Tag: review

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.

GTAIV Patch 1.0.6.0 Review

Posted onAuthorTech Review Man

Well the latest patch for GTAIV is out.

The only risk free way to install the patch is to boot up the game. Anything else and you risk a virus from some jerk who may have manipulated the file. My machine locked up while trying the install. I had to CTRL ALT DLT  to crash the game so I could look on Rockstar’s website. There was no physical download, just a bunch of information about the patch. Well pretty much the same stuff you see below.

One of the members of Rockstar Torronto has come to the GTAFORUMS and posted us plenty of information of what the patch gives us.
GTA IV Title Update 1.0.6.0 \ 1.0.5.1 \ 1.0.4.2 (Patch 6)
Rockstar Games Social Club
• Remove Rockstar Games Social Club application
• Separate RGSC application no longer required to launch game
• Social Club login now occurs during the launch process
Shadows
• A new, less memory-intensive, and better-looking scalable shadow solution has been implemented
• Enhanced Night Shadows added with user-selectable level of detail (replaces Shadow Density)
Performance
• Rendering optimizations have been made to improve performance, particularly when enabling shadows
• User-configurable graphics settings have been added for shadow control
• Improved memory management
Multiplayer
• Enhanced security to isolate users from cheaters and hackers
Episodic Content
• Provide in-game support to purchase “The Lost and Damned” and “The Ballad of Gay Tony” (Not available in Russian/Japanese Versions)
Bug Fixes
• Vehicle shadows re-enabled between 8pm and 6am
• Fix floating street textures
• Pedestrians in vehicles appear further out from the player to allow for long range sniping
• The Moon has been implemented with simulated lunar phases
• Fixed garbled text in Japanese Multiplayer menus
• “RESC 10” error fix for specific hardware configurations

As you see here the moon is back and looking great.

There are some great features with the new patch. Video settings .

New video settings

With the new patch they remove the mandatory Social club sign in.

Social Club is stripped out

with the removal of social club, there was a removal of shortcuts from the desktop. I seemed to have gotten an error.

but it was meaningless I think.

Error during the update GTAIV

BYE Bye Social Club

We get a new splash screen after the install. The new splash screen shows Episodes From Liberty City.

New GTAIV SPlash Screen

I try to load the Episodes and see if I can buy it, but i think I was a day early. So i got a connection error.

Live not connecting Episodes

I will try again later after the sales level out.

They added market place as an option during boot of game.. Cool. I of course will be buying the cd copy.

Market place button for gtaiv pc

I have noticed a 7 degrees F difference  when the Game link is blinking at the top of the screen, and a seven degree drop when i finally click the dang thing and get windows live opened. When I exit back out, instant temperature drop and frame rate increase.

After driving around and tweaking the heck out of my video settings, Air cleaning my heatsinks, replacing fans, cleaning up my start up processes, I started playing the game with a desire to explore. I stumbled into something kind of not good.

Yep Tree shadows are flickering.
So I moved to the Video settings to check what I had the settings at. you tell me what you think.

I seem to be bogging down really bad. I just recently did a motherboard upgrade so I can actually run dual channel Memory. That upgrade I did to my machine did magic for me. I jumped from 22fps up to 45 frames per second. That is a huge jump. I could then change my settings to near max for my video memory, but this patch killed that. I am back down, way down. with the video settings as smooth as i can get it, 17 fps .
I am not one to bash Rockstar and I appreciate all of the work they are doing. So I will not bash. I will instead ask you for your tech support.

Dual 9500 gt 512mb (sli on or off it does this)
AMD 5600+ dual core
2 gigs pc6400
XFX 750 A mobo black edition

****Update****

There is a patch for EFLC Episodes From Liberty City for pc.

****update2****

Well I could not get the game to work anymore. The game crawled to  about 10-15 FPS after that patch. So I completely uninstalled teh game and reinstalled. Dropped back to 1.0.4.0 Patch (aka patch 5). Turned off Anisotropic filtering in video card settings. Also turned off Anti-aliasing. Both were set to run by application control. So for gta in the 3d settings, I turned it off. Getting an average of 45 Frames per second.

May not be fore you. but works wonders for me.

The link for patch 1.0.4.0

Now if you want to try and roll youyr current install back to that, you have to reinstall rgsc.

I can’t walk you through how to save your settings, I didn’t  take that step. I went with a full fresh install.

It seems like it would be easy. Good luck. Report back on how you did it.

****update 2****

There currently is no updated no cd crack yet for 1.0.6.0

I would like to put my game disk back in the case and keep it from getting scratched.

***update 3***

Ok, I found my answer.
I posted about about an error I got while installing.
but as I closed the error window I saw the install was still going fine.
I got my patch through live.
So this patch I just installed
is the exact same one.

Difference is, this time I did not have gtaiv running during the install.
And this time
The frame rates are a buttload better..

but I do have to say 1.0.4.0 plays much much smoother.

I still want to see if marketplace can be killed with xliveless and see if that speeds things up.

download.xbox.com/content/5454083b/tu10000083_10000b83.cab?n=F1F2863FCD63C802

direct link to the new patch ,copy link to browser, extract  with winzip, works for me.


Week In Review

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Here I state the stuff I did on the sideline that never made it to the site, and I will cover the stuff on the site and give it an “after though”.

Trying different Advertisers than adsense. I really do not like how the last three years of adsense pay out has been. it has been dwendling low. what used to pay is no longer the format, and what does pay is starting to seem a little arrogant. I mean their code is so perfect and so close to your content, it could never fail, the issue must be your content…..  also i have two tools to tell me how much traffice I get, no they do not conflict each other.  adsense is showing less than 1/3 the traffic in the results. but what do I care?  I mean adsense no longer pays you for how many people you serve their advertisements to.. Almost no motivation in that at all.

So Now I am trying “Adbrite” On the tech review site, and am going to try widget bucket on a couple other sites. I have got to see the pay scale difference.  I am scared that since adsense is so  greedy, the other companies will be as greedy.. You know how they get, if one guy makes 300% profit off of a product, you can be sure all the other companies will, even the ones who are going out of business and can’t figure out why or how to save themselves…

Let’s see how that plays out.

Phone review is being rough on me. MOTOrizr v3, blackberry 8100, and blackberry 7105t. Just to help those in the market for used and just want small specs. All on Tmobile. Hard part is I have to swap Sim card and Mem card around , it takes forever to boot a BlackBerry. I really do mean forever. 5 minutes at the least.  I love the MOTO, cant do much without the 8100, the 7100  well that makes a pretty good back up battery and back up phone in case I really really need it. GSM rocks.

SDR Podcast has had some very good shows.

Sad to hear that GEOcities is gone. Yeah it had crappy site builders there, but it also had tons of data stored. The passing of that site will mean the passing of the whole freedom to design.

ByeBye Free Design

Bye Bye Free Design

Hours upon hours fighting with windows seven, fight a bsod infection. I was using Microsoft Windows 7  64  on a 2.9 g AMD5600+(dual core) with 3 Gigs Mem and 250 gig Hard Drive, I would have a flash  chatroom open, I would have Hulu open and try to burn a cd. I would get a lock up. If i left it along i would get the blue screen of death, If I ctrl Alt Delete  , I would get this stupi annoying pop up that would tell me that it failed to open user account applet or something or other. View Photo Of Win7 BSOD

still can not get Autodesk Autocad 2010 to work on windows 7.

Hello world!

Posted onAuthorTruXter1 Comment

Tech Reviews on a budget. Reviewing new budget products, used products and faulty products to tell you  how it can be used to make it better or even used  toprove it’s full value, some stuff can be tweaked and that will be posted also.

Website reviews, download reviews of opensource products and free programs.