Tech News
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Understanding the 80 Plus Certification @ Hardware Secrets
Published: Wednesday, December 9, 2009 | By: WillWith the world going "Green" everyday we get to see all kinds of different certifications to show how "Green" you can be. Well here is a good little article on explaining the 80 Plus Certification and what is does for your electric bill.
"Efficiency is traditionally an overlooked power supply specification. It says how much power is being wasted while you are using your PC. Problem is that you are paying for this wasted power. The 80 Plus certification was created to allow consumers to know which power supplies are the most efficient ones and, as the name implies, guarantees that the power supply is able to present efficiency of 80%. With more and more manufacturers trying to design power supplies with efficiency well above 80%, they decided to create three new certification categories: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Learn what they really mean."
My PSU is saving the world everyday.
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Radeon HD 5750 512 MB vs 1GB - DirectX 11 below 100 Euro @ TweakPC
Published: Tuesday, December 8, 2009 | By: WillHere is an interesting look at a subject that had created debates since Video Card RAM every came to be. This is going to be an interesting read to really see how this new beast deals with less ram.
Without a big bang XFX has released a RadeoN HD 5750 with 512 MB. Thats the cheapest DirectX 11 Graphics Card - and it is available!
So how big is the difference between 512 MB and 1 GB?I bet it does make a difference.
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The State of Solid State Chapter II
Published: Tuesday, December 8, 2009 | By: WillIn the Ninjalane Labs we tend to think that Solid State Drives are the bees knees. So it is fun to read more info on the new technologies that just make this product so much better. We just hope bigger drives and smaller prices come faster.
"In July of 2008 we published the first State of Solid State article. In it we talked about products that were on the horizon, pricing and where we thought the market was headed. Looking back, even I am surprised at how accurate the article was and how long the information was valid for. Like all things in this industry, eventually all things become dated, so it is time to make some new predictions, look at emerging technologies and even make some suggestions to the companies that are offering products to the masses.
Today we are going to talk about some of the technology advancements and get into some of the actual products that are currently hush-hush, but information is starting to leak out about. To round everything out, we are also going to get into some of the pricing predictions since the perceived high cost of SSDs has been such a tough wall to climb for many."SSD and SATA 6.0GB/s FTW!
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AMD Phenom II 965 X4 Black Edition C3 Processor Review @ OCIA
Published: Monday, December 7, 2009 | By: WillWith all of the i5 this and the i7 that information always blasting us everyday we tend to forget about the AMD Phenom processor. Well here is a look at the newest revision of AMD's highend PhenomII 965 X4 processor.
"Although AMD has had some exciting new mid- and entry-level chips come to market in the last several months, their top of the line Phenom II series has not seen much action since the beginning of the year. But since we won't see AMD's new six-core desktop Thuban processor emerge until next year, what we have to feed off of in the meantime is a new Phenom II core revision, the C3. Beginning with the highest-clocked chip, the 965 BE, the new core will begin to filter down through the rest of the lineup through next year. Enhancements to the core are expected to lower voltage requirements and thus reduce operating temperature, which can potentially lead to better, more stable overclocks. Is it worth the upgrade expense for a current Phenom II owner to make the change to the new revision though? Join me as I aim to find out!"
It is hard to ignor that the six-core beast is coming.
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Gaming in 2010 and Beyond - Where do we go from here?
Published: Monday, December 7, 2009 | By: WillThis is a pretty good article that I do agree with for the most part on the new game subject matter. Still a very good read to get the mind flowing, and let's hope the game developers listen to this and get some new good stuff on DX11.
The other day I took a look back at 2009 and the applications and games that have been released. I was rather unimpressed with what I saw. Out of the games that were released only a couple stood out as having any redeeming value. Even Modern Warfare 2 is diminished by choices made by Infinity Ward regarding the multiplayer side of the game (despite record breaking sales). 2009 was really not much of a good year for gaming. For the most part we were given follow-on titles and remakes of old ideas. Even Borderlands (which claims to be a unique game) turned out to be a new twist on an old idea.
So why was 2009 such a disappointing year for gaming? Well, one of the biggest reasons was the change of the guard with respects to Direct X. It looks like many developers held their breath while waiting on Microsoft, NVIDIA and AMD to drop the DX11 shoe. Out of those that did release games, most were stuck back on DX9 (a decision made to get the most money out of their titles)."I do think Borderlands is pretty fun though.
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How to play Dirt 2 now! (applies to steam only)
Published: Sunday, December 6, 2009 | By: DennisBeen looking to play Dirt2 but Steam keeps giving you the shaft? Well one of our forum members seems to have figured how to get around it.
Might be worth checking out.
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NL: Case Reviews Roundup
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 | By: WillLooks like the case reviews are out in full effect. So let's highlight a few of them.
- Antec Nine Hundred Two Mid Tower Case Review @ ThinkComputers
- SilverStone SUGO SG04-FH Case Review @ Motherboards
- Cooler Master HAF 922 Full-Tower Case @ TheTechLounge
- Thermaltake Element G Gaming Case Review @ Legit Reviews
- Review of LanCool Dragonlord PC-K58 case@ Testseek
- NZXT GAMMA Classic Series PC Case @ Bona Fide Reviews
- Cooler Master HAF 922 @ Technic3D
- Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case Review @ PCStatsWait! Wait! we have about all of these cases in our Case Review section already.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 | By: WillHere is some more games to check out for the holidays. Plus one of them is already pushing the envelope for DX11 gaming.
Colin McRae: DiRT 2 (PC)@ Elite Bastards
"If it's been a while since you touched a game like this, there's certainly something of a learning curve initially to readjust to the skills required to compete in your average DiRT 2 race, but once it all comes flooding back to you you'll soon find yourself enjoying the almost balletic juggling of brake and accelerator required to safely but quickly traverse each circuit. The track layouts themselves are certainly designed to get the adrenaline pumping - Quite brilliantly so at times, as you find yourself hanging mere inches from a sheer cliff face at times in the name of shaving a few fractions of a second of your lap time or to sneak past an opponent, and taking the word "dangerous" into a whole new league way beyond simply hitting a tree or wall on your way around the track. Once you get into some of the faster cars and find yourself faced with narrow, rock-lined tracks with huge drops around every other corner, nobody will blame you for finishing a race with sweating
palms and dilated pupils, such is the wonderful recreation of high speed that this game offers."Dragon Age: Origins Review (PC, PS3, 360) @ OCModShop
Bioware's new epic, dark fantasy RPG has been receiving a lot of attention lately. The game's marketing team has hit the internet hard and you would practically have to be blind to miss all the online ads for the game. This is a special case in which all the hype and pomp is very much deserved.
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ASRock X58 Extreme Motherboard @ PCShopTalk
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 | By: WillAsRock is not known for making boards that are extremely overclocker friendly. So I could see the lack of super cooling on this board. They tend to stay in the lower priced market with lots new options on their boards. So let's read this review to see if they are staying in that model set for them.
"The VRM and X58 chipset cooling solutions are linked together with a heatpipe; I do not consider this a very good solution because, as we already know, the X58 chipset is very hot also, like the VRM, and when we overclock the system and they will transfer the heat from one to another. I would have preferred this board to have some bigger heatsinks, with one or two heatpipes between the VRM and the X58 chipset."
It is not a horrible looking board.
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Intel: Initial Larrabee graphics chip canceled
Published: Friday, December 4, 2009 | By: DennisWow, I mean Wow.
"Justin Rattner (Intel Senior Fellow) demonstrated Larrabee hitting one teraflop, which is great but you could walk across the street and buy an ATI graphics board for a few hundred dollars that would do five teraflops." A teraflop is 1 trillion floating point operations per second, a key indicator of graphics chip performance.
Larrabee, a chronically delayed chip, was originally expected to appear in 2008. It was slated to compete with discrete graphics chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit.
Under the circumstances I can understand why they did this. Seems any future Larrabee development will be in the form of a software development platform.
