iceflatline

I bought a boxed copy of Dragon Age: Origins and played as a female Dwarf Noble warrior named Theona (because my son thought she looked like the character from Shrek). I spent over 105 hours in Ferelden exploring over 90% of it and finished at level 22. I used the longsword Topsiders Honor for much of the campaign and, with few exceptions, my traveling NPC companions included Alistar (Templar/Warrior), Leliana (Rogue), and Wynne (Healer/Mage). Here are my quick thoughts on the game…

Pros…

The title – Probably the best thing about Dragon Age: Origins is that it doesn’t have a “2″ in the title. In an era where big publishers ride the sequel horse until it dies starving in the desert called mediocrity (Call of Duty I’m looking at you), it’s refreshing to see some new “intellectual property” in the gaming world.

The story – Bioware’s RPGs are highly praised and successful for their story telling, and Dragon Age: Origins certainly maintains this pedigree. Simply put, this is probably one of best – if not the best – RPG I’ve played.

The combat – Combat was action-packed, reminding me of BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic. Every encounter was a heated skirmish between your party members and usually large packs of enemies. Like many of BioWare’s RPGs, you’re able to pause the game at any time to give orders to your henchman.

Cons…

Textures – While I found the story and combat best of breed, some of the graphics leave a lot to be desired. Dungeons, structures and towns for example look great for the most part, while other locations – outdoor scenes in particular – are just damn ugly. My theory is that Dragon Age: Orgins was in development for so long that it’s likely Bioware just didn’t get around to going back and optimizing some of the game content that was created first.

The loot – If you’re looking for a “lootapalooza” in every dungeon or building you fight through, this is not the game for you. Special weapons, armor and even health poultices are few and far between. Of course, some would argue that this is a good trait – it makes you really appreciate the good loot when you find it. But, if you’re one of those players that likes to constantly swap out old gear for new, you may be left less than satisfied.

Combat and companions – Some of the mechanics of combat that make the game great can also be a pain in the ass. Every battle is a full on skirmish, usually with your party outnumbered. To make matters worse, melee enemies converge quickly and surround your position making the combat close and cramped. This makes it difficult to spread out and fight or use tactics like pulling. I found myself constantly hitting the space bar so I could reposition my companions, health them up, etc. This resulted in a kind of chess game and really interrupted the natural flow and pace of the combat for me. Also, the shear amount of tweaking you can do to the tactics used by your comanions is staggering. As a result, I found myself constantly tweaking, worrying whether or not I had the right tactics set up for each companion in each encounter. Again, just another disruption in the natural flow and pace of the game for me.

Tips…

Healers are good – I recommend using Wynne for healing and buffing. She does a great job of managing herself, stays out of harm’s way, and will help save on those few and far between health poultices.

Ahh them Rogues – If you’re not playing as a rogue I recommend taking one along in your party. Not only can they open chests (which contain some of the better loot and health poultices) and spot enemies if setup correctly but many of their skills (“Deadly Strike,” “Below the Belt”) will be a huge help in combat.

Revenants must die – A revenant is a “corpse possessed by a demon of pride or of desire…” Whatever. It is, however, one of the toughest damn things you’ll face in the game. There are ten of them in total, four of which are involved in a quest called “The Mages Treasure.” Bring down those four and you’ll have yourself the “Juggernaut” armor set, some of the best armor in the game.

It’s okay to be a weenie – Combat, especially early in the game, can be very tough. I recommend embracing your inner noob and playing the game on “easy” until you get the hang of tactics and positioning.

This post will describe how to install and configure dnsmasq on a Linux- or Unix-based host. Once configured, you’ll be able to use dnsmasq to provide DNS and DHCP services in your home network.

So, why do you even need dnsmasq? Afterall, your ISP provides DNS and your home network gateway/router likely provides DHCP service for your network, right? Perhaps the best way to answer then is to explain the problem I was trying to solve. In my home network I would typically assign a static IP address to each host on my network, and then use its host file to resolve the host’s name to the IP address it was assigned. This approach allowed me to easily communicate between these hosts by simply typing their name rather than trying to remember their static IP address. However, as the number of hosts on my network started to grow, configuring static IP addresses and constantly updating the host files became unwieldy. dnsmasq solves this problem.

dnsmasq is a small, lightweight, and easy to configure caching DNS proxy and DHCP server targeted at small or home networks. It can serve the names of local hosts which are not in the global DNS, and its DHCP server integrates with its DNS server to allow hosts with DHCP-allocated addresses to appear in the DNS along with names configured either in each host or in its configuration file. dnsmasq supports static and dynamic DHCP leases and even BOOTP/TFTP for network booting of diskless hosts. dnsmasq is opensource software and is distributed under the terms of the GPL. Supported platforms include Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X.

The versions for the software used in this post were as follows:

FreeBSD 7.2 RELEASE and dnsmasq v2.52,1

Fedora v12 and dnsmasq v2.51-1.fc12

Ubuntu server v9.10 and dnsmasq v2.47-3_all.deb

Download and Install

I chose to install dnsmasq on my Ubuntu server-based machine. However, any host on your network in which you can add one or more external nameservers to /etc/resolv.conf and some or all of your hosts in /etc/hosts, can easily be used for hosting dnsmasq.

To install dnsmasq on a Debian-based distribution like Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install dnsmasq

On Fedora-based distributions:

$ su
# yum install dnsmasq

And on *BSD, if you’ve installed the Ports collection:

$ cd /usr/ports/dns/dnsmasq/
$ su
# make install clean

Or, if you would prefer to add the package:

$ su
# pkg_add -r dnsmasq

The dnsmasq script will be installed in /etc/init.d, symlinked from runlevels 2-5, and start automatically in a Debian-based distribution like Ubuntu. In Fedora-based distributions, the dnsmasq script is installed in /etc/init.d; however, you will need to create a symbolic link to it from the appropriate runlevel directory in order for it to start automatically at boot time. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use the chkconfig command as root. The following example shows how to add the dnsmasq script to runlevels 2-5 and start dnsmasq in Fedora:

$ su
# chkconfig dnsmasg on
# /etc/init.d/dnsmasq start

In *BSD, the dnsmasq script will be installed in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. To get dnsmasq to start at boot time, add the following line to /etc/rc.conf:

dnsmasq_enable="YES"

Then start dnsmasq:

$ su
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dnsmasq start

Configure

Configuring dnsmasq is straightforward. The various DHCP and DNS options can be passed via command line when starting dnsmasq, or may be set via its configuration file, dnsmasq.conf. I generally prefer to use dnsmasq’s configuration file; it’s very well commented and easy to follow.

Let’s walk through the changes I made to the default configuration file in order to provision both DNS and DHCP service for my network. Make sure you create a backup copy of your default file before you begin.

To start, I uncommented the following two options to force dnsmasq to filter my local network DNS queries so they did not reach the public DNS servers.

# Never forward plain names (without a dot or domain part)

domain-needed

# Never forward addresses in the non-routed address spaces.

bogus-priv

By default, dnsmasq will send queries to any of the nameservers you define in /etc/resolv.conf, however, it will try to favor those it knows to be up. Uncommenting the following setting forces dnsmasq to use the nameservers listed in /etc/resolv.conf strictly in the order they appear. Since I had a pretty good sense of which DNS servers I wanted to use and in what order I uncommented this line:

strict-order

By default dnsmasq will listen for DNS queries on all network interfaces. I have several interfaces on my server (Hamachi, eth0, eth1, etc.), but only one that is physically connected to my local network, so I uncommented the following line in order to force dnsmasq to listen for DHCP and DNS requests on that interface only – in my case eth0. Simply repeat the line with the another interface name if you have additional interfaces you would like dnsmasq to listen to.

interface=eth0

The following two lines are optional; however, if used, dnsmasq will append the domain name you choose to the host names defined in dnsmasq.conf and/or /etc/hosts. I use these, but the only real benefit I saw in my network was that I was able to ping devices such as my game consoles based on the names I defined for them using the dhcp-host parameter (see below).

# Set this (and domain: see below) if you want to have a domain
# automatically added to simple names in a hosts-file.

expand-hosts

# Set the domain for dnsmasq. this is optional, but if it is set, it
# does the following things.
# 1) Allows DHCP hosts to have fully qualified domain names, as long
#     as the domain part matches this setting.
# 2) Sets the "domain" DHCP option thereby potentially setting the
#    domain of all systems configured by DHCP
# 3) Provides the domain part for "expand-hosts"

domain=home.net

To enable dnsmasq’s integrated DHCP server you’ll need to uncomment the following line and provide the range of addresses available for lease in your network, and optionally, a lease time.

dhcp-range=192.168.10.100,192.168.10.254,24h

If you have a host on your network that you’d like to have receive the same IP address every lease, then uncomment the following line and provide the host’s MAC address, as well as the preferred IP address – one from the dhcp-range you defined above. For example, I like to have the computer I use most often receive the same IP address. That way I can easily forward ports to it, etc. Alternatively, I could have simply given it a static IP address and defined the name/address combination in the /etc/hosts file of the machine hosting dnsmasq.

dhcp-host=00:27:0E:02:A8:AE,192.168.10.100

If your network is anything like mine you probably have devices that don’t have a host names associated with them the same way a computer does (e.g., Xbox 360). The following parameter will assign a name to these devices in dnsmasq. You’ll need to provide the devices’s MAC address and the name you’d like associated with it. Here’s an example of how I have this defined in my network:

dhcp-host=00:0B:E6:05:38:47,wii
dhcp-host=00:22:48:48:EE:37,xbox2
dhcp-host=00:12:5A:99:67:DE,xbox1
dhcp-host=00:04:5A:A5:26:B0,tivo1
dhcp-host=00:1D:7E:00:E5:58,tivo2

By default dnsmasq assumes that host running dnsmasq is your gateway/router. That wasn’t the case in my network so I needed to specify the IP address of my Cisco gateway/router in the following line:

dhcp-option=3,192.168.10.1

The DHCP server needs somewhere keep its lease database file. I simply retained the default location chosen by dnsmasq for my Ubuntu server install. Note that this default location will vary depending on which platform your using to host dnsmasq:

#dhcp-leasefile=/var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases

Finally, you can adjust the number of entries dnsmasq will keep in its DNS cache in the following line. I retained the default of 150.

#cache-size=150

That’s it for configuring dnsmasq.conf. Keep in mind though that the options described here really only scratch the surface. I would strongly urge you to read through dnsmasq.conf thoroughly as there are many more options available for fine-tuning dnsmasq’s numerious capapbilities. But for now let’s move on and consider two additional files, /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/hosts, that are important when configuring dnsmasq.

resolv.conf

dnsmasq will consult a several locations when going about the business of resolving your network’s DNS queries. These locations include its internal cache, for any queries it may have already resolved; /etc/hosts, for any static name/IP address combinations that may be defined there; and, if the DHCP server is being utilized, it will of course know from its configuration file and lease database file which IP addresses it has assigned to the hosts configured to use DHCP. When it can’t resolve DNS queries via these methods, dnsmasq will send queries to the nameservers defined in /etc/resolv.conf. You must have at least one public DNS server defined there and it’s typical to simply use the DNS server(s) provided by your ISP. Following is an example of how I have my /etc/resolv.conf file configured. Recall that I uncommented the strict-order line in dnsmasq.conf as described above so dnsmasq will utilize DNS servers in the order I have them listed here.

#Allow applications on the machine hosting dnsmasq to also use it too

nameserver 127.0.0.1

#Google DNS

nameserver 8.8.8.8

#OpenDNS

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

#Cox

nameserver 68.105.28.11
nameserver 68.105.29.11
nameserver 68.105.28.12

#An option to use my network gateway/router as the upstream DNS. Note that the #pubic DNS server addresses will need to be defined in the router.

#nameserver 192.168.10.1

/etc/hosts

As I mentioned, dnsmasq will consult the /etc/hosts file on the host its running on when resolving DNS queries. This comes handy when there are hosts in your network that you have assigned, or would like to assign, static IP addresses to. In those cases the host name/IP address combinations can simply be added to /etc/hosts. In fact, if desired, you could elect not to use dnsmasq’s DHCP server at all and rely soley on dnsmasq’s use of /etc/hosts to resolve local IP addresses. In this respect, /etc/hosts is no different than any other host file resident on most computers except that now you only need to maintain the one file. Of course, the tradeoff is that you’ll need to configure static IP addresses on all your hosts. I settled on a hybrid approach for my network. I configured all client hosts (laptops, desktop PCs, game consoles, etc) to use dnsmasq’s DHCP server, and configured all servers and network equipment (access point, router, network printers, etc.) with static IP addresses. Here’s an example of my /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1       localhost
192.168.10.1    router
192.168.10.2    wap
192.168.10.4    server1
192.168.10.11   server2
192.168.10.51   print-hp
192.168.10.52   print-canon

Final Steps

Once dnsmasq.conf, /etc/resolv.conf, and /etc/hosts are configured to your liking restart dnsmasq:

# /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

Or, if your using *BSD:

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dnsmasq restart

Make sure to disable any other DHCP servers that may be running in your network, then simply configure your hosts to use DHCP – they should recieve an IP address that’s in the range defined in dnsmasq.conf. If you’re planning on configuring some hosts with static IP addresses, set the IP address of the host running dnsmasq as the DNS server and IP address of the gateway/router as the gateway. You’ll also want to make sure to enter that host/IP address information in /etc/hosts on the host running dnsmasq. That’s it! You now have DNS and DHCP service up and running in your network.

Now let’s run a quick test to make sure dnsmasq is caching DNS queries. The simplest to do that is to use the dig utility:

$ dig iceflatline.com

When you look at the output from dig and find the line showing the query time. Note the time and run the command again. You should see a noticable improvement in response time indicating that dnsmasq is caching query results locally.

Conclusion

This concludes the article on how to install and configure dnsmasq on your Linux- or Unix-based host. As you can see, dnsmasq isn’t terribly complicated and proves to be a really nice open source package for implementing a small, lightweight caching DNS proxy and DHCP server. For a full list of all the configuration options and other information I encourage you to visit the dnsmasq web site.

References

http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/docs/setup.html
http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/docs/FAQ

This is the third post documenting my upgrade to an Intel Core i7 Lynnfield system. In my first post I discussed the components I selected and why. I talked about assembling the system and some of the challenges I encountered in my second post, and in this final post I’ll be discussing my efforts at overclocking the Intel DP55KG motherboard and Core i7 860 processor.

Two Approaches

Intel’s new “Turbo Mode” feature is able to increase the processor multiplier value beyond its default value (21 in the case of the Core i7 860) if the processor is operating within what it considers are safe temperature parameters. For example, in Intel’s Core i7 Bloomfield architecture, processors are allowed to raise the stock multiplier value by 1 or 2 depending on the number of cores being used. Intel’s Lynnfield processors are considerably more aggressive with Turbo Mode, increasing Turbo Mode multipliers within a range of ~2-5. Essentially what this means is that when fewer processor cores are demanded by an application or process, larger multiplier values are used, thus the processor is allowed to run faster than the default multiplier would normally allow. In the case of the Core i7 860, it’s not uncommon, for example, to see it use a multiplier value of 26 in single-threaded applications, yielding a processor speed of 3.46 GHz, well above its stock speed of 2.8 GHz. While this sort of dynamic overclocking is pretty damn impressive, a question arose for me when it came time to overclock my Intel DP55KG and Core i7 860: should I attempt to overclock the system with Turbo Mode enabled, meaning I would have to consider the headroom required when higher multiplier values are used, or should I simply disable it and go with the more traditional overclocking approach? I ended up trying both approaches to see how they compared and to evaluate which would work best for me.

Regardless of which approach you use though, overclocking a Lynnfield system is pretty straight forward. Adjust the host clock frequency until the system achieves a stable CPU speed. From there, the memory multiplier can be adjusted to compensate for the change in host frequency. If desired/needed you can also adjust the CPU voltage, memory voltage, and Uncore voltage to further stabilize the system. That’s pretty much all the adjusting the architecture allows you to do.

Turbo Mode enabled

My first attempt at overlocking the Intel DP55KG and the Core i7 860 involved raising the host clock frequency but leaving with Turbo Mode enabled. These are the BIOS settings I started with:

Performance

Host Clock Frequency Override: Manual

Performance -> Processor Overrides

CPU Voltage Override Type: Dynamic
CPU Voltage Override: Default (default)
CPU Idle State: High Performance
Intel Turbo Boost Technology: Enabled (default)

Performance -> Memory Configuration

Performance Memory Profiles: Manual – User Defined
Memory Multiplier: 12
Memory Voltage: 1.65
Uncore Voltage Override: 1.10 (default)

Performance -> Bus Overrides

All settings in this section were left at their default values.

Power

Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Tech: Enabled (default)
CPU C State: Enabled (default)

With this approach, my objective was to try to achieve the best stable overclock I could using Turbo Boost and leaving the voltage settings at thier default values. However, I did alter two voltage settings: the CPU Voltage Override Type, which I set to Dynamic, allowing the CPU to still manage its own power usuage but with higher upper limits; and the Memory Voltage, which I set to 1.65 to match the voltage input specified for my Mushkin DDR3-1600 kits. I left the RAM timings at the default SPD values of 9 9 9 24.

And the result? I was able to achieve a host clock frequency of 154 MHz before the system became unstable (stability in this case is defined as the ability for the system to run without failure using Prime95 (v25.9) Large FFT for 2-3 hours). This yielded a CPU speed of 4 GHz, assuming a Turbo Boost multiplier of 26 (154 * 26 = 4.00 GHz). I did notice, however, that the multiplier in my case generally liked to stay at 25 a large percentage of the time during idle. I suspect this was the result of the High Performance setting in BIOS that forces the system to use the higher multiplier when the operating system would otherwise be allowed to lower it.

According to CPU-Z (v1.53) The CPU voltage (VID) fluxuates between .8 and .9 at idle and core temperatures according to Speedfan (v4.40) were ~30c at idle. Given the DRAM multiplier setting of 12, the DRAM frequency weighed in at a nice 1848 MHz. Loading all four cores resulted in VID rising to 1.096 volts and core temperatures to ~63c. Using all four cores of course also resulted in the system using the default CPU multiplier value of 21 (154 * 21 = 3.23 GHz).

So, in summary, I was able to achieve ~15% overclock under load using Turbo Boost and leaving the voltage settings at thier default values.

Turbo mode disabled

After determining the optimal overlocking settings for my Intel DP55KG and the Core i7 860 using default voltages and Turbo Mode enabled, I attempted to overclock the system with Turbo Burst disabled as well as the freedom to use higher voltage settings, if necessary, to make the system stable. These are the BIOS settings I started with:

Performance

Failsafe Watchdog: Enable (default)
Host Clock Frequency Override: Manual
Host Clock Frequency: 133

Performance -> Processor Overrides

CPU Voltage Override Type: Static
CPU Voltage Override: Default (default)
CPU Idle State: High Performance
Intel Turbo Boost Technology: Disabled

Performance -> Memory Configuration

Performance Memory Profiles: Manual – User Defined
Memory Multiplier: 10
Memory Voltage: 1.65
Uncore Voltage Override: 1.10 (default)

Performance -> Bus Overrides

All settings in this section were left at their default values.

Power

Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Tech: Disabled
CPU C State: Disabled

And the result? With Turbo Burst disabled and the latitude to increase VID and other voltage settings if necessary, I was able to achieve a host clock frequency of 170 MHz using a VID of 1.2 before the system became unstable, yielding a CPU speed of 3.5 GHz (170 * 21 = 3.57 GHz). Further increases in VID, memory or Uncore voltage did not allow for a stable system using higher clock speeds. Core temperatures rose to ~35c at idle and loading all four cores caused the core temperatures to rise to ~74c. With a the DRAM multiplier setting of 10 instead of 12, the DRAM frequency fell to 1700 MHz. Here again I left the RAM timings at the default SPD values of 9 9 9 24. I did try to run with the DRAM multiplier set at 12 but there was just no way my 1600 MHz RAM was going to run at 2040 MHz!

So, in summary, I was able to achieve ~28% overclock under by shutting down Turbo Boost and raising VID to 1.2.

Comparison

Table 1 shows the results of few highly unscientific tests I threw at both cases to see how they compared.

Table 1

	h.264 Encoding (Minutes)	SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)	SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic (GOP/s)	3DMark Vantage (1280x1024, 4xAA)	X3 Terran Conflict (1280x1024, 4xAA)	BattleForge (1280x1024, 4xAA)	Crysis (1280x1024, 4xAA)
Stock	33	17	71	15904 (15311/17996)	92	77	45
Turbo Mode On	25	22	80	16732 (15750/20587)	109	77	46
Turbo Mode Off	23	18	87	15342 (14209/20160)	118	81	47

The h.264 tests involved transcoding a typical MPEG-2 DVD *iso to the h.264 high-profile format using Handbrake. You can see there was not a significant difference in time between the two methods, but both represented a nice improvement over the default settings. Turbo Boost, however, did provide a nice bump in memory bandwidth, due mostly to the ability to run at a higher DRAM multiplier value. The use of Turbo Boost also wins out where 3DMark Vantage is concerned, suggesting that the higher multipler values played a role here again (the results show the overall scores followed by the GPU/CPU score in parenthesis). The game-based tests were vitually useless since these particular games strongly rely on the GPU and not the CPU. However, a game like X3 Terran Conflict, which likely makes use of all four cores for physics calculations, clearly benefits from the higher host clock speed.

Conclusion

Turbo Mode is something that should be evaluated based on your needs and the specifics of your overclock. Which one did I go with? I decided to run with Turbo Mode enabled and the lower host clock frequency. There were a couple of reasons for this choice. First, I rather like using the default voltage settings; by allowing Intel to manage the power settings, I’m able to run my system moderately faster, and in some cases a hell of a lot faster, but also a lot cooler. Second, I typically run applications that do not utilize all four cores, so a moderate overclock with Turbo Mode gives me better results than a higher-speed overclock without Turbo Mode. However, it’s good to know that as I grow to depend on more cores consistently, I can simply shutdown Turbo Boost and clock the system higher.