Tech News
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Auzentech X-Tension DIN review @ Elite Bastards
Published: Thursday, June 28, 2007 | By: DennisCleaver use of words
When we reviewed Auzentech's X-Meridian sound card at the turn of theyear we were, quite simply, mightily impressed. Although there are nowa myriad of boards featuring CMI's 'Oxygen HD' CMI8788 audio processoron the market, none could match the X-Meridian's outstanding audioquality. -
Neoseeker MSI P35 Platinum Review
Published: Thursday, June 28, 2007 | By: DennisOk so here is a fun review of the new P35 board from MSI. Most companies have been moving away from custom board colors and settling on bad ass black. Personally I'd like to see more Sexy Red boards but... what can you do.
In fact, I really like how the cool exhaust air passing though one of our Noctua coolers spills over onto the chipset cooler. Perhaps that'll help get us some sweet overclocks. Hey, wait a second . .
Silly monkeys, how'd they get in here?
No matter. We'll let them play as we look over all of the bundled hardware MSI included with their P35 Platinum motherboard. -
XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra XXX Edition Review @ NVNews.net
Published: Thursday, June 28, 2007 | By: DennisBack in my days of heavy gaming Ultra edition was the only card I even considered buying, and for the most part remains true. As of late the nVidia GTX replaced the Ultra as the launch edition with the Ultra coming out several months later. in a way just to annoy the early adopters which begs the question. Is the Ultra just an overclocked version of the GTX? Or does it demand a second look?
The core speed of the reference GeForce 8800Ultra increased a modest 6% over the GeForce 8800 GTX (612MHz vs.575MHz) while the shader processor increased 11% (1500MHz vs. 1350MHz).A 612MHz core is usually attainable by overclocking a GeForce 8800 GTX,but the 20% increase in the memory frequency (1080MHz vs. 900MHz)ultimately sets the Ultra apart from the GTX. -
Upgrade Alley Budget System Updated
Published: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 | By: DennisThis is Version One of the 'budget reliable' system. This system isdesigned to fit within an extreme budget, but have enough performanceand upgrade life to become the basis of a great upgrade.
Somegreat features of this upgrade include a MSI motherboard with on-boardvideo and an additional empty 16x PCI Express slot. This will allow fora future video upgrade. A single stick of DDR2 will get you by howeveradd a second for dual channel support. For this system we spent themajority of our money on the processor since the motherboard was notdesigned for overclocking.
All this and we still kept the total cost of the system below $500! -
Noctua NC-U6 Chipset Cooler @ Bjorn3D
Published: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 | By: DennisHow true this is, although I'm not sure I'm ready to replace my Northbridge heatsink with an even larger heatpipe radiator.
The overall majority of typical motherboard chipset heatsinks and"fansinks" typically offer only just sufficient cooling, but nofurther. If that wasn't enough many of the lower cost enthusiastmotherboards will often sacrifice silence for a high-speed fan in theprocess. Typically these fans only last one or two years at most beforewearing out and needing to be replaced, as some computer usersunfortunately discovered only after their board had overheated andfailed. -
Single-core Athlons to be phased out
Published: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 | By: DennisAMD has begun to phase out its single-core Athlon processor lineup andwill launch five new 45W Sempron processors in September to cover theentry-level single-core processor market, according to sources atmotherboard makers.
-- snip --
In addition, AMD will launch Spica core CPUs with support for socketAM2+ and HyperTransport 3.0 for its single-core lineup in the firsthalf of 2008, while in the second half, the company will launch 45nmSargas core CPUs supporting socket AM3, added the sources.
AM3 will likely be the DDR3 edition. -
Intel's Mighty Dual Xeon Beast - V8 Platform Preview @ Legit Reviews
Published: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 | By: DennisI really love workstation class machines; they come with some very neat stuff that for the most part is highly specialized and very expensive to buy. Now all we need is some of this hardware over in this neck of the woods.
To fully understand and to witness this type of system we assembled onefrom scratch to see just what it could do. Using the same IntelS5000XVN Workstation Board that Intel showed off at CES and newer IntelXeon X5365 processors along with 4GB of Samsung FB-DIMMs we set off tosee just how fast this system really is against rival processors fromboth AMD and Intel. How do you think this system will do against theAMD QuadFX FX-74 system or the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 system?
can I get a dr00l?
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Corsair Voyager GT 4GB USB Flash Drive Review @ Mikhailtech
Published: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 | By: DennisWe got to see these drives at Computex this year and we must say they are a great enhancement to an already impressive drive. We still have our 512Meg unit and use it every day. So far it still works and all the parts are there too
The drive itself is the sturdiest thingI've ever seen. It's encased in thick rubber with beveled writing. The clearplastic bubble near the hook on the front of the drive protects a blue LED thatflashes whenever there's activity. The rubber casing is thick enough to allowfor maximum shock absorption and heavy weight resistance (yes, I managed tostep on mine already). The bright red colors insure that you won't lose it andgive the Voyager an expedition look. -
First-borns have higher IQ scores
Published: Friday, June 22, 2007 | By: DennisNot sure why I'm posting this but the theories are very interesting and I love this quote.
While others claim the relationship between birth orderand intelligence is false, being biased by family size - historically,couples with lower IQs have tended to have more children than coupleswith higher IQs. -
Albatron GeForce 8600GT-256 PCI Express Videocard Review @ PCSTATS
Published: Monday, June 18, 2007 | By: DennisI think the quote will say it all.
In the 3D tests we see that the Albatron 8600GT-256 performs ratherwell for its GPU class, and that for the most part it can play moderngames at 1024x768 without difficulty. Turning up the resolution orcompletely maxing out the image quality settings is not a great idea.Nvidia's GeForce 8600GT GPU simply doesn't have enough memory bandwidthto handle that kind of load.
