MaximumPC 2004 11

ALL-IN-WONDER

OVERCLOCKING

I’d like to overclock my ATI

All-in-Wonder 9600 card, but I

wonder how that would affect

the card’s video capture and

PVR functions. If the card seems

stable with games, can I safely

assume its other functions will

be OK too?

—D. L.

It’s been a while since we’ve done

any overclocking on ATI’s All-in-

Wonder cards, but we can’t imagine

it would cause problems with the

vidcap features. Nevertheless, to

be safe, you can do some testing of

your own with the videocard over-

clocked. We recommend you record

four to five hours of programming

that you won’t miss should it get

messed up—the next Real World/

Road Rules marathon on MTV will

work. This should reveal any over-

heating problems that might occur

as a result of overclocking.

DVD FORMAT WARS

Hey, Doctor, which DVD

rewriteable format is ideal for

backing up movies? Is it DVD-R

or DVD+R? Also, does the brand

of the DVD media matter?

—S. FRONDARINA

The Doctor assumes you mean

which DVD recordable format is

ideal for backing up movies—

DVD+R and DVD-R media can only

be written to once. DVD+RW and

DVD-RW are the rewriteable for-

mats, but you don’t want to archive

your DVD-Video to either of these

formats because the media is more

expensive than write-once discs

and their compatibility with set-top

players is far lower.

Sadly, neither of the write-once

formats will work for everyone. The

first consideration is the kind of

media your burner supports. If it’s a

single-format burner that supports

just DVD+R or DVD-R, then that’s

what you’re stuck with. Luckily, the

set-top compatibility between these

two formats is pretty comparable.

If you’ve got a dual-format

burner that can write to either

format, then consider what kind of

media is supported by the set-top

player you’re going to play your

discs on. Some players prefer DVD-

R, others will read only DVD+R, and

some read both. If the manufacturer

doesn’t specify one or the other, the

only way to know is to create test

discs with both formats and try them

out on your DVD player.

Note that most commercial

DVDs use dual-layer discs. The box

almost always says whether the

disc type is single- or dual-layer, but

you can be certain it’s dual-layer if

Explorer reports the disc contents

as exceeding 4.7GB. If it does, you’ll

need a dual-layer burner and dual-

layer media to make a perfect copy

of the disc (as of press time only

DVD+R supports dual-layer; DVD-R

dual-layer drives will be available

soon). If you don’t have a dual-layer

burner, you’ll have to compress the

movie first, using an application like

DVD Shrink (free, http://www.dvdshrink.

org) in order to archive the contents

onto a single-layer disc.

GAUGING PERFORMANCE

INCREASES

Lately I’ve been spending a

lot of time and money trying

to increase my computer’s

performance. I’ve replaced my

old 7,200rpm hard drive with

two 120GB 7,200rpm Maxtors

set up in a striped RAID array,

replaced my aging graphics

card with an ATI 9600XT, and

installed two 512MB DDR sticks

in dual-channel mode. Is there

any way I can accurately gauge

the performance difference that’s

resulted from these changes, or

do I simply have to “feel” the

difference?

—GEORGE DEVIS

It’s actually quite easy to do some

rudimentary benchmarks on a

system. For instance, you can down-

load the demo version of 3DMark

2003 at http://www.futuremark.com and

run the default test, or use a game

with a built-in benchmarking mode

like Doom 3 to gauge performance.

(To run Doom 3’s benchmark mode,

open the game, open the console

by pressing Ctrl+Alt+~ and type

“timedemo demo1” without the

quotes.) The thing is, in order to

accurately determine a performance

difference, you need to run the

test/s before and after the hardware

upgrades. If you’re not inclined to

return your PC back to its original,

unupgraded state in order to run the

“before” benchmarks, then, yes, this

time you’ll have to judge any perfor-

mance increase by “feel.”

KEEPING IT WIDESCREEN

I recently bought a Lite-On

DVD burner and it came

bundled with Sonic MyDVD

4. I’m trying to burn AVIs to a

DVD so I can use them in my

set-top player, but for some

reason, MyDVD 4 will change

my widescreen format AVIs to

fullscreen. I’ve tried different

settings and configurations

but haven’t been able to come

up with a solution. Can you

recommend a solution or

alternative program that will

let me watch AVIs in their

native widescreen format?

—BRIAN KNAPP

The first thing you should do is

consider an upgrade to a newer

version of MyDVD. We too expe-

rienced weird problems with

MyDVD 4, but they vanished when

we upgraded to MyDVD 5, which

ARE IE ALTERNATIVES MORE SECURE?

Ask the Doctor Symptom Diagnosis Cure

8
MA XIMUMPC NOVEMBER 2004

I recently read an article in Maximum PC

about Avant and MyIE2 browsers and was left

with a question: Do the two browsers, both

of which are built on Internet Explorer , share

the same security risks and vulnerabilities of

Microsoft’s browser? Or are Avant and MyIE2

more secure?

—PSICORPS

The reason we prefer Mozilla Firefox and Opera

to the Avant and MyIE2 browsers is precisely

because of Internet Explorer’s inherent insecurity,

which unfortunately affects the browser’s offshoots.

(Tabbed browsing and nifty extensions are just

icing on the Firefox and Opera cakes.) With Firefox

or Opera , you don’t have to worry that you might

render your system useless by accidentally install-

ing a malicious ActiveX while innocently browsing

the net. MyIE2 and Avant don’t afford the same

protection.

Unfortunately, because MyIE2 and the Avant

browser use Internet Explorer’s rendering

engine, they’re prone to all the same insecu-

rities and foibles that plague IE.