Tech News
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Custom NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670/680 Round Up: EVGA, ZOTAC, MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS
Published: Thursday, July 12, 2012 | By: DennisI do like me a custom PCB and Hot Hardware has a grip of them on display.
Now that Kepler has had a few months to marinate, NVIDIA’s board partners are ready with newer, custom GeForce GTX 680 and GTX 670 cards that push things a bit further than the initial batch of products based on NVIDIA’s reference designs. As such, we thought it would be a great time to round-up some of the hottest offerings to see how they compare to each other and to AMD’s latest, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, which hit the scene recently.
We’ve got six cards on tap for you today, four GeForce GTX 680 and two GeForce GTX 670 cards, from companies like MSI, Asus, EVGA, ZOTAC, and Gigabyte...There is a review of the Gigabyte GTX 670 on Ninjalane already and is almost identical to the Gigabyte card featured in this article. I'm not a fan of their overclocking results but I am impressed to see that all of the cards were within a few frames of each other and of course the card that clocked the highest also netted the best score.
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Mozilla Likely to Stop Development on Thunderbird
Published: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 | By: DennisThis seems sudden but based on a leaked email from the top brass at Mozilla it would appear that internal development of the popular email client, Thunderbird will stop. Of course this saddens me because I am a loyal Thunderbird user but, I can understand the reasons behind the decision.
Just a month after the release of the latest version 13 of Thunderbird, however, a leaked email on Friday apparently forced Mozilla to admit that it's putting the brakes on internal Thunderbird development.
"Once again we've been asking the question: is Thunderbird a likely source of innovation and of leadership in today's Internet life? Or is Thunderbird already pretty much what its users want and mostly needs some on-going maintenance?" wrote Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, in a blog post on Friday.Thing is I've been running an older version of Thunderbird for years and thus far have been turned off of the newer editions due to the lackluster UI changes. The fact of the matter is, I like my email a certain way and when they change things I get all Hulk up in here and ragequit an email to Mozilla and complain.
Of course my actions do nothing but fuels the fires and reinforce the reasons behind the stop in development. It makes me feel better at least
With any luck Thunderbird will continue to run on future versions of Windows or maybe another group will pick up the project. Only the Mayans know the truth.
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Four ways the Internet could go down - Lets Speculate
Published: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 | By: DennisIn the uncertain world we live in we often wonder what would happen if "X" was removed from the equation. For instance what would you do if you didn't have a cell phone? I know what I would do, heck there was a good portion of my life lived during those times and it wasn't all that bad. Of course there was a think called a "Pay Phone" which has since been removed from street corners and bowling alleys across the country.
Another technology that we have taken for granted is the Internet, it brings endless hours of entertainment to us and is the lifeblood of companies and small nations across the globe. The Internet is designed to be robust and redundant with very little chance of going down, short of some major event such as the ones in this article.
The fact that the Web has not stopped functioning in its initial decades sometimes encourages us to assume that it never will. But like any system, biological or man-made, the Internet has the potential to fail.
The third scenario discussed is most likely what will cause worldwide failures and in the event of world war it will be one of the first things to go in an attempt to protect domestic communications and prevent other countries from using it against us.
I do like the last comment in this article, it sounds so "high school" - Read on
I propose that we need to have a similar backup security plan for the human knowledge that underlies the Internet.
I'm not suggesting something like the Way Back Machine, which takes snapshots of websites through time. I'm instead talking about simple instructions, burned onto physical media, for how to generate electricity, how to build a computer, how to build a router and how to reconstitute the Internet from basic principles.I could be wrong but I think he is talking about something we call a Book
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OCZ RevoDrive X2 SSD Review @ HardwareLOOK
Published: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 | By: Dennis240GB SSD!! What have you done with my Flash memory and where do I go to complain! SSDs are supposed to be small and expensive not Fast, Cheap(ish) and Large.
The OCZ RevoDrive X2 is one of the fasted SSD's on the market, and you can see why in its vastly dominating performance results, even against some of the newest SSD's from the top brands hosting the new SSD controllers and firmware. let's take a look at these gob smacking super fast results...
For those who don't know the RevoDrive is a PCI Express hard card that usually consists of two or more SSD drives in RAID to both increase speed and capacity.
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Windows 8 Upgrade Deals May Not Work Out Well for Microsoft
Published: Monday, July 9, 2012 | By: DennisEarly this month Microsoft announced that you could buy an upgrade to Windows 8 for $40US making it one of the cheapest OS's you can buy from Microsoft. But will this come back and byte Microsoft?? Will this be enough to offset the "phj34r of change" associated with Metro and the lack of a traditional desktop??
As a hardware enthusiast I don't think it will be enough. Sadly when it comes to software sales the majority speaks and the Majority in this case are *NOT* hardware enthusiasts.
"Being forced by their employers to work on Windows XP has been driving people toward Macs and tablets," Johnson said. "Microsoft's future viability depends on how fast it can get new value in the hands of users. A high cost of upgrading has been slowing them down."
However, the upgrade incentives can be a double-edged sword, because touchscreens, touchpads and mice that support gestures are important to providing a good experience with Windows 8, according to Michael Silver, a Gartner analyst.
"Most PCs that will really make Windows 8 work well won't ship until the OS does. People upgrading older PCs is actually a risk for Microsoft because they may not be as happy as users that have new PCs tuned for Windows 8," Silver said. "Users that upgrade should ensure they have either a touchscreen or a touchpad or touch mouse that supports gestures in Windows 8."I still don't see how the Metro interface will work in business, for the home user its golden but in the office environment workstations are dominated by keyboards I just don't see people flicking a screen and then moving back to the keyboard to finish their document. On the same token I don't see artists using a touch screen to photos or do anything to create images, you need a little more control than that and fat human fingers are not going to cut it.
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SSDs may replace HDDs to become mainstream storage
Published: Monday, July 9, 2012 | By: DennisSomewhat of an old story but I can see this happening in the near future. (or next 3-5 years according to Digitimes)
The large earthquake in northeastern Japan in March 2011 and flooding in Thailand in October 2011 resulted in short supply of hard disk drives (HDDs) and therefore pushed up prices for a while, according to Digitimes Research. In contrast, the average price of solid-state drives slipped 50% in the first half of 2012, making SSDs more competitive in price against HDDs. While average storage costs for HDDs stayed at US$0.09/GB, SSDs dropped to US$0.80/GB.
As they indicated the switch will depend largely on price and assuming we have more natural disasters that cause delays in manufacturing the offset in price may sway in favor of flash media over the traditional platter styles.
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Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Mainboard Review on Technic3D
Published: Sunday, July 8, 2012 | By: DennisGone are the days of a single motherboard design as diversity has become key to survival. This becomes clear if you look over the latest Gigabyte Z77 motherboard lineup. There you will find a dozen or so styles that vary from MicroATX up to high-end gaming rigs designed for large graphics arrays.
The Z77X-D3H featured in this review sits somewhere in the middle and arguably positioned below the GA-Z77X-UD3H that we reviewed on launch day. I revisited the same motherboard after the Ivy Bridge drop to both explore how well it could overclock and see if Ivy Bridge was all the chip people claimed to be.The Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Mainboard arrived Technic3D. We check the Mainboard with Intel Z77chipset functions and Performance in the following Review with a Intel i7-3770k CPU on Windows 7 64 Bit and Linux.
I can easily say that Windows 7 x64 runs great on the Z77 and would expect nothing less from any flavor of Linux you happen to fancy, assuming you can get the drivers.
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Facebook Hardware Giveaway July 9th - 31st 2012
Published: Monday, July 9, 2012 | By: DennisIt's giveaway time again and I would like to give a big shout out to Gigabyte and Thermaltake for helping me out with the prizes!!. The contest format is a little different this time around, there are three prizes offered and three people will be able to win.
In addition to the 3 prizes if the Ninjalane Fan page reaches 4000 likes then I will offer up a prize from the hardware closet, a EVGA Z68 FTW Overclocking Motherboard. If that wasn't enough a secondary prize will be offered at the 6000 like mark, the famed Level 10 GT. (GT edition *not* the BMW Level 10)
There is 4 things you have to do to win.
1) Fill out the contest entry form
2) Like the Ninjalane Fan page
3) Like the Gigabyte US Fan page
4) Share the contest page with your friendsIf you do all of those things you will be entered to win and be part of the random drawing on July 31st.
Questions and comments can be posted in the Ninjalane Message Forum or posted on the Ninjalane Fan page. Good Luck!
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NL: Review Block - After 4th Edition - Cases Coolers and Gaming Gear
Published: Thursday, July 5, 2012 | By: DennisI hope that everyone had a great 4th of July mid-week holdiay. Twill be awhile until the next one so check out some of this gear you can use to get the most from your system.
Also be sure to check out my review of the Cooler Master Storm Sonuz Gaming Headset. Its a stereo pair with removable microphone and cloth wrapping all around.
Coolers (Used to keep your junk at the right temp)
- Phanteks PH-TC14CS C-Type CPU Cooler Review @ Legit Reviews
- Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced CPU Cooler @ Planet Overclock
- Funky Kit Review: Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler
- Noctua NH-U9B SE2 CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme Liquid CPU Cooler Review @ NikKTech
- Noctua NH-L12 L-Type Low-Profile Cooler Review @ OCIA
- Cooler Master Storm Sentinel Advance II @ LanOC Reviews
Gaming Gear (Stuff for Battlefield 3)
- CM Storm Sentinel Advance II Gaming Mouse Review @ Techgage
- Cooler Master Storm Sonuz Gaming Headset @ Pro-Clockers
- CM Storm Sonuz Gaming Headset Review @ ThinkComputers
- Razer Taipan Ambidextrous Gaming Mouse @ Pro-Clockers
- SteelSeries 7H Fnatic Edition Gaming Headset Review @ Madshrimps
- CM Storm Speed-RX Mouse Mats @ techPowerUp
Cases (also known as chassis)
- Cooler Master HAF XM Mid-Tower Case Review @ HardwareHeaven
- BitFenix Shinobi XL Window Full-Tower Case
- Thermaltake Armor Revo - Snow Edition @ Techreaction
- Rosewill THOR V2-W Full Tower Computer Case @ Modders-IncMore in the hopper so kick back and enjoy the show.
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ASUS Maximus V Extreme @ ocaholic
Published: Thursday, July 5, 2012 | By: DennisOne of the most sought after motherboards in the past two months, the ASUS ROG Maximus V Extreme. This is a Z77 enabled gaming motherboard that moonlights as an extreme overclocker.
The Maximus V Extreme, is ASUS' new flagship model regarding Intels latest Z77 chipset. The guys over there at ASUS ROG put a lot of new features on the board. On the paper it looks like they've moved their flagship ROG board to another level (yet again?). So it's quite understandable that we can't wait to have a close look at this product.
There comes a time when you simply cannot pack any more features on a motherboard but it would seem that ASUS didn't get the memo. Instead they ignore the painful cries and keep shoving more on there. Looking at the specs the motherboard can support 4-way SLI and Crossfire with the help of an onboard PLX chip. Officially making it the second Z77 motherboard I have seen to enable that option.
