Tag: Intel

Computing Longevity – Upgrading CPUs and Assessing Alternatives

Xeon W3690 CPU

For a while now I have been tempted to replace my desktop computer with new hardware. I originally built my current desktop back in the middle of 2009 with the following specifications: Intel Core i7 920, 12GB DDR3 RAM, 128GB Solid State Drive + 1TB Hard Disk Drive, 2 x nVidia GTX 295 video cards. Those specs …

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Upgrading or Building Anew?

I have been doing some thinking about what to do with my desktop computer as it has served me well since I first built it back in 2009. Aside from a minor hiccup here and there it has strode on through the years quite admirably however I have recently run into some bottlenecks. Firstly, 12GB …

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Slumming a Gaming Experience on an Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU

Whilst interstate on annual leave I have taken my Panasonic AX2 convertible ultrabook to be my main computing device. Normally, at home I would use my desktop computer with its twin GTX 295 video cards (which are getting a little long in the tooth now for some recent games at 1600p) but I don’t typically …

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Lucid Virtu MVP – Switchable Graphics for the Desktop

Yesterday, I was asked by a friend of mine to provide an opinion on which CPU would be best suited for his new gaming rig and of course the CPU also affected what motherboard you select and the RAM configuration (dual or triple channel). Then you get to things like the graphics solution for the …

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CPU Enhanced Halt, DPCs and Audio Stuttering

DPC Latency Checker - DPC uninhibited system

For a while, my desktop computer has been having issues with audio stuttering and I’ve undertaken things such as downgrading VLC (which helped a bit) and also updating the audio and network drivers on my desktop computer (which also helped a bit but didn’t completely eliminate the issue). I found that network activity tended to …

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64-bit Windows 8 in a VM Requires Hardware Virtualisation

Here’s a quick tip for tonight relating to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview which I have written up yesterday as well as the installation process. If you want to use the 64-bit version of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview you need to make sure that you computer can provide hardware virtualisation. This function allows a virtual …

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Remedies for Stuttering Audio in Windows

Once upon a time, in order to get sound on your Windows computer you’d have to buy and install a sound card of which the most popular were the Sound Blaster line of cards from Creative Labs. Back in those days, The CPUs inside your computer had more than enough to do running Windows while …

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Apple MacBook Air Unboxing

My wife had been hanging out for a MacBook Air and I had encouraged her to wait until the refreshed model became available with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). Well, that happened last week and the order was placed shortly thereafter. As always, I had to do an unboxing video. I cover some of the …

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Dell XPS 8300 Unboxing

This was an unexpected gadget but a colleague of mine recently bought a new computer to replace an aging laptop that gave up the ghost earlier in the year. Anyway, he’s handed over his Dell XPS 8300 to me to do some basic tweaking for him. So, of course, I had to unbox it. I …

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Rosetta Support Disappearing in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

Just a heads up for those Mac OS X users out there that may be using older applications from the PowerPC days (so those G3 and G4 CPUs that powered the Powerbooks and other Apple machines of that generation) – Rosetta support is being removed from the upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) operating system. …

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