Share impressions regarding your latest tech purchase/gadget/software upgrade

I know we have a fun-filled "silly purchase of the month" thread, but how about one that focuses on computer/gadgets, upgrades, migrations to a new OS/server/etc.?

I did a very simple upgrade yesterday and I've been quite pleased with the results. I upgraded my ram from 4GB to 6GB, and it's made quite a difference to me. I frequently have quite a few applications open when I'm modding; the GECK, Paint Shop Pro IX (old school wheee), Audacity, NifSkope, and a half dozen or so browser tabs. When exiting from a game (Fallout New Vegas 90% of the time for me lately) my system would often nearly have a heart attack trying to free the memory; up to 45 seconds of black/non-refreshed screens/erratic cursor movement/browser tabs dying, etc.

After the upgrade to 6GB, that's almost completely disappeared; I'm back to clicking on things within a second or two at most. I'm surprised and pleased at how much of a difference it's made.

Good or bad, let's hear how it went for your latest system/gadget change!

I finally replaced my Onkyo receiver with a newer (3D HDMI capable) version.
It seems to leverage the surround speakers of my 7.1 setup much much better, but it has introduced some apparent video lag in certain situations. I've tried turning off all the various image processing options both on the receiver and my television, but I'm a bit bummed that signal latency is still a thing.

Rezzy wrote:

I finally replaced my Onkyo receiver with a newer (3D HDMI capable) version.
It seems to leverage the surround speakers of my 7.1 setup much much better, but it has introduced some apparent video lag in certain situations. I've tried turning off all the various image processing options both on the receiver and my television, but I'm a bit bummed that signal latency is still a thing.

Onkyo's and most decent receivers have settings you can adjust for lip sync problems. You just have to experiment a bit to get them right. It's normally an input by input setting.

MannishBoy wrote:

Onkyo's and most decent receivers have settings you can adjust for lip sync problems. You just have to experiment a bit to get them right. It's normally an input by input setting.

Well that's the annoying thing. I started playing with those settings but the delay seems sporadic. I need to find some reference material I can test against.

Showed off my rasp-pi project at work today brought 3 different groups out to van in the parking lot since I can't have usb cables or camera's in the building. It was a hit (rasp-pi running mini-dlna to replace my kids aging dual DVD players).

Onkyo's and most decent receivers have settings you can adjust for lip sync problems. You just have to experiment a bit to get them right. It's normally an input by input setting.

That doesn't decrease video latency. Rather, it increases audio latency to match video latency. This is fine for media playback, but it sucks if you're a gamer.

I just picked up a Google Nexus 7 (16GB) for the car project, it's a nice bit of kit for 200$.

Malor wrote:
Onkyo's and most decent receivers have settings you can adjust for lip sync problems. You just have to experiment a bit to get them right. It's normally an input by input setting.

That doesn't decrease video latency. Rather, it increases audio latency to match video latency. This is fine for media playback, but it sucks if you're a gamer.

True.

Also, many TV's are just slow, especially LCDs. Samsungs are kind of notorious on LCDs and plasmas for input latency.

Panasonic's been pretty good, but I think from what I saw they slipped a slight bit this year (of course the year I upgraded).

MannishBoy wrote:

Also, many TV's are just slow, especially LCDs. Samsungs are kind of notorious on LCDs and plasmas for input latency.

Panasonic's been pretty good, but I think from what I saw they slipped a slight bit this year (of course the year I upgraded).

Actually for Plasma sets there was a very negligible difference on input lag tests between Panasonic and Samsung when it came to last year's models. LG on the other hand was consistently awful.

To be fair, I don't know if that held up for this year's models or not.

Thin_J wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

Also, many TV's are just slow, especially LCDs. Samsungs are kind of notorious on LCDs and plasmas for input latency.

Panasonic's been pretty good, but I think from what I saw they slipped a slight bit this year (of course the year I upgraded).

Actually for Plasma sets there was a very negligible difference on input lag tests between Panasonic and Samsung when it came to last year's models. LG on the other hand was consistently awful.

To be fair, I don't know if that held up for this year's models or not.

And to be fair on my part, I haven't seen Samsung's plasma numbers in the last couple of years. I do seem to recall being surprised that they were nearly as bad as their LCDs when I looked one time, and had thought I remembered the general buzz being as they had slow response in general.

So I'll modify my statement to say if you're concerned, do some research. But generally CRT>plasmas>LCDs>DLP sets.