| |
|
|
 |
|
Sapphire PC-AM2RS790GX Pure 790GX Motherboard
|
 "I must say I am very impressed with this motherboard. It ran very stable at stock speeds and overclocked, even though the overclock was not that high. I like how Sapphire took the time in the designing of the board's features, although there were a couple of design flaws I noticed during the testing. First, the placement of the top two SATA ports and the onboard power and reset buttons are covered when you are using a large video card, such as the GTX 260 used in this review, rendering them useless. Even using right-angle SATA cables, I could not get access to the ports. Secondly, there is a lot of empty real estate on the back panel. It would have been nice to have a couple of extra USB 2.0 ports available and even maybe an eSATA port."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
AMD Dropping R300-R500 Support In Catalyst Driver
|
|
"Beginning next month with the Catalyst 9.4 release, support
for the R300/400/500 generations of graphics processors will be dropped
from AMD's mainline ATI driver. In a move they hope will allow them to
focus their efforts on newer and upcoming graphics processors, the
mainline Catalyst driver on both Linux and Windows will stop supporting
cards older than the Radeon HD 2000 series. Linux customers affected
will be encouraged to use their open-source driver stack (xf86-video-ati
or xf86-video-radeonhd and Mesa) or stay with the Catalyst 9.3 driver."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spire SP332CB Memory Card Reader
|
|
"Memory cards are being widely used nowaday with couple of reason and one of the major contributors is the cheaper manufacturing cost with better stability and maturity of the technology. A card reader is an important device to read the data of these memory cards and let us take a look on Spire SP332CB; an internal 3.5" card reader which can read up to 51 different kinds of memory cards."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X - High-end graphics card performance
|
|
Although we have only spent a very limited amount of time actually playing Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. it looks to be a very exciting game with loads of potential. Furthermore it looks to be a game that is not overlay demanding as evident by the DX9 results with anti-aliasing disabled. That said those planning on playing Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. in DirectX 10 mode will require a little more processing power.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Mid-Tower Case Review
|
|
"I have very little (if anything) bad to say about the Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Mid-Tower Case. This is one very nice case! It has loads of room and is relatively light. It also gives the end user the ability to remove unwanted items, add in needed items, and reconfigure fan locations. As open as the case is it is very quiet, on low you don't even know the system is running. I turned it off once by accident by hitting the power button because I had the LEDs off and I thought the system was off."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hard Drive Click of Death Explanation and Live Demonstration
|
|
Many of us have experienced the dreaded "Click of Death" that immediately tell us that our hard drive is dead or dying. What does the click of death look like? What causes it? Can I fix it by freezing my hard drive or giving it a whack? See a live demonstration of the click of death and hear an explanation for what causes it and some misconceptions for the common fix.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Harbinger - PC Review
|
|
In conclusion, my blunt opinion about Harbinger is that it is a pig with lipstick. It is presented as a futuristic RPG style game set in outer space but offers very few differences from past releases. The idea of a slave ship bent on destroying the universe is a very intriguing and interesting game theme but Harbinger fails to deliver anything truly distinct from past dungeon style RPG games. I liked the fact that there was a lot of artistic detail, especially to the ships settings and I liked the different races (probable because it reflects Starcraft, one of my favorite games.). What I did not like about Harbinger is the fact that it offers very little innovation and improvement in the field of role playing game. The sounds and graphics are repetitive and this takes away from the overall joy of gameplay. Harbinger fails to offer any real differences from past RPG games and I find it very difficult to recommend this game for your use today.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XFX GTX285 Black Edition
|
|
"The XFX GTX285 Black Edition was the fastest single GPU option in all of the tests, minus Fallout 3, and even put up a good fight with the dual-GPU options. The fan on this card was not loud, with an idle speed of 40% and maximum of 56% under load for measured fan speed. The card never ran over 80 Celsius at load, and idled in the high 30s. The heat dump was high; the air was warm but not toasty. Cranking the fan speed up got things loud and air moving good, helping with overclocking stability a bit after the point I had it set for. The temperature drop was good on the load-side with stock thermal paste. The removal of the back plate, combined with the fact that the screws use springs instead of the direct clamping pressure of regular screws, may also contribute to the temperatures, although this card had excellent idle and load temperatures."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vizio VX20L 20-inch Widescreen LCD HDTV Review
|
|
“It seems like all you see today is flat panel monitors and TV's and that's basically true. LCD's take up far less space, they weigh less and most importantly they look MUCH better than their CRT counterparts. Today we will be looking at the VX20L 20-inch Widescreen LCD HDTV from Vizio. The 20-inch size makes it perfect for the dual solution for a TV and computer monitor. Something you would use in a dorm room or even as a spare monitor. This HDTV features a 1366 x 768 (720p) native resolution, built-in HDTV tuner, and HDMI input. Let's take a look..."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 Processor
|
|
"While not as powerful as the newly released item(s), previous generation hardware does have its advantages. As I just mentioned, it is much cheaper than the latest and greatest. Also, since the hardware is at the end of its production cycle, odds are that all of the bugs and kinks have been taken care of in previous revisions. And perhaps most importantly, the hardware has been in the community for a while which means it is well documented on tech sites and forums across the net, so you will have a good idea of what to expect in terms of performance and overclocking before buying."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
|
|
NVIDIA has gone back to its old ways, back in the act of rebranding old cards and passing them off as new ones. The recently announced GeForce GTS 250 is actually a GeForce 9800 GTX+ with a fancy new name. However, NVIDIA has tweaked it a little and we check it out to see if it brings anything new to the mid to high-end segment.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cooler Master Sileo 500 Case
|
|
"Cooler Master offers up an affordable mid-tower with noise reduction panels built-in. How will it stack up among the plethora of so called "silent" PC cases on the market today? Read on for our take."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
EVGA GTS-250 1 GB Superclocked Edition
|
|
To that end we have an EVGA GTS-250 1 GB Superclocked edition to take a look at today. The GTS-250 1 GB edition is a G92 core with a twist, it's a 55nm shrink of the G92 core and has been rechristened the G92b. There are currently two models of the GTS-250 available, the GTS-250 512 MB which is nothing more than a 9800GTX+ rebranded and the GTS-250 1 GB which has a faster memory speed and a total of 1 GB of memory.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Seagate 7200.11 Drive Issues
|
|
“At first, I was told that I would have to attempt the firmware update on my own, and that Seagate would only replace the drive if that failed. After I commented that their website specifically recommends *not* to attempt to update the firmware on your own, as they have a warranty replacement program for just such a situation, I got a much different answer. A quick break on hold, and I was then instructed to simply follow the online instructions for returning a drive.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Coolermaster Silent Pro M600 Power Supply Review
|
|
It's been a little while since we last looked at a Coolermaster unit here at the site, but at long last I'm looking at one today: the Silent Pro M600. This is a modular 600W unit that promises 600 watts of good clean power while not making a lot of noise in the process. Let's see if it can deliver.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thermaltake ElementS (VK6000) Case Review
|
|
ElementS, also known as VK6000, is a high-quality steel mid-tower case from Thermaltake, bringing interesting features such as two 2.5" hard disk drive bays. Let's take a look on this new case."
|
|
|
|
|
| |
