Maximum PC 2009 RSS Feed

The Missing Keys

Bill Calkins — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:45:16 -0600

I bought two laptops for my two granddaughters about a year and a half ago. Now both have missing keys. Is there a way to purchase replacement keys, or do I need to buy a whole new keyboard? These two laptops are both Compaqs sold by HP. If I give HP the model number can I get a kit with all the key caps and a procedure for installation?

—Michael H.

Key replacement will vary based on the keyboard type used in the notebook. Some keys can be replaced by pressing replacements into the socket; others, however, once broken, cannot be easily repaired. In that case, the best way to repair them is to buy a new keyboard. The HP Parts Store carries replacement keyboards for $30–$60. Obviously, prices vary greatly, but a new keyboard for a notebook on eBay can fetch from $20 to $100 or more depending on the model and make. Switching the keyboard is usually a pretty painless affair, so long as you can locate the service manual for your notebook. You can find Compaq service manuals at HP’s Customer Care site.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

Fast Forward: Parallelism

Tom Halfhill — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:30:12 -0600

After decades of fitful progress, parallel processing is suddenly hot and will soon be commonplace on ordinary PCs. For applications rich in data-level parallelism, performance is soaring by leaps and bounds.

Multicore CPUs from Intel and AMD are all good, but the game-changers are the next-gen GPUs from Nvidia and AMD/ATI. These chips are evolving from highly specialized 3D-graphics processors for games into broader computing engines for nongame software. Nvidia is leading the charge with a new GPU architecture that, for the first time, supports general-purpose computing as strongly as it supports graphics.

Nvidia’s new Fermi GPUs will support error-correction codes (ECC), one terabyte of memory, concurrent kernels, and faster double-precision floating-point math. These features are largely unnecessary for 3D graphics but vital for high-performance general-purpose computing. (In fact, ECC slows down graphics processing, which is why it can be disabled in Fermi chips sold for the consumer market.)

With Nvidia’s CUDA development tools, programmers are accelerating some tedious media-processing tasks, such as video transcoding. CUDA uses the GPU’s programmable 3D-graphics shaders as massively parallel processor cores, delivering performance that today’s PC processors can’t match. In addition, GPUs are finding new applications in scientific computing, financial analysis, medical imaging, energy exploration, and engineering.

Other developments are equally exciting. Microsoft’s DirectCompute brings a parallel-processing API to millions of mainstream PCs running Vista and Windows 7. The new OpenCL standard makes parallel programming easier and less proprietary. Apple’s Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) supports OpenCL and Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch technology (now open source), allowing programmers to distribute workloads across multicore CPUs and GPUs.

Intel is busy, too. With its own new GPU (Larrabee) on the way, Intel has acquired two small companies specializing in software tools for parallel programming—RapidMind and Cilk Arts. RapidMind is especially cool, because its software bridges GPUs, multicore x86 processors, and even IBM’s Cell Broadband Engine.

Parallel processing is spreading to the masses, and parallel-programming tools are catching up with parallel-processing hardware. When these trend lines finally converge, we’ll wonder why it took so long.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.

SSDs with TRIM Support

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:30:29 -0600

I’m looking to get a new SSD for my laptop when Windows 7 comes out, and I just read a review on Newegg warning about a drive not supporting Win7’s TRIM feature. A Google search gave me the basics on TRIM, but how important is it, really? I’m having trouble finding which drives support it and am wondering if I should wait before pulling the trigger.

I use my laptop for home and work, so I’d really like to do a clean install on a new drive (for restoration purposes when I really screw something up) and it seems like a perfect time to make the switch. I’m also moving from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 7, so—as I understand it—I need to wipe regardless.

—Steve Wale

Think of TRIM as a garbage collector for your SSD. Normally, when you delete data on a disk, whether SSD or standard magnetic hard drive, the data isn’t immediately scrubbed. Instead, it’s marked as overwriteable, so when the disk runs out of fresh blocks to write to, it goes back and writes over deleted files. But given the way SSDs store data, this can decrease your drive’s performance once there are no more fresh blocks to write to. To write data to a block, an SSD first has to copy the entire block to cache, wipe it, delete the overwriteable sectors in cache, write in the new data (in cache), and rewrite the entire block to the disk. This can lead to slowdowns. Essentially, TRIM scrubs blocks of deleted data when it’s deleted, and makes sure the disk controller knows they’re blank, speeding up the whole process and making sure your drive’s performance doesn’t degrade over time.

At press time, only a few SSDs have TRIM support (including the OCZ Vertex and Patriot Torqx) but several ship with wiper.exe, a TRIM-like command that helps restore performance. We expect more SSD vendors to release TRIM in firmware upgrades as Windows 7 gets closer to release.

Scythe Mugen 2

Nathan Edwards — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:30:24 -0600

Bulky, but it gets the job done

They just keep getting bigger and bigger. Now that CPU air-cooling manufacturers have seemingly settled on the skyscraper school of heatsink design, there seems to be a competition over who can cram the most cooling fins into the largest area. Scythe’s Mugen 2 air cooler, the follow-up to its popular Mugen series, is one of the largest coolers of this type that we’ve ever tested. But can it match the cooling power of its slightly smaller cousins, such as Thermalright’s U-120 eXtreme?

The Mugen 2 is a hefty hunk of a cooler, at 5.1 inches wide, 5 inches deep (with the included 12cm fan), and 6.2 inches high; it weighs nearly two pounds. It’s not the heaviest cooler we’ve ever tested, nor the most unwieldy, but its girth could certainly prevent you from installing it in all orientations on all motherboards. We had trouble fitting it in some orientations on our EVGA 680i SLI board—our usual preference being to install the cooler fan parallel with the rear exhaust fan. On our board, though, there wasn’t room; we resorted to attaching the cooler fan perpendicular to the rear exhaust fan. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to impact performance, as the Mugen 2 performed slightly better in our tests than the Thermalright U120-eXtreme—about 2.25 C cooler at both idle and full CPU burn.

The Mugen 2 pushes the upper limit on air-cooler size, but we'll allow it. This time.

The Mugen 2 ships with mounting brackets for LGA1366, 775, and AMD boards; the first two use the same bracket and backplate but different screw holes. Support for the new LGA1156 socket wasn’t available at the time of this review, but the company states it is in the works. Installation requires motherboard removal or a motherboard tray with a backplane cutout. Each of its five copper heat pipes rises into its own separate stack of cooling fins, allowing airflow between the stacks.

If you opt to use the included 12cm fan, you might have to tweak your motherboard fan control settings due to its four-pin PWM connector. We manually set the fan control to 100 percent for testing, after the motherboard’s fan control resulted in significantly higher temperatures.

You can attach up to four 12cm fans to the Mugen 2—one to each face of the fin array—using the familiar thin wire clips found on similar coolers. Whether this actually helps, of course, is up for debate. We didn’t see any performance gains when we experimented with multiple fans on the Noctua NH-U12P and Thermalright U-120 eXtreme.

For laudable performance, a relatively easy install compared to its peers, and a lower price point, we’re awarding the Scythe Mugen 2 our Kick Ass Award. However, this is clearly the upper limit of how big a cooler can be and still earn a high recommendation. Hear that, vendors? Scale ‘em down a bit.

USB Slowdown

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:30:12 -0600

I recently reformatted my computer after a failure with an old Seagate 7200.11 1TB. Lately, though, I have been noticing problems with my USB ports. Whenever I connect my iPhone 3G, it is very hard for iTunes to recognize it and the popup tells me that the iPhone isn’t plugged in to a high-speed port, even though all my USB ports should be 2.0. This has raised even bigger concerns about my other devices connected via USB.

My motherboard is an Asus P5Q-E. The CPU is an Intel Q6600. My initial thought is that an upgrade to my mobo’s BIOS or other utilities might fix the problem, but I’m wary of undertaking such a feat without knowing for sure what the problem is, because I’ve heard updating the BIOS can be dangerous. If a BIOS update is necessary, what sorts of precautions should I take?

—Taylor Sabbag

The Doctor suspects the solution may be much simpler than you think. You’re probably plugging your iPhone into your PC’s front-panel USB connectors, as most of us do. Front-panel connectors tend to be flakier than your motherboard’s onboard USB ports, because they’re connected by cables rather than directly attached and many low-cost vendors use similarly low-cost cables. Our guess is that when you replaced your hard drive, you dislodged the front-panel USB connector from the motherboard. Power down and unplug your computer, then reseat the front-panel USB connectors on the motherboard. If it is a problem with the rear ports, the issue could be OS support (you are running at least Windows XP with SP1, right? SP1 added USB 2.0 support.) Besides making sure that you have at least SP1 installed (SP3 is recommended), you should also download and install the latest chipset drivers from either Asus.com or directly from Intel.com for the P45 chipset, which is used in that motherboard.

Finally, while the Doctor understands your fear of BIOS updates, it’s quite painless and generally quite reliable these days. A BIOS update is unlikely to fix your problem, though.

Release Notes: What Exactly Is a Personal Computer?

Will Smith — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:30:18 -0600

If I asked you in 1993, “What’s a PC?”, you’d probably have pointed to the beige box sitting under your desk at work. In 1999, if I asked you the same question, the odds are good that you’d have shown me a grey box in your den. In 2005, you would probably have shown me a shiny new notebook. But, as I sit here in 2009, I’m finding it difficult to answer this seemingly simple question.

Sitting on my desk, I have four extremely powerful computing devices, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s decide which of these are personal computers together.

Machine A features four CPU cores, and a host of GPUs and coprocessors. Machine B is more modest, with three CPU cores and a decent GPU. Machine C is even more modest, with a dual-core CPU, but a woefully inadequate GPU. Machine D pushes a lot of its workload onto dedicated processors, but still sports a dedicated GPU.

So, what’s all this powerful hardware? A home-built gaming PC, an Xbox 360, a Lenovo X200s notebook, and an iPhone 3GS.

The gaming rig and the notebook clearly fit the classical definition of a PC, but what about the iPhone and Xbox 360? I’m not sure. Let’s see if we can figure out what gives a device its essential PC-ness.

In the old days, it was safe to say that an Intel CPU and a Microsoft OS made your computer a PC. But now other types of hardware and software are gaining ground on the WinTel duopoly. What makes my machines PCs is that they’re platforms—constructs that allow me to run software that does what I need, assuming it follows the basic rules of the platform. Network connectivity is key, as well. Without a connection to the net, computers are much less valuable. For the most part, I use my four PCs to browse the web, communicate with friends, play games, and work.

Does the Xbox 360 meet my essential PC-ness test? It’s definitely a platform that I use to play games and watch video, and it’s connected to the Internet. However, it’s a locked system, so I can only run Microsoft-authorized software on it and connect Microsoft-authorized hardware to it. I can’t write a word processor for Xbox 360 because Microsoft wouldn’t let me run it. Clearly, the Xbox 360 isn’t a personal computer.

The iPhone is a tougher question. It’s a closed platform, but there are mechanisms that let me run apps from a finite, but very large pool. The device is net-connected 24/7, and I find myself using my iPhone for many of the tasks that I once exclusively used a PC for. This is a new class of device that we call the smartphone—but I’d be hard pressed to describe a more personal computer than the one that I carry in my pocket with me everywhere.

Could you?

Asus G51Vx-RX05

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0600

This budget notebook will make gamers smile

If there’s one thing that might take your mind off your financial woes, it’s some good old-fashioned fragging. And Asus is happy to oblige by offering the most affordable full-fledged gaming notebook that we’ve ever tested. The G51Vx-RX05, sold exclusively through Best Buy, costs less than a grand—OK, at $999, that’s a technicality, but still, this 15-inch notebook is cheap. It’s half the cost of the 15-inch iBuypower M865TU gaming rig we reviewed in November.

Of course, Asus had to cut some corners to get there. The notebook’s Core 2 Duo P7350 CPU, for example, boasts a mere 2GHz clock speed—that’s 33 percent slower than the iBuypower’s proc. And true to form, the G51Vx-RX05 performed about 30 percent slower than the iBuypower (our new zero-point rig) in our Premiere, Photoshop, ProShow, and MainConcept benchmarks.

A Power Control Panel option in the G51Vx-RX05 lets you overclock the CPU by up to 150MHz. That’s a 7.5 percent boost, which amounted to around five percent of additional performance in our CPU-centric benchmarks: Using the so-called “Extreme turbo” mode, we shaved 11 seconds off our original Photoshop time and a minute off of Premiere Pro. That doesn’t do much to bridge the gap between the G51Vx-RX05 and its higher-clocked competition, but it does add some value to the package.

If you're not crazy about the G51Vx-RX05's blue-backlit keyboard, a function button lets you dim or disable the lights.

Where you’ll find the most value, however, is in the notebook’s GPU. The G51Vx-RX05 sports the same GTX 260M graphics part as iBuypower’s machine. As we noted in our review of the iBuypower rig, this GPU performs head and shoulders above any previous-generation mobile part, serving up playable frame rates in today’s more graphically demanding games. Although iBuypower’s much-faster CPU gives that machine a slight edge in games (and effectively knocks Asus’s rig off our benchmark chart), the G51Vx-RX05’s game performance is still laudable. Compared to Toshiba’s 9800M-equipped Qosmio X305 (reviewed in June 2009), the G51Vx-RX05 was more than 20 percent faster in Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4. In Crysis even, Asus’s rig hit 30.48fps with the settings at High—that’s 30 percent faster than the Qosmio performed.

Physically, the G51Vx-RX05 seems solid. Its glossy white cover, glossy black trim, and blue-backlit keyboard give it an unmistakable gaming aesthetic that’s not too outlandish. Its rubberized palm rest adds a nice, comfy touch. And while its 15.6-inch reflective screen sports a relatively low 1366x768 native res, that can actually be a boon in games.

Does the G51Vx-RX05 make compromises? Yes. But in doing so, it delivers on its mission to provide top-notch gaming at an unbeatable price. And for that, this notebook deserves high marks.

Toshiba NB205

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:18 -0600

Getting it right the first time

Toshiba waited a long time to enter the netbook market, but as the NB205 proves, taking some time to learn from your competitors can be a good thing. The NB205 offers everything we expect from a netbook, as well as some unexpected bonus features, and does so for less than $400. We liked the NB205 when we used it in our netbook upgrading feature (October); here we give it a full review.

The NB205 has a matte-silver plastic chassis and a textured matte lid, available in blue, pink, black, white, or brown. We appreciate that Toshiba has bucked the glossy fingerprint-magnet trend here. The netbook is solidly constructed, with a color-matched glossy bezel and hinge. The included six-cell battery protrudes about a half an inch beyond the back of the netbook, and is slightly wobbly to the touch, but given the 6:45 (hr:min) battery life, a little wobble doesn’t bother us.

As we discovered in our netbook upgrading feature, both RAM and hard drive are easily accessible, although the hard drive panel uses TORX-6 fasteners rather than the more common Phillips head screws found on the RAM compartment. Still, if you’re ponying up for an SSD or larger hard drive for your netbook, you can probably spare a few bucks for a TORX-6 driver, too.

The NB205 looks good and runs well. But why is the tilde key down between the Alt key and the space bar?

The NB205 sports the standard array of ports: three USB 2.0, VGA, audio jacks, 10/100 Ethernet, and an SD card reader. Remember the bonus features we talked about? One of the USB ports is a Sleep-and-Charge port, so you can charge your phone or other USB-powered gadget even when the computer is off. It’s an addition so obvious we wish more netbook makers included it. We also appreciate the hard drive movement sensor.

The chiclet keyboard is easy to type on—the keys are more widely spaced than most, so you’re less likely to hit the wrong key. It’s not perfect, though—some keys are in strange places (for example, the tilde key is between Alt and the space bar), and pushing too hard on a center key causes the whole keyboard to flex slightly. The touchpad is textured, and as wide as the space bar, while the buttons are responsive and clicky, albeit identical in texture to the chassis.

Because the NB205 has the same guts as every other non-Ion Atom N280 netbook out there, we expected it to perform at least as well as our favorite 10-incher, the Asus Eee 1000HE, and slightly faster than our N270-bound zero-point system, the 12-inch Lenovo S12 (reviewed last month). And it did perform between three and five percent better than the zero point in our Photoshop, MainConcept, and Quake III tests. It’s a nice (if small) boost; the equivalent of winning a 100-meter dash by a hundredth of a second—the netbook world has yet to find its Usain Bolt.

With a lap weight of two pounds, 15 ounces, the NB205 is firmly in the middle of the netbook weight class. Its price, battery life, aesthetics, and performance put it near the top of the current generation, and we appreciate perks like Sleep-and-Charge. It’s one of the best netbooks on the market today. But TORX screws on the hard drive compartment? Toshiba, you were so close.