Tech News

• NL: Review Block - Sapphire said what?

  Published: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Who knew the HD9000 series would be so popular?

  Video Cards
  - Sapphire 6950 DiRT 3 Edition @ PureOverclock
  - Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 @ Phoronix
  - Sapphire Radeon HD 6750 1GB Video Card Review @ ThinkComputers
  - PowerColor HD 6850 SCS3 1 GB @ techPowerUp
  - Sapphire Radeon HD 6670 Ultimate @ LanOC Reviews
  - ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum review
  - Sapphire Radeon HD6950 Flex 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card reviewed in Metku
  - HIS Radeon 6970 ICEQ Turbo review

  Long live the HD6800 and HD6900! your reinvention is our quest for fast gaming graphics.

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• GIGABYTE X58A-OC (Intel X58 Express) Motherboard Review @ TweakTown

  Published: Monday, June 20, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Ok I normally wouldn't post a review like this but I couldn't resist.

  Below is their quote from the news release

  Back at CES (during the G1-Killer launch) we were shown something pretty special; besides the G1 we mean. While Tim Handley was telling us about the virtues of the G1-Killer line-up, he flashed us a picture of a new board that was still under development. This was an early image of the X58A-OC. The concept was a streamlined product intended just for overclocking and performance.
  
  You still get audio and LAN on the board, but for the most part the extras that are on many boards are gone. Of course, with the items removed other pieces have been dropped in to handle the extra voltage and current load from pushing the CPU and multiple GPUs to extremes. Despite the lack of all of the "extra" features, the price is still $380 from Newegg.com.

  Now we all are aware that the X58OC is a board designed for overclocking and also designed for Multi GPU configurations.  While it is unreasonable for a review site to subject a board to LN2 overclocking for the sake of the review I do find it rather offensive that they use a 980X and don't bother using a "good" cooling method while exploring the overclocking aspects of a motherboard, designed for overclocking.

  

  -- snip --

  In our test setup we ran into a few issues. Our top OC was only 4.375GHz (175x25). This is only a 1.1GHz boost from the stock clock speed. The reason we could not get higher? Our cooling and the RAM we were using. Whenever I tried to push beyond that 175MHz BCLK, the voltage needed was just too much. I could get into Windows, but I would quickly see the temperatures get saturated under any real load. 
  - TweakTown

  Tisk Tisk, I only bring this up since I was able to net a 4.6Ghz OC on the R3E with a custom watercooler.  Would I have used a watercooler in any other instance? no..  But, then again the R3E is an enthusiast level motherboard designed for enthusiast usage.  

  Much like the Gigabyte X58OC.

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• ASUS M5A99X EVO AM3+ @ techPowerUp

  Published: Monday, June 20, 2011 | By: Dennis

  There is going to be a lot of talk about the new AMD 990FX chipset in the next couple months, especially when "Bulldozer" finally goes to market.  Most people claim the 990FX isn't much different from the 890FX, and aside from additional features I'd tend to agree.

  That isn't to say that the mobo makers won't add some special sauce of their own.

  The brand-new ASUS M5A99X EVO, sports AMD's 990X and SB950 chipset. It is one of the first boards to offer full support for NVIDIA SLI and is also optimized for CrossFire configurations with its three PCI-E x16 slots.

  EPU and TPU can both be found on this board along with the new EFI BIOS and everything good that comes from using it.

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• NL: Review Block - Duke Nukem Fever

  Published: Thursday, June 16, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Changing things up a bit and am posting gaming news in a review block.  I'm sure Duke Mania will subside by the end of the week, and until then.  "Hail to the king baby!"

  - Duke Nukem Forever Review @ Techgage
  - Duke Nukem Forever (PC) Review: Fair and Balanced

  More Duke news to come.  (maybe )

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• Duke Nukem Forever Released - Nobody seems to care

  Published: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 | By: Dennis

  ArsTechnica seems to be pulling out the big guns to rip on Duke.  I hate to admit it but I happen to agree with the author.  

  Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

  As for the levels, remember when you could walk around in Duke Nukem 3D, exploring the environments, finding items, and locating the path needed to get ahead? That's over and done with. Duke Nukem Forever is one long corridor. You shoot your way through it, then there's a joke about a penis, then you shoot through another corridor - and then maybe you backtrack! - and then someone says something with curse words in it because that's edgy. With no exploration, no sense of joy at discovering something, there's no real way to forge your own path in the game. It's all point A to point B.”
  - Arstechnca

  I now want to find their review Call of Duty Black Ops, if they are any good it should be a word for word copy. 

  Be sure to check out the article, they drew up an excellent map of a modern FPS.
  
  Another famed editor over at mercurynews.com wrote up an article that started out ripping on Duke but then later changed tone as he starts describing elements of the game.  It’s a good read, but he clearly takes the easy way out.
  
  Review: 'Duke Nukem Forever' not worth wait

  "It's one of the most cliched setups in video games, and one of the ways that "Duke Nukem Forever" shows its age. At a time when narratives are more subtle and nuanced, the development teams trot out a tale that could have been written on the back of a cocktail napkin. It's not terribly complicated, and all it does is fuel the power fantasy that's the life blood of the franchise."
  - Mercurynews.com

  All good stuff, and I'm sure there will be more.

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• A tour of Zotac's Dongguan factory @ TechReport

  Published: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Truth be told once you have seen a SMT factory you have seen them all.  Despite this, I do love factory tours.

  Our tour was cut short before we had a chance to tour the motherboard wing, but at that point we were all high on solder fumes and dripping with sweat thanks to layers of anti-static gear. Besides, the workers had already been kept on shift past their usual lunch break to serve as subjects for the staccato of DSLR snapshots that ensue when you let journalists loose in a factory filled with fancy machinery and half-built PC components. You can find more than 40 shots of the factory in the associated image gallery below.

  Maybe next time we'll be able to see this in person.

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• NL: Review Block - Motherboards and Chassis

  Published: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 | By: Dennis

  In a way cases and mobos are very dependent on each other, and beyond putting the motherboard into the case but rather making sure the case is big enough to support the motherboard you choose.  Back in the early days this didn't matter since all mobos followed a specific pattern.  However, these days you can get extended ATX designs along with several custom sizes depending on what mobo you buy.

  Motherboards
  - GIGABYTE X58A-OC LGA1366 Motherboard Review @ Hardware Canucks
  - ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
  - ASUS Maximus IV Extreme (Intel P67) Motherboard Review
  - ASRock Z68 Extreme4 @ PureOverclock
  
  Cases
  - Thermaltake Level 10 GT Review @ XSReviews
  - In Win Dragon Rider Case Review @ XtremeComputing
  - NZXT H2 Silent Mid-Tower Chassis Review @ Techgage
  - Silverstonetek PS05 System Enclosure reviewed in Metku

  Lets hope our future case reviews start addressing supported mobo designs since that will be a huge selling point for one case over another.

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• THQ Shuts Down Kaos Studios

  Published: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 | By: Dennis

  This is what happens when you make a bad game and spend more money marketing it than actually developing the game.  I had really really high hopes for this game, the single player story line was awesome but totally failed to deliver and was way too short.

  

  The official statement doesn’t outright say it, but one can imagine that this has something to do with Homefront‘s relatively poor reception. The game did manage to sell over one million copies, to be fair, but it ultimately failed to hold the attention of gamers and received lukewarm, at best, reception from critics.

  Thing is businesses do this kind of thing all the time.  However, while the reasons for a sudden change rarely make sense the writing on the wall is clear. 

  "If you spend our money and end up making a steaming pile of crap be prepared to receive not only a pink slip but eradication from the industry."

  Just sayin.

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• LSI 9265 MegaRAID Supplementary Review: The Beauty of CacheCade! @ The SSD Review

  Published: Monday, June 13, 2011 | By: Dennis

  RAID has always been the quickest way to get super performance from any sort of storage subsystem.  Considering how fast SSDs are you have to wonder if RAID really makes a big difference over a single drive.

  Today we are going to take an indepth look at Cache Cade, a new approach to storage systems that allow the perfect fusion of HDD capacity and SSD speed.  W ith many large databases and enterprise users ‘caught in the middle’ with large HDD arrays, yet needing more performance from their existing infrastructure, CacheCade is a great option that allows the best of both worlds.
  
  The concept behind CacheCade is that it will be integrated into several consumer products by several big players in the computing industry, thus becoming very prevalent in the long term storage outlook. Both the enterprise and consumer segments are coming to grips with the changing landscape of storage brought about by the emergence of the SSD as the premium storage option. As always, the enterprise applications are trickling down into the consumer realm, and LSI is right at the forefront of development with this new method of storage enhancement.

  They seem to think so but if I am reading this correctly they are using a cache method to speed up performance much like what Intel is doing with Smart Response or even what hardware RAID controllers have been doing for years.  Either way it should be fast.

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• The Sexiest Booth Babes of E3 2011 @ Legit Reviews

  Published: Monday, June 13, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Several years ago the promoters of E3 had to put a stop to how skimpy the booth babe outfits could be, after that I lost all interest in attending. It is good to see that they still have a good assortment of babes there to help promote stuff.

  Legit Reviews was there and put together this little E3 booth babe gallery for us to enjoy.

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