Quick Windows 7 Taskbar Tips

Just a few quick tips to enable you to be more productive when using Windows 7.  These tips are specific to the taskbar.

• To open a second instance of an already open program - Hold down SHIFT and click the icon/button in the taskbar.  A second instance of the program will launch.  You can do this to open a third, fourth, fifth and so on.
• To make all open windows on your desktop go invisible and show only a border around each window - Hover the mouse over the rectangle to the right of your system time/clock. If you then click this rectangle, all open windows will be minimized. You can do the same by clicking WINDOWS and SPACE at the same time.
• To open apps as an administrator with your mouse only - Simply hold SHIFT and CONTROL while you click the application.
• To cycle through all open instances of a particular application - Hold CONTROL and click on the taskbar button.

That is it. Four quicks tips to help make Windows 7 work easier for you!

SLI/CrossfireX for World of Warcraft

SLI/CrossfireX is the term used for running multiple video cards in your computer and normally that would be 2 video cards. Not every video card supports running in SLI (Nvidia) or CrossfireX (ATI) and many motherboards out there do not support it either. Furthermore, most motherboards do not fully support or have the lanes/bandwidth to support to full PCI-e x16 lanes as many will support one x16 slot enabled but when adding a second card, the lanes revert to x8 lanes. The video cards must also match almost indentically when adding a second card; one can not add one Nvidia card and one ATI card and one can not add cards with different chipsets (if one has a GeForce 8800GT, one can not add a 7 series or 9 series card and most of the time, one could not even add an 8800GTX). The only way to really ensure SLI/CrossfireX will run is to get the exact same card from the same manufacturer of the original card! The picture to the left show 3 Nvidia GTX 280 cards in a tri SLI configuration. (Sidenote, there is something called Hybrid SLI that is for using completely different video cards but this is not a performance technology at the current time.)

Almost everyday I read a forum post about individuals thinking about running SLI/CrossfireX to get a performance increase in World of Warcraft. First off, World of Warcraft is a CPU intensive game as opposed to a GPU intensive game. (Many big games currently on the market are GPU intensive.) It used to be that one would have to edit a registry setting (cvar) to really get WoW to utilize more than 1 core (and in the last year, more than 2 cores). That is no longer the case as WoW can almost max out 2 cores and can run on 3 cores with no tweaks needed. WoW does support SLI/CrossfireX but for most it is not an upgrade path to better performance. At this point one may be recalling countless charts and tables of benchmarks showing the effectiveness of SLI/CrossfireX and that is true but with a caveat. Those benchmarks and tests also show results for GPU (video card) intensive games! Why would they use a game as a testing parameter that does not really tax the GPU? Warhead, Left 43 Dead 2, F.E.A.R. 2 and all the other games they use in their testing setups can really put a beating on the top end video cards and adding a second video card can help alliviate a system bottleneck between the CPU, the GPU and what you see on the screen (although one is still most likely bottlenecked by other factors and even more so when adding a second video card, but that is for a different blog post!) World of Warcraft does not push the video card as it primarily uses the CPU. That is not to say WoW does not look good because I love the visual styling and effects in the game. But it obviously does not have the same effects that are in first person shooters, racing games and the like that are full of explosions, detailed realism and environmental detail. Also, WoW is coded very well (not to say any of the other games are not) but good code can let the GPU relax a bit. The CPU is the true workhorse is WoW as the games uses a ton of preconfigured models, maps that are almost entirely static and, true to D&D form, thousands of 'dice rolls' and formulas being computed in every battle.

Lets look into this SLI/CrossfireX concept in WoW a little. If you have a video card that is on par with an Nvidia 8800 GT/GTS or an ATI HD 3870 or above, adding a second card will NOT increase performance (one may get a couple frames per second more, but nothing more than a trivial amount [frame rate increase under 5%]). If you have a decidedly slower/older video card, say an Nvidia 6800, you might get a decent performance improvement (% increase in frame rate) if one added a second 6800 card but part of that reason will be due to one's current frame rate being so low to begin with that even a 12-15 fps improvement could result in a frame rate improvement of 30%. However, I would not buy a 6800 card for ~$40 and take the hassle of finding the exact same card to run in SLI. I would just upgrade the card because adding a second 6800 would not increase one's DirectX or Pixel Shader version, does not improve one's memory interface, and would not allow one to fully saturate your PCI-E lane. It would be better to sell the 6800 card and buy an (for example) Nvidia 8800GTS for ~$75 (if the $40-50 price range is one's constraint) or an Nvidia GTS 250 for ~$110 (if one can get together another $40). Obviously one can buy an even better card if one's money constraint is at a higher price point. Either of those two cards would produce the same or more performance improvements versus using two 6800's in SLI.

Bottomline, going SLI or Crossfire solely to get an improvement in WoW is not the way to go. If one has a slower/older discrete video card such as the Nvidia GeForce 6 series or 7 series OR an ATI Radeon 9800, X700, X800, X1600, X1800, X1900, HD 2600, HD 3650, or HD 4650, then I would recommend just selling that card and buying a new card that is at minimum 2 generations newer (I would not go any lower than the Nvidia 8800GTS or the ATI HD 4770). The sweet spot for a discrete video card with Cataclysm in mind would be in the range of an Nvidia GTX 275 ($225) or GTX 280 ($325) or an ATI HD 5770 ($160) or HD 5850 ($310) -- any of those chipsets would give one very high performance even when Cataclysm comes out.

Using SLI/Crossfire as a method to achieving higher framerate for an Nvidia GeForce 9 series card or an ATI HD 3870/HD 4830 or better is pointless. That upgrade can cost one anywhere from $100-$400 and even at the $100 price point, the few frames one may get is just not worth it. That money could be much better spent upgrading the real bottleneck of your system and in turn, improving one's WoW performance.

A true Quad Core CPU would be a better upgrade if you are currently on a single, dual or 3 core CPU. Even a 3 core CPU is bottlenecking WoW to an extent that you would see more improvement going to a quad core as opposed to an SLI/CrossfireX setup. WoW can grab up to 3 cores for itself but it can not do that on anything less than a quad core or a Core i5/i7 CPU (I love AMD, although I am running an Intel Core i7 in my system, but this is just another reason why Intel CPUs are better than their AMD counterpart as an Intel CPU with hyperthreading can perform two different tasks on one core. Thus an Intel CPU that is dual core with hyperthreading can perform better in WoW than a 3 core AMD CPU with everything else about the CPU's being equal. [Note: I am not saying a dual core Intel with hyperthreading is better than a 3 core AMD, just that the Intel can handle 4 different tasks at one time versus 3 tasks on the AMD.]) Ok! Back to WoW and CPU core usage. The most WoW can utilize with a 3 core CPU is 2 cores as atleast 1 of the cores will be running background tasks; obviously WoW uses even less if one only has a dual or single core CPU (although in a dual core system, WoW can use both cores, but it can't max them as it could on a quad core as it is competing for the other core with everything else one is running, such as Windows, Anti virus, a web browser, etc.). Going from a single core CPU to a quad core CPU would be a massive increase in performance as World of Warcraft is always competing with everything else on one's computer for CPU cycles. Sidenote: This is a simplification of how the CPU works but there is not really that much more too it except a lot of complicated terminology

Upgrading to a better hard drive would also be a better upgrade than multiple video cards. If one's hard drive is in the 5000-6000 range for RPMs, an upgrade to a 7200RPM HD would be a huge improvement. There are also 10,000RPM HDs (which are coming down in price due to Solid State hard drives) that would give a decent improvement over a 7200RPM hard drive especially if one is using 4GB of RAM or less. Even if you are using 4GB of RAM, WoW is using your hard drive's page file regularly (this is different than the computer just accessing the HD to get WoW files, music, etc. -- the page file on a HD is a small portion of the HD that the computer uses like RAM). Even a page file on a 10,000RPM HD is significantly slower than your system's true RAM but nonetheless having a 10k RPM HD would increase the performance of WoW versus a 7200RPM HD. The true upgrade sweet spot here is if one does have a hard drive with an RPM of 5000-6000; upgrading to a 7200RPM or 10k RPM would be a massive improvement for WoW, let alone the system. Furthermore, if one's hard drive is a few years old, the buffer is most likely only 4MB or 8MB, the read/write access times are over 12ms, and the seek time is over 8ms. Any of the newer hard drives released within the last year will have a buffer of 16MB with a few featuring a 32mb buffer, the read/write access times are under 10ms and the seek time is under 6.5ms. That all adds up to more and more performance! But I can not just end this section without saying this -- if you are using a 7200RPM hard drive to play WoW or any other games and/or you use Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Audio/Video editing software, etc. and/or one compresses and decompresses a lot of files -- I just can not even explain how awesome a 10k RPM hard drive is. I have been using a 10k RPM hard drive since 2004 and before that I used an option called Raid 0 which used 2 7200RPM HDs to get a similar effect as a 10k RPM hard drive (a 10k RPM HD is much more simple than using a RAID 0 option too). A 10k RPM HD just makes the computer feel decidedly more snappy; everything justs seems to be faster and the lag time (ie. when the computer seems to be just sitting there for 1 second to many seconds thinking after one has clicked for it to do something) versus a 7200RPM drive is atleast cut in half. It is a quality of life upgrade, between upgrading to a 10k RPM hard drive and adding more RAM, there really isn't an upgrade that one can do on most decent computers that can give one an improvement in everything one does on the computer like those two upgrades!

Finally, another upgrade of sorts that would allow for more system resources to be available to World of Warcraft is to get rid of that free Anti Virus software everyone seems to be using. Most of the free scanners use too many CPU cycles and have a large memory (RAM) footprint. Some of the free options are coded to be inefficient so that a user would be more compelled to upgrade, which I think is a terrible strategy. All of the free anti virus scanners do not feature the most robust virus library and are weeks behind on current viruses versus their paid counterpart. Also, if you are using Norton or McAfee, while one would have a great scanner for keeping their system clean of viruses, malware and spyware, these two companies' scanners are unnecessarily bloated using more CPU clock cycles and more memory than even the free scanners! Solution: Try ESET NOD32 Anti Virus. This is the best anti virus software there is; one's system will be as safe or more safe than using Norton or McAfee and NOD32 has the smallest footprint of any anti virus program. It uses the least amount of CPU cycles and with all the bells and whistles turned on, NOD32 is using only 3.2MB of memory on my system right this second. Norton and McAfee can use 10 to 25 times this amount of memory easily. ESET NOD32 does cost money to use; they have no free version (~$40 a year) however they do have a free one month trial. I would definetly suggest trying it out for just the trial period and seeing how well it performs. $40 a year is also a small price to pay for complete piece of mind from viruses, malware and spyware. Check it out here.

In closing, simply, SLI or CrossfireX is not an effective way to get better performance from one's computer when playing World of Warcraft.

Two Cool Finds on the Internest

Just wanted to do a quick post to show 2 sites that I think are pretty cool. The first is a site that shows a handful of gigapixel pictures. The pictures are so large that when shown fully on your desktop, the people in the picture are the size of ants, but you can zoom in far enough to clearly see who the person is and even see if their eyecolor. Pretty amazing. They also have a link at the bottom to a site that has a large collection of images such as these. Check it out here.

The second site is somewhat more useful; Wallbase.net. This site has a very clean interface and a great collection of high resolution wallpapers/backgrounds/images. Not much else to say, just check it out! Also, the NSFW (not safe for work) section show full nudity some of it borders on hardcore porn. The setting by default is for the NSFW images to not display so if you wish to click the box to see the unsafe pics, be sure you are in an appropriate location.

Computer Modding Stage 1

This is my first stage in my current plan to upgrade, mod, and 'trick out' my computer.  I started by doing a little general dust removal.  I then removed my old Thermaltake V1 AX CPU Cooler CL-P0508 heatsink and fan unit, pulled out my CPU and removed the old thermal compound that was on the top of the CPU.  This Thermaltake was by no means a slouch of a cooling option providing a marked improvement over the stock Intel cooler that came with the CPU itself.  This Thermaltake cooler is pretty much on par for what one would expect to find installed in an overclocker's or enthusiast's computer.

Next I upgraded the way in which I will be attaching my heatsink to the computer/CPU.  There are a number of "normal" ways to attach a heatsink -- basically if one is not purchasing a separate item to attach one's heatsink and just using the items that are included with your heatsink or CPU, then one is not attaching the heatsink in the most optimal way. Which is fine. There is no real need to use a special mounting apparatus unless one is specifically trying to get the absolute lowest CPU temps that one can get. I purchased a Thermalright LGA1366 Bolt-Thru Kit (LGA1366 is my CPU socket, this is the most extreme enthusiast socket specification that Intel makes, which easily eclipses anything AMD offers). To install this, I removed my motherboard, attached a large black base on the backside of the motherboard and attached two metal pieces ont the front on the motherboard.

My third step was to remove the two green 80mm exhaust fans from my system, one of which was only running at about 66% of its optimal output. I left the working green fan out of the computer and will be using it in another stage of my modding and upgrading. I then cut the actual fan apparatus out of the dying green fan leaving just the external frame of the fan (the LEDs were also removed from the fan frame). I attached the green frame to an 80mm to 120mm fan converter (which was something I did not know even existed until a few months ago). Next, a Yate Loon 120mm x 25mm fan was attached to the converter. The Yate Loon fan was my best find for the month of November; in my never ending search for the best PC components on the market, I stumbled upon this rather cheap fan (about $7 which is cheaper than most any other 120mm UV and LED fan on the market). I got the high speed version of the fan (which had an H in the item number) which is listed to have Max Air Flow of 88 CFM - 88 CFM puts this fan in the top 10% for fans of this size however it is significantly quieter than any fan with a higher CFM or a comparable CFM and is 40-350% cheaper. The real kicker is this; it has been benchmarked to show that it actually has a CFM of well over 100, which makes it just about the best 120mm fan on the market. Finally, I attached the whole apparatus that I assembled to lower of the two 80mm exhaust fan spots.

Moving ahead, I applied Tuniq TX-3 thermal compound to my CPU. Ok, TX-3 (I will keep this brief), this is the best thermal compound on the market, hands down. It had the lowest rise over ambient temperature when benchmarked against all other thermal compounds plus you just apply it, install your components and that is it. Many of the other compounds out there, EVEN the popular Arctic Silver, require that you do a burn in period of up to 2 days! I also used a new technique to apply the compound. Normally I used either a baseball card Toploader or a piece of hard credit card shaped plastic covered in a zip-lock bag or saran wrap to spread the thermal compound. Spreading the TX-3 was taking me a long time as it has the consistency of peanut butter (one should always spread one's compound, the technique of just putting a dot or strip and letting it spread itself after putting the heatsink and CPU together is not fail-proof). At this point I had my mom in the room to assist with the next step which was to hold the heatsink in place while I bolted it down. Seeing that the spreading of the thermal compound was a tedious process, she suggested putting the zip lock bag actually around my finger itself and to spread the compound with my finger. It worked like a charm and I will be using and recommending this technique in the future.

Finally I bolted on the new Cogage True Spirit heatsink to the CPU with two spring loaded screws. Another Yate Loon fan (exactly the same as the one mentioned before) was attached to the front of the heatsink with two UV 9 inch zip ties. Stage 1 is complete!

The Cogage is simply an amazing heatsink. It outperforms pretty much everything there is on the market and is a third of the price of it's closet competitors. With the Yate Loon fan attached there is no better heatsink or fan out there, it even outperforms many of the liquid cooling options. If you want to read more about the this and see some of the benchmarks, check THIS out. Actually I should say that it is the best LGA1366 air cooler on the market, but since the LGA1366 is the fastest and most demanding socket on the market, it is by default the fastest on the market. Also, check out this review by jonnyguru; my cooler is similar to the Thermalright Ultra-120 although, as indicated in the first review, my Cogage outperforms the Ultra-120 (Jonnyguru is my first stop for anything computer related, they are basically Tom's Hardware on speed. This is not a diss to Tom's, I still use that site daily. My main reason for choosing Jonny over Tom is simply that Jonny is now what Tom used to be back in 2001. When I started college in 2000, I always refered to Tom's when doing anything computer wise as they were an enthusiast first source. They have slowly become more mainstream over the years and I now would label them as a source for mainstream users and your weekend warrior PC tuners. Jonny's gives a better set of reviews and scores for a true PC enthusiast, I would not recommend their results to mom and dad or to someone that just likes to turn up one's front side bus and use a Windows based tuner to up one's GPU clock. Downside to Jonny's is that they only cover a hanful of components and do not review as may products as Tom's; they really do something special for what they do cover though, just check out any power supply review, you will be impressed.)

Side note: I heatshrinked and sleeved the cabling on the new fans. This allows the cords to be a bit more 'tidy' and gives them a UV glow.

I benchmarked my computer before and after this stage of modifications. Before doing these modifications, at startup followed by allowing my computer to sit idle for three minutes at stock speeds on my CPU, GPU and RAM, my CPU temps were in the range of 43-46°C and got up to 56°C during startup; system temps were 40-48°C; GPU temp 70°C; and hard drives temps ranged from 33-39°C.

The results of this stage of modifications blew my mind. I was expecting a moderate decrease in CPU temp, a slight system temp decrease and basically no change in GPU and HD temp. These modifications way over performed my wildest expectations! The results at startup followed by allowing my computer to sit idle for three minutes at stock speeds on my CPU, GPU and RAM were as follows: my CPU temps were in the range of 29-33°C and got up to 36ºC during startup; system temps were 30-33ºC; GPU temp 59ºC; and hard drive temps ranged from 30-34ºC. WOW!

So I did a quick 5 minute stress test on the new setup. I used 64-bit Prime95 (the most intense way to stress one's CPU, hits all your cores pushing and keeping them at 100% for the entirety of the test; nothing else can make your CPU run as hard as Prime 95). The results: CPU temps ranged from 43-50ºC with two of the cores hitting 54ºC at the onset of the test before dropping back to 49-50ºC; system temps ranged from 32-44ºC; GPU temp 57-58ºC; and hard drives temps ranged from 30-33ºC. These temps were recorded near the end of the five minute test (while the test was still going). I was speechless. I have never on any blog or site seen such low CPU temps while running Prime95 (not that these were uniquely low temps, just I have not seen such low temps). The temps during the test still were basically under the temps while the computer was at idle before the upgrade. This test had all eight of my cores at 100% for five solid minutes while idle means less than 5% on all the eight cores with an average usage across the eight cores of 3%. I do not even have words for this, it is just insane. Also, the GPU and HD temps continued to drop! I mean, this test does not push the GPU at all and is very minimal on the HD's but normally one would expect a slight increase due to the system itself increasing in temperature. Not the case here; as the fans started spinning faster due to the cores hitting 100% usage, the rest of the system continued to cool down.

Click this sentence to see a screenshot!

I cannot wait to get started on my next stage of mods and upgrades. I have a ton of parts already on hand for my future mods and upgrades; got to start thinking of what will be in stage 2.

Cost: The Cogage True Spirit cost $39, the Bolt-Thru kit was $9, the TX-3 thermal compound was $9 (and I accidently wasted what was left of it so I am counting the whole syringe of it towards the overall price although I actually used only a fraction of it), heatshrink and sleeving material was $0.50, the two Yate Loon fans were $14 total and the 80mm to 120mm fan converter was $7. I should be able to sell my old heatsink/fan on eBay for $45 (that is after shipping, eBay fees and Paypal fees). That gives me a grand total of $33.50, which is pretty cheap and if you consider the results, it was a steal.

WalMAX or Wimart

Sprint is negotiating a deal with Walmart to put WiMAX towers on the roof of every Walmart to distribute high speed wireless internet.  WiMAX speeds can currently reach speeds of 10mb/s.  The Sprint deal is just a credible rumor right now.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from modena's posterous

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine

Simply put, enter one of your web 2.0 social media accounts and this site kills your account. As it destroys your account, you get to watch exactly what it is doing. It changes your password and email to something that it does not tell you so that you can never login again and it removes (destroys) all the content you have at that site from images to posts to personal information.

This is a great tool for anyone that is absolutely 100% sure that they do not want a particular account anymore, but you cannot seem to muster up the will or spend the time to do so. It takes a lot of time to manually remove all the information, for example, that you have on your Facebook account. It also takes a lot of willpower to never login again when you still know the email and password.

The suicide machine can be found at http://suicidemachine.org/ . It currently supports MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter. They had support for Facebook but not at the time of this post. They are, however, expected to add Facebook and other accounts in the near future.

WARNING: Please remember that once you do this, it is done forever!

Graphics Card Hierarchy

When building or upgrading a computer the component I spend the most time researching and mulling over chart after chart of benchmarks for is the Video Card or GPU (graphics processing unit). It seems that no matter how long I take to review the specs and benchmarks for a set of cards I am interested in, I can never narrow it down to one, definitive card that I want to purchase. This is why I love when Tom's Hardware (one of the better hardware review sites) does a Graphics Card Hierarchy. This chart easily lets me determine which card is better than or worse than another card. It is laid out in a very intuitive manner, Nvidia on the left, ATI on the right, the fastest cards are at the top of the list and as you work yourself down the list, the cards get slower. Simple!

I have inserted the chart here but you should reference the actual article here, this chart is just to show you what it consists of.

Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart
GeForce	Radeon	Intel
	Discrete: HD 5970
Discrete: GTX 295	Discrete: HD 4870 X2
	Discrete: HD 5870
Discrete: GTX 280, GTX 285	Discrete: HD 4850 X2, HD 5850
Discrete: 9800 GX2, GTX 260, GTX 275	Discrete: HD 4870, HD 4890, HD 5770
Discrete: 8800 Ultra, 9800 GTX, 9800 GTX+, GTS 250	Discrete: HD 3870 X2, HD 4850, HD 5750
Discrete: 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS 512 MB Go (mobile): 280M	Discrete: HD 4770
Discrete: 8800 GT 512 MB, 9800 GT Go (mobile): 260M (112)	Discrete: HD 4830
Discrete: 8800 GTS 640 MB, 9600 GT, GT 240 (GDDR5)	Discrete: HD 2900 XT, HD 3870
Discrete: 8800 GS, 9600 GSO, GT 240 (DDR3) Go (mobile): 260M (96)	Discrete: HD 3850 512 MB, HD 4670 Mobility: 3870
Discrete: 8800 GT 256 MB, 8800 GTS 320 MB, GT 220 Go (mobile): 8800M	Discrete: HD 2900 PRO, HD 3850 256 MB Mobility: 3850
Discrete: 7950 GX2	Discrete: X1950 XTX, HD 4650 (DDR3)
Discrete: 7800 GTX 512, 7900 GTO, 7900 GTX	Discrete: X1900 XT, X1950 XT, X1900 XTX
Discrete: 7800 GTX, 7900 GT, 7950 GT	Discrete: X1800 XT, X1900 AIW, X1900 GT, X1950 PRO, HD 2900 GT
Discrete: 7800 GT, 7900 GS, 8600 GTS, 9500 GT (GDDR3) Go (mobile): 7950 GTX	Discrete: X1800 XL, X1950 GT, HD 4650 (DDR2) Mobility X1800 XT
Discrete: 6800 Ultra, 7600 GT, 7800 GS, 8600 GT (GDDR3), 9500 GT (DDR2) Go (mobile): 7800 GTX, 7900 GTX	Discrete: X800 XT (& PE), X850 XT (& PE), X1650 XT, X1800 GTO, HD 2600 XT, HD 3650 (DDR3), HD 3670, Mobility: X1900, 3670
Discrete: 6800 GT, 6800 GS (PCIe), 8600 GT (DDR2) Go (mobile): 7800, Go 7900 GS	Discrete: X800 XL, X800 GTO2/GTO16, HD 2600 PRO, HD 3650 (DDR2), Mobility: X800 XT, HD 2600 XT, 3650
Discrete: 6800 GS (AGP) Go (mobile): 6800 Ultra, 7600 GT, 8600M GT, 8700M GT	Discrete: X800 GTO 256 MB, X800 PRO, X850 PRO, X1650 GT Mobility: HD 2600
Discrete: 6800, 7300 GT GDDR3, 7600 GS, 8600M GS Go (mobile): 6800, 7700	Discrete: X800, X800 GTO 128 MB, X1600 XT, X1650 PRO Mobility: X1800
Discrete: 6600 GT, 6800LE, 6800 XT, 7300 GT (DDR2), 8500 GT, 9400 GT Go (mobile): 7600 (128-bit)	Discrete: 9800 XT, X700 PRO, X800 GT, X800 SE, X1300 XT, X1600 PRO, HD 2400 XT, HD 4350, HD 4550 Mobility: X800, 3470 Integrated: HD 3300
Discrete: FX 5900, FX 5900 Ultra, FX 5950 Ultra, 6600 (128-bit) Go (mobile): 6800 (128-bit) Integrated: 9300, 9400	Discrete: 9700, 9700 PRO, 9800, 9800 PRO, X700, X1300 PRO, X1550, HD 2400 PRO Mobility: X1450, X1600, X1700, 2400 XT, X2500, 3450 Integrated: HD 3200, HD 4200
Discrete: FX 5800 Ultra, FX 5900 XT Go (mobile): 6600, Go 7600 (64-bit)	Discrete: 9500 PRO, 9600 XT, 9800 PRO (128-bit), X600 XT, X1050 (128-bit) Mobility: 9800, X700, X1350, X1400, X2300, HD 2400
Discrete: 4 Ti 4600, 4 Ti 4800, FX 5700 Ultra, 6200, 8300, 8400 G, G 210, G 310	Discrete: 9600 PRO, 9800 LE, X600 PRO, HD 2300 Mobility: 9700 (128-bit), X600, X1300 Integrated: Xpress 1250
Discrete: 4 Ti4200, 4 Ti4400, 4 Ti4800 SE, FX 5600 Ultra, FX 5700, 6600 (64-bit), 7300 GS, 8400M GS, 9300M G, 9300M GS	Discrete: 9500, 9550, 9600, X300, X1050 (64-bit) Mobility: 9600
Discrete: 3 Ti500, FX 5200 Ultra, FX 5600, FX 5700 LE, 6200 TC, 6600 LE, 7200 GS, 7300 LE Go (mobile): 5700, 8200M, 9200M GS, 9100 Integrated: 8200, 8300	Discrete: 8500, 9100, 9000 PRO, 9600 LE, X300 SE, X1150 Mobility 9700 (64-bit)	GMA X4500
Discrete: 3, 3 Ti200, FX 5200 (128-bit), FX 5500, Go (mobile): 5600, 6200, 6400, 7200, 7300, 7400 (64-bit)	Discrete: 9000, 9200, 9250 Mobility: 9600 (64-bit), X300
Discrete: FX 5200 (64 bit) Go (mobile): 7200, 7400 (32-bit) Integrated: 6100, 6150	Discrete: 9200 SE Integrated: Xpress 200M, Xpress 1000, Xpress 1150	GMA X3000, X3100, X3500
Discrete: 2 GTS, 4 MX 440, 2 Ultra, 2 Ti, 2 Ti 200	Discrete: 7500	GMA 3000, 3100
Discrete: 256, 2 MX 200, 4 MX 420, 2 MX 400	Discrete: SDR, LE, DDR, 7000, 7200	GMA 500, 900, 950
Discrete: Nvidia TNT	Discrete: Rage 128	Intel 740

exFAT - New Flash File Format

Microsoft recently released info and specifications for a new flash file format called Extended File Allocation Table or exFAT. The main reason for the move to creating a new flash file format is that the current FAT file system has a maximum capacity of 32GBs. The exFAT can support far larger capacities - up to 256 terrabytes (or ~256,000 GBs). The exFAT file system will soon be showing up on high end SD cards allowing for the creation of higher capacity SD cards.

Personally I am not really a fan of those tables (say with iPods) that give you a theoretical maximum amount of songs or videos that you can fit onto different size versions of the iPod. However, in an attempt to show the usefulness of this new file format, I will be resorting to a similar scheme. One hour of decidedly high definition video (with high quality audio) can easily reach 6GBs in size. That would allow a 32GB SD card to hold about 5.2 hours of video and with upcoming advances in what we currently call HD, the amount of space one hour of video takes will only grow. I will spare you with anymore numbers as I am sure you can start to see that 32GB is not really that 'large' anymore.

Also, the largest file size that you can save in the FAT system is only 4GB, which at a very high HD setting can be as short as 14 minutes.

So when can I get myself a 1 TB SD card??? It'll be awile....

HEY! What's that on your computer?

Basically my whole life friends, family and others that have seen whatever computer I was using at the time as my main rig, always seemed to be very impressed. This is usually followed with many questions of why something on my computer is the way it is and how they can do the same thing.

In recent times, with more and more people using computers daily and wanting to do more with their computer, I get these types of questions even more often. Some of these things they want to know about are (but not at all limited to) tweaks, desktop layout, programs, and even questions about the actual physical layout of the computer itself.

I have recently decided to start a new section of this site to showcase many different things that I do or have on my computer that most people are not aware of. I plan to call this section something like 'How I Compute' and will add new posts to it a couple times a week. I hope that I can show you some new and interesting things that you can do with your computer.