Tech News
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NL: Review Block - Gaming Gear Edition - 3/14/2012
Published: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 | By: DennisGaming gear edition, The real question is, does it play Battlefield 3?
Gaming Video Cards
- ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II review
- HIS Radeon 7770 GHz Edition @ PureOverclock
- Sapphire HD 7750 Ultimate @ LanOC Reviews
- Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770 OC Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
- AMD Radeon HD 7950 On Linux: Southern Islands Isn't Yet A Penguin Holiday @ Phoronix
Motherboards
- Gigabyte X79-UD3 Intel X79 Motherboard Review @ ThinkComputers
- ASUS Rampage IV Extreme @ PureOverclock
- ASUS Rampage IV Gene @ Bjorn3D
- ASUS Sabertooth Z77 preview -
Patriot Viper Extreme PC3-16000 CL9 1.65 V DDR3 @ techPowerUp
Published: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 | By: DennisThis is an interesting look at how older memory kits work in newer systems. As you may know with each processor release memory companies release new products that better match the performance of the system they are designed for.
So what happens when you take an older kit and try it with a newer processor?? Well during the Sandy Bridge launch I used Corsair Dominator GT modules rated at CL7 with the 2600K and found that they ran quite good, in some cases better than the RipjawsX.
Today we take a trip back through time, and visit an older product, that just might have more relevance in today's market than first meets the eye. The Patriot Viper Xtreme PX523G2000ELK kit may appear familiar and for good reason, as they were launched nearly 18 months ago, back on October 19th, 2010. Does this Viper from Patriot still have some bite on the modern X79 platform?
The real question would be around overclocking and if there was a benefit to using older modules to enhance your OC ceiling.
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A Look at ASUS Z77 Motherboard Features @ Techgage
Published: Monday, March 12, 2012 | By: DennisThis last week (as of this news post) a few site editors close with Asus were invited to the US campus to get a firsthand look at the new Z77 line of motherboards.
If you know anything about Asus motherboards you'll likely have a pretty good idea as to what everyone got to see. Or do you?
During a meeting with ASUS last week, we were given the run-down of what we can expect to see from the company's upcoming Z77-based motherboards - and wow, is there a lot to cover. We're taking a look at features for three particular models here, including the RoG Maximus V GENE, Sabertooth Z77 and P8Z77-V.
I see that the Sabertooth still has its thermal armor. There is a P67 edition of that motherboard in the Ninjalane Lab so stay tuned for the full review. (yes I know P67?)
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NL: Review Block: Motherboard Round-Up Z77 and X79
Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012 | By: DennisQuick little motherboard review round-up. We got some Z77 boards in there with the illegal "ivy bridge" monger in the title (as of this news post "ivy bridge" hasn't been released). We also got some fancy X79 boards in there including the MSI X Super Big Boom Bang BIffity-Bish Bash board.
Motherboards
- MSI Z77A GD65 motherboard preview
- MSI Z77A-GD55 Motherboard Review @ HardwareHeaven
- MSI Z77A-GD65 'Ivy Bridge' Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
- Sapphire Pure Black X79N @ Hardwareoverclock
- Gigabyte G1.Assassin 2 @ ocaholic
- ASRock X79 Extreme9 Motherboard Review @ Hardware Canucks
- ASUS X79 Sabretooth Motherboard Review @ Madshrimps
- MSI Big Bang Xpower II X79 @ ocaholicMore board reviews to come.
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X79 Motherboard Roundup: ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte
Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012 | By: DennisI've always wanted to do a "round-up" style review but I never get enough of the same product in, at the same time to make it worthwhile.
Intel’s X58 chipset made for great platform performance, and even though the chip maker has unleashed many more chipsets since the X58 came out, there hasn’t been a true successor in the high-end of their product line-up (not even the Z68 chipset) until now.
The X79 chipset looks to pick up the X58’s poll position, so we decided to bench test a few motherboards from ASRock, ASUS, and Gigabyte to see how Intel's new flagship performs.Given that the performance of these boards will be almost identical doing side by side comparisons does make sense. I wonder which one came out on top?
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NL: Review Block: Cases and Cards Edition - (video, no mercy)
Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012 | By: DennisSome case and video card reviews from the Ninjalane inbox, enjoy
Cases
- CM Storm Trooper Tower @ Hardwareoverclock
- Corsair Carbide Series 500R Mid Tower Case @ Pro-Clockers
- Antec One Case Review @ HardwareHeaven
- Cougar Evolution Enthusiast Mid Tower@ Pro-Clockers
- InWin Buc 101 Mid Tower Computer Chassis @ TechwareLabs
- Cougar Evolution Mid Case Review @ XtremeComputing
- Cooler Master Storm Trooper Computer Case Review @ Bigbruin
Video
- VTX3D Radeon HD7970 X Edition Review
- Funky Kit Review: Gigabyte HD 7770 OC GPU (1GB GDDR5)
- OC3D: Gigabyte HD7970 OC Review
- Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB OC Edition Video Card Review @ Legit ReviewsI'm not so sure about the Cougar cases, they just seem werid and that they have been done before.
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Have online comment sections become "a joke"?
Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012 | By: DennisI think the answer here is, yes.
It was only a matter of time before people realized that while the Internet was created by intellectuals and scholars looking to share their collective knowealge when it was opened up to the rest of the world the uneducated masses would go and f*ck it all up.
"The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership -- that's a joke."
Denton was speaking at South by Southwest Interactive, the annual festival here devoted to Web and digital culture.
He said commenting on his own sites (which he said he's seen make reporters cry) has gotten so bad that he doesn't engage.
"I don't like going into the comments ... for every two comments that are interesting -- even if they're critical you want to engage with them -- there will be eight that are off topic or just toxic," he said.Some have asked me why I don't enable comments within the news section and don't allow open comments within the reviews? Well the reason is there are some idiots out there looking to get their name on something or just want to let their anonymous voice flow. Personally I would rather people be held accountable for their actions, its how I was raised and how the world should be.
Tis a good read, be sure to check it out. Oh and check out the gems in the comments section. *roll*
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 680: Kepler arriving this month
Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012 | By: DennisIf the rumors are true we should see the next generation of nVidia GPUs coming out later this month. The initial rumors were for a April/May release (which might still be the case) though reports out of CeBit has pushed this timeline up quite a few weeks.
And now the most important bit: Specs. The GK104/GTX 680 will have 1536 CUDA cores and a 256-bit memory controller connected to 2GB of GDDR5 memory (4GB will be an option). The core will sit at 705MHz, while the shaders will be clocked at 1.4GHz. The memory will be clocked at 2GHz QDR (6GHz effective) and should be capable of 192GB/s. There’s no information on the GK107, but the GK110 is expected to have 2304 shader cores. It is rumored that the GTX 680 will be slightly faster than the HD 7970 in some tests, and slightly slower in others.
Given the name the GK indicates an entirely new core though will likely follow some of the same architecture patterns found in Fermi. A new feature will be "turbo boost" which will help even out framerates and lower overall GPU temps. From a spec standpoint the GK104 might just be the best gaming card ever.
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NVIDIA Tesla GPUs Accelerate Science on HP ProLiant Generation 8 Servers
Published: Thursday, March 8, 2012 | By: DennisI don't normally post press releases in the news but this story seemed fitting considering my recent encounter with an HP Proliant DL360 G5.
HP ProLiant SL250 Gen8 CPU-GPU hybrid servers combine the world's most powerful parallel processors, NVIDIA Tesla M2090 GPUs, with new Intel Xeon E5-2600 series CPUs based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture.
With an average of 12 percent higher performance for scalar processing, the new Intel E5-2600 CPUs relieve sequential bottlenecks for GPUs to tackle and complete parallel tasks significantly faster. This results in dramatically higher GPU utilization and overall increased application performance.If you think about it this is a natural progression for server systems when they need more power. We have been doing the very same thing for years in our desktop PCs but we don't use them for science experiments but for games and we call the technology SLI and Crossfire.
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Walton Chaintech returns to motherboard and graphics card markets
Published: Thursday, March 8, 2012 | By: DennisThis is an interesting read, I wonder how serious they are at getting back into the market.
Taiwan-based Walton Chaintech has announced it will form an alliance with China-based leading graphics card vendor Colorful and return to graphics card and motherboard industries. The company quit the motherboard and graphics card markets in 2006.
Walton Chaintech chairman Lu Li-Cheng (transliterated from Chinese), pointed out that the company has many years of experience in motherboard and graphics card production, R&D and marketing and as the company received OEM orders from Colorful, the company expects to gradually return back to branding business in 2013 and is targeting to breakeven in 2012.Lets hope when they do get production rolling their motherboard offerings are better than they used to be. Then again one of the last great AMD 754 based motherboards we used was a Chaintech design, and a motherboard I still have in my collection.
