05 maxpc may2014

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BUDGET GPUROUNDUP

FIVE NAS UNITSREVIEWED

DELLSPIXELICIOUS 4K

Get off your NAS andmove your storage tothe network PG. 52

MINIMUM BS MAY 2014 www.maximumpc.com

The Ultra HDmonitor weve beenwaiting for? PG. 80

REFRESHYOUR PC!PC got you down?We show you howto put the pep back

in its stepPG. 22

BUILD IT:We build a 4Kgaming rig for

the real worldPG. 70

Real gamingcapability for $150?

Yes, maam! PG. 38

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4 maximumpc.comMAXIMUMPC MAY 2014

+

MORE

inside

IN THE LAB

QUICKSTART

BUDGET GPUROUNDUP

FIVE NAS UNITSREVIEWED

DELLSPIXELICIOUS 4K

Get off yourNAS andmove yourstorage tothe network PG.52

MINIMUMBS MAY2014 www.maximumpc.com

The Ultra HDmonitorweve beenwaiting for? PG.80

REFRESHYOUR PC!

PCgotyoudown?We show youhowto putthe pep backinits step PG. 22

BUILD IT:We build a4Kgaming rig forthe realworldPG. 70

Real gamingcapabilityfor$150?

Yes,maam!PG.38

523822

SPRINGCLEANINGPC slowing down? Whip it

back into shape with our

handy guide.

A GOOD GAMINGBUDGETGPU?1080p gaming gets a boost

and a price breakwith new

GPUs from AMD and Nvidia.

MULITBAYNAS SHOOTOUTWe put five multi-bay NAS

boxes through the paces and

rate the results.

INTEL 730 SERIES480GB SSD

78 84DELL ULTRASHARPUP2414Q 4K MONITOR

80MAINGEAR PULSE 17GAMING LAPTOP

76

MAY 2014

08

16

18

65

70

20

92

DOCTOR

COMMENTS

LETTERS

R&D

THE NEWSComcast making waves;

128GB MicroSD cards;

Rig of the Month returns!

THE LIST8 dying technologies youths

dont use.

HEAD TO HEADSurface RT vs. Chromebook.

On the CoverIllustration by

Martina Morawetz

22

GPS devices.

HOW TOTroubleshoot problems with

Event Viewer; share a mouse and

keyboard using Synergy.

BUILD ITBuild a spiff y 4K-gaming test

bench without completelybreaking the bank.

FEATURES

INTEL NUCD54250WYKH

where we put stufftable of contents

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5maximumpc.com MAXIMUMPC

editorial

MAXIMUMPC

Future plc is a publiccompany quoted on theLondon Stock Exchange.

www.futureplc.com

submit your questions to: [email protected]

GordonMah Ung

MAY 2014

a thing or two about a thing or two

THIS MAY SURPRISEyou, but I wrote thiscolumn on a PC. In fact, everything Ivewritten for the magazine this month

was written on await for itPC.Other things I've used a PC for this

month: editing photos, editing audio,burning DVDs and audio CDs (yes, Istill use those), and transcoding video.Oh, and I played games on my PC, too.I also accessed the Internet and wrote95 percent of my emails this month ona PC.

Im not going on here because Ivefinally run out of things to say. Im men-tioning this because maybe the prob-lem with the PC today is that we donthave the equivalent of the sent fromone of my four iPads email appendagetacked onto our every communiqu.

Said appendages are not the choiceof the tablet or phone buyer, of course.Those signatures are set by default bythe device maker so that any time youget an email from someone using aphone or tablet, you are informed of thesender's device choice. Sure, it's pos-sible to edit or even delete the offend-ing text, but few users ever bother. Isuspect that many enjoy the cachet as-sociated with their specific device.

When an email is sent from a PC,though, there is no device-makermessage appended. It usually has yourcontact info, maybe a funny or inspi-

rational line, and thats it. Well, guesswhat, world? People are using theirPCs to send email, too. In fact, Id betthat the actual word-volume of PC-generated email is higher than mo-bile-generated. Sure, theres probablymore email sent on phones or tabletstoday, but those are just one- or four-

word responses, while people composefar longer emails on a PC.

The world doesnt run on just email,

though. It runs on images, video, andoffice documents. It runs on Javas-cript, C++, DirectX, HTML, Flash, andall kinds of nifty languages and APIsall created on a PC. By now, Im sureyoure sick of me getting in your facetelling you that at this very moment, Imusing my PC to create a magazine, too(full disclosure: Maximum PC is actu-ally laid out in Adobe Indesign by ourArt Director Richard Koscher on anx86-based desktop system booting analternative operating system. In otherwords, a PC), but I think its OK.

If the world actually knew how muchwas created on the PCfrom the pic-tures they see to the videos they watchon Youtube to the paychecks they cashtheyd realize just how integral the PCis to our world. No? You disagree. Toomuch in your face and confrontational.Really? If someone doesnt mind send-ing out email with the signature sayingit was sent from my phone, they prob-ably wont mind me telling them for tenminutes all the things I did on my PCtoday, too.

Gordon Mah Ung is Maximum PCs

deputy editor, senior hardware expert,

and all-around muckraker.

WRITTEN ON A PC

Non-executive Chairman:Peter AllenChief Executive: Mark Wood

Group Finance Director: Graham HardingTel +44 (0)20 7042 4000 (London)

Tel +44 (0)1225 442244 (Bath)

2014 Future US, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this magazinemay be used or reproduced without the written permission ofFuture US, Inc. (owner). All information provided is, as far as Future(owner) is aware, based on information correct at the time of press.Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directlywith regard to products/services referred to in this magazine. Wewelcome reader submissions, but cannot promise that they willbe published or returned to you. By submitting materials to us youagree to give Future the royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive rightto publish and reuse your submission in any form in any and allmedia and to use your name and other information in connectionwith the submission.

Future produces carefully targeted maga-zines, websites and events for people with apassion. We publish more than 180 maga-zines, websites and events and we exportor license our publications to 90 countriesacross the world.

EDITORIALDeputy Editor:Gordon Mah UngSenior Editor: Josh NoremOnline Managing Editor: Jimmy ThangAssociate Editor: Tom McNamaraContributing Editors: Nathan Edwards, Alex CastleContributing Writers: Tom Halfhill, Jeremy Laird, Paul Lilly,Thomas McDonald, David Murphy, Quinn Norton, Nick PeersCopy Editor: Mary RicciIntern: Clark CrispEditor Emeritus: Andrew Sanchez

ARTArt Director:Richard KoscherPhotographer: Mark Madeo

BUSINESSVice President, Consumer Media: Kelley Corten, [email protected] President, Sales & Business Development: Nate Hunt,[email protected] Sales Director:Stacy Gaines, [email protected] Sales Manager:Michael Plump, [email protected] Sales Manager:Tad Perez, [email protected] Sales Manager: Austin Park, [email protected] Sales Manager: Jessica Reinert, [email protected] Manager Sales Ops & Monetization:Michael Grinde, [email protected]

Vice President, Marketing & Sales Development: Rhoda BuenoDirector of Consumer Marketing: Lisa RadlerNewsstand Director: Bill Shewey

PRODUCTIONProduction Director: Michael HollisterProduction Manager: Larry BrisenoProject Manager: Jennifer LimProduction Coordinator: Linh Chau-Ward

FUTURE US, INC.4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080Tel: 650-872-1642, www.futureus.com

President: Rachelle ConsidineVice President, Finance & Business Management: Lulu KongVice President / General Manager, Digital: Charlie SpeightGeneral Counsel:Anne OrtelDirector, Human Resources:Eric Buksa

SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICEMaximum PC Customer Care,P.O. Box 51592, Harlan, IA 51593-1352Website: www.maximumpc.com/customerserviceTel: 800-274-3421Email: [email protected]

BACK ISSUESWebsite: www.maximumpc.com/shopTel: 800-865-7240

REPRINTSFuture US, Inc., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400,South San Francisco, CA 94080Website: www.futureus.comTel: 650-872-1642, Fax 650-872-2207

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quickstart

8 MAY 2014 maximumpc.comMAXIMUMPC

the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are small

competitor, Time Warner Ca-ble. TWC (which Time Warner,Inc. spun off as an independentcompany in 2009) serves morethan 11 million customers. Bycomparison, Comcast serves21.7 million, according to theNew York Times. At about 33million, their combined cus-tomer base would dwarf thepopulation of Texas.

And in the midst of this,Comcast wants Netflix tostart paying to use its seriesof tubes. The company is ap-parently not eager to win anypopularity contests. It mountedNBCs peacock on the hood ofits corporation, in case there

Media giant offers $45 billion for Time-Warner Cable anddemands tribute from Netflix

Comcast Disturbs

the Force

was any doubt as to ownership.And its been a regular finalistin the Consumerists annualWorst Company in Americaawards. The quality of Netflixsservice had been degrading formonths, but things reached acritical level right around thetime that the federal courtsstruck down net neutrality, onthe basis that the FCC did nothave the authority to regulateinformation services. Net neu-trality is intended to preserveequal access to whatever ser-vices you ask to be delivered toyou over the Internet. Withoutlegal enforcement or regionalcompetition, proponents say,things can get ugly. Once youstart paying the ISP to reach itscustomers, you set a precedentfor a future where only thosewho can pay the ISP will haveany visibility, they say.

Are proponents of net neu-trality being too harsh, though?Telecom analyst Jeff Kaganbelieves so. Kagan is in favor ofComcast charging Netflix.

I have read many who thinkthis is not good for the enduser, Kagan said. I see thisstory as more for the two com-panies and the economics ofthe industry, and less for theconsumer.

However, things got a bit un-clear when Mr. Kagan said thatNetflix would no longer be pay-ing the Internet transit provider

middlemen to deliver traffic toNetflix.

After this deal, Netflix willpay Comcast and stop payingothers for delivery to Comcast,Kagan maintained. Netflix willstill pay others to deliver to oth-er providers like Time WarnerCable, Cox and so on.

Were not sure how Cogent,Level 3, and others would becompensated in this new sys-tem, but technology analystRob Enderle believes it willblow up for Comcast.

This will be a self-correct-ing problem, because increas-ingly, the power is moving to thecontent owners. But by acquir-ing Time Warner, Comcast getsenough power to push backrather hard on both the legis-lation and this content trend,Enderle said. If they use thatpower, then the content own-ers and Google are likely tomove around them, making thedeal suicidal strategically forComcast. It will give Comcastenough rope to hurt consum-

ers, and that rope will likelyeventually strangle Comcast.

Although the FCC cantregulate Comcast like it does atelecom, it can still review andpotentially block a Comcast-TWC merger (as it did in 2011with AT&T and T-Mobile), sothis story isnt over yet.Tom McNamara

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Comcast Cor-poration is the largest mass me-dia and communications com-pany in the world, by revenue.

Bigger than Rupert Mur-dochs News Corp empire;bigger than Disney, which alsoowns Pixar, Marvel, and Lucas-film; and bigger than Viacom,which owns Paramount andseemingly half the channelson basic cable. Part of this isthanks to Comcasts $13.7 bil-lion acquisition of NBC Univer-sal in 2011, and now it appearsthat NBCU was just one step ona longer journey.

The next step is the acqui-sition of its nearest cable TV

Netflixs content directly competes with cable TV companies thatprovide Internet accessawkward!

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9maximumpc.com MAY 2014 MAXIMUMPC

Tom

Halfhill

Fast

Forward

EVERYONE WHOS SAVVYenough to read thismagazine is probably the first-call techsupport for friends and family. But whatabout the people who writethis magazine?Do we ever resort to calling a vendors techsupport?

You betcha. At least, I do. I could claim Iminvestigating the support that newbies get,

but the truth is, sometimes Im stumped.Most recently, it happened while trying tomake a Windows 8 recovery disk for a newHewlett-Packard notebook.

Like most small notebooks, my HP has nooptical drive and didnt come with Windowsinstall discs. No problem, I thought. HPsRecovery Manager can use the recovery par-tition on the hard drive to create the recoverymedia on DVDs (using an external drive) oron a USB thumb drive. I chose the thumbdrive, because it seemed easier than burningsix DVDs. The recovery files required at least23GB, so I bought a new SanDisk 32GB drive.The package logo assured me the product isWindows 8 Compatible.

Hours later, despite flashing lights in-dicating continuous disk activity, a checkrevealed that no files were actually copied.I eliminated all the likely possibilities be-fore finally calling HPs tech support. A nicewoman in Bangalore diagnosed the prob-lem: my new thumb drive is Windows 8 com-patible. Windows 8 automatically mounts acompatible thumb drive as a localdrive, butthe Recovery Manager requires a remov-abledrive. No error message told me this,of course.

Ms. Bangalore advised using a drive thatisnt Windows 8 compatible so that it wouldbe compatible. But all my older, incompat-

ible thumb drives were smaller than 32GB,so they werent compatible with my require-ments, either. After consulting a supervisor,Ms. Bangalore cheerfully agreed to mail mea bootable thumb drive with the recoveryfiles preinstalledno charge.

Problem solved! But, still.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior

editor for Bytemagazine and is now an

analyst for Microprocessor Report.

WHENCOMPATIBLEISNTCOMPATIBLE

LaCie Unveils 5TB DrivesSolid-state drives may be super-fast, but theyre also super-expensive compared toa mechanical drive, and no consumer SSD is currently bigger than 1 terabyte. Rightnow, you can get a 4TB hard drive for as low as $150. Up until recently, though, thatwas the biggest you could find anywhere. Now, French storage-device company LaCiehas announced the arrival of several external devices containing 5TB hard drivesfrom its new owner Seagate. At the top end is a unit containing five of these, givingyou five more TBs than previous five-disk setups could supply. LaCies new units willcome in USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt II varieties. The single-drive version has a launchprice of $450, so you probably wont be putting it in grandmas Youtube machine. PL

Rig of the Month is OnlineUntil a few years ago, we had a section in our magazine called Rig of the Month. Readerswould send in photos of fancy or just plain whimsical boxes, and a lucky few would befeatured in each issue. Well, weve decided to do an online resurrection of this section, atour website:http://bit.ly/MPC_ROTM. That link will show you how to contact us, providea gallery of past winners, and list some helpful tips on how to take good photos. (Dontshoot with a potato, seek out natural lighting, clean up your PC and the area around it, andGordon says that he will throw an intern into a volcano if its a Mac.) TM

Continuted on page 12

Asus to Double PC ShipmentsYou may have heard some industry experts claim that the desktop PC is deadand being rapidly replaced by tablets and even smartphones. Well, hardwaremanufacturer Asus isnt buying it. Company president Jerry Shen announcedthat it planned to ship about four million desktop PCs in 2014, up from two millionlast year; China would be one of the companys major targets, in recognition ofits large population and steadily growing middle class. For comparison, Lenovoshipped about 14 million desktop and laptop PCs last year, and Dell about 9.5 mil-lion, according to research firm Gartner; the firm expects about 321 million PCshipments in 2014, which follows several quarters of double-digit decline. PL

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Thomas

McDonald

GameTheory

FROM CHAOS,ORDERIVE ALWAYSknown that if I covered technol-ogy long enough, Id encounter something Idont understand. Its taken 25 years, but themoments here: I dont understand Twitch.

I get the tech and all that, mind you. I justcannot fathom the idea of thousands uponthousands of people watching someoneelse play games for hours on end. It was likestumbling upon a community of waffle pornaficionados or people who think Lena Dun-ham is funny.

Twitch Plays Pokemon seemed to takeTwitch in a new and even more ridiculousdirection. While the first game was still inprogress, I popped in from time to time tosee a flurry of contradictory orders beingentered into an online Pokemon Red emula-tor. This massive community of gamers inputconflicting commands as the character (liter-ally!) twitched across the screen, attemptingto complete something like an action.

It was absurd. It was chaos. It was filledwith griefers attempting to walk the char-acter off a cliff or constantly hitting thestart button.

And then something really strange hap-

pened. Out of all this chaos, something likeorder began to arise. It was helped along bysome tweaks to the code to prevent the startmenu problems. People began to work to-gether. They began to plan. Anarchy mode(in which each command is entered instantly)gave way to Democracy mode (in which themost popular commands in a 30 second peri-od are used), with people voting which modeto use once an hour.

What appeared to be an absurd gimmickturned into a fascinating social experimentpowered by a game. People attempting toactually play the game were fighting on twofronts: the game itself and the trolls deter-mined to wreak havoc.

In the midst of all this, a kind of raggedersatz community formed. Gamers beganto plan. It was an unexpected, amazing il-lustration of spontaneous orderthe veryheart of democracy and free markets. Thus,a Pokemon emulator and a chat window be-comes an experiment illustrating how civili-zations form.

Thomas L. McDonald is

Editor-at-Large of Games Magazine.

Toshiba Announces Warp-SpeedUSB Flash DriveDespite living in an age where even your cat expects you to be putting data inthe cloud, portable storage still has its uses. However, the smaller thesedevices get, the slower they tend to be. Hardware manufacturer Toshiba isbucking this trend with a USB 3.0 flash drive called the TransMemory Pro,which claims read and write speeds of over 200MB/s. Its bundled EX II PadLocker allows you to create a hidden partition on the drive, and there areoptions for encryption and password protection, too. The TransMemory Procomes in just 64GB and 128GB capacities at launch, with MSRPs of $130and $200, respectively. Its compatible with USB 2.0 but will be limited tothat protocols max of 480Mb/s PL

A monthly snapshot of whats up and down in tech

Tech Tragedies and Triumphs

TRIUMPHS TRAGEDIES

RIG OF THE MONTH

Thats right, were bringing it back!

At least in online form, for now.

Baby steps.

NINE CITIESThat will possibly be receiving

Google Fiber. Meanwhile, the Maxi-

mum PCstaff is stuck with Comcast.

ANDROID

Android now owns 62 percent of the

tablet market, and grew a crazy 127

percent in 2013.

RADIO SHACK

It announced it is closing 1,100

stores. Stock up on speaker

cable and RJ-45 connectors!

WINDOWS XPAs of April 8th, Windows XP

will be officially retired after

more than 12 years. We loved

you, man.

MTGOX

Crypto currency exchange files

for bankruptcy after $450 mil-

lion BitCoin stolen. Seems legit.

IrrationalGames ShutsIts DoorsKen Levine announced in an openletter that his 17-year-old Irratio-nal Games studio was closing, andhe that would retain a core team of

about 15 people. Indications werethat its most recent game, Bio-Shock Infinite, did not meet finan-cial expectations. According to anunnamed source in the New YorkTimes, the game cost $200 mil-lion to develop and market, whichLevine disputed in a Twitter post.In the letter, Levine said he desireda studio with a flatter structureand a more direct relationshipwith gamers. His new team will bemaking narrative-driven gamesfor the core gamer that are highlyreplayable. TM

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Quinn

Norton

ByteRights

THE TRANSPacific Partnership, or TPP, isan evil trade agreement being negotiatedin secret by twelve nations. The only rea-son we know much at all about it is thatthe intellectual property chapter wasleaked to Wikileaks back in November.

The leaked text revealed TPP to be asuper-DMCA, granting the power to pros-ecute and censor for rights-holding cor-porations. It creates controls on culturestraight out of the now-dead ACTA andSOPA. It provides more protections forpatents to benefit pharmaceuticals com-panies, increasing the power of a patentsystem so broken that it makes the inno-vation it was designed to protect a con-stant hazard of life-crushing liability.

The TPP is being negotiated in secret,so secret that our own congressionalcommittees meant to provide oversightfor the USTR cant see the text, whilecompanies like Halliburton and moviestudios have both access and input.

But this is all old news. Ive whined toyou about all of this for years. What is newis the rising protest in those twelve na-tions against the trade representativesobvious attempt to screw the Internetand public in general. Like COICA, SOPA,PIPA, and ACTA before it, the TPP is suf-fering from the fact that everyone hatesit and wants it to dieeveryone but theObama administration and the corpora-tions it represents.

Right now, the administration is trying tofast track congressional approval in orderto get the TPP into law before anyone has achance to see how awful it is. That meansits political go-time again, and its going

to take another upwelling of public hate tostop this newest terrible attempt to destroyour nets and our rights. Its becoming aroutine, the public against the net haters,but its a routine we keep winning. So, callyour representatives, sign petitions, hit thestreets, and kill this thing.

Quinn Norton writes about copyright

for Wired News and other publications.

ITS BADTREATYKILLIN TIME

Hackers Target300K RoutersTech site Ars Technica reportedthat more than 300,000 homenetworks had been compromiseddue to exploited flaws in rout-ers made by D-Link, TP-Link,Micronet, and others. This flawcould be used to secretly redirectthe user to fake bank websitesused to steal account informa-tion, or to put malicious softwareon their computers. Security firm

Team Cymru first discovered theflaw and reported it to the gen-eral public. If your router is com-patible with DD-WRT, reportsindicated that it would be moreresistant to these attacks thanthe pre-installed proprietaryfirmware. Disabling remote ac-cess to your router can also help(and is the default setting in mos tof these devices). TM

128GB MicroSDCard ArrivesIf your mobile device only has a Mi-croSD card slot for external stor-age, and you need more than 64GBof space, youre in luck. SanDiskhas introduced the worlds first128GB MicroSD card, featuring upto 30MB/s read speed. (No wordon write speed, but dont expectit to be nearly as fast, if history isany guide.) But with an MSRP of$200, its not for the faint of heart.

It says it uses a proprietary verti-cal stacking technique to pack allof those memory chips into such asmall space. At launch, the itemwas exclusive to Amazon and BestBuy. PL

AMDs Mantle Stirs CompetitionLate last year, CPU- and GPU-maker AMD announced Mantle, a new API that couldreplace Microsofts DirectX in future games. AMD used flagship title Battlefield 4 todemonstrate performance gains from 5 percent to 20 percent, depending on the videocard (all of which need to have AMDs GCN architecture to be compatible, at leastfor now). The secondary implication was that Mantle could make a game look nicerwithout impacting performance.

Several months before this, an AMD exec claimed that Microsoft was not active-

ly developing DirectX anymore. Microsoft denied it but did not elaborate. With theGames Developer Conference in March, however, Microsoft announced DirectX 12 anddeclared its intent to deliver on key features associated with Mantle, such as moredirect communication with the hardware, and less reliance on the CPU. When youthrow in the fact that Mantle is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), you can seewhy Microsoft might be a bit nervous. Studios currently integrating Mantle into gamesinclude BioWare, Criterion, DICE, PopCap, and Eidos.

OpenGL is the major pre-existing cross-platform API, and the Khronos Group, whichguides its development, had some words on the subject, as well. At GDC, it brought to-gether high-level technicians from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia to talk about optimizations toOpenGL that it claimed could reduce driver overhead (which reduces performance andbattery life) by a factor of ten. However, it said that these alterations were already avail-able in the programming code and provided some demos as visual aid. TM

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8 DYING TECHNOLOGIES YOUTHS DONT USE

MAPS

Our parents still use them, but todays youth

will never unfold one of these in the car.ALARM CLOCK

Once again, the smartphone

has claimed another victim

the snooze button.

COMPACT

CAMERA

Theres no reason to

carry one of these

instead of a smart-

phone, and phones

are higher-res.

LAND LINES

Nobody wants to

pay for two phone

contracts or sit on

the couch to talk.

CDS

Vinyl records are making a come-

back, but the 30-year-old compact

disc isnt and never will.

WIRED INTERNET

Well never give up our

LAN cables, but these

damned kids are all

about wireless now.

GPS DEVICE

Smartphones

now handle GPS

duties, rendering

the dashboard-

mounted box

obsolete.

ANSWERING

MACHINE

Were not sure if

youths actually call

anymore, let alone

leave voicemails.

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18 maximumpc.comMAY 2014MAXIMUMPC

BY GORDON MAH UNG

CapabilityChrome OS is possibly themost limited operating systemin town today. With a tradition-al fat OS such as Windows,OSX, or even Android, you can

install local applications thatrun on the device. Chrome OSis pretty much a cloud laptopwith almost everything run-ning through a browser. Thatmeans no real fat apps andjust about nothing when youhave no access to the Internet.Likewise, Surface RT is alsohobbled by its lack of supportfor legacy Windows apps. Yousimply cannot take advantageof the millions of x86 apps outthere, since it runs on the ARMarchitecture. However, evenMicrosofts anemic Modern UI

app store gives you more of-fline capability than ChromeOS, plus the Surface gives youa free copy of Office 2013 RTthat runs perfectly fine withoutan Internet connection.

Winner:Surface RT

PriceChromebooks got off to a prettyslow and head-scratching startwhen they were first intro-duced, with prices that werealmost equal to traditional

budget notebooks and net-books with a real OS on them.Chromebooks didnt really startto burn up the sales charts untilthey broke the magic $300 bar-rier. Today, you can get a verycapable Chromebook for $200,and youd have a hard timefinding a Chromebook for morethan $350. The debut priceof the Surface RT was also areal Whiskey Tango Foxtrot at$500without a keyboard. To-day, the Surface RT (which isstill available) has been recali-brated down to $300 without a

keyboard and $350 or $400 withone, depending on the key-board. In the Surface RTs cor-ner, you also get Office 2013 RT,which is not a cheap option onits own for the x86 version. Still,youd have to work to spend$300 on a Chromebook.

Winner:Chromebook

Well be honestno one on our staff would choose a tablet or Chromebook as his or herprimary portable over a full-featured laptop. Yet, we cant deny that Googles Chrombookshave been wildly successful sellers. The proper platform to put against Chromebooks?

Surface RT. Yes, Microsofts original hybrid device that marked a break from x86, andone that people thought would be a game-changer. It wasnt, but the Surface RT is stillaround and is now competitively priced at $300. That, folks, is Chromebook range, andmakes it the perfect combatant to get into this slap fight.

ROUND 1 ROUND 2

Surface RT vs.

Chromebook

The Acer C720 is the

best deal in Chrome-

books, and a worthy

competitor to the

Surface RT.

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19MAY 2014maximumpc.com MAXIMUMPC

ROUND 3 ROUND 4 ROUND 5

And theWinnerIsWe actually thought thiswould be easier when westarted. After all, SurfaceRT is pretty much on theouts, and when you havethe aura of a loser, itshard to overcome that.When we actually satdown and thought hardabout this comparison,it was a lot closer thanwe expected. Surface RThas a lot more appeal at$300 than it did at $550.Still, we have to give this

battle to Chromebooks.This might be different ifwe were looking at, say,a Windows 8.1 hybrid at$400 with the x86 libraryand power behind it, butit isnt. Maybe youll seethat battle in a futureissue.

SecurityIn terms of security, its prettyhard to do better than a Chrome-book today. Its Linux-based, soits way, way more secure thanany Windows OS, right? Not

so fast. When it comes to Win-dows, you probably cant getmore secure than Windows RTtoday. While malware-targetingWindows 8 wont work becauseits Windows RT, frankly, RTsales are so insignificant that nohacker would waste time target-ing it. There are other aspectsto security, though. Nothing isstored on your Chromebook.If confiscated at the border,you lose nothing. Anything onthe Surface could be compro-mised, and youd lose the files,of course. Chromebooks arent

immune from attack, though,as they rely on the strength ofthe security of your Internetconnection. Overall, both areactually very secure and saferthan other desktop OSes today.Well give the overall nod to theChromebook, though, becauseyou cant steal whats not there.

Winner:Chromebook

Build QualityWe are fortunate in that in ourtime in The Lab, weve actu-ally touched or tested about90 percent of the Chrome-book models ever sold. In all

that time, besides Googlesodd-duck $1,300 Chrome-book Pixel, weve never beenblown away by the build qual-ity. They are, for the mostpart, ultra-budget notebooksand they feel like it. However,in the Chromebooks defense,they all at least feature full-size keyboards. The SurfaceRT, on the other hand, wasoriginally made as a premiumtablet/laptop hybrid deviceand it feels like it. Theres anice heft and solid feel to theSurface RT that isnt there in

the Chromebooks. The onlynegative in build quality isthe barely there Type Coverkeyboardbut it can easily beswapped out for the far betterType Cover. The Surface RTalso features an IPS panel andhas touch in its corner, mostChromebooks have neither.

Winner:Surface RT

Believe it or not,

Surface RT is still

available as a new

product, now at a

very palatable price.

Battery Life andPerformanceThis one is a bit tough to judge,as there are so many Chrome-books to choose from for thecomparison. You can pick from

anemic ARMs to Haswell-basedCelerons, so it really can be allover the map as far as perfor-mance and battery life are con-cerned. Weve seen everythingfrom all-(work)day browsingperformance to meh, depend-ing on the make and model.Surface RT is also an interest-ing kettle of fish, with its Tegra3 ARM chip. In performance,its actually slower than a dual-core Atom chip. If we have tosum it up, though, well give theChromebook the advantage, asyou can get a Haswell-Celer-

on-based Chromebook fromseveral major OEMs, and theypound both Surface RT and thenewer (and twice as expensive)Surface 2 in performance andbattery life.

Winner:Chromebook

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quickstart


THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES...

submit your questions to:[email protected]

Dual Boot 7 and Linux

I am a bit of a newbie, but 76years old. Can a Windows user

install both Windows 7 and a

Linux distro on a solid-state

driveparticularly a Samsung

840 EVO drive?

Charles Greenwood

THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Yes,you can install both Windowsand Linux onto the same SSD,

just as you would on a mechan-ical drive, provided the drive islarge enough to accommodateboth operating systems. TheDoc would recommend at leasta 256GB drive, if not larger.The best way to do this is toinstall Windows first, then in-stall your Linux distro. Ubuntumakes this particularly easy,as its install process allowsyou to install it side-by-sidewith Windows, and guides youthrough the process of shrink-ing your Windows partition tomake room for Ubuntu. If youwant to shrink your Windowspartition from within Windows,see the next Doctor question.See this help page for details:

http://bit.ly/MPC_WinDB .If youre not planning to

install Ubuntu or one of itsvariants, the procedure willbe slightly different, but theanswer is the same: Yes, aslong as theres room, andinstall Windows first becauseits bootloader doesnt play

nicely with Linux if Linux is on

the drive first.

Dual-boot 7 and 8

I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64-

bit and Windows 8 Pro 64-bit.

Id like to have both installed

on my system and choose

between them when I boot up.

I dont really like Win 8 and

really do like Win 7. I have a

128GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD

with about 16TB of other hard

drives. I am looking to upgrade

to a 256GB drive so that I can

better run both OSes on. I am

hoping you might be able to

give me proper instructions as

to how to have a dual-system

boot on my system.

David Dube

THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: You can

certainly dual-boot Windows8 and 7, but the Doc thinksits a waste of space, sinceyoull be using double the diskspace to install nearly identicaloperating systems. The desk-top portion of Windows 8 isvirtually the same as Windows7s, except better, and the an-noying parts of Windows 8 canbe minimized or turned off en-tirely via the use of StardocksStart8 and ModernMix.

Anyway, assuming yourmind is made up, the best wayis to install Windows 7 first,making sure to only use half ofthe free space on the drive foryour Win 7 partition. If you ac-cidentally use the whole thing,

no problem. Once Windows 7 is

installed, go into Disk Manage-ment (right-click on My Com-puter, select Manage, and go toStorage >Disk Management),right-click the C partition, andselect Shrink Partition. Resizeit so that about half the spaceon your drive is free. Its bestto do this right after installingWindows 7, of course, so youhave free space on the drive.Leave the newly created freespace as unallocated space;dont put another partitionthere. Then, shut down yourcomputer and boot from theWindows 8 install media.The Doc is assuming that youbought the physical media orwere able to create a bootableflash drive or DVD from thedownload tool.

When the installation wizardgets to the part where it asksWhat kind of installation doyou want? select Custom, thenchoose the unallocated spaceon your drive, and the rest is acinch. After it installs and yourestart your computer, youshould be able to choose which

OS to boot into, and which oneyou boot into by default.

Ancient Motherboard

Problems

Doc, Im having problems with

my motherboard. Im run-

ning an MSI K8N Neo4 with a

dual-core AMD processor with

sDua Dua -Boot Questio ncient Computers outer Con usion

You can use Windows Disk Management to shrink full-disk par ti-tions, enabling you to create another partition on the same drive.

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1GB of RAM and a 500-wattPSU. Im trying to reinstallWindows XP. I started a cleaninstall, but halfway through thecomputer just shuts off. Thepower light on the computerflashes on and off. I have to

wait 15 minutes to restart. Atfirst, I thought it was overheat-ing, but it never gets over 29 C.I set the BIOS to not shut downon errors. I also swapped thevideo card to a smaller onethat requires less power. Then,I thought it was the power sup-ply, so I replaced that, but myPC still shuts off.

Finally, I started unpluggingthe power to the motherboardand plugging it back in. Bydoing this, I found that I couldrestart the computer rightaway. The solder and pegs ofthe power socket are intact.Do you have any ideas, or isthe motherboard toast?

Darrel W

THE DOCTOR RESPONDS:TheDoc would take a good longlook at any capacitors on themotherboard. If any of themare bulged out, its quite pos-sible you are a victim of badcaps. You can actually replacethe cap yourself, but mostpeople elect to move on. Forthose who dont know the an-

cient history, the electronicsindustry as a whole was a vic-tim of sub-quality capacitorsthat urban lore claims wasthe result of one vendor usinga stolen electrolytic formula.Basically, an unknown numberof PCs, televisions, and allother sorts of electronic de-vices have failed due to bulgedor bad caps. Vendors are sosensitive to this old issue thatthey all like to proclaim thatthey use military-grade capac-itors made from unicorn hornsin their motherboards. That

MSI motherboard is a littlelate to be part of the bad capsera, but its still possible.

If the Doc were in yourshoes, hed look for the nextpossible failure: inadequatecooling due to thermal pastethats disappeared. If themachine is roughly 10 yearsold, the thermal paste couldbe kaput, causing the machineto overheat and reboot. So,

consider reseating the proces-sor and reseating the heatsink with fresh thermal paste.You should also try remov-ing one of the pieces of RAM(assuming you have two) andtrying to reproduce the issue.

Do so with both pieces of RAM.The last step may be to actu-ally remove the motherboardfrom the case and see if itwas installed incorrectly inthe first place. Sometimes apoorly installed motherboardmount will short out the sys-tem. But in all likelihood, theboard is bad. You should alsoknow that Windows XP is atend-of-life status and will nolonger receive updates fromMicrosoft. You should upgradeto a newer OS so that you cancontinue to receive securitypatches. The nForce 4 chipseton your board is also longdead as a supported product,so maybe you can accentuatethe positive and use the op-portunity to get somethinga little more fresh.

Chronic RouterModel 420Your February 2014 802.11acRouter Buyers Guide hasme re-evaluating if I want tocontinue my subscription toyour magazine. Do you folks

have your lab in a state that haslegalized marijuana? Reflectedin the chart labeled AC RoutersCompared, you show up to419Mb/s throughput using the802.11ac Asus router. This isreally fantastic, but where didyou get an Internet connec-tion of, what, 500Mb/s? Did yougenerate that in a lab?

Since you did not state yourdownload speed, I will assumeit was around 500Mb/s. Whohas Internet that fast? Now,if your chart had a statementshowing these routers all

have linear ratings, and that ifyou only get 50Mb/s you candivided 50/500 =.1 and thentake the Asus routers speedof 180 Mb/s (in the bedroom at10ft) and you can be assuredthat at a download speed of 50Mb/s, your speed will be: 419x .1 = 41.9 Mb/s for the 802.11AC and 180 x .1 = 18 Mb/s forthe 802.11N. That could turnthis useless chart into a useful

chart, if in fact there is a wayto deduct these figures. As itstands now, it is absolutelyuseless crap.

If you want to publish amagazine that is helpful to thevast majority of the readers,

then tailor it to some level ofreality. Also, it might have beenuseful to add that at present,as far as I could find, there areNO Apple 802.11ac adapterson the market as of Feb 16,2014. And finally, show routerinput (download speeds andfrom where) and output (uploadspeeds). Then add the niftytheoretical specifications forfuture possibilities.

Dave Shaff

THE DOCTOR RESPONDS:Thanks for your feedback,Dave. While our state hasntyet legalized marijuana, itspretty easy to get a medical-usage card.

First of all, youre correctthat broadband speeds inthe United States are prettydismal, and you dont needan 802.11ac router to getmaximum performance fromyour broadband connection.But there are several thingsyouve overlooked. The first isthat we tested performancebetween the test laptop and a

PC wired to the routers Eth-ernet jacks. The speed of thebroadband Internet connec-tion was not tested, preciselybecause Internet connectionspeed varies so widely.

Secondly, performance justdoesnt scale down linearlylike that, even if we were talk-ing about download speedsfrom the Internet at large.You cant take the 419Mb/sthe Asus router got on the

Wireless-AC test, and the180Mb/s it got on Wireless-Non the same computer in thesame location, and just apply alinear reduction in the way youseem to think you can, even ifyou areworking with a slow

Internet connection.The Doc has around a

30Mb/s connection at home,with an Asus RT-AC66U rout-er. So, we ran SpeedTest abunch of times, just for kicks.A desktop wired directly tothe routers Gigabit switchgot 28.48Mb/s down. A laptopwith a dual-band Intel AC7260 Wi-Fi card 15 feet fromthe router got 28.54Mb/s onits 5GHz AC connection, and22Mb/s on the 2.4GHz N con-nection. Theres no 50 percentlinear reduction going fromWireless-AC to Wireless-Nacross the board. So, evenif you have a relatively slowInternet connection, like mostof the country, your routerisnt going to bottleneck youat the rate you assumed fromthe chart. Youd have to havean extremelyfast networkconnection before you startedseeing your router limit yourdownload or upload speeds.

Thirdly, the reason to getone of these fast routers (andthe reason we test their PC-

to-PC speeds, not downloadspeeds) is for fast in-networktransfers, like streaming HDvideo from a home server toan HTPC, or backups. But ifyoure not doing that, yourecorrect, you dont need tospend $200 on a router.

Finally, as far as Applegoes, the 2013 MacBook Airsand Pros have Wireless-ACbuilt in, and have since last

year.

[SECOND OPINION]

In your reply to the question about disabling SkyDrive (Doctor,March 2014), you suggested the use of gpedit. There wasno mention that gpedit is only available in professional andenterprise editions of Windows 8 and 8.1.

Mark Hammonds

PROFESSIONAL USE ONLY

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Refresh your PC

REFRESH

YOUR PCGIVE YOUR PC A CLEAN STARTBY MAXIMUM PC STAFFIf youre reading this, its highly likely that your PC is a fine-

tuned piece of 64-bit technology, customized to the hilt and purringlike a kitten with a belly full of formula. Yup, shes a beaut, and at-tacks your daily tasks like a Belgian Police Dog going after a fleeing

perp. All is well in the world, until one day when you sit down, fire itup, and realize something is different. That extra bit of snap whenprograms open is missing, and encoding video seems to take lon-ger than it used to. Even downloading files seems to require morepatience than youre accustomed to exhibiting. Its at this very mo-ment that you silently say to yourself, What the F*CK???

First things firstcalm down, power user. Before you smashyour rig with a hammer, pound on the keyboard, and decide to justnuke it from orbit, realize its just a temporary slowdown and ithappens to everyone, even Maximum PC editors. Over time, PCs getslower; its just the nature of the beast. Dont fret, were here tohelp by showing you how to give your PC a clean start. Well walkyou step-by-step through the cleaning process, showing you whatyou need to get er done, and if you find you cant resolve the prob-lem, how to properly nuke it from orbit. Well also detailpun in-tendedphysically cleaning your rig. Once youre finished, your PC

will be noticeably perkier and everything will be right as rain. Now,drop the hammer, and lets get started.

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Refresh your PC

Theres only two kinds of storage devices in this world: those thathave already died and those that are going to die. If youve alreadyidentified that your PC is acting wonky, its time to back that moth-er up. It may seem counterintuitive that you would run a backupbefore you do a PC cleanup, but we highly recommend it: If youbreak something or something finally gives up the ghost, youll kissyour USB ports that you made a backup before it all went sideways.There are numerous aftermarket tools, but Microsoft has beenkind enough to give you a fairly powerful backup and imaging toolin the OS itself. If youre using Windows 7, just search for Backup,or dig into the Control Panel and look under System and Security. Ifyoure using Windows 8.x, the backup system is the same, althoughits hidden. To find it, go to the Control Panel and search for Win-dows 7 File Recovery.

If you have multiple drives, you can choose how you want thebackup to run, and manually select the other drives in the sys-tem for the backup set. You should set an automatic backup aswell, and create a system restore disc. Ensure that you createda system image, also, should you need to restore the backup to acompletely new hard drive.

With your backup complete, its time to do a basic visual inspec-tion of the internals of the PC for obvious problems, such as fansclogged with so much cat hair and dust that theyre causing theCPU or GPU to overheat and throttle, or data or power cables that

If theres a bogeyman of mysterious system slowdowns, its mal-ware. In fact, if we had a nickel for every time a relative told usa virus was the cause of their slowdown, wed have 0.08-34 ofa Bitcoin. With that said, before you get too hip-deep in trying tospeedupify a PC, a sweep for malware should be run. Wed alsodo a cursory examination of the OS for extraneous toolbars or trayitems that have been installed. These arent truly malware, but stillworthy of eradication.

Wed also recommend a full system scan by the systems real-time AV software (after updating the virus definitions). A secondarysweep using various on-demand tools is also on the to-do list. Thiswould include browser-based file scanners available from all of thepopular AV vendors, as well local tools such as Malwarebytes (www.malwarebytes.org) or SuperAntiSpyware (www.superantispyware.

com). Running specific rootkit removal tools available from compa-nies such as Malwarebytes and Sophos, among others, cant hurt.Rootkits are a class of malware designed to thwart normal detec-tion means. Before you get crazy about removing any detections,you should research it to make sure it isnt just a false positive.And be advised that many types of malware cant be removed witha single-click tool. Youll typically have to dig deep in a multi-pageguide to remove many of todays specialty infections. Obviously,Binging will lead you to most guides, but a great place to start isBleepingcomputer.com. The site has loads of removal guides and

The Windows backup and restore program works well enough,

and should be run regularly.

A thorough check for malware is recommended before any

serious system cleanup.

BACK IT UP AND KICK THE TIRESThe only person to blame for not having a backup is you

MASH MALWAREDont always blame malware, except when its to blame

have wiggled loose. Typically, loose or unplugged cables result inimmediate show-stopping errors and crashes rather than a sys-tem slowdown. Youre more likely to find your fans clogged withdust running at low RPMs or fans that have died.

links to useful tools. But again, a word of warning: dont just startripping things out of the OS without knowing what youre removing.

Continuted on page 24

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Refresh your PC

Any PC that you use daily will build up hundreds of gigabytes of fileclutter over the months and years that you use it. As most peopleare rolling large mechanical drives, the clutter has an impact onperformance and your ability to pack away even more cute kittenvideos downloaded from the Internet.

For this step, well start with the low-hanging fruit. Simply openMy Computer, right-click your primary drive, and select properties.Click Disk Cleanup and check off the things that are clutter (justabout everything is in this panel) and click OK. We did this on a workbox and shaved off 7GB in Windows Update files that had been sit-ting around. While 7GB isnt much in the day of 4TB drives, manypeople still run 1TB and smaller drives with every nook, cranny, andsector filled (you know who you are.)

The next easy cruft targets are the system restore points au-tomatically created by Windows. Windows typically creates thesesnapshots of the OS when you install a new driver, OS update, orapplication. Windows sets a default for these based on the size ofthe drive its installed on, but they typically occupy gigabytes onthe drive. To free up space, you can delete all but the latest restorepoints by clicking the More Options panel from Disk Cleanup, andselecting Clean Up under System Restore and Shadow Copies.

Before you do this, though, think about how the recent stabilityof your system. If its been reliable but slow for the last few months,wiping the previous restore points should be fine. But if the systemis being wonky, you may just need to rely on those restore points toget the box back to a point where its stable, so wed recommendkeeping the old restore points until youre sure the box is working.You should also be aware that Windows 7 and Windows Vista usedSystem Protection and Restore Points to occasionally make backupcopies of your personal data files through the Volume Shadow Cop-

Originally named Crap Cleaner, this handy application has sincebeen renamed to the more palatable CCleaner, but it still worksamazingly well at clearing out the junk from the corners of yourOS. Available for free from http://bit.ly/MPC_CCleaner, its aneasy one-stop shop for freeing up space that you might normallymiss with the built-in cleaner. As much as we like CCleaner, youshouldnt expect miracles. We ran it on three-year-old scungy

build of Windows 7 after running the Windows cleaning routineand CCleaner came up with 18.3GB to clean out16GB had accu-mulated in the trash bin. One word of warning: By default, CClean-er will wipe out your browser cookies, which might throw you fora loop when youre forced to sign into web sites that you may haveforgotten the passwords for. Its probably best to exclude browserhistory and also Windows Explorer Recent Documents from theCCleaner clean-out, too, because they dont net you much spacebut make your system more livable.

The built-in disk cleanup does a decent first pass at dumping

unneeded system clutter.

CCleaner still does an admirable job of emptying out unneeded files.

CRUFT CLEARINGDeclutter the system files

CLEAN THE CRAPCCleaner is an easy-to-use, one-stop declogger

ies service. These older versions may be purged when you do this,but it wont touch your most recent versions.

Yeah, we know, many power users will thumb their nose at Sys-tem Restore and some will outright switch it off because malwarecan use it as a place to hide, but the feature can truly be a bacon-saver sometimes.

Another easy target to clean out is the default downloads folder.Other than documents, the vast majority of downloaded files canusually be dumped overboard.

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Oddly, many people still define their computing experience by howlong it takes to cold-boot their PC. First, we just have to ask, haveyou tried standby or even hibernate? You know, those handy modesthat can have you at the desktop five or 10 seconds after touchingthe mouse button or keyboard? No? You still prefer to boot fromcold, anyway?

If your OS install is a year or two old, you will have accumulatedenough startup programs to significantly impact hard-drive boottimes. The easiest way to remove these programs is click on theStart button, and type msconfig. Click on the Startup tab and scrollthrough the list, looking for things that dont need to be started atlaunch. Uncheck them, click apply, then OK, and reboot.

One thing to remember, Windows 7 will optimize the boot timesautomatically. If you reboot, and wait five minutes and reboot fouror five times, the boot times should actually get better automati-cally as Windows 7 decides what it can prioritize.

Windows 8.x (yes, haters, step back) actually improves uponboot times, as well. Anyone who has used the new OS can attestto its fast boot times. Win8 moves startup optimization to the TaskManager (ctrl-shift-esc). Click on the Startup tab, and Windows 8will even tell you whats slowing things down, and give you an esti-mate of how long it took to boot after the process was handed overto the OS.

Those of us who have moved on to the SSD-based westernshores of Valinor live lives fairly well untroubled by slow startups.

The vast majority of our tips to clean up a slow-running PC can besolved in software, but sometimes software isnt the answer. How willyou know the difference? One of the clearest indicators is age. OldPC components do not age like wine. If youre at your buddys houseto take a look at his computer and that computer is a Pentium 4 orAthlon XP, its a lost cause.

So, while most newbs youre trying to help can still benefit from thecleaning tips in this story, the P4/Athlon XP machines arent going tosing no matter how much you tune them. Putting money into a hard-ware upgrade for these old dogs should be carefully weighed: newparts can be difficult to locate and everything in the box is suspect.

Its not so bad for a Phenom II or Core 2 box. In fact, these machinescan be quite workable if the user has realistic expectations. Dropping

an SSD into a Phenom II or Core 2 rig would be a game-changer forthese old platforms, even if the motherboard doesnt support the fullSATA 6Gb/s speeds. Sometimes, a little RAM will even help, if the boxwas already memory-starved to begin with. With a 64-bit OS, 8GB isstandard and 4GB is borderline.

If gaming needs a boost, dropping in a newer GPU can certainlyhelp. Even those rigs that are constrained by low-wattage PSUs nowhave a modern option with Nvidias new Maxwell series, which canrun on even 300W PSUs (for more on Maxwell, see page 40).

If the machine is also running that now-abandoned OS, Windows

You can manually deselect programs that star t up from

msconfig to speedify your boots.

Unless youre in the retro computing club, wed recommend

dumping that Pentium 4 box.

STOP STARTUPSGiddyap quicker

CONSIDER AN UPGRADE

Hardware isnt always the answer, but it usually is

But those poor souls of middle earth still using mechanical-baseddrives are the ones who need to concern themselves with startupoptimization. However, we can all benefit from storage-drive opti-mization, which we cover on page 32.

XP, an OS upgrade to Windows 7 or even Windows 8 is advised.Obviously, we dont recommend $400 in upgrades on a $200 PC,

but a $100 upgrade on a box that buys the person another 24 monthsof use can be a godsend for those on tight budgets. As we said,though, everything below the P4/Athlon XP line should be abandoned.

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Youve cleaned up the extraneous system files on your machine,but the real junk is the gigabytes of nothingness youve collectedfrom repeatedly dumping that 32GB memory card onto the harddrive because you were afraid to delete something you might needlater. Six months later, those same unkempt files are boggingdown your system and freeloading on your dime. When space getstight, we turn to WinDirStat (www.windirstat.info).

In the past, when drives were smaller and your file-hoardingwas limited to a mere 500GB or so, you could rely on the goodold-fashioned search-and-destroy technique: browsing throughWindows Explorer for old photos, games, and files that you sim-ply dont use anymore. With 3TB and even 4TB drives packed withgod knows what, that technique isnt effective anymore. Instead,use Windows Directory Statistics, or WinDirStat, to help visualizeand locate files on our drives that can be slated for termination.WinDirStat is an extremely lightweight (less than a megabyte)open-source program that scans your hard drive to provide youwith three sets of information: directory list, tree map, and file ex-tensions list. The tree mapeasily the most attractive feature inthe programrepresents every file on your hard drive as a coloredrectangle. Also handy is the extension list, which gives you totalpercentages calculated by file extensions.

The tree map is the handiest and helps you easily see whereyou have bloat on your drivesthe bigger the file, the bigger the

Most people treat hard drives like the attic or garage. Rather thanimmediately culling extra files, you simply put it in storage to dealwith at a later date (the road to hell, good intentions, etc). No mat-ter that you already put those files in storage just last weekyoullget around to dumping the duplicate files eventually. While thereare many, many deduplication tools available, one good startingplace is Auslogics free Duplicate File Finder app (www.auslogics.com) It doesnt have the bells or whistles of apps that analyze au-dio, photo, and video for duplicates, but it works fairly fast and is agood way to eliminate the obvious duplicate files. On one old Win-dows 7 box, Duplicate File Finder turned up a good 39GB of dupesthat could be tossed. Simply fire up Duplicate File Finder, have itsearch your drive, and it will give you a list of duplicate files. Un-der Action, select All Duplicates In Each Group, and it will mark

the duplicate files for dumping into a trash can, or moving into theRescue Center, where you can recover the file if you realize lateron you made a mistake.

The program works well enough, but we wouldnt wipe out fileswilly-nilly without first making a separate backup and making surethat the irreplaceable files going away are actually duplicates.DFF will show you the file name, file size, and creation date, whichgives most people enough confidence to delete, but the paranoiain us would want to visually confirm it, too. This same philosophyis probably what brought us to this space issue in the first place.

We dig the simple and effective representation of our hard

drives from WinDirStat.

Duplicate File Finder can quickly, er, find your duplicate files.

VISUALIZE YOUR DRIVEThink of WinDirStat as Google Maps for your HDDs

DEDUPE ITDuplicate often

rectangle. Scrolling over files displays the file name and its loca-tion, and you can delete files from within the program by select-ing a file and pressing the delete key.

After all, am I sure I really did copy all of the images from thememory card to the computer? Even the ones I took last week-end? Ill just make another copy... I have plenty of space.

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Refresh your PC

Before we get started discussing problems with your storage sys-tem and how to optimize it, make sure you have done two things:First, that youve connected your SSD to a SATA 6Gb/s port on yourmotherboard (consult your manual), and second, that youve en-abled AHCI on your SATA controller via the motherboard BIOS. Ifyouve already installed Windows and your SATA controller is set toIDE instead of AHCI, hit Google to find the registry hack to fix it. Andyes, running in IDE mode rather than AHCI on a modern SSD canindeed rob you of performance.

With that out of the way, the first thing to do when you senseyour system is slowing down and you see your hard-drive activityLED churning constantly, is enlist the trusty three-finger salute.For the uninitiated, that means pressing ctrl-alt-delete to bringup the Task Manager in Windows. Select the Performance tab tosee if anything is spiking or is nearing 100 percent utilization. Fromthere, you can go to the Processes tab to see which process is tak-ing up all those resources. In the screenshot below, we see a staffmembers work PC that suffered daily paralyzation at the hands ofa virus scan and several associated processes. The resolution wasto kill the processes, then make sure to schedule the virus scansduring non-work hours.

If everything looks fine in the Task Manager but the system still

If you are running a hard drive and want to optimize it, theres nota whole lot you can do beyond keeping it defragmented. To makesure its defragged, right-click the drive, select Properties, Tools,and then Defragmentation. Ideally, you should do this after youvedone your spring cleaning of unused junk from the machine. If itsyour boot device, some people like to disable hibernation beforea defrag to get a little extra boost out of the defrag by eliminat-

If your system feels like its stuck in the mud, the Task Managerwill reveal whats causing the problem.

Both Samsung and Intel offer free tuning software that helpskeep your SSD running in tip-top shape.

OPTIMIZE YOUR STORAGEStorage is usually the prime suspect in system slowdowns

HDD OPTIMIZATIONFast hard drives arent

feels slow, run a few benchmarks to see if the numbers are up tospec. For sequential read and write tests, we recommend Crystal-DiskMark for SSDs and HDTune for Hard drives. Admittedly, noneof us use HDDs for our OS anymoretheres no reason to with SSDprices falling faster than the value of Bitcoin.

If you run the benchmarks and find the performance is lackingon your SSD, you have a few options. Your first is to optimize thedrive via the Trim command. What this does is send a command tothe drive that tells it to run its garbage-collection routine, whichmeans it will erase all the blocks that have been deleted, clear-ing the way for them to receive fresh writes. If the drive has notbeen trimmed in a while, data can become fragmented all over thedrive, and since blocks of an SSD have to be erased before they

are written to (as opposed to a hard drive, where they can just beoverwritten at any time), a simple write command can require thecontroller to delete blocks, move data around, and then performthe write, which can seriously degrade performance.

In general, if youre running Windows 7 or newer, you shouldbe fine. However, you can Trim a drive manually on Windows 8:right-click the drive in My Computer, and click Properties, Tools,and then Optimize. If you own a Samsung or Intel SSD, you candownload the free Samsung Magician or SSD Toolbox software, re-spectively, which also let you Trim your drive.

ing the multi-gigabyte hiberfil.sys file. Frankly, we dont think itmatters much anymore. In our opinion, the concept of a fast harddrive is antiquated now, due to SSDs, as is the concept of op-timizing them. Any gains you make toward keeping a hard driveoptimized will be largely unnoticeable in the real world, beyonddumping the useless cruft and running a basic defrag, which theOS will do on its own.

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Refresh your PC

Unless you live in a HEPA-filtered cleanroom, a desktop PC willeventually need a physical cleanup as well as a digital one. Thatmeans opening up the case, which means turning off your rig andunplugging it from the wall. Dont want to lose a finger in thosefan blades. Most case panels are secured with six-sided Phil-lips screws, sometimes call a hex screw. Or they have thumb-screws, which can usually be removed by hand. Once taken out,keep these together in a small container. An empty coffee mugwill do in a pinch.

If youve had this PC for several months, you should see a coat-ing of dust inside. That has to be removed, because it insulatessurfaces and clogs up fans, which can lead to overheating. With acan of compressed air, spray short bursts at the dust. Long sprayscan freeze the inner workings of the can. And tilting the can mayalso cause its liquid to spray, which contains a solvent that candamage the contact surface. Ideally, do this dusting outside, be-cause you dont want all that dust floating around indoors.

Case fan filters can also get gnarly. These days, most of themslide out. Spray them with air, or remove them, run them under thetap, and air dry. Fans themselves also get grody. You may need totemporarily remove the CPU fan from the heatsink to clean bothitems sufficiently. When spraying fans, hold their blades down toprevent them from spinning, otherwise you may damage the motor.

A periodic disinfecting wipe or baby wipe can take care of yourmouse, but keyboards usually need you to pull their keycaps to re-ally get at the crustiness underneath. A puller tool is best for this.You can order one online from Newegg or Amazon, and regionalcomputer stores like Frys and Microcenter usually sell them.Some people run their boards through the dishwasher. Dont usedetergent or hot water for that, and give them at least a day tofully dry out.

Last but not least, dont forget to wipe the dust off your moni-tors screen. But dont use conventional glass cleaner, because itcan permanently damage the panel. You can buy screen-cleaningkits from most office supply stores, or you can use a spare micro-fiber cloth, like the kind made for camera lenses. Pharmacies alsostock these. Just gently wipe the screen with it. If you need someliquid to clean the screen, spray your cloth with plain water from amister. Never spray the screen itself, because the liquid can dripinto the panel housing and corrode the components within.

Gordon agrees, baby wipe s work amazingly well for cleaning

the surfaces of a dirty desktop or laptop.

Tuxie the cat, pointing out a spot Josh missed while cleaning.

LETS GET PHYSICALKnock, knock, house cleaning

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTIONIf youve just cleaned out a rig thats never seen a proper cleaning,youre probably wondering what you can do to avoid such horrors inthe future. Fan filters are obviously one option. If theyre not builtinto your case, you can get them from sites like Newegg, Amazon,and Frozen CPU. Some have magnets, and you just slap them on;others need to be screwed in. To get the correct sizing, measureyour fan diagonally with a ruler. The most common size is 120mm.A filters dense mesh will reduce airflow and increase temps in thecase, so theres a trade-off. Even the best filter will not completelyeliminate dust, it will only reduce the number of times per year thatyou need to clean the insides. Smokers and owners of furry petswill also need to clean more often than usual. Periodically brushingthose critters will help reduce buildup.

And we dont know if we have to mention this, but washing your

hands a few times over the course of the day will also help preventunsightly crud from building up on your input devices. This is espe-cially important after a meal or after spending time outdoors. Andspeaking of food, try to keep it away from your keyboard, which is acrumb magnet and said to be dirtier than a toilet. If your mouse padhas an old-style fabric surface, you may want to consider eliminat-ing it altogether (unless your desk is made of glass), or switch-ing to one made of plastic or metalmaterials that can be cleanedquickly and easily.

SMOKERS AND OWNERSOF FURRY PETS WILL ALSONEED TO CLEAN MOREOFTEN THAN USUAL

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We wont bother telling you to back up your data be-fore you send your OS to meet its maker, because thatis too obvious. But before you n uke the OS, make sureyou have everything you need.

What might not be obvious is that because of pi-racy, a lot of the more expensive software packagesrequire activation, which also requires you to deacti-vate any serial numbers before you begin your bomb-ing run. Most professional Adobe packages work thisway, so if youre running Photoshop, Illustrator, orany locally stored creative suite, be sure to open theapp, click Help, and then Deactiv ate. Make sure youvedone it correctly by firing up the program again to seeif it asks you to activate. If it does, youre good to go;keep in mind youll need Internet access to success-fully do this. Also keep in mind that if you deactivatea piece of software, then upgrade your system, thesoftware might think its a different computer, whichcan complicate re-activation.

The activation process varies on a program-to-program basis, so use Google if you run into any is-sues. Microsofts Office suites react the same as theoperating system, and any significant change in hard-ware will trigger a reactivation. The bottom line: Ifyou have a mission critical appl ication that you absolutely haveto have up and running as soon as possible, be sure to knowwhat the re-activation process is before you pull the trigger sothere are no surprises. Some apps require you to contact thevendor for a new code before they will run , which is a wonderf ul

thing to learn at midnight Friday before a three-day weekendwhen you need the app that night.

There are other apps you should also pay attention to. First up,browser bookmarks. Chrome will let you sync your bookmarkson other machines, but you need to set it up to do so. If youreinto the old-school method, you can also export your bookmarks

Steam includes a built-in Backup and Restore tool, and we recommend using it.

NUKE IT FROM ORBITNothing can save LV426, so when its too mangledor infested, just nuke it

In order to reinstall certain software, such as Adobe products, you must

first deactivate the serial key.

file as HTML and then re-import it. Youll want to make sure youhave a copy of your iTunes library handy, too, which is locatedin C:\Users\Username\My Music. Be sure to deauthorize iTuneswhile youre at it. Youll also want to back up your Steam libraryso that you dont have to re-download all your games. To do this

in Steam, click Steam in the upper left-hand corner, select Back-up and Restore Games, then follow the prompts. Alternatively,you can do it manually by copying the entire Steam directoryover. You no longer have to worry about save-game files, sincethey are now all automatically saved to the Steam Cloud.

Your final stop on this trail of tears is to make sure you haveall the drivers you need for anything connectedto your PC. At the very minimum, be sure tohave your chipset and LAN drivers, as thosealways go first, and with an Internet connec-tion you can always download anything elseyou need care of the helpful SlimDrivers utility.Dont forget your printer drivers, though, andit doesnt hurt to download Windows 7 SP1 orWindows 8.1 either, though Windows Updatecould also do it for you.

Once youve deactivated your software, col-lected all the serial keys you need, made sureyour Steam and iTunes libraries are backed up,saved your browser bookmarks, and have allyour drivers, you are read y to proceed. Beforeyou reboot your PC to reinstall, be sure to takea moment to consider all the amazing timesits given you. Once thats complete, shut her

down, and well see you on the other side.

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Cheap GPU's

1080PAT THE

COR

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SIX ENTRYLEVEL CARDS

BATTLE FOR BUDGETBOARD

BRAGGING RIGHTS

BY JOSH NOREM

The video-card game is a lot like Hollywood. Movies like My Left

Foot and The Artist take home the Oscars every year, but mov-ies like Grown Ups 2and Transformers 3pull in all the cash. It'sthe same with GPUs, in that everyone loves to talk about $1,000cards, but the actual bread-and-butter of the market is made upof models that cost between $100 and $150. These are not GPUsfor 4K gaming, obviously, but they can provide a surprisinglypleasant 1080p gaming experience, and run cool and quiet, too.

This arena has been so hot that AMD and Nvidia have recentlyreleased no fewer than six cards aimed at budget buyers. Fourof these cards are from AMD, and Nvidia launched two modelscare of its all-new Maxwell architecture, so we decided to pitthem against one another in an old-fashioned GPU roundup. Allof these cards use either a single six-pin PCIe connector or noneat all, so you don't even need a burly power supply to run them,

just a little bit of scratch and the desire to get your game on. Let'sdive in and see who rules the roost!

RAL

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Cheap GPU's

Maxwell offers far greater power savings by using more granular

clock gating, which allows it to shut down unused graphics units.

NVIDIA'S MAXWELL

CHANGES THE GAMEBudget GPUs have always been low-power components, andusually need just a single six-pin PCIe power connector to runthem. After all, a budget GPU goes into a budget build, andthose PCs typically don't come with the 600W-or -higher powersupplies that provide dual six- or eight-pin PCIe connectors.Since many budget PSUs done have PCIe connectors, most ofthese cards come with Molex adapters in case you don't haveone. The typical thermal design power (TDP) of these cardsis around 110 watts or so, but that number fluctuates up anddown according to spec. For comparison, the Radeon R9 290Xhas a TDP of roughly 300 wat ts, and Nvidia's flagship card, theGTX 780 Ti, has a TDP of 250W, so these budget cards don'thave a lot of juice to work with. Therefore, efficiency is key,as the GPUs need to make the most out of the teeny, tiny bitof wattage they are allotted. During 2013, we saw AMD andNvidia release GPUs based on all-new 28nm architecturesnamed GCN and Kepler, respectively, and though Nvidia held adecisive advantage in the efficiency battle, it's taken things tothe next level with its new ultra-low-power Max well GPUs thatwere released in February 2014.

Beginning with the GTX 750 Ti and the GTX 750, Nvidia is em-barking on a whole new course for its GPUs, centered aroundmaximum power efficiency. The goal with its former Kepler ar-chitecture was to have better performance per watt comparedto the previous architecture named Fermi, and it succeeded,but it's taken that same philosophy even further with Maxwell,which had as its goal to be twice as efficient as Kepler whileproviding 25 percent more performance.

Achieving more performance for the same

model or SKU from one generation to the nextis a tough enough challenge, but to do soby cutting power consumption in halfis an even trickier gambit, espe-

cially considering the Maxwell GPUs are being fabricated onthe same 28nm process it used for Kepler. We always expectmore performance for less power when moving from one pro-cess to the next, such as 32nm to 28nm or 22nm to 14nm, butto do so on the same process is an amazing achievement in-deed. Though Nvidia used many technological advances to r e-duce power consumption, the main structural change was tohow the individual CUDA cores inside the Gr aphics ProcessingClusters (GPCs) are organized and controlled. In Kepler, eachGPC contained individual processing units, named SMX units,

and each unit featured a piece of control logic that handledscheduling for 192 CUDA cores, which was a major

increase from the 32 cor es in each block found

in Fermi. In Maxwell, Nvidia has gone backto 32 CUDA cores per block, but is put-

ting four blocks into each unit, whichare now called SM units. If you're

confused, the simple versionis thisrather than one

piece of logic con-trolling 192 cores,Maxwell has a piece

of logic for each clus-ter of 32 cores, and

there are four clusters perunit, for a total of 128 cores

per block. Therefore, it's reducedthe number of cores per block by 64,

from 192 to 128, which helps save en-

ergy. Also, since each piece of control logiconly has to pay attention to 32 cores instead of

192, it can run them more efficiently, which alsosaves energy.

The benefit to all this energy-saving is the GTX 750 cardsdon't need external power, so they can be dropped into pret tymuch any PC on the market without upgrading the power sup-ply. That makes it a great upgrade for any pre-built POS youhave lying around the house.

The first Maxwell card has

a TDP of just 60W, which

is less than half that of its

rival from AMD.

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NVIDIA'S NEW Maxwell cards run surprisingly cool and quiet

in stock trim, and that's with a fan no larger than an oversizedRitz cracker, so you can guess what happens when you throwa mid-sized WindForce cooler onto one of them. Yep, it's soquiet and cool you have to check with your fingers to see if it'seven running. This bad boy ran at 45 C under load, making itthe coolest-running card we've ever tested, so kudos to Nvid-ia and Gigabyte on holding it down (the temps, that is). Thisboard comes off the factory line with a very mild overclock ofjust 13MHz (why even bother, ser iously), and its boost clockhas been massaged up to 1,111MHz from 1,085MHz, but as al-ways, this is just a starting point for your overclocking adven-tures. The memory is kept at reference speeds however, run-ning at 5,400MHz. The board sports 2GB of GDDR5 memory,and uses a custom design for its blue-colored PCB. It featurestwo 80mm fans and an 8mm copper heat pipe. Most interest-ing is the board requires a six-pin PCIe connector, unlike thereference design, which does not.

In testing, the GTX 750 Ti WindForce was neck-and-neckwith the Nvidia reference design, proving that Nvidia did apretty good job with this card, and that its cooling require-ments don't really warrant such an outlandish cooler. Still,we'll take it, and we loved that it was totally silent at all times.Overclocking potential is higher, of course, but since the ref-

MUCH LIKEGigabyte's GTX 750 Ti WindForce card, the MSIGTX 750 Gaming is a low-power board with a massive TwinFrozr cooler attached to it for truly exceptional cooling per-formance. The only downside is the formerly waifish GPUhas been transformed into a full-size card, measuring morethan nine inches long. Unlike the Gigabyte card though, thisGPU eschews the six-pin PCIe connector, as it's just a 55Wboard, and since the PCIe slot delivers up to 75W, it doesn'teven need the juice. Despite this card's entry-level billing,MSI has fitted it with military-class components for betteroverclocking and improved stability. It uses twin heat pipesto dual 100mm fans to keep it cool, as well. It also includesa switch that lets you toggle between booting from an olderBIOS in case you run into overclocking issues.

Speaking of which, this board lives up to its name and has a

beefy overclock right out of the box, running at 1,085MHz baseclock and 1,163MHz boost clock. It features 1GB of GDDR5RAM on a 128-bit interface.

The Twin Frozr cooler handles the miniscule amount ofheat coming out of this board with aplombwe were able topress our finger forcibly on the heatsink under load and feltalmost no warmth, sort of like when we give Gordon a hugwhen he arrives at the office. As the only GTX 750 in this test,it showed it could run our entire test suite at decent frame

erence design overclocked to 1,270MHz or so, we dont thinkyou should expect moon-shot overclocking records. Still, thiscard was rock solid, whisper quiet, and extremely cool.

Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti WindForce

$160 (street), www.gigabyte.us

rates, but it traded barbs with the slightly less expensive Rad-eon R7 260X. On paper, both the GTX 750 and the R7 260X areabout $119, but rising prices from either increased demand or

low supply have placed both cards in the $150 range, makingit a dead heat. Still, it's a very good option for those who wantan Nvidia GPU and its ecosystem but can't afford the Ti model.

MSI GeForce GTX 750 Gaming

$140, www.msi.com

9

VERD ICT

8

VERD ICT

GIGABYTE GTX 750

TI WINDFORCE

MSI GEFORCE GTX

750 GAMING

The WindForce cooler

is overkill, but we like

it that way.

MSIs Twin Frozr cooling apparatus transforms

this svelte GPU into a full-sized card.

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Cheap GPU's

THE SAPPHIRE RADEONR7 265 is the odds-on favorite in this

roundup, due to its impressive specs and the fact that it con-sumes more than twice the power of the Nvidia cards. Sure,it's an unfair advantage, but hate the game, not the player. Thisboard is essentially a rebadged Radeon HD 7850, which is a Pit-cairn part, and it slides right in between the $120 R7 260X and the$180ish R7 270. This card actually has the same clock speeds asthe R7 270, but features fewer streaming processors for reducedshader performance. It has the same 2GB of memory, same925MHz boost clock, same 256-bit memory bus, and so on. At150W, its TDP is very highor at least it seems high, given thatthe GTX 750 Ti costs the exact same $150 and is sitting at just60W. Unlike the lower-priced R7 260X Bonaire part, though, theR7 265 is older silicon and thus does not support TrueAudio andXDMA CrossFire (bridgeless CrossFire, basically). However, itwill support the Mantle API, someday.

The Sapphire card delivered the goods in testing, boastingtop scores in many benchmarks and coming in as the only GPUin this roundup to hit the magical 60fps in any test, which wasa blistering turn in Call of Duty: Ghosts where it hit 67fps at1080p on Ultra settings. That's damned impressive, as was itsability to run at 49fps in Battlefield 4, though the GTX 750 Ti wasjust a few frames behind it. Overall, though, this card cleanedup, taking first place in seven out of nine benchmarks. If that

THE RADEON R7 260X was originally AMD's go-to card for1080p gaming on a budget. Its the only card in the companyssub-$200 lineup that supports all the next-gen features thatappeared in its Hawaii-based flagship boards, including sup-port for TrueAudio, XDMA Crossfire, Mantle (as in, it workedat launch), and it has the ability to drive up to three displaysall from this tiny $120 GPU. Not bad. In its previous life, thisGPU was known as the Radeon HD 7790, aka Bonaire, and itwas our favorite "budget" GPU when pitted against the NvidiaGTX 650 Ti Boost due to its decent performance and amaz-ing at-the-time game bundles. It features a 128-bit memorybus, 896 Stream Processors, 2GB of RAM (up from 1GB on theprevious card), and a healthy boost clock of 1,100MHz. TDPis just 115W, so it slots right in between the Nvidia cards andthe higher-end R7 265 board. Essentially, this is an HD 7790

card with 1GB more RAM, and support for TrueAudio, whichwe have yet to experience.

In testing, the R7 260X delivered passable performance,staking out the middle ground between the faster R7 265 andthe much slower R7 250 cards. It ran at about 30fps in testslike Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider, but hit 51fps on CoD: Ghostsand 40fps on Battlefield 4, so it's certainly got enough horse-power to run the latest games on max settings. The fact that itsupports all the latest technology from AMD is what bolsters

isn't a Kick Ass performance, we don't know what is. The Dual-Xcooler also kept temps and noise in check, too, making this thego-to GPU for those with small boxes or small monitors.

Sapphire Radeon R7 265 Dual-X

$150 (MSRP), www.sapphiretech.com

this card's credentials, though. And the fact that it can runMantle with no problems (see page 51 for benchmarks) is a

big plus for Battlefield 4 players. We like this card a lot, justlike we enjoyed the HD 7790. While its not the fastest card inthe bunch, its certainly far from the slowest.

AMD Radeon R7 260X

$120, www.amd.com8

VERDICT

SAPPHIRE RADEON

R7 265 DUALX

AMD RADEON R7

260X

Sapphire's R7 265 is thethird card in this roundup

to use a two-fan coolingapparatus.

9

This $120 cardsupports Mantle,

TrueAudio, andCrossFire.

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Both companies offer proprietary technologies to lure you intotheir "ecosystems," so lets take a look at what each has to offer

SHOULD YOU TAKE THE RED

PILL OR THE GREEN PILL?

G-SYNC

Nvidia's G-Sync technology is arguably one of the

strongest cards in Nvidia's hand, as it eliminates

tearing in video games caused by the display's re-

fresh rate being out of sync with the frame rate of the

GPU. The silicon syncs the refresh rate with the cycle

of frames rendered by the GPU, so movement on-

screen looks buttery smooth at all times, even below

30fps. The only downside is you must have a G-Sync

monitor, so that limits your selection quite a bit.

REGULAR DRIVER RELEASES

People love to say Nvidia has "better drivers" than

AMD, and though the notion of "better" is debatable,

it certainly releases them much more frequently than

AMD. That's not to say AMD is a slouchespecially

now that it releases a new "beta" build each month

but Nvidia seems to be paying more attention to driv-

er support than AMD.

GEFORCE EXPERIENCE AND SHADOWPLAY

Nvidia's GeForce Experience software will auto-

matically optimize any supported games you have

installed, and also lets you stream to Twitch as well

as capture in-game footage via ShadowPlay. It's a

really slick piece of software, and though we don't

need a software progr am to tell us "hey, max out all

settings," we do love ShadowPlay.

PHYSX

Nvidia's proprietary PhysX software allows game

developers to include billowing smoke, explod-

ing particles, cloth simulation, flowing liquids,

and more, but there's just one problemvery few

games utilize it. Even worse, the ones that do utilize

it, do so in a way that is simply not that impressi ve,

with one exception: Borderlands 2.

MANTLE AND TRUEAUDIO

AMD is hoping that Mantle and TrueAudio become the

must-have "killer technology" it offers over Nvidia,

but at this early stage, it's difficult to say with cer-

tainty if that will ever happen. Mantle is a lower-level

API that allows developers to optimize a game spe-

cifically targeted at AMD hardware, allowing for im-

proved performance.

TRESSFX

This is proprietary physics technology similar to

Nvidia's PhysX in that it only appears in certain

games, and does very specific things. Thus far, we've

only seen it used oncefor Lara Croft's hair in Tomb

Raider. Instead of a blocky ponytail, her mane is flow-

in