Random Technology Questions

[friendly luggage]

I don't know what your budget is but I personally think that the i3 you have selected will be good for gaming on a lower budget. The 7750 card however is weak and I would recommend you get at least an AMD 7770 or GTX 650. What PSU have you got selected as it's the most important item of a machine not to cheap out on.

[yoječ]

GTX650 is more or less equal to HD7750. Didn't you mean GTX650Ti?

[Andreas]

 

So all I need is a better CPU and Graphics card?

If I buy the rig as it is, will it be able to play IV with 50-60 FPS+?

Not maxed out and some settings probably need to be set on medium. The dual core CPU might limit the vehicle density and the detail distance. The GPU isn't able to max the game out and it doesn't matter in which resolution since it doesn't make a huge difference if you play GTA IV in 1366x768 or 1920x1080. It only starts to matter on resolutions that are higher than Full HD.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Carl CJ Johnsons Brother Brian

[Sneakerhead.]

 

GTX650 is more or less equal to HD7750. Didn't you mean GTX650Ti?

So if I got this build next month/early Feb, would it make since to keep it as is and then wait till GTA V is announced for PC to upgrade it?

[friendly luggage]

Windows 7 seems to be eating up a gigabyte every week or so. Could this be from restore points and if so, do the old ones remove themselves?

[Spider-Vice]

It has a set limit for how much it can take of space before deleting restore points, but you can always use CCleaner to clean up the restore points prior to the last one.

[Andreas]

 

So if I got this build next month/early Feb, would it make since to keep it as is and then wait till GTA V is announced for PC to upgrade it?

No. It would make sense to don't buy a new PC at all until GTA V comes out for PC or you buy the right hardware from the start because then you don't need to waste hundreds of $$$ just because you haven't bought the right hardware from the start. It's a waste a money and even if your parents buy it for you, you should respect their hard work for the money. Don't buy a whole new desktop PC at once from any random electronic store because it's mostly cheap sh*t for way too much money and so, you know. You should buy all the parts from a more professional store or via internet because then you do exactly know what you have bought, you have buy it for a fair price and also you don't have to think about an upgrade for a longer time. Is my post convincingly enough?

Edited December 21, 2012 by Carl CJ Johnsons Brother Brian

[Whiskey]

Probably a stupid question, but does anyone know how to change the icons of your hard drives? In My Computer, where all your drives are listed?

[Ryan]

Probably a stupid question, but does anyone know how to change the icons of your hard drives? In My Computer, where all your drives are listed?

Click on the drive, then properties, then customize.

[Whiskey]

The customize button isn't present when I click properties, but I got it to work by creating an autorun file which runs the Icon file from the hard disk directory.

[winme05]

What can I stuff in a CNR slot?

[Crokey]

 

What can I stuff in a CNR slot?

Modem, LAN cards, even some Graphics and Sound cards. But they are outdated slots and hardly anyone makes stuff for them or even uses them any more, as technologically they're crap, probably best to leave it as a dust collecting slot.

[Bad.boy!]

Why is visualization technology turned of by default in the bios? Does it slow down the pc a little if you're not using an application like virtualbox, or are there any other disadvantages?

[sivispacem]

Why is visualization technology turned of by default in the bios? Does it slow down the pc a little if you're not using an application like virtualbox, or are there any other disadvantages?

Allowing hardware-level virtualisation means that any algorithms for the division of processing power, RAM, hard drive space and PCI-E buses are implemented before the operating system loads- it makes the system potentially very vulnerable to hypervisor or paravirtualisation rootkits which can live in semi-persistent memory like GPU memory and effectively act as a man-in-the-middle for spying or information exfiltration, utilising hardware virtualisation to effectively harvest data, mirror or alter processes and exfiltrate data whilst the end user remains completely unaware. Proof-of-concept rootkits like Blue Pill could effectively log, alter or transmit all activity on a machine at a hardware level whilst remaining completely invisible to end users or even the most advanced anti-virus software. This, combined with the fact that very few end users utilise virtualisation technology, means that it's usually disabled by default. Even if you are using virtualisation technology, the settings in the BIOS to enable it only make a difference if you're doing inter-machine virtualisation- allowing you to connect to a VM as if it were a VPN host over a network. If your running multiple virtual machines on a single hardware set but not as part of a VM-over-networking protocol, then everything including process and memory allocation can and should be done at a software level. For instance, I've got a BackTrack and a Fedora virtual machine on my main desktop, and Windows XP VM on my laptop, and on neither have I enabled virtualisation in the BIOS.

[Ryan]

I have Windows and my main programs installed on my SSD, and have a 1TD HDD as a storage drive. If I don't happen to be doing anything such as browsing files on the storage drive, it will power down and stop spinning after 5 or 10 minutes. I can still view it if I go to My Computer, but if I want to browse the drive, I have to wait for it to turn on and spin up again. Anyone know how to fix this so the drive is always on?

[sivispacem]

Is there a setting in the hardware/power options that allows you to set when the disk goes into standby mode? There's one in my copy of Windows 7 under "advanced power settings".

[Ryan]

Is there a setting in the hardware/power options that allows you to set when the disk goes into standby mode? There's one in my copy of Windows 7 under "advanced power settings".

Just found it and set it to never. Hopefully that will fix it. Thanks sivispacem

[winme05]

I updated my GPU (GF4 MX440 AGP8x) drivers, and both benchmark score and gaming performance went up, but I can't access the nVidia Control Panel now. Should I roll the drivaers back or is there another solution?

[Mince]

How can I play encrypted DVDs on Windows 8? I used WMP when I had Windows 7, but I upgraded to Windows 8 today (so WMP is no longer of help.) I couldn't play these DVDs on VLC before I upgraded, and I still cannot do so.

[Exxon]

Which videocard is better?

 

-nVidia GeForce GTS450 (or 440)

or

-nVidia GeForce GT 645

[sivispacem]

Which videocard is better?

 

-nVidia GeForce GTS450 (or 440)

or

-nVidia GeForce GT 645

The GT645 is considerably more powerful, though they're both sh*te.

[yoječ]

GT645 is a rebranded GTX560SE, which is an overclocked GTX460 SE. Somewhat better than GTS450, and way better than GT440.

Edited December 26, 2012 by yojo2

[Exxon]

My friend is going to buy the Acer predator G3620 for €900, is that worth it?

[sivispacem]

My friend is going to buy the Acer predator G3620 for €900, is that worth it?

Not if it comes with the boggo NVidia GT630 it isn't, no.

[yoječ]

Predators are the same story as Alienware PCs: in most cases, they have very low price/performance ratio.

[xI Jakk Ix]

My friend is going to buy the Acer predator G3620 for €900, is that worth it?

I built my GTX 670 system with a 3570k for lower than that. Building your own PC is always better, however, if your friend prefers not to build and just wants a straight up PC, go for something like that. Just remember you will be paying almost double what you would be for manually building a gaming system, which is a lot when I spent around £800 on mine.

[Finn 7 five 11]

My friend is going to buy the Acer predator G3620 for €900, is that worth it?

I built my GTX 670 system with a 3570k for lower than that. Building your own PC is always better, however, if your friend prefers not to build and just wants a straight up PC, go for something like that. Just remember you will be paying almost double what you would be for manually building a gaming system, which is a lot when I spent around £800 on mine.

Well some pre builds are actually competitively priced to building your own, however the Acer predator is not, that build is a god damn rip off, all you are paying for is the pretty case.

 

Not even close to worth it.

[Rebel]

I have a question, seems kinda stupid but oh well. I'm thinking I should really update my drivers on the PC since when I made it. I'm just wondering how to go about this task and which components I should do driver updates on and where to get them from. If it helps here are my specs CPU - AMD Athlon II X3 460 Motherboard - MSI 870S-C45(FX) (MS-7715) Graphics card - AMD Radeon HD 6670. Do I need to update sound drivers or anything too? Thanks in advance.

Edited December 27, 2012 by Rebel

[Ryan]

If everything is working fine and you're not having any issues, I wouldn't really worry about updating your drivers. Your video card driver is the main one you'd want to consider updating.

[G-Eazy]

My PC sounds like an vacuum cleaner.

I've tried this: Clean the PC, I've checked if there was no dust in my cooler.

 

Can someone please help me, because my PC stands in the living room and if I am gaming at the evening, and my parents are watching tv they are annoyed of the loud noise coming from my PC.