Rade UK

By default SMPlayer is set to 'software decoding' resulting in high CPU utilization and potentially choppy playback depending on your system. Changing the settings to enable 'hardware decoding' will reduce CPU utilization and video playback will be much smoother. Compare the screenshots below, at 46 seconds the same video (playing at full window size) caused 25% CPU utilization versus 2% CPU utilization. SMPlayer Software Decoding SMPlayer Hardware Decoding How to enabled hardware decoding In the preferences > performance, change the 'Hardware decoding' option from 'None' to 'Auto'. Then click 'OK'. You have now enabled 'hardware decoding' in SMPlayer. If you wish to confirm this, simply compare your CPU utilization before and after.

After a long time not playing this game I decided to come back to see how things are and to my surprise absolutely nothing has changed, apart from the Xbox and PS4 versions going live with the new engine upgrade. But why has there been a total lack of progress on the PC version? GamersFirst announed the engine upgrade back in 2013 and having gone to the effort to port APB Reloaded to the Xbox and PS4 on the new engine I hope they will improve the PC version but when is the question. Meanwhile things are not looking very good for the PC version. My experience on Citadel over the past few days have been awful. Whilst the in game monitor reports my delay as 16ms and the server performance as 33ms, the game is barely playable and laggy. It is near impossible to frag anyone and driving cars requires me to press the direction buttons half a second in advance. It could be a routing issue between my ISP and their servers or their DDOS protection causing added delay or packet loss. Ho...

Not so long ago I decided to upgrade my graphics card to something more powerful, after searching I went with an MSI GeForce GTX 1080 AERO 8GB . But I've been regretting that decision ever since. The problem with this card is it runs very hot and always throttles the frequency because it is reaching over 83c when playing demanding games such as Ghost Recon Wildlands. The fan/heatsink design is very poor. The speed of the fan varies with temperature and under heavy load (i.e. running hot) it also sounds very loud. Having spent nearly £500 GBP on this graphics card, I don't want it to cease working as a result of running at those high temperatures. Thanks for equipping this graphics card with a substandard cooler MSI. So what are my options? I could use MSI Afterburner to adjust the fan RPM or upgrade the cooler with an after market one. Hardware solution is more robust and doesn't matter if you are using Windows or Ubuntu, so an aftermarket cooler it is. Looking...

View this email in your browser We are sad to announce that we will be closing Raptr on September 30th, 2017. We want to start by thanking you for your support over the past 10 years. The world is different today than when we first launched Raptr. Many compani...

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux based operating system, an alternative to Windows and Mac OS. If you are not into gaming or do not have a need for Windows then maybe Ubuntu could work for you? It is completely free and can even run from a USB stick. You can download Ubuntu from https://www.ubuntu.com/ Some popular programs include Libre Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, Kdenlive, Chrome, Steam. Personally I prefer using Ubuntu over Windows, in Ubuntu I don't hear my hard disk drive thrashing like in Windows 10 and browsing my files seem quicker. On a plus side I don't have to worry about viruses either. Maybe it will work well for you?

Acer recently announced their new Predator Orion 9000 Gaming PC and I have to say it looks good. No doubt there will be many configurable options and processor choices but can it really be considered a gaming PC if paired with an Intel i9 7980XE processor? The reason I ask, imagine throwing in a Formula 1 racing car engine into a Ford Fiesta and then claiming its a super car akin to a Lamborghini Huracán Performante. What about all the other aspects to consider such as aerodynamics, an efficient drive train able to put down all that power, suspension setup, braking system, cooling and the list goes on. With this in mind, are there design aspects that in some way hinder or act detrimental to the idea that you can make a gaming PC using Intel's i9 7980XE? Lets look at the specification. A base frequency of 2.6GHz, 18 cores, maximum turbo frequency of 4.4GHz meaning depending on the load only 2 cores have the potential to run at 4.4GHz at any given time. 3 cores lower th...

A few years ago when I first heard about Steam OS I was intrigued, did this mean gaming on Linux would be on par with Windows? Would Steam OS be the ultimate operating system for gamers? Fast forward to today and Steam OS has been around for over three years, and what's interesting about that is the web does not seem to be talking about it. So it's time to find out why. http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/ After following the Steam OS  instructions from their site, I created my Steam OS USB installation media and rebooted my PC. Upon boot there was the option of an automatic install and expert install. I went for the automatic install although there were problems formatting my hard drive. It didn't work, so I rebooted and chose expert mode. Despite the name expert mode, all I did was click next until I came to the formatting hard drive screen. My hard drive had Ubuntu 16.04 LTS installed and this was causing a conflict with the automatic...