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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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Shopping for a monitor isn't exactly straightforward, though. As if picking a size weren't hard enough, you also have to balance your standards for specifications versus price. That's too much work for a lot of people, especially after they just spent a month researching the best hardware to buy, and they stick with the well-known names like Samsung and Viewsonic.
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We compared the nForce 780a SLI to the AMD 780G since we wanted to test out the integrated graphics and PureVideo HD functionality as well as general performance. It seems to have paid off; the test results were interesting as the HD DVD playback testing over the HDMI output showed that NVIDIA passed up ATI when it comes to offloading the CPU usage. NVIDIA claims that an HT3-based Phenom CPU is required to provide the necessary bandwidth when playing HD video using the motherboard GPU. Our testing showed this is not true, but NVIDIA claims moving from a HT1 processor to HT3 will give the integrated graphics the bandwidth it needs to better render HD content. This is something we will check out later, because if we are impressed with what a 2.5GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core CPU can do with HT1, we'd better be sitting down for some Phenom 50-series action...
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The Nano Silencer TLI-U is ideally sized for 1U server chassis, nano formfactor PCs, car PCs and media center microATX-style cases. The entire TLI-U heatsink stands no taller than 45mm, and uses the same swagged aluminum fin technique as the Micro Silencer model. Twin sintered wick copper heatpipes and a total weight of just 214 grams make the TLI-U a capable low mass cooler for weight sensitive applications. For the sake of convenience the heatsink even comes with a pre-applied patch of 8 W/mK rated gray thermal interface material on the bottom.
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The Xigmatek S1283 Red Scorpion (Achilles) CPU Heatsink arrived Technic3D. The CPU Cooler with new silent LED PWM Fan, H.D.T. technology and easy installation. See you in the following Review the Red Scorpion on a Intel Dual-Core XE6800 CPU compared with Standard Boxed Cooling and more.
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It has been some time since we reviewed an AMD processor on Driver Heaven, but quite a lot has happened since then with the release of various CPU revisions, as well as triple core, the 780G chipset and further energy efficient Athlon models. So today it is time to catch up with the current range of AMD products starting with the Phenom 9850.
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Although Western Digital did not reveal it, the Scorpio is certainly making use of perpendicular recording technology to achieve its performance levels. Of course, there's only so much they can do with perpendicular recording technology. It is likely that the Scorpio also uses four platters to attain its remarkable storage capacity of 320 GB.
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Two months ago we had looked at the Tyan Tempest i5400XT motherboard, which was Tyan's latest product based upon Intel's newest workstation chipset and had support for dual Intel Xeon quad-core processors. We found the Tempest i5400XT to be a real winner and everything had worked terrific with Linux. Today we are looking at another Tyan workstation motherboard but the tides have turned as we look at their latest AMD dual quad-core solution, the Tyan Thunder n3600M. The Thunder n3600M motherboard supports dual AMD "Barcelona" Opteron processors, 16 sticks of DDR2 RAM, and eight SAS ports, among other stunning features.
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Are you in the market for a small form factor m-ATX motherboard that can give you blistering performance for your multimedia needs, plus the ability to play the latest Direct X 10 games? And as a bonus you can install a second card to gain CrossFireX for your games. Then you have to check out the Sapphire PURE Hybrid CrossFire 780G Innovation Motherboard.
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An Asus M3N-HT Deluxe/Mempipe!? What's that? Hey, if you are asking that question, you probably forgot already that there's actually another manufacturer other than Intel that makes CPUs; which goes by the name of "AMD". It's interesting how quickly we forget about the days of glory for AMD and their Athlon 64 back in 2003. But the most important thing is that, AMD is still 'sort of' alive for some competition against microprocessor giant Intel to keep the CPU market 'just sort of' nice and fair. When I received the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe/Mempipe motherboard for review last month (Which was still on NDA for the chipset), I was excited to see what kind of motherboards were produced currently on the AMD platform. Combined with NVIDIA's flagship 780a chipset, it certainly brought back memories of the whole NVIDIA-AMD combination that ruled back in the days of the MSI K8N-Neo2 Platinum, DFI LanParty Ultra-D, and the Asus A8N-SLI Premium.
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It is hard to believe that it has been almost two full years since NVIDIA released a new flagship chipset for the AMD platform. Since the nForce 590i SLI's official release in May of 2006, NVIDIA has introduced a handful of mid-range and more affordable chipsets for AMD processors, but the 590i SLI was it at the high-end, despite AMD's release of new quad-core Phenom processors and competing 7-series chipsets. Early this year while NVIDIA outlined their plans to mix things up at the high-end of their AMD chipset line-up with the IGP-equipped nForce 780a SLI, but it has taken quite a bit of time to bring that product to market. Today though, we present to you three nForce 780a SLI-based motherboards (two from Asus and one from MSI), that are sure to pique the interest of all of the AMD fans out there. For the first time since the Phenom launch, AMD fans will now be able to pair up NVIDIA's flagship graphics configurations with an AMD CPU and exploit all of the features inherent to both.
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From a technical point of view we understand that Auzentech has fully licensed Creative Labs' X-Fi chip onto their own proprietary circuit board design. So what does that mean? Well it means arguably the world's fastest and most advanced audio processing at the average consumers reach right now, with upcoming driver support for Dolby Live, DTS interactive and since we have a Creative chip, the very latest in EAX surround technology. My first impressions were good with a very noticeable notch up from the low-end after swapping from the Xonar. Not only did the low-end sound a lot beefier, it had a lot more character to it; more warmth and depth.
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Continually, we find ourselves looking at great Corsair PSUs - the HX, the TX and now the VX have all performed fantastically. The VX550W does exactly what it says on the tin and even though our model dropped a fraction below 80 percent load under significant 3.3V and 5V stress, it's very unlikely they'll ever hit these sorts of values in a real PC. Where it matters the Corsair VX550W works exceptionally well, hitting upwards of 85 percent efficiency throughout the rest of the tests.
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The OCZ ReaperX HPC memory series is the newest variant of the heatpipe cooled memory available from the manufacturer. Its new design improves on the cooling with dual heatpipes and finer fins to keep the parts cool. In our testing we saw excellent performance going all the way to DDR2-736 at 3-3-3-12.
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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With six +12v rails and four 6-pin PCI-E connectors just for starters, it's designed for those high end overclocked gaming rigs with multiple video cards that require a lot of power to perform optimally. Let's have a look at the rest of its offerings in more detail.
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Ultra's X-Pro range consists of many units with a power output ranging from 600W to 800W. Today we will take a look at the two most powerful units of this particular series, the X-Pro 750W and the X-Pro 800W. Today we will find out if they should be in your shortlist for an upgrade or for a brand new high end gaming system.
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