The "Quick Questions that does not Deserve a Thread"...Thread. V4
7,787 replies, posted
[QUOTE=gaboer;39936340]Why does steam slow my internet down so much when downloading?
Is there any way to make it less slow, or put a download cap?[/QUOTE]
I think if you change the download speed in settings, it limits the download bandwidth.
It's set to "DSL/Cable > 2Mbps"
I still don't fully grasp the whole SSD thing, Is it like a Hard-Drive but faster?
[QUOTE=Blockhead;39937066]I still don't fully grasp the whole SSD thing, Is it like a Hard-Drive but faster?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd[/url]
[QUOTE=Blockhead;39937066]I still don't fully grasp the whole SSD thing, Is it like a Hard-Drive but faster?[/QUOTE]
Long story short, instead of using magnets to write onto a spinning disc, it uses a bunch of flash memory, same stuff in USB thumb drives and SD cards. Except instead of using a USB port or card slot, it uses the same SATA interface as a hard drive, and is usually packaged in a box the same size as a laptop hard drive.
It's called a "Solid State Drive" because it has no moving parts. That was the main reason they were ever used up to 2005 or so. Flash is expensive, so it was only used (at that time) for industrial devices where there would be too much vibration or other stuff for a hard drive to function.
But once they started getting more memory in them, and faster, they found other advantages. Primarily latency. With a spinning hard drive platter, any time it needs to read a file, it has to physically move the drive head and then wait for the right bits to spin around to the read area. That generally takes only milliseconds, but that's an eternity by computer speed (at 4GHz, a processor could run sixty million instructions in 15ms).
SSDs have lower latency - they can access that file simply by looking up where it's stored in memory. They have to do some weird mapping tricks, since for the most part they're telling the computer to treat them like really, really fast hard drives, not flash.
A computer with an SSD is *fast*. The hard drive is the thing slowing down your computer most of the time. With an SSD, you'll be booting up in seconds, programs will load in the blink of an eye, and so on.
The downside is capacity and cost. 768GB seems to be the most you can find a hard-drive-sized SSD for. There are bigger ones, up to 2TB, but those are PCIe cards aimed at servers.
The cost is also high - per gigabyte, an SSD is about ten times more expensive than a hard drive. $100 will get you either a 1TB hard drive, or a 128GB SSD. That 768GB SSD will run you about $700.
The normal thing to do, then, is to get a fairly-small SSD and install your OS and programs on it, and then use a regular hard drive for your documents and such. Myself, I use a 128GB SSD and a 750GB hard drive. The only things on the hard drive are a backup Windows install (in case the SSD fails), my Users folder, and my Steam library. Everything else is on the SSD, and it runs *much* faster.
My motherboard is driving me nuts with its coil whine, I think it's time I replace it since Gigabytes RMA process is being a pain in the butt.
What's a good, and decently priced, Z68 motherboard? Maybe something around $100 to $120ish.
[QUOTE=Forumaster;39936582]I think if you change the download speed in settings, it limits the download bandwidth.[/QUOTE]
it doesn't
[editline]16th March 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=gaboer;39936340]Why does steam slow my internet down so much when downloading?
Is there any way to make it less slow, or put a download cap?[/QUOTE]
because it uses all of the bandwidth it can get hold of
if you just took 2 seconds to type 'limit steam bandwidth' into google you'd have your answer
[url]http://www.netlimiter.com/[/url]
[url]http://www.net-peeker.com/[/url]
[QUOTE=latin_geek;39930367]What's a good PS2 to USB controller adapter? Or will any of them do the job just fine?[/QUOTE]
bringing it back
it either works or it doesn't, there's no criteria for a good ps/2 to usb adapter
buy the cheapest one
[QUOTE=gman003-main;39937387]-gman awesomeness-[/QUOTE]
If you couldn't understand a bit of that, here's a simple analogy; if a hard drive is a Honda Accord (decent speed, decent price), then an SSD is a Lamborghini (fuckin' fast and it'll dent the hell out of wallet).
The only thing that shows is performance and price, in no way does it describe what it is.
So I'm upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit.
What I'm intending to do is boot off my disc that has DBAN burned to it to wipe my hard drive, then boot off my Windows 7 64-bit installation disc.
I need confirmation that this will work before I go off and do something stupid.
Why do you need to DBAN?
[QUOTE=Brt5470;39941018]Why do you need to DBAN?[/QUOTE]
I only have one hard-drive. I also can't upgrade straight from 32-bit to 64-bit without uninstalling everything. I tried, it doesn't work.
You don't need DBAN to wipe it though, a quick format will do just fine.
[QUOTE=Samiam22;39941221]I only have one hard-drive. I also can't upgrade straight from 32-bit to 64-bit without uninstalling everything. I tried, it doesn't work.[/QUOTE]
Just put in the Windows 7 disk, go to install, hit advanced, delete the partition, install. You don't need to do a military grade wipe.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;39941329]Just put in the Windows 7 disk, go to install, hit advanced, delete the partition, install. You don't need to do a military grade wipe.[/QUOTE]
Alright.
I'm completely new to this stuff [sp]and actually put off installing 64-bit because I thought DBAN was required[/sp], so thanks for this information.
DBAN is a method for wiping a drive if you want no one to ever find whats on it. It zeros a drive.
Windows just needs to find a clean drive to write to. So by deleting the partition and making a new one you're just like wiping off a chalkboard instead of taking a pressure washer to it.
You can also install Windows on the existing partition if you wanna keep the files, it just renames the Windows folder to Windows.old and stuffs everything in there.
Thats messy though. I prefer to backup, wipe, install and slowely bring files back in organized form.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;39942163]Thats messy though. I prefer to backup, wipe, install and slowely bring files back in organized form.[/QUOTE]
I couldn't agree more.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;39942163]Thats messy though. I prefer to backup, wipe, install and slowely bring files back in organized form.[/QUOTE]
There is nothing messy about it, you have one Window.old folder.
[QUOTE=SEKCobra;39942245]There is nothing messy about it, you have one Window.old folder.[/QUOTE]
I like having specific revisions of my computer installs I guess.
So I have 2 SSD's in RAID 0 as my OS. I'm running out of room though as of recently. Can I add another SSD (same size brand etc) to the RAID and not have to reformat?
RAID0? nope. Since the data is striped, like a zipper, it would have to be reorganized. Your best bet is to take an image of the raid off and onto an external HD, break the raid, add the drive, remake the 3xDrive RAID0, then recopy the image back onto the raid, and expand.
[QUOTE=latin_geek;39930367]What's a good PS2 to USB controller adapter? Or will any of them do the job just fine?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000YMQGWU/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1[/url]
Shows up in Windows as two "Twin USB Joysticks" (probably in case you plug in a multitap). No vibration function out of the box, though evidently a driver exists somewhere that fixes that. Apart from that, plug it in and it works fine.
[QUOTE=Forumaster;39934453]NetAnnoy? [url]http://www.jalsoedesign.net/windows/netannoy/[/url][/QUOTE]
Aha, that's it, many thanks.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;39942372]RAID0? nope. Since the data is striped, like a zipper, it would have to be reorganized. Your best bet is to take an image of the raid off and onto an external HD, break the raid, add the drive, remake the 3xDrive RAID0, then recopy the image back onto the raid, and expand.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the response. It will be either that or I'll just get bigger hard drives and do a full reformat.
Time to upgrade my graphic card, what do I buy.
Here is my current rig:
I7 860 @ 3.05ghz
4go 2x2go corsair pc16000
asus p7p55D motherboard
Hd5850 1go gddr5 xfx oc/d from factory
Antec quattro 1000w
The rest is irrelevent.
I've didn't keep myself up to date in the hardware world recently so I'm a bit lost on what is worth the money and what isn't. I'm gaming and doing massive engineering rendering and simulation. I was thinking of going dual screen at the same time (I know that they almost all have dual dvi port nowadays anyway) and going for another 2x2Go of pc16000.
I like ati but I'd like to use nvidia 3d feature with my living room 3d TV from time to time.
I'm going for 250~300$. As you can see, I keep my graphic cards around 3-4 years before upgrading, it has to last me that at least.
Thank you facepunch