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Written by Kar Hoe
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010 00:00 |
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I took the brave decision to jump the bandwagon by switching from an NVIDIA based graphics card to an ATI based graphics card. I have been a supporter of Nvidia since I got my first PC where I have used an XFX Geforce 4 MX440 before switching to a newer PC powered by MSI 7300GT, and then moving on to my gaming PC powered by Gainward 9600GT Golden Sample. I love the PhysX feature available in Geforce 8 and 9 series where physical objects are rendered by the physics engine in Nvidia CUDA compared to traditional games where all the flags looks the same. With PhysX, no two flags will look the same.
So anyhow, I have been using the Gainward card for close to 2 years when the card decided to end its life. I went back to the distirbutor and met up with Charles, the GM of Netraid who was later absorbed into the current distributor. He offered me a one to one exchange to the same new card which delighted me. I accepted the offer and happily plugged the card into my PC upon reaching home. Just within hours of using the card not even stressing it with any games, the card died again! Barely 5 hours it died with the same problem.
Then my worst fear came, could it be that my Power Supply Unit have become faulty and ended up killing both the graphics card? I took my entire PC to the distributor the next day and my Power Supply Unit was put through a rigorous tests and it was concluded that the PSU was perfectly alright. This time, the distributor could not offer me any more replacement cards as the last one died in my hand. So instead, I was offered an upgrade to a brand new PowerColor ATI HD4770. I took up the offer as I could not afford being unable to use my PC as I have a thesis to work upon.
So here's how the previous card looked like in my PC
The old Gainawrd 9600GT Golden Sample in the rig
Now fitted with ATI HD4770. I am totally unused to the new 'simpler' yet powerful card. Compared to my previous card, this one has lesser RAM, smaller heatsink, and lesser ports.
This time, I took it home, and after fitting it into my PC, the screen did not display anything! Apparently, my Samsung monitor is starting to die as well. Fortunately, I managed to get the card working - until today. Looks like a 23 inch widescreen upgrade is coming soon.
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Last Updated on Monday, 18 January 2010 15:36 |
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Written by Kar Hoe
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Friday, 25 December 2009 00:00 |
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A few months ago, I mentioned that I have been lucky enough to win a pair of OCZ High Performance RAM from TechARP. Despite winning the RAM, Adrian Wong of TechARP could not deliver the RAM as his wife went into a coma due to swelling of her brain. We have been following the status of his wife each day. Right now, his wife has made a good progress, all credit to the medical team and specialists. But a check on the forum shows that his wife has been admitted to hospital again, let's all pray for the recovery for his wife.
Back to the topic, I received my parcel few weeks ago but despite that , I didn't bother to fix it in my PC as I was busy preparing for my exam. Now that exam has ended, the RAM sits perfectly in my PC, giving me an additional 2GB of RAM.
Two T-shirts and a pair of RAM. Now I have 4 TechARP T-shirts as I got another 2 from winning the previous lucky draw contest.
There's the pair of OCZ RAM, each coated individually which means every stick of RAM is unique.
Installed those RAM into my PC.
Guess this is the only Christmas present I got this year 
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Last Updated on Friday, 25 December 2009 16:49 |
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Written by Kar Hoe
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009 00:00 |
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Remember months ago that I said Astro HD would be announce by year end? Well December is here but there is still no news of Astro HD. However, it seems that the new Astro decoder features component video output. Component video output, although more inferior compared to HDMI, still supports HDMI up to 1080p albeit in analog signal.
Images of the new decoder, have been posted on the Internet, and it seems like they are not available to new customers.
If you notice, this decoder has a USB port as well. Apparently this decoder is manufactured by Thomson and the USB port could have been incorporated into the design of the decoder, but will Astro be utilizing the USB port? The possibilities are unlimited, if the decoder were to decode the high compressed HD signals, it shouldn't have problem decoding any movie files downloaded from the Internet and plugged into decoder via an external storage.
Pictures taken from Miri Community.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 01 December 2009 21:55 |
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Written by Kar Hoe
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Saturday, 12 December 2009 00:00 |
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Most of the time, when you turn on your computer, the only thing you do is to go to the Internet, Facebook, Youtube, Messenger, Gmail/Hotmail just to name a few. So why bother loading the entire operating system and all other unnecessary components just to perform such a simple task? Why wait 5 mins before the PC is useable?
This is where Google Chrome OS comes in, Google Chrome OS (different from Google Chrome browser), still in the development stage plans to provide you a PC, which you can use to surf the web within 7 seconds from the time the power button is pushed. Google Chrome OS achieves this by loading only the necessary bare minimum resources.
Watch the preview here
To see Google Chrome OS in action, watch the second video here
Seems promising, but seems like Microsoft has slammed Google Chrome OS even before the beta version is made available. Apart from that, it could be that it's just a matter of time before Google converge Google Chrome OS with it's smartphone counterpart, Android into one new product, Android Chrome perhaps?
Looks like Google is one step closer towards the completion of Internet domination.
Looking forward to install this in parallel to Windows 7 installation, since most of the time I'm on the Internet anyway. The beta is already available and instructions to install it via thumbdrive is available here.
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Last Updated on Saturday, 12 December 2009 09:38 |
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