Gadgetory

every once in a while in my life I encounter a computer or electronics issue that's completely inexplicable for example in the early 2000s I had a machine that for some reason didn't require the warcraft 3 disc to be loaded in the optical drive I wasn't using an OCD crack and the issue I'm not going to call it a problem because it was very convenient the issue persisted over multiple reformats Andry installations of the game only to go away when I upgraded the computer but the point of this video is not for me to tell old stories from a million years ago because I'm old the point of this video is that thanks to the power of video recording and the internet I can now share with you these experiences welcome to episode 1 of what we're calling haunted hardware Tunnel Bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open Internet to try tunnel bear for free check out the link in the video description so you're sitting there at home thinking - there's nothing haunted about running Doom on a computer it's supposed to work that way the game is scary or not scary whatever the case may be no no the haunted thing about what you're looking at right now is this fraps counter up here in the top left corner that's not supposed to be there now if I was running an OpenGL mode that would be fine but look at this settings advanced Vulcan for contrast this is how it is supposed to work this is my normal desktop test bench with a GTX 1080 we go into settings advanced opengl 4.5 boom FPS counter is working now if we switch to Vulcan doom will restart and we'll fast forward through this if it drags out for too long for you guys and my camera person will hold kind of steals but really you can already see okay we are switched over to Vulcan my FPS counter is gone fraps is still very much loaded in the system tray it just doesn't work that way fraps isn't designed to work with either of the new lower level API s that is Vulcan or DirectX 12 that what you just saw there is the normal expected behavior so it's at this stage in any troubleshooting process that the good old sanity check comes in so you go into your settings you go this is a really cool feature of doom it's like it's almost like it's made by people who care you go show performance metrics and you go okay is it actually running Vulcan did yes it would appear so okay but if we were running in borderless window mode it is possible that fraps could overlay itself in some way so what we need to do is go into the console and this is another great thing that do has and good games all have and we can have a look at what commands we have we go okay vid restart okay you saw that black flash no the game is running 1920 by 1080 fullscreen so the next logical step let's check our software revisions maybe nvidia has a driver or do released an update or a de fraps has a new version something of which enables this functionality so nvidia driver 21 21 13 72 70 got it do build one twenty seven twenty nine ninety two and fraps is version three point five point nine nine let's go double check all that stuff over on the desktop here we've got that same driver revision it's great even though we're running a different graphics card there's the same architecture running the same driver doom is running that exact same build which makes sense because I've always got auto update enabled and steam and finally fraps is running that same three point five point nine nine in fact here's a fun fact it didn't realize this until I was working on this video fraps hasn't even been updated since 26 and February 2013 so for them to have introduced a patch that enables this functionality seems very very unlikely considering the last patch fixed arrow desktop and DirectX 10 games so then it's at this point that we start getting into the troubleshooting steps that take a little bit longer we're going to do a full reinstall of our driver as well as doomed downloading a completely fresh copy of the game off of steam just in case there is some weird corruption that's not allowing it to properly launch in Vulcan mode for example to get rid of our video card driver we're going to be using DD you I'm not going to go through all the steps in you know explicit detail but basically you reboot in safe mode you runs edu you download a fresh copy of the drivers off Nvidia and install that and try again and we're back in game now with fresh drivers fresh copy of the game and exactly the same behavior we saw last time so at this point it's time to take it to the next level we are going to do a fresh format of this PC we're going to go back to bone stock then we're going to update the drivers then we're going to install the game and see if it persists now I suspect it's running an OpenGL mode out of the box it's not something you can configure when you launch the game for Doom so everything here looks hunky-dory totally normal opengl 4.5 we have fraps okay advanced Vulcan yes eleven hundred frames per second haunted right haunted haunted computer Vulcan 1.0 point one three framerate counter working even though it shouldn't and the game is loading now I did observe that OpenGL Vulcan regardless of what API it was running performance did look a little bit low there so I'm going to remove another variable I'm going to disable the onboard graphics here disabling this will cause it to stop functioning yeah I think that's good I would sure hope so and what I'm going to do now is to determine once and for all whether we have magic fraps or broken game I am actually going to do our benchmark run with each different readout here and see if they perform differently okay so settings we're going to triple confirm them blah blah blah blah blah full-screen blah blah blah advanced Vulcan definitely everything is Wow Wow windows okay I'm not going to run the whole benchmark because quite frankly the difference between Vulcan and OpenGL at this resolution on this hardware should be pretty much immediately noticeable so we're getting about 70 frames per second talking to this guy respectfully so that's fine let's go ahead settings advanced OpenGL restart okay here we go no way okay hold on just a second here what the just happened okay so at this point in the video I was kind of expecting the conclusion to be haha it's just running OpenGL because the game isn't launching in Vulcan Mode but what we appear to have gotten instead and I don't have another 1060 equipped laptop to compare against unfortunately but what we what we appear to have gotten instead is magical fraps running on a magical machine magically working on Vulcan even though there is absolutely no way and I'm sure the fraps developers would be happy to call me up and tell me this personally there's absolutely no way that this is working so this is the kind of that I go through all I wanted all I wanted was a performance comparison between this laptop and this laptop for my review of this laptop this is what I'm dealing with so if you were wondering when you saw the review of this laptop which will perhaps come out before this video why there was no Vulcan doom testing now you know I'm not blaming this laptop in fact I probably won't even mention it because it's probably not this laptops fault because I've seen this kind of bit before I'm just happy that for once I got to share the experience with you guys you know I'm really glad that FreshBooks is the ad spot on this video because have you guys ever been dealing with some kind of accounting thing like a checkbook that won't balance or like an interest accrual of like 32 cents that you just can't get to reconcile just going up that's it it's all haunted I give up well if you have fresh books could be the solution for you fresh books is a super simple cloud accounting software that's helping over five million small service-based businesses conquer their admin and paperwork with a lot less time and stress it takes about 30 seconds to create and send a polished professional-looking invoice you can get paid through fresh books on your own schedule whether that means taking a deposit or getting paid all at the end and you can even track your expenses it is pretty freakin awesome so with fresh books whether you're a plumber computer technician you run a small dance studio whatever the case may be you can save time and spend your time running your business instead of doing boring paperwork for your business and if you have any questions if any of this is like overwhelming you're like I don't know how it works fresh books has a war-winning customer service that you can talk to any time you want so for an unrestricted 30 day free trial just head over to fresh book style comm slash tech tips linked in the video description and enter Linus tech tips and the how you heard about us section so thanks for watching this episode of what are we calling this haunted hardware if you guys just like this video hit that dislike button but if you liked it hit that like button get subscribed for maybe more on today are where depending on how many people hit that like button and maybe consider checking out where to buy this laptop or any other the gear that we put in the video description over on Amazon using our affiliate code also linked in the video description is our merch store week buy cool t-shirts like this one as well as our community forum which you can join to discuss hardware and hardware related accessories which is a very very belaboured king of the hill reference probably no one no one caught that hardware yeah I sell hardware and hardware anyway sorry don't forget to subscribe see you guys next time