Tech News
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Logitech G19 Keyboard for Gaming Review @ OCC
Published: Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | By: WillYou want the ultimate cool keyboard. Well here it is with a very healthy price tag, as well. Let's take a read and see if the features justify the prietag on this cool toy.
"Obviously the G19 keyboard is very customizable. The keyboard has 12 macro keys, an LCD screen that can be set to display a wealth of information, and a backlight that can display most any color, although some colors display better than others. Additionally, the ability to change between three profiles at the touch of a button is key. If you have several games you switch between, you can make three separate profiles, complete with different backlight colors, to handle all your custom key macros."
I like it all the way till I see the price tag.
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SilverStone Raven RV02 Full-Tower @ Techgage
Published: Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | By: WillNinjalane had the great honor to review the first Raven, and we cannot wait to give everyone the new Raven 2 review. Like all good things though you gotta wait so read this review in the meantime.
"SilverStone's Raven RV01 chassis might not have been the most well-received, but the company has attempted to make up for all the mistakes of the initial chassis with a follow-up, the RV02. Fortunately, the company has done just that, and except from a rather minor issue, and possibly its price, this is almost a perfect chassis."
I know, I know you want the Ninjalane version.
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G.Skill RipJaws DDR3 Kit @ Technic3D
Published: Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | By: WillThe new Socket 1156 is out and it is time to match up some awesome looking RAM with the processor. G Skill has made one very cool looking set of RAM named the Rip Jaws that can perform as well as they look.
"The G.Skill RipJaws 4GB DDR3 1600 CL7 Memory-Kit arrived Technic3D. Technic3D will see as good they are with Overclocking against the CSX Diablo, OCZ and G.Skill Trident Memory Kits on Windows Vista Ultimate 64 Bit and the Foxconn Bloodrage Mainboard. You can see 1.760 MHz (1,65V) with 9-9-9-24 (2T) in the following Review."
The red heatspreader version is just out of this world cool.
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Corsair® launches 950 Watt power supply for gamers and PC enthusiasts
Published: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 | By: WillCorsair® launches 950 Watt power supply for gamers and PC enthusiasts
Corsair TX950W raises the bar for high-quality, affordable power supplies, thanks to massive 78A +12V rail, NVIDIA® SLITM and ATITM CrossfireTM support and 80 PLUS® Bronze certification
FREMONT, Calif., Oct. 6, 2009 - Corsair®, a worldwide leader in high performance memory and computer products, today announced the launch of the Corsair TX950W power supply unit (PSU), the latest addition to the award-winning TX-series of high-quality PSUs.
The TX950W has been designed to meet the demanding requirements of PC enthusiasts, creative professionals and gamers. The TX950W is built using industrial-grade components to ensure clean and stable voltages, and has been qualified to operate at 100% load at an ambient temperature of 50°C for unmatched reliability.
The Corsair TX950W boasts a dedicated +12V rail capable of delivering 78A (936W), which equates to 98.5% of the PSU's total power output. This makes it ideal for extreme, multi-GPU gaming systems using the latest multi-core CPUs, such as Intel® CoreTM i5 and CoreTM i7-series, all of which require high amounts of stable power at 12V.
"Corsair's TX650W, TX750W, and TX850W PSUs have dominated the market by offering superior performance and quality at affordable prices," said Jim Carlton, Vice President of Marketing at Corsair. "The TX950W raises the bar even higher, thanks to 80 PLUS Bronze efficiency, low noise, and output that's capable of reliably powering even the most demanding Dream PCs."
Thanks to the 80 PLUS Bronze certification, which guarantees at least 85% energy efficiency at typical load levels, the TX950W produces minimal waste heat and is extremely quiet. The high-quality 140mm cooling fan remains at its minimum speed until approximately 65% of the PSU's total load. Six 6+2-pin PCI-E cables are provided and the TX950W has been thoroughly tested for compatibility with NVIDIA SLI and ATI Crossfire solutions. The TX950W also boasts extra-long cables to support full-tower chassis.
The Corsair TX950W is available immediately from retailers and e-tailers, and is backed by a five-year warranty and comprehensive customer support via telephone, email, forum and the Tech Support Express helpdesk.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 | By: WillHere is a good way to start off teh week with some PC game reviews.
Risen (PC) Game Review @ Technic3D
"A sweeping story captivates players from the start! An epic story in an authentic world hand-crafted with an eye for detail and populated by "real", plausible characters. A Mysterious Volcanic Island The heavy tremors on the island bode ill for its inhabitants. Ancient temples have risen from the ground recently, bizarre creatures are terrorising the area. Fear and terror is spreading among the population. The End of All Hope? See you in the following Review from Technic3D the better Version from Ghotic 3."
Darkest of Days PC Game Review @ Gamepyre
The premise of the game is solid with time traveling affecting the past and future a solid starting point for a game. Unfortunately, this game falls short of a great game in a number of key points. Invisible walls throughout the game limiting freedom of movement are a serious problem in this game. With games like Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead having much more understandable "walls" this game limits the player to an almost "On the rails" type of game instead of the promise of a free moving game. The graphics while outstanding in a few areas, mostly can be done on a DX9 class card and it shows. PhysX on the other hand delivers a realistic environment with smoke, gunfire and effects that make the game come alive.
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Patch Re-enables PhysX When ATI Card is Present @ NGOHQ
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 | By: WillWell it looks like NVidia came to there senses and wanted to sale lower end video cards to ATI Video Card owners. So everyone can get there PhysX fix, and still run there Radeons.
"As you may or may not know, Windows 7 allows two display drivers to be used at once - like in Windows XP. Therefore, it is possible to use an Nvidia card for PhysX and ATI card for graphics rendering. Sadly, since the release of 186 graphics drivers, Nvidia has decided to block this feature anytime a Non-Nvidia GPU is present in the system. In addition, for some incomprehensible reasons, the latest version of PhysX System Software also prevents PPU cards from working if a Non-Nvidia GPU is present.
As expected, this move by Nvidia generated a lot of criticism from both consumers and even Nvidia's competitors. Luckily, a forum member by the name of GenL has released an experimental beta patch which intercepts disable-PhysX-if-Radeon-is-present-code. So far, according to user comments the patch delivers successful results. At this stage, the patch only works for PhysX GPU rendering and not PPU rendering. However, the developer claims that work is still in progress."Stay tuned for an PhysX Article might be on the way.
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Asus Maximus 3 ROG LGA 1156 Motherboard @ Bjorn3D
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 | By: WillThe Ninjalane color are starting to show up on all of our favorite hardware. That red and black color combo is juat awesome looking. The board I hope is just as awesome to be allowed to have these colors.
Once in a while when the stars align themselves just right and the moon has a blue ring around it a motherboard of epic proportions falls from the sky and graces mankind with the gift of ultimate overclockability and sheer beauty. Every feature works perfectly and the overclocking flows like a mountain stream during spring snow melts. It doesn't happen very often that such a motherboard is gifted to use from the computing gods high on top Mount Geek but when it does it's something you will never forget.
The Asus Maximus 3 Formula ROG (Republic of Gamers) motherboard is without a doubt one of those legendary boards. Gifted with style and grace and pretty enough to soften the heart of the hardest core overclocker the board is a sheer joy to run and overclock. Despite the ability to deliver great performance for the casual end user and self overclock the i7 870 to 3.52GHz with just a mouse click, the Maximus 3 has more than enough features for the enthusiast hard core overclocker. We would warn you though once you've gone Maximus 3 other boards might seem muted by it's beauty and performance.I so want to try one of these out.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Thursday, October 1, 2009 | By: WillHere is a couple PC games to making the PC gamer pretty happy.
Risen (PC) Game Review @ Technic3D
"A sweeping story captivates players from the start! An epic story in an authentic world hand-crafted with an eye for detail and populated by "real", plausible characters. A Mysterious Volcanic Island The heavy tremors on the island bode ill for its inhabitants. Ancient temples have risen from the ground recently, bizarre creatures are terrorising the area. Fear and terror is spreading among the population. The End of All Hope? See you in the following Review from Technic3D the better Version from Ghotic 3."
Batman: Arkham Asylum - PC review, performance and PhysX evaluation @ Elite Bastards
"If the gameplay isn't enough to convince you that this is a worthwhile gaming experience on its own, then mixing it together with the narrative that Arkham Asylum weaves might just change your mind. Put simply, it's sensational... We've often heard talk of "cinematic computing" from the major GPU manufacturers, but this is the first PC title that I would genuinely care to label as "cinematic" in every meaning of the word with regards to its presentation. The story and the way it develops is compelling, polished and professional (while also doing the necessary when it comes to making actual gameplay entertaining), the voice acting is above and beyond your average PC game (we'll discuss that a little more shortly though), and the visuals are stunning throughout. Assuming that you don't loathe Batman with a passion, I can't think of any way I can fault the overall presentation of Arkham Asylum as a body of work at all."
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ATI Radeon HD 5850 CrossFire Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
Published: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | By: WillThe lower priced high end 5850 is coming out and looks to be another power house in a special price range. These GPU beasts are just incredible, but is all this power needed to push the console ported games of today.
"When it comes to the performance of the ATI Radeon HD 5850 we found it to be 15-25% slower than the Radeon HD 5870 in the vast majority of the benchmarks. It was also faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 graphics card, which is currently NVIDIA's flagship single GPU video card! If we had to suggest a screen resolution size to go with the Radeon HD 5850 it would have to be 1680 x 1050 and under if you like to turn all the eye candy on. Sure, the majority of the benchmarks that we ran here today showed the Radeon HD 5850 was able to run above 60FPS at 1920 x 1200 with 8xAA enabled, but we would like to plan for the future. With DirectX 11 game titles coming out soon a Radeon HD 5870 would be the better choice for gamers with monitors greater than 24" and screen resolutions in the 1920 x 1200 and beyond range..."
Then again we might actually get games that are DriectX 11 driven. Don't hold breath for your breath for them.
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Lucid HYDRA 200 Details and Interviews with AMD, Lucid & NVIDIA @ Legit Reviews
Published: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | By: WillLooks to be that the cat is out of the bag and everyone is going to be wanting to try out this new technology. Has the line really started to blur for AMD and NVidia? Let's take a read to see.
"The demo that we were shown behind closed doors was of course an MSI Big Bang motherboard that was running Windows 7 and ATI Radeon HD 4890 and GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards at the same time with both cards being load balanced. Notice that the Lucid HYDRA 200 load balancing solution has no interconnects, bridges, external dongles or adapters that are needed. Both cards were running fine and we were able to change which card had the monitor output on it from the Windows 7 desktop, which was pretty slick. Lucid gave us a chance to try out PC Game titles F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin and Bioshock to see what the future of scalable graphics looks like with the Hydra 200. We must admit that we were fairly impressed with what we saw as the technology appeared to be working without any issues on these two game titles..."
Very interesting indeed!
