AcidAddict33

I looked it up and the only one that falls into budget at $549 is the chromebook with a Celeron processor and 64 gigs of storage. The $699 model with an i3 and 128 gigs of storage doesn't sound that good of a value either. Thank you for the suggestion though.

I'm currently looking for a laptop for a friend with a budget of $600. I know that they'd mainly be using it for web browsing and media consumption, with little to no gaming (integrated graphics should be fine). Preferably with an SSD, but HDD is fine too so long as it's a decent size. I see a few different options out there but I'm not sure what brand/model would be best for this price range. Below is the best one I could find, but I'm still open to any suggestions that people may have. Any help is appreciated, and I can provide more information if it would help. https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-3000-LED-Backlit-Processor/dp/B08Z3SGDDH

So I'm looking at a laptop configuration on HP's website, and I noticed this option under the CPU: 4x4 SSD. It's the same exact CPU and selecting it would be no extra charge, so I tried googling what it means but that didn't turn up any useful information. I assume all it lets you do is have the ability to use 4x4 SSDs based on the 2nd picture: Under storage, I picked a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, but for $50 more I can have the same SSD, but it would be a "4x4 SSD". So my question is what exactly does being a 4x4 SSD mean, and does it have any advantages over a regular one that justify a $50 price jump?

What exactly are you unsatisfied with, if you don't mind me asking?

I'm currently trying to help my friend pick out a laptop since their old one is dying, and with a budget of around $1500 we've arrived at the following 2 laptops, the HP Spectre x360 15, and the Dell XPS 13 touch. I wanted to ask for some help picking between the 2, or if there's an alternative in this price range that would be a better choice. Their main use would be media consumption and coding, but one of the reasons the budget is so high is because they want their new laptop to last them at least 10 years like their old macbook has (and it's their first windows laptop so it should leave a good impression on them). They didn't want a 1080p screen, so we've only picked 4k ones. Also gaming ability is not a factor, it's just that the Spectre with the best specs we found happens to have a dedicated graphics card included. Below are some specs of the laptops, but some of the things that concerns them is battery life and speaker quality. From some reviews I've seen that the XPS has a worse speaker compared to the Spectre, but I can't find anything about real battery life (like how long will it actually stay on during normal use, not just a random estimate from the manufacturer's website). Any help or input would be appreciated, thank you. HP Spectre x360 15 Processor: 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-10510U Integrated: Intel® UHD Graphics 630 Discrete: NVIDIA® GeForce® MX250 (2 GB GDDR5 dedicated) Display: 15.6" diagonal 4K AMOLED multitouch-enabled (3840 x 2160) Memory: 16 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB) Storage: 1 TB Intel® SSD Dell XPS 13 Touch Processor: 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-10710U Integrated: Intel® UHD Graphics with shared graphics memory Display: 13.3-inch UHD (3840 x 2160) InfinityEdge Touch Display Memory: 16 GB, LPDDR3, 2133 MHz, Integrated Storage: 1 TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid-State Drive

I tried messing with the fan settings with no success; The only way I've been able to use my pc right now is to disable the CPU minimum fan speed check, and to plug it into the pump header which causes it to spin at max speed. However I just solved the problem. With a Bios update. I don't even know how that would even work, but it did. I just upgraded my rig today, and I thought I had updated to the latest BIOS via flashdrive but turns out I hadn't, so I just did that and all of a sudden my CPU fans started kicking in. Did not realize that a BIOS update could affect fans but I guess it kind of makes sense since my old fan that's almost 6 years old worked and the newer ones didn't. Anyways I'll marked this as solved now.

Motherboard: Asus ROG Crosshair Hero VII WIFI CPU Cooler: Noctua U12A I've recently upgraded my rig and everything seems to be working fine, except the CPU fans. I've plugged them into the correct CPU fan headers on the motherboard, but they simply do not turn on. However, if one of the fans is not pushed in all the way and is at a specific angle, then it works. But the slightest nudge unplugs it. I tried the stock cooler fan (for the Ryzen 3700x) and it has the same issue. Out of curiosity I dug out my old cpu fan and it works completely fine when plugged all the way in. I figured if it's sometimes working then the pins themselves are fine, and then I noticed the holes on the old fan (white) are way smaller than the Noctua ones (black). Are the bigger holes preventing the pins from making contact with the wires? And if so, is this a common issue with Noctua fans, and how do I solve it? Or am I completely off base with what the problem is?

Thanks for the input, I guess my original post wasn't clear enough. Items marked with a (*) are items I already own, so the PSU and GPU are already bought. The PSU is in my current rig which replaced one that failed a few years ago, and the 1070TI was bought but never used since my CPU bottlenecked it, so it's just been sitting in it's box waiting for an upgrade.

So I've been needing an upgrade for a while, and with half life Alyx coming out I feel it's finally time to upgrade my old rig from an i5-2500k with 8 gigs of ram to something better (and capable). Below is my possible future rig after a few hours of research. My idea with this rig is to go all out (within reason) to make it last a long while and VR capable, with the only upgrade possibly being a 2080 or more RAM. Initially I wanted a 3950X but was told it was overkill and impossible to get my hands on one anyways. I plan to use a Valve Index for VR, so I want to take advantage of the higher refresh rate their headset is capable of. I don't much care for RGB since my computer will be under my desk, and I'll be reusing my old case (unless components won't fit or there's issues with the USB headers). Any thoughts/opinions would be greatly appreciated. Items marked with * are items that I already own. CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A 60.09 CFM CPU Cooler Motherboard: Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero (Wi-Fi) ATX AM4 Motherboard Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory *Storage: WD Black 2TB *Storage: Samsung 850 PRO 1TB *PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650 W *GPU: EVGA 1070ti *Case: Cooler Master HAF 912

Would an upgrade be mandatory, or would overclocking the 2500k to like 4.0ghz be sufficient enough? Like I'm unsure if the chip itself cannot physically keep up with the GPU or if it's just because of it's running at 3.3ghz. Reading old forum posts I see people running it at 4.5ghz no problem. That may be what I do if my first idea of overclocking does not work/isn't possible, thanks for the advice.

I played at 1080p and I don't remember the exact CPU usage but it was more than 80%. I thought that a bottleneck would be possible but I thought worst case scenario it would give only slightly better performance, not worse. I am now using my old 970 in the meantime before I upgrade my CPU. I just bought the 1070Ti because it was on sale. Thank you everyone for the advice. Any recommendations as to what CPU would get the job done if gaming at 1080p is what I'm mainly using it for?

So I recently upgraded from a 970 to a Geforce GTX 1070Ti. I played Black Ops 4 on my 970 with no problems, but after upgrading i get really bad frame issues, even when making all the settings low and changing settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel. And I deleted the old drivers using DDU and installed the latest ones already. At first I thought something must be bottle necking the system, but it didn't make sense to me that a newer card would perform worse. When I did benchmarks, UserBenchmark for example said my computer is perfect for gaming (see below). With Black Ops 4, some areas are over 170 FPS, but other areas make it come down to like 90 FPS. Moving the aim around like crazy and shooting makes it drop to 50 anywhere. (see attached screenshots) In DOOM (2016), the FPS is usually over 100, but certain action parts (glorykills for example) make it drop to below 60. In Fallout 4 (where the FPS is capped at 60), some outdoor areas make it drop to mid 50s. I don't know how to use a lot of hardware monitoring software, so I included a screenshot of HWiNFO of my GPU during a match of BO4 Multiplayer. I turned on CPU and GPU time in BO4 and saw that the GPU time was always more than the CPU. Since the higher number means it's taking longer to process a frame, does that mean the GPU is the bottleneck? I'm just not sure what the issue could be after trying to google it for a while. Any help would be appreciated. UserBenchmarks: Game 94%, Desk 61%, Work 40% CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K - 66.6% GPU: Nvidia GTX 1070-Ti - 117% SSD: Samsung 850 Pro 1TB - 55.7% HDD: WD Black 2TB (2013) - 98% HDD: Toshiba MK5076GSX 500GB - 34.9% RAM: Unknown F3-12800CL9-4GBXL F3-12800CL9-4GBXL 8GB - 61.3% MBD: Biostar TZ68K+

So digging further and further I've come across the following information: (Also I may have found somewhat of a fix; if you're just looking for how to speed up the game, skip to the end); With this game (and many other old games), the FPS was tied to the game speed. Running at 20 FPS is supposedly the intended speed (according to speedrunning forums/tutorial videos), and through extensive testing NOT DONE BY ME, it turns out that different versions of the game (steam, GOG) tend to run at 20 FPS, while the retail version on windows 10 can be inconsistent, but run higher; around 30, thus making the gameplay smoother and faster. The game was not tested for XP and 7 here, but it behaved similarly in that it was faster than 20 FPS. Source: https://www.speedrun.com/Commandos_Behind_Enemy_Lines/thread/wgpg0/1#ctj6q Included in that source is a link to the tester's google drive with video clips of each of the OS's and versions he tested. The comparison between these 2 clips is what I meant by "feeling slow and sluggish" to what I remember: Windows 10 RETAIL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_Z_EbKUdPlMENjeXpBMnFaY2s/view Windows 10 STEAM: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_Z_EbKUdPlaHlLVDNmNVBhNGM/view An important thing to note is that purchasing from Steam includes 2 versions: Regular, and Legacy. The Regular version was updated to fix old bugs (Spanish text instead of English text when you fail a mission, Save/Load not working Properly, the "speed up" on modern hardware, etc.). People then complained that the patch made the game crash or no longer run anymore, and people rushed to try and patch it themselves. Eventually, Steam included a Legacy version, which supposedly is an "as is" version of the game from 1988 with no patches or anything, in the hopes that one of those versions would work on your computer. My Fix: Note: Fix performed on Steam (updated) version; Legacy version had problems, see Downsides. Download DXWnd and follow the steps to download/add a path/check fullscreen/uncheck windowed from this video, but IGNORE WHAT THEY DO FOR THE TIMINGS TAB. Just do what they do up to 00:35. For the Timings tab, do what I did instead: (x6 also works, but seems too fast; unfortunately there's no x5 option) Now hit okay, save, and run from the path you just made. The gameplay should be much faster and more comparable to the Windows 10 RETAIL video from earlier. After playing through a mission or 2 with constant saving/loading, I don't see any real game breaking problems. The Downsides (so far): Video clips (intro, and various historical clips like before the first mission) won't play. Not sure why. When trying this method on the Legacy version, videoclips play, and all seems to be working fine, EXCEPT whenever you move the mouse, you essentially make the FPS go to zero and everything goes so slow. I don't know if messing with the settings further would fix this issue, but it's been days of looking stuff up and messing with sketchy programs; just do this fix on the Steam updated version. DISCLAIMER: I'm no expert. What you've just read was the compiled findings of searching random forums and posts from 2008 to 2017, and the trial and error of multiple outdated programs (BEL LOADER, Speed Gear, etc.). If anyone knows a better fix or just knows what is actually being accomplished with what boxes I checked for DXWnd, just let me know. All I wanted was to play an old game from my childhood without it feeling slow and sluggish, and this is as good as I think I'm going to get. I will probably buy the retail disk version soon to be done with this headache once and for all, but this is for anyone who just has the Steam version. Hope this helped anyone who just wants to play Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines at 30 FPS.

I tried but wasn't able to use DOSBox to run the game. I guess my question now is, does anyone know what that "Speed Gear" program actually does? This article implies that managing the clock speed my application sees would work, but I'm unsure how I would do that manually: https://superuser.com/questions/630769/why-do-some-old-games-run-much-too-quickly-on-modern-hardware

I forgot to add that yes I did try setting the game at a higher priority, as well as old compatibility versions, but no results. I wish I knew what that Speed Gear program actually did behind the scenes because it did fix the game for me, but would keep crashing. The program allowed me to either speed up all windows, or target specific applications, so I'm not sure if it was messing with systems timers, which would be something I don't know how to do Manually.