Posts Tagged ‘Clock Your Speed’

Increasing Gaming Speed

Friday, November 20th, 2009

This past weekend, a sci-fi, fantasy and horror convention in Arizona called TusCon, featured an interesting event.  According to citizen journalist blogger BJay, they hosted an event for people who modify their computers to make them go really fast for gaming. It was hosted by PCwormhole.com, a site that offers “a gateway to bleeding edge PC’s and the innovators who build and bench them.” They call this over-clocking.

We’re all about clocking speed here at Speedplexer, at least internet speed. But if you’re some who really, really feels the need for speed, you’ll want to speed up your computer’s processing as well.

BJay explains in her article, “Some people overclock their computers or make them run at a higher clock rate or GHz than it was designed to (it goes faster). However their efforts are limited by the temperature of the processor or some other internal components.  Cooler temps allow more speed.  Computers come with a heatsink to keep temperatures down.  However for hardcore, extreme enthusiasts, it’s not enough and they modify it.”

She included photos of a water cooled computer CPU, a CPU cooled by liquid nitrogen, an Nvidia video card with putty applied to reduce the temperature and a CPU cooled by a modified A/C unit and tubing. PCwormhole.com also has photos available, if you’re interested.

“These computers were using i7 processors and got to temperatures as low as -90 degrees and speeds were increased from a clock speed of 2.6 GHz to 5 GHz – making it about twice as fast.”

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US in the Middle for Broadband Around the World

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its latest data on worldwide broadband access last week.  For broadband penetration, the United States is in the middle of the pack, slightly above average for O.E.C.D. member countries. For a cool graph, check out the New York Times BITS Tech Blog, where they explain “perhaps this makes sense, given that the United States is in and of itself an unevenly developed country.” 

As for affordability, the United States has monthly broadband subscription fees that are slightly more expensive than the average for the O.E.C.D.. Other findings include:

* The economic crisis has not significantly slowed worldwide broadband adoption. In fact, broadband growth during the last six months of the year was slightly stronger at 6.23% than in the first six months at 6.16%.

*  Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Sweden, Korea and Finland maintain their lead the OECD with broadband penetration well above the OECD average, each surpassing the 30 subscribers per 100 inhabitants threshold. There was no change in rankings in the past 6 months among these leading countries.

* The United States is the largest broadband market in the OECD with 80 million subscribers, representing 30% of all broadband connections in the OECD.

• Connection speeds of 20 Mbit/s were available in all but two OECD countries in September 2008 – Turkey and Mexico.

• The average advertised speed  for DSL is 9.6 Mbit/s,  for cable is 14.9 Mbit/s and for fibre is 65.3 Mbit/s. The U.S. is above average here at 50 Mbit/s. But Japanese providers now offer cable broadband services at 160 megabits per second.

Check all the broadband speed graphs the OECD has available and then clock your speed to see where you stand.

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Wi-Fi in the Sky

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

According to the Wall Street Journal, American Airlines is loading up another 150 planes this year with Wi-Fi Internet service. They began offering wireless Internet to domestic customers on 15 of their Boeing 767’s last August. Their next step is to start adding service to 153 of their Boeing 737’s in time for 2010. This is just the latest sign that high-altitude, high-speed Internet  is becoming a standard on domestic flights.

Several U.S. airlines are planning on or considering offering Internet on domestic flights. Delta Air Lines plans to equip more than 300 planes with wireless Internet access by year end. Southwest Airlines Co. began testing a satellite-based Internet service on four of its planes earlier this year. United Airlines plans to offer air-to-ground Internet service on 13 of its planes in the second half of the year.

But it’s not for free—with airlines looking for ways to make money any way they can these days,  American is charging $7.95 for customers who use hand-held wireless devices, fees for laptops range from $9.95 for short flights - $12.95 for longer flights. Delta’s prices are the same. United’s air-to-ground internet service will cost $12.95 and be restricted initially to flights between New York and California. While Continental Airlines Inc. and U.S. Airways Group Inc. are still studying the situation before offering in-flight Internet access to their customers.

Both American and Delta are using air-to-ground technology developed by Aircell LLC, an Illinois-based company. Customers can surf the Web and check emails at speeds of up to three megabits per second, faster than many connections on land. Download Speedplexer to your laptop and you can clock your speed while you’re in the air!

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