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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Friday, June 1, 2007
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The first chipset to come out under the AMD brand is the 690G series which we first looked at though ECS. This chipset is designed to be a value product for AMD and its Athlon processors. Today we have a new motherboard from MSI based on the new AMD 690G chipset series with support for HDMI which makes it perfect for the Home Theatre PC users out there. Let us today have a look at the MSI K9AGM2 and see exactly what it has to offer.
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GeForce 8600 GTS is the fastest mid-range video card from the new GeForce 8 family from nVidia, targeted for users that want a performance higher than GeForce 8600 GT and are willing to pay more for this performance gain. This model from MSI, NX8600GTS-T2D256E OC, comes factory-overclocked, meaning that it will achieve a performance higher than the standard GeForce 8600 GTS, and also supports HDMI. Check it out.
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Wednesday, May 30, 2007
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GeForce 8600 GT is a mid-range video card in the new GeForce 8 family from nVidia. Usually this kind of model is the one that provides the best cost/benefit ratio for the average user. Is this true for this new release? This is something we will check in our review. Also this model from MSI, NX8600GT-T2D256E OC, comes factory-overclocked, meaning that it will achieve a performance higher than the standard GeForce 8600 GT. Check it out.
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Friday, May 25, 2007
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The Intel P35 has seen a pretty quiet launch with retail boards already in store shelves. The MSI P35 Platinum is one of the few early products to hit the market that will still be based on DDR2 memory, but MSI does manage to implement some interesting ideas and bag themselves a winner.
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
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We have not seen MSI venture to water cooled cards before and the 8800 GTX is still of a bit of an untapped market for this. Asus has an Aqua model which uses the aging Tide Water system from Thermaltake. This particular system is not too quiet, takes up a load of room, and is generally pretty inefficient. The only other company to have a water cooled card is BFG Tech but its version is a bit more hardcore, it is only for people who already have a water cooled system in their case. MSI on the other hand seems to use its own design which unlike the Tide Water looks to cool everything from the GPU to the memory and unlike the BFG Tech is an all in one system making it a good option for people who do not really know what they are doing.
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Friday, May 11, 2007
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The MSI K9AGM2-FIH motherboard is a good simple mainstream platform for building an AMD Socket AM2 motherboard. For 2D tasks, like regular office work, surfing the web and the like, this motherboard is a perfectly suitable and quite inexpensive. The onboard Radeon Xpress 1250 videocard handles 2D applications just fine, and is Windows Vista Aeroglass compliant. Better still, the onboard HDMI connector allows the MSI K9AGM2-FIH to output video at 1920x1080 (1080p), HDCP content included.)
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Thursday, May 10, 2007
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Now motherboards based on Intel's P35 chipset are hitting shop shelves in Taiwan and other places around the world, we are able to start testing and providing reviews. Today we have been given the first of what we hope to be many retail boards based on the Bearlake P35 chipset. It is set to replace the Intel P965 chip as the mid-range monster with some updated features and specs such as support for upcoming 45nm Wolfdale and Yorkfield processors, PCI Express 2.0, updated ICH9 Southbridge as well as support for DDR-3 memory.
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Monday, May 7, 2007
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Nvidia has listened, traditionally there are only one or two chipsets for each platform from Nvidia, but currently the company has four for the Core 2 platform, five if you want to count the old 590 Intel Edition. Within the 600-series there are now a total of four options; 680i SLI for the enthusiast, 680i LT for the high-end, 650i SLI for the mid-range and the 650i ultra for the vale end of the market. We have tested a motherboard from ECS, our first 650i SLI chipset, which we found to be a very good contender. Its performance was on the money, in fact it was not that far behind the 680i-series, only the SLI implementation and a few additional features are where the chipset really differs. 650i falls back on the old twin PCI Express x8 slots for its SLI setup. If you want to use SLI, your graphics cards only run at x8 speeds, this eliminates the ability to run quad-SLI.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2007
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We look at the first motherboard to hit our labs with a built-in HDMI interface that sounds perfect for an HTPC setup. Based on the 690G chipset, this motherboard is capable of more.
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Its main problem (and that goes for all 8600 GT and GTS cards) is the X1950 Pro, which offers a very similar package bar DX10 support. These cards certainly are not in a dominant position right now, they are merely "competitive". As it stands, I still feel MSI's card is a good buy, but the entire 8600 series would look a whole lot better at a lower price point, but that's for NVIDIA to worry about, not the AIB partners...
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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Nvidia's 8800GTX has been dominating the high end GPU market for around 6 months now and there has been little variation in this department. However, MSI have now released an overclocked GTX with its own water cooling setup. This is the MSI OC Liquid, let's see if it can give us some nice numbers.
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Monday, April 23, 2007
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MSI has taken what nVIDIA has done with the GeForce 8600GTS and tweaked it so it's even better. The MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC comes factory overclocked and equipped with a swanky low noise heatsink. The MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC retails for an aggressive $224 CDN ($199 USD, 99 GBP)! Faster than the previous generation, quieter, and less expensive. Talk about the best of both worlds!
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
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Nvidia's latest G84 and G86 cards are doing the rounds on review sites at the moment, and because of this they are rather hard to come by. Fortunately, we have managed to get hold of a second 8600GT. Let's see what these bad boys can do in SLI.
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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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Nvidia has dominated the high end of the GPU market for the last 5 months with their 8800GTX and GTS offerings. However up to now ATI/AMD has managed to hold their own in the mid range market with their X1950 series, specifically the great "bang for buck" x1950 Pro. Now though, Nvidia are bringing in their mid-range muscle; it's time for the 8600GT.
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Today the GeForce 8600GT and 8600GTS arrive and bring with them DirectX 10 support for people on a relative budget. But how much of that G80 magic remains, and what other changes has NVIDIA made to ensure it succeeds in this most crucial of market segments - the sub-£150 sector?
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