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Author Topic: The Generic Computer Advice Thread  (Read 573751 times)

Reelya

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3270 on: March 13, 2017, 12:48:58 am »

It says 2048 GB using the right type of memory ... and note that this is significantly larger than a "2TB" hard drive, because memory is specced in actual binary TB, not decimal.

TheBiggerFish

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3271 on: March 13, 2017, 01:55:55 am »

Wow.
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Reudh

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3272 on: March 13, 2017, 03:53:56 am »

To be honest, a large page file is not too useful these days. You used to be recommended to have it at 2.5x your RAM size, as using the page file was expected. These days it's so slow that restricting it to the size of your ram of even half your ram or lower is much better. You always need some as there are occasional apps that insist on using the page file and will crash if it's disabled. Having it too large will just cause a misbehaving app to make your PC unusable, so it's best to set a limit so that runaway apps will crash instead.

On my work PC I have 32 GB of ram and Windows only recommends a 5 GB pagefile!
....
32 GB of RAM?

Yeah, my comp is 16GB, but I find that's often too much. I have never come close at all to filling it up, the most i've gotten to was maybe 8GB.

Thief^

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3273 on: March 13, 2017, 09:34:13 am »

32 GB of RAM?
High end workstations and mid-size servers can easily have that amount installed.

Yeah it's a high-end workstation, I'm a game dev. It's actually only half populated (8 slots, 4 filled with 8GB sticks = 32 GB). I've definitely used over 16 GB before, but 32 GB is definitely plenty.

High end servers with hundreds of GB (or over 1 TB!) of ram are awesome.
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Dwarven blood types are not A, B, AB, O but Ale, Wine, Beer, Rum, Whisky and so forth.
It's not an embark so much as seven dwarves having a simultaneous strange mood and going off to build an artifact fortress that menaces with spikes of awesome and hanging rings of death.

BigD145

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3274 on: March 13, 2017, 10:53:10 am »

To be honest, a large page file is not too useful these days. You used to be recommended to have it at 2.5x your RAM size, as using the page file was expected. These days it's so slow that restricting it to the size of your ram of even half your ram or lower is much better. You always need some as there are occasional apps that insist on using the page file and will crash if it's disabled. Having it too large will just cause a misbehaving app to make your PC unusable, so it's best to set a limit so that runaway apps will crash instead.

On my work PC I have 32 GB of ram and Windows only recommends a 5 GB pagefile!
....
32 GB of RAM?

Yeah, my comp is 16GB, but I find that's often too much. I have never come close at all to filling it up, the most i've gotten to was maybe 8GB.

16gb is most useful when you are running software with a memory leak.
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TheBiggerFish

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3275 on: March 13, 2017, 12:53:06 pm »

32 GB of RAM?
High end workstations and mid-size servers can easily have that amount installed.

Yeah it's a high-end workstation, I'm a game dev. It's actually only half populated (8 slots, 4 filled with 8GB sticks = 32 GB). I've definitely used over 16 GB before, but 32 GB is definitely plenty.

High end servers with hundreds of GB (or over 1 TB!) of ram are awesome.
I have that to look forward to?

*starts crying tears of joy*
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Aklyon

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3276 on: March 13, 2017, 04:42:48 pm »

To be honest, a large page file is not too useful these days. You used to be recommended to have it at 2.5x your RAM size, as using the page file was expected. These days it's so slow that restricting it to the size of your ram of even half your ram or lower is much better. You always need some as there are occasional apps that insist on using the page file and will crash if it's disabled. Having it too large will just cause a misbehaving app to make your PC unusable, so it's best to set a limit so that runaway apps will crash instead.

On my work PC I have 32 GB of ram and Windows only recommends a 5 GB pagefile!
....
32 GB of RAM?

Yeah, my comp is 16GB, but I find that's often too much. I have never come close at all to filling it up, the most i've gotten to was maybe 8GB.

16gb is most useful when you are running software with a memory leak.
Isn't it also used for heavy rendering?
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Sappho

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3277 on: March 16, 2017, 03:05:37 am »

This is a fun one. My computer is waking itself from hibernation again, around 3:30 in the morning. I've had this problem and fixed it once before (it was a program updating itself). I've already disabled all hardware devices (including the network card) from waking the computer. I've disabled task scheduling that allows waking the computer. I've double-checked every task in the scheduler to make sure something isn't somehow waking my computer anyway. And I looked in the system Event Viewer log to find the culprit... The Power-Troubleshooter message simply says "Wake source: Unknown".

I'm at a loss. This wasn't happening before, and I can't think of anything I've changed recently that might mess with my power options. Anyone have any ideas?

I've got Windows 8.1, 64-bit system. Not sure what other info would be helpful in this case.

Thief^

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3278 on: March 16, 2017, 04:50:30 am »

I'm looking at getting a newer tablet. It's kind of a toss-up between the Asus Zenpad S and the Nvidia Shield K1. I'm trusting I'll be able to plug my controller in and emulate PSP things on either, but word is that the battery drains a little quick on the Shield since it's carrying a lot of beef, relatively speaking. Is the battery drain going to happen faster as a result of having more processing power available, or is it going to drain at the same rate for either device if you're only using a moderate amount of performance.

I ask, of course, because I've got an xbox controller that I dongle into my present tablet, and, well, you only get the one port. If I'm going to kill the battery faster running Super Mario 64 on the one over the other, I'm probably going to reach for the thing with longevity.

With as tech savvy as I am, I should probably know these things.

Generally speaking, faster CPUs are less efficient, and use more power to do the same work. This is because while CPU power use increases linearly with frequency, increased frequency requires increased voltage and power usage increases with Voltage squared. So even a relatively minor change, e.g. 1.1x frequency, 1.1x Voltage would be a 1.1 * 1.1^2 = 1.331 times more power use.

Another consideration is that if the chip is larger (more cores or more graphics units) it will use more static power, that is power which is used regardless of the work it is doing.

There are many other factors to consider, but generally a slower chip will give you better battery life - if the battery is the same size!!!
... which it's not. The Zenpad's is ~75% the size of the Shield's.
« Last Edit: March 16, 2017, 04:58:02 am by Thief^ »
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Dwarven blood types are not A, B, AB, O but Ale, Wine, Beer, Rum, Whisky and so forth.
It's not an embark so much as seven dwarves having a simultaneous strange mood and going off to build an artifact fortress that menaces with spikes of awesome and hanging rings of death.

Thief^

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3279 on: March 17, 2017, 01:44:17 am »

IIRC Windows doesn't schedule defragging any more, it does it continuously in the background when the PC is idle (plus is better about allocating files in the first place). I've not seen a significantly fragmented drive since the 9x days, so it seems to work.
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Dwarven blood types are not A, B, AB, O but Ale, Wine, Beer, Rum, Whisky and so forth.
It's not an embark so much as seven dwarves having a simultaneous strange mood and going off to build an artifact fortress that menaces with spikes of awesome and hanging rings of death.

Arx

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3280 on: March 17, 2017, 01:51:25 am »

Had a look and mine has schedule settings, so I assume there's scheduling of some kind. Runs weekly on my machine, apparently, and pings me if it misses three weeks in a row. I've never had to run a defrag on this machine and it's at <1% fragmentation, so it's pretty good. I don't know what time of day it runs the defrag at, though.
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wierd

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3281 on: March 17, 2017, 03:46:23 am »

If this is win10, it might be windows INSISTING on calling the mothership as well.
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Sappho

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3282 on: March 17, 2017, 06:18:32 am »

Sappho- is this daily, or like every Wednesday? I recall that the built-in Windows defragmentation program is scheduled to run at 3:30 AM or so. Maybe that's it?

No, it's happened a couple of times this week. Didn't happen today. I have checked every single auto-scheduling application and update system on the computer, including Windows maintenance. EVERYTHING is disabled, and has been for ages. I had this problem once before and I went through and disabled everything. When it started happening again this week, I double-checked all of them and they're still off. Then I double-checked the entire task scheduler list for anything that might wake the computer. Everything is disabled. All the hardware is disabled from waking the computer (I hibernate, don't use sleep, so I just use the power button to turn it on). Keyboard, mouse, ethernet controller, everything is forbidden from waking the computer. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell is going on. It didn't happen today, at least. I'll keep an eye on it. Maybe whatever it was is done and it won't happen anymore. I frigging hope so.

And this is Windows 8, not 10. I wouldn't "upgrade" to 10 if you paid me. I have it at work and it's just The Worst Thing.

Flying Dice

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3283 on: March 17, 2017, 05:38:19 pm »

It's the CIA snooping through your files at odd hours of the night. /jk

Might be Windows Defender running security scans, dunno if that would show in the usual set of scheduled program operations.
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Sappho

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Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread
« Reply #3284 on: March 18, 2017, 05:01:18 am »

Nope, I checked that, too. Nothing is allowed to wake the computer, including Windows Defender.

The oddest thing is that this only just started happening. It happened before, I fixed it, and now out of nowhere it started happening again. However, today it didn't happen. It's been a few days. Maybe whatever it was is over now, at least...
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