What secondary software titles are must haves for you guys on your 18's?

I would say every time i do a fresh install of a OS, I always reinstall the following:

Winrar, CCleaner, Daemon Tools, Utorrent, Avast Antivirus, Malwarebytes anti-malware, Core temp, NVIDIA control panel.


I also newly have been using a program called driver booster which actually works believe it or not. (its disabled at startup and quickly scans for new drivers available for your machine). Twice it has detected new drivers for things i usually don't check for like chipsets ect., that i would have only found ifi i went on dells website.


Does anyone else recommend programs that are must haves? CCleaner and winrar are definite must haves in my opinion. (both are free i might add). Also i guess depending on your preference afterburner or precision would have to be installed for your video cards.

 

Agreed iObit driver booster is excellent but their Advanced system care 7 is brilliant as it does so many things far more functional than cc cleaner,anti virus wise bitdefender is excellent but very resource hungry when doing a full scan (a very good stability test too) personally i prefer afterburner over precision x once again more functionality and simpler to use. One program that i definitely use is one that actually shows folder thumbnails for pdf files on 64 bit systems something adobe cant seem to get right:thumbsup:

 

Afterburner has less functionality, not more. EVGA Precision X offers functional GPU voltage control, usable Power Target controls for 780M, K-Boost and twice as many profile slots as Afterburner. Afterburner's one and only feature that is missing from Precision X is screen recording, but that is irrelevant now that NVIDIA ShadowPlay exists (and also works better). At this point the only use I have for Afterburner is downloading it to grab the bundled RTSS 6.0.0.6228 for 64-bit OSD support.

 

Does Precision X offer power target control on 780M with the stock Vbios? Afterburner does offer power target control on my desktop GTX690 but not on my laptop... On a sidenote does anybody use sidebar gadgets? I found these to be really useful to monitor temperatures,cpu load,disk information,gpu information etc.
http://www.myfavoritegadgets.info/

 

Not on the stock vbios.

 

I like and use desktop gadgets under both Windows 7 and 8. It sucks that Micro$lop removed support for gadgets so many other aesthetic niceties from Windows 8/8.1 and crippled it so badly. Fortunately, all of that is correctable with hacks and third-party offerings.

For gadget lovers another good option is AIDA64. It's not only an excellent monitoring and testing utility in its own right, but their Sensor Panel feature is pretty sweet. The gadget you see in my recent desktop screen shots (example for Windows 8.1 below) is AIDA64. The sensor readings and aesthetic features are fully customizable.

Yes, as Brother Pathfinder mentioned, you need an "unlocked" vBIOS for that. TDP and voltage are both adjustable with an svl7/johnksss vBIOS, same as your desktop GPU. Here's an example...

Spoiler

Unfortunately, anything more than a minuscule bump in voltage is more than the new 18 can handle and it will turn itself off if you try to do anything fancy with GPU overclocking. The more you overclock the Haswell CPU, the more it exacerbates the power handling limitations the system suffers from.

 

I too have Aida64 based on Mr Fox's recommendation, I can second it is a great utility

 

Mr fox. i swear i responded to one of your youtube videos about using extra ram for caching ect. , i saw your desktop and want it...How do i make it look like yours? i like the theme on the bottom for all the running items and the upper right video card software /gadget i want it. lol.

 

mr fox i actually already have aida64 extreme,business, and engineer versions all installed on my systems..i found a spot that has gadgets in the program but when i click on any of the links it brings me to a microsoft site saying they no longer support gadgets...i want your sidebar program to view my gpu settings ect.

 

I was about to reply to your comment on my RAM Caching tutorial video on YouTube, LOL. You can download my custom AIDA64 Sensor Panel and use it as a template if you wish. Brother gschneider was able to import it and use it with his system just fine. [ DOWNLOAD]

 

Does Precision X work with RTSS 6.0.0.6228? The only reason I have Afterburner right now is like you, 64-bit OSD support. I haven't tried running Precision X on a 64 bit application since installing the newest RTSS.

 

I use Display Driver Uninstaller Download version 12.6 to delete old nvidia drivers

 

Aside from using the template I provided the link for AIDA64 Sensor Panel (which is not a Windows Sidebar gadget) you can still install and run any normal Windows Vista/7 gadgets on Windows 8 without Micro$lop's blessing. My Windows 8.1 is totally hacked to pieces and does not even resemble Micro$lop's crappy version of the OS. (You can see many aspects of the customization in the screen shot I shared showing Precision X. If you look closely you can see it is Windows 8, not Windows 7. Anyhow, just install the 8GadgetPack and tell M$ where to stuff their lack of support, LOL.

Yes, it sure does. Precision X also includes RTSS, just not the new one with 64-bit support. In fact, I never use Afterburner and probably should just uninstall it and leave RTSS.

DDU is a very useful program. Although, I seldom uninstall NVIDIA drivers unless I am trying to completely rid my system of a version I don't like. NVIDIA drivers install nicely over the top of other drivers... very seldom have problems like AMD. DDU works really well for AMD drivers and Intel drivers also.

 

Never use Daemon Tools.
Use the free virtual clonedrive instead. slysoft.com

 

I can't believe no one has said Throttlestop yet. Best program ever.

 

Mr.fox. i clicked on your link and downloaded it, but nothing on my computer is able to open it. I know it got to be as simple as changing something or something. I get that use the web to check for a program able to open it ect.

i changed the file extension to .gadget and then was able to get the install gadget thing to pop up, but when it does it says its not a valid gadget file.

 

You import it with AIDA64. It doesn't open with anything else. As I mentioned, it is an AIDA64 Sensor Panel, not a Windows Gadget.

 

To import into Aida 64.
Open Aida64
Open the sensor panel so it is on screen.
Right Click the panel and click sensor manager
Click import then navigate to the file and open.
It will then open the file like Mr Fox's

I have since modified the panel with my own needs but Mr Fox's is a great place to start .

 

daemon tools is free (the light version) professional version is free too, just pretty sure i will break rules on this site if i talk about it. lmfao

 

up and running.. View attachment 110181

 

what about the rest Mr. Fox, even your bottom bar looks different ( not to mention your MAC OS style top bar

 

Pardon my ignorance, but if your CPU supports XTU, is there any advantage to using ThrottleStop? From my limited understanding reading these forums, for pre-Ivy Bridge chips that do not support XTU, ThrottleStop is a godsend because it would be one of the few (only?) way(s) to do anything at all with your chip. But for chips that support XTU, is there any reason why one would want to use ThrottleStop? I mean, wouldn't the two programs fight each other for control of the CPU?

 

Having both on doesn't cause any issues as long as you do your initial XTU settings prior to launching TS. There isn't much need to use XTU after that so having TS as a start up app causes no issues. Actually, now you mention it, I'm not sure if TS has Haswell support.
The value of TS for me is being able to have multiply CPU overclock/underclock profiles and all the tweaks and settings toggle-able (from the press of a hotkey on the fly at any time. Having 4 switchable profiles; 1 @ 4.6ghz , 2 @ 4.3ghz, 3 @ 3.4ghz, 4 @ 1.2 ghz is really handy.

 

Yes, ThrottleStop 6.00 and 7.00 both support Haswell. I use it on the 18 and have it launch as a task at Windows logon automatically on both beasts. In addition to those features mentioned by Brother TBoneSan, it does exactly what the name implies... it helps prevent throttling under load, especially when CPU and GPU are under load. Here is a real quick, down and dirty example of 3DMark11 Test 1 at 4.3GHz on CPU, very mild 955/1350 GPU overclock run in a window mode.

3DMark11 Test 1 - With ThrottleStop	3DMark11 Test 1 - Without ThrottleStop

 

ThrottleStop best program ever. Especially for those having Haswell CPUs, this is a must.

 

I agree except for the "especially Haswell" part only because it has been a must-have utility since back in Core2 Duo days. Anyone that is serious about getting good performance from their post-P4 Intel CPU needs to use ThrottleStop to get the best it has to offer. The only difference is that Haswell is messed up worse than any other CPU before, so the benefits are more glaringly apparent. ThrottleStop makes a big difference in benchmark physics scores with all Intel i7 processors. I don't use i3 or i5 to know for sure, but it probably helps them as well. With 3920XM and 3940XM it's good for roughly 1,000 points in 3DMark11 and Vantage. The new settings unclewebb added for Haswell are really spectacular.

 

I agree it's a great utility, but what I meant was that those with Haswell shouldn't go without it. Locking the CPU at a certain multiplier will help with minimum FPS performance in benchmarks. It takes time for CPU freq to ramp up.

The new settings fix the crap that Dell's BIOS has given us. Having different offset voltages for different profiles is like giving me a turbo buttons.

Also off topic but while I was working on my 18, with its palmrest off. I tuned the Dolby surround equalizer for it to sound good, and it sounded great, almost as good as a decent pair of external speakers. But once I put on the palmrest and assemble the laptop it started sounding muffled again. I have to tune the equalizer again. Something that the engineers didn't really think of when designing the laptop, don't block the space in front of the speakers, give it space or give it a port to direct the sound out. The mesh and plastic grill in front of the speakers + palmrest make the speakers sound crappy. The subwoofer actually produces decent response, but sadly a big part of it is absorbed by the palmrest.

 

The CPU-GPU sensor panel of Aida is simply awesome. I got mr.fox skin to start customizing it from there,but I'm having an hard time on tryin to set up some trasparency to the sensor window. Also,do anyone knows a good Dock program for applications launch to set on the top of the desktop?

 

RocketDock is what I use. I use the Black Beauty icons, then made some of my own unique icons to match the motif.

 

Thanks for the download Mr Fox. I took what you made and went crazy with it. This is on my desktop, I will install on the 18 today. Thanks.

 

VLC Media Player. Very versatile, stable media player. I use it nearly 100% of the time.

Media Player Classic is very good too. Simple and stable and a back-up just in case VLC doesn't work, which is quite rare.

 

Be careful using VLC player's volume boost. It's a great media player, but using the volume boost can ruin laptop speakers. The damage caused by over-driving the speakers is not covered under warranty.

 

Didn't know this. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Hi Mr. Fox! ( You have been the biggest help to me on these forums ) Could we get a repost for the sensor panel settings file? Link is not available any longer.

Thank you sir!


/imest

 

You're welcome. Here is a sensor panel shell that can be used as a starting point. It will need editing for different configurations, but easier than starting from scratch.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwdqi25LDwZySnNkZlFWUzRvZ00/view?usp=sharing