TruXter Tech News

I started a new site. Electronics Online Garage Sale.

I will be cleaning out my storage and adding Items Regularly.

Many items have accumulated over the past few years. Things that just worked well so I didn’t want to just waste them .. I hung on to them for the chance my new parts break.

Well i have accumulated quite a bit of computer parts. I don’t really want to use ebay and let the items go at some underbid price. Or have to ad prices for items that did not sell within the short time expected. so I will be removing items that have sold as they sell.

So enjoy the Online Yard Sale.

That was a very busy month for tech news. Lots of great things came, some not so great but that is almost unnoticeable. Looks like good news for the gaming world all the way around. Bad news for the business phones. Then again, no one really used palm anymore anyway.

Apple Released the IPAD

Steve Jobs Says ” No Adobe”

Smart-phone maker Palm For Sale Would have done Motorola some good to buy out.

Hewlett Packard Buys out Palm

Free Android Phones for Adobe Employees

Nvidia, Intel vie for lead role at Apple

AMD Talks To Apple

Nvidia Launches 400 Series cards

Rockstar Games  releases patch 6 for Grand Theft Auto gtaiv

Droid Incredible  Released.

Forceware 196.21 Windows XP (32-bit WHQL) http://downloads.guru3d.com/Forceware-196….nload-2457.html
Forceware 196.21 Windows 7 | Vista (32-bit WHQL) http://downloads.guru3d.com/Forceware-196….nload-2458.html
Forceware 196.21 Windows 7 | Vista (64-bit WHQL) http://downloads.guru3d.com/Forceware-196….nload-2459.html

Despite the FPS listed in the results, I really felt a smoother game play, even with the settings set higher.
I did exit and run GPU-Z and found 52 degrees Celsius. a bit high.  I mean all game play signs were smooth and even flowing
but after exiting, for the first time on this pc, it took longer than 2 seconds to open my start menu. So I think I may have been
running a bit hot. I will work on better cooling.

I also saw that the drivers defaulted my machine to run gtaiv in SLI mode. since SLI is not supported on this game, I just flashed red
Felt like a seizure. I had to go through a few settings to turn that off

For anyone With a budget card wanting to GTAIV. It is very much worth it to try these drivers.

BEFORE
Statistics
Average FPS: 23.33
Duration: 37.58 sec
CPU Usage: 96%
System memory usage: 82%
Video memory usage: 87%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1440 x 900 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Texture Filter Quality: High
View Distance: 24
Detail Distance: 36

Hardware
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
Video Driver version: 195.62
Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+

File ID: Benchmark.cli

AFTER
Statistics
Average FPS: 20.20
Duration: 37.28 sec
CPU Usage: 99%
System memory usage: 86%
Video memory usage: 79%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1440 x 900 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Texture Filter Quality: High
View Distance: 56
Detail Distance: 56

Hardware
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
Video Driver version: 196.21
Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+

Finally Nvidia’s Drivers have caught up with Windows 7. These probably will not make it to the final release version. These are leaked and tweaked by the gur3d community. but if you are on a budget video card and just want to play the game on medium settings, do this, these are great drivers.

I do warn that I did not creat these drivers and am not in any accountable for the outcome or effect or results of what these drivers might do to your machine. So don’t thank me and don’t scream at  me for what ever happens. Not all video card vendors are the same, not all video card vendors have the exact same configuration. Not all computer combonations are the same. For my machine, these are exactly what i need to play grand theft auto IV.

Here is my computer Configuration.

Next to bench Need For Speed Under Cover

I just got done rebuilding the tech forum.

My hopes is that we will help each other find solutions to their tech issues. so please sign up and check in from time to time. Maybe someone will ask a question you can answer. I know you guys out there have plenty of witts about you in the computer and electronics field. Not everyone is as good as you guys.

So come to http://iworkwithtech.com/forum/

Sign up. Leave a greeting somewhere or start a new thread, or heck make a request.

Ok I am going to post a copy and paste of what I was saying in forum on pcpitstop. Not much help there, even though the title says, well… you will see..
actual convo : http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.php?showtopic=165060

<i>I am using a dell dimension 3100 with a 2.9 g single core
2 gigs pc 3200
I have a video card in this old beast I bought from staples
the video card is a verto pny 8400 pci (not pci-e)
when I take the bench tests without the card, I get a better score in 2d.
in fact , if i have the card in it takes about 45 seconds to perform that part of the test.
without the card it is instant.
Anyone have any old pci tips I can use to get this thing off th ground and moving faster?:
I really need the tips, since I am limited to this machine and use it for cad and flash and photoshop

I understand that.
But the 2d takes about 40 seconds to complete.
as apposed to less than a second like it used to do.
or as it does with my home pc. i’m just looking for some old school tweaks.

Bios only allows me to select auto or onboard. sadly enough.

I have two gig pc3200 (the machine is a bit dated but it’s a work pc)
when I am in cad, as I scroll down pages I actually see waves like as if I haven’t installed drivers
although it will allow me to crank video setting to 32 bit and 1280/1024 and i have the nvidia control panel
just like if if the drivers are installed. so it acts like there is no drivers while it shows drivers. have uninstalled and reinstalled and updated and updated . I think I’m at the latest 181.22 or something .

The thing acts worse than if I used onboard.
I mean while in adobe flash, in autodesk,cad, photoshop, or anything that uses video. I have probably 12 grand in software installed on this machine so moving to another is not foreseeable any time soon.
and yes I am a long time pc gamer so I know how to reduce start up programs and disable items as I run another that uses tons of resources.
as i remember there used to be a driver addon we used to use for agp slots called a “gart”. and if i remember correctly, there was something for pci slots, but of course it’s a dell pc so drivers and software are limited.

I am tempted to locate a modded bios for this and set it so I can turn that dang onboard gpu off.

and yes what finch was saying is perfectly correct. But for the 2d segment of the pcpitctop test (the part with the descending rings) to take 45+ seconds. Something is clearly wrong. I have taken this test on probably all of about 17 computers here in the office, some with radeon pci-e some radeon agp some with nvidia agp and or pci-e some with onboard gpu and the ring portion always takes less than a blink. never does it take it take 45+ seconds except on my machine with an 8400 gs pci card or on a machine that has no drivers yet (we recently added monitors to a few pcs for the ladies here to watch a buncha junk going on with our installers and tracking). i just know i am forgetting to do something.</i>
Sorry, but reallu I am that dang lazy, I wrote all that out once, and it seemed to hit the mark. but erm it fell on wrong ears, or at wrong pace.
Heck I dunno.

and yes, that is pci slot, not pci express.

[tags]512mb, 7600, benchmark, bfg, computer, gamer, gaming, gs, gt, make computer faster, nvidia, overclock, pcpitsop, performance, pny, results, speed up computer, test[/tags]

If you read my earlier post about my cat killing my video card.

You would pretty much assume that the card could not be saved. The card was so bad off it was like the “degause” button was stuck and well you pretty much assume the card was french fried. After 4 hours of wiping with a cotton swab and water then going back with window cleaner the very next day and doing this for about four hours only to give up and say “screw it” and start spraying the video card soaking it in glass cleaner even in the dvi socket and vga socket and s video socket, then going back with a paper towel and dabbing up the glass cleaner after it soaked for a minute then sprayed again and dabbed again. Final spray was a soaker of the entire card to rinse off remaining coffee residue. I dabbed after a two minute soak and drain , then went back and wiped with a paper towel and a hand full of cotton swabs until the card looked brand new. I mean under a microscope you would not find any dust, not one drop. I let the card sit for one more night, and a whole day of work.

Of course I tilted the card so that what ever fluid/liquid that was still in the card in any of the sockets would drain downward back the way it entered.

I dug out my BFG nvidia drivers, I put on fresh heatsink paste (the only heatsink paste I found was the cheap tube I had in my parts box) reinstalled my heatsink

Snapped card back in, connected fans and power to card and booted up and installed the bfg nvidia drivers.

Went to pc pitstop and did my usual bencmark

here is a past work

here is after the clean up and reinstall

To see quick results, go to “compare” at the bottom.

here is the temporary card .

Well, so much for fun.

My cat slapped my coffee onto my computer and the fan splattered coffee all over my video card.

512 mb ram 7600 gt wasted.

Now I am running on a $40 6200 I had laying around since the last upgrade in the family.

Oh yeah my head was in the way because I was plugging in a usb chord at the time  now I smell like coffee.

Must go shower