Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Trippy]

ASUS RT-AC68U.

[MahrinSkel]

Well, I wound up going with a 29" AOC ultra wide screen (21:9 ratio, 2560x1080) and a Visio 29" soundbar. Umm, wow.

It's the same vertical screen height as a normal 22" 16:9, and can function as one (with black pillars).  I haven't had a chance to actually play a game with it yet, but I did fire up MWO and run around the testing grounds, it really does give you a wider FoV in that game (some others restrict your horizontal FoV to a fixed number of degrees and wider screens mean narrower verticals), which will come in handy.

For movies, it is just sweet. 21:9 works out to 2.35:1, which is very close to a true cinematic ratio, so movies that haven't been cut down to 16:9 for BluRay release fill the whole screen. The built in speakers aren't much (tinny and underpowered, as usual), but with the soundbar, it's great, better sound from that 2.0 soundbar than I would get from a cheap 5.1/7.1 system, without wires and little boxes all over the place.

I had considered a 34" LG (same resolution, there's also a 1440p version) but decided against it both because it was too big and heavy to mount on an articulated springloaded arm, and because there are lots of complaints of light bleed from inconsistent quality, and gamers said it suffered from ghosting. Glad I went a little smaller just because I can't imagine being comfortable sitting only a desk-width away from anything wider than the 29".

At $350, the AOC is a bit pricey (but no worse than the 27" ultra-HD's that are currently popular, never mind the 4k's) and I probably wouldn't have done it under normal circumstances (I had some leftover grant money I had to either spend or give back). It's both cheaper and reportedly better for gaming than the other 29" ultrawides, which run $410-440. It's quite a bit cheaper than the 34" models, which start at $600 and go up fast ($1300 for the curved LG 1440p 21:9).

I'll have to see how it does in my dorm room on an articulated arm (which hasn't arrived yet), but right now I'm ready to say to hell with the 200 PPI ultra-high definition models, ultrawide is the way to go big.

--Dave

Edit: The AOC also supports *all* of the video I/O formats (HDMI, DVI, VGA, and DisplayPort 1.2 both in and out). The only thing it doesn't have is optical audio, which is a big bucket of idgaf for me. All of the others are missing at least one of those (usually VGA), and most don't have DP daisy-chaining. It does just fine at outputting analog audio to my soundbar from a DP input. As a bonus the DP output is the only one coming directly from the NVidia chipset on my laptop, so I just shaved at least one frame worth of display lag.

[Abagadro]

ASUS RT-AC68U.

Any benefit to going up to the P model of that for the faster processor? Its 20 bucks more.

[Trippy]

Probably not.

[Yegolev]

Is there some error log other than Event Viewer in Win7?  I thought I had fixed my wife's computer when I replaced the optical drive, but it is again crashing and the only notable thing I see in Event Viewer is a kernel power.  I am once again thinking it might be the C: drive, the hangup there is that the ISO I tried to use to boot it to update the C: ... won't boot.  I do not have any idea where to look to determine root cause on these machines.

[Rendakor]

I've had a couple BSODs over the last few months, with the error code "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"; Google suggests its a memory issue involving a new hardware/driver install, or an OS upgrade but I haven't done any of those. Any ideas what random part might be dying?

[Rasix]

I get that a lot when my video card is about to say goodbye.

[rattran]

I had it with a flaky memory stick last year.

[Yegolev]

Best gaming laptop under $1400?

Does this exist?

[Trippy]

Not at $1400, unless there's a sale/rebate. At $1500 you can get a 970M.

[MahrinSkel]

Best gaming laptop under $1400?

Does this exist?

You can get the low end of the MSI Dominator line for $1200 (870M, 8gb, i7 4800MQ). Mine is the Dominator Dragon (same but i7 4810MQ and a shiny red case for $50 more, no longer available). $1500 gets you the same basic model but with a 128gb SSd and the 970M (but downgrades the screen to 15.6").

If I were buying today rather than 6 months ago, I'd bite the bullet for the 970M, but it wasn't available under the $2000 point at the time. The smaller integrated screen isn't that big a deal, as you'll generally be using an external monitor for gaming.

--Dave

[Yegolev]

Good info.  Another $100 won't be hard to push her into.

Follow up: could the 970M handle The Sims 3 with ALL OF THE ADDONS?  Plus <INSERT EXPONENT HERE> community content?

[Trippy]

A 970m is like a slightly slower GTX 760. A GTX 260 can pretty much max out The Sims 3 (min FPS 71) so the 970m is way overkill if that's what this laptop is going to be used for.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, the 970M is a beast of a card, comparing favorably with $300 desktop cards and is currently the best non-SLI option for laptops (given the recent price drop, that is probably about to change).  It will not only run Sims 3 with all of the options, it will probably be future-proofed against the next generation of the Sims franchise.  The 870M is about 60% of the 970M, and nearly as much overkill for Sims 3.

You're really looking at the question of how long this is going to be her primary computer, and what will she be running towards the end of that life cycle.  If she's going to be using it for 4-5 years, get the 970M.  If she'll probably be replacing it in 2-3 when the original battery degrades it to tethered mode, get the 870M and put the difference into SSD, RAM, or a new external monitor.  Another reason to overkill on GPU is that we're about to shift to ultra-high resolution, 1440p, 2K, and 'Ultra Wide".  What is overkill at 1920x1080 may not be at 3840x2160 or 3440x1440.

--Dave

[Yegolev]

Dave, you're absolutely on the right track.  I'm going to try one last time to fix her tower computer (reseat RAM, potentially buy replacement sticks) and if I can't, then it's going to be the one she uses for Sims 4 (which will eventually have as much content as Sims 3) and remote-desktop into work.

Found this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9514707&CatId=3998
Seems legit.  I assume it has WiFi because laptop.

[MahrinSkel]

That's an exceptionally good deal on that Asus, I'd jump on it quickly if you can convince her to pay the extra $200.

--Dave

[Yegolev]

Since she's the only one of us that is employed, I don't have a lot of pull at the moment.

[Abagadro]

ASUS RT-AC68U.

Thanks for recommending this. I've been up on it for about 2 weeks and it is working great. Kicked up my speeds (both wired and wi-fi) by a factor of 4.

[Trippy]

[Engels]

So I have a Gforce 550 low end card for work. I have a motherboard with built in intel graphics. The video card doesn't seem to handle both DVI and VGA to two monitors without sending a weak signal to the VGA connected one, causing odd pixel 'shaking' for lack of a better word. I have therefore connected the VGA to the onboard video and left the DVI on the video card. This works fine in Windows, but I'm not getting automatic detection in Linux Mint (Cinnamon). Does anyone know the best way in Linux Mint Cinnamon to get the desktop environment to 'find' the new onboard connection?

[Trippy]

Did you install the Intel graphics driver?

[Engels]

I ran the Intel installer and I -think- it has the drivers:

$ lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] (rev a1)


$ sudo inxi -Gxz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Card-2: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] bus-ID: 01:00.0
           X.org: 1.15.1 drivers: nvidia,intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau) tty size: 80x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root

The issue seems more that Cinnamon doesn't want to see the second monitor un the System Settings > Display applet.

[lamaros]

Should I install my games on my SSD or SATA drive?

[Trippy]

As many on the SSD as will fit.

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, presumably anything where you might want some improved performance or general startup/load times.

[schild]

ASUS RT-AC68U.

Thanks for recommending this. I've been up on it for about 2 weeks and it is working great. Kicked up my speeds (both wired and wi-fi) by a factor of 4.

Fuck, is that thing THAT good?

Sheit.

[Rendakor]

Anyone know anything about making PDFs? I've got a lot of homebrew D&D content in text form (Open Office .odt) that I'd like to put into one file with bookmarks and shit. I'd also maybe like to add some pictures and/or change the background from plain white, but those are less important. This isn't serious enough that I want to spend money on a program, just something to put all of my content in one place for my players instead of having to send out 20+ documents.

[Chimpy]

Do the formatting in your word processor, then either save as PDF (if it is an option) or get pdfcreator off the web and "print to" that.

[Lantyssa]

I'll second PDF Creator.  There are others out there if that gives you trouble.  (Cute PDF is one we use as an alternate.)

[Venkman]

Quick browser question: Is it still Chrome > Firefox > IE/Spartan/whatever for speed and compatibility? Or has that changed recently.

[Hawkbit]

Quick browser question: Is it still Chrome > Firefox > IE/Spartan/whatever for speed and compatibility? Or has that changed recently.

That's a really great question. I find I'm currently using 35% Firefox, 65% Chrome now, where I used Chrome exclusively over the past ~5 years. Chrome is a damn memory hog. You'll likely get different responses here.

[Rendakor]

I'm a Firefox fanboi; Chrome is an awful memory hog.

[Venkman]

Thanks. Yea, I've been having some Chrome issues on a couple of my machines and it seems memory related. Or at least process related (there's always 5 processes minimum).

Separate question now:

I have a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router. All of a sudden it seems the 2.4ghz portion shit the bed. I can't get any devices to connect to it no matter what I set, and some of these devices don't like the 5G option (two old Kindles). Google's been no help to me. Everyone wants to talk about DD-WRT or some other model.

I could accept burning out a channel maybe. Bought this thing only a year ago. We only have like 16 devices, but only six are used at any given time. I've never heard of a channel burning out before. But I've never had one that could do 2.4ghz and 5ghz either.

[Salamok]

Does anyone know the best way in Linux Mint Cinnamon to get the desktop environment to 'find' the new onboard connection?

It has been 3 years since I looked into it but last I checked it was some extremely difficult shit (i would say unpossible but there are a handful of crazies in the world that slogged through it) to get any flavor of Linux to run multiple monitors across different brands of GPUs.

[Rendakor]

Got the new PC together (no POST errors, woo!) but my browser is doing something weird: whenever I visit certain pages (the f13 advanced search page in particular) the monitor dims. I've disabled Adaptive Brightness on startup according to a Google, but their other suggestion is to disable monitor dimming under Display in Advanced Power Settings and that option isn't there for me.

Edit: Fixed it by switching my HDTV to Game mode, which also got rid of the input lag I was about to whine about.

Edit 2: Now I'm noticing that images are like...grainy. Google seems to indicate that this is a problem when using an HDMI cable to hook up an HDTV as a monitor; I was using a VGA cable before with a VGA-DVI adapter and I assumed that the HDMI would be an upgrade. Is there a fix? I know we have a lot of people using TVs as monitors (hai2uSky) so hopefully someone knows what's up.

Edit 3: Switching from 1080p down to 1680x1050 fixed it.