Month: December 2017

USB 3.0 to 10/100/1000 Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet LAN 1000Mbps Network Adapter (WHL #34)

While I’m at computer peripherals…this one has been laying around for quite some time. Bought in January 2017 for 5.68€ on AliExpress, but current pricing is basically the same. Guess IC prices haven’t dropped much, although laptops that do not carry an ethernet port due to height limitations have become more common. Yeah, bullshit, but Jon Doe likes thin hardware with cooling problems. Always reminds me of the Macbook Air / Thinkpad X300 ad parody…

That aside, I really wanted to compare this Gigabit adapter with the two other types of network interfaces that I have available – some Realtek onboard stuff that I deem “good enough” for everyday use, and some PCIe addon card from Intel that is usually considered worth the upgrade (after all, people still buy sound cards, right?). […]

31st December 2017 31st December 2017 By Bzzz In 5 Comments

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – line flicker (WHL #33F2)

Ahh, good old Christmas.

Been busy with other display-related things, but haven’t been using the BenQ at all. Now that everything is quiet and there are a couple days of vacation, I did fire up the system and played PoE for half an hour. And another half an hour to take some videos and photos. For whatever reason, there are now entire lines flickering during gameplay, and I claim these weren’t present the last time I used the thing. GPU driver update (still on 17.8.2 for my Radeon 260X)? Someone changed something in the PoE code (which caused an update of 600+ MB)? […]

25th December 2017 25th December 2017 By Bzzz In No Comment

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – AMA modes (WHL #33F1)

This post is partially outdated – please have a look at the updated version #33F3 with proper photo diode measurements as well!

 

So…I tried measuring response time of the monitor, and I didn’t really succeed. I’m missing MY PRECIOUS photo diode, so doing the same thing with an LED…is pretty meh. Don’t take these for real, time must be off due to high capacitance (“high” being some 10pF including leads?) and the LED not being as sensitive as a proper photo sensor diode.

Well anyway, the shape of the traces tells us a little about the AMA setting of the display, which is BenQ speech for the Advanced Motion Acceleration or pixel response / panel overdrive setting. […]

3rd December 2017 29th January 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment