55. Disable VSYNC

If you are looking for a frame rate advantage in your 3D game or video benchmark of choice, and you are not overly concerned about image quality, try disabling the VSYNC or 'wait for vertical synchronization' setting in your card's direct3D and OPENGL settings. The VSYNC setting basically forces the video card to conform to the screen refresh rate of the monitor, meaning that the card will not send new display data to the monitor until the previous data has been fully displayed.

This has the effect of capping the maximum frames per second displayed at the refresh rate of the monitor. Newer video cards especially may well be able to render considerably more frames per second than this, and disabling VSYNC will allow them to. The penalty for this varies. In some games, quality loss will be imperceptible. In others it will be unbearable. Try disabling VSYNC and observing the results, especially if you are trying to boost benchmark scores.

To disable VSYNC on ATI cards:

From advanced display settings, go to the '3D' tab and check the 'use custom settings' box for both direct3D and OpenGL. Press the 'custom...' button to access the controls for both modes. Turn the 'wait for vertical sync' slider all the way to the left.

To disable VSYNC on Nvidia cards:

From advanced display settings, go to the tab that identifies your video card model. The VSYNC settings are located in 'more direct3D settings' and 'OpenGL settings.'

Network and Internet speed tweaks

56. Increase maximum number of simultaneous connection in Internet Explorer

By default, Internet Explorer 6 allows only two simultaneous server connections, which is fine for normal use, but can bog down when you are connecting to web pages with lots of graphical content. By increasing the number of possible connections, you can use your Internet bandwidth more efficiently, and load complex web pages faster.

To increase IE maximum connections:

Start REGEDIT.

Navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings'

Add the following two DWORD entries:

'MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server' value equals '0000000a'
'MaxConnectionsPerServer' value equals '0000000a'

Exit and reboot.

57. Wifi 802.11b devices slow down 802.11g networks

802.11g wireless devices have recently become extremely affordable, and given their clear speed advantage over the previous generation of 802.11b devices, they are being adopted quickly. 802.11g is also completely backwardly compatible with 802.11b, but... this backwards compatibility carries one major disadvantage.

Connecting an 802.11b client to an 802.11g wireless network will drag down the speed of the entire network due to signaling compromises that need to be made to accommodate the older device. Expect average throughput to be about half of what it would be if the network contains only 802.11g devices. So if you are hosting an 802.11g wireless network, consider upgrading your clients to WIFI 'g' devices also.