CONTENTS
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 SOME
TUNE-UP Articles.Feb
1999
 Windows
95/98 Tweaks.PC
Velocity (a hardware website)
has some tweaks for Windows 95/98 Included are tips and hints on how to
speed up your bootup and optimize your overall performance.
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PC
Velocity's
Win95/98
Tweaks
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Monitor
Tune-UP.Here's
a how-to on monitor tuning. Found this at Avault (a games website)
but its still relevant information for a monitor tune-up.
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Avault's
Monitor
Tune-up
Article
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Fixing
Hardisk Trashing in Photoshop.Here's
an article for Photoshop users. Some good tips on preventing hardisk
trashing.
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Hardisk
Trashing
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Swap
File Optimisation.Here's
an article on how to optimise your swap file for PC Users. In case you
didn't know, the swap file is the hardisk space reserved for virtual memory.
Optimising it would speed up your applications and prevent hardisk trashing.
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Swap
File
Optimisation
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The
Spitting Printer Syndrome.
24 September 1998
Have you ever had your epson printer
refusing to print complete pages on you and spewing garbage? Read Volker's
excellent article on the Spitting Printer Syndrome for his experiences
and workaround to the problem. Thanks for the contribution Volker!
Along with Volker's tips, I have
only the following to add:-
-
Looking at some 'tweaks' for
your pc at www.tweak3d.com.,
especially the tweaks for Hardisk and BIOS. Although Tweak3d is
geared towards games... it has great tips which are applicable to anybody
looking to boost the performance of their pc.; and
-
Perform a clean install of
Windows by first renaming your Windows directory (eg call it c:/oldwin)
and installing Windows (95/98) afresh. This is my panacea.for all ills
and it has never let me down so far althought it is time consuming. For
more details, I have posted further information on this at the FORUM
Section.
I also came across the problem
described by Volker once or twice using my previous motherboard (Asus)
but have not had any problems. With my current Abit BH 6, no problems at
all so far.
There is also a threaded discussion
at the FORUM section
where you can post your experiences with this problem and any feedback
on the solutions you may have.
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The
Spitting Printer Syndrome!
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Effects
of Increased RAM.Photoshop
Benchmarks
Having more RAM is always a good
idea. Nowhere is this more true than when running Photoshop. Without enough
RAM, some filters just cannot be run (such as the ocean ripple distort
filter) or even if they could be performed, your harddisk will be thrashing
away, resulting in slooow filter processing times. Here are some figures
showing the increase in speed using the filters in Photoshop 5.0 when more
RAM is added to a computer. All results obtained from performing the filter
in question with Celeron 300A@300mz (not overclocked) on the same 15.6mb
tiff file under Win98 environment (benchmarks conducted by Jac):-
For the file size used
(15.6mb), you can see that there is a big jump in performance from 64mb
to 128mb and less so from 128mb to 192mb. In other words, there are diminishing
returns in adding more RAM beyond 128 in the case of a 15.6mb tiff file.
Whislt I don't have benchmarks on the speed gains from 32mb to 64mb, you
can imagine that running Photoshop on 32mb RAM is not really a viable option
for image manipulation of large image files. In fact, running Windows using
only 32mb of RAM is generally not advisable given the high memory overheads
required by Windows itself.
What the above chart shows is that
RAM can be an easy way to speed up your Photoshoping. Given the price of
RAM these days (as compared to buying a new cpu), it looks like adding
RAM is also cost effective.
 Update
Just received some explaination from Convergent Systems, a major distributor
of memory in Singapore, for the lack-lustre performance of the 192mb benchmarks,
Check out Convergent's comments here:- Beyond
128mb
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Celeron
300A.Photoshop
Benchmarks
 
Intel's latest offering
in the Celeron 300A which is clocked at 300mz runs fantastic for
a supposedly 'budget' chip for home users. It runs about on par with the
original pII 300 for most applications and on top of that, is supremely
overclockable! Overclocking, refers to the 'pushing' or maximising
of a cpu by increasing the motherboard's bus speed. The Celeron 300A is
rated to run at 4.5 (multiplier) x 66mz bus speed. Taking the bus speed
up to 100mz (an option which can easily be achieved with ABIT's BH6 which
is a jumperless motherboard).
 Check
out the following photoshop benchmarks (benchmarks conducted by Jac)
of
various cpus compared to the Celeron 300A. The benchmarks are of the times
taken to perform certain filters in Photoshop 5.0 and you can see the speed
gains that you can get from overclocking. In fact, the Celeron 300A running
at its normal speed of 300mz is impressive enough on its own. When overclocked
to 450mz, the filters really fly. Looking at the chart below, you can see
that the Celeron 266 does not fare all too well in Photoshop although it
is very impressive for games. Jac
tested
using Win98 and had all filters running
on the same tiff file of 15.6mb.
Finally, he threw in values for AMD K-6 233 and P150, albeit both using
only 64mb RAM, to give some perspective to the comparisons:-
Photoshop
Benchmarks
The Celeron 300A at 450mz
has been running for about 6 hours straight and the computer is still going
strong and stable. To achieve the feat of overclocking to 450mz, Abit's
BH6 was used, currently the undisputed king of the BX motherboards!
Here are some reviews of the Celeron
300A, Intel's latest and greatest:-
Here are some reviews of the
ABIT
BH6 motherboard:-
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Find out more about overclocking
at
Andy
Drake's
site
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