Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[leif erikson]

With Win 10, MS removed the files necessary to play those games. Then it updated Win 8 and Win 7 to do the same.

They claim that those files present a security risk.

Please see this thread for details.

 

[Zelig]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a json viewer that can handle big files and will format the json?

I have to debug a 4.5MB json file, and it is currently all on one line. I usually use firefox with the JSONview addon, but this file just makes it grind to a halt. I have also tried netbeans, and that is working on formatting it but has been going over 20 minutes and has not returned.

Notepad++ should work fine, for an 8mb json file for me it opens in about 4s and formats (with the JSON Viewer plugin) in about 8s. Visual Studio about same speed with native formatting.

If you've changed from 32-but Windows to 64-bit, you might have to make the games run in 32-bit mode.

32-bit apps automatically run in 32-bit - they can't be run in 64-bit. (And vice-versa, 64-bit apps don't run in 32-bit.) They take different binaries. 32-bit will work on either x86 or x64 installs of Windows. (As opposed to Itanium processors which are 64-bit only, but basically dead now.)

 

[shadowplay]

Thanks to everyone who offered help.

With Win 10, MS removed the files necessary to play those games. Then it updated Win 8 and Win 7 to do the same.

They claim that those files present a security risk.

Please see this thread for details.

This appears to be it.

 

[Zelig]

Under Canadian copyright law you're probably safe to just bypass the DRM.

 

[Dell19]

Fun question, I brought a PC at the start of 2012 with this processor:
Intel Core i5 2500K @ 4.3Ghz

If I go back to the same site that I brought that PC from a similar PC comes with this processor:
Intel® Core™ i5 6500 CPU

Then if I compare them here:
http://www.game-debate.com/cpu/inde...e=core-i5-6500-3-2ghz-vs-core-i5-2500k-3-3ghz

There isn't a huge difference. Is this a reasonably accurate picture and as a side question how useful are comparison websites like the above when comparing CPUs and GPUs?

The above is for a desktop PC however I've been thinking about getting a new laptop and its off putting comparing the stats to my desktop (which has an upgraded graphics card).

 

[cardgame]

The 2500K, particularly if it's overclocked as you have it, is still a very strong contender in 2015.

 

[Zelig]

CPUs tend to not affect gameplay FPS much. I'd avoid the game-debate.com site, from a quick glance it contains some nonsense which is factually incorrect.

The 6500 isn't really a comparable processor the 2500K, it's lower end. Equivalent processor to the 2500K is the 6600K. The 6500 is especially weak because of low turbo bins, so it doesn't scale up in frequency very much.

Some quick numbers, based on Geekbench, so CPU performance only, with stock 2500K at 100% (And assuming no throttling, i.e. the i5-2500k runs at 4.3 which dropping even at full load on all cores):

Single-threaded:
i5-2500K @ 4.3 GHz: 116%
i5-6500: 120%
i5-6600K: 126%
i7-6700k: 145%

Multi-threaded:
i5-2500K @ 4.3 GHz: 126%
i5-6500: 115%
i5-6600K: 125%
i7-6700k: 175%

Really, best difference between a 2012 PC and a 2015 PC is storage - you can stick NVMe-based SSDs in a 2015 PC which, trounces 6 Gbit/s SATA.

 

[cardgame]

NVMe is still wicked expensive not worth it, over twice the price of 6bps SATA, which is still plenty fast.

 

[Zelig]

Twice the price for four times the performance is a steal.

(Not to mention it's less than half the price. The closest SATA equivalent to the NVMe 950 Pro is the 850 Pro, which is less than 1.6x the price.)

 

[cardgame]

Yeah, but diminishing returns. Booting in 8 seconds up from 80 is fantastic. Booting in 3 seconds up from 8 is... well, meh.

 

[Zelig]

Boot time is pretty much irrelevant to modern PCs, SSDs affect normal OS responsiveness.

For $450, you get a better user experience from a $350 SSD and a $100 CPU than you get from a $220 SSD and a $230 CPU. This holds true for pretty much any dollar amount - past the baseline workable PC, SSD is the first thing that's worth upgrading.

Obviously if you're building a pure gaming system, don't bother, get the cheapest HDD/CPU, and spend $1500 on SLI GPU, and you'll get better performance than any who spend more of the same budget on anything other than GPU.

 

[cardgame]

Cheapest CPU isn't good for gaming either

 

[Quintillus]

Depends a lot on what type of games you play. If you're play Civ-like games, you want a good CPU for the AI calculations, and $1500 worth of graphics cards is a huge waste, assuming you aren't playing Civ5 on two 4K monitors or some madness like that.

I really don't see a compelling case for upgrading a 2500k unless, say, you need the performance of a hex/octa core. Particularly when it's overclocked to 4.3, the performance boost of comparably-priced (low $200s) current-gen CPUs just isn't enough to justify the new CPU, new mobo, and if it's Skylake, DDR4 RAM. Things change if you're doing multithreaded scientific computing and can benefit from a hex/octo core i7, but if that's the case you probably already know it.

NVMe is wicked fast, and if you're building a new build anyway, why not? But I don't think it tips the balance for upgrading a Sandy Bridge system that isn't otherwise running into performance walls, either, for the diminishing return reason cardgame mentioned. If you have Sandy Bridge + SSD, you're probably already good; if you have Sandy Bridge + HDD, you should get an SSD but it's a much more economically sensible route to get a SATA3 SSD than to get NVMe + new mobo + new CPU + potentially new RAM.

And though I agree that cheap, large HDDs are great for a pure gaming system, I'd still recommend an SSD boot drive for those.

 

[Dell19]

Thanks for the info interesting to know that processors haven't jumped a huge amount in speed. I do play quite a few games that are meant to be processor intensive so its not a component that I can totally ignore.

 

[Zelig]

Depends a lot on what type of games you play. If you're play Civ-like games, you want a good CPU for the AI calculations, and $1500 worth of graphics cards is a huge waste, assuming you aren't playing Civ5 on two 4K monitors or some madness like that.

Civ5 isn't a fair benchmark, slow turn times are a symptom of the awful coding, not limited CPU performance.

And it's a terrible game, gameplay-wise anyway. Civ4 flies on pretty much any CPU - to really get the best Civilization experience, save your money from GPU/CPU and play civ4 on a 4K, 5K or 3440x1440 monitor (Depending on size/aspect ration preference.)

Things change if you're doing multithreaded scientific computing and can benefit from a hex/octo core i7, but if that's the case you probably already know it.

Should probably be running a proper workstation in that case. I just ordered a new box for my office last week with a Xeon E5-2697 v3, should give marginally better (100 MHz) single threaded performance than the i7-5960X and 1.6x the multithreaded performance.

And everyone still gives three-year warranty as standard on workstation boxes... it's utter nonsense that Apple is selling the Mac Pro as a workstation with a single CPU socket, Ivy Bridge-E and a one year warranty...

 

[Samson]

And it's a terrible game, gameplay-wise anyway. Civ4 flies on pretty much any CPU - to really get the best Civilization experience, save your money from GPU/CPU and play civ4 on a 4K, 5K or 3440x1440 monitor (Depending on size/aspect ration preference.)

This brings up a question (or 2) I have been meaning to ask here. I am playing Civ4 on a laptop, a toshiba portage z830. It has an i7 processor, 8Gb ram and an SSD, but civ4 does not run that fast ever, and sometimes is really laggy, and only at 1024 x 768. Is this to be expected with a machine like this? If I wanted a good computer for running civ4 what would it take?

 

[Zelig]

Laggy during gameplay, or long turn times?

I'd open civ in windowed mode with the task manager open - verify that other processes aren't hogging the cpu and that you're not running out of RAM. Play for a while and check what frequency the processor is running at - full dual core turbo for the 2677M is 2.6 GHz, but if it's throttling significantly below the base 1.8, it could make quite a large performance difference.

Run fraps while panning/zooming map around to check GPU performance... anything below 30 fps is likely to feel choppy.

Since the GPU is integrated, both the CPU and GPU contribute to the 17 watt TDP, and once you hit the cooling limit, both CPU and GPU performance will be affected.

 

[Samson]

Laggy during gameplay, or long turn times?

I'd open civ in windowed mode with the task manager open - verify that other processes aren't hogging the cpu and that you're not running out of RAM. Play for a while and check what frequency the processor is running at - full dual core turbo for the 2677M is 2.6 GHz, but if it's throttling significantly below the base 1.8, it could make quite a large performance difference.

Run fraps while panning/zooming map around to check GPU performance... anything below 30 fps is likely to feel choppy.

Since the GPU is integrated, both the CPU and GPU contribute to the 17 watt TDP, and once you hit the cooling limit, both CPU and GPU performance will be affected.

Lagging during gameplay. The fan comes on a lot, and I think it gets very hot so the cooling limit may well be it. I shall give your suggestions a try, but I do not know how to "check what frequency the processor is running at".

 

[Zelig]

In Win8+ CPU frequency is shown in the task manager.

I think you can use CPU-Z if you've got Win7-.

 

[cardgame]

It's almost certainly throttling your processor's capabilities so it doesn't overheat and give you a BSOD.