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If the playback of 4K videos is causing your processor fans to spin themselves to bits or the quality of the playback is an annoyingly inconsistent frame skipping mess, this may help you. The default Windows movie player app and alternatives like VLC and smplayer can play videos with hardware decoding but I frequently have playback issues. In search of something that works and is simple, say hello to  mpv.io  a free, open source, and cross-platform media player. Using MPV to playback 4K videos has provided me with the smoothest viewing experience compared to anything I have ever used but there is one small catch. Out of the box it defaults to software decoding (using your CPU), so you need to configure it to take advantage of hardware decoding, i.e, nvidia NVENC. Go to the options and tick a few boxes? Unfortunately not, you have to configure it by way of a text file named mpv.conf. Realistically all this means is using notepad to type a few characters... or since you are here...

If you notice the sound quality when playing a youtube video sounds off and not as good as Windows, I recommend you modify some PulseAudio settings by editing a configuration file with a text editor of your choice, sudo powers required. The file in question is is /etc/pulse/daemon.conf Look for the setting below, ; resample-method = speex-float-1 Uncomment the line by deleting the ; and change the default value from speex-float-1 to sox-vhq. resample-method = soxr-vhq I would also recommend the following, default-sample-rate = 48000 alternate-sample-rate = 48000 Explaining it in more detail No doubt you have seen this recommendation all over the internet. By default Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will set your sound device to run with a sample rate of 48KHz. This is where the setting 'default-sample-rate = 48000' comes in. When you watch a video on youtube through your browser, the audio sample rate from youtube is 44.1KHz (because that is what youtube encodes audio at). Ideally the 'alt...

For those who are not interested in messing about, your best NVME's for the PlayStation 5 are from Seagate and Western Digital with heatsinks attached. Seagate FireCuda 530 500GB ZP500GM30023  Seagate FireCuda 530 1TB ZP1000GM30023  Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB ZP2000GM30023  Seagate FireCuda 530 4TB ZP4000GM30023  Western Digital SN850 500GB WDS500G1XHE-00AFY0  Western Digital SN850 1TB WDS100T1XHE-00AFY0  Western Digital SN850 2TB WDS200T1XHE-00AFY0

Its an issue many Intel Z97 motherboards are experiencing and my BIOSTAR Z97Z7 is no exception. I've been disappointed for a while that I was unable to update Windows 10 beyond version 1909 as this would cause a BSOD as soon as the Intel IEMI (Intel Engine Management Interface) driver was installed. Despite being released in 2014 my BIOSTAR Z97Z7 with an Intel 4790K is still working well, so the thought of upgrading just to have Windows 10 on the latest version does not appeal to me at all. However, out of luck I went to BIOSTAR's support page for my Z97Z7 and saw the following, A BIOS update Z97BFB05.BST, dated 2020-11-05 with the description Improved WIN10 compatibility (Beta). So I decided to update my old but still going strong Z97Z7 and I can now use Windows 10 20H2 without any BSOD after the Intel IEMI driver is installed. BIOSTAR have never been known to me as a company that supports their motherboards with BIOS updates when compared to MSI or ASUS, it is very nice to ...

A collection of my favorite Windows 10 gaming tweaks, I'll be updating this with more as time goes by if necessary. I do not require Windows Search or use Cortana, pick and mix what suits you best. Disable Dynamic Tick Open a command prompt as admin and type; bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes Reboot required to take effect. By default Windows 10 will allow the system timer to go idle to save power at the expense of system responsiveness. For any interactive application such as gaming particularly in a competitive setting, maximum responsiveness is more preferable. To restore the default setting type; bcdedit /deletevalue disabledynamictick Enable the Ultimate power plan Open a command prompt as admin and type; powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61 This will enable the ultimate power plan under Control Panel > Power Options. To read up on this further, see https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/52059.wind...

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...