Archive for the ‘Buying Guide to Graphics Cards’ Category
Why Your Computer Is So Slow: Try This Solution..Computres Point
January 5th, 2011 | 
Author: As a working PC tech, this is one of the most common issues that I face day in and day out. Just about everyone, at some time, comes to the realization that their computer is not performing the way that it was before. Until someone else uses their computer and complains about the slow computer speed, many people don’t even realize that their computers are actually slowing down. With other computers and situations, it’s just the opposite. It is a sudden slow-down and poor computer performance that immediately draws the user’s attention. The following guidelines may help you to determine exactly what is causing your computer to slow down so drastically.
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The first thing I suspect when someone tells me that their PC is running slowly is that they may be dealing with adware or spyware. It’s not uncommon for a computer that’s been infected with malware of this type to exhibit various other symptoms too. Odd behavior such as pop-up ads, your internet home page changing, sudden closing of your browser or even system crashes are all symptomatic of a Spyware/adware infestation. Regardless of whether you are experiencing any of these symptoms or not, it’s always a good idea to have your PC scanned with a decent antivirus or antispyware program. It doesn’t matter which program you use, just be sure that your program is highly reputable.
Another common source of system slowdowns is a highly fragmented hard disk. Because it happens over a long period of time, disk fragmentation may not even be apparent to you at all. Fragmentation may be the problem if the PC is not exhibiting any other symptom but slow down. There is a built-in defrag program in all Windows programs but it will not be able to defrag especially large files or some of the system files. If you want the PC to run at peak performance, it would be a good idea to install a third party defrag utility program like “Diskeeper.”. The really nice thing about the third-party utilities is that they do allow the user to acquire advanced features that can actually defragment the entire hard drive.
Lastly, another reason many PC’s start to shed performance over time is that too many software programs are running in the background. This occurs over time because software designers assume that you wish to run their application every time you’re at your PC. Consequently for your “benefit” they helpfully add their app to the startup group. That’s very well except when you’ve added 30 or 40 new programs to your PC, you’ve got 30 or 40 programs starting up routinely every time you start your computer. With all these programs hogging valuable resources from your system, there isn’t a great deal left to perform the things that you want to do. Here’s the repair for that and it should improve computer performance:
Click on Start’ > Run’. In the dialog box type “msconfig” (less the quotes). Push enter. This launches the Windows Configuration Utility. On the far right side you should see a tab that is labled “Startup”. Click this tab. Each program that is automatically started will be listed here and it will have a checkmark to its side. It can be a bit surprising how many of these programs are listed. Every one of these applications can safely be disabled. All one must do is uncheck the box next to the app. Don’t be afraid. You will not be removing the program or actually disabling it altogether. You are just keeping it from opening when you turn on the computer. All of the programs are still quickly available from the start menu or from your desktop shortcuts. A statement of caution, though. There are some programs that you do want to run automatically such as your antivirus and antispyware. Simply leave the box checked beside these types of applications. When you’re finished, click ‘Apply’ and ‘OK’. You will see a note telling you that your computer needs to be restarted for the corrections to take effect. Once your PC has been restarted, you will be presented with a dialog telling you that you have used the System Configuration Utility. Just put a check in the box that says “Do not display this message on startup” and click OK. You will not see that dialog for a second time (until next time you use the msconfig utility).
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Buying Guide to Graphics Cards
The graphics card is a vital performance component of your computer, particularly if you play 3D games, or work with graphics and video content. The graphics card sits in an expansion card slot in your PC and it is specifically designed to process image data and output it to your monitor, enabling you to see it. A graphics card works by calculating how images appear, particularly 3D images, and renders them to the screen. 3D images and video images take a lot of processing capacity, and many graphics processors are complex, require fans to cool them and need direct power supply. The graphics card consists of a graphics processor, a memory chip for graphics operations, and a RAMDAC for display output. It may also include video capture, TV output and SLI and other functions.
Graphics Cards
What are your needs?
The first decision you need to make is whether you need a graphics card for handling 3D images or whether you are simply requiring 2D image rendering. For 2D requirements, you need only a low-cost solution. In many cases, an integrated graphics solution will suffice for 2D applications.
However with 3D graphics, the performance of the graphics card will impact directly on the frame rate and image quality of 3D programs and games. The differences between the low and high-end cards can be substantial, both in cost and performance.
Rendering 3D graphics is like lighting a stage, both the geometry of the shapes in question and the lighting of it need to be taken into account. The geometry of an image calculates the parts of an object that can and can’t be seen, the position of the eye and its perspective. The lighting is a calculation of the direction of the light sources, their intensities and the respective shadows that occur. The second part to presenting a 3D image is the rendering of colours and textures to the surfaces of the objects, and modifying them according to light and other factors.
Most modern graphics cards include a small microchip called the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which are provide the algorithms and memory to process complex images. They reduce the workload of the main CPU, and provide faster processing. Different graphics cards have different capabilities in terms of processing power. They can render and refresh images up to 60 or more times per second, calculate shadows quickly, create image depth by rendering distant objects at low resolution, modify surface textures fluidly and eliminate pixelation.
What Specifications to Consider
Processor clock speed
This impacts on the rendering capability of the GRU. The clock speed itself is not the critical factor. Rather it is the per-clock performance of the graphics processor, which is indicated by the number of pixels it can process per clock cycle.
Memory size
This is the memory capacity that is used exclusively for graphics operations, and can be as much as 512MB. The more demanding your graphics applications are, the better you will be served with more memory on your graphics card.
16-32M
64M
128M
256M
512M
640M and more
Memory bandwidth
One thing that can slow down 3D graphics performance is the speed at which the computer delivers information to the graphics processor. A higher bandwidth means a faster data transfer, resulting in faster rendering speeds.
Shader model
DirectX Shader Models allows developers control over the appearance of an image as it is rendered on screen, introducing visual effects like multi-layered shadows, reflection and fog.
Fill rate
This is the speed at an image can be rendered or “painted”. This rate is specified in texels per second, the number of 3D pixels that can be painted per second. A texel is a pixel with depth (3D). The fill rate comes from the combined performance of the clock speed of the processor and the number of pixels it can process per clock cycle, and will tell you how quickly an image can be fully rendered on screen.
Vertices/triangles
Graphics chips don’t work on curves, rather they process flat surfaces. A curve is created by multiple flat planes arranged to look like a curve. 3D objects are created with multiple triangular surfaces, sometimes hundreds or even thousands, tessellated to represent the curves and angles of the real world. 3D artists are concerned with the number of polygons required to form a shape. There are two different types of specification: vertices per second (I.e., angles the triangles), and triangles per second. To compare one measure with the other, you have to take into account the fact that adjacent triangles share vertices.
Anti-aliasing
A technique used to smooth images by reducing the jagged stepping effect caused by diagonal lines and square pixels. Different levels of anti-aliasing have different effects on performance.
RAMDAC
The Random Access Memory Digital to Analogue Converter takes the image data and converts it to a format that your screen can use. A faster RAMDAC means that the graphics card can support higher output resolutions. Some cards have multiple RAMDACs allowing that card to support multiple displays.
TV-out
Some graphics cards provide the option to connect a television via either a composite (RCA) or S-Video connector. TV Out
S-video Out
S-video In and S-video Out (VIVO)
YPbPr Connection for HDTV
DVI
Some graphics cards include a connector for DVI monitors, handy because a lot of LCD screens support DVI. DVI offers better image quality than the standard VGA connector.
Dual-head
Dual-head is a term used when two monitors are used side by side, stretching your desktop across both.
SLI (Scalable Link Interface.)
With SLI you can couple two graphics cards in your computer, enabling each card to take half the rendering thereby doubling the performance.
When considering your graphics card, it pays to think about how much you need your computer to process your graphics output. Using a high end graphics card with a high pixels per clock rating, large memory, fast processor and other features means that you can run the latest games efficiently, or work in intensive graphics development.
Different Models
While there are many vendors of graphics cards, there are actually only two major manufacturers of chips for graphics cards. Nearly every graphics card on the market features a chip manufactured by either ATI or Nvidia. Cards using the same graphics chip will perform roughly the same as each other. However, even though they use the same chip, some feature slightly higher clock speeds, as well as manufacturer guaranteed overclocking-an even higher clock speed than that specified. Other factors that will influence your decision should include the amount of memory a card has (128MB, 256MB, 512MB) and its additional features, such as TV-Out and dual-screen support.
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