NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup

Some new PC games to check out for everyone here.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior (PC) @ TweakPC

"Interactive City sends the player to the jungle. Sniper: Ghost Warrior promises entirely new shooting action on home PCs. We have caught the sniper rifle, played the track and reveal whether hot or not."

Transformers: The War For Cybertron (PC) Review @ KitGuru gaming

"Most of us loathe Transformer games and with good reason, they nearly all suck. The thought of reviewing a new Transformers title filled me with trepidation because I had an ominous feeling that I was going to be wasting a part of my life ... which I could dedicate to a new hardware review .. such as the shiny new Sapphire graphics card sitting on my table. You will probably be as surprised as me to read that this third person shooter is actually pretty good. No, seriously."

A Transformers game that might not suck.

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G.Skill Phoenix 100GB Solid State Drive Review @ Hardware Canucks

Another SSD review how surprising is this.  Here is another brand that I just love for their excellent RAM it is GSkill. Looks like they have the SandForce bug as well. I am diggin these names for the SDD drives. It reminds of the days of the American Muscle Cars.

"At this point, SSDs sporting SandForce controllers seem to be a dime a dozen. This hasn't stopped G.Skill from releasing their own SF-1200 based drive but they have also modified the design in order to improve performance while keeping its price below that of the competition. Could this be the perfect SSD for enthusiasts looking for maximum value?"

SF-1200 FTW!

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NL: GPU Roundup

With so many new cards hitting the market and refreshing of some of the older ones our mail box is full of awesome video card reviews. If you guessed it you get to click on a link below. It is GPU roundup time.

- MSI GeForce GTX 465 Twin Frozr II Video Card @ TweakTown
- MSI GeForce GTX 465 Twin Frozr II @ techPowerUp
- AXLE Radeon HD 5670 1GB Video Card @ TweakTown
- Asus ENGT240 @ Bjorn3D
- Asus ENGT240 Geforce GT 240 1GB DDR5 Videocard Review @ Tweaknews
- ASUS EAH5870 V2 Review @ OC3D
- Palit GeForce GTX 470 Dual Fan Cooler review @ Guru3D
- EVGA GeForce GTX 470 Superclocked+ Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Sparkle GTS250 @ Bjorn3D
- eVGA GeForce GTX 465 SC gets tested @ Guru3D
- Gainward GTX470 Golden Sample GOOD reviewed in Metku.net
- MSI R5870 Lightning Video Card Review @ Hardocp

See I told you we had a bunch.

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Mushkin Callisto 120GB SSD Review @ OC3D

Mushkin SSD are now here and based on the SandForce controller. This is really to awesome for I'm a huge Mushkin RAM fan as it is and would love to see how they work out on the new SSD lineup. I guess it is time to read up to find out.

"Mushkin enter the SSD arena with their Callisto lineup of MLC based drives."

Not much of a quote. Oh well!

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470GTX Video Card Water Block Mayhem @ Bjorn3D

NVidia's GTX 470 is a heat generating monster that just screams to be watercooled. So here is a good roundup of a few of the waterblocks to take care of cooling these monsters. Let's see how they all fare against the heat.

"When Nvidia introduced the 4xx series of video cards we were all amazed at the power these video cards had. At the same time, we were all shocked at the temperatures these video cards reached to give us that level of performance.

I am not going to lie to you, I also freaked out when I saw the temperatures of my 470GTX reach above the 75°C mark. Even with the fan of this video card running at full speed, and having an 80CFM 120mm fan blowing directly down across the video card, my temperatures were still reaching the 80°C range. This video card quickly became known around here as 'Nvidia 470GTX video card, the only way to heat your house.'

Since I absolutely loved this video card's performance, and its abilities that it was offering me, I did not quite want to give up on it just yet. Since I am a big fan of water cooling, I decided it would be the best choice to grab a few water blocks and then see how this video card cools down."

I'm big on the EK waterblock myself.

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Antec Fusion Remote Black Review @ HardwareLogic

The Antec Fusion Black Remote looks to be very interesting for the HTPC crowd out there. If your on the fence about this controller go on over and take a look at it. Oh yeah, you might also to a look at the case that is well priced for all the great options as well.

" Combining silence, convenience, and style, the Fusion Remote Black is an excellent enclosure for a home theater PC. With its special triple chamber design and dual 120mm fans, the Fusion Remote Black runs quietly and coolly. If that weren't enough, the Fusion Remote Black boasts an included remote control and media management software. "

Enjoy!

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SandForce SF-1200: Does Lower Capacity Mean Lower Performance?

A new SSD controller is like a new ice cream flavor. Some love it, others have a hard time dealing with it ,and everyone wants to find an angle on it. So let's read another angle of the SandForce 1200 controller.

"Up until now we have observed SSD manufacturers quoting different performance numbers for each capacity size in a product line. The most obvious came in 2009 when some manufacturers listed as many as four distinct performance envelopes in their Indilinx Barefoot products with all divided by capacity. The Indilinx Barefoot products weren't the only ones listing footnotes about performance, Intel had a few of their own as well.

There are many reasons why smaller capacity drives can be generally slower than higher capacity drives. Without boring you with technical details, we will just briefly touch on technical side. The first possible reason a smaller drive performs less than a higher capacity drive can be linked directly to the flash memory itself. Some smaller drives use smaller flash memory that does not perform as well as larger capacity flash. The next issue and what we saw mostly in 2009 and early 2010 were smaller than 128GB drives that were using less of the available channels on the controller."

Oh yeah, the SandForce 1200 is the BOMB!

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GIGABYTE's New Technologies: CloudOC, Unlocked Power & More @ Hardware Canucks

Looks like Gigabyte has something new for all of us overclockers called CloudOC. I'm going to be honest that I just don't think this is going to be to big among top HWBot overclockers. Then again I have been wrong before.

"Gigabyte has long been known as a leader in numerous fields and in the new few months they are looking to take things to the next level. In this article we take a closer look at some of the technologies which they will be introducing including the already-available Unlocked Power and the innovative CloudOC."

Only once and it was never proven!

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Hard-Drive Roundup June 2010 @ HardwareHeaven

Here is a great Hard-Drive Roundup that shows performance of not only a few SSD drives price segments but some of the top mechnical drives as well. It will help out on making the next hard drive choice easier.

"Todays review includes SandForce, Indilinx and Toshiba based SSDs mixed in with the Seagate 6GB/s and VelociRaptor mechanical models then just for good measure a high spec 2.5" mechanical drive is added to ensure we have a complete picture of the real world performance available at each market segment."

Crucial FTW!

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DX11 Graphics Cards High End Roundup June 2010 @ HardwareHeaven

I guess a DX 11 high end GPU roundup is possible with NVidia bringing in the GTX 480 & 470. Now the question is the GTX 465 worth it's money over the Radeon 5830? It will all be told someday.

"On the ATI based side we have Sapphire's 5970 Toxic 4GB and the Asus Matrix 5870 Platinum. From NVIDIA partners we have Zotac GTX 480's, Gigabyte and Palit GTX 470's and Gainward GTX 465s which allow us to compare single GPU and SLI based setups. We will be covering real world gameplay, PhysX, 3D Vision, GPU computing, High Definition / 3D media playback and power/noise readings in this review to establish which products are worth purchasing."

Is that day today?I don't know.

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LC Power, Silverstone & Cooler Master PSUs: Clash of the Titans @ InsideHW

With the PSU being the heart of a great Computer build it is always nice to see a roundup of the big boys to get a good idea of what someone may need. I am very curious to see which ones turn out to be top dogs of the pack.

"Latest-gen graphics cards consume an awful lot of power, and that seems
to increase with each generation. The same could be said for CPUs as
well. A configuration that would be able to run the latest games in high
resolutions often requires more than one graphics card. The usual 500 W
PSU simply won't be enough in such situations. We thought that it would
be interesting to delve into PSUs that could power overclocked quad-core
or hexa-core CPUs combined with two or more graphics cards. We borrowed
a couple of PSUs from LC Power, namely Metatron series models of 1000
and 1200 W. The remaining two arrived from SilverStone and Cooler Master..."

I think I'm for the Cooler Master or maybe the SilverStone. Wow it is hard to pick.

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GTX-480 Thermal Study @ Bjorn3D

Here might be a good read to help clear the air about all the heat the GTX 480 makes. Well let's hope this article is not a lot of hot air for we here know that the GTX 480 is one hot running beast. This is just during normal gaming sessions that we have come to this conclusion.

"When the Nvidia GTX-480 hit the shelves we saw a lot of sites reporting what we considered high temperatures on the GPU. A lot of those sites were relying on Furmark and chose not to game for hours on end in a variety of games and get thermal readings that way. We can understand the initial rush to publish because in reviewing it's publish now or suffer a loss of traffic on the review or article.

We can't understand not going back and studying the thermal envelope of the GTX-480 after the initial reviews. So we fired up the GTX-480 and gamed for days on end (a dirty job but someone had to do it). Each game we ran we gamed for hours and hours then dropped out and took temperature readings. Each benchmark we used we ran multiple benchmarks back to back and dropped out and took readings. In all we spent 3 weeks gaming, taking thermal readings, and checking ambient temperatures to ensure continuity of testing."

I think a pun was in there somewhere.

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Corsair Force Series 120GB SandForce SF-1200 SSD Review @ Legit Reviews

These new SandForce SSD drives are all the rage. This is for a very good reason as well. They are fast and rock out the benchmarks very well. On a real world usage scale they are extremely fast as well. 

"As far as performance is concerned, we observed almost exactly what we saw with the Force 100GB drive, as we expected. We found both of these drives to be among the best performing MLC SATA II drives available which is typical of the all Sandforce based drives we have seen from nearly all manufacturers. The prices for SSD's haven't come down much as of late with the economy doing the yo-yo and NAND being consumed voraciously by iPads and smartphones. With Corsair freeing up more available capacity without having to add more onboard NAND really helps add to the value of the drive without increasing production costs, so the consumer wins. While the Force 120GB drive is listed online at Amazon for $350, it looks like they don't have it in stock yet which means the price is almost assuredly going to come down once it is more widely available - unless there are supply issues..."

Nice drives, but the price is not very cheap.

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Gigabyte HD 5870 SOC, PowerColor PCS+ HD5870 Graphics Cards @ iXBT Labs

The new custom Radeon HD 5870 are hitting the market and they look to be awesome. I do like the custom PCB on the Gigabyte, and I bet it is a great overclocker. Let's read to see how they both work out for gaming and overclocking. 

"Today we have a couple of customized solutions based on the Radeon HD 5870 GPU. Both have proprietary coolers, and Gigabyte's card also has an original PCB. Besides, both graphics cards are factory-overclocked."

Enjoy!

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In Win Diva sff chassis @ Hardware Bistro

Do you have a Princess or Diva geek in your life. Well it looks like InWin has brought out the perfect case for that special someone. Check out this review to see if this is a case that is built for a Diva.

"In Win is one of our favourite brands as they always produce innovative and high quality products although their retail business was just started. Today we will bring you another cutie chassis from In Win; Diva. In Win Diva is not really a successors of Allure but they will be in same category which is purposely designed to capture female market. Let us go through in detail without further delay."

I think my 3 year old Little Princess might like it. It's pink of course she will like it

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ATI Radeon HD 5870 & 5970 with NVIDIA PhysX

If people are ATI fans they are not going to buy a high end GeForce card, but for the sake of getting in on the PhysX support buying a mid range to low end card is perfectly understandable.

"If you haven't heard already, the 257.15 Beta ForceWare driver set from NVIDIA accidently had the ability for ATI users to again use an NVIDIA card as a second to do PhysX. The whole ordeal created a bit of drama around the web; as soon as it was discovered by NVIDIA they yanked the driver and put another one up that disabled the ability.

After a bit of uproar, they put it back up but said that it wouldn't be included in future drivers; they kind of dribbled on about how it's expensive to maintain it for ATI cards. It sounds like a load of crap to be honest, because it's been disabled for ages. We're sure in the last few months they've done nothing and all of a sudden it was slipped in and working fine on ATI cards. I don't know what NVIDIA have against making money, but the whole thing sounds stupid."

Seems that NVIDIA is playing the heart strings and opened up PhysX support with ATI cards.  Granted the driver is beta but still, once its in the wild it will stay there.

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The Best $500 NVIDIA PhysX Setup

This is an interesting article on a PhysX and building the best bang for your $500 bucks. I can see lots of combinations that could work on this subject.

"Some of my best article ideas come from forums. Talking the other day to some people, I mentioned how the GTX 480, while a great card, poses a PhysX related issue if you're using a high resolution monitor; something like a 30" with 2560 x 1600 support. The frame rate drop under games that utilize PhysX at its native resolution is so aggressive that a 30 FPS dip in performance means a game becomes unplayable.

Going through the ol' NewEgg.com and looking at some USA based For Sale forums, I found out that for about the same price as a GTX 480 you could buy a GTX 470 and a second hand GTX 260 to use as a PhysX card. Also, because you're going NVIDIA with NVIDIA, you don't have to worry about poor support from drivers since NVIDIA promote this kind of setup. So, with a GTX 480, GTX 470 and GTX 260 on hand, we show you how $500 can be best spent if PhysX is something that you're really after."

I still think the GTS250 is an awesome PhysX card.

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How to make an SSD: Touring A-DATA's Taipei Factory

With a followup on the SSD Roundup is a factory tour of how to make them. I bet this was very cool to see. Just gotta keep the hands in the pockets. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want me touching everything.

While Chris, our head SSD guru guy, was in Taiwan for Computex, we thought we should hit up our friends at A-DATA and see if we could arrange a personal tour of their Taipei factory. On Monday 7th of June, still a little exhausted and also sick from the craziness of the busy show, we headed on down and got things rolling.

Walking distance from A-DATA's headquarters just out of Taipei City you will find A-DATA's factory production facility. It is here where all the magic happens. A-DATA has a capacity of 100,000 double sided memory modules per day and 3,000 SSDs per day."

I want to go to one of these places someday.

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NL: SSD Roundup

These things just keep getting more popular by the minute. I think they come out with a new faster control every other month. So let's round up some SSD reviews.

- OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SSD review @ Elite Bastards
- Corsair Force and Reactor 120GB SSD @ Technic3D
- Corsair Force Series F100 100GB Solid State Drive Review @ ThinkComputers
- Crucial's RealSSD C300 solid-state drive @ TechReport
- OCZ Agility 120GB SATA2 OCZSSD2-1AGT120G SSD Review @ OCInside
- Patriot Inferno 100GB SF-1200 Solid State Drive @ TweakTown
- Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 128gb @ LanOC Reviews

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MSI Big Bang XPOWER Intel X58 Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews

All of the gaming and benchmarking fun that can be had out of this motherboard. Not sure I like the idea of it being named Big Bang. Gives a couple visuals that might not be right, or even shocking at times. Last thing I want is my board going boom on me.

"The MSI Big Bang XPower will support up to six single slot graphics cards for some hefty multi-monitor use. It also supports the latest Quad-SLI and CrossFireX technology from NVIDIA and ATI. If you are looking to do some extreme overclocking with the new Intel Core I7 980X you will need a board that can supply enough power. Under Extreme overclocking conditions the I7 980X can draw around 480 Watts, which is too much for a single 8pin cpu connector to supply. The MSI Big Bang XPower was designed for such a circumstance! The keen folks over at MSI added a second 8pin CPU connector to the Big Bang XPower! There should be no issues with power when pushing the latest processors to the maximum frequencies. They also decided to add a 6pin PCI-e which will aid when overclocking the graphics cards!"

Focus, Focus I was talking all about the board exploding.

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