Tweakipedia - Page 8

Here you can view a listing of TweakTown's Tweakipedia Guides, Tips and How To posts - Page 8

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 SLI benchmarked at 7860x1440

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Oct 3, 2013 1:01 AM CDT

This has been a long time coming, slowly getting the parts that we needed to get to this point, but we're here! We have our new system built, which you can check out in this post, and the video below.

The new system kicks all sorts of ass, thanks to some of our closest friends who sent over boxes of hardware to make this happen. We'd like to thank Corsair, NVIDIA, GIGABYTE, AMD, Patriot Memory, and InWin for making this all happen - without you, we couldn't have done it.

Now I'm sure you want to know the exact specs of the system, so here we go:

CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K "Haswell" processor w/Corsair H110i cooler
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 SLI (2x)
RAM: Patriot Memory Viper Series - 32GB of 2400MHz DDR3
Storage: 240GB Corsair Force Series GT (3x) and 480GB Corsair Neutron GTX
Chassis: InWin X-Frame Limited Edition
PSU: Corsair AX1200i digital PSU

Continue reading 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 SLI benchmarked at 7860x1440' (full post)

Introducing our new Tweakipedia test bed, for all things tweaking!

Anthony Garreffa | Computer Systems | Sep 12, 2013 12:18 AM CDT

For the last couple of months, I've been securing some hardware to build up a new test bed for me to use for my Tweakipedia articles. We've had some truly great support from some of our closest partners and friends, including Corsair, GIGABYTE, Patriot Memory, NVIDIA, Sapphire, InWin and more.

We've got a little video that looks at the various parts, of which you can check out above. Below, we have a video of the GPUs that we'll be testing in the coming weeks, which is an even bigger tease.

Introducing our new Tweakipedia test bed, for all things tweaking! 01

Introducing our new Tweakipedia test bed, for all things tweaking! 02

I'm still waiting on some more components, and have two monitors that will be at my door step in the next two weeks. The monitors in question are the ASUS PB278Q displays, so we'll have three in total for some truly high-resolution testing. We've already overclocked one, but let's see how three do, hey?

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Moving your Steam and Origin games to a new OS installation

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Aug 29, 2013 12:04 AM CDT

I used to hate re-installing Windows, but with a few tricks it can be a quick and painless effort these days. We've written some previous articles that will help you, first of which is installing Windows from a USB drive which is worlds faster than using an optical drive.

Moving your Steam and Origin games to a new OS installation 31

Secondly, we have the Windows Update Downloader article, and thirdly, how to slipstream your new Windows disc. This all goes towards making your PC life easier, and now we're going to do the same with games.

Normally, a fresh install of Windows would require you to re-install Steam and Origin (one or the other, or any other digital distribution platform - but we're centering on Steam and Origin for this Tweakipedia article). You still have to do that, but you'll be able to migrate your games over, and then let them sync to the Steam and Origin networks.

Continue reading 'Moving your Steam and Origin games to a new OS installation' (full post)

Slipstreaming Windows Updates into a Windows ISO

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Aug 27, 2013 12:04 AM CDT

If you install Windows more than once every couple of months, slipstreaming your installation might be down your alley. If you don't know what slipstreaming your Windows installation is, let's have a quick chat.

Slipstreaming Windows Updates into a Windows ISO 09

Don't you hate downloading your Windows Updates, which can be in the gigabytes, to only lose them when you format and re-install Windows? Well, with a few tricks, you can manually download and save your Windows Updates, and then weave them into your Windows installation disc - this, is slipstreaming.

This helps save so much time, and double ups on downloading your Windows Updates. For people like me, it helps because I'm constantly installing Windows on a new build, and hate having to let Windows Update do its thing before I can get to business.

Continue reading 'Slipstreaming Windows Updates into a Windows ISO' (full post)

Performance with a Sapphire HD 7770 FleX overclocked at 1080p

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Aug 15, 2013 6:19 AM CDT

We have our final piece in the 1080p puzzle with SAPPHIRE's Radeon HD 7770 FleX Edition card, where we give it a good thrashing by overclocking it and running it over our suite of benchmarks. This will be the last test at 1080p, with the next gear we're shifting into will see 2560x1440 being tested.

Performance with a Sapphire HD 7770 FleX overclocked at 1080p 01

Once we have a baseline from all of our GPUs, we will step into multi-monitor benchmarks at the beginning of September. These benchmarks will include 5760x1080, 3240x1920, 7680x4320 and 4320x2560. These benchmarks will be when things get interesting, and it should stress out our GPUs.

We have two HD 7770s and two HD 7870s from SAPPHIRE, which will go under our multi-monitoring microscope before we step into the higher-end cards. This will give us a plethora of data to look at, before next-gen GPUs start floating into our hands.

Continue reading 'Performance with a Sapphire HD 7770 FleX overclocked at 1080p' (full post)

Using the Windows Updates Downloader to speed up your installation

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Aug 10, 2013 7:48 PM CDT

Installing Windows 7 these days is simple, but the process of downloading all of the Updates is ridiculous. There are so many updates for Windows 7 it's not funny, but we have a way to simplify this for you.

Using the Windows Updates Downloader to speed up your installation 01

We've just built a brand new high-end system for our Tweakipedia and multi-monitor benchmarks, where we'll unveil it in a Tweakipedia post in a few days. For now, let's simplify your Windows Update process with Windows Updates Downloader.

You'll need to head over to the Windows Updates Downloader website and download the tool, which is quite small, then we'll get right into the very, very simple and time-saving process.

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Overclocking our ASUS PB278Q monitor, 2560x1440 at 85Hz

Anthony Garreffa | Displays & Projectors | Aug 6, 2013 12:03 AM CDT

I recently purchased an ASUS PB278Q monitor for my daily use, and it's gorgeous. It's 2560x1440 resolution provides plenty of desktop real estate, but it only arrives with a 60Hz refresh rate. I feel like I'm substituting resolution for refresh rate, which I am, but the resolution really is worth it.

I posted my unboxing video last week, and we had a reader tell me to "just overclock it," so, I did.

Overclocking our ASUS PB278Q monitor, 2560x1440 at 85Hz 07

I did some Google searching, and found the tools required, which are a little different depending on your setup. It comes down to your GPU, whether you're running an AMD Radeon or NVIDIA GeForce GPU. I'm running a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX Edition GPU right now in our TweakTown Prodigy PC.

Continue reading 'Overclocking our ASUS PB278Q monitor, 2560x1440 at 85Hz' (full post)

Performance with a Sapphire HD 7770 FleX at 1080p on our Prodigy PC

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Aug 2, 2013 4:07 AM CDT

It hasn't been long since we tested our TweakTown Prodigy PC, where we took a look at the performance on our Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX Edition GPU at 720p. Now it's time to crank things up a bit, and move onto 1080p.

Performance with a Sapphire HD 7770 FleX at 1080p on our Prodigy PC 01

Before we get into the numbers, I expected to see a big drop in frame rate moving from 720p to 1080p, but was pleasantly surprised to see the Sapphire HD 7770 FleX Edition hold up at 1080p. We want to obviously hit 60 FPS, which is why we test our system at max settings, and medium settings. This gives us the best of both worlds when it comes to results.

This PC was built for the purpose of 720p gaming, but we thought we'd see how we go at 1080p. We'll probably end up doing another couple of tests at 2560x1440, too. The specs of the TweakTown Prodigy PC are as follows:

Continue reading 'Performance with a Sapphire HD 7770 FleX at 1080p on our Prodigy PC' (full post)

Performance with a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX overclocked at 720p on our BitFenix Prodigy PC

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Jul 24, 2013 8:43 PM CDT

Last week we did some testing with our awesome BitFenix Prodigy PC, where we slapped in a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX Edition GPU and did some testing at 720p. We have an article that should be available next week that will take a look at some 1080p results, but I thought I'd do some overclocking on the HD 7770 FleX Edition, first.

Performance with a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX overclocked at 720p on our BitFenix Prodigy PC 02

I didn't think I'd squeeze much more speed out of it, but boy oh boy did it overclock. We actually saw a huge overclock on our Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX Edition, which had a stock GPU clock of 1000MHz and stock memory clock of 1125MHz.

Performance with a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX overclocked at 720p on our BitFenix Prodigy PC 03

Just how far did we push it, while staying stable with our suite of benchmarks? We cranked the GPU clock up to 1250MHz, which was an increase of 250MHz, or 25%. The memory clocked up from 1125MHz to 1375MHz, another impressive result.

Continue reading 'Performance with a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX overclocked at 720p on our BitFenix Prodigy PC' (full post)

Performance with a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX at 720p on our BitFenix Prodigy PC

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Jul 16, 2013 3:41 AM CDT

Now that we have our TweakTown Prodigy PC ready to go, we have looked at the performance with the on-board graphics in another Tweakipedia article, here. Now we're going to take a look at the performance of our system with the Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Flex Edition GPU inside.

Performance with a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX at 720p on our BitFenix Prodigy PC 09

We should see a huge performance increase when compared to the on-die graphics with our Core i7 3770K. What we're going to do is split this into two pieces. The first of which we'll cover 720p in detail, and a second piece will follow early next week which will cover 1080p.

Our target here would be to hit around 60 FPS with the 720p resolution, and around 30 FPS at 1080p without AA enabled. All gamers (and games) are different, of course, but this is what we'll do for now and we'll see how things go during our testing.

Continue reading 'Performance with a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX at 720p on our BitFenix Prodigy PC' (full post)