Tag Archives: tweaks

SSD Optimization Guide

If you have bought and installed an SSD (Which are roughly 10 times faster) than standard SATA hard drives, there are a few things you should do to make things run better in windows.

1) Sean’s Windows 7 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs:

This Guide is superb tells you everything you need to do with tutorial videos as well, also a windows 8 Guide.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

2) Solid State Drive (SSD) Tweaks for Windows 7

http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/solid-state-drive-ssd-tweaks-for-windows-7/552.html

Firefox 3 – Uses Huge amounts of Ram and is slow – Solutions

I love Firefox heck who doest with the fantastic features it has but Firefox 3 is so slow it seems to take ages compared to FireFox 2 and really its just not good enough. Ive tried everything to get it work a bit better, made a new profile etc and did some searching for a solution.

It also seems that Firefox uses a huge amount of ram up to 400mb of ram on my PC and thats not unique according to the searches ive done. Ive found an addon that seems to reduce the crazy amount of ram that Firefox Uses;

AFOM – Memory Recovery & Retention For Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11922

Im using this addon at the moment and it does seem to work even for the latest FireFox version. There are other Tweeks and solutions on the problem and ive listed some of them below.

  1. Firefox Running Slow? Make It Fast Again Without Re-Installation
  2. Is Firefox slow for you? Here’s some tips to try which might speed it up
  3. Firefox slow? Limit history size for speed improvement
  4. This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak

This page comes up with a FireFox tweek that ive not yet tested but it might just do the trick;

This little fix will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, and as a result it will take up less than 10MB of memory while minimized. So far, from my experiences with using this today, when you maximize Firefox it will obviously increase the memory usage. However, it does not seem to go back up to the insane amount that it was at before minimizing it. For example, Firefox was at 180MB of memory usage and then I minimized it and after a few seconds I maximized it. After maximizing it and continuing on my routine business it appeared to only have gone up to 60MB. This seems to be a good solution for me right now since I frequently maximize and minimize Firefox anyways.

  • Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
  • Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
  • In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
  • Now select True and then press Enter.
  • Restart Firefox.
  • Arma 2:The only PC Game to push it to the limits?

    arma2-03Arma 2 seems to me to be the only PC Game at the moment that really pushes a PC’s gaming performance to the max.The game is amazing when its in full detail but is a total nightmare to get any kind of decent performance from. I still have yet to finish the game as i just cant play it on the normal settings as it looks terrable however cranking up the detail slows the framerate down and your left chasing the Frame Rate Vs Visual Quality.

    Its not been since Crysis or maybe Flight Sim 10 that its been hard to get a game running right and look its best. In Arma 2’s case it seems that im not alone in getting bad performance from the game. I was reading many posts on the Bohemia Arma 2 forums about Arma 2 and most people have the same issues i have.

    The game seems to have huge problems loading textures and other stuff on the screen when you play, which leaves you looking a trees suddenly apearing and grass just loading before your eyes which totaly ruins any emersion or reailty when your playing the game. There is general theory that Arma 2 is just not optimised properly for the PC which seems to be true from what ive read.

    I read a post on the BIS forums from somebody who had a brand new ATI 5870 (Best GFX Card you can buy at the moment) and the game was still running poorly.

    Which is just shocking, however there seems to be a theory going round the Arma2 forums that the game is having problems loading data from the hard disk and thus the “poping” or “slowdown” occuring.

    My own PC Specs:
    AMD Phenom 9850 BE quadcore
    4 gig DDR 2 Ram
    ATI Radeon 4870 512mb
    Windows Vista 64 bit

    Here’s how I got ARMA2 to perform smoothly (high fps, no stutter, no LOD trashing)
    A thread discussing possable solutions to improve Arma 2’s performance.

    ArmA 2 I/O analysis results
    How Arma 2 manages loading and saving Data to the hard drive.