Half-Life 2 Fallout reports following on from WhutDuFuk.com's DVD backup guide, Pretenda at wrgn.net has made the job even simpler by creating an installer to automate the process of getting Steam back off the DVD. The installer is designed to work with HL2/CS:Source Steam content, but should also work with other Steam games that use GCF files to store data.

Optimize Windows XP to improve both work and gaming performance safely. Windows XP's default configuration is far from optimized. This guide will help you improve your overall system performance. I avoid using or recommending "all-in-one" Windows XP Tweak programs since many blindly adjust settings that have no affect on performance and can cause future problems..

If you ever wonder how it?s possible for servers to take requests for many domains and know which one to serve up, this article is for you. The secret is in a mandatory HTTP header field and it?s actually quite simple.

If you want to know how to create a content management system with php where you can make password protected pages that require to be registered, then this article should help you, but going through the code of a very basic CMS system and providing you the code to play around with. Read the Full article at IceTeks

Building your own MAME Arcade box is something that has become quite popular around the Internet these days. HTPCnews.com takes a look at two pivotal parts to the creation of your very own MAME Arcade box that you can view / play on your big screen TV via a HTPC or some sort of dedicated box if you care to build one. First they take a look at the X-Arcade Two player Joystick which looks and feels just like what you'd expect to use at an arcade! Then they review a front end to organize and create a professional feeling to your box when you are searching your 1000's of MAME titles for a game to play.

We've updated our handy graphics comparison chart, adding a stack of new graphics cards with relavent links to related TR reviews and articles. While it's a pretty complete compendium of current and past hardware, we haven't listed some of the more obscure and OEM-oriented versions of every graphics part. The comparison chart will give you a good idea how the various graphics options stack up in terms of pipeline configuration, fill rate, and memory bandwidth, but keep in mind that there are a few manufacturer-specific SE, LE, 64-bit, and Golden Ultra Turbo Sample Editions out there that don't necessarily match.

Just spotted this bit of Info posted over at FutureMark's Forum by valtterieranen.

There seems to be enough interest for smooth mousing to warrant a little guide on how to radically increase the smoothness of the MX series mice.

This tweak requires SP2.

TweakGuides have thrown up their latest guide that looks at tweaking your ATI Catalyst Drivers!

After the recent release of ATI's new Catalyst Control Center, I've revamped my ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide, adding two new pages and many and various updates throughout the guide to cater to the changes brought about by the Control Center and the Catalyst A.I Feature. As well as descriptions of all the new features, included is some invaluable advice on how to prevent the Control Center from taking up a massive amount of system resources, so it's a must-read, even if you've read the guide before.

Eric Vaughan has put up a Beta version of this guide, updated for SP2. I would appreciate any feedback so please check it out.

Lockergnome.com are detailing a few select game design blogs that are prominent in the game theory community. These various blogs are a great starting point for people who are interested in the field and are looking for a place that has a lot of information.

With prices of computer parts dropping quicker than anyone could imagine, building a full scale high performance HTPC couldn't be cheaper! HTPCnews takes a look at various parts that have been proven to work extremely well together and compiled it all together into their latest $1000 hardware guide, Building an AMD A64 HTPC for $1000. Included in this guide are imbedded links to a great deal of their other guides from the past that have been updated for use at the current time... including their PVR Identification guide, HTPC Audio 101, Quieting and Cooling your HTPC Case, and much much more.

The AMD Athlon64 and AthlonFX line of processors has been on the market long enough to become a standard, rather than the 'newest thing.' The excellent performance offered by these chips (running 32-bit benchmarks) has been well documented. PCI-Express support is coming soon care of the Nvidia nForce 4, and the next wave of chipsets, due around Christmas should result in a whole lot more 64-bit capable desktops popping around the world.

This is a simple introduction and how-to for the Security Center. I'll introduce the Security Center to you and show you how to enable/disable the main settings.


Thanks, TweakHound :)

Short-Media have thrown up a new article which asks does Windows Service Pack 2 slow you down?

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 and millions installed it. Did boat anchors come with the enhancements? We threw 108 benchmarks at Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 in an attempt to declare a winner.

Today TweakTown are going to tell you about some of the best Spyware remover programs available for you to download, how to use those programs, and also how to monitor processes which are running on your computer to establish if the processes are a security risk or not. After you?re finished with this guide your PC will be free of Spyware and running the way it should without any nasty programs running in the background chewing up your computer performance and violating your privacy.

Lockergnome.com are detailing a few select game design blogs that are prominent in the game theory community. These various blogs are a great starting point for people who are interested in the field and are looking for a place that has a lot of information.

Team Radeon takes a look at getting the most out of Tweaking Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC!

In this guide they guys at Madshrimps show you how to make you Hard Drives sparkle, and with the correct light setup in your case, they can even become your "center piece", if done right

As probaly most of you know when you overclock your videocard you get higher performance, but you may have absolutely no idea how increasing the memory or GPU frequency impacts the card performance. Why when you "unlock" some features of the card (unlocking dispabled pipelines for instance) the card gains big performance boost. And what is the difference between the cards with 64, 128, 256bit memory bus?

At Madshrimps: See how an ugly dull box turns into one spectacular looking case, guest writer Antonio shows of his creation: sandblasted side panels, professional painting and near unbreakable windows are some of the excellent features of this "big black" casemod.