Some people have trouble gaming inside of VMWare. It tends to throttle their CPU. However, in the newest version of VMWare Fusion one of the toggles have been removed. You can change quite a bit of settings to optimize your virtual machine explicitly for gaming purposes.

It’s going to hit your CPU no matter what. You’re running software. Make sure that you’ve allocated the most RAM that you can to the VM. Maxing out your CPU won’t kill anything, no. I run my live stream on the Mac Mini every day. It’s run for the past three years, even though the Mac Mini’s CPU is throttled almost constantly.

Yes, the games are going to throttle your CPU. It could happen with XP outright, let alone when it’s running inside of the virtual machine. That will have more overhead.

In terms of mitigating that, it’s not really possible honestly. The latest version of VMWare will take care of most of it for you. Play around in your settings. Check your hard-disk buffering status. Optimize what you can – wherever you can.

It’s not going to kill your computer, no. You’re safe to keep on gaming.

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There are a lot of people making and watching videos online these days. When I visited the AMD campus in Texas during the SXSW conference recently, Casey showed me how AMD is helping people all over the world enhance their Flash experience. Adobe Flash 10.1 is a collaborative effort between Adobe and the team at AMD.

This new version of Flash takes advantage of the benefits that are enabled through AMD’s ATI Stream technology. This provides viewers with improved playback, reduced usage of their CPU, and longer battery life due to the comination of using all of the resources found in both their CPU and GPU.

The GPU is a much more efficient way of processing video than the CPU is. As we move more to a mobile lifestyle, your battery will wear down faster if you are processing video using your CPU. AMD wanted to make this much more efficient, and take advantage of different components of the computer or mobile system.

In addition to better battery life, the video footage will actually look better. With hardware acceleration enabled, videos are sharper and are much clearer. You’ll even see more vibrant colors. Even the whites are whiter using this technology.

You can experience this for yourself right now. Make sure you have the updated video driver from AMD installed. Then, of course, you’ll need to download and install the beta of Adobe Flash 10.1 to your system.

Thanks to the team at AMD for the help they provided to me to attend SXSW, and for all of the time they spent with me to discuss what’s new and exciting at AMD / ATI.

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During my trip to SXSW last week, I spent some time at the AMD campus. I was able to talk briefly with Raymond from the AMD Product Marketing Group. I had heard that AMD has a vision for Vision, and wanted to get more information for all of you. It’s a difficult process to buy a new computer these days, with all of the choices there are. AMD Vision was created to simplify that process for you.

When a consumer walks into a store, they typically have ideas as to what they want to buy. Vision, Vision Premium and Vision Ultimate designations are similar to “good”, “better” and “best” hardware configurations. What this will do is give the purchaser a much better idea of what they will get with any particular model, to help them decide if it is the right one for them.

Even without knowing a model number, people can compare models against each other by using the Vision designation. People don’t necessarily care about the tech terms, such as “gigabyte”. They want to be able to look at something, and just know it will work for them. With this program, it’s simple for an average computer user to figure out what is what, and what will do the job.

For instance, let’s say a woman walks into the store and needs to buy a notebook that will allow her to surf the web and watch movies. The Vision line would be perfect for that. However, if she also needed to do some light video processing, she would be better off choosing the Vision Premium model. If she’s a power user who does a lot of processor-intensive work (or even a gamer), she’ll need to go with a machine designated with the Vision Ultimate tag.

This is the vision of Vision – to simplify the buying process, and make it more intuitive. AMD has been seeing very positive results with this program. People understand what they are trying to convey, and are using it to their advantage.

From what I’ve seen, I have to agree. Vision is fantastic, and I highly recommend using this system when you are looking to buy your next computer.

I appreciate the folks at AMD sponsoring my trip to SXSW, and giving me the opportunity to get important product information to our community.

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Visiting AMD today, seeing their new technology. I can’t thank the folks at AMD enough for helping get me to SXSW!

Billy has done several screencasts in the past for our channels, and has received some pretty good feedback. Today, he’s going to show you how to monitor your system if you’re using OS X, using an application called iStat Menus. Remember, if you want to submit a screencast for possible use on our channels, see the information in the link at the beginning of this description.

iStat Menus can monitor many different things on your system, including:

• CPU – Realtime CPU graphs and a list of the top 5 CPU resource hogs. CPU usage can be tracked by individual cores or with all cores combined, to save menubar space.
• Disk Usage – See used or free space for multiple disks in your menubar. More detail for all your disks is only a click away.
• Memory – Memory stats for your menubar, shown as used and free memory or wired, active, inactive and free. The memory dropdown menu shows a list of the top 5 memory hogs, as well as other useful info.
• Disk Activity – Detailed disk I/O in your menubar, including a variety of different read and write indicators.
• Network – The realtime graph will keep your finger on the pulse of what data’s being sent and received for all network connections.

iStat Menus is fully customizable, and each menu extra comes with many different display modes, each featuring customizable colours, font sizes and widths.

Thanks for an excellent screencast, Billy! This little application is sure to come in handy for many Mac users!

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There is this thing sitting inside your computer that is the one thing every other thing is connected to! It’s called a motherboard. I have no idea why there’s no fatherboard… but yeah. The motherboard is crucial. If it’s not working – good luck using your computer at all. Ian from the PCPitStop community is sad because his Sony Vaio died. His motherboard is now dead, and wonders where he can find an affordable replacement.

Virut won’t corrupt your motherboard – but it will usually lead to having to reformat your system. With that said, if your motherboard is hosed for any reason, you might want to run a few diagnostics if you can. It’s possible it could be a bad power supply, you know? Check everything you possibly can, to determine for sure that it’s a motherboard.

I feel your pain. I’ve heard some not-so-happy things about Sony support in the past. Unfortunately, if it is a motherboard problem – it’s going to cost you. My recommendation is to find a local Geek. Pay them in pizza and cola. They’ll take a look at the computer to assess the problem. Sometimes it’s something small that trips us up, and I certainly hope that’s what is going on with you!

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I’ve been thinking recently about the advances that chipset makers have been making with GPUs, and how the CPU market seems to be stagnant at the moment. Recently, ATI made the first GPU clocked at 1GHz available with the Radeon HD 4890, factory over-clocked. In addition, that same card has 800 stream processors, while most CPUs have only two or four cores. Those cards also use GDDR5 memory, consequently.

On the software side, Snow Leopard is integrating OpenCL into the Mac OS, allowing developers to harness the power of the GPU in applications that traditionally might’ve just used the CPU. CUDA from NVIDIA also allows C programmers to harness some of the power of their GPUs with the right compilers, wrappers, and drivers.

All of this combined makes me wonder if someday soon we might see the death of the CPU as we know it today, to be replaced by a closer relative of the GPU. If GPU clock speed caught up with CPU clock speeds, the benefits of parallel processing available to the GPU would be immense! I know that changing architectures on an OS level would be quite a task (considering that Microsoft and Apple are just now making the switch from the decades-old x86 architecture), but do you think it will happen? Could the CPU be on its way out the door?

It doesn’t matter how new your computer is, you only have a limited amount of resources. You have to keep an eye on your CPU, your memory, and your disks – you need to know what’s going on! The Resource Monitor Tool has been improved for Windows 7 to make this easier for you to do.

On the primary tab of the Resource Monitor, you’ll find information about your CPU, memory, disk and network, as well as an overview of your performance. The remaining tabs go into more details in their area. For instance, in the CPU tab, you can see a CPU usage breakdown by service. Also, on the Disk tab, you can see a breakdown of disk activity by process.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Resource Monitor in Windows 7 is that they took the graphs and moved them to the side. In Vista, they were shown along the top. The charts would end up scrolling off the screen. This way, you’re able to dive in deeper, and see things more clearly at a glance.

More than anything, I appreciate the network section. They list off services that are running, the firewall status, and even what ports are being listened to (or from!). It goes deep into my system, and lets me keep better track of what is going on within my system – and help to keep it more secure, as well!

They did a really good job at really spicing this up. If you’re a power user, you’re going to appreciate the Resource Monitor tool inside of Windows 7, especially if you “kind of” liked it in Windows Vista. I kind of liked it in Vista, but it just wasn’t enough. This one in Windows 7 is definitely enough.

Kudos, Microsoft. I’m very happy to see how excellently this has been upgraded for Windows 7.

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This is Kyle Allen’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

Core i7 brings us Intel’s first true quad core processors, all four cores are now on a single die. Previously Intel’s Quad Core’s were essentially two dual core processors in one package. The current Core i7 line includes three Quad Core Processors, the 920 (2.66GHz), 940 (2.93GHz), and 965 Extreme Edition (3.2GHz). Currently priced at $294.99, $569.99, and $1029.99 respectively (Prices from Newegg).

The only Chipset that currently supports the Core i7 architecture is Intel’s own X58 express, offered by many manufacturers such as Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, Foxconn, EVGA, MSI, and Biostar. The X58 chipset supports ATI CrossFireX technology, Nvidia has even opened up SLI support for the X58 express chipset, although motherboard manufacturers must submit their motherboards to Nvidia for review. Core i7 brings many new technologies and even brings back some old. Intel has brought back Hyper Threading technology which allows each core to process two threads of information simultaneously, so each of the Core i7 processors have 8 threads and are seen as 8 Virtual Cores by the systems OS.

Core i7 isn’t just Intel’s new line of Processors it’s an entirely new, much improved architecture. Intel has replaced the Front Side Bus (FSB) with its new Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) which can achieve data transfer speeds as high as 25.6 GB/sec. Intel says QPI performance is 6.4 Gigatransfers/second on the 965 Extreme Edition and 4.8 Gigatransfers/second on the 940 or 920 CPUs, the resulting bandwidth is either 16 or 12GB/s respectively. Intel’s Core i7 bring us an integrated memory controller which offers improved performance due to increased bandwidth and lower latency. Core i7 processors now feature L1, L2, and Shared L3 Cache, 64K per core, 256K per core, and 8MB shared respectively. Core i7 only supports DDR3 and bring us fast triple channel memory, it is also recommended that memory is operated below 1.65V.

Core i7 also features advanced Power Management features, Power Gate allows individual cores to enter a sleep state while other cores are under load, the processors include integrated power controllers and a power control unit that actively monitor each cores power consumption, and voltages. Having integrated power controllers and a power control unit is important to the Core i7 architecture because it allows the CPU to transfer power from cores in sleep mode to cores under load in what Intel calls “Turbo Mode.” If one of the cores is being used heavily, it can use some of the power that would ordinarily be used for one of the other cores if it is not currently in use to essentially overclock individual cores. Lastly Core i7 introduces a new CPU socket the LGA 1366, a 1366 pin socket that functions similarly to the current LGA 775, but is slightly larger and the CPU cooler mounting holes are further apart.

For the last couple of years I have been observing people over and over again bash Microsoft and its products. While some of these criticisms were valid, most of the negative remarks were grossly exaggerated. I think most of the disapproval came from the problems with vista’s launch and apple’s commercials. While there are apple products I like, I own an ipod touch and would buy an iphone if it were not on at&t’s service, I am more than happy with my pc and don’t really see a compelling reason to switch. Below are the top 5 reasons I will be staying with my pc.

Software – Like it or not there are more software options in the windows ecosystem. Paid or free, software availability is definitely more plentiful on the windows side of the fence. I don’t really believe that a convincing argument can be made about which platform has the better application whether it be linux, mac, or windows. It is a fact however, that Windows has substantially larger library of applications available, it number is far greater than both mac and linux combined. Because of this great variety users have more options.

Live Mesh – Of all the items on this list, this is the one I am least familiar with. I have only recently began using live mesh (3 weeks or so), but I must say I absolutely love it. While it’s still in beta form I honestly believe what Microsoft has done with it will pay off in the long run. Not only are they going to integrate their Windows Live apps with it, but they are also opening mesh up to developers to create their own apps. Live mesh is (for those who don’t know) Microsoft’s syncing platform that allows all other apps that sit on top of it to sync to your account. Much like Google’s apps you will be able to download the app itself to the desktop and use it there. Not only can you download Microsoft’s apps, but you can also download the developer’s app. Mobile me is to apple what live mesh is to Microsoft, the difference is mesh is much bigger in what it will be able to accomplish. Oh by the way live mesh works on the Mac too. It makes paying for a yearly mobile me subscription sound foolish does it not?

Price / Upgradability – I like having a desktop. I like to build my desktop. I like to upgrade my desktop. The things I like are made simple on a pc. The Mac really only has 2 desktop systems. The first is way too expensive for what it offers, and the second is underpowered for my needs and comes inside a monitor. That is a problem for me since I despise the idea of having to buy a completely new computer if something happens to the monitor. Plain and simple PC’s are just more affordable and more configurable. That’s both hardware and software. Yes a new retail copy of windows may cost more than a retail copy of OS X, but I think that the majority of people that upgrade their OS, especially those who do it on a semi-regular bases, knows that you don’t buy a retail you buy OEM. An OEM copy of vista home premium is cheaper than a copy of OS X. And while there is something to be said about the elegance of apple products they are not worth the huge premiums we pay. And by the way there are PC vendors that make excellent / beautiful laptops too (Voodoo PC, Falcon NW, or Hypersonic PC anyone?)

Multimedia – Yes I can imagine the WTF in people’s faces but before you say anything hear me out. I believe that windows is a solid multimedia platform out of the box (remember I use vista home premium). I really like Windows Media Center and I think it’s far better than any other media viewing software in any platform (at least out of the box). It’s a simple and clean interface that allows you to easily explore your entire digital library. If your pc is not connected to your TV and you just so happen to have a xbox 360 you can stream your media through that. Now I understand people are going to bring up iLife and here are the reasons I am not that impressed. First I hate itunes, especially inside a windows environment. Yes it may work ok on macs, but it’s very slow on windows plus I hate buying anything with DRM (thanks Amazon). I also think Microsoft has comparable products to the rest of the iLife suite for the exception to iDVD and garage band (but who really uses garage band). Plus if u don’t like the products offered by Microsoft there are so many other ones out there available most of which are free.

Windows 7 – I truly believe that Win 7 will be the best windows OS EVER once released. I have been able to obtain a copy of the pre-beta release and must say that I am very impressed with the stability of the OS (even in its pre-beta form). It is very lightweight and has a bunch of improvements. While most improvements are not huge, they are numerous enough that you really do start to notice a difference. They have managed to make the whole OS much simpler, yet allowed it to be highly customizable. They are really taking advantage of all the architecture changes made in vista. In many ways those painful architectural changes were what caused most of the shortcomings in vista in the first place. I remember how harshly Vista was criticized when released and while I never really agreed to the degree of hate it received, I do admit that there were certain things that were wrong with it at launch. Problems such as: old hardware not having proper drivers (which we really can’t blame Microsoft for), UAC, hardware requirements and others really seemed destroy any chance Microsoft had of getting any good press. Regardless of what you thought of vista at launch, the fact is that is a very stable OS today and not only do I use it, I highly recommend it to any new PC buyer. And while I could be wrong about this, it seemed to me like most the criticisms came from Mac users. I find this funny because they seemed to forget all the crap the Mac OS went through during the switch from OS 9 to OS X. But getting back to Win 7, I guess you could say that in many ways it’s the OS vista should have been at launch plus a whole lot more.

http://live.pirillo.com/ – I take pride in the fact that I don’t know everything. I love to learn, and looking to the community for help filling in my blanks is important to me. Consider this an update… 1.1 if you will… to my earlier video on Quad and Dual Core CPUs.

My original video on Quad Core processors was met with some constructive criticism. Apparently, I explained one of the main points wrong. So… let’s set the record straight!

When you say “quad core” or “dual core”, it doesn’t mean there are literally four (or two) tiny little CPUs sitting inside the computer case. Rather, there is one CPU, with four (or two) cores to it. This enables the CPU to run faster, and stay cooler. When I open up my process manager, you can see that Windows manages these cores separately. It shows four separate boxes, making it seem as though there are four separate CPUs. I think this is where my explanation got muddied before, and I wanted to make things right.

By all mean, don’t let what I say in my videos be the end of the conversation on any matter. Ask questions, extend the discussion. If I’m wrong, or unclear on something, let me know about it.

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I want to start some conversation. I’m not officially authorized to speak for Intel on any matter (see my “Caveat Lector� disclaimer over there in the sidebar), but there are a ton of things that I can talk about. I’m just a guy, a blogger, who works at a very large company that makes the most complex things ever made by humans. It’s a fascinating place, and I know there are lots of you that would like to know more about Intel. Or maybe you have something you’d like to vent. Or perhaps you just want to say how much you love something Intel has done (wouldn’t that be nice?).

Wow. That’s pretty bold. I’ve known Josh for a while now (after first meeting him at a geek dinner in Portland). He’s about as “geek” as they come. I guess the ball’s in Intel’s court now? It’s happening anyway.