Category Archives: computer tips

Duke Nukem Forever & AMD Dual Core Optimizer (on Intel!)

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Recently I experienced some stuttering while playing DNF with my buddy Kevin. I tried adjusting the video settings to lower quality, yet I still experienced stutter and visual lag (not ping related). Eventually I narrowed the potential culprits to: #1 stuttering from a slow RAID1 hard drive setup that DNF/Steam was loaded on #2 AMD Dual Core Optimizer was installed by DNF/Steam even though I have an Intel CPU #3 the NVIDIA control panel being set for 3D acceleration to

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Calculating aspect ratio for LCDs/monitors/projectors etc.

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I’m working on a new project to compare computer monitors and especially for setting up ideal multi-monitor displays. The idea is to give you as much information as possible on all the monitors out there (using a database), or if your monitor is not in the DB then accept some basic info (diagonal width and resolution) to calculate all the information you need. So, a basic question for any monitor is: what is the aspect ratio? Here’s how to calculate the

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Fixing Warning: date() [function.date] in PHP 5.3 [solved]

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If you recently upgraded to a newer version of PHP, like PHP 5.3, you may be getting some errors similar to this in your PHP scripts: Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected ‘America/Chicago’ for […]  instead

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History of Intel’s QuickSync, soon even faster! (Ivy Bridge)

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Intel’s Quick Sync is a great new feature of their latest CPUs. One reader experienced 3x faster encoding and that is definitely not out of the norm! You are probably already familiar with how Quick Sync speeds up video encoding and that it is generally regarded as better than the competing AMD and NVIDIA solutions. However, here are a couple tidbits you may not have heard yet! #1 Intel’s Ivy Bridge brings even faster acceleration to Quick Sync If this progression keeps

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Create BIGGER genius playlists in iTunes? [solved]

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Q. Good morning. I have iTunes for my music collection (mp3 & AAC) and really like the Genius feature of iTunes. However, I cannot figure out how to make a Genius playlist with more than 25 songs in it! Is this possible? I don’t really know my way around iTunes very well and I have checked preferences etc. but to no avail. Please help if you can. A. Yes, you CAN make a bigger Genius playlist with 50, 75 or 100

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DELETE a Recovery Partition when Disk Management won’t let you

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Today I was preparing a 2.5″ SATA laptop hard drive for use in my wife’s mini-PC. The hard drive I was attempting to use came from an old Acer laptop. I connected the hard drive via a USB enclosure and attempted to clear out the old partitions and reformat. Unfortunately I found that the Windows 7 Disk Management interface would not allow me to delete the “System Recovery” partition. Here is how I went about deleting that protected partition so I could

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Which Intel GMA does i945GTm-VHL have?

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Q. I just built a little mini-computer HTPC with a i945GTm-VHL motherboard from AOpen. When I go into device mananger under video/display adapters all I see is “mobile 945 express chipset family” but what I want to know is what version of Intel video GMA do I have? A. Your motherboard has Intel GMA 950 integrated video. You can find more details about your motherboard here:   AOpen Global – i945GTm-VHL specshttp://global.aopen.com/products_detail.aspx?Auno=2064Support Intel® Viiv™ Technology Integrated Gen 3.5 graphics controller in

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One Click or No Click DVD Ripping [HOWTO]

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Q. Helloz… ive been backing up my DVD collection b/c Im worried about scratching them. i like DVD shrink on Windoze but it takes a few clicks to do it. Is there a 1 click way to make it eazier and faster? thx n advanc –DVDFan91 A. Interesting spelling and good question. 😉 There are a few resources out there dedicated to the one click or even NO click dvdrips, so yes you can make it happen! NOTE: please make

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