Category: tech

BFG GTS 250 Review

Posted onAuthorTech Review Man2 Comments

BFG 250 GTS

Purchased one month ago aVideo card, BFG 250 GTS 1gb from the local fry’s store for $123.49. Heck of a deal coming from two Nvidia 9500gt 512 mb Video cards. Played a few games of Grand Theft Auto IV  with it. Saw the best in game benchmarks over my past video cards. Fan was quieter than my old cooling system on my  twin 9500 gt cards. Temperature was much Higher. On first boot with that card Speedfan saw the temperature at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. While my 9500 gt cards saw temps of 90 on average, 105 after stress, boot temp was around 85. My son’s 240 card temp after stress reads 95*. That’s after about an hour of playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

Gpuid aka Gpu-Z benched

GPU Z Screenshot

BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 OC 1GB PCIe 2.0

Performance
GPU NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 250
Core Clock 750MHz (vs. 738MHz standard)
Shader Clock 1836MHz
Shader Model 4.0
Texture Fill Rate 48 Billion/sec.
Stream Processors 128
Memory
Video Memory 1GB (1024MB)
Memory Type GDDR3
Memory Data Rate 2240MHz (vs. 2200MHz standard)
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth 71.7GB/sec.
Connections
Bus Type PCI Express® 2.0
Display Connectors 2 Dual-Link DVI-I
RAMDACs Dual 400MHz
Multiple Monitor Support Yes
HDCP Capable Yes, Dual link (Requires other compatible components which are HDCP capable. Designed to meet the output protection management (HDCP) and security specifications of the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats, allowing the playback of encrypted movie content on PCs when connected to HDCP-compliant displays)
HDMI™ Capable Yes (Requires adapter and audio cable, sold separately)
NVIDIA® SLI® Support Yes, 2-Way & 3-Way

I got frustrated with the temperatures being so bad. Sometimes in game I would see temperatures all of the way up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. So I removed the heatsink to see what could be causing it.

Actual Board

After close inspection, I noticed a part had been hitting the heatsink.

Flaw in BFg 250 gts 1gb Design

Looking at the heatsink I see they had designed the heatsink to accommodate for this issue, but about 1/2 an inch away.

I tried sanding down the heatsink to get more clearance, I tried drilling holes the size of the part. That actually helped. So no longer was the heatsink pressing on it, it also wasn’t vibrating against it. Look at the wear.

One month later

The temperature had not lowered no matter what I tried (while still using factory parts). I boot up my computer and start to play Need for Speed Carbon. The screen filled up with speckles. I had to reboot the computer. After the reboot I let the computer idle for a moment and then I checked the temperature with Speedfan and statistics with cpu-z.

Read outs after crap out

Not a good read. 16x card reading at 4x. after 1 month.

but for the one month of testing, the card was amazing. It played every single game I threw at it. It’s speeds never hesitated, except when it got hot. once the card would get hot, I would see some pretty tragic lag. The nvidia 240 my son has plays modern warfare 2 with high resolution and never once budges or lags. The clock speeds of that card are a bit lower than the clock speeds of the 250. If you have a low budget a warning  because the one I got died after a month of occasional hard gaming light video editing and plenty of cad design and photoshop work.

I must inform you that I did not overclock my card. I did not overclock my motherboard. I did not overclock my memory or my processor. I save that for after I get new parts. I was happy with this card so, I never bought a new card. now I have to. Tigerdirect.com, here I come.

Frys Let Me Down

Posted onAuthorComputer Tweaker2 Comments

Ok, Story time.

15 days ago I was given $150 to upgrade someone’s computer. This computer was very old. pc100 ram. Max of less than 1g capabilities. It only had a 40 gig hard drive and the processor was a Pentium II. I take the $150 and go to fry’s and walk around in circles for an hour as I always do. The frys in Houston Texas off I45 and West Road. It hit me, I cam up with an idea. I put together in my head all of the parts that where on sale and with in a budget I could handle and a good enough upgrade to be near worth the change of parts.So I look at my son who has been on his Intel e2200 processor for 2 years. And I think about my Athlon 5600+. I see that you can buy a gigabyte motherboard and an AMD 440 for $59. Ok that is not bad, not bad at all. Below I see 4 gigs pc 6400. I grab two of the cpus/motherboard packages and the 4 gigs memory. I rush home and yank only $80 out of the pot that I was supposed to use to build this kid’s computer with, I stuff that money in my pocket. I yank my two gigs of memory out of my computer and my 5600+. Throw a triple core Amd 440 and 4 gigs of memory in my machine, chunk my memory and my old processor in one of the new boards, toss it into the kid’s computer and install windows from one of my unused disks. There he is set. I take the other mobo and cpu combo and build a triple core 3.0 gig CPU  and 4 gigs memory computer for my son. We all came out with very nice machines for under two hundred bucks.

The kid’s computer is running like a monster. My son’s computer however had gone through a huge series of bsod (Blue Screen of Death) . I go to return the motherboard and processor for his machine and forgot the dang backplate. They sent us back home to get that. We go back up there. A different person was checking us out the next time we get there. They said the box for the cpu did not match. Even though the processor I was returning had the serial code on it, and that serial code matched my receipt. ok I go home and get the box. I get back up there with both boxes. This time I am being checked out by a third person. He now says that the box for the motherboard does not match the serial code on the motherboard. Even though the serial code on the motherboard matched the receipt. 3 trips to that place. This is the last day of the 15 day Warranty. It takes me 30 minutes to get home, 30 minutes to get back. I am standing there in front of the dude and it is 30 minutes before they close. He walks to his manager and explains what has been happening. The  manager some skinny dude with a nasty comb over and a suite that is 4 sizes too big for him shrugs and laughs and says I need the right box.

I asked the manager to come talk to me and hear what I have as the situation. I just wanted to see if he would laugh in my face within kicking distance. As soon as he walks up he says ” there is nothing i can do without the right box” . I tell him it is my 3rd trip up there and it would have been helpful if someone would have covered all of this the first time I came up there. I explained that one of the boxes are at some kid’s house and I will not be able to get it back. He grins and stares at me with a “ok figure it out dude” look on his face. I grab my stuff and start to walk out the door. I turn to the guy and very angrily started to say ” this is how you satisfy customers” I have no idea what I was going to say with that. The dude doesn’t care, he is just there to stand in goofy poses and look important. I got half way through saying it and just stopped and walked away.

On the way out of the door, the door guy who is suposed to check your bag and mark your receipts stepped in front of me with his purple highlighter, I looked him in the face and told him to F off. I know it wasn’t his fault. I just didn’t want to have to go through  a hokey pokey of explaining that I am walking out of the store with a handful of parts and a receipt that already has a highlighter check on it from the last person who didn’t actually inspect my stuff. I just knew that this time I would be accused of something I didn’t do so I stopped him right there. He replied with a “woaaaah!!!???” . I continued to the car and left for home. I got home 5 minutes before they closed. I would never make it back.

If the lazy bunch had their act together (yeah I know I had the wrong stuff) they could have double checked all that i was walking in and out with to let me know what else I need. they were not helpful at all.

From now on I am buying everything I need from http://www.tigerdirect.com/ They have better deals anyway. You only have to wait a few days though. and I am not one to go around saying that Fry’s sucks, But they really let me down. The biggest  tech review site in Houston, and the most common writer here, treated like a nagging 12 year old.

Epic Meme Videos

Posted onAuthorComputer Tweaker

Over the years, the internet has given us some ftunny, yet weird, still kind of cool videos. Here are the all time favorites for this site. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

What is a meme

WEEEEEEEEEEE

Peanut Butter Jelly

All your Base


Star Wars Kid

UmaNuma

Banana Phone


Badger

Tech Tv Blooper

In the spirit of the funnies.
some of my oldest videos

The boss

The Run Away

AMD New Six Core CPU

Posted onAuthorGregSnippets1 Comment

AMD CPU ON ZDNET
Ok, dur. This thing will go from it’s normal everyday regular processes to run another process that is self focused? are you kidding me? why add more work to your work horse? are they that dang impressed by dodges Himi that drops from 8 Cylinders down to six when in highway gear?? IT’S NOT THE SAME THING!!!!!! STOP IT . AMD has been on a downward spiral for a couple years. Now they have put the nail in the coffin. They really should have left it at six cores and then release the information that you yourself can adjust it closer to what they state on Zdnet. I mean AMD has always be the DIY processor anyway…. Right? Well they need to give the users what they want.. and for that matter, Nvidia freaks….. bring coolbits back! (I know AMD and ATI yadda yadda it’s my post let me vent)

Linux User Rant About Microsoft vs Apple

Posted onAuthorTech Review Man

Apple Versus Microsoft

Do we not get tired of hearing the same argument over, time and again? ” Well Microsoft is better than  apple just look how many users we have” the retort is “well look at how many viruses you have”. and then as we all shrug at the next statement as a reaction is ” well that is because we have so many users, who in their right mind would create a virus for a mac?? why bother with infecting the three mac users out there” This always stumps the mac guy so he usually mauls around all the stupid responses he can come up with then he responds with the big be all end all answer ” Well i don’t care how many users there are on mac or Microsoft, I just like how much better Mac edits video and audio files”.

Really… Really??? Really guy? show me this huge massive collection of videos you have created and all the audio content you edited. Don’t show me some stupid cd you burned at 2 seconds faster on your mac than what some other dude could have done on his windows machine, Don’t send  me to look at some clump of pirated videos you burned to a CD or DVD collection. I will have to, by all means  grab my keyboard and give you a close frontal of a home row tattoo.

“Well a Macintosh is the best computer you can put windows on” . Ok that reaction is pretty good. Not that it is says either is better than the other, it does say that mac actually took the time to find the right set of components and slap them into one machine and mass produce many slightly varied versions of it and know that all parts are a great fit together. Cool great deal. What happens if you have two identical macs, format one and install windows on it, and install equivalent software on each and begin a benchmark? and then check out software that has no match and see what one is the best bang for the buck.  Can the mac play as many games? of the game they both can play which many plays the games the best,fastest,smoothest, has better image quality? What machine has the largest collection of software to be installed and used between the two ? Has either company broken any labor laws? ok that was a mean stab.

Truth is, since Macintosh has a legal bind against Microsoft saying that Microsoft can not build personal computers, after so many years They should at least agree to build computers that Microsoft can be installed on. Wait I guess they already do, since they are 90% PC parts already. The only big Money Microsoft can look forward to is to build something like a tablet or mobile device that you can not technically call a computer, and install it’s operating system on it. Wait.. I guess they already. We call them palm.

Well I am glad they both make an operating system you can install on a thumb drive and take on you when you make a family trip across country and do not feel like bringing your whole computer. Wait?? they don’t? Why not?? Oh you say because the instabilities and mass driver errors? I guess that makes sense. I mean how could any operating system be put on something so small . i mean that would be like  a pendrive boot disk. I guess that would take an operating system used by NASA or good enough to be used in most schools across the country. Would be crazy to think you could do everything Microsoft claims to do or be even better on a mac than mac is, all the while run from a measly 4 gig (or greater if you want) thumb drive.

Man if good wishes could come true.

Android Must Have Apps

Posted onAuthorComputer Tweaker2 Comments

Now these picks are not by some internet standards or by any other influence other than me seeing extreme use in them.

Shop Savvy Bar-code scanner. Yeah the results have not been up to what I expected but hey, they do offer a chance to look at the products on amazon and see what other people’s reviews are of the items.

Zxing scanner. Not near as good as shop savvy, but is another scanner so I have two to pick through. Choices are wonderful.

Cherry Rplayer – you can manually insert radio stations you like – I of course have ZRock in mine, because well they only have an iphone app and well I want to hear Zrock Dang it!

Opera Mini– because it does some stuff that google browser will not, like play myspace games right off their site, without need of an ap.

Pandora Radio – I love the way it lets you pick a music type and just ride with it. (audio out to audio in on my car, excellent sound.)

Digital Clock from Socialmobile , it’s like my back up alarm clock  (only use it while it’s on the charger though)

Twit.tv by Mediafly – all the Leo Laporte podcasts I can listen to.

Pretty much everything I have found, are just trials or do not live up to what they charge you, or just plain ol toys.
still waiting for Myspace Mobsters Android ap. Or a nice pdf viewer that costs no money and does not have trial period.. like foxit for Droid would be real nice. Mozilla Firefox for android would be nice. Hulu would be good.
Tv.com player would fricken rock if it had shows i like in full episodes. like Smallville Two and Half Men. but seems like everything that I like, is just 1 minutes snippets, really how much bandwidth could 300×200 really be ? They could soooo make some money from the ads, kinda like hulu does, if they would just do it . Youtube ap is great, but don’t hit pause, you freaking video fail every-time you do hit pause.
A-online radio has great features but it does not make the list. It just does not buffer very well. See Pandora radio isn’t as free roam as Aonline, but I can plug my G1 into my car stereo, turn on Pandora radio and let it play all the way from work to home. I plug in A-online and it plays for all of about 20 seconds. If it is not a buffer issue then the garbage shuts off every time the back light turns off. I know it’s one of the two and I can do nothing about either.

A very good write up on ZdNet called 10 Must Have- Android Apps

One Month Review of G1 HTC Android.

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Well I have had my G1 for one month.

On day one, it crashed about 3 times.

On day two it got an update to something, no clue it happened so fast and I had no idea how to work anything on it, that I may never know. After the update I had crashes the whole day . Finally found the applications and what ones I could install.

I have to have all background processes turned off, otherwise it is super dead slow. Barcode scanners all seem to be just advertisement for national companies. Mostly target and  some drug store. Read More about the Android Barcode scanner here.

While searching the apps online, every single app has some clown saying ” app froze would not run had to uninstall found better one” then they say the name of  the supposed better one. I have come to the conclusion they are smearing  and trying to promote their own app..  If it freezes, turn background processes back on.. you will move slow, but yeah, it will work.

Storage,
I hate the limitations of this cell phone. I have an 8 gig memory card in the machine, but it seems to only install new apps to the phone, not the memory card. That bugs the hell out of me, because default storage for the phone is like one song. There is no way to change that.

The phone has been out for just over a year, yet they already have the G2 on it’s way to the shelves? if not already released???? why? they knew it sucked?

Screen area is huge and the resolution is remarkable. The camera takes an amazing picture, audio is pretty good through good head set, if you have the right adapter. Internet is super fast if you use the wifi settings and have a fast connection at your house (lol). I have actually seen over 2 megs a second, considering I have a 20meg a second connection, it is possible. Pandora Radio and ars radio are the best features. Other than running around in your skivvies playing with the light-saber app.

yesterday I pulled out one of my old Motorola phones, slapped my sim card in it, and bam, I get a bunch of text messages.. Has that freaking phone been missing my texts? Is that why she dumped me ? is that why i lost that bid for the job? what in the heck ???

Not happy, selling pretty soon.

I will be going back to my Blackberry 8100, just hope I can get used to the double tap simi qwerty keyboard.

Top Ten Podcasters of the Year: TruXter’s Choice

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Well the year has brought so much news to the tech world, Via podcasts. Since that is a media source, TruXter tech Review will list the choice of podcasters for 2009. From tenth place down to the number one spot.

These podcasts are not necessarily  all tech, it’s the means in which this media is brought to us that makes it tech. There is great talent and tons of devotion in these people, that is why they are making the list. There are some that are very talented but had no devotion or motivation to carry on this year as they had in the past years. So this year they will not be making it to this list. Some are great talent but a bit slacking this year so their scoring isn’t as wonderful as it could be. This post is not to bash, but show apreciation, keep that in mind if your or your favorite podcaster is not in the top 2.

There will be no award that can be given other than readers of this site, a chance to listen to the media on the podcaster’s site. So i hope they enjoy the notoriety, no matter how small the traffic might be or low the number of interested link followers their are.Well without further  blathering, this is the list of 2009’s podcasters we hope to hear more from during 2010.

If you know someone with a podcast that should have made the list, leave their link. If it’s your link please let me know. i will gladly listen to more than one episode. probably every episode you do within 2010. Just respond to this post.

#10. Leslie Katz-Cnet News Daily Podcast, voice is kind of cool and not disruptive. Topics are clear and interesting.

#9. Alex Albrecht-Diggnation He drinks with Kevin Rose and reads from digg.com frickin a.d.d. train wreck lol!.

#8. Kevin Rose- Diggnation Gets drunk with Alex and gets off topic so often, I love it. Weekly Show.

#7. Andrew G.R.-Jobacle.Com s.Mostly writing there now. but still doing shows.

#6. Bryan Lunduke–Computer Action Show Computer Action Show. Seems like it’s up to twice a month nowe.

#5. Chris Fisher–Computer Action Show Computer Action Show. Seems like it’s up to twice a month now.

#4. Veronica Belmont-TekZilla New episodes: Thursdays usually around 45 minutes.

#3. Patrick Norton-TekZilla New episodes: Thursdays usually around 45 minutes.

#2. Leo Laporte –The Tech Guy Podcast Two Podcasts a Week for this show, Hours of entertainment while at work in a Zone.

#1.  Andrew McCaskey- Slashdot Review SDRNEWS SDR News Producer and Host – Slashdot Review about 15 minutes of just straight to the point tech news. No worries if you get super interested and can’t keep up, he has show notes on his website.

HDTV Online?

Posted onAuthorTruXter

I watch tons of Television on my computer. Really the whole High Def world is multitudes better online than  any other source , well except for local broadcast. So I have a whole bag of websites I go to.

http://hdtv-divx.com Not really High def, but more like a 16×9 view area.

cbs.com Really high def, but fix any advertisement blocker you have or you will not see jack squat.

Diggnation Kevin and Alex

Joost

Yidio  <–I think what they are doing is illegal, so I am not linking them and I do advise leave your popup and spam blockers on.

and that is how I watch tv online, without the freaks and the spammy just. I warn never click that junk that comes in you email.

Fire Alarm Cad Template

Posted onAuthorTruXter12 Comments

fire_alarm_title_block

(Give me a like on a social site or share this with a friend, I don’t have a 2000 pr team, it’s just me here)
I have been working on a template in autodesk for a year or so, trying to eliminate all issues. I have not yet prevented everything that I may encounter, but I have reduced the amount of issues that can come. So no this is not a perfect download. It is how ever as close as I have come this far. Fire Alarm Legend and Title Block is now for sale only. There are tons of websites that help you get the Symbols for you legend and there are many sites that give you fire alarm sprinkler addons for autodesk autocad. There is very little for fire alarm. So it is a rough start.

Most of this is my own work, but much of this is what I have gathered around the internet doing searches In Google and Bing and Yahoo and Ask. There just was not enough out there for me to get the job done. What you see there in Layout view is nothing compared to what is going on  in Model. Everything you see there is through view ports. All of my view ports are built to scale.

The trick is to drop all images into the square above the  title-block  and then scale it so that it prints out to scale. there is a second view port in layout view that opens to that location.

If you are in need of this whole Fire Alarm DWG file, let me know I will set it up for upload and message you when it is ready.

There is a huge original version of this, so what you are seeing in those two pdf files would be the light weight trimmed down most used items version. There is a huge one with everything I can possibly use, that would look like a train wreck though.

******update*****
I have the cad file listed for sale. I will be emailing the DWG DWT file to every person who pays for it.

All prices are marked and made easy.  Major credit cards and paypal are welcome, If you require any other method of payment, use the contact form on that page.
Simply because I would prefer to sell the thing for at a lower price for the basic and limited tools.
There is a full version with full tools and all addons to make it easier to complete your fire alarm
design in cad. Oh and the one I had here on the site, Is about 10 versions old.
The new one has a few Candelas tools in it already and many block features that most people do not even know
exist.
This Template comes with a my personal created method to measure Candelas , Smoke coverage, a battery calculation addon that I created, Blocks for every device to me inserted, and instruction manual with short cut codes for calling the block.
This Fire Alarm Template has everything I use on a daily basis and will shorten your design time, reduce room for error and simplify fire alarm design so much that you can give someone a computer with this template and they will be designing fire alarm systems like a pro, as they read the “HowTo” file.
So Simple, even your boss can use this .DWT file.
If you want a copy just reply with a comment, all messages here are filtered so they will not post till I approve them.
All personal information will not be shown here.
******update*****

**update** This post is 4 years old. There have been many updates to the fire alarm template. It is no longer free. I have listed it for sale. The update to this is located here Fire Alarm Design Made easy

(Here is the 2014 version of the fire alarm template)
and here is the fire alarm template version from 2015 (Videos showing function) <– NEW
Also please notice I added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template with symbols.