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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Friday, May 9, 2008
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A few months ago, ASUS jumped into the audio card market with both feet with the introduction of their Xonar product line. One of the first models to market was the premium Xonar D2 Ultra Fidelity 7.1 sound card. The D2 boasted a superb retail package with all of the cabling, software and extras one would need thrown in, along with a slick, eye-catching design, for around $180. Not only did the Xonar D2 Ultra Fidelity 7.1 deliver on all fronts, but it also proved to be solid competition for Creative, who still has somewhat of a stranglehold on add-in audio card market. To further infuse themselves into the audio card market though, ASUS didn't stop with the Xonar D2 Ultra Fidelity 7.1. They have since developed several other model to meet the needs of consumers of all budgets. Today, we take a look at ASUS' latest offering which targets the mainstream market, the more affordable Xonar DX PCI Express 7.1 Audio Card.
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I have to say that I'm impressed with the Asus EAH3870 X2 graphics card - it's quite a step away from the reference design and innovation like this should be encouraged. The inclusion of four DVI ports will be a welcome addition for anyone looking to run more than a couple of monitors on their workstation and what makes it even better is the fact that, unlike Nvidia's SLI, ATI CrossFireX technology scales across multiple displays. There is no need to disable CrossFireX in order to enable multi-display mode - and believe me when I say that is a big thing for anyone like me who is a gamer but also runs multiple displays. It's for that reason alone that I have never used a GeForce 9800 GX2 or GeForce 7950 GX2 in any system that isn't used for testing purposes - it defeats the object of having a single graphics card for me because it has all the compromises of SLI.
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Thursday, May 8, 2008
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Today we are checking out the Asus EAH3850 X2 dual GPU video card. This is one of the fastest ATI graphics cards you will find. If you only have space for one card and you prefer ATI, the EAH3850 X2 is worth a serious look. After all the testing was done there was no doubt that the Asus EAH3850 X2 is the fastest ATI video card I have tested. It isn't as fast as the top cards from NVIDIA like the 9800 GX2, but it's not as expensive either. The Asus EAH3850 X2 retails for around $350.
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X48 is new, but there are many boards already begging for your dollars. We are taking a look at the most robust of them all, the P5E3 Premium, which includes built-in WiFi, a great board design and fantastic overclocking abilities. It would almost be a perfect board if it weren't for the $375 price tag.
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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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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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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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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Today we are checking out a portable GPS device from Asus called the Asus R300. The R300 packs in all sorts of features like an FM transmitter and an internal GPS antenna. Volume levels for the spoken directions are very good making them easy to hear over road noise and loud kids or music. The built-in FM tuner can also send the directions to your cars speaker systems and allows you to listen to music and hear audio tracks with video over the car stereo system.
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Monday, May 5, 2008
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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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The worst thing about the exclusive V-cool heatsink (really the only bad thing) is that to get enough surface area for the passive cooling to be effective the normally single slot 9600GT becomes a dual slot design. I also found that the back edge of the passive heatsink blocked the retention clip for the six-pin power connector the card requires. I had to lift gently on the fins of the heatsink to get the clearance needed for seating the power plug.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
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Hitting the enthusiast scene decked out from head-to-toe, this motherboard brings next-gen right to your doorstep with the new 790i nForce chipset, 1600MHz front side bus support, Tri SLI compatibility, PCIe 2.0, DDR3-2000 support and an integrated water cooling system. Holy cow! Hold on to your seat as HardwareLogic puts this monster on our test bench and unleashes the full assault of our benchmarking suite.
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Monday, April 28, 2008
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Have a $1,000 budget for a new notebook? Look no further than the ASUS M51S. Touted as a multi-media notebook, it offers a 15.4" screen, 250GB HD and 3GB of RAM. Included also are 4 USB ports, DVI and VGA outputs, full numpad, fingerprint reader, a face-detection logon system and more.
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The AMD 780G chipset is all the rage right now for micro-ATX socket AM2+ motherboards. Today, we take a look at the ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI motherboard. It features DX10 compliant integrated ATI RV610-based graphics, which supports dual VGA outputs including DVI/HDMI interfaces with HDCP. It also incorporates AMD's UVD with hardware acceleration of H.264, VC1 and Mpeg2 used in HD DVD and BluRay disks. Is this board the right choice for your next HTPC or PC?
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When people think of energy efficiency they may have the misconception that it has to equate to a lack of power and excitement. In terms of automobiles, perhaps thinking that all hybrids are like a Prius. But what we have with the P5K PRO is a sporty, high performance model that just happens to have a smart design capable of saving energy.
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Monday, April 21, 2008
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The Eee PC 900 is an exciting little laptop on the surface but, when you break it down to the basics, it isn't all that dissimilar to the original Eee PC... ...if you haven't got an Eee and you're in the market then this is definitely the cream of the crop right now and if you'e looking for a new 'netbook' then we can't recommend the Eee PC 900 enough.
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Friday, April 18, 2008
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You did your research and you've discovered that the 8800GT continues to be one of the best value for money cards when it comes to good mid-range performance. The thing is, you wouldn't mind kicking it up a notch in the memory department if you had the choice. Well, we might have found the card for you here today. ASUS has recently released an 8800GT that is packing 1GB of GDDR3 memory. However, it's not uncommon for a bump in memory to do nothing more than make you feel a bit better about your system. Really, there's only one way to find out if the extra memory does anything for your gaming experience, and that is to run it through a multitude of tests.
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