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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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Today we are checking out one of the fastest and coolest video cards ever to come from XFX and NVIDIA, the XFX 9800 GX2 Black Edition. The Black Edition is overclocked even more than the legendary XFX XXX cards. There is no doubt that the XFX 9800 GX2 Black Edition is one of the best performing video cards on the market. It outperformed all the stock 9800GX2s I have tested and posted significantly better minimum frame rates on game tests. The XFX 9800 GX2 Black Edition and the Asus EN9800GX2 Top were a virtual tie performance wise. Both the cards also offer a nice game bundle. However, the XFX 9800 GX2 Black Edition edges the Asus card out in game quality and warranty.
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When I reviewed their luscious A5s, my own music, music that I leave playing all the time, music that I can play in my head *sans stereo*, I... it mesmerized me. There was so much I didn't know I was missing, so much that I didn't expect to be able to hear without some studio phones. I will test these smaller, "desktop" speakers against a high standard. I will test them on an Audioengine standard.
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Well one thing is for certain, the OCZ PC2-8500 4GB Dual Channel Reaper HPC Memory is fully compatible with the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P and ASUS Blitz Formula Motherboards. The memory is definitely capable of exceeding it's rated specs. Given the complexities and obstacles associated with a 4GB kit, 1066 MHz is a worthy achievement in its own right. The 4GB Reaper kit remained completely stable throughout testing as well as passed several hours of further scrutiny from our trusty RST PRO 2 provided by Ultra-X. If there were any type of weaknesses in the memory, the RST PRO 2 would have definitely found them.
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If you work in an environment where precise colour rendition is vital, such as medical or graphics production, the VP950b should be perfectly suited to your needs. It's well built, has a good range of connection options (digital and analogue), and the flexible stand allows you to position the display for maximum viewing comfort. Gamers will want a higher resolution and an HDMI port, but then the monitor isn't aimed at this market. Overall the VP950b is a very good monitor for general Windows users.
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Sunday, May 18, 2008
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You can call it a fad, but the latest craze is not about the latest quad core laptop with a 8800 series graphics accelerator, several hard drives in RAID, or a 20" screen and whatever. Ever since the announcement of the Asus Eee PC, and its official launch just a few months prior to Christmas 2007, hardcore enthusiasts and general consumers alike have expressed immense interest in this piece of low cost, ultra portable laptop. Do a Google search. Read a tech blog. Log in to your latest forum. Engage in a conversation with a few friends. To be honest, being a reviewer for quite a few years now, there's not many products which have made me sit there just to eagerly anticipate. The Asus Eee PC is one of those rare products -- and after using it since March and showing it off to quite a number of friends, I can see where all the excitement lays. That is, a few months after its release, I finally managed to get a hold of a unit of the Asus Eee PC 4G; previously known as the Eee PC 701. Using it almost daily for a month and a half, we now present to you our detailed long-ish term test of the popular fully loaded Asus Eee PC.
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Enermax is one of the world's most reputable switching PSU manufacturers and their products are considered to be some of the best that money can buy. Recently they released two new product lines, the Pro 82+ and Modu 82+ series. Both product ranges contain units with maximum power output ranging from 385W to 625W and whilst a maximum output of 385W may sound insufficient with the availability of 1kW+ PSUs during the past year, it is more than adequate power for a modern system with a single GPU and numerous drives installed. Today we will take a look at the Pro 82+ 385W unit which appears to be using some industry leading features and technologies despite being it the least powerful Enermax PSU we have tested.
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The average improvement of the Albatron GeForce 9600GT-512X over the ATI Radeon HD 3850 for both the game and synthetic testing is over 40%. There is no way you can spin these results to the ATI Radeon HD 3850's favor! Looks like the Radeon HD 3850 is the Hillary Clinton of this matchup... it held up until the end, but the math is just not there to give it any victory...
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Even though it's a P45-based Republic of Gamers board, it?s curiously not fallen under the Blitz branding that was used for the P35-based RoG boards - Asus is changing things around slightly by slotting all Intel-based boards under either the Rampage or Maximus nomenclature, with the Striker branding saved for Nvidia chipsets on Intel platforms.
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The Nokia 6500 Classic is a brilliant phone for day to use. It hasn't got anywhere near as many features as the amazing Nokia N95 (such as GPS, FM tuner, front-facing camera and so on) and battery life is disappointing at just 3h 30m talktime, but it's a totally practical phone for heavy voice callers. Messaging and e-mail are obviously restricted due to the lack of a QWERTY keyboard, but those who sent lots of text messages should quickly work their way around the Nokia 6500 Classic's excellent keypad and menu system. Enthusiast photographers will balk at the rather limited 2-Megapixel digital camera, and business users may want 3G videocalling to prove to their boss that they're not out on the golf course, but the rest of us should be very well served by Nokia's best looking phone to date.
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In my assessment, NZXT's claim that the Tempest is the "Airflow King" cannot be disputed. My hardware has remained cool, with temperatures of 27C for both processor cores, 32C for the system, and 39C for the graphics card. And despite having six fans installed to keep things so cool, the Tempest is one of the quietest cases I have used.
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AMD and NVIDIA are now pushing towards a more power conscious chipset market with integrated features in order to boost their value. This can only mean good things for end users who not only get a more power friendly based PC (and in todays green market, this is big brownie points), but also features that weren't previously added. Today we are testing out the mid-range value option from NVIDIA; the GeForce 7100/630i board from abit. How does it perform? Let's push forward and begin with a look at the specifications.
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Unlike conventional laptop computers, the C90S is an upgradeable laptop, meaning that the user is free to replace many of its core components including the processor and the graphics card. Possibly even more interesting than this is Asus' choice of platform, not quite the standard for a mobile system. The Asus C90S is powered by Core 2 desktop processors rather than the 'Merom' mobile variety. That includes support for the 800MHz FSB Allendale models, as well as the 1066MHz FSB Conroe processors. It is possible, then, to configure the C90S with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor operating at 2.93GHz if you'd choose to do so, which certainly makes the C90S a very unique laptop, or should we say mobile desktop replacement.
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The TomTom XL S is the company's midrange GPS unit, and offers the same core functionality as the more expensive models while offering a few less features and a reduced price. It includes maps of the US and Canada, includes text-to-speech functionality for reading street names aloud, and offers a large database of Points of Interest as well. Though its functionality is primarily limited to driving directions (no music playing capability, for example), it's a highly capable and intuitive device that will serve most motorists quite well.
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Back in April, I reviewed Thermaltake's BlacX USB Hard Drive dock and heralded it as a step in the right direction, away from those boring hard drive enclosures out there. Although it was a cool concept, it lacked in the performance department due in part to the omission of something faster than your standard USB port. Vantec has come along with a new product called the NexStar eSata/USB Hard Drive Dock which sports not only lowly USB, but kicks up the performance with an eSATA port.
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As a founding father in what's still considered a niche market, Alienware offers a range of custom notebooks and PCs, culminating with the Area-51. Built with gaming in mind, Alienware recently overhauled their flagship lineup to keep up with this ever evolving segment and sent us their Area-51 ALX, a water-cooled powerhouse sporting a quad-core processor and dual-GPUs. But it takes more than a spec sheet to impress us, and at $7K, we're expecting an out-of-this-world ride. Did Alienware oblige?
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