Overclocker`s Software - Notebook Hardware Control
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This one you might not find posted around the forums very often, but is VERY useful for notebook users. I would make this a requirement for anyone that uses a notebook. I've had it on my computer since I got it. It brings many of the features listed in this article together into a single program. You can monitor the speeds of graphics cards, temperatures of everything, and the ability to change the voltage of the CPU. It has four different power settings that can be changed in a single click.
Another type of testing you may see is actual game Frames Per Second. This is what really counts right? It's all well and good if you have good super pi time, for example, but that means squat for actual gaming. You might see a variety of games being used. The reason for this is that each game is developed differently and there are many different game engines out there. Some games use Direct X and some use OpenGL; these will also vary the performance from the computer. Also some games allow a company to help them and give them time to develop their drivers to boost the performance of the game.
The last item you may notice hitting the forums and around the Internet is what operating system you are running. With Microsoft's release of Windows Vista, developers had to start fresh with drivers, so they are still in a very immature state. Therefore, performance on Vista should be a little less than Windows XP at this point. In a few months the newer games should catch up and be roughly the same if not better for Vista. This is going to be similar to a 64 bit version of operating systems; the drivers haven't been out there long enough for the maximum tweaking to happen.
These are some of the more commonly used programs you will run into while looking into overclocking and computer monitoring a management. These are all very useful programs that will make it a lot easier to monitor your computer. I personally use CPU-Z and ClockGen to overclock my computers and Stress Prime 2004 to make sure the computer is running at its maximum speed while still being stable. I do use games that I normally play a lot to measure how well the computer does on that game. For my notebook computer, Notebook Hardware Control is the first thing I download when I reinstall it. If you would like any other recommendation or have questions on other programs here, please stop by our forums; our members will be glad to help you.
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