Tech News
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 | By: WillIt has been a little bit since our last PC game review roundup. Don't worry there is going to be enough new games hitting soon that will take care of the problem.
Star Trek Online (PC) Review @ GamingHeaven
"Back in 2004 an announcement was made that Star Trek Online was in development and geeks around the world rejoiced (this reviewer included). News releases after that were sporadic at best until in January 2008 it was announced that the developer was closing its doors and the game development (not including code) was being passed to Cryptic Studios. Given their experience with MMO games, Cryptic seemed an ideal fit and just over two years after taking on the IP, we have the official release of Star Trek Online."
"Mass Effect 2 is the sequel to BioWare's hit space-based role-playing game (RPG), Mass Effect. A single player adventure, Mass Effect 2 allows players to continue the adventures of the fully customizable series hero, Commander Shepard, as you take on a whole new adventure and cast of supporting characters. Features new to this latest release in the franchise include the ability to import game save files from the original Mass Effect game to continue the adventure in an unbroken fashion, a new damage system, a more flexible dialogue game mechanic and more. See you in the following Review from Technic3D."
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ASUS P7H55D-M EVO & Intel DH55TC @ Techgage
Published: Tuesday, February 2, 2010 | By: WillLook here a two for one review on two different board with the same Intel H55 chipset. HTPC is really in the air right now with everyone about to jump on this new setup. Let's see what these guys think about these board for your HTPC setup.
"With Intel's recent Clarkdale processor launch, the itch to build that new HTPC is no doubt greater than ever. Not only does Intel offer a wide-range of processors, but motherboard vendors are currently offering an incredible amount of H55 models. We're taking a look at two here, Intel's own DH55TC and ASUS' P7H55D-M EVO."
I think the Asus board would be my pick.
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Inside Intel and Micron's 25nm NAND Fab - IMFT @ Legit Reviews
Published: Tuesday, February 2, 2010 | By: WillTime for a road trip on the internet to the Intel/Micron Fab in Utah. Interesting to see, but I do have a spoiler. Not one guy was dressed in cool blue suit or dancing. Micro must not allow the Intel guys to have fun there.
"This shrink is important as the new 25nm process reduces chip count by 50 percent compared to previous process generations, allowing for smaller, yet higher density designs and greater cost efficiencies. This is great news as that means IMFT will be able to get twice as many NAND Flash chips per wafer. Intel said that performance would be comparable to 34nm speeds today, but that endurance and reliability would be improved. Since devices like SSDs can be built using less 'chips' now you can expect to see SSD capacities increasing in the months to come. Micron even mentioned that 1TB 2.5" SSDs will be a possibility in 2010 thanks to the move down to 25nm..."
What a shame I was so looking forward to dancing workers in the fab.
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GF100 (Fermi) Product Names Released
Published: Monday, February 1, 2010 | By: DennisCaught this on Facebook and Twitter of all places
Fun Fact of the Week: GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 will be the names of the first two GPUs shipped based on our new GF100 chip!
Seems reasonable
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Corsair Obsidian 800D @ PureOverclock
Published: Saturday, January 30, 2010 | By: DennisHere is a case that many of us have been dr00ling over.
The Corsair Obsidian 800D showcases extensive and unique features in a crowded marketplace that often lacks originality. Corsair may be new to the chassis business, but they've had years to watch and learn from other manufacturers’ mistakes. Can the Obsidian 800D rise to the challenge in a very competitive market? Can Corsair continue their successful move from memory products into other PC component areas? Let’s find out.
The case is full of cool stuff and goes light on the crap we don't normally use. A must see if you get a hands-on look.
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NL: Review Block - Lil bit of everything
Published: Saturday, January 30, 2010 | By: DennisHere is a kitchen sink edition of a review block. Nice thing about this... The news box is clean once again, and this time because of posting stuff.
Motherboards
- EVGA H55 Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets
- EVGA W555 First Look @ OC3D
- MSI H57M-ED65 mATX Motherboard @ Hardwarezone
- ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer Motherboard @ Bjorn3D
- Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5 Intel P55 Motherboard Review @ PCStats
Video Cards
- HIS Radeon HD 5770 Videocard Review @ Tweaknews
- Diamond Radeon HD 5750 OC Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
Cooling
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler Review @ Overclockers Online
- Noctua NH-D14 CPU Heatsink review @ APH Networks
- Zalman CNPS10X Flex CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Noctua NH-C12P SE14 @ Hardwareoverclock
Storage and Memory
- Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB @ Techgage
- Kingston HyperX 12GB DDR3-1600 @ PureOverclock
- Patriot Memory Torqx 64GB PFZ64GS25SSDR Solid State Drive @ PCShopTalk
- Thecus N4100PRO: A Data-Treasure Cave @ InsideHW
- Patriot Memory Torqx 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD) Review @ ModSynergy
- Patriot Valkyrie NAS Raid Device @ Pro-Clockers
Cases
- Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Limited Edition Case Review @ Bigbruin
Until next time. -
ASRock ION 330HT with Blu-Ray Review @ HardwareHeaven
Published: Saturday, January 30, 2010 | By: DennisASRock using ION, finaly something people can maybe buy.
Today HardwareHeaven has one of the latest ION models released on their test bench, the ASRock ION 330HT-BD is one of the highest specification ION/ATOM systems HardwareHeaven have seen to date.
The best thing about this product?
Its really small.
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Workarounds for Radeon HD 5000 Series Vertical Stripes Issue
Published: Saturday, January 30, 2010 | By: DennisSomething tells me that if anyone is having an issue where the screen is blank they are most likely to just return the product for RMA.
AMD's latest ATI Radeon HD 5000 series is indeed selling like hotcakes. Only three weeks ago, AMD had announced that it had shipped two million DirectX 11 GPUs. However as history has taught us, new products sometimes mean new issues. Since the official launch of the HD 5000 series, there have been many lockup reports on several forums. This lockup happens mostly during 3D mode and is accompanied by vertical stripes appearing on the screen (But sometimes it appears as a black screen) and looping sound. So far, we haven't found any information on AMD's website, but luckily one of our systems was affected and it allowed us to investigate this issue.
Funny how one of the workarounds is to update the BIOS, imagine that
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First Look: EVGA W555 dual-Xeon motherboard @ bit-tech
Published: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | By: DennisOne of the coolest motherboards of 2010 was on display at CES from the American company, EVGA. The board hasn't been released yet but there are plenty of photos including the ones we took at CES and the ones found over at bit-tech.
The W555 is a dual-processor LGA1366 motherboard with a difference - unlike existing traditional workstation/server motherboards - it's designed to be overclocked.
Created by a design team led by Peter 'Shamino' Tan, the W555 was first unveiled at the CES show a couple of weeks ago. However, the only shots we saw of the board were extremely blurry and covered with heatsinks. Fortunately, EVGA sent us these photos so we could take a closer look at how this monster motherboard is shaping up.We cannot wait to get ahold of this little gem for some real world testing, it should be awesome.
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P55 vs X58 Memory Performance Analysis w/ OCZ Platinum Series @ Tweaktown
Published: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | By: WillHere is an interesting spin on dual-channel vs. triple-channel. Looks like they are using two different chipsets to test out this theory. Don't forget to read our article using the same chipset to get our take on this subject.
With so many samples passing through my front door over the year, we quite often end up with some surprises; be it a company sending it without letting us know, or it taking a bit longer to arrive than we expected and we forget about it. For whatever reason, we ended up with a couple of kits of PC3-12800 memory from OCZ.
In wondering what we could do with the two kits and how we could work them both into a single article, I thought it was time to see how the old Tri-Chan vs. Dual-Chan debate is going on with our X58 GIGABYTE board and P55 ASRock one."Here is a link for the lazy.
