Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'utilities'.
-
Welcome to the useful software megathread! This thread covers a broad list of different software and utilities, how they’re used, and what to use them for. I have also provided links to said programs for quick and easy downloads for you all. I may split these into different categories in the future. I've clearly done that to an extent, but I may give titles to the different areas later. Feel free to suggest other edits. EDIT: after reading through all of these, I decided it might be a good idea to not manually edit in other recommendations, but rather let them just be posted in this thread. Cheers! Cinebench -- https://www.maxon.net/en/products/cinebench/ More of a benchmark than stress test, this lets you test your CPU’s multicore speed by using your CPU to render an image. I see Cinebench commonly used to get an idea of thermal performance, as well as multithreaded performance in general. Usually if a system isn’t performing as normal, it can be recommended that a user runs Cinebench to get an idea of how their CPU is performing compared to how it should be performing, since Cinebench scores are easy to find online. Unigine Benchmarks -- https://unigine.com/en/products/benchmarks There are a few Unigine programs used for benchmarking, I personally recommend Unigine Heaven and Superposition. These are used usually to test GPU performance and overclocks. I’ve used Unigine programs combined with Cinebench to identify bottlenecks in systems in the past, as well as my personal GPU overclock. Aida64 and Prime95 -- https://www.aida64.com/ https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/prime95-download.html These are in the same boat, as they are programs designed for extended stress testing of your CPU. The workloads they put a CPU under are usually not close to real world stress levels. These are usually used to measure temperatures at full load over time since they run longer than Cinebench, as well as to test overclock stability over time. Prime95 may experience problems when using it on Haswell and newer Intel CPUs with automatic voltage settings. It should also be noted that with these stress tests that you either need proper cooling or to set voltages to manual to prevent any overheating issues while testing. Aida64 is also useful for its ability to show temperatures per core while running, as well as thermal throttling. Furmark -- https://geeks3d.com/furmark/ Furmark is a extended stress test for your GPU. The workloads your GPU is under are definitely higher than pretty much anything you’ll likely use it for. Furmark is commonly used to test overclock stability over time. BE WARNED: Furmark has been known to kill Nvidia Kepler(GTX 6xx-7xx)series and lower GPUs. Maxwell(GTX 9xx) and higher GPUs are not known to be killed by Furmark, and I’ve personally never heard of it happening. Adobe Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas Pro -- https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/ https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html Commonly used video editing suites. I’ve personally used Premiere Pro and quite like it. Tutorials are easy to come by for both since they are basically the most popular editing suites. They do cost a pretty penny, so be prepared for that. Premiere Pro does have a 5 day trial period. I cannot speak for Vegas Pro. Open Broadcaster Software --https://obsproject.com/ Lightweight easy to use recording and streaming software. Highly recommended for lower end systems. I’ve used this a lot in the past. It is free, but you can choose to pay in order to support it. It’s also open source. Commonly known as OBS. XSplit Gamecaster and Broadcaster -- https://www.xsplit.com/ More taxing recording and streaming software. Not recommended for a lower end system. There are both free and paid options available. More commonly referred to as XSplit. Discord -- https://discordapp.com/ Discord is a somewhat lightweight chat application offering audio, video, and text communication. Quality is good, and the interface is pleasant as well. One can also create servers that are maintained free of charge. There is also a wide list of bots one can add to a server. Teamspeak -- https://teamspeak.com/en/ Teamspeak is similar to Discord. Teamspeak servers will have to be hosted manually and will cost money, however. I have heard reports of it being less secure and users being able to grab IPs from servers, but I’m not sure if that issue was fixed in the last update or not. Cannot speak for quality(perhaps someone else can). Skype -- https://www.skype.com/en/home/ Mostly phased out by Discord, basically the same thing. There are no servers in Skype, however. Audio and video quality is decent. Mumble -- https://www.mumble.com/ Phased out by Skype, Discord, and Teamspeak. Offers audio and text communication. Servers are manually hosted. Quality is decent. CPU-Z and GPU-Z -- https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/cpu-z-download.html https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/gpu-z-download-techpowerup.html Very useful system utilities for finding information about your CPU and GPU. GPU-Z is particularly useful for spotting scam cards, although it is possible to fool GPU-Z. Windirstat -- https://windirstat.net/ A quick and easy way to see what takes up space on a drive. ShareX -- https://getsharex.com/ Quick and easy way to capture screenshots and share files. Also offers quick and easy uploading to image hosting sites. VoidTools -- https://www.voidtools.com/ Fast way to search a drive. Only works on NTFS formatted drives, unfortunately. Advanced IP Scanner -- http://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/ Reliable and free network scanner to analyse LAN. The program shows all network devices, gives you access to shared folders, provides remote control of computers (via RDP and Radmin), and can even remotely switch computers off. Easy to use and runs as a portable edition. CrystalDiskInfo -- https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/ Gives you a complete readout of all your computer's SMART information, as well as a current temperature and health status. From its dashboard, you can quickly see a long list of up-to-date system data, so you know when things are going well, and if it seems like something is going wrong. Displays basic HDD information, monitors S.M.A.R.T. values, and disk temperature. Snappy Driver Installer -- https://sdi-tool.org/ Useful tool for finding and installing drivers automatically. Useful for when you install an operating system and don't want to look for every driver individually. Ultimate Boot CD -- http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ Extremely useful tool for troubleshooting & diagnosing a PC that either won't boot or otherwise is playing silly buggers. Great for pretty much anything. Has tools like: Allows you to change forgotten passwords (Local accounts only). Incredibly useful for helping family members. A whole bunch of disk diagnosis, recovery, cloning, wiping, and management tools. Memory testing tools (including Memtest86 and Memtest86+). MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision XOC -- https://www.msi.com/page/afterburner https://www.evga.com/precisionxoc/ Both of these are GPU overclocking tools. They are very similar in both features and interface, I personally prefer Afterburner. They will allow you to change clock speeds, fan curves, and(on some cards) voltages. AMD Ryzen Master -- https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/ryzen-master Software-based overclocking tool for AMD Ryzen processors. Not as reliable as BIOS overclocking, and will need to be re-enabled after a system restart. Useful tool for users new to overclocking that want to avoid the BIOS. Also reports temperatures. HWMonitor -- https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html Commonly used tool for finding hardware information and provides monitoring. MemTest86 -- https://www.memtest86.com/ The best memory test out there since trying every slot and DIMM. Nvidia GeForce Experience -- https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/geforce-experience/ Automatic driver downloads and updates. ShadowPlay clips(on GTX 6xx and higher cards). Recording and streaming capabilities. If you’re into that sort of thing, I personally like it. Display Driver Uninstaller -- https://www.wagnardsoft.com/ Very useful program that will uninstall and completely wipe your GPU drivers and anything related to them. Recommended to run when switching GPU brands or experiencing driver issues. ShutUp10 -- https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/oo_shutup10.html Quick, easy, and intuitive way to control and view what data Windows 10 is sending. Gimp -- https://www.gimp.org/ Free image editing tool, similar to Adobe Photoshop. Blender -- https://www.blender.org/ Free open-source 3D modelling program. Very extensive program, with even plugin support. Program itself is free, some plugins are paid. Somewhat higher learning curve if you have never used a 3D modeler. May be very taxing on lower end systems. Lightshot -- https://app.prntscr.com/en/ Faster, easier way to take screenshots in Windows. Allows for easier cropping, sharing, and editing. Foxit Reader - https://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf-reader/ My choice of PDF reader for years. It's been more reliable than Adobe Acrobat Reader which tends to crash frequently (like every other Adobe Product) and fail to recovery your files when it does crash. The UI for Foxit Reader is based on the Ribbon of Microsoft Office so you should feel right at home. pdfbinder - https://code.google.com/archive/p/pdfbinder/ Um... it binds PDFs. That's about it. Simple, free, and lightweight application that just works 100% of the time. Not much else to say. Mp3tag - https://www.mp3tag.de/en/ Easy to use application to edit the tags of your audio files. Supports all the formats you'll ever want including mp3, flac, m4a, etc.
-
The Bluestacks Android emulator is the best Android emulator for playing mobile games on your PC. it can utilize up to 8 CPU cores, 12GB RAM, 4K resolution, full GPU support, supports up to 240hz refresh rate, and up to uncapped fps, depending on the game. It’s 100% free, and I personally use it for playing mobile games, that are limited to 60, or even 30fps on my Android phone, 240hz/fps gaming is the minimum for me, no matter the type of game. But with all emulation, stability will vary, and performance will be better, the better your hardware is, especially your CPU. https://www.bluestacks.com
-
This is an interesting situation I found myself in- I was doing some digging on the product support page for my motherboard & I noticed as far as utilities/software go, the MSI Center app is available to download from your motherboard support page, but I'm NOT seeing the MSI Dragon Center available. Which makes me wonder, "Did MSI replace the Dragon Center software with MSI Center?" "If so, why?" (I know if you search download MSI Dragon Center, it will provide an official page from MSI where you can download it.) But anyway, just curious about this topic. If any MSI users/fanboys/fangirls out there know anything, please do let me know! Hoping to get an answer to clear up the confusion. Thanks in advance!
-
Dear fellow nerds and teck savy friends I have been searching for a decent free and opensource folder protections software for sometime which provides folder hider and password protections but cannot find anything useful. It is either a crappy visually hider free software which you can easily bypass or ridiculously expensive. If you guys can point me to decent software, I pray to the silicon gods that you always find best deals on modern GPUs and always on top of the order quous...... Any help would be appriciated...
- 1 reply
-
- utilities
- opensource
-
(and 2 more)
Tagged with:
-
Working In The Industry: You'll find that sometimes you will need software that your client doesn't have installed, in cases where getting access to the internet is not possible this can be a real nightmare. So to prevent this, it helps to carry just about every utility you can with you ether on a USB thumb stick or a CD. Personally, I have two folders that contain portable software and software to be installed. The former contains several small programs for monitoring and testing that can be taken from this really useful site - http://portableapps.com/appsHowever, the latter contains software such as 7-zip, chrome, Avast and GIMP. Depending on the information I have before going onto the job, I add drivers to a separate driver. Whats Next?: Half term this week, should be able to add some cool content when I'm not in work so keep checking back to see whats new. Thank You :)
-
Hello, I just got a hold of an Aorus RTX 3080 Ti Master and I am having issues with setting a fan curve that will actually stay set. I am new to Gigabyte products and I have read that the software is less than satisfactory. I bought this card from Bestbuy because it was in stock and I have been waiting a while (Like everyone else). Is there a specific utility that will work better with this card? I am currently using MSI Afterburner to at least get all fans spinning during game play. I was having an issue with the middle fan not spinning other then after boot up. My first build and I am still learning so any suggestions other than getting a different card would be most helpful! Intel I7 10700k Asus ROG Strix z490-E Gaming Mobo 64gb Corsair Vengeance 3200 Ram 1000w Corsair psu Windows 10 If anymore info is needed let me know! Thank you everyone!
- 1 reply
-
- rtx 3080 ti
- aorus
-
(and 2 more)
Tagged with:
-
I recently built my first PC. I have a 7950X CPU, a Radeon 6950XT, 2x16GB G.SKILL Ripjaws S5 DDR5 6000MHz RAM, and a X670 AORUS ELITE AX motherboard. I would like to know the full capabilities of my new rig and how it compares with other hardware out there via benchmarking. What are the best benchmarking utilities out there?
- 4 replies
-
- benchmark
- benchmarking
-
(and 4 more)
Tagged with:
-
hello I am new to making a pc and im on a budget of around 650-700 (no over) dollars I am wondering what the best build that can get me good frame rates on games like bf1 gta 5 and witcher 3. I would like to ask everyone to post a link (preferably pc part picker) On the best performance pc within the budget I provided or even less. Also make sure to include windows and a monitor above 21.5 inch's. Thank you! (I use usd)
- 26 replies
-
- budget gaming windows
- pc
-
(and 4 more)
Tagged with:
-
I have a couple questions about drivers and software with my MSI R9 390 8G: 1. When I used the driver version before 18.2.3, every time I played a game, after about 30 mins, my computer would freeze. When I restart, it says that the Radeon Wattman settings failed, but I have no idea what that is. What should I do? I went to the Windows 10 driver settings and clicked rollback driver. That has been working for me until the last update of Rainbow 6 Siege. It says that I need the latest driver for optimal settings and then just crashes. 2. What is MSI Live Update? 3. How do I overclock my GPU safely using MSI Afterburner? 4. What is MSI Gaming APP? Thanks!
-
Hi everyone, So I've been saving up for half a year and now i've finally build my PC. It's the first one ever (wohoo) and i want it to last long. But while it's fairly straight forward with hardware and overclocking, I'm not that good at software and there're less examples of it.So because this website really helped me with components I'd appreciate advice on soft) What are the best utilities? For eample backup service, disk maintenance, registry and space cleaners and so on. Also is win10 upgrade worth it or is it better to wait for a bit?
-
hey everyone, I'm Alex from Pipemetrics, a little startup making quality Windows apps in Switzerland. I wanted to show off our new project called Diskovery, its a data storage inspection tool, meaning it scans your computer for an attached storage devices (HDD, SSD, USB drives, etc), analyzes them and then gives you a clean and easy to understand report. Its still in beta at the moment so we'd like for people to test it out and give us feedback about their experience it so we can continue to polish it, both from the UI standpoint and the code in the background. Here's the link to read up on all the technical details and download the app: https://pipemetrics.com/diskovery/beta It started when our developer was building a module for our flagship app, Bvckup 2, that can read the S.M.A.R.T. stats on all modern drives. As he continued to tinker with it, it began to grow into something much more useful than his first idea, so we decided to dedicate more time to it and turn it into its own separate program. Its not 100% finished (that's why we are looking for testers) but we aren't looking to turn it into a paid product, even when we take it out of beta. Its free now and it will remain that way. Its really small (225kb), doesn't need to be installed to use and as of right now, it is the only app of its kind that actually bothers to show which physical drives are attached to which RAID volumes. So I think that's it, check it out and let us know what you think, either through here or through the log reporting feature in the app itself. Thanks! Also here's a preview of the UI, in case you wanted to see what a typical report might look like when using the app:
-
So, this is a bit disconcerting. I'm not sure what to think about this. Especially considering the recent theft of 22 million security files from the "Office of Personnel Management". China is suspected to have been involved in that, but the administration declined to publicly blame them. Scary times we live in. Even more so when you consider that our elected officials basically have no idea how the internet works, or any knowledge of basic security principles. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/politics/utilities-cautioned-about-potential-for-a-cyberattack-after-ukraines.html You will need to pause your adblock.
- 11 replies
-
- cyber attack
- security
-
(and 4 more)
Tagged with:
-
I'm not sure if anyone on these forums knows what this is, but I installed SAO Utilities Beta some time ago because I thought it'd be cool, and then the HP Bar widget came into play. If you know what SAO Utils are, you know what I'm talking about. The point of this thread is me asking if there's any possible way to set a custom and easily-changed value for the HP Bar.
-
I recently updated motherboard utilities, and now my mouse goes off my screen. I can hit the "Wall" at the left, top, and bottom, but there is no wall for the mouse, it just dissappears from the screen, and keeps going to a certain point, I have to drag my mouse half way accross the mousepad in order to bring the mouse back, please help.
- 3 replies
-
- mouse
- windows 8.1
-
(and 7 more)
Tagged with:
-
Do you need stuff? OF COURSE YOU NEED STUFF!! NOTE: The things that are listed here are not in any order! Windows: Google Chrome! An amazingly fast browser, wayyyyyyy better than IE! Ninite One-click installer for every program that you need! Open Office Just like Microsoft Office but free! RSSOwl One of the best RSS feed readers out there Juice The BEST podcast listening program X-CHAT 2 X-Chat 2 Amazingly awesome IRC chat client KeePass Stores all of your passwords in one place TrueCrypt Convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device FreeMind Enables you to brainstorm and link together ideas quickly Workrave Prevents from working too much and causing repetitive stress injury CPU-Z Monitor every aspect of your CPU! HWMonitor Monitor every aspect of your WHOLE computer! GPU-Z Monitor every aspect of your GPU! FooBar2000 BEST music player EVER! CCleaner Number-one tool for cleaning your Windows PC Teamviewer Remote control any computer Flash Drive: Hirens BootCD Every SINGLE tool that you will ever need!
-
I just found out about this thanks to my supervisor showing me it. I thought I'd share. Here is the page listing all the utilities (in a better format, because I'm not formatting all that after Ctrl + Shift + V). However, I can't find the download button on that page. I found a legit place to download it here. Go to the bottom and click the hyperlink where "Filename: Hirens.BootCD.15.2.zip". Some of it is old and useless (for Windows 8 for example), but other things are pretty cool and always useful. Some are for MS-DOS (yes, old), some are for Linux, and some are for Windows. This is for those who don't want to read the full list linked above; it's an overview.