Tech News
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AMD Athlon II X2 240e and X3 435 Mainstream CPUs @ HotHardware
Published: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 | By: DennisLooks like we have new AMD procs in the wild.
With the current price war going on between Intel and AMD at the lower-end of the market, consumers are left with more affordable options than ever before. One can argue that there has never been a better time to build a computer or upgrade an aging system, especially with the cost of relatively high-performing hardware finally reaching attainable levels. And with AMD's recent launch of their first $99 quad-core, enthusiasts have run out of excuses to postpone the jump to multi-core computing.
AMD continues to expand their product line up with mainstream processors at competitive prices with the launch of eight new Athlon II models today. These chips range from dual to quad-core varieties and feature lower power consumption as well. Today, we will be looking at two variants from this launch, the dual core Athlon II X2 240e and triple core X3 435 processors. Come on by and take a look... -
NL: Review Block - Mobo time!
Published: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 | By: DennisNinjalane was founded on doing motherboard reviews and while innovations in mobo design have somewhat slowed they still remain as the centerpiece of any system, either it be gaming, enthusiast, test bench princess, or down and dirty oem, the fact remains you need one to build a system.
- MSI P55-GD80 LGA1156 Motherboard Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Gigabyte P55-UD6 Motherboard Review @ Motherboards
- DFI LANParty Jr. GF9400 T2RS mATX Motherboard @ Tweaktown
- ASUS P7P55D Deluxe LGA 1156 Motherboard @ Bjorn3DWe have P55 board reviews on the way, but due to the nature of second tier and innovation it takes awhile to get the products off the line.
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Intel Core i7 CPU Water Block Roundup Oktober 2009 @ Madshrimps
Published: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 | By: DennisFor those of you that know "me" I have a soft spot for watercooling setups. Either DIY or OEM they all seem to have some unique flair and have gotten quite advanced over the years. Here we have a roundup of 6 blocks designed for the Core i7.
Here we are again, with some brand new water blocks to cool your Nehalem or Lynnfield monster CPU. We got some strong contenders this time, which will give the blocks, that we already tested, a serious run for their money. In total 7 new blocks delivered to us thanks to Aquatuning. We compare performance to 6 blocks we previously tested. Find out which one cools your CPU the best!
Of course these are all European watercooling companies so don't expect to see Danger Den on the list.
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Patriot Viper II Sector 5 4GB DDR3-2000 @ PureOverclock
Published: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 | By: DennisDue to many many years of being jerked around by Patriot Memory I have all but given up on trying to deal with the bastards but every once in awhile I take a peek to see what they have been up to.
Sponsored or not it would appear that PureOverclock has posted their "third party opinion" (<- Patriot words, not mine) review of the new Viper 2 modules for the LGA1156.
Today we're looking at a set of Patriot Viper II Sector 5 4GB DDR3-2000 modules that are optimized for use in the LGA1156 socket Core i5/i7 platform, and geared to those who want to push their system. We've seen in our past testing that Patriot modules typically offer great performance and value, so we'll see today if they can continue the trend.
By the looks of it Patriot fired their product designer.
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Upgrading to Windows 7 @ TestFreaks
Published: Monday, October 19, 2009 | By: WillHere is a good little guide for all of you guys out there looking for the new Windows 7 upgrade. This is one great OS and this guide should help it out.
"If you've paid any attention to what's going on in a couple days then you'll know that the new operating system from Microsoft is set to launch, October 22nd to be more specific. It's called Windows 7, while I'm not attracted to the name of it, I do like the operating system itself. It offers many new things over Vista, including the ability to run smoother and of course better reviews and feedback. "
Enjoy!
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OCZ Z-Drive m84 PCI-Express SSD Review @ HotHardware
Published: Monday, October 19, 2009 | By: WillHere it is SSD RAID on some serious steriods. Then slap a 8x PCI Express connector to not allow any kind of bottleneck. This is the ultimate SSD setup, but is it worth the money? Let's read ot find out.
An interesting thing about NAND Flash SSD technologies, beyond the fact that the market is flush with competitive product offerings, is that the technology itself is very flexible and adaptable to a number of different design approaches. Take for example a RAID 4-pack configuration with Intel's X25-M SSD or perhaps the omnipotent Fusion-io ioDrive. Granted, these are rather high-end, pricey setups, but you get the gist that solid state storage arena is just getting warmed up.
In a sort of hybrid version of Fusion-io's product and our RAID 4-pack array, OCZ Technology has introduced an almost fully integrated solution of their SATA-based SSD technology, along with a third party RAID controller, all wrapped up clean and tidy on a PCI Express X8 adapter card.
Dubbed the Z-Drive, we first got a look at this wild-eyed beast back in May. It wasn't quite ready for prime time back then and it re-emerged again in early September with specs that admittedly caused a pavlovian response of our salivary glands. Today, we get to satiate ourselves with a deep dive look at the new OCZ Z-Drive, in a tasty 256GB variant that drops in at an almost reasonable $899 price point that is on near cost parity with a standard mid-range SSD...I want one real bad.
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Razer Naga MMO Mouse Review @ Driverheaven
Published: Monday, October 19, 2009 | By: WillThis review goes right along with the MMORPG game that was posted just below. Razer Naga MMO Mouse looks to be very cool for the WoW and Aion fans. Let's read how it works out with all of those buttons.
Today we are going to look at Razer's latest offering, the Naga gaming mouse. It is designed with MMO games in mind, instantly noticeable by the number of macro buttons included. It also has an impressive specification to back up its gaming orientation, boasting a 5600 DPI precision laser sensor and a 1000Hz polling rate.
I want to try one, but I'm sure I would hit the wrong number everytime.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Monday, October 19, 2009 | By: WillHere is a couple more games for the PC gamer inside all of us to enjoy. One of them is even a MMORPG built on the famous Crysis Crytech Engine.
Aion: The Tower Of Eternity (PC) Review @ Gamingheaven
The MMORPG genre has been dominated for so long by World Of Warcraft that it seems almost impossible for any other titles to get a long term foothold. Developers keep trying however because this market is so lucrative and today we look at the much hyped MMO entitled 'Aion' from far east developer NCSoft.
Left4Dead Crash Course (PC) Review @ Gamingheaven
Valve are due to release Left 4 Dead 2 in November but they have just updated the original Left 4 Dead with some new downloadable content which is aimed to appease the zombie loving masses. Called Crash Course it comprises a brand new campaign featuring two chapters and best of all, its free.
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DFI LanParty BI G41-T33 Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
Published: Friday, October 16, 2009 | By: DennisWhen our review of the BloodIron G41 went live I had a quick chat with them in regards to the feedback the get from other editors. Seems that most people have a hard time understanding that a mainstream motherboard is designed to be cheap and not a gamers dream board.
I think some of that stems from a change in how DFI is marketing the company. In previous years everything DFI did in relation to the LanParty brand was focused on the high-end. The verbal minority (ie people reading this) did a great job at spreading the word and things were good. Fast forward to now, more companies have come forth with high-end enthusiast platforms to sell alongside their mid and low range stuff. DFI never really had a low-end but instead focused on the OEM market, so the bottom line here is if DFI is going excel at what they do they need to expand the product line and start focusing on some of their other products.
Today we have the opportunity to take a look at another board in the LanParty series from DFI. The LanParty series has always been a favorite of mine because of the tweaking options and the overclocking ability that they have. The board we get to look at today, though, was one that most would not think would belong in that series of boards. It is a micro board, uses the older LGA775 socket coupled with DDR3 memory, and has the G41 chipset that sports the GMA X4500 on-board graphics chip...
I would expect to see many more BloodIron products hitting the streets and various review sites, the interesting part will be to see what sites buy into the change which ones will resist.
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Windows 7 : ATI DX10 V DX11 Article @ DriverHeaven
Published: Friday, October 16, 2009 | By: WillWindows 7 is here and so is DirectX 11. So what does all this really mean to us PC gamers? Well check out this article to get a better understanding of it.
"Since our last articles on Windows 7 the ATI Radeon 5800/5700 series of graphics cards have launched and two games are now available which have DirectX 11 features. Today we take a look at performance and image quality differences between DirectX 10.0 /10.1 and DirectX 11 when running Windows 7 on ATIs latest hardware. The article also includes the worlds first detailed look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat running in DirectX 11 mode."
Good stuff here!
