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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Monday, July 7, 2008
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I am not going to lie to you, but I am not the first one to say it -- time sure flies by at an alarming rate. The last time we reviewed a case was back in September 2007 of the popular Antec P182 -- and that's nearly ten months ago already. Prior to that, it was the NZXT Duet in May 2007, and Thermaltake's Aguila in December 2006. Oh boy, it's the second half of 2008 already, and it seems like I haven't really done much this year! Speaking of the Thermaltake Aguila, I've been using it with my ever-changing main computer that's gone though dozens upon dozens of upgrades and revisions since it was first built in November 2006 -- with pretty much no components resembling of the original build. That said, the case was still the same, and I felt that it was time for a change.
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The PCTV nanoStick is great value for money if you're looking for the smallest USB digital TV tuner on the market. But similar to other Pinnacle TV tuners we had a nightmare scanning for TV channels using the supplied antenna. Internet radio quality was quick and easy. After quickly glancing through Pinnacle's forums, it seems a lot of other users have problems scanning for channels - regardless of reception area. When we gave up and connected a rooftop aerial, video quality was good - even at full screen - and the added benefit of being able to trim videos and burn them onto DVD means you can watch recorded programs on the big screen once you get back to the comfort of your living room. Advanced users not needing to compromise on size should look at Pinnacle's PCTV Dual DVB-T Diversity Stick, which sports twin digital TV tuners so you can watch one channel while recording another or record two different channels at once. Overall, the PCTV nanoStick is an attractive package considering its size and price, but it comes with a serious caveat: you need to get the aerial in just the right position to work perfectly on all channels - or just ditch it and use a proper indoor aerial to get the best signal every time. But that's defeating the object, of course.
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Friday, July 4, 2008
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We test PowerColor's HD 4850 to see how the 'little card that could' stacks up against its rivals.
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Today we are checking out the PNY GTX 260 video card. The GTX 260 is the lower performing of the pair of GTX 200 series GPUs recently announced. The GTX 260 is about $100 cheaper than its GTX 280 brother. In the end the performance of the PNY GTX 260 was good. The price for the card is a bit high at $449.99 when compared to new offerings from AMD. The card performs well and I suspect over time the price will come down and make it more attractive.
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Sapphire has always offered the most influential ATI graphics products available, and the new Radeon HD 4850 is no different. Although it still uses GDDR3 clocked at 993 (1986 MHz DDR), unlike the 4870 version that is decked out with GDDR5, the Sapphire 100242L model offers 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) on its 625 MHz 800-core RV770 GPU. Benchmark Reviews tests the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 graphics card against the closest competition, and even compare CrossFireX performance in this performance review.
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OCZ is by far one of the biggest supporters of overclockers out there; this has been evident by bringing out memory that has a water jacket built into it, allowing extreme cooling users to simply pump some H20 into it and cool it down better than that of ordinary air cooling. Today we have the newest incarnation of the Flex memory from OCZ with their own built in water jackets. The Flex-II PC2-9200 Kit comprises OCZ's highest clocked DDR2 memory modules; how will they perform? - Let's have a bit of a gander and see.
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ATI has a definite winner here as the card comes close to the GTX280 in one situation and beats the previous generation HD3870 throughout the tests. Apparently the HD4870 comes close to the performance of a GTX260 in almost every case, but for $100 less making it a real winner. Competition has been lacking in the graphics market since the launch of the 8800GTX two years ago, but ATI is back with a vengeance offering lower power draw, great performance and features for a lower price point than the competition at the same performance segment. The big gun of the ATI lineup, the HD4870X2 is due in August and should outperform any GTX280 across the board for lower prices.
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Crucial once again knocks socks off and does it in style. The Ballistix line of memory has always been known to impress and rightfully they should. But what this kit of memory has done on the 790i test motherboard is just above and beyond what our expectations were...and our expectations were certainly a little bit lofty coming in. Needless to say, we weren't expecting to be able to benchmark at 1100MHz+ and certainly not at the little amount of voltage that was required to do so. Simply put, this memory out ran the motherboard and it wasn't even a close race.
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At this time NVIDIA's new GTX 260 graphics cards are positioned to be quite a bit more expensive than ATI's similar performing HD 4870. However, NVIDIA includes support for CUDA and PhysX. We also saw amazing overclocking potential on our GTX 260 card, even surpassing the $200 more expensive GTX 280.
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The Radeon HD 4800 series is shaking up the desktop graphics scene and we're here to bring you more exciting benchmarks results from this hot new GPU, including CrossFireX scores that match and exceed anything from NVIDIA at similar price bandings. Ready your wallets!
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While we have already examined a few motherboards on AMD 780G, some performance matters were not covered. For example, operation in the Hybrid CrossFire mode and decoding of HD video. To be more exact, they were waiting in the wings for a traditional "personal" review of the chipset. Now we finally publish it.
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Today we put together a review comparing the performance of entry-level CPUs on the USD 70 price range: Celeron E1400 (dual-core 2 GHz), Pentium Dual Core E2160 (1.8 GHz), Pentium Dual Core E2180 (2 GHz) and Athlon X2 4600+ (2.4 GHz). With this review we wanted to answer a simply question: which one is the best USD 70 CPU today? We also included on this round-up a Core 2 Duo E4400 (2 GHz). We know that this CPU isn't on this price range (and not even sold in the US anymore), but we were curious to compare a Celeron, a Pentium Dual Core and a Core 2 Duo all running under the same clock rate (2 GHz in our case) to see what is the performance difference between these Intel CPUs. Which CPU is the winner? Read on!
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MSI's P45 Neo3 is a good value motherboard if you're looking to go green. It's not suited to high-end gamers though, due to its lack of nVidia SLI support, and there's no WLAN or Bluetooth chipsets. Some may also need a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller. There isn't an onboard speaker for diagnostics, either. But MSI put many new technologies into its P45 series to improve the working of GreenPower, which improve temperatures, overclocking and stability. And with features such as active phase switching, enabling phase switching for the memory and chipset, as well as the PWM, the P45 Neo3 should cater for demanding users. Nvidia's uber-high-end nForce 790i Ultra SLI still rules the roost for ultimate performance, but the P45 Neo3 is a reasonable choice if you're building a solid all-rounder on a budget. While the motherboard is catered to the budget user, its two-phase power supply for the chipset gives it better overclockability compared to the P45 Neo and there are still plenty of storage ports to cater to the enthusiast.
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Based off of the RV670 chipset is the Sapphire Ultimate 3870 video card. This card many not be overclocked like the Toxic we reviewed a few weeks back. This means it won't perform at the same level of the Toxic did, but the major thing the Ultimate has over the Toxic is silence. Combined with 512MB of GDDR4 and Shader 4.1, silence isn't the only feature the card has that it can boast about. Just how well does it match up against the Toxic mode? Read on to find out.
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The In Win B2 is an excellent choice for anyone who wants a rather unique computer case. There aren't any other cases I know of that are modeled after a stealth bomber, or that have a front door that opens like this. Tool-less design features can be found everywhere, and except for mounting the motherboard, there is no need to get a screwdriver out.
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