the masses, and carry on conversations among themselves over the benefits of the different software applications, processor architectures, and operating systems. Still, they can be wrong sometimes, and aren't perfect. They know a lot, but their knowledge is by no means supreme. They can't make a decent tweaking guide for Windows, they can't design their own motherboard, and their knowledge is not really complete on anything. They will not be getting jobs at Microsoft anytime soon.

The 10s are the best of the best. Want to know who coded your clean disk utility? One of these guys. Who designed the GPU in your video card? One of these guys. These guys come in to correct the 9s when they miss something, and they just know that they're the best - it's like being in love. Want to know ultimately why that stick of RAM isn't quite working well with your motherboard? These guys will tell you, and give you a 100 page explanation in the process. They can go on for hours on the simplest questions. They are the computer gods.

Please make all questions multiple-choice (at least 4 possible answers), and include category and difficulty level. Humor is always welcomed, too

I'll start out with some questions already put up, and try to add a few of my own later today.

 

[DKlein]

Questions:

What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

"What is the purpose of the reset button and what does it do?"
Ok more ?s. Do current HDD require 40 pin 80 cable (or what kind of IDE cable do they need)

Will your optical drive be slowed by using an old 40pin, 40 iwre IDE cable?

To what component(s) of the PC do the following terms apply: Master, slave, cable select?

Whats the purpose of a jumper (can be used twice, in the contect of a mobo and a drive device)

Does a WD HDD require a jumper when alone in the master position on an IDE channel?

Does running the CPU frequency out of synch with the ram hinder performance in (a) an athlon XP system, (b) and AMD 64 bit system, (c) an Intel Pentium system ?

Do CPU's with long pipelines require/benefit more memory bandwith than others?

Who manufacturers cpu's with long pipelines? AMD or Intel

What are the family of CPU's developed by Intel

Same as above for AMD?

What do Micron, hynix, infineon, Sansung all manufacture? Bonus question, which generally OC's better?

What is a good proggie to test ram/memory with?

Same for CPU

An IDE cable has two positions to attach HDDs. Which position indicates Master, which for slave?

Do most current CPU's draw their ower from the 12v or 5v rail?

Same for gfx cards

Same for HDDs

What are methods for cooling CPU's (passive, air, water is what I'm getting at here)

Who is Bill Gates and why does he suck? (stole DOS and got rich, stole windows and got richer) J/K, although very true

What is a search engine?

What is/was gopher and Wais?

What is a GUI

Is AOL the "internet"?

LAN v WAN, what is

Internet v intranet

Whats token ring, or ethernet

Whats a router, hub, switch

If you install win 98se over top of itself will your data be lost?

If you seperate your HDD into multiple partitions, installing the OS on c: and Apps on d:, must you reinstall the apps after reformating and reinstalling the OS?

What's a registry?

What key generally brings up the console command in PC games?

What are console commands for?

What might the console command "showfps 1" or similar do?

Whats a dongle?

 

[bendixG15]

MY question.........

What is this doing here ???????????/

Take this OT where it belongs.

 

[ssvegeta1010]

How about a graphics card question that many have trouble with:

(Level 5-6)
What is the proper abbreviation for PCI Express?

 

[DKlein]

Those were by ribbon13 and Fern, respectively, by the way. Now for a few of my own submissions:

* (level 1) What is a monitor?
A. A type of lizard
B. That thing you're looking at right now
C. That thing with all the keys on it
D. A and B
E. All of the above
(answer = D)

* (level 2) What is the internet?
A. A method of catching large numbers of fish
B. A method of connecting to other computers over communications lines
C. A method of working at a company whereby you do nothing important, but supposedly learn things
D. A method of adding and subtracting 0s and 1s to make computer language
E. All of the above
(answer = B)

* (level 3) Which of the following is a malicious program?
A. A trojan condom
B. A ringworm
C. A germ
D. A virus
E. All of the above
(answer = D)

* (level 4) On which device in your computer does data go for long-term storage?
A. Processor
B. Hard drive
C. Video card
D. Heatsink
E. Monitor
(answer = B)

* (level 5) What is a way to protect your computer from internet-based attacks?
A. A router
B. A firewall
C. Adware
D. Spyware
E. A and B
F. All of the above
(answer = E)

* (level 6) What is a measurement of processor speed?
A. GB
B. MHz
C. MPH
D. RPM
E. CPU
F. MPH/s
(answer = B)

* (level 7) Which is the greatest in storage size?
A. 53450KB
B. 678.890MB
C. 0.87GB
D. 1034Mb
E. 53450Kb
F. 235467198B
(answer=C)

* (level 8) Arrange the following according to typical storage size (smallest to largest):
A. HDD, RAM, VRAM, L1 Cache, L2 Cache
B. RAM, VRAM, L2 Cache, L1 Cache, HDD
C. VRAM, RAM, L2 Cache, L1 Cache, HDD
D. L1 Cache, VRAM, L2 Cache, HDD, RAM
E. L1 Cache, VRAM, L2 Cache, RAM, HDD
F. L1 Cache, L2 Cache, VRAM, RAM, HDD
G. VRAM, L1 Cache, RAM, L2 Cache, HDD
H. L2 Cache, L1 Cache, VRAM, RAM, HDD
I. VRAM, L2 Cache, L1 Cache, HDD, RAM
J. HDD, L2 Cache, L1 Cache, RAM, VRAM
(answer = F)

* (level 9) What are the basic differences between RISC and CISC architectures?
....

* (level 10) Please connect the following diagram to the appropriate processor: (insert technical diagram here)
....

Well, I can't answer the last two questions, but I hope I'm right with the rest of 'em. Feel free to critique other's questions as well.

 

[ssvegeta1010]

DKlein, there seems to be a rather large gap in diffuculty between levels 8 and 9. This may be just from how the levels are.
Otherwise, those look great.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: bendixG15
MY question.........

What is this doing here ???????????/

Take this OT where it belongs.

SU!!! This belongs here and go be a moderator somewhere else!!! Fing 1000 post members telling ppl where to go....

I see hardware questions fool!!! You go somewhere else!!!!

 

[DaveSimmons]

Here's one that many people here get wrong, difficulty 7-10:

Sound card audio:
For current sound cards and motherboard audio except nforce2 with SoundStorm, an optical or coax digital connection to a receiver or speakers will send how many channels of audio?
a. 5.1 Dolby Digital or DTS audio for both movies and games
b. 5.1 Dolby Digital or DTS for movies, 2 channel PCM stereo for games
c. 2 channel PCM stereo for both movies and games

Correct answer: b.

Explanation: Only Soundstorm offers real-time Dolby Digital encoding of multi-channel audio, though intel is planning to offer it as well. For existing soundcards and other motherboards you can only send 5.1 game sound to a receiver or most speakers using 6 analog connections (to the DVD analog in on most receivers).

 

[Lonyo]

* (level 7) Which is the greatest in storage size?
A. 53450KB
B. 678.890MB
C. 0.87GB
D. 1034Mb
E. 53450Kb
F. 235467198B
(answer=C)

0.87GB is larger than 1034MB?
There was me thinking 1GB + 10MB (1034MB) would be bigger than 0.87GB

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
* (level 7) Which is the greatest in storage size?
A. 53450KB
B. 678.890MB
C. 0.87GB
D. 1034Mb
E. 53450Kb
F. 235467198B
(answer=C)

0.87GB is larger than 1034MB?
There was me thinking 1GB + 10MB (1034MB) would be bigger than 0.87GB

It says Mb for megabits not megabytes.....

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
* (level 7) Which is the greatest in storage size?
A. 53450KB
B. 678.890MB
C. 0.87GB
D. 1034Mb
E. 53450Kb
F. 235467198B
(answer=C)

0.87GB is larger than 1034MB?
There was me thinking 1GB + 10MB (1034MB) would be bigger than 0.87GB

It's a cheesy trick question -- even though bits are rarely if ever used in specifying storage quantities, D is 1034 Mb (megabits) not MB, and E uses "kb" for kilobits.

I'd throw this away as written since kilo, mega, giga bits are normally only used for data rates (audio & video) and for network transmission speeds.

The only exception I can think of is for capacity of some ROMs such as for the motherboard BIOS.

 

[imported_Phil]

At the linking, completely suck do you.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Here's one that many people here get wrong, difficulty 7-10:

Sound card audio:
For current sound cards and motherboard audio except nforce2 with SoundStorm, an optical or coax digital connection to a receiver or speakers will send how many channels of audio?
a. 5.1 Dolby Digital audio for both movies and games
b. 5.1 Dolby Digital for movies, 2 channel PCM stereo for games
c. 2 channel PCM stereo for both movies and games

Correct answer: b.

What about DTS? Not all movies are encoded with 5.1DD/AC3. I think that the answers to that questions should be re-worded using more format-neutral terms, like "multi-channel digital audio" and "encoded/compressed" vs. "uncompressed PCM".

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Here's one that many people here get wrong, difficulty 7-10:

Sound card audio:
For current sound cards and motherboard audio except nforce2 with SoundStorm, an optical or coax digital connection to a receiver or speakers will send how many channels of audio?
a. 5.1 Dolby Digital audio for both movies and games
b. 5.1 Dolby Digital for movies, 2 channel PCM stereo for games
c. 2 channel PCM stereo for both movies and games

Correct answer: b.

What about DTS? Not all movies are encoded with 5.1DD/AC3. I think that the answers to that questions should be re-worded using more format-neutral terms, like "multi-channel digital audio" and "encoded/compressed" vs. "uncompressed PCM".

Good point, or just add " / DTS".

 

[KoolDrew]

* (level 5) What is a way to protect your computer from internet-based attacks?
A. A router
B. A firewall
C. Adware
D. Spyware
E. A and B
F. All of the above
(answer = E)

A router is still a firewall.

 

[DKlein]

Originally posted by: Dopefiend
At the linking, completely suck do you.

Ahhhh, you're right... Struggled with that through 3 edits and apparently still got it wrong.

ssvegeta1010, yeah there's a bit of a huge difference, but that was sort of the way it has been planned (refer to chart on previous thread, once I fix the link). There's supposed to be a huge diff between 9 and 10, and a pretty big diff between 8 and 9.

bendixG15, what Duvie said. These are a lot of general hardware questions, and they're already starting some good discussions. Half the fun of this test should just be those discussions, which really aren't OT material.

 

[Gamingphreek]

* (level 9) What are the basic differences between RISC and CISC architectures?
....

* (level 10) Please connect the following diagram to the appropriate processor: (insert technical diagram here)
....

Well, I can't answer the last two questions, but I hope I'm right with the rest of 'em. Feel free to critique other's questions as well.

Well obviously as stated i cannot answer the second question. However the first question is much more simple than you think.

RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computing, CISC stands for Complex Instruction Set Computing. All of this refers to the amount of instructions the CPU must go through to execute instructions. You commonly here about IPC, and how the greater the IPC the more work gets done in a given period of time, which is the reason that AMD can compete with Intel at a fraction of the clock speed.

Also a router itself does nothing by itself, it only does something if it has a built in HW firewall. Other than that all a router does is split the signal so multiple computers can use it (in a nutshell).

I think you have good questions but they are honestly a bit too simply. A microprocessor architecture engineer or something would simply tear that apart. Myself, still being in HS can answer every single one of those question (#10 might be included depending on which diagram).

You need to make the questions harder and have a more abrupt jump.

This is rather hard to do if it is only M/C. So make sure to ask some more advanced questions such as EPIC Microarchitecture, Electrical Current and Engineering Questions, How SSE, 3dNow, and MMX effect processor performance, the difference between graphics pipelines; and for the level 9 and 10, more so 10, the parts of a basic GPU or CPU instruction.

-Kevin

 

[DKlein]

Yeah, you're right on the router/firewall thing. My bad, wasn't thinking. Also, maybe I am making them too easy? I'm never sure how to judge the knowledge of the average computer user, though. Are you thinking that I'm not giving them enough credit?

And lets keep those contributions coming, guys.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew

* (level 5) What is a way to protect your computer from internet-based attacks?
A. A router
B. A firewall
C. Adware
D. Spyware
E. A and B
F. All of the above
(answer = E)

A router is still a firewall.

Ehh... not really...

My router, before I flashed it to another manufacturer's firmware didn't have a firewall. Sure, the NAT part of the router is, in effect, a basic firewall, but it's nothing like a decent SPI hardware-based Wanker Wall.

 

[DKlein]

Bump for some more questions.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: ssvegeta1010
How about a graphics card question that many have trouble with:

(Level 5-6)
What is the proper abbreviation for PCI Express?

definitely needs to be implemented. tired of people telling others to buy a pci-x video card.

 

[Fern]

Got a suggestion. Not being lazy here as I have subimtted my own questions (and yeah, they're on simply side as noted, but we need those too. "Each to his level"). Are there any "databases" of existing questions we can use, adapt or modify to our purpose? Perhaps the A+? No need to reinvent the (entire) wheel kinda of thing, ya know

Fern

 

[DKlein]

Good thinking. Also, sorry if I've made all way too complicated. Basically, just throw out some questions, no need to worry about the whole difficulty level thing or category.