More Computer Stuff · 2:14am Oct 25th, 2012
Well, I finally finished assembling all the hardware for my new desktop last night. Three days before the scheduled release of Windows 8 (the 26th).
In the end I got a EVGA (NVidia based) GTX 650 Ti instead of a GTX 560 as I had planned, as I missed the clearance period for the latter. As such they were about the same price and the 650 Ti was only a bit weak I got it due it only using about half the power (or something like that, I am not looking at the spec sheet, but it only has half the power plugs).
And it seems to play Icewind Dale II, unlike the mobile version of the 560 (or maybe they just fixed the drivers... but said error was also present on the mobile version of the 260). Or it is either Windows 8 has better support for older DirectX versions / desktop cards have fewer issues.
And Virtu (GPU visualization driver that lets programs use the dedicated GPU, the integrated Intel Graphics, or a hybrid of both) is cool, but not stable on Windows 8 yet.
I got it to work (it was a matter of tweaking the BIOS so that it would not turn the integrated graphics off), but now it seems it does not work when using a Remote Desktop Connection which means it will be using the integrated then (as the fix was setting that as the primary display device).
And I finally found a reasonably simple way to connect to the internet from my laptop through my desktop over ethernet (a link to the program that makes this possible without extra hardware will be listed below).
Here are a few links of things to look at:
A couple of good sites to visit when picking your security software:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/ (Anti-virus comparisons)
http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge-64/results.php (Firewall comparisons)
A DHCP server program for Windows (useful for setting up a network without having a dedicated router or modem):
http://www.dhcpserver.de/dhcpsrv.htm
And this site is a good one to visit for a chance of getting free programs:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
Those that do/will use Windows 8 but want a start menu, consider Start 8 from IOrbit:
http://www.iobit.com/download.html (at the bottom)
