Tech News
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The Video Card Special Report
Published: Wednesday, December 1, 2010 | By: DennisThis just in. Hot video cards crash land in a local computer shop near you. Their suggested presence has caused widespread havok and destruction as shoppers attempt to catch a glimpse of these cards in the wild. Proper PhysX processing has made their survival on this planet possible, however the intense heat and massive price gouging limits their numbers to a handful at any given time.
- CHW review of ECS GeForce GTX 460 1GB Black
- AMD Radeon HD 6850 & HD 6870 reviewed in Metku
- ASUS ENGTX580 Voltage Tweak - SLI @ Bjorn3D
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 SOC @ PureOverclock
- SPARKLE Calibre X460G Video Card Review @ Madshrimps
- Inno3D GeForce GTX 580 OC edition review
- ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 AMP Review @ XtremeComputingIn other news the great UD7 makes an appearance in some place other than the Ninjalane Labs
- HEXUS.net - previews :: Gigabyte P67A-UD7 Intel Sandy Bridge motherboard examined
- An early look at Gigabyte's P67A-UD7 motherboardHere is Tom with the weather.
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NL: Review Block - Accessory Edition
Published: Wednesday, December 1, 2010 | By: DennisAs hardware enthusiasts we often concentrate on the go fast goodies that make our systems scream, but what about the essentials? Should we show them some love too??
- Psyko Audio Labs 5.1 Gaming Headset Review @ OCIA
- Tt eSPORTS Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard @ Techgage
- Silverstone Technology NT07-1156 HSF Review at Overclockers Online
- Lian Li PC-8FI Aluminum Computer Case Review @ Tweaknews
- Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 Review @ Real World Labs
- Coolink Corator DS Heatsink Review @ FrostytechSome good stuff in there, I especially like the TT keyboard with the fancy red backlight.
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NL: Review Block - Mobos, Cards, Coolers, Cases and Memory
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010 | By: DennisMotherboards
- Gigabyte's P67A-UD7 Previewed - Intel Sandy Bridge Motherboard Breaks Cover
- ECS Elitegroup A890GXM-A2 motherboard @ Hardwareoverclock
- GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R (Rev. 2.0) Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
- ASUS Rampage III Gene @ PureOverclock
- ASUS Rampage III Extreme @ Bjorn3D
Video Cards
- ASUS GeForce GTX 580 @ PureOverclock
- XFX Radeon HD 5970 2GB Black Edition Review @ Real World Labs
- Sparkle Calibre X480 GeForce GTX 480 Video Card Review @ ThinkComputers
- GeForce GTX 580 3-way SLI review
Memory
- G.Skill 2x4GB CL7 1600 MHz Trident DDR3 review
- OC3D: Mushkin PC16000 Radioactive 6GB Review
- OCZ RevoDrive 50GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Review @ ThinkComputers
- Quick Review: Corsair XMS3 Series PC3-16000 12GB Kit
- OCZ Flex EX PC3-17000 12GB Triple Channel Memory Kit Review @ OCIA
- OCZ Vertex 2 60GB Solid State Drive review @ APH Networks
Cases
- Lian Li T60 - Test Station Review @ XtremeComputing
- DimasTech Test/Table Easy V2.5 Bench Table Review
- Cooler Master Centurion 5 II Chassis Review @ BayReviews
Coolers
- DeepCool Ice Matrix 600 CPU / Processor Cooler Review @ Tweaknews -
Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic @ Techgage
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010 | By: DennisWhat is better than a brand name used to describe something "good" that would otherwise kill you if used in any other context?. In the case of the "Toxic" edition video cards we find it quite fitting.
AMD's Radeon HD 6850 is one of the more attractive mid-range offerings on the market right now, and Sapphire hopes to lure potential buyers in even closer with the help of its "Toxic" edition. It features a customized cooler that runs quiet and keeps temps low, and also cranks up reference clocks for an immediate performance boost.
Sapphire has been very smart to keep the "Toxic" brand name since it tends to be the brand that most AMD enthusiasts gravitate to when looking for their next fix.
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Palit GeForce GTS 450 Low Profile 1Gb GDDR5 Video Card Review @ Madshrimps
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010 | By: DennisI have actually been looking to pick up one of these cards for a HTPC project, but as with any HTPC build you are most concerned with overall performance related to multimedia, not necessarily games.
Sadly this review didn't answer that question, but did however provide some good looks at the card and the sexy red pcb.
The GTS 450 Low Profile from Palit is one of the most powerful cards meant for installing inside a HTPC, so we basically get of both worlds: a compact and silent system while surfing the internet or doing office work along with decent performances in todays' games, if using lower resolutions.
We can only assume it will decode a BluRay movie and still have enough power to show it all at 1080p.
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Gainward GeForce GTX 460 SE 1 GB @ techPowerUp
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010 | By: DennisShortly after the GTX 580 product release nVidia announced a new 400 series card designed to provide GTX 460 performance with slightly less cost.
Last week NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 460 SE which is designed to give a good price/performance level without compromising on memory amount. But is this enough to compete with the full GTX 460 variants that have 768 MB or 1 GB of memory?
Video memory, or the frame buffer, size is usually a good indicator of maximum resolution combined with texture size. Simply put video quality. Less memory means you'll have to run lower res to use the same size textures. This was one of the main reasons the GTX 460 1GB was so much faster than the 768MB counterpart. The SE comes with 1GB video ram but with a considerably slower GPU.
Normally this is also where I mention the Sexy Red PCB on most custom Gainward products, maybe one day we'll get to see some more Gainward gear grace the pages of Ninjalane.com
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Thermolab Baram 2010 @ Hardware Bistro
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010 | By: DennisHere is a heatsink we haven't seen in awhile, the Thermolab Baram, 2010 edition.
Thermolab is a Korean thermal solution vendor and unlike other vendors they do not design and execute mass production but just fulfilling the market with adequate supply. Baram and Bada are two of their major products and have gained pretty good reputation worldwide. Today let us have a look on their Baram successor; Baram 2010 with additional dissipation area.
Not much has changed in the design; they just added a few new attachments to fit the new socket types.
For a quick side by side, check out our review of the baram here.
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Putting SATA 3.0 to Work with Areca ARC-1880i and Crucial C300 256GB SSDs
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010 | By: DennisOk we all know the benefits of RAID disks over single disks and while the advent of faster onboard controllers and software RAID has made addon RAID cards virtually obsolete (in the enthusiast PC) you can't ignore the performance gains. Provided you are willing to pay for the opportunity to use them.
TweakTown decided to put a couple of SSD drives to the test, and in an attempt to further expand the "no duh" factor associated with the speed of both SSD and RAID they combined them together. To do so they attached these drives to the latest hardware RAID controller from Areca and ran a few benchmarks.
Today our focus is on SATA 3.0, the latest computer bus interface for mass storage devices like hard drives and of course solid state disk drives. SATA Revision 3.0 or SATA 6 Gbit/s as it is also known replaced SATA 2.0 with several improvements including importantly for us here today a doubling of the maximum throughput from 375MB/s to 750MB/s per connected device.
What do you do with all that extra bandwidth that is offered by the new bus? You put it to work, of course! We hit up the folks over at Areca about a brand spanking new SATA 3.0 SAS controller that they have started selling and they obliged our request and sent on over one of their new ARC-1880i controllers for the job. Next up, we needed something to connect up to this shiny new RAID controller and we enlisted the help of the folks over at Crucial for this part of the mission. They were friendly enough to ship over no less than four of their RealSSD C300 256GB SATA 3.0 solid state disk drives.Yep, you guessed it, it's fast
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NL: Review Block - Gigabyte Edition - All Giga All the Tyme
Published: Monday, November 22, 2010 | By: DennisIn no particular order, some random Gigabyte reviews from around the web (localized to the Ninjalane Newswire)
- Gigabyte P67A-UD4 motherboard @ FunkyKit
- GIGABYTE GV-N480SO-15I Super Overclock @ techPowerUp
- Gigabyte H55N USB3 Mini-ITX review @ Guru3D
- Gigabyte Aivia K8100 Gaming Keyboard @ Pro-Clockers
- Gigabyte HD 6850 review @ t-break
- OC3D: Gigabyte GTX480 SOC Review
- OC3D: Gigabyte P67A-UD7 Preview
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 SOC review @ Guru3D
- GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD7 Preview @ Bjorn3D
- Funky Kit Review: Gigabyte M6980 Gaming Laser MouseI see a few P67 "Previews" in there, seems that P67 boards are out in the wild.
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Clocking Up Old Hardware - Worthless or a Gem??
Published: Sunday, November 21, 2010 | By: DennisThere is no mistake that most everyone has some old computer hardware laying around, maybe an old desktop you no longer use, or some old PC's at work the IT guys are too lazy to throw out.
Believe it or not but those parts might be worth something, on HWBot.
Most computer enthusiasts are all about current technology, they need to have the latest and greatest for bragging rights or points. In terms of HWBot usage (competitive overclocking) the latest processor combined with one or more of the latest video card(s) can easily go a long way in getting a big score. However those points are in high demand and will likely be lost overnight.
How do you overcome this?? Bench some of that old gear you have and lock up points that have a tendency to stay awhile. For instance Slngsht (from the Ninjalane Forums) has racked up over 50 points benching P3 processors he bought on Ebay. No special cooling required, just a board with plenty of bios controls
This actually inspired me to unbox my old development server and make a couple runs. Believe it or not but a dual processor P3 450 still has some life left. My latest endeavor is to tackle what I am calling "The 12 Hour Challenge" (name shamelessly taken from Slngsht). In this challenge you must submit 5 SuperPi 32m scores that take over 12 hours to complete. Not only is this a complete opposite of what you normally try to do with SuperPi but tests your nerves and knowledge to make a system slow enough to actually "pass" the test.
Check out the SuperPi 32m "12 Hour Challenge" thread in the Forum for more details.
