Tech Bits
I installed a new video card (from ATI x600 to nVidia 7600 GC OC) in my gaming PC and for once I think I made a good choice. Buying video cards is a pain because it's hard to remember which products are roughly equivalent between ATI and nVidia and product lines within a company have a wide performance range. Fortunately Tom's Hardware Guide just did a round-up of video cards which includes a fairly detailed table that compares video card performances. I managed to get a decent deal and now I'm able to crank up the graphics settings in Oblivion fairly high instead of just squeaking through.
While researching video cards I discovered that I had to worry about power consumption. Dell, in their infinite wisdom builds their XPS gaming PCs with 375 watt power supplies (still do, I checked). Many of video cards are specced for 400+ watt power supplies, including the one that shipped with my XPS. No wonder I had to underclock the original video card to keep the system stable. Grrrr... My new video card is rated for 350 watt power supplies so I shouldn't have any more problems there.
I'm also annoyed at Dell about the Bluetooth on my laptop. I picked up a Logitech Bluetooth mouse since because I prefer a mouse to a keypad and with Bluetooth I wouldn't have to worry about dongles hanging off the back of the laptop. But when I went to re-enable Bluetooth in the Bios it said that it wasn't installed anymore. Huh. I did some poking around with Google and found out that there is a design flaw in my laptop model that causes the Bluetooth card to loosen from its connector. I might be able to wiggle it back into place. Okay, relax... it's just a screwdriver and a few screws... keep track of those things... deep breaths... I opened the case to find out that my Bluetooth card was missing! o.O It must have gone MIA when I sent it in for service a couple years ago because the Bios saw it before then. Having a Bluetooth mouse wasn't a high priority but it's irritating that a feature that should be there isn't there any more.
Continuing this tech rant... Ubuntu, the operating system I run on my laptop, came out with a new release (think upgrading from Win 95 to Win 98). The good news is that I can finally get the laptop to hibernate again. The mediocre news is that they added 3D desktop support but my laptop's video card still isn't supported all that well. The bad news is that I'm among those people who are having problems connecting their WiFi networking. So this release was a wash for me. :-( Hopefully the WiFi problems get fixed soon in a software update.
While researching video cards I discovered that I had to worry about power consumption. Dell, in their infinite wisdom builds their XPS gaming PCs with 375 watt power supplies (still do, I checked). Many of video cards are specced for 400+ watt power supplies, including the one that shipped with my XPS. No wonder I had to underclock the original video card to keep the system stable. Grrrr... My new video card is rated for 350 watt power supplies so I shouldn't have any more problems there.
I'm also annoyed at Dell about the Bluetooth on my laptop. I picked up a Logitech Bluetooth mouse since because I prefer a mouse to a keypad and with Bluetooth I wouldn't have to worry about dongles hanging off the back of the laptop. But when I went to re-enable Bluetooth in the Bios it said that it wasn't installed anymore. Huh. I did some poking around with Google and found out that there is a design flaw in my laptop model that causes the Bluetooth card to loosen from its connector. I might be able to wiggle it back into place. Okay, relax... it's just a screwdriver and a few screws... keep track of those things... deep breaths... I opened the case to find out that my Bluetooth card was missing! o.O It must have gone MIA when I sent it in for service a couple years ago because the Bios saw it before then. Having a Bluetooth mouse wasn't a high priority but it's irritating that a feature that should be there isn't there any more.
Continuing this tech rant... Ubuntu, the operating system I run on my laptop, came out with a new release (think upgrading from Win 95 to Win 98). The good news is that I can finally get the laptop to hibernate again. The mediocre news is that they added 3D desktop support but my laptop's video card still isn't supported all that well. The bad news is that I'm among those people who are having problems connecting their WiFi networking. So this release was a wash for me. :-( Hopefully the WiFi problems get fixed soon in a software update.