Tech News
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Modder overclocks Motorola Xoom to 1.5GHz
Published: Monday, February 28, 2011 | By: DennisOne of the hot new tablets of CES was the Motorola Xoom, not because of its fancy name but rather the fact it is running the nVidia Tegra 2 chip. The GPU and processor combo promises to deliver excellent performance but appears to only be clocked in at 1Ghz.
At least from the factory
Motorola's Xoom tablet is equipped with Nvidia's Tegra 2 dual core chip that plods along at 1GHz. It's not that the chip is particularly slow but a chap at Xda Developers Forum managed to bump up the clock speed by 50 per cent and keep it stable enough to run a suite of benchmarks.
The procedure to overclock a Xoom isn't quite as easy as jumping into the BIOS and fiddling with a couple of settings, however it's far from rocket science. After unlocking the Xoom's bootloader and rooting the device, it's a matter of loading a new boot image with a kernel that supports the higher chip frequencies.That is a good gain considering the mobile nature of the Xoom and Tegra 2.
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Intel Thunderbolt in the new Apple Macbook
Published: Thursday, February 24, 2011 | By: DennisEver wonder why Intel held back on USB 3 support in their south bridge chips? It would seem they were holding out for the next big thing (sound familiar?)
Thunderbolt is a unified connection technology (like USB and Firewire) that has transfer speeds up to 10GB bps which is is pretty damn fast.Thunderbolt could compete with connector technologies such as USB, Firewire and HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface), which link PCs to external storage, audio devices and displays. Laptops and devices with USB 3.0 ports started reaching store shelves last year and offer data transfer speeds up to 5GB bps. Intel has held off support for USB 3.0 on its PC chipsets, which has been a topic of concern for PC makers, which have had to implement third-party controllers to add USB 3.0 ports to laptops.
It would also appear that Thunderbolt will not be based on fiber optics due to cost and thus will remain on copper until costs can come down or the next best thing comes along.
The big news here is the rumor that Thunderbolt technology will be included with the new Macbook Pro. Of course there is no indication that it will make the Macbook any better/faster but will ensure that Apple is in the news for the rest of the week and give Apple zealots a chance to gloat about having new Intel technology.
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iXBT Labs Review: Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB Phantom Graphics Card
Published: Thursday, February 24, 2011 | By: DennisKeep in mind this is a GTX 570 video card and from a company that doesn't typically sell their wares in the US. If you can get past that then you'll find a great custom video card from Gainward designed as an overclockers solution.
After a recent a review of Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB "Golden Sample" Goes Like Hell we again return to the same brand and even the same GPU. It's just that we've got another interesting product from the company: Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB "Phantom" with a custom cooler. Let's see how it performs.
Rarely will you find an overclockers video card that actually allows you to overclock in the same way we tweak and tune motherboards. While the included software can help you do this you're still limited by the hardware and how it was designed. This is where a custom PCB video card comes into play, of course the assumption it was designed to help you push the limits and not be just another reference card.
This review is two pages in length and rather lack luster in the details. But there are a bunch of graphs you can click on to push up their pageview count. Sadly the one thing missing from this review is the actual overclocking process. For instance does it allow voltage adjustments? can you adjust memory timings (not likely)? and is there a Mhz limit on their sliders?
We may never know.
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OC3D: XSPC Rasa 750 RS360 WaterCooling Kit Review
Published: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 | By: DennisWe haven't seen a watercooling kit review in awhile and this one actually looks pretty good.
Water cooling kits.... they were once a much avoided option by most in the favour of a custom loop. Times and technologies have moved on and the XSPC kit on test today is worlds away from what was once the easily available "Big Water" tacky kits that flooded eBay just a few years ago. The thing is, technology had moved on everywhere, now we have air cooling heat sinks that easily out-perform water cooling kits from a few years back.
Personally I prefer to build my watercooling kits from scratch but that can get rather expensive and for the novice just starting out can be very confusing. Luckily I'm a professional
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Sapphire HD5670 Flex Edition Review – low cost multiscreen productivity @ KitGuru
Published: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 | By: DennisGetting the most from your hardware is the enthusiast way, while some prefer to overclock their systems for better performance others just want to see or do more with what they are given. Sapphire follows the same philosophy when it comes to their custom products like the ones in the FleX line.
KitGuru has been following Sapphire’s excellent Flex series since it was introduced last year with their customised HD5770 FleX Edition. This card proved a good seller for Sapphire and they decided to expand their range with two new additions – the HD6870 Flex Edition which we reviewed earlier this month and the lower end HD5670 Flex Edition which we are looking at today.
We have reviewed 2 of these FleX cards and found them to be quite good both from an overclocking standpoint and by providing more display options on already inexpensive hardware.
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Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1000 Watt Modular Power Supply Review
Published: Monday, February 21, 2011 | By: DennisIt would seem that everyone is making power supplies and given the increased demand for clean power it is important you pick the right one. We have reviewed the Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W edition and found it to be extremely good though have found the plugs to be a little annoying.
Cooler Master already showed in our previous reviews, that they manufacture excellent power supply units and their Silent Pro Gold 1000W power supply underlines this impressively.
The results are so impressive, that the Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1000W received the ocinside.de OverClocking Dream 02/2011 award.
In the review we will examine, among other things, how high the current consumption is with this enormously high power of 1KW and if it is worth to buy such a PSU.Don't overlook the Silent Gold Series, unless you have something against "yellow"
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Crucial Ballistix Active Cooling Fan Review at Overclockers Online
Published: Monday, February 21, 2011 | By: DennisCooling is extremely important with any high end computer system. Normally we associate this with CPU or Video card cooling but there are other things that require attention as well. Chipsets, Voltage Regulators, and Memory to name a few.
Some memory kits come with fan attachments and it would seem that Crucial has finally decided to offer one as well.
Crucial’s Ballistix Active Cooling Fan aims to cool down your memory by eliminating often ignored dead spots around your system memory. Easily installed and compatible all across memory makers the Ballistix Active Cooling Fan makes a great addition to any system even if low noise is important to you.
The cooler looks really good though follows the bent sheet metal method so the edges are exposed. This reminds me I'll have to stop by the Crucial offices here soon and see what they are up to.
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NL: Review Block - Video Card Express
Published: Monday, February 21, 2011 | By: DennisJust a few of the video card reviews that landed in the news inbox.
Video Cards
- Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic review @ Guru3D
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 Vapor-X @ Techgage
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 1GB Video Card Review @ TweakTown
- Sapphire Radeon 6870 FleX Edition @ PureOverclock
- HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo 1 GB @ techPowerUp
- MSI GeForce GTX 460 1GB Hawk Review @ Hardware CanucksWe should have a Flex card coming later this week so stay tuned
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Lian Li PC-V354 Review @ ocaholic
Published: Monday, February 21, 2011 | By: Dennis"Good" MicroATX cases are difficult to find but they are out there, and when you you do find one you almost don't want to let it go.
With the PC-V354 Lian Li has a m-ATX case in it's portfolio which should offer a lot of space for hardware for such a compact enclosure. Especially regarding the hard drives Lian Li seems to have made its homework. Of course, like with all Lian Li cases the timeless design alone would be reason enough to write an entire review.
The drives in this case appear to be stacker style and take up the entire height with only a single external 5.25" available.
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Intel LGA2011 Details Surface Along with Launch Window
Published: Thursday, February 17, 2011 | By: DennisThis news posting is rather short but brings to light some of the details surrounding the new LGA2011 platform designed to replace the LGA1366, the most important part is the timeframe, they are saying by the end of the year!!
One of the bigger reasons Intel's enthusiast platform requires 2011 pins in the socket is that Sandy Bridge E comes with a quad-channel DDR3 memory controller, which should result in up to twice as high memory bandwidth as Sandy Bridge and its dual-channel memory controller.
Other differences include more cache, 4 to 8 CPU cores, HyperThreading, 40 PCIe channels (20 in Sandy Bridge) and perhaps the most important of all, individual bus frequencies for SATA and USB interfaces, which means bus overclocking will be back with LGA2011. This is of course very positive for overclockers.A few things to notice here.
- The name - Sandy Bridge E ??
- Quad Channel DDR3!
- 40 PCIe Lanes
- 4 and 8 core CPUs
is it just me or does this sound like they are taking 2 current Sandy Bridge CPUs and mashing them together on the same die. So instead of adding more cores to a CPU we're adding more cpus which basically creates a dual Quad Core processor.
