Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 August 11

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August 11

Playing 3D games in PC

hello friends and technicians....I need your overall suggestion for buying a proper graphics card for my PC. I will explain you my doubts...I once had a celeron processor 2 GHz hosting on a mercury 845 model VIA chipset based motherboard(low end) and with memory upto 384MB and with NVIDIA 128MB Geforce MX 4000 AGP card. With this configuration I was able to play almost many 3 D games like NFS underground 2 with almost 80%(800x600) graphics under windows 2000 and about 50% under windows xp. Simiarly I was able to play other few games of that sort too..Recently I sold that for a lower price since it was not upgraable. Now in the past week I bought a new configuration.It has Pentium D 3.0GHz residing on Intel 965RY Motherboard with 1 GB RAM. I thought the system wouyld be excelleent for gaming since it has INtel GMAX3000 which can have shared memory range upto 256 MB.Since it has 4 MB cache in CPU and its a dual core I thought it would outperform in playing most of the games..But what the unfortunate thing was that this new system could not do any better when compared to my older pc mentined in the 1st line. I don't understand why is this..I played many games and checked its performance...I finally concluded that both pcs are just doing the same thing.No improvements..I now feel like that my pc is not perfect for playing good high end games with good graphics...What would be your suggestion?..Is there any way that I can upgrade by buying high end graphics card like 8600GT or so. OR do I gotta change my pc again?....Can anybody tell me what kind of graphics card will my pc can drive with maximum load?...For eg, my older pc was not able to drive MX 4000 card 100%.I don't want the same condition happening again for this model too.I want to know the proper card for this..Plz give me a proper guide.Expecting your suggestions...Thanks for your time with me in advance...

I thought the system wouyld be excelleent for gaming since it has INtel GMAX3000 which can have shared memory range upto 256 MB. there's your problem. Get a real graphics card. Integrated cards suck. If you're serious about gaming, an 8600GTS from Newegg for around 200-300$ is going to be the most effective use of money with that computer --Lucid 01:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh really?....I can't believe that a 3D card can really change the way game plays completly.I looked at the onboard card's features(on intel site)and then only purchased..I even thought I should have purchased extreme edition Motherboard(975)series and core 2 duo CPU for gaming.Never thought of graphics card :-) ..So buying a PCI express card is my solution!...I hope both PCI 1x and PCI 16X are the same, aren't thay?..Mine has two provisions too...I will check out soon...Thanks really

Uh, no, PCIe 1x and 16x are completely different. 16x is what any decent graphics card will be nowadays, 1x is going to be crappy budget cards. --Lucid 01:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

And you don't have to get a 8600GT. A 7600GT or 7900 should be good enough and cheaper. But yes, intergrated cards are generally not as good as separate cards, and shared memory cards are especially bad for performance (due to bus speed/timing issues and using up the RAM for its own memory). --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Ghost File Win98

Hi! How can I make a Ghost File WIN98?Plz Help —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Star33 2009 (talk • contribs).

[1] might help. Googling would have saved you the trouble. Splintercellguy 22:26, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

JavaScript archiving function

I'm interested in creating an auto-archiving function for my talk page, that includes not only the "[edit]" link, but another link ("[archive]"), and using autosave functions (&autoclick=wpSave, etc) to add the section to one of my archives. I've started a little something in my userspace, autoarchive.js, but I'm not too sure where to go from there, and what I have done is correct, or could be done a better way. All help is appreciated. Kind regards, –sebi 02:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Nokia 6680 help

Hi....! i am asking a question about mobile phone. i have Nokia 6680 which cant display the main menu.i am using Telenor SIM but when the sim is removed it works well.plz help —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Star33 2009 (talk • contribs).

Wireless Router loosing signal

I have a Netgear router and it is about half way across the house from my room where I have my laptop. Before the signal strenth to my laptop was always either Very Good, or Excellent. And also the speed was always at 54.0Mbps. However it started about three months ago where I started having signal strenth problems with my router. Now the signal strenth of the router has a mind of it's own. One minute it goes from Very Good to very low and the Mbps goes to like 54.0Mbps to like 11.0Mbps. My router has a problem of some sort. Why is this happening? And I know for a fact that it is not the wall problem because remember I said before it never had the signal strenth problem. So what is the deal here? It would be very appreciated if someone could give me the correct information. Thank you Bond Extreme 03:05, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Someone nearby could have a device that may be interfering with your router, for example, another conflicting router in a neighbours house, a newly built moblie phone base station nearby, etc. Wireless devices use normal radio frequencies, so the same tricks you'd use to get a better signal on an analogue radio will work for them too (lifting it higher, trying different positions, tin foil, etc) Think outside the box 10:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I do know that one of our neighbours does have a router running close to our house. Would that be the problem? How do I resolve this?17:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe your neighbour is having similar problems. Have a chat over the garden fence and see if you can both experiment a bit - moving the equipment around to improve the signal in both houses. Astronaut 01:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

You could also try running a "sniffer" like Network Stumbler http://www.netstumbler.com/ and look to see if any other wireless networks are on the same channel as yours. If there are, try changing channels up or down by 3. --Blowdart 17:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Non-animated animations

My computer has never really displayed an animation. That is, stuff like GIF animations. I can't for the life of me think of the problem...browser? Firefox. RAM? Approximately 2GB. OS? XP. Anybody have any suggestions?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 03:12, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

In Firefox, the way image animation is handled is configurable. See [2] for the details. (Sounds like you have the parameter set to "none" in your browser.) --71.175.69.118 04:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, still nothing. It is set to "Normal," but nothing has changed. In fact, it was set to "Normal" to begin with!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 05:03, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Some firewalls and adblockers have options to block animated GIFs, by removing their animation. Got anything like that running? Check their options. — Kieff | Talk 05:41, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

All I've got is the infinitely ambiguous EZ Firewall. Didn't see anything about GIFs.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 02:58, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Try viewing a page with animated GIF using an alternative browser on the same machine to see if the problem is specific to Firefox. --71.175.69.118 11:45, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

IE didn't reveal anything...--The Ninth Bright Shiner 19:41, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Is your ISP messing with your connection? F 09:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't suspect Road Runner of anything...--The Ninth Bright Shiner 18:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Clock difference in Pentiumdual core Vs Core 2 duo

Hi friends, I have a query that if a Pentium D running at 3 GHz can outperform a pentium core 2 duo at 2 GHz?...The key point is that this pentium D has 4 MB cache where as the core2duo has only 2 MB L2 cache...Both are 800 MHz bus speed....what makes these two processors unique and which among these two beat the crowd?..anyone knows?....

Core 2 duo will outperform the pentium D (as long as you can take advantage of both cores I think) - the Pentium D's are cheaper though (if you can still get them)..87.102.5.144 10:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Though as you've probably guessed the situation could be reversed, for instance if the program is very large ie more than 2MB.

Someone else could probably give you more info on what advantages a Pentium D has over the Core 2 Duo in terms of instruction pipeline length etc.

Unless you can produce empirical evidence to show that at the same price, a Pentium D will overall outperform a Core 2 Duo, please don't make uncited assertions that contradicts most benchmarks out in the wild. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:14, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

?I didn't - I said the opposite??87.102.1.234 10:15, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I think he meant op. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:36, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

That was to the person directly above me and below User:87.102.1.234. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:01, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

That was me too (User:87.102.1.234. forgot to sign) - I meant that Pentium D's are now cheaper (in general) for instance here excluding one example the "D's" are all cheaper than the "Duos" sorry I wasn't clearer..?87.102.66.187 12:27, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh and re-reading I should have added 'and vice-versa' at the end. and underlined "could be"87.102.66.187 12:30, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

And made it clear that having the kernel>2MB was most unlikely..Sorry.87.102.66.187 12:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Dual-ported RAM re-ask

1. Are there more articles about multiply ported memory here (I couldn't find them)?

2. Does anyone know of RAM with more than 4 'ports' currently in use - if so what/where/when?

3. Have we got an article on quad ported ram under another name? Thanks.87.102.35.197 11:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Please don't re-ask so quickly. Anyway, it looks like our coverage of that subject is very limited, so probably "no" to the 1st and 3rd questions although you can try Googlewhacking to see for sure. 68.39.174.238 13:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

HTML <object> backgrounds

Is there any way to set what color/image/transparent is the background to an HTML <object>?

I'm trying to write a webpage with some embedded audio and video on it. The video shows up fine because both Quicktime and Windows Media Player are about the same size, but when I try the audio, Quicktime is 15 pixels tall and WMP is 45 pixels. If I make the object 15 pixels tall, the WMP looks really wierd and there's no way to control the audio flow except for stop/start. If I make the object 45 pixels tall, WMP looks great, but QT has white rectangles above and below it. (My page's background is kind of a green fading into blue from top-left to bottom-right. A white splotch looks just great on that.....)

Anyway, if there's no way to set the background of an HTML <object> tag, does anyone know how to make an "in-house" player like on youtube or myspace? Thanks. 69.205.180.123 14:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

YouTube and MySpace players are just done using Flash. They are easy to make, generally speaking because the Professional versions of Flash (which you can demo for 30 days without paying for) come with pre-fab media players that you just need to customize. --24.147.86.187 16:23, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

As for the question about the <object> -- have you tried giving it a CSS class and then setting the class background to transparent? That is what I would try... --24.147.86.187 16:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Not sure but try the <span> tag which has a background colour thing - it technically highlights whatever is between the span tags, so its great for a 'highlight' effect on text - yet its entirely different to a 'background' which normally refers to table cells (and your actual webpage). Google it for the syntax, maybe say "HTML" + "Span" + "highlight" Rfwoolf 20:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

No, <span> tags are only for inline elements, not block elements. You can try setting <object style="background: transparent" ...> but it is likely that the white blotch is from Quicktime itself, not knowing what to do with the extra space. Also, it is much better practise to embed sound using Flash to ensure consistent controls and not needing to load yet another plugin. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Page Loading Speed

I recently upped my watchlist count by a considerable amount to over 370 pages. Since then, whenever I try to load a page it takes much longer than it did before I watched all those extra pages. Is there anything I can do to sort it out? (I doubt this will make a difference but I use the latest version of Safari). I originally brought this to the Help desk but was directed to the reference desk and this seemed most appropriate. Thanks asyndeton 19:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

370 is not a large watchlist, and there's no reason that should impinge on performance. Those with very large watchlists might experience some slowdown when actually viewing their watchlist page, but not otherwise. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:37, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I heard a developer say that in general you will get a faster page load if you are logged out. It's not a huge difference, but when you are logged in it has to load all of your preferences and stuff (like date preferences, for instance) instead of just showing you the same page that everyone else is seeing. You may want to try that, although I don't really think it will make much of a difference. --Oskar 16:50, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes. Non-signed in users see a cached version of pages (served straight from the squid cache), so if the page is in the squid then you get it straight away (I honestly don't know how that scheme handles "you have messages" for anons). This isn't possible for signed in users, as their pages are affected by their settings and their .js file. But if you're looking at an article that is sufficiently obscure for it not to be in the cache then a server will have to render that page whole regardess, so you'd not see much speedup from being anon. I don't know what the caching situation is for special: pages - I rather suspect they'll be set not to cache. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

It's really really hard for a logged out user to see his watchlist, though. --LarryMac | Talk 17:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

CPU designation according to windows

Apparently only the business and ultimate versions of Windows Vista are compatible with more than one "physical CPU". I intend to install windows vista on a Mac Pro dual processor dual core xeon machine. Within the framework of windows vista, does this constitute one, two, or four physical CPUs? Basically, if I install one of the more basic systems only capable of utilizing one physical CPU, will it be capable of using the full processing power of the computer, or only a fraction thereof? Tuckerekcut 22:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The key is the phrase "physical CPUs". A dual core processor is a single physical CPU and so any version of Vista will make full use of a single dual core processor. Your mac pro is a dual processor, two physical CPUs, and thus the lower SKUs of Vista (Home Premium and lower) will only make use of one of those (although it will make use of both cores on it). Even before dual core processors were release Microsoft stated [3] that all cores would be utilised and they would be treated as a single CPU. --Blowdart 15:55, 12 August 2007 (UTC)