Sunday 16 December 2012

Processor, ram & graphic card

There is confusion among buyer when they looking for new pc. Typical question they will ask the salemen is..

1)Is it intel I3, I5, I7 or amd
2)Isn't amd pc can get overheated 
4)How much ram this thing have?
5)Can i play game with this pc?


The salesman will tell them this pc spec will blow their mind away, this pc have 50GB of GDDR10 RAM, this thing have AMD processor, great for playing games, he can play Need Speed : Speed Demon Fantasies Comes True without lag. And if the customer  choose to buy this pc, he will upgrade it to 60GB of RAM, just add RM100.


Wrong, wrong wrong. First of all the salesman will say just about anything to convince you to buy at his shop. He could say,"you should buy this pc because this particular pc is like a light, shining in darkness."


Or god forbid he say prophet told us to choose this pc. What the salesman didn't say that? Because its obviously false and will not work.

How to choose correct hardware for your gaming pc?. I found this awesome website, tweaksguide. It contain verrrrrrrry detail explanation of graphic process. But who can read 12 page of nothing but text really? So here its more simple explanation so you can continue play your games.

Process

1) when u click the game icon, the OS will find the game executable file and lauch it. 
Analogous to finding stuff in the main store house. What happen if the the storehouse worker is slow and lazy? It will take a long time to find the stuff you r looking for. This is why the faster the hard disk, the faster OS and game will load.

What happen if stuff/ boxes in storehouse is not place properly?, just toss it around. You'll have a hard time finding the right box. That why we need to defrag the hard disk


2) the game data is placed in RAM. RAM act as a temporary store house because it is much much faster than hard disk. From here, CPU will process the data. Before CPU  process the data, it will store it in  L1, L2 or L3 cache.

3)Now the CPU cannot process all the information. Graphic information will be passed to the graphic card.

Analogy: The CEO at the headquarter (CPU) make strategic plan of the company, but it is the worker and machine in factory (graphic card) that actually make the product.





4)Sometimes finished product is not ship directly to the retailer, it will be stored in factory store room. This is the graphic card RAM, or VRAM.  This is rough and not completely acurate analogy,for more info go to the tweak guide, frame buffer. To supply the showroom with constant flow of product, the factory will produced at greater rate than the actual product flow out rate (Double or Triple Buffer). To be able to do this,store room(VRAM) is need. When showroom (monitor) need to replenish, the product will always be available.

5) the finished product is sent to the showroom, where the product is displayed and sold.


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Now can you see from the analogies, in order to have high performance gaming machine, u need matching hardware. What is the use of having huge store room (VRAM or RAM) if the factory cannot actually make the product.

Similarly the RAM only act as a temporary store room. Let say the OS required 2GB,  for optimum performance the game use another 2GB and all background process & program use total of 1 GB. So you need 5GB RAM. Adding more ram wouldn't improve you game performance at all.

It is just like building extra storehouse without actually improving the factory manufacturing capability. 

What happen if you have high perfomance graphic card, lots of RAM but slow processor? It will create a choke point, slowing down the overall pc perfomance. It like having state of the art factory, superb worker but of the  CEO company is incompetent, he tell the factory manager to make wrong adjustment.



Adios










Friday 7 December 2012

Setakat tu je la yang awak dapat


Bila ada orang mengadu,” pointer aku rendah dowh, cukup2 makan je ni, dah la sem ni test 1 Air Condition aku failed, midterm CEND321 Lift Repair aku ade buat silly mistake”, aku tak tahu nak jawab ape. Xde kata-kata yang aku boleh berikan untuk mereka ni.
Macam mana nak bagi kata2 semangat kat diorang ni, sedangkan aku pun tak pernah diberi kata2 semangat?

Shit.. kalau aku yang kata macam kat atas tu, mesti orang akan kata; tak bersyukur seh.Hmmm
So apa aku nak bagitau dekat orang kat atas tu? Ok, aku akan bagitau apa yang orang penah kata kt aku: Setakat tu lah yang awak dapat...