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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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Another offering from the Austrian cooling experts in the form of a low profile HSF. We take a look at what it can do.
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We saw MSI mix it up just the other week with the 9600GT by overclocking it and going down the aftermarket cooler route. Aesthetically speaking, the card really didn't do a lot for us, but as we dived deeper into the testing of the card we became pleasantly surprised by the performance the cooler offered. The latest 9600GT variant from MSI sports the same cooler along with an extra 512MB of GDDR3, giving us a grand total of 1GB. The card also carries with it the same overclock we saw on the 512MB model which should aid in getting some extra performance over stock clocked offerings.
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The ECS N8800GT 256MB packs in double the memory with an available BIOS update giving you the performance of a true 8800 GT 512MB. The extra memory along with a nearly silent heat sink/fan combo and a $169 price tag assures it to be a great success!
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We continue our exploration of some of the market's lesser known power supplies today with the GP-PS550BP from GlacialTech, a budget unit featuring semi-fanless operation, passive PFC, and a promise by the company of being capable of full power to 45 degrees.
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Monday, May 5, 2008
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How would you like to have 32 gigs of storage in your front pocket? There was a time when just a one gig flash drive was the 'big drive'. Just enough storage room to transport a few pictures of the loved ones or enough to hold a few songs to share with your best friend. Times have changed and needs have increased. Now we have movies, programs and other large forms of files that would shallow a one gig drive. That's when a drive like the Voyager comes into play. Besides an abundance of space, the Voyager is rigid and durable as well.
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ASRock came on board in 2002, not long after I started building my own rigs. In those six short years, they have come up with some remarkably innovative designs for economy motherboards. Today I will be looking at the ASRock Penryn 1600SLIX3-WiFi motherboard. ASRock has taken the nVidia 680i SLI chipset, given it the capability of running the new Core 2 Extreme 1600mHz FSB processors, added WiFi, and placed that in an economy-minded board.
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It amazes me that each year memory companies keep putting out larger and larger memory capacity portable storage devices at lower prices than the previous year while trumping last year's products and their competitors. Corsair, a world leader in producing high end computer and flash memory products sent us their largest capacity USB 2.0 flash drive to date sporting 32 GB of storage. Yes you read correct; a 32 GB USB 2.0 flash drive that you can carry around in your pocket. Crazy isn't it?
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The bundle and support are very well with the XFX Black Edition GeForce 9800GTX, it comes with COD4, which is one of the hottest PC gaming titles available at this moment and costs around $49.95 at most e-tailors or retailers making the card a more attractive buy. Support and warranty options are well taken care of BY XFX as they take very good care of their customers in the after purchase environment and quick RMA return times. Overall this card is a solid piece of equipment that excels in the 1920X1200 and below resolutions with moderate AA and AF settings. In the 1680 and 1280 resolutions you can turn up the AA and AF settings to their maximum values and get great FPS gameplay. Not quite a gamers gold card, but definitely a Gamers Silver card award winner.
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Noctua has always fascinated me with their cooling solutions. They take the concept of product refinement to a new level, and often times simply tweak key areas of an existing design rather than reinventing the wheel. A perfect example of their research and development is found in the NH-U12P CPU cooler. This new product replaces their older NH-U12F model, and now features a NF-P12 cooling fan. Through the use of four heat-pipe rods configured in a "U" design, the NH-U12P borrows from the well-established performance record of many top-level coolers. Additionally, Noctua emphasises the complete experience beyond simply cooling the processor, and optimizes their products to operate with very low noise levels.
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Looking for excellent gaming performance but also want to keep PC noise to a minimum? The EN9600GT Silent from ASUS is the card to buy. It couples the power of the 9600 GT with pure silence, and costs little more than the stock model, making it a great choice for either the HTPC or desktop.
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MSI has done a wonderful job with their K9A2 Platinum motherboard. The performance is higher than the last AMD motherboard we did the Gigabyte GA-M69GM-S2H motherboard back in September. The ability to do Quadfire (Four ATI cards in Crossfire) is excellent. The minor issue with the motherboard utility aside and the problem with setting up RAID aside, this was a joy to work with. The question with the AMD motherboards is always whether it might be better to buy a new Intel CPU with new motherboard rather than buy an AMD board to use the old CPU. For the true hardcore enthusiast, there really isn't an AMD choice that makes sense as Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs dominate the AMD equivalents in performance. AMD competes in price as the lowest priced Intel Quad Core is 10%+ higher priced than the AMD equivalent.
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The Tempest from NZXT?s crafted series is a very nice looking computer case. With a current street price of $109 plus shipping it is in the same price bracket as the ever-so-popular $99.99 Antec Nine Hundred hardcore gaming case.To compare these two cases one will find that they are similar in style, but the Tempest has a little more going for it; it can hold up to 8 hard drives and the top of the case is designed so that it can mount some of the most common dual 120mm water cooling radiators to it with out modifications. Buying a case is obviously a personal decision, but it would be hard to go wrong with the Tempest...
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From the concept of the Rally Flash Drive family, OCZ has done everything right: a sleek slender body with fast performance. As the series matured and evolved to the Rally2 Turbo, the drive has had a few cosmetic changes and the performance has kicked into a higher gear. The curved edges with no protruding parts and overall small body makes it an easy fit into pockets while the 25-30MB/s performance guarantees you quick copy from hard drive to flash.
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Scaling from one GPU to two doesn't necessarily result in doubling the performance as we've seen in countless SLI and Crossfire articles. But what happens when you add a third GPU to the mix? That is what we're going to find out today by putting three 9800GTX SLI cards together.
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X48 has certainly earned a name for itself now. While Intel has been at the back end of adapting new technologies that actually work (forget the Rambus incident), the X38/X48 chipsets are somewhat ahead of their time. What can be said for the DFI X48 LANParty board other than yet another success from this once OEM company is that DFI has really taken on a new persona over the last three years. With a huge boost in R&D, DFI are designing boards that are not only functional, but look just as good as they perform.
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