How-to: Dell 2209WA running at 75hz (or 76hz) and information regarding refresh rates

I was surfing around the other day researching screen tearing and how it could be avoided, and stumbled upon a little driver hack that enables a faster refresh rate on this particular monitor. You can do it just as well with third-party applications like PowerStrip, but a native solution is great and enables you to use this higher mode only in games or certain applications, while maintaining the standard 60hz when you are using your computer for other things.

 
Please divert your eyes to the lower left corner!

So what’s the deal with faster refresh rates?
Faster refresh rates means you will get less screen tearing. It also heightens the response time of the monitor, allowing it to display information faster both normally and if vsync is enabled (going from 16.67 ms to 13.16 in response time.) It is also stated in the official specifications that the 75hz mode is supported.

Does it help?
I was a bit hesitant at first, but it really does! After toying around with it for a bit, the biggest difference turned out to be the timing I got when I  playrf DJ Max Trilogy; the result was very palpable, but i noticed that almost all games suffer much less from screen tearing while using 76hz.

Wolfenstein (2009) proved to be one of the best examples as it had some horrible tearing issues at 60hz which were all but gone at 76hz.

What if the game/application doesn’t let me select which mode to use or reverts to 60hz?
Many games have flags that you can send when starting it. If they don’t, a third party app might be able to force the refresh rate.

Download!
Finished reading? Go ahead and download the fix here:
Mirror 1
Mirror 2
Mirror 3 (Pastebin link, paste text in notepad and save as anything.inf)

After unpacking, right-click the file you get and select “Install”. Please note that this fix is only for the Dell 2209WA monitor. Similar fixes may be available for your monitor, Google knows!

This does not alter any drivers you have installed for your graphics card, such as ATI Catalyst or nVidia GeForce.

A footnote regarding 75/76hz difference
I put both 75 and 76hz in the topic because there seems to be little difference between these two values and people use them interchangeably. After applying the driver mod my OSD shows 76hz which seems to work fine. I have not read any reports that this 1hz difference would be a problem.

In other news

Go Saints!

Internet wisdom

Just a little fragment of “internet wisdom” I randomly stumbled upon on Youtube the other day. (Click for large version.)

I’m not conspiracy-prone, but these guys look almost too funky to pass up on:

 
The established Stewart Swerdlow with wife, Janet. (Click for homepage.)

Who are they? What do they actually do? Developing topic!

How to properly price casual games

(Please note: I’m all for supporting casual and indie game developers, but I’d rather support three of them at Magnetis price than one by buying Eufloria.)

Dreamcast battery replacement mod (2xAAA)

I recently got a Dreamcast to play some of the unique games on the console (mainly Seaman and Samba De Amigo) and quickly noticed that the internal battery was drained which would cause the internal clock to reset every time I powered the console off. To play certain games (including Seaman) your clock needs to be fully working, so I set out to find a replacement.

Google that!
Finding information about how to replace it seemed to be simple enough, but many people seem to disagree on what kind of battery is actually in there, some claimed it to be a normal CR2032, the ones in the VMU; others claimed it was a rechargeable version, the ML2032. When I opened mine up it turned out to be a ML2430 (datasheet) which seems roughly equivalent to the ML2032. A problem is that these batteries are insanely expensive, and I’m not even sure they’re being manufactured anymore.

The mod

Disassembling the Dreamcast
Snesorama.us member shredhead posted a simple tutorial, all credits to him, I’m just adding my additional pictures and experience. If you’re looking for the long version, go ahead and read the linked post.

You start out by disassembling your Dreamcast. There are four screws on the back and when they’re out the top slips right off. You’ll have something looking like this (click image for larger version):

First, you need to unscrew the power supply unit (the left circuit in the picture) and lift it out. It usually sits pretty tight, so be firm but careful. It’s attached with six pins (‘A1’ in the image) which you need to be careful not to break when you pull it. It will still be attached to the power button, so you can just leave it hanging on the side.

Then unscrew the controller ports module, detach the ribbon cable carefully (‘B’ and ‘B1’, respectively) and lift out the module. Also note the battery at ‘C’.

Now things should be looking like the image below.

Now that we have the controller module, let’s get started on assembling  the battery pack.

“Crap wiring guide", kindly borrowed from the original post below:

Here’s how my pack turned out. first soldered and then bundled together with electrical tape:

Soldering on batteries isn’t the easiest of things, so I’d recommend buying special batteries suitable for soldering.  (usually available in well-stocked hardware stores) but they might end up costing you as much as a replacement battery, so if you’re handy and quick with the soldering iron you’ll probably manage it just fine. Remember not to expose the batteries to the heat of the soldering iron for a prolonged time, as this can decrease the voltage you get out of them. Mine went down from about 2.5v to just below 2v (tested with multimeter.) but everything still works just fine.

Assembling the battery pack and controller.
Note the picture of the controller board upside down, it shows the polarities that you will need to connect. You will only need to solder one of the positive connectors. You will need to remove the old battery first by applying your soldering iron to the three points while wiggling the battery until it comes loose.

Finished result after soldering and assembling everything again:

(Yes, I screwed up the cable colors, the black one is positive and the yellow one is negative!)

The pack fits snuggly between the GDROM drive and the ribbon cable, I used another piece of electrical tape to make sure it sticks.

Final word
Best of luck with this mod, may it give you a reason to dust off your Dreamcast!

Mini computer parts review (Including Radeon HD5770!)

I bought a new computer a few months ago (part list here) and thought that I would express my opinion about most of the individual parts in a small compiled blog post. If you came from Google or another search engine, just scroll down to the part you’re interested in for its own mini review.

The parts are assigned in three categories. Happy reading!

The good

Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650W
I’ve had absolutely zero issues with this power supply. It runs virtually fanless on low loads, and seems to do a great job under stress too. It even managed to power 2xHD5770 without issues.

Corsair Hydro Series H50
I was a bit hesitant about this closed-loop water cooling system due to its steep price tag, but in the end it proved to be a great investment. I’m running my Intel i5 comfortably at 3.7GHz (Remember, the stock speed is 2.66GHz!) at about 50-55C or so at full load. Virtually 4 extra GHz for about a hundred dollars is not a bad bargain!

Fractal Design Define R2
Quite frankly one of the best cases I’ve seen. Tons of HD slots, sleek design and very thick metal makes this a great investment both now and in the future.

 

Intel Core i5 750 2,66GHz Socket 1156
It’s fast, it runs very cool with the Hydro H50 (Although I’ve heard the stock cooler is supposedly pretty bad.) and it gives mad overclocking abilities.

The bad

Asus P7P55D
Aside from the horribly ugly crapware that Asus sends with this motherboard, it’s actually pretty decent. The only reason it’s in the “bad” category is that this motherboard does not support CrossfireX like stated. Since the second PCI-E port is of 4x (speed) you can not have a multi-GPU configuration with this board. Having bought two HD5770 cards and finding worse performance using Crossfire than without (15fps with Crossfire vs 60+fps without in Serious Sam HD) was an unpleasant surprise. Of course I only have myself to blame for being uninformed, but you’d think that having Crossfire stamped in big on the box seemed like a good indication of its support, but alas. So what kind of Crossfire does it support then? Apparently, multi-gpu on a single-card one. Thanks, Asus… Not.

Corsair Dominator DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9
They work just fine, but start to crash at >=1650MHz for me. Not much left to the imagination.

 
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 Lite HDMI DisplayPort Dual-DVI 1GB
I really wish I could put this in the “good” pile, but unfortunately, not all is well. The card itself has exceptional performance for its price. A sub-200USD card that runs Crysis at very acceptable framerate is quite a feat. Unfortunately, the drivers are horrible. Remember that I wrote about my DXVA problems that solved themselves a few weeks ago? Well, they didn’t, as I’m having the same issues again in the 9.12 hotfix. Not only that, but who could forget the Saboteur fiasco? There’s also my recent Voddler issues and fullscreen video crashes. ATI do seem keen to fix their issues and they constantly release updated drivers, but they’re not anywhere near done yet, nor will they be in the foreseeable future.

Oh wait, I also forgot this ATI Overdrive bug. Now I don’t feel so guilty for putting this in the “bad” pile anymore.

PS. People in the ATI support forum are really unhelpful. Doesn’t work? Buy more hardware! DS.

The ugly

Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB
This disk has some serious stutter issues. Simultaneous read/writes go very slow, and the cache does a poor job of keeping up. It –is- faster than a regular hard-drive if you’re running games, but if you’re updating Windows, downloading a couple of files and browsing the web all at once, expect up to 5-10 seconds of freezing, and expect it often.

It also doesn’t support the TRIM command. (You want that, or else your speeds will diminish with time.) And no, not even the 40GB model that has a compatible Intel chipset and simply needs a firmware update. Well done, Kingston.

Next time…
I’ll definitely look more into multi-GPU configurations. If you’re looking to buy a computer, read reviews and performance tests carefully before building! Very few motherboards today support true 16x/16x Crossfire support.

In other news…
 
I’m going to become a Samba God – watch me shake!