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20 Essential Tips and Tricks Every Flickr User Should Know

Alex Castle and Norman Chan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0600

For photographers, the last decade has been a very exciting time. Between the rise of the DSLR, Photoshop, affordable HD camcorders, and other technologies, the tools of the trade have seen dramatic changes. But one of the most important innovations has been Flickr.com, which hasn’t changed how pictures are taken, but how they’re stored and shared.

Flickr is an online photo management service and social network, which has become the service of choice for professional and amateur photographers to share their work and discuss their trade. Its open API has allowed the community to develop hundreds of third party apps and add-ons to enhance its otherwise minimal interface. Because we know that many of our readers are into the art and tech of photography, we’ve compiled the 20 essential tips and tricks that we think every Flickr user should know. And even if you aren't a photographer or don't have a Flickr account, we have cool tricks for searching and browsing through Flickr's incredible database of photos.

Read on to find out how to get the most of Flickr!

Automatically Upload the Contents of a Folder to Flickr

We’ve already shown you how to do quick, batch uploads to Flickr, but wouldn’t be nice if you could just select a folder, and have to the contents of that folder automatically uploaded to Flickr, a la Dropbox? Well, as it turns out, you can, using a program called Flickr Foldr Monitr. As the name implies, the program monitrs—err, monitors a folder, and uploads any pictures dropped into that folder to Flickr.

Here’s how you set it up.

1) Download Flickr Foldr Monitr

2) Install the program. It’s a small program, so this is quick.

3) Select the folder you want to monitor. We chose C:/Photos, and checked the Include Subfolders box.

4) Click on Options.

5) We selected to upload photos to sets based on directory name. This makes organization easy, but remember that users with free accounts are limited to three sets, so choose your directories wisely. We also chose to have the Monitr start syncing and minimize itself when run, so it behaves like Dropbox.

6) Click on Authenticate, and you’ll be taken to the standard Flickr app authentication page. When you’re finished, click on the Finish Authentication button.

7) Click Go. Now the Foldr Monitr is active, and any pictures you put in the folder will be uploaded.

Add Flickr to Windows search with Flickr Search Connectr

Among the new features in Windows 7 is Search Federation, which allows third-party services, such as Flickr, to integrate seamlessly with the explorer’s search bar. This means that you can select “Flickr” the same way as you would select a normal library in Windows 7, then type a query into the search bar in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Photos will show up in the explorer, as though they were on your local computer even though they’re actually on Flickr’s servers.

The enable Flickr search, do the following:

1) Go to http://www.istartedsomething.com/flickrsearch/

2) Scroll down to where it says “Get the Flickr Search Connectr.”

3) Select whether you want to search results from all of Flickr or from a certain user (such as yourself) and how you want to sort the results.

4) Click Download the connector.

5) Now simply double click the flickr.osdx file that was downloaded to your computer, and Flickr search will be added to the Windows 7 explorer.

Upload Videos to Flickr

Earlier this year, Flickr opened up video hosting for Pro and Free members. Free account holders can share 2 videos a month, uploading them using the web or Desktop Uploadr utility. The rules for videos are simple: they must be safe or moderate content, and you can only upload videos you’ve created yourself – no YouTube-style hosting of TV show clips. Videos show up in normal search results, but only play when you click through to the video’s permalink page. You can also filter searches to only display video results.

Since Flickr considers videos a “long photo,” they’ve instituted a time limit of 90 seconds for each clip. If you upload a file that’s longer than 90 seconds, Flickr will NOT split up the video into separate clips – only the first minute and a half will play. High-definition video (720p) uploads are possible, but only Pro members can share those clips (check out this HD gallery).

A Free account member can still upload an HD clip, but Flickr will downsize it to 500 pixels wide (500x281 for widescreen videos, 500x375 for 4:3 content). The service will store the full resolution version until a Free user upgrades their account. There’s also a file size cap of 150MB per video (500MB if you’re a Pro user uploading an HD clip).

Finally, here are the file container formats that Flickr accepts for video uploads: AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG 4, 3PG. As for codecs, Flickr doesn’t have an official list of supported types -- H.264 works, but and DivX and Xvid do not.

Know Creative Commons Your Rights

Flickr uses the popular Creative Commons licenses to allow you to choose how the photos you post can be used. If you choose to apply one of these licenses to your photos, you’re granting the public the right to distribute those photos, with one or more conditions. Here are the four common conditions of Creative Commons licenses, and what they mean:

Attribution: If a person wishes to distribute this photo, they must credit the photographer. Though originally an option, this condition is now included by default in all valid Creative Commons licenses—you cannot select a license without Attribution on Flickr.

NonCommercial: Any use, distribution, or derivation of this photo can only be used for non-commercial purposes. In other words, your picture cannot be used in advertisements, on for-profit websites, in magazines, or for any other money-making purpose.

NoDerivs: Anyone who wishes to distribute your pictures must distribute them exactly as you posted them—they cannot make derivative works.

ShareAlike: Any derivative works made from your photo must be shared under the same Creative Commons license as the photo itself. This condition is obviously mutually exclusive to the NoDerivs condition above.

So which should you use? Generally, the most lenient license that you’re comfortable with. If you want others to see your photography, then the more freedom you give people, the more likely they are to distribute your photo for you, raising your profile. If you use Flickr for purely personal photos, then of course you’ll want to keep all rights reserved.

Parse a Hotlinked Flickr Image

When someone uses Flickr to host a photo on their blog, the hotlinked image actually contains information that can lead you back to that user’s Flickr page so you can browse the rest of the photos from that set. Decoding the status photo URL is pretty easy. For example, let’s take a look at a cool photo from user SlimJim:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2501/4112962396_07998b272f.jpg

The part of the URL we care about is the first part of the filename – in this case, 4112962396. Copy this photo ID number and paste it at the end of this address: “http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=”. This will take you to the Flickr photo page, where you can see the username of the photo’s owner and click through to their photostream.

Quick Tip: You can input a Flickr photostream address (ie. http://www.flickr.com/photos/username) to http://idgettr.com/ to get that account’s Flickr user ID number. This id number can then be used with a variety of Flickr API tools to set up slideshows, galleries, or RSS feeds.

5 Essential Flickr Greasemonkey Scripts

If you’re looking for something to customize the way you interact Flickr, without going as far as to install a FireFox add-on, consider Greasemonkey scripts. These snippets of code can be loaded into the Firefox GreaseMonkey plugin, and apply subtle enhancements to the Flickr UI. You can find a giant listing of Flickr GreaseMonkey Scripts here, but we’ve collected five of our favorites for you below:

Multi Group Sender: A simple script that changes the behavior of the normal “Send to group “ button to allow you to send to multiple groups at once. Excellent for getting your photos some exposure.

Flickr AllSizes+: Adds a convenient “All Sizes” button to photo pages, which allows you to quickly access any size version of the photo.

flickrPM: Adds extra icons next to user photos in discussion forums and photo pages, making it easier to get more information about other Flickr users, and to get in contact with them.

Greased Lightbox: Not just for Flickr, this script opens thumbnail images from services like Flickr and Google images in a popout “lightbox” without actually having to load a new page.

Flickr Auto Page: Don’t worry about hitting the end of the page with Auto Page, which automatically loads new images as you scroll down.

Download All of a User or Group's Photos

Now that the Flickrleech website has gone offline, where do you turn to batch download images from a single user or group? Flickr Downloadr is an open-source desktop application that lets you preview images based on keyword search, specific user id, or group name. You can sort your results to filter out ones copyrighted with a Creative Commons license, and then batch download any chosen images to a local disk. The interface is designed to look integrated with Windows Vista and 7, but the newest version also works with XP.

Take a Stroll through the Flickr App Garden

In this article, you’ve seen how Flickr can be augmented with extensions, plugins, bookmarklets, mobile apps and more. But truthfully, what we’ve shown you is just a fraction of the huge collection of applications and webapps written with the Flickr API, which allow you to interact with Flickr in all sorts of new ways. Flickr collects all these apps for you in an app-store-esque-but-free service called the “App Garden.” Just point your browser to www.flickr.com/services/ and start browsing apps. The app garden’s pretty crowded, though, so we’ll call out some of our favorite featured apps.

Picnik: This webapp is essentially photoshop-lite in a browser window. It’s got the tools you need for most any basic photo manipulation, and it’s free. Best of all, it integrates with Flickr, letting you edit your photos directly, without any extra uploading or downloading.

Color Hunter: For all you designers out there, Flickr can be an excellent source of inspiration, with its never-ending stream of professional quality photographs. Color Hunter lets you take a photo that inspires you, and extract a color pallet from it. Further, you can tell Color Hunter a tag to search for, such as “Ocean” and it will search Flickr for photos with that tag and show you a list of pictures, with pallets.

Flogr: For any aspiring photographer, a photoblog is pretty much a necessity these days. Fortunately, there are webapps like Flogr, which handles a lot of the coding for you, easily turning your Flickr photostream into a photoblog.

Flickr Schedulr: Once you’ve set your photo blog up with Flogr, or developed a following on Flickr, you need to start making sure you keep uploading a steady stream of photos to keep people’s attention. Flickr Schedulr allows you to schedule uploads, meaning that you don’t have to log on to upload a photo once or twice a day—instead, you just queue a bunch up in advance, and let Flickr Schedulr take care of the rest.

Fd’s Flickr Toys: After all that talk of running a photoblog, it’s time for a little fun and games. That’s what fd’s Flickr Toys are for—having fun with (or at the expense of) your Flickr photos. The Flickr Toys let you make jigsaw puzzles, fake magazine covers, motivational pictures, Warhol-esque pop portraits, and more.

Manage a Flickr RSS Feed

Flickr offers several different RSS feeds to serve photos from individual accounts, groups, pools, and even photo comments. Each feed has parameter options that let you filter specific users, photo sizes, languages, and friends. The user ID parameter can be acquired from sites like http://idgettr.com. Here are some basic feeds you can tap for your blog or RSS reader:

Public photos: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne

Friends’ photostreams: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_friends.gne (user_id parameter required)

Public favorites: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne (user_id parameter required)

Group pools: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne (id parameter required)

Only recent activity: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/activity.gne (user_id parameter required)

Recent Forum Discussion topics: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/forums.gne

So, if you want to create a feed that just shows the photos of your friends, the feed would be:
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_friends.gne?user_id=XXXXXXXX?friends=1. Check the Flickr feeds page for specific parameter syntax.

You can also use a Flickr RSS feed to create a dynamic Windows 7 wallpaper. Go to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes, and make a copy of one of the themes (we picked aero.theme) to your Desktop. Open it in Notepad and add the following code to the file:

[slideshow]
Interval=1800000
aShuffle=1
RssFeed= (your RSS feed goes here)

Then save it, and double-click to install your theme (You may need to right click and open with Windows Shell Common Dll). Only RSS feeds that include images as enclosure items will work. With Flickr, that means you’ll need to add the “?format=atom_1” extension to the end of the base feed.

Use Flickr Stats Wisely

If you’re a pro user, Flickr’s Stats page can tell you a lot about how popular your photos are. Here’s a quick breakdown of the kind of information you can find on the picture stats and user stats pages:

How many people are viewing your photos

If you click on the Photo Stats link in the Additional Information section of a photo page, you’ll see the number of views, favorites and comments the photo has received recently, and in total. If you have a pro account, you can click Account stats at the top of the photo stats page to see a listing of your most popular photos, and their stats.

Where they’re coming from

You can also see a list of top referrers, both for individual photos and on an account-wide level. This is an excellent tool for uncovering the cause of a sudden spike in popularity for a photo, as it will help you identify if it’s been linked to by a popular blog or other website.

If one of your referrers is a search engine (and it almost certainly will be) you can click on that referrer to see a list of the search terms that brought people to your photo.

Send Photos to Flickr with Email

Though this feature was originally set up for users to upload photos from their web-enabled camera phones, email is a really quick way to get your photos up on your Flickr account. The way this works is that Flickr gives you a secret email address (which you can set up here), and you just send your photo as an attachment to that address to upload the photo to your account. The subject line of the email becomes the title of the photo, and any email body text becomes the photo description. The email address is supposed to be private, but you can give it with your friends and family if you want to create a shared pool of photos.

You can also add tags to these emailed photos by adding the “tags:” at the end of the subject line or on any new line of the body text. For example, if you wanted to tag an image ‘comic-con’ and ‘costume’, you would append “tags: comic-con costume” to the end of the subject line. Put tags in quotes if they are longer than a single word. Tip: turn off the auto-signature on your phone (ie. “Sent from my iPhone”) before sending photos to Flickr, or else it’ll appear in your image description.

Additionally, you can set the privacy settings for each email upload but appending a little bit of text to the secret email address. If your secret email is secretemail@photos.flickr.com, for example, use secretemail+friends@photos.flickr.com to only make the photo visible to users on your friends list. Other options include:

secretemail +family@photos.flickr.com - Visible to family
secretemail +ff@photos.flickr.com - Visible to friends and family
secretemail +private@photos.flickr.com - Only visible to you
secretemail +public@photos.flickr.com - Visible to everyone

Email Flickr Photos Directly to Your Blog or Twitter

Along with emailing photos to your Flickr account, you can also get Flickr to post that photo to your Twitter feed. This requires linking and authorizing Flickr to modify your Twitter account. Go to the Add Twitter page, and click the “Head over to Twitter now” button. Once authorized, emailing a photo attachment to your secret Flickr2Twitter email address (which is separate from your normal secret Flickr upload email) will post a tweet with a shortened Flickr link (http://flic.kr) to your Twitter stream. The subject line of that email will be the title of the image and also the tweet (max 116 characters).

Upload to Flickr from your Favorite Desktop Client

Flickr is a great tool for managing your photos online, but there’s still something to be said for the power and speed offered by a dedicated desktop photo-management or photo-manipulation program. Fortunately, plugins have been written for all of the most popular photo apps using Flickr’s API, which allow you to upload to Flickr directly from within those programs. Here are some examples:

Google Picasa

Picasa is an excellent photo management program available for free from Google. It’s able to tag and organize photos, and it’s available for free here. Picasa is made to work with Google’s Picasa Web Albums service, but it’s also possible to upload directly to Flickr using a plugin called picasa2flickr which can be found here.

Adobe Lightroom

If you’re seriously into photography, chances are good you use Adobe Lightroom, which allows you to organize and process your photographs. If you use Lightroom, and you want to show off your photo’s on Flickr, you can download the Export-to-Flickr plugin here. This plugin is “donationware” which means that after a trial period, you must make a donation of at least 1 cent to keep using it. A bit of a pain, but a very handy plugin nonetheless.

If you’d like to try out a full version of Lightroom for free for a couple of months, check out the public beta of Lightroom 3, which is going on right now.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

For those not willing to shell out $200 for Lightroom or $700 for Photoshop, the $80 Photoshop Elements is a strong choice, with all the photo editing tools needed by the vast majority of users. Unlike the previous two programs, you don’t even need a plugin to upload to Flickr from Photoshop elements, the functionality is built-in. To access it, look in the Online Album menu, under More Options.

Make the Most of Flickr’s Geotagging Feature

Here are three easy ways to Geotag photos:

Tag from the Flickr photo page itself

Using a bookmarklet called loc.alize.this you can geotag your Flickr photos from inside your browser. Simply go to the bookmarklet’s homepage and save the bookmarklet to your bookmarks list or quickbar. Then, visit the photo page for one of your photos, and click on the bookmarklet. It’ll inject the geotagging code right into the page, without having to reload.

Tag from Picasa

Picasa has an excellent geotagging interface, complete with integrated Google map. Simply download the program[picasa.google.com], use it to tag your images (the tags will be saved into the images EXIF data) and then use the Picasa2Flickr plugin listed above to upload the photos to Flickr.

Tag from a dedicated program

For the fastest tagging experience, you’ll want to go with a dedicated tagging program, such as GeoSetter. Being entirely devoted to geotagging, Geosetter has the most complete list of features as is the fastest way to automatically or manually tag photos. Plus, like Picasa, tagging your photos before uploading to Flickr means that the geo information is stored both locally and in the cloud.

To see all of the geotagged photos on Flickr displayed on a map, just hit up http://www.flickr.com/map/, navigate to part of the world map, and click Search the map.

Use Flickr’s URL Shortener, Flic.kr

Flickr employs its own URL shortening service, Flic.kr, for linking to images in tweets, but you can also use it to link you images without using a third-party service like tinyURL or Bit.ly. The only tricky thing is that Flic.kr doesn’t have a landing page to shorten URLS, and photo id numbers are shortened using a complicated base58 system. Fortunately, the user-created http://urlkr.com/ site will let you generate a Flic.kr URL from a full-length address. If you want to link people to your main Flickr photostream page, you can also use the address http://flic.kr/username, which is shorter than http://flickr.com/username by three characters.

Educate Yourself with Flickr

Flickr is more than just a photo sharing site; it’s a community. That means that you can link your account to friends and family, and that there are thousands of user groups, where people share photos and carry on discussions. Many of these are very topical (“Live Music”) for instance, but there are others that can be very educational for the up-and-coming photographer. Here are some examples:

Beginners Digital Photography: General purpose discussion for those new to digital photography.

Nikon Digital Learning Center: An educational group sponsored by Nikon, and focusing on Nikon gear.

Canon DSLR User Group: The flip side of the coin—A group focusing on digital photography with Canon cameras.

Photoshop Support Group: A forum for photographers to talk about Photoshop

Adobe Lightroom: Similar to the above, but focusing on Adobe’s Lightroom product.

And that’s just a small sample of the educational groups on Flickr. If there’s something you’re interested in or have questions about, just do a group search[http://www.flickr.com/groups/] and chances are good that you’ll find just what you’re looking for.

4 Different (and Awesome) Ways to Browse Flickr

Even if you’re not a professional photographer or active Flickr contributor, you can still have fun browsing the millions of photos uploaded by other users. In fact, you don’t even have to register a Flickr account to enjoy other people’s photographs. Flickr’s native search and Explore feature are decent for casual browsing, but here are some cool sites that let you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Multicolr: You may have heard of Flickr Color Picker, a site that lets you search Flickr photos based on color palette, but Multicolr does the task better. Not only can you choose from 120 starting colors, you can add up to 10 colors to the mix to find an interesting image that incorporates those tones.

Spell with Flickr: This search site lets you find photos that feature specific letters, so you can spell out words or phrases with random user photos. Handy for writing ransom notes!

Findr: Tags are useful for identifying pictures, but search results can be difficult to navigate. This site lets you filter searches with related tags, narrowing down results until you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Retrievr: Retrievr lets you pick a color and draw a picture in a window, after which it’ll try to find Flickr results that match the shape of drawing. The technology behind this site is still experimental so it doesn’t work 100% of the time. But when it does, the results are very cool. Alternatively, you can upload an image for the site to process and find similar-looking photos.

Access Flickr on your Smartphone

You don’t take your photos sitting at your desk, so why should you only be able to access Flickr there? You’re not, of course, thanks to the wealth of Flickr-API-powered smartphone apps, available on all the major platforms. There are lots of offerings, but here are our favorites for each service:

iPhone: Flickr

The iPhone has the honor of being the only smartphone platform which currently has an official Flickr app. When you consider that the app is free, fast, and as feature-packed as any of the competition, it’s hard to recommend anything else. Did we mention that it’s free?

Android: Pixelpipe

There’s no official Flickr app for Android, but there is Pixelpipe[http://pixelpipe.com/], a multi-platform program for uploading content from mobile devices to more than 100 different online services, including Flickr. The app’s not quite as slick as the iPhone’s, but the huge number of supported services, and the low price point (a dollar for the full version, free light version) makes this an easy recommend.

Windows Mobile: m.flickr.com

Ok, so you’re using a WinMo phone. We feel for you. Fortunately, no matter what platform smartphone you use, you can access Flickr’s mobile site, m.flickr.com. And actually, you’re not missing out on too much; Flickr’s mobile site is a fantastic example of how a mobile site should be made, giving you quick access to your photos, as well as those of your contacts, the day’s most interesting photos, and those taken nearby. Unfortunately, you can’t upload photos with the website, but you can still use the upload-by-email function.

5 Sweet Firefox Flickr Plug-ins

There are dozens, if not hundreds of Firefox plug-ins that integrate Flickr with the browser. But as is the case with most Firefox Add-ons, installing too many can bog the browser down. Here are our picks for the five most essential ones that are worth installing.

FireUploader: This extension is an all-inclusive file manager that lets you upload and download to a variety of file sharing and social networking sites, including Flickr. You just have to log in and authorize the add-on with Flickr to use its simple file browser window to manage batch photo uploads.

Cooliris: Formerly known as PicLens, this add-on lets you browse Flickr images on an infinite 3D wall (as well as images from other image sites). It’s a really cool way to browse large galleries and view image searches. Alternatively, you can also visit picturesandbox.com to get a similar photo landscape for searches.

Uploadr: Don’t confuse this with Flickr’s official Uploadr desktop app. This independently developed Firefox add-on lets you right-click to upload images you find on other websites directly to your Flickr account. Think of it as using Flickr for image bookmarking.

Better Flickr: Like Better Gmail, this is Lifehacker’s custom compilation of Greasemonkey scripts for Flickr, packaged in a Firefox add-on. It adds convenient interface features like a photo magnifier and thumbnails enhancer to make the Flickr homepage easier to use.

Flickr Original: If you like to archive photos, this lightweight extension is for you. It lets you view and download the original size file for any Flickr photo, granted the user is sharing it with the public. Sure, you can replicate its functionality by browsing the Flickr website, but this will save you a few clicks.

Have any essential Flickr tips we didn't mention? Post them in the comments section below!

Cryptic Talks Star Trek Online's Space Combat, Away Missions, and Competing with WoW

Norman Chan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0600

We chat with Craig Zinkievich, executive producer at Cryptic Studios, about making a game for Trekkers and competing with World of Warcraft

Set 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (the last film before the J.J. Abrams reboot), Star Trek Online puts you in the shoes of a captain in a newly sparked war between the goody-two-shoes Federation and savage Klingon empire. The promise of exploring the final frontier, massive space battles, and obscure Star Trek references fills us with geeky glee. We went down to Cryptic Studios’ offices to play the game and quiz Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich to ensure that fans of Star Trek and MMOs are getting the best of both worlds.

Maximum PC: It looks like Star Trek Online is focusing more on action, as opposed to boring bits like interstellar diplomacy.

Craig Zinkievich: The game is set in 2409, about 30 years after the events of the Star Trek: Nemesis movie. A lot of stuff has happened since then. The Borg have returned to the Alpha Quadrant, bent on assimilation. The Romulan Empire still exists, but they have to deal with the fact that they don’t have a home world – so there’s a power vacuum there. The most important aspect is that the Kitomer Accord – the treaty between the Klingon Empire and Federation – has broken down. In STO, you play either as a Captain in Starfleet, the military wing of the Federation, or the Klingon Defense Force.

We’ve really tried to make the content in Star Trek Online feel as though you’re in one of the Star Trek shows or movies. You’re never just in one place. You can be on a ship, get a distress call, beam down to a planet, then beam up to a satellite that’s on fire, and finally back to your ship for a climactic space battle. You’re constantly moving between ground and space to really get that cinematic feel.

The biggest challenge in creating STO is that it’s two whole games—you have your ground combat and your space combat. But the game demands it; you have to go back and forth, and I think it’ll be the strongest aspect of the game.

On Space Combat

CZ: Space combat is very much like the shows. It’s not a dogfight—you’re not zipping around. You’re in huge 1,000-meter starships with hundreds of crew onboard. In the shows, it’s all about tactics and positioning. It’s about bolstering a shield that’s taken damage, transferring power from your deflector dish to your weapons or engines at the right time. It’s about knocking your enemy’s shields down with phasers and taking them out with photon torpedoes.

Each ship has four directional shields – though some of the smaller ships only have one shield. All weapons in STO have facing and firing arcs to them. For example, a ship can have forward facing photo torpedoes with a 90 degree arc, and two phaser banks with broad-side arcs. So in battle, you would flank broadside along your enemy to use both phasers to knock down enemy shields and then turn toward the enemy to finish them off.

MPC: Is the point of the battle to destroy the ship?

CZ: Yes, because it’s wartime, the battle does come down to destroying your enemy’s ship. Most of the time, they don’t give up at the end. There are certain instances there the enemy will surrender to move the story along, but most of the time it’s a fight to the death.

MPC: How does respawn work, then, if your ship is destroyed?

CZ: Well, first and foremost, it’s a game. We thought of a whole bunch of different ways to do interesting things for respawn, but it really came down to getting players back into the action. You don’t lose your ship [if it blows up]; you just respawn at the beginning of the map with a little damage done to your systems. But overall, we don’t want you to spend 80 hours getting that Sovereign class vessel, get owned, and then lose that ship.

MPC: How does your crew and shuttles factor into the gameplay?

CZ: Each ship has a crew bar, which affects your hull regeneration rate – how fast you can repair systems that get damaged. There are certain powers that allow you to send boarding parties to other ships with shuttles, which takes crew. You can even send healing parties to repair other vessels during co-op.

The really cool powers come from your bridge officers. Like the shows, it’s all about the people—who’s there on the bridge during a crisis defines how the ship deals with it. You have a roster of bridge officers (starting off with one) that you can upgrade over time. These guys are like MMO pets, but taken to the next level. You name them, customize their look, give them equipment, and level them up with new skills and specializations. And the skills they have really end up defining what role you play in missions.

Some skills include tractor beams, which can hold enemies in place during combat, or high yield torpedoes that deal super damage. Each officer has one ability to begin with, but as you level them up, they get up to four skills. Each officer seat can also be upgraded, too. Officers in Ensign seats can only use one skill, while those in Lieutenant or Commander seats can activate more of their skills at once. With bigger ships, you gain more weapon slots and more bridge officer seats as well. The maximum is six officers with 12 skills total.

MPC: How does ship upgrading work?

CZ: Players start off with a generic Light Cruiser ship. Several hours into the game, you replace that with one of three different classes of ships – Engineering, Science, and Tactical, each with five tiers that you can advance through. Every ship has weapons, deflector shields, impulse engines, and Officer seats, all of which can be upgraded. But when you actually reach a different tier of ship, you get a new ship [of that class] entirely.

MPC: Can you re-spec your ship in the middle of the game?

CZ: You can change ship classes at any time if you want to try a different style of play. You just use your Starfleet “merit” and buy the ship at a Space dock. You don’t lose the previous ships that you had, either. You’ll always have the Light Cruiser, for example, if you wanted to use it for a specific mission. One night you could use a Defiant class ship for a quick space battle, and the next night, you could change to a Science class ship – the healer – to support your guild. You can really change what role you play on the fly.

MPC: So there are 16 different ship types in the game?

CZ: Yes, there are 16 total configurations total, from three ship classes with five ships in each tier, plus the first Light Cruiser. But within each configuration, we want you to be able to customize your ship’s appearance.

MPC: Like designing your character in any other MMO.

CZ: Yes, but still want you to be able to look at somebody’s ship, and know what configuration and class that ship is in.

MPC: Does the game have the “hot rod” style Enterprise from the new Star Trek movie?

CZ: [Laughs] No, we don’t have the new J. J. Abrams “hot rod” ship in the game yet, but we do have access to that in terms of our license. We’re focusing on filling out and rounding out what [the Federation of] 2409 looks like.

[Craig then loads up several ships on a computer, including ones based on the Intrepid, Excelsior, Miranda, and even Prometheus classes that will be recognizable to hardcore Star Trek fans.]

Our artists have done a fantastic job designing these ships and the elements that’ll let you customize each configuration.

Away Mission Gameplay

MPC: Let's talk about the ground-based away missions.

CZ: When you go down to a ground mission, you always play in a five-person away team. If you’re playing by yourself, you beam down with four bridge officers. If you’re teaming up with other players, you’re going to all go as captains.

MPC: Sounds like that would be against protocol!

CZ: Yeah, it’s funny. You have protocols like the Prime Directive, but those things never come up in the shows unless they have to break them! So, yes, you’re constantly breaking protocol by beaming down, but it wouldn’t be fun just to sit on your ship.

But this is another one of those places where you can change your style of play depending on which Bridge officers you slot. You can choose to bring medical officers if you’re playing with a Leroy Jenkins-type player one night, or bring a tactical officer if you’re going on the offensive.

MPC: Which player in a party gets to decide who to bring down, if you’re not playing with a full roster?

CZ: The team leader gets to assign which players go in the away team slots, and who has control of extra slots.

MPC: And the biggest group you can play with is five players?

CZ: Exactly, it’s five people per normal instanced team, which is the same for instanced space battles. There are larger persistent areas, like large fleet actions, where you can have dozens of ships. The same goes with large away missions, where you can have several teams [of five players each] on one planet at once.

Bridge officers on the ground are fully-functional MMO pets. They’ll follow you, use their abilities, and go into combat. If you want to, you can micro-manage them. You can tell them to stay in one spot, be aggressive, and even set their targets before combat. You can ask them to use special abilities on the ground, like healing or setting down minefields. Ground combat is fast-paced run-and-gun. It’s about maneuvering around your enemies and flanking them from the side, which does more damage. As a Captain, you can equip yourself with two weapons that you can switch at will, including melee weapons and martial arts skills.

MPC: And what kinds of things are you doing on away missions? Just killing everyone?

CZ: Just think of all the myriad things you’ve seen in an episode of Star Trek. For example, after you dispatch Klingon ships above a planet, you may have to beam down to the planet to save the locals from the Klingon landing party. Some missions ask you to recover artifacts and others have you following people back in time.

MPC: What type of loot will you be able to collect from missions and random exploration?

CZ: With bridge officers, they all have a paper doll that needs to be equipped with armor, personal shields, weapons, and other tools, which you’ll find on your missions. The same goes with your own character avatar. There are plenty of items and loot that you’ll find within the game, which you can sell or trade at spaceports. You can even find potential bridge officers.

MPC: Like an alien that you meet on a random world.

CZ: Yes. Another one of the loot items that is very important on the ground missions is your kit, which is a career-limited loot item. The kit gives you really cool powers on the ground, like Security Escort, which lets you beam in extra NPC characters for this mission.

MPC: A bunch of red shirts?

CZ: Exactly! They should have a much higher aggressiveness factor. These kits end up defining your role. Medical science players can deploy stasis fields with their medical tricorders. And over time, as you level them up, each kit can have up to four powers.

MPC: Will you be allowed to team up with friends who are at a much higher or lower level than your character?

CZ: The missions themselves are set level, and you can bring in a range of levels to play in them. Like City of Heroes, we have a sidekick system that lets your team scale to one level, with the experience rewards scaled along the same line as well.

MPC: What will be the level cap for the game?

CZ: We don’t have levels, per se. We have five ranks in the game, ranging from Lieutenant to Admiral. Each of those has 10 sub-ranks, so that ends up being 50 “levels.” And that’s indicated by the pins on your uniform, just like on the show.

MPC: You mentioned spaceports. Do you mean space stations like Deep Space Nine?

CZ: There are several large social hubs within the game. Earth Space Dock is probably the largest one for the Federation. That’s where you go to repair your ship, visit the auction house, and get access to new ships. There are major ones like Deep Space Nine, and minor ones like Memory Alpha, which have similar amenities.

MPC: Sounds like you’re including a lot of details from the shows.

CZ: In almost all of the content that we’ve made, there are Star Trek references, like a familiar character’s grandson or something that was alluded to once in an episode. We have pretty hardcore writers who end up getting all of those references in.

The Genesis Device

MPC: In terms of art assets and content creation, how much of that is crafted by designers and how much is randomly generated?

CZ: If you’re going to make a Star Trek MMO, you’ve to let players boldly go where no one has gone before, right? So we needed to make hundreds and thousands of planetary systems that you could explore. We did that by creating a Genesis game engine that could procedurally generate maps and systems.

Not all of the content is automatically generated. A good deal is first procedurally generated, and then given to our artists to hand-craft to coincide with story-driven missions. The pure procedurally generated content is more for exploration, when you want to make contact with someone who’s never heard of the Federation before. Genesis has been a really powerful toolset that allows us to create the foundation for our artists and designers to add the really cool content, as opposed to spending their time on the more boring tasks.

MPC: Do players then experience the same content or see different worlds when completing mission on their own?

CZ: The main episodic story content will be the same for all players. There are also Patrol missions, which will also be the same for everyone. But the exploration content, when you go to star cluster, for example, will be different for each player. There may be some similarities, but you’ll end up seeing different stuff.

MPC: How much of the Star Trek universe can you explore?

CZ: The game is split into four hubs – Federation/Klingon (where you start), Romulan, Cardassian, and finally Borg at the end. We liken each of these hubs to a season of Star Trek, each season with a set number of episode missions based there. Each will have major and minor story arcs, as well as one-off episodes. There’s an overarching story arc for the whole game, so that always shows up in each hub, story-wise.

Each hub is split in sectors, where are high-level maps that you’ll use to fly between planets and spaceports. This is one of the persistent areas where you’ll see hundreds of ships flying around, in addition to the large fleet action zones.

Making the Game Appealing to Star Trek Fans

MPC: What kinds of compromises did you have to make for this to appeal to both MMO players and Star Trek fans who might never have played an MMO?

CZ: There are some compromises we’ve had to make, license-wise, like adding many phaser weapons variations [in addition to the two main types in Star Trek canon]. In terms of gameplay, our goal is to make a really deep MMO that doesn’t scare away someone who has never played an MMO before. For example, the power-level interface has a complex mode where you can move individual power bars, but there’s also a mode where you can use preset power levels for offensive or defensive stances.

MPC: Do you base the content on materials like the Star Trek technical manuals and the Klingon language?

CZ: We definitely use the technical manuals to get the scale right. We don’t have plans to translate the game into Klingon, but who knows, maybe we’ll figure out a way to get the community to localize it for us.

MPC: What about playing as the Klingons

CZ: We’re not ready to reveal too much, but the Klingon gameplay will be drastically different from the Federation. It’ll open up a couple of hours into the game, and will be more PVP focused.

MPC: Is there going to be a lot of interaction between the two factions?

CZ: Yes, through the PVP and the indirect PVP gameplay throughout the Neutral Zone. But the storyline on the Klingon side is not the same as the one on the Federation side.

The 800-Pound MMO in the Room

MPC: When you’re designing a new MMO, how do you design it to compete with World of Warcraft?

CZ: I don’t know if there will ever be another World of Warcraft [-sized game]. The fact that WoW has so many subscribers is awesome, because it’s exposed so many people to MMOs. Whether or not there will be another game that gets millions upon millions of subscribers isn’t really [our concern]—we didn’t sit down and ask ourselves how we could steal WoW subscribers.

We first asked ourselves how we could make a decent MMO, how we could develop a reasonable business model, and have reasonable expectations. And then, we tried to make it the MMO that the Star Trek universe deserves.

MPC: And what business models work, if you don’t want to compete with WoW?

CZ: You can look at games like Warhammer and Conan, which launched with a few hundred thousand purchases. You can have a pretty nice business with a few hundred thousand users, or even fewer. So, I don’t think many people going into the MMO market sanely think they need 10 million subscribers to make money.

MPC: Is it a chicken-and-egg scenario where you need to have enough subscriber revenue to make new content to attract new subscribers?

CZ: Definitely. There’s a barrier. From our experience, if you don’t break 100,000 subscribers at any point in time, your game tends to just go away. Most games that don’t break that 100,000-subscriber mark tend to just be flashes in the pan. But once you do, you tend to get a really solid fan base with enough revenue to keep adding to the game, and things go pretty well.

MPC: What do you think about different business models, like opting for micro-transactions instead of subscriptions?

CZ: We like the subscription model, and will probably be using that in the near term. We are looking at micro-transactions and how that would work – Star Trek will have micro-transactions, but most of those will be cosmetic things. Some will augment gameplay, but won’t replace any gameplay.

MPC: Is there a risk in Cryptic having multiple MMOs in the market at the same time?

CZ: I don’t think there’s a risk as long as long as the products are different. If we were making fantasy MMO after fantasy MMO and competing with ourselves, we’d eventually run into problems. I also don’t think that we’re banking of people to play our games based on our name, either. We just want to make games that we want to play, and hope that other people will want to play as well.

MPC: How do you determine the long-term plans for an MMO, given the uncertainty of success?

CZ: We don’t have life spans on our games, and we go into the first year with an expansion and update plan. That being said, though, from our experience, the longer you plan ahead, the more likely the plan is useless, because the subscribers will tell you what they like and dislike, and what they want to see more of. So, even though we put a plan out there, we have to be flexible and listen to our captive audience. Which is kind of the cool part about making MMOs. [Once it’s released], it’s not just us making the game—everyone contributes.

Cryptic has also provided five keys to the Star Trek Online closed-beta going on right now. Post a comment on our Facebook page, under the Star Trek Online post, to get your name in the random drawing. We'll pick five readers to receive beta keys on Monday, November 23rd, at noon PST.

Complete Guide to Troubleshooting USB Problems

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:30:00 -0600

The "U" in USB stands for "Universal", and no other I/O port does so much for so many computer users as USB. From providing a home for keyboards and mice to driving printers, scanners, all-in-one units, and providing access to terabytes of storage and the Internet, USB ports do it all. That also means that USB-related problems can cripple your PC, leaving it unable to access storage, input, and output devices.

Tracking down the causes of USB-related woes can be difficult, but in this article, we show you the common and uncommon causes for USB problems – and their solutions.

USB Troubleshooting 101

Recent operating systems include drivers for common USB devices, such as keyboards, mice, and storage devices. If one of these devices is not recognized when you plug it into a USB port, try another USB port on the computer itself (we'll discuss troubleshooting ports built into hubs later), preferably a USB port built into the port cluster on the rear of a desktop PC.

If the device works in some USB ports, but not others, note the ports that are not working. This information will be used to help determine if the cause is the hardware setup at the BIOS level or at the Windows driver or Device Manager level.

If the device works on another PC, but not on yours, the problem lies with your PC. However, if the device doesn't work on any PC, it's time to replace the cable, or the device itself.

Even if you never have a USB device that doesn't work at all, you might see one of the following messages when you plug a USB device into your computer or into an external hub:

"This device can perform faster"

To solve this problem, we need to see how USB ports are configured in the system BIOS – and find out what type of USB hub is in use.

"Hub power exceeded"

This problem, on the other hand, requires a trip to the Windows Device Manager.

Diagnosing USB Port Problems in BIOS Setup

BIOS setup is the place to check if you have any of the following USB problems:

- Your system doesn't recognize a mainstream USB device, such as a printer, mouse, or storage device, in any USB port.

- You get a "This device can perform faster" error message when you plug a Hi-Speed USB (aka USB 2.0) device into any port on a recent computer.

- You can use a USB drive for storage, but you can't boot from it, and you've verified the drive is a bootable device.

- You can use a USB keyboard in Windows, but not for accessing the BIOS at system startup.

To check BIOS settings, restart your computer and press the appropriate key to open the BIOS setup menu.

Tip: If you are unable to access the BIOS setup menu with a USB keyboard, plug in a PS/2 (6-pin DIN) keyboard (if your system has a PS/2 keyboard port). It's worthwhile keeping an old PS/2 keyboard around for troubleshooting. Some USB keyboards can also be adapted to PS/2.

Checking for "Missing" USB Ports in BIOS Setup

Once you have the BIOS settings menu open, what's next? Typically, you will find USB port settings in the Integrated Ports or Integrated Peripherals menu:

If the USB controller or host controller is disabled, no USB ports will be recognized by Windows, and consequently no USB devices will be recognized either.

What if some USB ports are usable, but others are not? Some systems enable you to specify the number of USB ports in BIOS setup.

To solve problems with "missing" USB ports, make sure the following settings are enabled:

USB controller

USB 2.0 controller (aka USB EHCI controller)

USB legacy support

Save changes, exit BIOS setup, and your system will restart, providing access to USB ports.

Tip: If you are unable to use a USB keyboard in BIOS setup, but it works after Windows boots, there's a problem with USB keyboard or legacy support. Change the setting, or contact your system or motherboard vendor for a BIOS update.

Missing USB 2.0 Support

USB 2.0 support has been included in virtually all systems built in the last five years or so. However, it's possible to configure a system so USB 2.0 support is disabled.

On most systems that include USB port options in the system BIOS, you can specify whether to run USB ports in 1.1 or 2.0 (Hi-Speed USB) modes. Depending upon the system, you might see separate entries for USB controller and USB 2.0 controller in BIOS setup, or BIOS setup might have a single entry for USB controller with the option to enable 1.1 support only or 1.1/2.0 support.

Make sure USB 2.0 support is enabled, save changes, exit BIOS setup, and your system will restart, providing USB 2.0 support.

Note: If you have an old system that was never updated to Windows XP SP1 or later, its USB 2.0 ports will run only in USB 1.1 mode, regardless of the BIOS setting, until SP1 or later is installed (SP1 added USB 2.0 support). So, if you're reinstalling Windows XP original edition, make sure you install SP3 immediately, if not sooner (see our article on using the free nLite utility to do this).

Diagnosing USB Power Management Problems

Some systems cannot wake up a system from S3 (deep sleep) power management mode unless this option is enabled in the system BIOS. If you are unable to wake up your system by tapping on a USB keyboard or moving the mouse, make sure this option is enabled in the system BIOS.

Diagnosing USB Problems with Device Manager

If you're still having problems with some USB ports after making sure that the BIOS settings are correct, the next stop for Windows users is Device Manager.

In Device Manager, USB 2.0 controllers are listed as Enhanced, while USB 1.1 are listed as OpenHCD. Note that a single USB 2.0 controller can manage all USB ports built into the motherboard, while each root hub requires its own OpenHCD controller.

Note: If your system does not have USB 2.0 support enabled in the BIOS, an Enhanced controller entry will not appear in Device Manager.

Root Hubs and Generic Hubs

You won't find USB ports listed by that name in Device Manager. Instead, Device Manager lists USB ports by host device:

- Root hub

- Generic hub

Root hubs host USB ports connected to the computer's motherboard or add-on USB host adapter card. A root hub typically hosts two USB ports in 1.1 mode, and the root hub on a system with USB 2.0 support hosts all of the USB ports built into the system. To determine the number of ports a root hub hosts, open a root hub's properties sheet in Device Manager and click the Power tab.

If a root hub is disabled in Device Manager, devices connected to the hub cannot be used and are no longer displayed in Device Manager.

To enable a disabled root hub, right-click the hub and select Enable from the right-click menu. Follow any prompts displayed to complete the process.

Generic hubs are external devices that host USB ports. A generic hub plugs into a USB port, enabling the port to service multiple devices. By daisy-chaining generic hubs to a root hub, a single USB port can support up to 127 devices.

Generic hubs are available in a variety of forms, from standalone devices that include four or more USB ports to keyboards and monitors that include USB ports. Because some generic hubs are self-powered, and some are bus-powered, generic hubs can cause power problems for some USB devices.

Hubs and USB Power Problems

One of the most poorly understood causes of USB problems is the difference between self-powered and bus-powered hubs. Self-powered hubs include root hubs (which draw current from the computer's power supply) and generic hubs that are connected to AC power. These hubs provide 500mA of current to each USB port.

Generic hubs that do not have an AC power source are bus-powered, and provide only 100mA of current to each USB port.

Bus-powered hubs are suitable hosts for USB devices that use little power, such as keyboards, most mice, printers, and external hard disks that use AC power. However, device power requirements vary widely, and other types of popular devices, such as portable hard disks, flash memory drives and card readers, and game controllers with force feedback often cannot operate when plugged into a bus-powered hub.

To determine the power requirements for any USB device, open the Power tab for the root or generic hub the device is plugged into.

The devices shown in this example must be plugged into a self-powered USB hub, as they require more than 100mA of current.

However, the devices shown in this example can be plugged into either a bus-powered or self-powered hub, as they require less than 100mA of current.

Dangers of Exceeding Available Hub Power

If you plug a device that requires more power than the hub can provide, what happens?

If you plug a device that requires more than 100mA of current into a bus-powered hub, you will see a "Hub Power Exceeded" message.

Click the message to see a listing of other ports that you can use.

While the listing isn't specific, keep in mind that any built-in USB port is connected to a root hub, and will therefore provide 500mA of power – enough for almost all devices.

What happens if you plug a device that requires more than 100mA of power into a self-powered hub that becomes disconnected from its AC power supply? At that point, the hub becomes a bus-powered hub, the voltage per port drops to 100mA, and, if you have a flash drive plugged into the port, you might destroy it.

To avoid disaster, consider this advice:

- Think twice before using a bus-powered hub.

- If you use a bus-powered hub, make sure you know the current requirements for all USB devices you plan to use with the hub. Any device that requires more than 100mA of current will not work with a bus-powered hub.

- If you're worried about forgetting to check current requirements before you plug in a new device, use a self-powered hub.

- If you already have a bus-powered hub and are frustrated because some devices will not work with it, replace it or connect the hub to a compatible AC adapter.

Hubs and USB Performance Problems

Most, but not all, USB generic hubs sold today support USB 2.0 speeds – but there are innumerable USB 1.1-only hubs still in use. If you plug a USB 2.0 device into a USB 1.1 hub, you will see the same "This device can perform faster" error message you would see if you had plugged the device into a USB 1.1 port on the computer.

How can you tell how fast a USB hub will run? There are two methods I use:

- Check for markings on the hub

- Check the properties sheet for the hub

Most USB 2.0 hubs are labeled as such. However, an unlabeled hub might also support USB 2.0 speeds.

To determine the speeds supported by a USB hub, follow this procedure:

1. Plug a USB 2.0 device, such as a storage device or wireless adapter, into one of the ports on the hub.

2. Open Device Manager.

3. Expand the Universal Serial Bus Controllers category.

4. Open the properties sheet for the hub.

5. Open the Power tab and look for the device you connected in Step 1.

6. Repeat steps 4-5 until you find the correct hub.

7. Open the Advanced tab and note the hub's performance level. A hub that supports USB 2.0 speeds will run at high-speed. A hub that supports only USB 1.1 speeds will run at full-speed.

Note that some desktops with front-mounted USB ports run these ports in USB 1.1 mode only.

USB Hub and Device Power Management Problems and Solutions

By default, USB root and generic hubs are configured to enable the PC to turn off the device automatically to save power. However, USB devices are configured by default to enable the device to wake up the system.

If your system cannot be awakened from standby, check these settings, as well as the power management settings in the system BIOS.

Cables and USB Device Compatibility

USB cables not made for high-power (over 100mA) devices can cause those devices to fail. Typically, thicker cables (such as the white cable shown below) use 28AWG cable, which is capable of carrying full power to any USB device, while thinner cables (such as the gray one shown below) use thinner cable of unspecified gauge. Smaller-gauge cable prevents full power transmission to the device.

While using an underperforming USB cable won't cause the device to be damaged, it can be frustrating to need an extension or other cable doesn't work with some devices.

The second factor is the rise of alternative device cable connections. At one time, virtually all USB devices, with the exception of digital cameras, used the standard B cable connector. With most current devices, except for printers, the standard B connector has been replaced by the five-pin mini-B cable. And, some devices use four-pin mini-B cables or Mini-A cables. To be prepared for any eventuality, consider keeping a universal USB 2.0 cable handy (like the one in the photo below).

The third factor is the need to exceed 500mA at startup with some portable USB hard disk drives. Some onboard USB ports are capable of proving more current to spin up these drives, while others are not. Keep in mind that self-powered generic hubs typically cannot provide additional power for these drives.

If you cannot use a single USB cable to provide sufficient power with some systems, use a double-headed cable. One connector provides power and data services from a single USB port, while the other provides additional power from a second USB port. Some portable hard disk vendors supply this type of cable, while others make it an extra-cost option.

USB Driver Problems and Solutions

Because recent versions of Windows recognize standard USB devices such as mice, keyboards, and storage devices without the need to install drivers, it's easy to forget that a plug-and-play installation is possible only when the computer has the appropriate driver already installed.

If you plug a USB device into a computer that does not already have the appropriate drivers installed, you will be prompted to run the Found New Hardware Wizard.

Continue only if the installation instructions for the device recommend doing so. In most cases, however, you need to run the device installation program provided on the device's driver CD before Windows can install the device. In such cases, click Cancel, disconnect the device, and install the driver for the device first.

Once the device is installed, you might be able to update the drivers with the device's Driver tab on the properties sheet in Device Manager.

Conclusion

Want to avoid having USB problems at all? Here are some best practices that you should follow to get your ports in order.

- Make sure your computer is configured to run USB ports in USB 2.0 mode

- Upgrade systems running original Windows XP to SP1 or greater

- Avoid using bus-powered USB hubs with most bus-powered peripherals other than mice, keyboards, and some types of game controllers

- Avoid using USB 1.1-compatible hubs with USB 2.0 devices such as storage, printer, scanner, and multifunction devices

- Use the Device Manager properties sheets for USB ports and devices to solve problems

- Make sure you install driver software for new USB devices before you connect them to your system

- Replace USB cables not designed for high-powered devices with thicker USB 2.0-compliant cables

- Check power management settings in BIOS and Device Manager for USB ports and devices

Mark Edward Soper is the co-author of the new book CompTIA A+ 220-701 220-702 Cert Guide, with Scott Mueller and David L. Prowse (Pearson).

ATI Radeon HD 5970: The Undisputed Performance Champ

Loyd Case & Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0600

AMD’s Radeon HD 5970 takes the performance crown, and now offers DirectX 11 GPUs top to bottom.

You can forgive AMD for stealing a line from Nvidia’s playbook. From the name and marketing materials, it’s not obvious that this card is a dual GPU card. One AMD chart even refers to the card as the “ATI Radeon HD 5970 GPU,” much like Nvidia’s 295 GTX is a dual GPU card that’s sold as if it were a normal graphics card.

Let’s take a quick look at the speeds and feeds of the new card, and then discuss additional features. We’ll compare them to the Radeon HD 5870 single GPU card; there are differences in core and memory clock speeds.

ATI Radeon GPUs Compared

Model	HD 4870	HD 5970
GPU	Single HD 5870 GPU	Dual HD 5870 GPUs
Stream Processors	1600	3200
Core Clock	850MHz	725MHz
Memory	1GB 1200MHz GDDR5	2GB 1000MHz GDDR5
Texture Units	80	160
ROPs	32	64
Memory Data Rate	4.8Gbps	4.0Gbps
Compute Performance	2.72TFLOPs	4.64TFLOPs
Idle Power	27W	42W
Max Power	188W	294W

Most features simply double, since there are two identical GPUs with the same memory per GPU. However, note the memory bandwidth is lower, since the memory clock is lower. Also, overall compute performance isn’t quite double, since the engine clock for each GPU defaults to 725MHz, rather than the single GPU 5870’s 850MHz.

In addition to the paired GPUs, the card maximizes performance with a new second generation PLX PCI Express 2.1 bridge chip. This speeds up communications between the two GPUs.

The older Radeon HD 4870 X2, AMD’s last dual GPU card, often suffered from serious overheating problems, so AIT has taken steps to improve overall thermal efficiency. The first step is to used specially screened GPU chips with the minimum amount of leakage current. The thermal system consists of a vapor chamber, with heat dissipation via a fully vented exhaust system. Finally, a multipoint, programmable PWM fan controller ensures fan speeds consistent with overall thermal output. The whole affair is rated to dissipate 400W, or over 100W of headroom.

The use of low leakage GPUs suggests that the core clock speeds could be pushed higher than the default 725MHz. Given that the card can dissipate 400W of overall thermal output, ATI has decided to leave the card unlocked, letting users overclock it to their heart’s content. The company is even making available an overvoltage tool, and suggests that the card has enough headroom to push the engine clock to above the 850MHz of the single GPU HD 5870 and the memory speeds up to the 1200MHz of the 5870. In The HD 5970 also sports sophisticated digital voltage regulators, real time power monitoring and Japanese pure ceramic capacitors, which facilitate higher clock speeds. (The reason for the more conservative default clock speeds is that the company needs to make allowances for the thermal environment inside PC cases, which may be less optimal.)

What about power efficiency? The HD 5970 offers the same clock gating capability as the single GPU variant. In addition, the card offers an ultra low power state that puts one GPU to sleep, which cuts the overall power draw of that GPU by half the normal idle performance. The card idles at 42W, only 15W higher than the 27W of the HD 5870. Of course, the card sucks 294W at full throttle – and that’s at the default clock speeds. So you’ll need a power supply with the later PCI Express 8-pin power connector – the HD 5970 uses one eight pin and one six pin connector from the PSU.

The onboard connectors are slightly different from the original HD 5870: two DVI-I connectors and one mini-DisplayPort attachment, first popularized with Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops and iMacs. All three can be attached simultaneously, and drive three displays at the same time. Note that most DisplayPort enabled monitors which aren’t Apple displays ship with standard sized DisplayPort cables, so you’ll need to obtain a mini-DisplayPort to standard DisplayPort cable if you want to take advantage of that connection option.

Performance

We tested three graphics cards: the Radeon HD 5970, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and the GeForce 295 GTX. Note that the 295 GTX only ships with 1792MB of GDDR3 memory (896MB per GPU). The Nvidia GPUs on the 295 GTX have a full complement of 240 shaders, like the 285GTX, but only a 448 bit wide memory bus, similar to the GeForce GTX 260 line of graphics chips.

All games were run at two settings: 1920x1200, 4xAA and 2560x1600 4xAA. All detail settings on all games were maxed out. We also report the results from 3DMark Vantage’sdefault, performance setting and the extreme setting. In addition, we’re tossing in the results from the eVGA GeForce 285 GTX SSC and XFX Radeon HD 5870 at the 1920x1200 resolutions, so you can get an idea as to how much you gain from the dual GPU cards.

We used our standard graphics test system for benchmarking graphics cards:

Test System

Component	Model
CPU	Intel Core i7 975 @ 3.33GHz
Motherboard	Asus Rampage II ExtremeX58
Memory	6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 @ 1333MHz
Hard Drive	Seagate 7200.12 1TB
PSU	Corsair 850W
Operating System	Windows 7

The HD 5890 seems much better behaved than its predecessor, the HD 4870 X2. Although the HD 5970 fan noise became quite audible at high loads, it seemed much quieter than the 4870 X2. More telling was our experience removing the cards immediately after completed benchmarking runs. The 4870 X2 was extremely hot to the touch – we had to handle it carefully to avoid burnt fingers – while the 5970 was cooler to handle (though still very warm.) Much of this was no doubt due to the vapor chamber covering the back side of the card.

As we expected from our previous experience with the Radeon HD 5870, the dual GPU HD 5970 pretty much smokes the competition. At its targeted $599 price point, the performance needs to be stellar – and it is. Let’s check out the performance charts.

1920X1200 4XAA

Model	eVGA 285 GTX SSC	Radeon HD 4870 x2	GeForce GTX 295	XFX 5870	Radeon HD 5970
3DMark Vantage (Perf)	13941	14458	19342	17089	21089
3DMark Vantage (Extreme)	6276	6574	9241	8312	12084
HAWX	62	78	93	68	104
Far Cry 2 (Action)	47	67	62	62	75
Far Cry 2 (Ranch Long)	56	77	73	74	116
BattleForge (DX10)	46	36	33	47	61
Crysis (DX10)	22	33	29	32	44
Resident Evil 5	87	126	115	100	135
X3: Terran Conflict	93	101	100	101	107
STALKER: Clear Skies	27	38	40	36	53

2560x1600 4XAA

Model	Radeon HD 4870 X2	GeForce GTX 295	Radeon HD 5970
HAWX	53	54	76
Far Cry 2 (Action)	18	59	65
Far Cry 2 (Ranch Long)	50	55	82
BattleForge (DX10)	23	20	39
Crysis (DX10)	19	18	24
Resident Evil 5	88	85	102
X3: Terran Conflict	90	59	101
STALKER: Clear Skies	22	20	31

There’s no question the Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest single desktop graphics card you can buy today. The real question is if it’s worth $200 more than a single Radeon HD 5870. Certainly if you’re running a 1920x1200 display, we’d recommend the single GPU card. But if you’re running triple displays, or a 30-inch, 2560x1600 monitor, and you want to push polygons at full resolution, you should consider the Radeon HD 5970. But make sure you’re willing to pay the cost.

Another note: this card is enormous. It’s an actual foot-long graphics card; make sure you’ve got a case deep enough to handle it.

Then there’s the whole issue of CrossFire. The HD 5970 is essentially a pair of downclocked HD 5870s in CrossFire mode. When the game can take advantage of CrossFire – as it does in our benchmarks – you can see huge performance gains. If the game can’t make use of CrossFire, then you own a pricey single GPU card that doesn’t run as fast as the HD 5870.

But what about running TWO of these cards in CrossFire mode? Find out on the next page.

Dual-5970 CrossFire Performance

We were fortunate enough to get not one, but two 5970 cards to test in our lab. The two cards came in Falcon Northwest's brand new Talon PC, which is the first 5970-equipped system we've reviewed.

You can read our full review of the kick-ass Falcon Northwest Talon here, but the system specs are below for your reference. Note that the Talon is a Lynnfield-based Core-i7 system, overclocked to 3.93GHz, as opposed to the 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Bloomfield proc we used in our testbed to benchmark the lone 5970 card.

Specifications

Processor	Intel 2.93GHz Core i7-870 @3.83GHz
MOBO	MSI P55-GD65
RAM	8GB Crucial DDR3/1600
Videocard	Two MSI Radeon HD 5970 in CrossFire mode
Soundcard	Onboard
Storage	Two Intel X25-M 80GB in RAID 0; 1TB Samsung Spinpoint 7,20rpm hard drive
Optical	Lite-On 22x DVD burner
Case/PSU	Silverstone case with Exotix paint job and 1,000 Silverstone PSU

In addition to a 48-hour plus burn-in period, we wanted to push Falcon Northwest’s dual-Radeon HD 5970 cards on something a bit harder so we connected the FNW Talon to a 30-inch 2560x1600 panel and cranked several benchmarks to maximum. The result? Impressive. Although, the drivers we used were still fairly early, the performance of the card is unquestionable. We had some concerns of running the card in a dual x8 mode (a limitation of the P55 chipset and Lynnfield platform) instead of full x16’s that an X58 platform would give us but the results don’t seem to show too much to be concerned about. The cards seem to offer better than expected scaling, even with early drivers.

Dual-5970s on Falcon Northwest's Talon PC

	HD 5970 Crossfire On	HD 5970 Crossfire Off
3DMark Extreme Overall (1900x1200)	18954	11686
3DMark Extreme GPU (1900x1200)	18763	11384
3DMark Extreme CPU (1900x1200)	23498	23561
3DMark Extreme GPU (2560x1600)	13494	9076
3DMark Extreme CPU (2560x1600)	23387	23399
Crysis, Very High, (2560x1600)	34.4 FPS	27.1 FPS
Far Cry 2 Ultra High (2560x1600)	185.2 FPS	107.4 FPS

Crysis, 1900x1200 (NO AA)	66.3 FPS	(did not run)
Crysis, 1900x1200 (16X AA)	64.3 FPS	(did not run)

Note that in Crysis, enabling 16X Anti-Aliasing doesn't seem to affect the framerate with CrossFire enabled.

Finally, a note on overclocking. The AMD overvolting tool has two settings for core and memory. You can overvolt the GPUs, overvolt the memory or both. Using the tool, we pumped up both voltage settings, then found the card to be stable at 870MHz core and 1250MHz memory (17 and 25% respectively.) Curiously, though, we saw little actual performance gain. 3DMark Vantage (extreme setting) only saw a 1% increase, from 12084 to 12182. We got two additional FPS in Crysis and either no increase or slight decreases in frame rate for Far Cry 2 and STALKER: Clear Skies. We probably need to do a better job of balancing memory and core clocks, but our initial experiences suggest that overclocking may not be worth the effort.

20 Essential Tips Every Ubuntu User Should Know

Will Kraft — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:30:00 -0600

So you've read our Complete Beginner's Guide to Linux and have decided to adopt an open-source operating system--congratulations! But diving right into a new OS is daunting, even if it is as polished and stable as Ubuntu. That's OK though, because we're here to help. We've compiled a list of the 20 most important skills that every Ubuntu user should have. These tips, ranging from basic GUI manipulation to advanced system recovery, are essential to your Windows-free computing experience. Whether you've just installed Ubuntu for the first time or have been a Linux acolyte for years, you'll want to read our refresher. And if you have any tips you can't live without, we'd love to hear about them in the comments section!

Turn Your Audio Up to 11

The sound dialog menu has been a staple in every version of Ubuntu (and GNOME in general) for many years, but in 9.10 it has received a significant overhaul and no longer resembles a traditional mixer. Previously, the maximum volume of a system was determined by hardware and other factors and could not be easily exceeded on a system-wide level. This was sometimes a problem, since the maximum volume of a system could be well below what the hardware could actually deliver. In 9.10, the volume slider has been modified to boost audio up to roughly 150%, so it is now possible to compensate for any discrepancy. However, you should be careful with this feature—you could potentially damage your speakers if you exceed their limits. (Generally, the volume is too loud if there is distortion.)

Ubuntu 9.10 also features a new ability to choose between several different sound themes for various system events. This feature was present in older versions, but is greatly refined in 9.10.

Create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

Ubuntu offers extensive keyboard shortcut functionality, including support for some of the keys on multimedia keyboards. These are often detected and appropriately bound out of the box, so there is no need to assign them manually. Keyboard shortcuts are managed through the appropriately named entry in the Preferences sub-menu. To create a new keyboard shortcut combination, scroll down to the desired action in the list and click on the existing combination. When the current entry switches to “new shortcut...” press the new key combination you want to use for that action. To cancel the change, left-click on “new shortcut...”.

Control Your System Remotely with Nautilus

Ubuntu features a powerful file manager called Nautilus that is closely integrated into GNOME. This tool allows you to work with local files in an intuitive interface, but it also has remote-connection capabilities comparable to what can be found in an FTP client. In addition to regular FTP access, it provides a graphical interface for SSH-based remote access to other Linux/Unix systems and support for browsing shared folders on Windows systems on the network.

This functionality is accessed through the “Connect to Server” option in Ubuntu's Places menu. The dialog box allows you to select a protocol, location, user name, (and password, if necessary) and port number. Once you have established a connection, the remote server will be accessible through a folder and can be used and unmounted like any type of storage media.

Customize Your UI with Desktop Compositing

If you have a video card (or even an onboard video chipset) you can turn on various desktop effects with a utility called Compiz Fusion. (We covered Compiz Fusion in depth in a previous article.) Although it is possible to fine-tune the performance of these desktop effects with Compiz-Config Settings Manager (CCSM), Ubuntu also features a built-in interface with several preset functions. This is located on a tab called Visual effects in the Appearance dialog (reached through the Preferences sub-menu under System). There are three preset options: none, normal (a moderate level of effects), and Extra (massive levels of eye candy). If you use CCSM instead, none of the presets will be selected.

Boot and Install Ubuntu from a USB Stick

Most people have several old low-capacity USB sticks lying around that they no longer use in favor of higher-capacity sticks that have become increasingly affordable. An ideal use for an older stick with a capacity of 1 GB or less is as a boot medium for a Linux distro. (At least 700 MB capacity is required.) If your BIOS supports USB booting, it is possible to create an installation stick for Ubuntu instead of a more traditional CD. USB sticks have the advantage of being reusable with later versions, so you won't eventually end up with a big pile of obsolete installation discs. USB sticks can also be used to store data files from the live session, using extra space that has been set aside for that purpose. (Files created during a normal liveCD session are usually destroyed at shutdown because a temporary ramdisk is used to store them.) External hard drives may be used to boot from as well, but USB sticks are much more practical for the purpose.

To create your own USB stick, open the USB Startup disk Creator in the administration sub-menu. You will need to provide an Ubuntu ISO or CD as a source medium, so make sure you have that on hand before you begin. The Disk Creator tool will not accept other distros (and you can't fool it by renaming any other ISO image to “ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso” or something to that effect), so you will still have to use UNetbootin to create USB sticks for non-Ubuntu distros.

Sweep Away Old Files

Although Linux systems do not routinely accumulate obsolete files, it still happens on installations that have been upgraded a few times. Sometimes, old software packages may be left behind during the Ubuntu upgrade process (although the upgrade utility has a stage where obsolete packages are removed) and Ubuntu has a utility called Computer Janitor that allows you to deal with them. This tool keeps a tally of all old and/or deprecated packages on your system and makes recommendations for removal. This tool is located in the Administration sub-menu.

Find the Right Hardware Drivers

Unlike many other distros, Ubuntu has a special utility called Hardware Drivers (sometimes called Restricted Drivers). This utility will search your system for any hardware that needs proprietary drivers to function under Linux and will make these drivers available for download if possible. The Hardware Drivers manager can handle various types of hardware, including Nvidia video cards/chipsets, Broadcom wireless, and more. The Hardware Drivers tool is located in the Administration sub-menu.

To activate a driver, highlight its entry in the list and click the Activate button. If there is more than one driver available for a device, you should choose the recommended version. The Hardware Drivers manager will then acquire and enable the driver for you. In most instances, a reboot is necessary before a driver becomes fully active.

Get NTFS Compatibility

The NTFS-Config tool auto-detects NTFS-based partitions and sets a new mount point for them in /media. To enable support for a device, check the box next to it when it is detected. Once mount points for all devices have been set, you are able to enable or disable write support on internal and external NTFS devices with one click. To enable NTFFS write support on your system, install ntfs-config: “sudo apt-get install ntfs-config”. From that point on, you can access it through the Administration sub-menu.

Manually Run Programs

Many times, you will need to run a program and it may not be in the Applications menu. Normally, you would have to open a terminal and launch the program from there, but there is an easier way. By pressing ALT and F2, you can initiate a Run dialog that allows you to launch a program (with any necessary switches/options) without having to bind it to a terminal.

By default, programs launched with this method run with your own account's permission levels, but it is possible to launch programs that need superuser permissions by running “gksu $program”. Gksu is a frontend for Sudo that allows temporary privilege escalation. You can also view a full list of programs (hidden by default) and populate the run dialog with them by clicking on the list entry. Both native and Wine programs will appear in the list.

Gksu has its own benefits as well. Although it defaults to root, running gksu by itself will produce a dialog that shows a list of ALL users and services. You may then launch a program from any account.

Handy Window Tricks

Ubuntu offers many options for working with open windows. Some require compositing to be enabled while others will still work on non-accelerated systems:

• To shade a window, (i.e. hide all but the title bar) ensure that compositing effects are enabled and move your pointer to the title bar. To hide a window, scroll up with your mouse wheel. To show the window again, scroll down.

• Sometimes, it is necessary to keep a window on top of the others even when it loses focus. To do this, right-click on the title bar and select the “Always On Top” checkbox. To restore normal behavior, clear the checkbox by clicking on it again.

• Since Ubuntu and most other distros have support for multiple desktops, (also called workspaces) it is convenient to allocate open programs between them to keep things from getting too crowded on your monitor. To move a program to a different desktop, right-click on the title bar and select either “Move to Workspace Left/Right” or “Move to Another Workspace”. Furthermore, it is possible to drag windows from one desktop to another using the mouse if certain compositing effects are enabled.

Import Documents from Windows

When you are setting up a dual-boot system with Ubuntu, it is possible to import your documents and settings (web browser favorites, etc.) During installation, Ubiquity (the Ubuntu installer) will detect any Windows partitions that exist on the system and will present you with an opportunity to migrate your settings to Ubuntu. By expanding the list, you are able to pick and choose which parts of the system to import (selecting the main checkbox will import all of them).

Encrypt Your Home Directory

Home directory encryption is a feature that was introduced in Ubuntu 9.04. During installation you have the option of checking a box in the setup utility that will cause your home directory to be encrypted automatically. This will help prevent your files from being compromised. Encryption/decryption is automatically handled behind the scenes, so you don't need to worry about securing your files manually. On the first boot after setting up an encrypted home directory, you will be prompted to learn the master password for your home directory. (To view it again, run the “encryptfs-unwrap-passphrase” command.) This master encryption password is automatically generated by Ubuntu and is NOT your login password. You will need this master password to recover your files if you are not able to boot normally, so store a hard copy of it in a safe place.

Dual Boot with Wubi

Although preparing a traditional dual-boot system is easier and safer than ever, Ubuntu has a completely zero-risk way of doing it, thanks to a tool called Wubi. Unlike a conventional tool that repartitions your system and replaces the bootloader (arguably the most dangerous parts of dual-booting), Wubu creates a virtual file-system that piggybacks on top of Windows. Wubi then reconfigures Windows' own bootloader to be able to boot into a normal Ubuntu environment. Unlike a LiveCD, a Wubi installation is fully functional apart from a few features such as hibernation. Furthermore, a Wubi installation can be completely uninstalled from within Windows like any other program, whereas a conventional dual-boot configuration cannot.

Modify Software Sources

Most software for Ubuntu is made available through online repositories. The available repositories are managed through a file in /etc/apt called sources.list. While it is possible to edit this file manually, (many experienced users prefer this method) newer users may be more comfortable with Ubuntu's Software Sources tool (located in the Administration sub-menu). This front end splits the various repositories listed in sources.list into categories to make them easier to identify and manage. The tool allows you to check/uncheck boxes for the official Ubuntu repositories and easily add GPG keys used for repository authentication.

Smooth Out Fonts

Ubuntu supports font anti-aliasing similar to Microsoft's ClearType. This feature (found as a tab on the appearance tool in the Preferences sub-menu) smoothes out screen fonts in Ubuntu, making them easier to read. There are several presets to choose from, each producing a different effect:

• None/Monochrome: Quite unsightly. There is no conceivable reason to use this, but it does allow you to disable anti-aliasing altogether.

• Best shapes: This focuses on presenting characters most accurately and with a moderate amount of anti-aliasing.

• Best contrast: This attempts to provide the best character contrast with less anti-aliasing. This generally looks similar to Best Shapes except at very large font sizes.

• Sub-Pixel Smoothing: This heavily anti-aliased mode is specifically designed for use with LCD displays. It produces the smoothest-looking type but tends to make fonts appear bolder than they would otherwise.

Install Packages Yourself

Ubuntu uses automated package management to handle most software installation and maintenance, so it is very seldom necessary to download and install packages yourself. If you ever have to do this, there is a front end that makes the process much easier than it would be otherwise. Once you have the package (deb) that you want to install, double-click on it from within Nautilus to bring up the Gdebi package installation tool. This tool will install the package for you and will also resolve dependencies.

Once a package has been installed, it can be further managed or removed with the regular package management system.

Restart the GUI

Although the GUI (Xorg) in Linux is quite resilient, there are still instances where it may crash (however, a crash will not bring the whole system down). In most cases if there is a problem, the GUI should restart by itself, but if all else fails it is possible to start it manually (assuming that your system is still configured correctly). To restart the GUI properly and return to the Ubuntu login screen, log into your account (if you have not already done so) and run “sudo gdm”.

Set Up Recovery Mode

Ubuntu's recovery mode (accessible through the GRUB menu) has several tools that are designed to help you recover from various problems. Each tool is presented in a list with a brief description of what it does. You can fix broken packages, get a root command prompt, attempt to repair a broken GUI system, etc.

Dual-boot systems will always show the GRUB menu to let you choose your operating system for that session, but single-boot systems will just load Ubuntu automatically. If the GRUB menu is not displayed on startup, press ESC quickly (and repeatedly, if necessary) immediately after power-on to force the GRUB list to display.

The Ubuntu GRUB menu also has the memtest86+ utility for RAM testing. If you often get random crashes or kernel panics, faulty memory may be the cause of the problem.

Turn on a Firewall

Even though Ubuntu does not need anti-virus and anti-malware utilities, a firewall is still beneficial because it allows you to fine-tune your network settings and limit which programs may communicate freely with the Internet. Linux has a firewall management tool called iptables, but it can be rather difficult to work with it directly. Fortunately, there is a tool called Firewall Builder that is capable of configuring iptables based on parameters you specify. The tool is far too complex to cover in a simple tip such as this, but it allows you to set firewall rules and manage device and service behavior. It is best used by network administrators who know what they are doing.

To install Firewall Builder, run “sudo apt-get install fwbuilder”.

Use Remote Desktop

Ubuntu offers extensive remote desktop functionality out of the box. Using the Vinagre tool, you can access other Linux boxes on your network through VNC. (Windows support is planned through RDP in future releases.) To launch Vinagre, run the Remote Desktop Viewer utility located in the Internet sub-menu of Applications. To configure how Vinagre can interact with your system, modify the Remote Desktop Preferences located in the Preferences sub-menu.

Play Windows Games in Ubuntu

Although the various Linux distributions have a wide variety of software available, you may have a few Windows programs that you may not be willing or able to part with. Although many people dual-boot or use virtual machines to get around this problem, there is yet another potential option that many people new to Linux may not have considered--- Wine. Wine stands out from the other options because it does not require a separate Windows license. Check out our Wine guide here!

ATI Mangles the Competition: 8 Hot New Video Cards Reviewed

Loyd Case — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:30:00 -0600

We burn up kilowatts testing eight hot new videocards to see why the Radeon reigns supreme

AMD’s recent release of its RV870 GPU line makes the company the undisputed graphics performance leader. The Radeon HD 5870 is the fastest single-GPU graphics card on the market currently. But at roughly $380, it’s not inexpensive, so AMD has also rolled out the Radeon HD 5850, 5770, and 5750 cards. All are DirectX 11–capable, at lower price points than the flagship HD 5870.

The HD 5850 uses the same RV870 GPU as the 5870, but with a couple of functional units disabled. Priced at around $260, the 5850 occupies the lower tier of the high-end cards. The recently released 5770/5750 cards use a different chip. Based on the same DirectX 11 architecture as their big brothers, the 5770/5750 are built with 1.04 billion transistors—just slightly more than the 956 million used in the previous-generation Radeon HD 4870/4890 products. Contrast these numbers with the 2.15 billion transistors in the Radeon HD 5870.

Current prices for 5770s are roughly the same as older 4870s, around $150–$160. So the 5770 is firmly positioned as a midrange graphics card.

We put eight cards to the test, from six companies: three Radeon HD 5870s, three HD 5850s, one HD 5770, and a factory-overclocked Nvidia GTX 260 from Gigabyte, our token Nvidia card in the mix. We compared each card against the fastest previous single-GPU champ, the EVGA 285 GTX SSC. Our test bed consisted of a 3.3GHz Intel Core i7-975 on an Asus Rampage Extreme II X58 motherboard, 6GB Corsair DDR3/1600 at 1,333MHz, a Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard drive, a Lite-On DVD+/-RW optical drive, a Corsair 850W PSU, and the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

At the start of any new GPU’s cycle, board vendors adhere to the reference design, making performance virtually identical among competing cards. This changes as OEMs tweak their designs. Still, as you’ll see from our reviews, differences exist in terms of warranty, software bundle, availability, and price.

At a Glance: ATI's New Line of GPUs

ATI Radeon GPUs

Model	HD 4870	HD 5770	HD 5750	HD 5850	HD 5870
Stream Processors	800	800	720	1440	1600
Core Clock	750MHz	850MHz	700MHz	725MHz	850MHz
Memory Clock	900MHz	1.2GHz	700MHz	1GHz	1.2GHz
Memory Width	256	128	128	256	256
Max Power Use	150W	108W	86W	151W	188W
Price	$150	$160	$130	$260	$380

All these have 1GB of memory; there’s also a 512MB version of the 5750 available, at around $110.

The Reviews (Click the picture or headline for the full review and benchmarks, and verdict)

XFX Radeon HD 5870

All of the Radeon HD 5870s reviewed here are essentially identical—they’re the fastest single-GPU graphics cards you can buy currently. Out of the box, you get a typical one-year limited warranty. But if you register XFX’s product online. within 30 days of purchase, the warranty lasts for “the duration of your life.” Not a bad deal, assuming the company is around that long.

HIS Radeon HD 5870

HIS is based in Hong Kong, but its cards are readily available in U.S. outlets. They often cost slightly less than the competition, but that’s not the case with the company’s Radeon HD 5870, which is priced the same as its competitors. When we first unpacked the card, we thought it was the lesser HD 5850 model, due to its relatively compact packaging.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870

As with all Radeon HD 5870s, Sapphire’s version offers superlative performance, making it one of the fastest single-GPU cards available today. At its core is AMD’s 2.15 billion transistor Cypress chip, coupled with 1GB of 1,200MHz GDDR5 memory. Two DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort connection allow for flexible monitor attachment.

More reviews on the next page!

Asus EAH5850

All of the Radeon cards tested here are based on AMD’s reference design, including this Asus card. However, Asus includes Smart Doctor software, which allows you to easily overclock its card.

Diamond Radeon HD 5850

We admit to mixed feelings about Diamond’s Radeon HD 5850. On one hand, it offers the same strong performance as other Radeon HD 5850 cards—second only to their big-brother HD 5870 cards. But unlike other manufacturers, you don’t get a coupon for Dirt 2 in the box. Instead, you need to register the card at Diamond’s website to get the perk. You also won’t get the two-year warranty unless you register the card.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

As with Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5870, the company’s HD 5850 card ships with coupons for two games: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Sapphire’s HD 5850 delivers a stock Radeon HD 5850, with its 1,440 stream processors, 72 texture units, and DirectX 11 support.

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC

It’s easy to be seduced by the latest and greatest graphics cards, but you can sometimes find excellent deals in older-generation cards that can still keep up with today’s shader-heavy PC games. Gigabyte’s 260 GTX SuperOC is a good example.

To make the cards, Gigabyte starts with cherry-picked 260 GTX chips from the factory.

HIS Radeon HD 5770

AMD has wasted no time bringing its DirectX 11 GPU architecture to a more affordable, mainstream-class GPU in the HD 5770. HIS is one of the first manufacturers to bring the HD 5770 to market.

At around $160, the card is priced similarly to existing Radeon HD 4870 cards. It’s the lowest-cost card in the roundup, and given the 180mm2 die size (that’s incredibly tiny for a GPU), prices are likely to eventually come down even further.

Next: Tools to Boost Your Graphics Card Performance

Tools to Boost Your Graphics Card Performance

The Asus EAH5850 might be the only card here to ship with the Smart Doctor software tool for overclocking, but the fact is, you can overclock any of the graphics cards in this roundup.

AMD’s own Catalyst software suite that’s installed with the Radeon drivers has a built-in overclocking control panel known as Overdrive.

While you can’t tweak the voltage—something that’s fairly dangerous, anyway—you can set GPU and memory clocks, manually control your fans, and use Overdrive’s auto-tune feature to try to automatically set higher clock speeds. Our experience with auto-tune is that it’s fairly conservative; we were able to boost core clocks from 850MHz to 890MHz, and memory clocks from 1,200MHz to a scant 1,230MHz. When you click auto-tune, expect to wait about 15–20 minutes for the process to complete.

Nvidia also lets you overclock cards based on its GPUs, but you have to work at it a little. First, you need to download the Nvidia System Tools software from here. Look for the link “Nvidia System Tools with ESA support.”

Download and install System Tools. You can do this even if you don’t have an Nvidia-based motherboard. An additional panel is installed in the Nvidia graphics control panel, allowing you to manage clock speeds.

As with AMD’s Overdrive, Nvidia’s tool has an auto-tune feature.

Third-party apps also exist for overclocking graphics cards. Probably the most popular graphics overclocking tool is RivaTuner, which works with both ATI- and Nvidia-based cards. You can find RivaTuner at Guru3D. Currently, RivaTuner hasn’t been updated to work with the 5800 series. Also, you may have issues with 64-bit Vista and Windows 7, due to its use of an unsigned driver.

Making the Most of Multiple Monitors

Eyefinity is AMD’s moniker for the Radeon HD 5000 series’ ability to connect to multiple displays. Even the lowest-cost Radeon HD 5750 offers four display connections; you can use any three of them simultaneously. Note that if you use more than two displays, one must be DisplayPort capable—but you can use an active DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter to connect a third display via that monitor’s DVI port.

Of course, the HD 5000 cards support standard Windows multiple-display capability, so you can clone or extend a display if you have more than one attached. But Eyefinity takes this a step further, by enabling you to create monitor groups. If all the displays in a monitor group are the same resolution, then you can configure the driver to see all of them as one large surface.

Three 1680x1050-pixel panels can therefore be configured as a single 5040x1050 panel in a three-wide configuration. Or, you could configure them as a single 1680x3150 stacked display. When you do this, games and apps see the group as a single display. Not all games will necessarily look correct—you’ll probably need to manually tweak the field of view, for example. Note that the panels don’t have to be the same physical size, but they do need to have identical resolutions.

If you don’t have three monitors of the same resolution, you can still use Eyefinity groups—you just can’t configure the group to be a single surface. We used three displays—a 2560x1600 monitor with DisplayPort and two DVI-equipped 1920x1200 24-inch panels. The two 24-inchers were set up in portrait (tall) mode, so they were seen as 1200x1920 displays. The 30-inch Dell 3008WFP was set up in landscape (wide).

While you can use Eyefinity with two displays, it’s a far better gaming experience with three, particularly in games with a targeting reticule or similar feature. With two displays, the reticule is split over the center bezels. That makes aiming a little chancy in fast-paced shooters.

HIS Radeon HD 5770

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:14:21 -0600

Near–HD 4870 performance at a budget price

AMD has wasted no time bringing its DirectX 11 GPU architecture to a more affordable, mainstream-class GPU in the HD 5770. HIS is one of the first manufacturers to bring the HD 5770 to market.

While the HIS HD 5770’s benchmark scores were the lowest in the roundup, this needs to be put into context. The card is practically miserly with power. Our system’s idle power of 142W was on a par with other HD 5000 series cards, but power at full bore was a scant 251W—about 10W lower than the HD 5850. The card requires just a single PCI Express power connector.

For the low price, you have to give up some graphical amenities, like antialiasing. It’s worth noting, however, that the HD 5770 still delivers 38fps in the Far Cry 2 action scene and 51fps in Ubisoft’s HAWX flight sim with AA and AF enabled. And like all the HD 5000 series, you can connect up to three displays to a single card.

So if you’re on a tight budget, and are still looking for a solid gaming experience and efficient power usage, check out the HIS HD 5770.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870 HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850 Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC HIS Radeon HD 5770

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Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:09:43 -0600

The 260 GTX chip pushed to its limit

To make the cards, Gigabyte starts with cherry-picked 260 GTX chips from the factory. Then it clocks the GPUs at 680MHz, more than 100MHz faster than the standard 576MHz. Similarly, the SuperOC pushes the shader clock to 1,466MHz, instead of the stock 1,350MHz. Rounding off the performance push is 896MB of GDDR3 running at 1.25GHz instead of 1GHz. Gigabyte delivers these rarefied clock rates at slightly less than $200.

It’s true that the SuperOC won’t deliver Radeon HD 5850 levels of performance—but it also costs $60–$80 less. You should get good performance from the card if you’re willing to run without antialiasing in current games. Note, however, that pushing the card this hard takes power; our system idle power was 160W (compared to 141–142W for the Radeon HD 5000 series cards), and power at full bore was 316W—the same as the much more powerful Radeon HD 5870.