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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Monday, March 29, 2010
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"The year is 2012 and the world has descended into social unrest and the earth itself is beset with ecological disasters. When Los Angeles is totally destroyed by earthquake and numerous other disasters strike different parts of the world, the race is on to save as many as possible and our accepted way of life. The accomplished cast including Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, John Cusack and Thandie Newton are all mostly cannon fodder for the horrifyingly realistic visual effects, those of which are solely the reason the film exists.
Director Roland Emmerich is the new Irwin Allen, that is, master of modern disaster movies. However, unlike Allen, Emmerich has the budget and more importantly the technology at his disposable to bring his apocalyptic vision to life. Whilst I enjoy disaster movies, I feel I should mention one aspect of the film that bothers me slightly. As I mentioned earlier, the visual effects are horrifyingly real and are shown in such dense detail. One slow motion panning shot reveals people falling out of a collapsing high rise building, evoking images of September 11. It?s at times an uneasy sight, not helped by the rather sleazy, ?disaster porn? aspect of the film. It revels in the destruction, rather than simply offering the image to an audience."
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In late January 2010, AMD released a new series of processors that fills in some of the gaps in their Athlon-II and Phenom-II Dual, Triple, and Quad-Core Lines. Most of the newly released processors are really just 100MHz clock speed bumps on the old versions. We have also seen the addition of some triple and quad core Athlon-II processors. In this article Benchmark Reviews focuses on the newly released AMD Athlon-II X2-255 AM3 ADX255OCGQBOX processor. Based on the Regor core, the Athlon-II X2-255 has a 3.1GHz clock speed, up 100Mhz from the Athlon-II X2-250 at 3.0GHz which was released last summer. The Athlon-II X2-255 is at the very low end of the newly released processors and represents a value based market at only $75. Benchmark Reviews is going to use the Athlon-II X2-255, with its support for DDR2 RAM up to 1066MHz as well as DDR3 RAM up to 1333MHz, to show some of the great upgrade options available for consumers who have been waiting for! a low-cost option for a better computer system.
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?Antec?s Truepower line of power supplies has been around for several years now. ThinkComputers really liked theTruepower Quattro 1000W and the 850W. The former was one of the first recipients of my Editor?s Choice Award. The Truepower New 750W was released last year, but we?ve got a fresh review of this 80PLUS Bronze certified unit with a 120mm PWM fan and partial modularity."
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"Long before Klipsch brought audio nirvana to the masses with the sub-$100 Image S4, the company was still carving out its headphone reputation for a far more discerning audience with a line of earbuds that tread knee deep into triple digits: the Image X10. Universally lauded for their performance, comfort and small size, the X10 proved that in-ear headphones didn't need to come from a custom mold or use multiple drivers to produce sound that rivaled open-air cans"
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MSI sent us a sample of their Big Bang Trinergy motherboard which is a socket 1156 motherboard that comes packed with features as a THX soundcard, OC dashboard, OC genie function etc. Lets take a closer look at what type of performance we can get from it.
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"So yesterday I got my Wii disc from Netflix, and today I?ve got many screenshots for you of the interface. You could call it a review or maybe an overview, but this will show you everything you need to know about it I hope.. "
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At the center of every new technology is purpose, and NVIDIA has designed their Fermi GF100 GPU with an end-goal of redefining the video game experience through significant graphics processor innovations. Disruptive technology often changes the way users interact with computers, and the GeForce GTX 480 graphics card is a complex tool built to arrive at one simple destination: immersive entertainment. Priced at $499, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 empowers DirectX-11 video games to deliver unmatched geometric realism. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests 3D frame rate performance of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480, and demonstrates how well Fermi architecture fits in with GeForce 3D-Vision.
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"Is there any less appropriate name for a product in the green-crazed marketplace of 2010 than the Ozone Smog? Unless some other hapless company is marketing a mouse known as the Barbaric PuppySlayer, we think not. Unfortunate product name aside, the Smog gaming mouse from Spanish upstart Ozone sets its sites squarely on the likes of Logitech and Razer by offering a full-featured gaming mouse at a price more in line with these competitors' entry-level offerings."
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"At £250/$375 the Makos are aimed squarely at the enthusiast crowd and, as they are a 2.1 channel set, at users with somewhat limited desk space. Whilst many gamers will baulk at such a steep price tag for a bundle comprising of merely two channels, these speakers' specifications are top notch, and with no less than 300W of RMS power available they are more than a match for most surround sounds sets. The all-important frequency response specification also speaks volumes about the Mako's capabilities as it stands at an impressive 25-20,000 Hz."
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?We are looking at a set of GeIL Black Dragon 6GB DDR3-2000 memory modules that look very unique from what we normally see, sporting no fancy heatspreaders. Going with a different approach, there is a black PCB design, gold printing, and red LEDs make these Black Dragons quite refreshing in a sea of clich?d products that want us to believe that sleek metal casings can justify the high price tags that accompany such things.
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?We are looking at the Xclio A380Color Plus, a case with audacious styling and unique aesthetics. Toss in some neat LED lighting effects and huge fans, and you've got something very interesting as a result. Sure, we're suckers for good looks, who isn't? But at the end of the day, we believe Performance is King, and that's often where things are made or broken in product design and implementation.?
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"Seasonic revamped their S12II power supply series, adding 80 Plus Bronze certification and promising higher efficiency. This new series is called S12II Bronze and let's see if the 520 W model is a good pick."
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"Today for review I've got a CPU cooler for my Corei5 750 Socket 1156 CPU from Thermaltake called the Contac 29. This cooler truly surprised me in its performance, I put it up against the Noctua NH-U12P and got virtually the same results in CPU temperatures. The Contac 29 is an inexpensive cooler at $40, but it's well made and produces decent results. So read on to learn more.. "
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
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There are two fundamental differences between Western Digital's Scorpio Black and Scorpio Blue drive families - spindle speed and storage capacity. The Scorpio Black drives spin at 7,200 RPM and are currently limited to a maximum capacity of 320 GB. The Scorpio Blue drives, on the other hand, spin at a more sedate 5,400 RPM but have a maximum capacity of 1 TB.
While Western Digital offers Scorpio Blue drives in capacities of 1 TB and 750 GB, these models are 31.5% thicker than standard 2.5" drives and may not fit most notebook storage bays. They also spin at a slower spindle speed of 5,200 RPM. The model with the largest storage capacity, that also conforms to the standard 2.5" form factor, is the 640 GB WD Scorpio Blue hard disk drive, and this is the drive we will be looking into today.
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Blu-ray Combo drives are popular among PC enthusiasts today as they can both play back the latest Blu-ray Disks and burn a DVD for Data Storage or other uses. The BC-08B1ST has 8x speed which is one of the fastest currently available drive on the market today. Blu-ray media when needing to transfer files requires a fast speed and there are hardly 8x Blu-ray media to take advantage of this drive yet. This drive has a 2MB cache and works right out of the box with the included ASUS BD Suite which consists of CyberLink?s BD Suite of software version 7.3.
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