Customer Reviews

PC Performance Tuning & Upgrading Tips & Techniques

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A stumbled across this book by accident. It was a great find.

I have every book on Upgrading. Most are 1,500 pages of tables and device settings I can't imagine that anyone would ever use.

During my first weekend with this book, I put 30 to 40 of the tips to immediate us. It's a great no "BS" way to improve your PC performance.

If you don't try any other upgrades, you owe it to yourself (and your PC) to give over clocking a try. Using the benchmarks the book describes, I was able to boost my PC performance by 20% by over clocking my CPU. However, I followed the book's advance and slowed my CPU back down and instead speeded up my system bus. My performance jumped by 32%!

The book shows you how to use software to cool your CPU -- so I have not yet had to add extra fans.

A great chapter!

I am preparing the for the A+ exam and I stumbled across this book. What a find!

The tips are to the point -- how something works, how to determine if it is working well (lots of benchmarks you can run against your system), what to do about problems and ways you can determine whether or not you should make the fix.

Lots of books tell you how to upgrade something. This book tells you how to determine if the upgrade is going to make a difference. I would have saved a lot of money on upgrades over the years if I had known how to measure the benefits before I spent the money.

Highly recommend.

I have a HP LaserJet printer with a network card. I took the book's advice and connected my pc (via a hub) to the printer using a network (100Mbs). I print a lot of large graphics. They seem to print 20 to 30% faster using the network connection.

I'm just getting started with my prep for the A+ exam. Not ready to coverclock the cpu yet.

Found the Windows-related performnce tips very easy to follow. Changing my modem settings improved my dial up connection by about 20%.

Looking forward to trying the disk tips.

To me, the book's value was that it showed me how to measure the effect (usefulness) of my operations using benchmarks. I learned I didn't need more RAM. I could speed up my CPU. My disk drive was actually performing faster than I thought. I used to the tips in the modem chapter to speed up my dial up throughput by 14% percent (works for me).

I had been struggling with trying to understand the differences between PCI, VESA, IDE, SCSI and firewire ... when to use which for what ... how to use each.

The book's bus chapter is worth the price of the book alone! Not only do I now know what each bus does, how to tell if my PC has the bus, I also know how the buses communicate with one another.

According to the book and the benchmarks I ran after reading the book, incorrect bus use can severely impact performance. Fortunately, fixing the bus problems is easy.

My 200MHz Pentium desktop now out performs my 400MHz notebook thanks to overclocking the CPU and system bus. I spent the weekend running benchmarks and working up the courage to try "overclocking" -- it was really quite simple.

My PC is four years old. Don't have the funds to buy a new one. I am still kind of a newbie so I was a little afraid of the content.

Found it was very easy to use...I could pick and choose the level of info I wanted (some stuff is way beyond me) ... but my system now starts 30 seconds faster -- I'm happy.

Finally--something you don't need an electronics degree to understand. Lots of step by step instructions. The benchmark programs helped me determine what operations were useful and which I could ignore. Wish the book had a CD with the programs, but the book tells you where you can find everything you need. I am studying for A+ cert -- this book was a great help.