Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

[2lalaland]

I am sorry if I come off cranky but I am. This is ridiculous that I don't have any manuals to use your utilities! I have spent more than my fair share of googling to come up with answers on how to use xfast ram, instant boot & all the other 1's. The only thing I find by asrock is the sales pitch & stupid you tube video that isn't even the user interface that I have & all that info is so half assed! Why does this need to be so difficult? ABC 123, ya know? You offer a product, by goodness let people know how the heck to use them, right? ALL of my google searches come up from people exactly like me trying to figure this crap out. The only utility I have been able to figure out is Xfast LAN & that is because it comes from a different company THAT HAS VERY PRECISE DIRECTIONS TO SET IT UP! Does this make sense to anyone?! Am I suppose to automatically know how to set these programs up? Let me pull out my ESP skills...

Not only have I googled trying to find this info, I've been all over your website trying to find it. I am extremely irritated as you can tell. Like I said, ABC 123. If by any chance these manuals are out there, google certainly has failed me! IF they are somewhere, anywhere, will someone please kindly direct me to where they are before I go insane, LOL! If there aren't any, shame on you! And thanks for wasting the majority of my day figuring this crap out when it could be so simple with a manual :) By the way, the manual that came with the motherboard is just as half assed intructed about these utilities as that you tube video.

Thanks for letting me vent :) I feel better now, LOL! But I will feel much better with instructions!

[Shiari]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

IMHO, most of this stuff is next to useless, and you can easily do without. You're right however that the documentation could and should be better, so that users can more easily determine whether it is of any value to them in the first place.

[2lalaland]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

Thanks for your response, Shiari. I have a feeling you are right. If it was something useful I'm sure there would be manuals! Like the manual they give to set up your motherboard :) Very, very important :) No issues there whatsoever.

You used the word 'most', is there any of them I should keep? I'm just going to get this crap off of my computer. Now I am doubly ticked that I wasted as much time as I did trying to figure this crap out.

[JackOfShadows]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

To borrow a line from WJC, "I feel your pain." I've had to figure this stuff out on my own which isn't exactly terrible here. [I'm so ancient, I can run most anything, and pretty much have at one time or another.] If I can help with any specifics, ask. Between the utilities and the way I blended things together, well speed daemon surely applies.

[2lalaland]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

Thank you for your response, JackofShadows (love that handle, by the way :) ). So you are in the opinion that these utilities can be an asset? If so, please share!

First off, do you use all of them? Should I get rid of any of them?

I'm starting to wonder about this Xfast Lan. I actually think my computer was faster before getting this set up. I got it calibrated to 100%, but it seems like it was faster before. It's got to be a setting I'm sure. cfos was pretty user friendly in setting this up so I'm not sure. This utility seems logical to me, but it SEEMS like the delay comes from it deciding on how to handle situations, therefore slowing it down. I won't elaborate any more until I hear you think if this utility is even worthy.

Xfast Ram, this is where most of the battle comes in. Ready Boost vs Instant Boost? Paging file? Allows me to access it until after I reboot than it disappears. I use Chrome & it's an option on my UI but it's grayed out. Once again, I will elaborate more if you think this utility is worthy.

XFast USB, shamelessly I don't use this much as I have very few devices I need it for now. I know I will in the future so I would still like your input.

I still haven't gotten to overclocking & not quite sure I want to just yet. I live in a very warm climate & don't feel I have sufficient cooling to take this route. 1090t on 970 extreme4 I hear is pushing it already with temps, although I really haven't noticed too much of a difference, even in the middle of summer. So AXTU stands pretty much as default. I tweaked a few things, but don't feel comfortable to step this up until I get better cooling.

Thank you so much for your consideration!! You should work for ASRocks, LOL!

[parsec]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

2lalaland, I must agree documentation is lacking in some areas. I have no idea which ASRock board you have, but my new Z87 board's manual has documentation on the new features introduced with this board, but the earlier ones like AXTU (now A-Tuning) is still lacking.

XFast RAM is a decent free RAM drive software package. You specify an amount of your DRAM memory that becomes a "disk drive" in the eyes of Windows. It has a drive letter and is listed with your other disk drives in Windows Explorer. It is temporary in the sense that it is volatile DRAM memory, which loses its settings when its power is removed. It can be backed up with an option on the configuration screen, being written to a standard storage drive, and restored after a shutdown and restart. Some users have had problems with the restoration part of the process. The backup and restoration process takes time when the PC is shutdown and started.

XFast RAM can be useful as a scratch disk and location for temporary files, and of course is much faster than any SSD or HDD. Ready Boost is an old feature from the XP days, using an USB flash drive as a substitute for DRAM memory. Worthless now if you have a 64bit OS and more than 4GB of DRAM. Same thing for the pagefile, it's a substitute for DRAM memory, using a disk drive as a memory substitute. Again if you have more than 4GB of DRAM, and don't use all your memory with your applications, you never use the pagefile.

But now consider, since the pagefile is a DRAM substitute, for a lack of memory, and you then put the page file on a RAM drive which is made of memory, what is the point? Worst case situation, the total DRAM available is reduced after the creation of the RAM drive, and if the remaining memory is all used up, the pagefile is then used. But the pagefile is now on the RAM drive, whose space could have been used normally in the first place if it was available. I cannot see how this is an advantage at all.

Instant Boot is just another version of Windows Hibernate. It may allow you more control over how it is created and may be faster than coming out of Windows Hibernate, but is not a ground breaking feature IMO.

Any of these utilities may be useful depending upon what you do with your PC. Any tool may not be useful to you if you never need it. Do we need a jackhammer in our garage? No, but that does not mean it is a worthless thing. Of course, your point is you don't understand what the point of these utilities are, which is like looking at a hand tool that you do not know its purpose.

[Shiari]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

ASRock XFast USB
ASRock XFast RAM
ASRock XFast LAN

Lots of mostly marketing speak there.

XFast USB ... since that seems to need USB3 (which I don't yet have any devices for) so I haven't bothered to try it and I don't know if it works to make enough of a difference. If it does make a difference, then the question becomes whether you do enough with USB data transfers to make it worthwhile to have an application running for it all the time.

XFast RAM ... well, if you would run a 32 bit OS with a lot more than 4GB of memory it would be useful, but you'd probably gain more from switching to 64 bit. It's certainly true that a ram disk can make your browser cache and temporary files access a lot quicker, though you'll also loose a bit of performance on shutdown and startup. Plus you're eating into your available memory, so if you don't have a lot of memory already you're probably better off not using it at all. I did use a ramdisk for my browser cache for a while, but the difference isn't big enough for me. Instead I have my temporary files on a stripe set in the raid array.

XFast LAN ... I'm not sure what it does exactly; it appears to allow for some traffic prioritisation, plus it seems to deal with a well known network latency issue in Windows (easily fixed with a registry key - no running software required) that particularly affects World of Warcraft, possible other games. I'm on a gigabit LAN here, I don't have performance issues (transfers between our computers happily saturate the network at 100MB/s) ... anything slowing me down would be the internet connection, and if traffic priority becomes an issue then that is something that needs to be dealt with by the router (because software on my computer can't control what my housemates are doing). Maybe it's useful to a less knowledgeable user though, who may not realise that what they do with their computer may affect their own experience negatively. :P

Fast Boot ... you need Windows 8 for that, I'm still on 7 with no plans to upgrade. That's certainly something I'd use if I could though.

[2lalaland]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

"Any of these utilities may be useful depending upon what you do with your PC. Any tool may not be useful to you if you never need it. Do we need a jackhammer in our garage? No, but that does not mean it is a worthless thing. Of course, your point is you don't understand what the point of these utilities are, which is like looking at a hand tool that you do not know its purpose." Yes, Parsec, thus the manuals. I don't know how to use a jackhammer either but I bet if I plugged that into google I would get plenty of info on how to do so ;) Do I really need to pull out my ESP skills for this when it should be so ABC?

When I registered here, I had to put in all my system specs, how come you can't seem them? I'm new to this board. 970 extreme4.

Actually, my system shut down faster with Xfast Ram, boot up, eh.. I set it up to save as a backup & bootup. No glitch there.

Ready Boost as an option in Xfast Ram is what confuses me? x64 here. I realize most of this utility is for x32ers but I've read there are benefits for me as well. The user interface of these programs are for the birds. There should be an option there for either/or to be much more user friendly :) I have read all about the info you are describing & got the basics down on how all this works, but it still doesn't help me to set up THIS utility.

Unfortunately, I do need instant boot. & something is definitely going awry there as well. When I boot up & click on something too soon, I get error messages. If I wait until everything loads up & click on a program, no problems.

The page filing system is what has prompted me after almost 2 yrs with this build to try this utility. Out of the blue I've been getting VERY RANDOM crashes in a video game, guess what? Memory errors. I have 8gb of ram & apparently that isn't enough during high stress points of this game that it causes it to crash. Something ain't working right here, you see. Was it always this utility & some upgrade changed things, I dunno know. It use to work like a charm. Thus prompting me to configure all this stuff.

Thanks again, Shiari. You are convincing me to just get this crap off my computer. Those links are pretty much all the info ASRocks supplies. Pretty scary if you ask me. Leaving people to figure this stuff out on their own, shame on them. I'm pretty disappointed :(

I just recently had a very strange occurrence with a 7 update. I'm starting to wonder if this is all coming into play. After the update a few weeks ago, my video went haywire on a video game I play. The update didn't have anything to do with my video card nor it's drivers. A forum I visit helped me to get this fixed & was told it's been happening to random people. 1st started in March with other folks. This last round of 7 updates effected me as well as others. No one knows why it's happening to certain people & not others. My audio is also off after that update, it switched from my speakers to my TV (monitor). I haven't gotten around to checking out the audio as it is no big deal right now. I don't know much about how all that works but I'm starting to wonder if it is all this BS on my computer?

Thanks for the advice, I'm just going to take it off my computer. I did read 1 thing important googling about Xfast ram. Someone didn't stop it before removing it & they had some big issues. At least I found something productive in my google searches :)

[profJim]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

When I registered here, I had to put in all my system specs, how come you can't seem them? I'm new to this board. 970 extreme4.

Did you enter your hardware list in the System Specs section in your Edit Profile section?
Did you click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page?
If you did save the changes, you should see your complete hardware list in the System Specs list in the Edit Profile section.
Send me a PM if you have any questions about your hardware list.

Forum Moderator

[2lalaland]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

No, I didn't take the time to set up my profile because I'm spending so much time on this other stuff. I thought that info at registration would just automatically show & haven't been paying attention to those details. I just want my computer running normal. I will have to say, you are quite colorful profjim! AND quite funny. I'll set it up soon.

So far I got xfast lan uninstalled. The way that program uninstalled seemed pretty cheesy with the fonts not showing up in the complete window, bad english...goes to show it's BS I guess. It wouldn't completely uninstall until I took their survey. It kept prompting me to fixes instead of letting me uninstall. I just clicked 'other' typed in you suck & it worked, LOL!

Now, I'm on Xfast ram. It's not letting me uninstall it . I stopped it, rebooted & it is stopped. When I click on uninstalling it's giving me message that I need to reboot 1st. Did that 3x's & it won't let me do it. Is it safe to use Windows to remove this program? Back to googling gosh darn it! I've wasted way too much time on this already!

[GinoDL]

Re: Sick of no manuals for these utilities!

I am sorry if I come off cranky but I am. This is ridiculous that I don't have any manuals to use your utilities! I have spent more than my fair share of googling to come up with answers on how to use xfast ram, instant boot & all the other 1's. The only thing I find by asrock is the sales pitch & stupid you tube video that isn't even the user interface that I have & all that info is so half assed! Why does this need to be so difficult? ABC 123, ya know? You offer a product, by goodness let people know how the heck to use them, right? ALL of my google searches come up from people exactly like me trying to figure this crap out. The only utility I have been able to figure out is Xfast LAN & that is because it comes from a different company THAT HAS VERY PRECISE DIRECTIONS TO SET IT UP! Does this make sense to anyone?! Am I suppose to automatically know how to set these programs up? Let me pull out my ESP skills...

Not only have I googled trying to find this info, I've been all over your website trying to find it. I am extremely irritated as you can tell. Like I said, ABC 123. If by any chance these manuals are out there, google certainly has failed me! IF they are somewhere, anywhere, will someone please kindly direct me to where they are before I go insane, LOL! If there aren't any, shame on you! And thanks for wasting the majority of my day figuring this crap out when it could be so simple with a manual :) By the way, the manual that came with the motherboard is just as half assed intructed about these utilities as that you tube video.

Thanks for letting me vent :) I feel better now, LOL! But I will feel much better with instructions!

2lalaland,

I'm relieved to hear that so many others feel the same way I have about Asrock's utilities. I've built 4 computers using Asrock's boards, and am very impressed and pleased with the results. I also appreciate the utilities and drivers they supply with the package, but am frustrated to find out that I have little idea of what they do, how to install them, or how to use them. I also fail to understand how Asrock can spend the time and effort to create them, then release them with zero information, either with the utilities, or somewhere in their support portion of their website. Having no idea of what the purpose of the utilities are, or how they work, I'm reluctant to even try them for fear of wrecking my files, or affecting the operation of my computer. I've had this happen often enough with other freeware or shareware products that do supply this information.

Come'on Asrock, use some common sense and get with the program!