Say you set up a network drive for a network drive for a computer you had months ago but is no longer on your network: When Windows boot, it spends at least some time reconnecting to that drive, wasting precious seconds you could be spending on Facebook. While XP and Vista are better than older versions of Windows about network connections [who can forget those interminable “Connecting…’ messages?] it still makes sense to disconnect from network shares you no longer need. You won’t actually boot noticeably faster without those extra drive letters, but Explorer will become usable more quickly after launch. This is especially noticeable in Vista, which has a helpful “loading” progress indicator that overlays the address bar: Having any number of network shares will cause it to take any extra 10 to 20 seconds to fully load.

DO IT Right-click each shared folder in Explorer and select Disconnect. This will permanently remove them from your drive list unless you map them again.

YOU CAN TWEAK VIRTUAL MEMORY SETTINGS FOR IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

In the Windows 95/98 era, conventional wisdom held that you should manually set your virtual memory [i.e., pagefile] size to at least 1.5 times the amount of RAM in order to optimize performance. [By default, Windows will manage pagefile on its own: You will likely find the initial pagefile size set to 0.5x or 1x the amount of RAM you have]. We were skeptical about this tip, but our benchmarks surprised us: Some systems showed no change at all, but some(particularly older machines) showed substantial improvement beyond the usual random noise we see in benchmark results. We got at least a 10 percent jump after we upped the initial pagefile size to 2x amount or RAM on two separate machines. It won’t work for all computers, so the jury’s still out on this one, but because it’s so easy to do and there are no negative consequences, it’s worth a shot just to see if it has any effect.

DO IT In the XP System Control Panel, click Advanced, then [under Performance] click Settings, Advanced. In the Virtual Memory module, click Change. Click Custom size then up both initial and Maximum size to roughly double your amount of RAM. Click Set [important!], then OK out of all windows. In Vista’s, click “Advanced system settings” in the System Control Panel and follow the same instructions.

CLEARING THE PREFETCH DIRECTORY [OR CACHE] WILL IMPROVE STARTUP TIME

One of the most notorious Windows tips ever is that deleting all the files in the Windows/Prefetch directory will cause your system to boot faster. We tested the tip by repeatedly measuring boot times on a trio of both XP and Vista machines with overstuffed Prefetch folders, then running the same test after clearing the folders out. The result: No improvement in boot time in any of the cases. Some testers have reported that clearing the Prefetch cache actually lengthens boot time, though we didn’t experience this either.

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A midrange 6200-based card that delivers

When Nvidia inveiled its G200GPU, we were immediately drawn to the shiny, speedy GeForce GTX 280. Why wouldn’t we be? With the high core and memory clocks and 240 stream processors to churn through the toughest shaders, it was sexy and fast. We were less excited about 260, which sported 192 stream processors and slower clocks speeds but cost about $100 less than the 280( at the time). Since then ,ATI has released its R700-based Radeon 4870, which outperforms the original 260 but cost the same amount.

And that’s where the Core 216 edition of the 260 GTX comes in. With the same stock clock speeds but 24 more shader processors than the original, the new version of the 260 GTX delivers comparable performance to the 4870 at a similar price. The speeds and feeds are about the same as the original 260’s, although EVGA clocked this card’s core at 626MHz( up from 576MHz stock) and includes 896MB of GDDR3 running on a 448-bit bus at 1053MHz (stock is 999MHz).

Aside from the additional shader processors, the core 216 version of the GTx 260 is identical to the original. The card features all the video decoding and playback power of the GTX 280, including hardware accelerated H.264 decoding to accelerate Blu-ray playback. Performance was about what we expected; the card delivered scores that were slower than a GeForce GTX 280’S but slightly faster than the 4870’s in shader-intensive games such as Crysis. We’re seeing significantly better performance with both NVidia and ATI cards after recent driver releases, so we’ve rebenchmarked an even playing field.

We’ve seen this card for less than$300 online already, which puts it firmly in the midrange category. You can find 512MB Radeon 4870 HDs, which are slightly faster, for less money online, but the GTX 260’s extra memory will likely help the card do better than the 512MB Radeons with games released in coming years. Of course, the 1GB 4870 boards are available for about $300, but unfortunately, we don’t have one in the Lab for comparison.

PNY VCGGTX260CXPB XLR8 260 Core 216 896MB DVI + DVI + Graphics Cards