Tuning My System

“It is expected the system will hang or crash during the tuning process.”

Nice. Major confidence builder.

OK–nvidia, here’s the deal. I have entrusted you with my main PC. Screw this up and it’s hell to pay.

This all started last night. I was testing the new Photoshop CS4 when I got an error message. There was some sort of incompatibility with my GPU–the ‘brain’ of my graphics card. I checked and sure enough the driver I had was old. Download, reload, reboot. Problem free.

Of course the next time I opened Photoshop I got the same message.

Interestingly, there’s a check box to tell Photoshop to stop bugging you. I have software equipped with a “self denial box!”

Anyway, my card isn’t the newest or fastest, but it seems to have the listed specs to handle Photoshop. I dove into the software suite that comes with the video drivers. My card was built by PNY, but the guts were designed by nVidia. I don’t understand the significance of that last sentence, but I’m throwing it out… just in case.

Within the nVidia software is a tab for “nTune.” Allegedly, in three hours it will tune my system, making tweaks to soup it up while maintaining stability. I’m not sure how it does that. The on-screen explanations say the least, to say the least!

There is one stern admonition.

“It is expected the system will hang or crash during the tuning process.”

Nice. Major confidence builder.

I started it before I went to bed. There aren’t many indications of what’s going on except every once in a while what looks like a scene from a game will pop up in its own window. Four characters arranged in a circle will jump and move. Then the window closes.

By this morning nTune had shut itself down. It didn’t automatically restart as implied (nothing is specific about this). I hit a few keys and now it’s cruising again. Last night it has boosted some internal clock speeds by nearly 20%. Today they’re back to the original settings. I don’t have a clue what’s going on. I’m much too trusting.

Like I said, nVidia you’re on notice. Don’t screw with my system.

One thought on “Tuning My System”

  1. Much like Google, I’ve always had a “good feel” for Nvidia. Hopefully everything goes well. I’m sure there isn’t much in there that you couldnt do yourself with misc. registry settings, but having it all put together in one place is sure convenient.

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