Do Not Pay For The Specific Hardware Is Not Needed

Do not pay for the hardware specifications is not necessary

Do not pay for the specific hardware is not needed

They did it again. Point of View Graphics card manufacturer has released a new government with no less than 4 GB of memory. It 'simply useless. In fact, it's worse than useless.

Additional memory card makes the most expensive and makes the performance worse. It's a double failure seems difficult to understand, but also a cultural totem gimmicks obscure and specifications, which runs through most of the PC hardware industry. Here is a practical guide to some of the worst offenders.

The first is the previously mentioned low-end graphics card memory load. Several gigabytes of graphics memory is impressive, but the logic behind this is that there is.

High graphical detail requires a lot of memory. But the GPU for low-end cards are not able to handle the major decisions of heavy textures and complex shader programs. Even worse, to keep costs in the short, inevitably means cheap memory is used.

Inevitably, therefore, low-end cards offer extended memory data transfer speeds slower than their standard brethren. The result is a whole hill of memory, most of which are never used, and the rest is simply to reduce the performance.

Space Stations

Another of my favorites is to read and write sequential performance solid state drives. Things have really started to accelerate in the last year, with a single disk performance now exceeds 500 MB / s. In fact, I recently played with a PCI Express SSD able to 1.65GB / s of raw bandwidth. This is a monumental series of any metric. The problem is that it is not a figure you will ever be able to profit in the real world.

There are several issues here. First, sorting the information on your PC or disk to run depends on the weakest link, not the fastest, so you'll have a number of SSDs to get something similar to the theoretical peak performance.

But even if you have more than one SSD ultra-fast, chances are you will not really benefit from the massive transfer rate. This is because large files tend to contain incompressible data - movies, music and photos. Typically, all already highly compressed.

This is important because the faster SSD tend to use data compression for maximum performance, and it is not possible with files incompressible.

The final problem with the responsibility of the SSD is a performance random access. Read and write a lot of small data sets is much more reflective of everyday use of computers than the Heavy Lifting multi-GB file, but it is also the place where the SSD is the weakest.

In one of my tests the Random Access 1.65GB/s-capable PCI Express SSD, barely reaches 20 MB / s. It costs the thick end of 1500 pounds. Enough said.

Control screens

PC monitors are another rich source of obscure specifications, and perhaps the single most misleading is the contrast. It is not uncommon today to find instructors claiming a contrast ratio of 1,000,000 to one or more, but read the fine print and discover that numbers over 1000 to almost always refers to a dynamic contrast. In other words, we are actively talking dimming backlight for darker blacks.

It may feel good but the current big screens are backlit. This means that only the dynamic contrast ratio refers to the range of brightness from frame to another, not a single frame. And it is the contrast of a frame, which gives an image of vitality.

The trend towards so-called cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio and full HD resolutions are still bound to the screen sins. Most monitors and laptop screens are now in 16:9 format and it is generally argued that it is better because it fits wide-screen video content.

Of course, HDTV is usually produced in 16:9, but movies are even greater. Specifically, applications are made portraits of configuration of computers, so a large area of ​​the screen is not very useful. As for 1080p Full-HD, which can take less pixels, no more, compared with a widescreen 16:10.

There are many other examples. Power supplies, for example, is often sold on the strength of watts peak output when it is really quality and stable supply, which means something.

The battery life of laptops is correct for the routine work in the most noble fiction ever unless you are using a Wi-Fi, and enjoy the display is turned off. I'm not kidding.

Of course, the kit makers do not always seem to pull a fast one comparative measurements are often very useful.

The lesson here is be very cold when it comes to large numbers on the sheets. You have been warned.