turn it off and on again

[Legendary Silke]

Unofficial tech support. Fun when it works, frustrating when it doesn't. :)

 

[Tsutarja]

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" is the phrase I live by with tech support. ;D

 

[Tsutarja]

I've done that a few times for friends, although I might start charging a small amount for stuff now because it takes away from precious time.

You really should especially if the same person is always constantly going to you for tech support! I know I would if I had that issue for sure...

 

[Legendary Silke]

It just wouldn't feel right for me to charge for tech support within the family...

 

[Tsutarja]

It just wouldn't feel right for me to charge for tech support within the family...

I agree with you there, but would friends or even acquaintances be different? :P

 

[Legendary Silke]

I agree with you there, but would friends or even acquaintances be different? :P

Probably the same thing. After all... they probably went to my side for a reason. Least I could do is to make it free of charge. It's just not in me to make it paid tech support.

 

[Tsutarja]

In other news, I think it's time for me to perform my semiannual system image on my laptop. :P

 

[Legendary Silke]

I probably don't want to make system images. Just regular backups. I almost always nuke the entire thing anyway.

The SSD seems to be faster, but mostly on the apps launching after sign in. The initial boot times - the time to get to the desktop - doesn't seem to have been improved. At least the disk no longer thrashes and it finishes booting faster.

 

[Dter ic]

System images? ha I think going barebones to the point of only backing up drivers and Music, videos and pics to a hard drive is all I need.

I've been looking into getting a high end laptopop next year and let's say so far I've ;learned that it's not as easy as intel i7 -> i5 -> -i3 when there's different models in each group. There's also AMD which I am not really knowledgeable on.

 

[Legendary Silke]

System images? ha I think going barebones to the point of only backing up drivers and Music, videos and pics to a hard drive is all I need.

I've been looking into getting a high end laptopop next year and let's say so far I've ;learned that it's not as easy as intel i7 -> i5 -> -i3 when there's different models in each group. There's also AMD which I am not really knowledgeable on.

Well, on the Intel side, laptop-wise, for burst workloads (most computing that isn't compiling, video encoding, or gaming):

Atom < Atom-based Celeron and Pentium < Core-based Celeron and Pentium < i3/m3 < dual-core i5/m5/m7 < dual-core i7 < quad-core i5 < quad-core i7.

If sustained workload, dock the m3/m5/m7s by one tier.

You can find out if a given i5 or i7 is a quad-core model by the -Q suffix at the end of the CPU models. You can also find out if a Celeron or Pentium is Atom-based by an N- prefix at the beginning of the CPU models, too.

Ignore anything AMD on the mobile space.

How high of a budget are we talking about? I might be able to give pointers.

 

[Legendary Silke]

So I found MSI Afterburner, and I might try overclocking my GPU to try getting better FPS in GTAV. I hope it works out well.

Run something in windowed mode (1280x720 minimum) (a good thing to try is either Unigine Heaven or Valley) and adjust the settings on the fly. Dial back when you see glitches. Try 20 MHz increments first, then dialling back by 5 MHz after you spot errors. Do this for base/boost/turbo and memory, where applicable.

Don't forget to bump your power limits, and if desired, temperature limits. Make sure that your power supply has enough spare amperage for the rail your video card is on!

I usually just dial back an extra 5 MHz after I think I see no more errors just in case the stray frames appear very rarely.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Well, my resolution is 1920x1080 so Windowed Mode will probably help, although some games i have don't do Windowed Mode (Skyrim, although I haven't dug into the settings much yet, but I'm sure GTAV does). While I do run on a battery, I often keep my laptop plugged in when gaming, but I really should keep an eye on power consumption.

Skyrim actually has a windowed mode, but you probably shouldn't rely on it too much, as vertical sync doesn't have an effect, which might wreak havoc with the game physics.

Easier to just test with the Unigine benchmarks. If it's stable there, it probably is in most other games unless you're thermal throttling. Keep an eye on temps and the power limits to see what you're getting bottlenecked.

Also, consider overclocking more mildly than usual since you're overclocking a laptop. Make sure you don't run into thermal issues. Desktop video cards are significantly more lenient in this regard - their over-engineered coolers make you basically limited only by the silicon quality and your power supply.

 

[Tsutarja]

I've always been scared of overclocking...but then again I'm scared of heat in general :P

 

[killer-curry]

lol when my brother says that 2009 model core i5 750 is too slow for gaming. For me core i5 so far is good for high demanding games.

 

[Legendary Silke]

lol when my brother says that 2009 model core i5 750 is too slow for gaming. For me core i5 so far is good for high demanding games.

Really, anything Sandy Bridge or later is good.

Sometimes I think that's because CPU performance pretty much got stuck. We're still getting improvements on them, but I think the majority of them went to the efficiency and the processor graphics.

This is actually a good thing, mind you - Windows tablets are now viable gaming machines. :)

I think I might actually get a Windows tablet again, something that runs on an Atom...

 

[Legendary Silke]

That or else wait for Skylake to make it into regular PCs.

They're getting there. They always do. It's just that it's so early for Skylake.

I just replaced a failing Seagate HDD from a netbook and put a spare Toshiba inside. At least the netbook should keep going for a while.

Also managed to sell that, albeit at half the street price. It was otherwise lying there, so... :)

 

[Tsutarja]

Can I just say that downloading Linux distros through torrenting is much faster than direct downloading? :P haha

 

[Legendary Silke]

Can I just say that downloading Linux distros through torrenting is much faster than direct downloading? :P haha

I usually find much better luck with a nearby mirror over HTTP. Then again, my ADSL connection prevents me from going beyond 4 Mbps. And the upload speeds are pathetic.

Still waiting for FO service to roll out here.

 

[Tsutarja]

I almost kinda wish we had a section here for reviews. That'd be really neat to see.

I would love to see more product reviews in here myself, but nobody does them enough to warrant it :(

 

[Legendary Silke]

I would love to see more product reviews in here myself, but nobody does them enough to warrant it :(

I would totally love to get a brand-new small laptop and review that. :P