Week of November 2, 2008

This leads us to today's review sample which is the Palit 9800GTX+. The overall specifications of the 9800GTX+ are very similar to the 9800GTX with a few differences. The main difference is the reducing of die size. After months of playing second fiddle to AMD when it came down to die size Nvidia finally got with the program and reduced theirs to 55nm. This meant a few things to the consumer one being less power consumption. And for those that really like numbers higher clocks came along for the ride. How does 745/1100 sound? I figured you would like that. Palit has a couple more features that will win you over if these first couple don't.

Cooling PC system memory modules definitely isn't a new idea, but surely there is room for improvement. The earliest idea was actually a mod, placing a fan in the case directed towards the modules, which had bare chips at the time. Next came the heat spreader, which increased the surface area of the memory chips. This helped, but without a lot of airflow in that area of the case, its effectiveness is limited, and for real cooling, that fan is still needed. Our friends at Thermaltake have taken a truly active approach to memory cooling. (pardon the pun) They have taken their Orb heatpipe cooling idea, placed it on some heat spreaders, and created actual active memory cooling. Read on to check out Tt's RamOrb!

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake RamOrb Active Memory Cooler SHOPPING & PRICING

TITAN presents the Cool Idol (TTC-NK75TZ), a CPU Cooler based on Heatpipes, which should have a good cooler performance since it is huge. Through its six heatpipes, it should be possible for the Cool Idol to give a waste heat of 150 watt. In the following test you can see what the performance of the Titan Cool Idol is like.

Today we get to play with something interesting, its ECS’s new SLI water cooled setup, the ECS Hydra 9800GTX+. A package that contains two 9800GTX+ cards that are water-cooled with an easy radiator setup is all set to blow you away.

The new T10 definitely improves on the outdated T9, and stands out in the audio player market due to Samsung's traditional minimalistic styling and reliable functionality. The T10 is a great player which I would
recommend to anyone.

Today one of the main things people are looking for is size and performance/size and when it comes to harddrives the flash drives are slowly coming onto the market but there are competitors like a 2.5" HDD. Today we are going to look at a enclosure for a 2.5" HDD, to be more precise it´s the IB-250 from Icybox. This pocketsize hdd enclosure makes it very easy to transfer your HDD around and it also protects it from damage and with its USB interface you can plug it into any computer and run it right away. Let´s see what type of performance we can get out of this enclosure.

CLICK HERE FOR Icy Box IB-250 2,5" External HDD SHOPPING & PRICING

With a legendary reputation built around incredible audio devices like audio and gaming headsets, as well as bluetooth headsets, Sennheiser is a name most audiophiles know and feel extremely comfortable with. Established in Wedemark, Germany in 1945, Sennheiser branched out and created Sennheiser Electronic Corporation (SEC) which is the wholly owned subsidiary with headquarters in Connecticut.

As we continue our look at bluetooth devices, today HardwareLogic takes a gander at the Sennheiser Communications Voice Max Dual Microphone Tehchnology VMX 100 Bluetooth Headset. Does the VMX 100 live up to Sennheiser's legendary reputation?

CLICK HERE FOR Sennheiser VMX 100 Bluetooth Headset SHOPPING & PRICING

Gone are the notations that 4Gb DDR3 memory kits are expensive and out of reach for many users. Elixir have now produced affordable DDR3-1333 4Gb kits for the masses. If you're mainstream user who wants to use a 64-bit version of Windows and also wants the benefits of having 4Gb of installed ... then these Elixir DDR3-1333 4Gb kits are worth considering. For all you gamers and hardcore enthusiasts ... you might want to look elsewhere.

Did you know that lighting is one of the most effective ways and probably the most commonly used ways to draw attention, highlight or accentuate just about anything imaginable? Yep, even custom street rods and you guessed it, custom computers. Well, CrazyPC has just what you need to help you accomplish a wide array of very easy lighting effects.

The Core i7 platform solidifies Intel's lead over AMD, while obsoleting generations of its own products. But isn't enough enough at some point?

Today we are looking at the Razer Moray gaming earphones. The small and compact in-ear design makes these extremely portable. If you are looking for a set of earphones for your MP3 player or music phone, the Razer Moray may be exactly what you need. Read on for all of the details.

CLICK HERE FOR Razer Moray Gaming Headphones SHOPPING & PRICING

Today we will look at the Kingston DT (Data Traveler) 400. This is one of the latest offerings from Kingston and features MiGoSync Software, SecureTraveler2 and enhanced Ready Boost Capability.

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston 16GB DataTraveler 400 USB Flash Drive SHOPPING & PRICING

Signal Path Technologies is now known for bridging the abyss between PC and High End Audio. This they have accomplished with the Decco, a 50wpc hybrid tube/chip-amp with internal DAC. They also design and build Era loudspeakers. Today we evaluate both.

When you enter a store with large assortment of NotePal devices, there is a great chance that you will pay more attention on X1 model. Although entire NotePal series is nicely designed, this model stands out with its attractiveness. As its name associates, NotePal X1 is stylized in letter X shape, which with black coloring gives a mystic note to this device. Upper surface is made of metal mesh which ensures certain level of cooling even when the cooling blower is not working. It is designed for cooling laptops of 12-15.4” display size…

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master NotePal X1 SHOPPING & PRICING

In wind tunnels, stacks of thin aluminum honeycomb cells are used to straighten the airflow for aerodynamic experiments. The tightly packed cells have little air resistance, yet as turbulent air moves through it is forced into a more laminar flow pattern. This is the premise behind Nexus' BeamAir series of hexagonal computer fan airflow straighteners. The small plastic honeycomb devices attach to the back of any thickness of 120mm or 92/80mm fans.

Today we’re going to look at two mini USB drives, the Corsair Voyager Mini and the Super Talent Pico. Both of these drives are smaller than most USB drives on the market but still facilitate the storage of large amounts of data with both drives available with 8GB of space.

The video card is one of the most overlooked pieces of our computer components when it comes to cooling it. Most people think the stock or original cooler is sufficient enough to keep this part of the computer cool. The folks over at Arctic Cooling think that the stock (original) cooler is not enough to keep the most highly in demand component of our computer system cool. So they bring us the Accelero Twin Turbo, built upon an already proven design, the Accelero. The Twin Turbo still utilizes the four copper heat pipes and large aluminum fins, but the Twin Turbo adds to this design two very quiet fans. Let's turn the page and see how this VGA cooler managed to cool a video card card already proven to run 'hot', the ATI HD 4870.

The case hasn’t exactly been a joy to work with either, with a very cramped internal layout and few of the refinements like a removable motherboard tray or well thought out cable routing that can make building a system a great deal easier.

The exterior is also very uninspiring, with the blank black box looks and poor case door with its tacked on blue lit metal plate, resulting in a case that just looks at best understated but will probably come across just plain boring. While we frequently praise cases for being a blank canvas for modders, here there’s none of the style and finesse we’ve praised in the past – it’s just a featureless black box with a metal triangle and a blue light on the front.

And there’s a pretty hefty price tag involved here too, with the NZXT Whisper currently selling for around £95. In this range there is big competition from the still superlative Antec P182, available now for under £90, which bests the NZXT on literally every front, from build quality, to ease of use to overall performance.

We’ve also recently seen excellent high airflow cases like the HAF 932 (priced a bit higher at £125) become very competitive in the low noise stakes with the use of larger and larger fans meaning blades spin slower, and noise levels drop sharply, while not compromising on airflow.

If we wanted a £90-100 “blank canvas” case – every single time we’d get the Akasa Mirage. The build quality, space and design easily outweigh the extra £10 in cost.

After our time with it, the core build quality is mostly there, but the level of polish and attention to detail you’d see from bigger names like Cooler Master, Lian Li, Akasa or Antec just isn’t. This puts the NZXT in a very tough position, as it’s competing at a price point against higher quality cases from these very manufacturers and that's where it ultimately falls down. For the same money you can get a different case elsewhere with much better build quality, performance (in relation to cooling and noise), looks and features for less money, and it’s for this reason that we can’t really recommend the NZXT Whisper.

CLICK HERE FOR NZXT Whisper chassis SHOPPING & PRICING

Sapphire is back again with another specialty graphics card based on a high end ATI Radeon GPU. The newly released Sapphire Radeon HD4850 X2 2048MB graphics card incorporates a pair of Radeon HD4850 graphics processors and 2048MB of GDDR3 memory on a custom PCB to create one serious looking piece of equipment.

Sapphire is best know for taking an ATI product, and making better. It's rare that an AMD partner takes engineering into their own hands, a produces a self-made product. What's impressive is that they've decided to do so with a dual-RV770 Radeon HD 4850 X2 as their latest evolution in graphics cards. Benchmark Reviews compares performance against the GeForce 9800 GX2, CrossFireX 4850's, and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 to name a few, but add a collection of todays hottest video cards to make sure the Sapphire 11139-00-40R receives a workout.

Gelid Solutions' Silent Spirit CPU cooler is a small, lightweight, high performing heatsink for both AMD and Intel CPUs (including Intel Socket LGA1366). Its four heatpipes connect to a pure copper base and an angled block of fins to cool surrounding motherboard components. The cooler is also extremely silent with Gelid's silent 9 2mm PWM fan attached.

"Although practically every other review site has beaten us to it, it's still always a bit exciting to receive the world's most powerful graphics card at the time. We recently we had nVidia's top end offering, and this week Sapphire have been kind enough to let us take a look at theirs. This card is called the 4870 X2, and as the name implies it's 2 x 4870 GPUs on one card. It's absolutely monstrous, but does it perform as well as everyone's saying? Let's see if XSR concurs. "

"The six heatpipes travel up out of the base and around the circumference of the fins, with the outermost pipe routed through the copper section and the inside two pipes traversing the inner aluminum fins. As the heatpipes begin and end in the base it could be said there are really only three pipes, but each capable of bidirectional heat dispersal. The control knob is conveniently mounted in a space between the fins on the opposite end of the cooler."

"When the HD 4870 launched a few months back, it did come as a bit of a surprise that we couldn’t see any 1GB models on offer. Really, in this day and age it does seem weird to have such a high-end card carry only 512MB of memory.

Jump forward a few months and we finally see 1GB models coming from companies. The first one we’re going to be looking at comes from Palit and carries with it a bit more than the reference cooler and clocks."

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"The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850x2 is no doubt in my mind, a great product. For the same price as a highe-end, single GPU graphics card based on a Geforce GTX 280 ... you can now have dual GPUs, with 2Gb of DDR3 ram and performance that screams at you !!"

Every sign we've seen thus far leads us to believe that netbooks are going to be very popular this holiday shopping season. With good reason, too – they fill a void which has existed since the dawn of mobile computing. Truly cost efficient, rugged, little notebook computers with enough processing power and screen resolution to get basic tasks done – nothing more, nothing less.

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"After spending a few weeks using the NIA on Vista Ultimate 64-bit with the new 2.001 NIA drivers, I experienced some good and bad with the NIA. I started off with the Pong game that is built into the OCZ NIA software bundle. Nice, simple and a good way to give your head a work out. In fact, after about 10 minutes of flexing my head to move the pong paddle up and down..."

"Dead Space redefines the survival horror genre with a storyline that is full of suspense, intrigue and surprises. Gameplay is well done, though I don't particularly care for the third-person view, I would have rather had first person, but it works well for this game. Graphics are spectacular overall, very nicely done and fairly realistic as well. Dead Space wasn't exactly what I would call scary, but it is a gory and hellish bloodfest of carnage and death that will make any horror fan ecstatic with glee."

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“If you look at U100 and U90 when they’re closed, you wouldn’t notice any difference. But, just one look at screen and the essential difference is revealed – U90 has 8.9-inch screen which is for 1.1-inch smaller than display on earlier introduced model. As for interior is concerned, there are no bigger differences and even BIOS is the same for both models. Quite simple, it wasn’t economical to build completely new model so MSI adapted existing one with few changes in hardware components and software setup…”

Cooler Master has a long history of building some of the best enclosures on the market and they are looking to continue that tradition with the new HAF 932 full tower case. Not only does this product promise to rewrite all the rules concerning what people expect in an enclosure but it also has a great price. Is it possible for quality and a relatively low price to go hand in hand?

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"Where the platform really shines is when it does exactly what it was actually built for and that is the lower end market as well as home entertainment personal computers. In fact, it was able to gracefully play full high definition movies without a hitch. Although the case can only sport a single hard disk drive, which may seem like an issue for some, with the newest drives capable of storing a healthy 1.5 terabytes of data this shouldn't appear as a problem for the vast majority. Some might be worried by the small 200W power supply, but it proved to be up to task even under a fully loaded processor rated at 89W with an overclocked chipset."

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In a nutshell, the Core i7 920 is an overclocking monster and it delivers industry leading video encoding, image compressing, thread munching behemoth and a great value CPU. However, it sits in an expensive new platform that sniffles at games, still. Most of us will want to wait this launch out and see what happens as DDR3 kits drop in price and new X58 boards are launched.

When corporate funds are tight, companies find new ways to reduce operating costs wherever they can. As a network administrator for several small and medium businesses, I'm used to seeing pedestal servers with expensive Windows Server edition Operating Systems running for the sole purpose of serving files out to the workgroup or domain. These environments have made it necessary to look for money-saving opportunities elsewhere in the office environment. A few years back Network Attached Storage server hit the scene with a price tag comparable to the alternative, but the NAS products offered in today's market are far superior and cost much less than before. QNAP offers many affordable NAS server solutions for every department size, and their Turbo Station TS-509 Pro delivers feature-rich functionality to the enterprise environment. In this article, Benchmark Reviews te! sts the performance of the 5-drive hot-swappable SATA Gigabit NAS server.

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"I think we are lucky to have such a robust and stable motherboard this early on in the Core i7 game. The ASUS P6T Deluxe has shown up at a couple of retailers between $313 and $336 in North America, but keep in mind the Intel X58 chipset nor the Intel Core i7 processors have officially launched yet. That will come later in November. The ASUS P6T Deluxe proved to be a joy to work with and was one of the easier overclocking experiences I have ever had. There is not much more to say beyond the P6T is stable, fast, and feature rich. Oh yeah, did we mention being above to run 12GB of RAM easily at DDR3-1600?"

Over the past few years, nVidia have become used to holding the performance crown firmly on their brow. With the recent introduction of ATI as the Queen Bee of the GPU world with their 4 series of cards, especially with the 4870 x2 taking the top performance award, nVidia have been playing catchup. With that said, the green camp have released a wide range of mid-range cards with very low price points, in an attempt to draw in the mid to budget range crowd. Today we have the 9400GT from Zotac, a company that's reputation has grown steadily over the last few years. Will this card stand up to our scrutiny?

"Pretty much any game you play will allow for a minimum of 2xMSAA with virtually no hit to the FPS so graphical quality has a good start to begin with. The quad-pipe cooling setup does very well, keeping things cool and quiet; we saw a maximum load temperature of only 58C when overclocked and while we could hear the card, we had to stop to listen for it specifically among the other sounds of our watercooled test system. At idle the card is silent. The cooling solution also looks great in an industrial fashion and the pipework and clear plastic approach makes it a great accessory in a watercooled setup even if the card itself isn't watercooled."

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Our test bench will play host to the Kingmax FLGE85F-B8MF7 or better yet their Long DIMM DDR3-1600. The Kingmax offering is capable of this while operating at 1.9 volts. And to protect the modules the kit wears a set of black aluminum heat spreaders that will remind you of the Corsair Dominators and the Patriot Viper. But we will see if the Kingmax set can set itself apart when it comes down to performance and overclocking.

The new Leadtek GeForce GTX 260 Extreme+ comes with an increased shader count of 216 compared to 196 on the regular GTX 260. Leadtek has also overclocked the card for some free extra performance. In our testing the GTX 260 Extreme+ delivers excellent performance per Watt claiming a number one spot in the test group.

A couple of months back, I was looking into getting some additional speed out of my Gen-1 Mac Pro (1.1 to be exact). I had upgraded the RAM to 6GB and installed the 8800GT for best gaming performance, however, loading times were still high even with my 400GB SATA2 drive.

"Video card vendors always seem to manufacture graphic cards that have undersized heatsinks with incredibly loud fans and that are almost as hot as the surface of the sun. One would think that after decades of building these things they'd take a hint and build reference cards with thermal solutions that are adequate for stock performance. However, due to this inadequacy many other companies have found a market to fill and Thermalright is a company with proven designs and great success. The Thermalright T-Rad2 picks up where the reference design left off..."

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" Today I've got the 4th Generation Apple iPod nano, the 8gb version, in the limited edition color Product Red. The iPod has taken over the mp3 player market leaving many companies struggling to compete with it, it was basically an instant success with the launch of the first version, and since then it has all been uphill for Apple and the iPod line of products. The new nano offers a large LCD viewing area, an accelerometer for games and navigation, along with of course being very portable and well made."

"ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition is probably one of the most fully loaded socket 1366 motherboards to arrive on the market for the Core i7 processors, based on Intel X58 chipset with ICH10R south bridge chip. Features not found on most competing motherboards include a small 2.5" LCD display for overclocking options, three x16 PCI Express slots, support for SLI (finally), support for SAS hard disk drives, an impressive 16-phase voltage regulator circuit and several other features common to high-end boards from ASUS, like Express Gate (which allows you to immediately load an internet browser and Skype even without a hard disk drive installed), passive heatsinks with heat-pipes for the chipset and voltage regulator circuit and solid aluminum Japanese capacitors. Let's take a look on this motherboard and what you should expect from it."

"This Black Edition video card from XFX comes pre-overclocked. That's a good thing for the folks who either don't know how to overclock or the people who just want something better than the normal cards. Manufacturers know this since the bulk of the market is not this crowd. Now you have the gamers, enthusiasts and hardcore benchmark junkies that will make the card scream for mercy. Overclocking abilities on the factory clock speeds are many times a good indicator that the card will do well when the cooling is improved and the voltage mods have been put into place. So how well does this card from XFX do on air? Pretty well actually. On the Core speed only the EVGA GTX260 FTW had a higher GPU core and shader clock speed. When you add in the additional processing cores, the performance of the XFX Black addition is almost as good as the well clocked GTX280 in the comparison list. I was able to coax an additional 76MHz out of the GPU core,111MHz more out of the memory and 121MHz more from the shader cores. Add the additional clock speeds to a card that is already almost as fast as the GTX280 and you have a lot of performance to play with. This translates into additional frames per second for the gamer, additional points per day for the people running distributed computing projects and last but not least, reduced time to compress video when using the GPU."

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Just over a year ago, Asus launched its Eee PC series of notebooks, prompting quick competition and innovation throughout the market. Today Benchmark Reviews looks at one of the newest additions to the Eee family, the Eee PC 1000H 160GB. Like the Eee PC 900 series, the 1000H is based on the Intel Atom platform, and features the Atom N270 processor. However, instead of an 8.9", the 1000H boasts a 10.2" screen as well as a 160GB hard drive. Perhaps the biggest improvement, though, is the use of a 6-cell battery. In this review, we'll take a closer at the Asus Eee 1000H netbook and find out how it compares to more conventional laptops.

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Titan are one of the oldest companies specializing in computer cooling equipment. They are not very well known in the US yet, but during the past few years their production capacity and R&D capabilities have increased many times over, making them one of the better known cooler makers in Europe and Asia. The product which we have here today is the NK75TZ, a huge heatpipe cooler aimed towards those who want great performance but silent operation at the same time.

"You may not have heard it used before, but gelid can actually be found in a dictionary. The word literally means very cold or icy. How fitting for a company who specializes in PC cooling components to use it as their corporate name. Gelid Solutions originated earlier this year as a Hong Kong based company under Swiss management. They manufacture CPU coolers, fans and other thermal-related computer hardware for gamers and silent enthusiasts. Today they have sent us a product sample for review, the Gelid Silent Spirit."

"Sitting near the very top of Mio's Moov line, the $250 Moov 310 occupies the most powerful and feature-rich territory in the company's otherwise budget-oriented GPS brand. Despite its affordable $250 price tag, it offers a very well-rounded feature set, friendly interface, and excellent tracking performance. As one of the first devices launches since Mio's merger with Navman, it also benefits from new and refined software from the partner company."

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“ASUSTek Company has showed lately that they know their stuff, even when it comes to AMD solutions. After launching of 790GX chipset and premiere of new SB750 and its possibilities, almost all motherboard manufacturers, and among them Asus of course, introduced their solutions attended for enthusiasts. Those were motherboards with AMD 790FX chipset combined with SB750 that has ACC (Advanced Clock Calibration). Just as reminder of possibilities of SB750 we should mention that it allows higher overclock margin than in cases of previous SB600 and SB700. This kind of combination that brings solid overclock platform, support for QUAD-FIRE and many other possibilities, impose itself as ideal solution for AMD enthusiasts…"

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"The new Radeon HD 4850 X2 that is being launched today is simply two Radeon HD 4850 video cards in a single board working in CrossFire mode, being a cheaper option to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which is the most expensive video card available today, and priced to compete with GeForce GTX 280. How is the performance of Radeon HD 4850 X2 compared to GeForce GTX 280 and other high-end video cards? Does it provide a good cost/benefit ratio? That is what we will see in our review."

“It always makes me feel better knowing and being able to report that a PSU can live up to its recommendation. The OCZ 600 Watt ModXStream Power Supply is a very, very worthy choice. The price seems to be on par with the 600 Watt range, though just a bit on the top end at around $110. If anything makes it worth the buy, consider the efficiency and power produced.”

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In the past few weeks we here at Pro-Clockers have reviewed all the latest ATI offering so we find it only fitting to review the HD 4850 X2, a card that I feel is "a little more fitting." The 4850 X2 is a dual GPU two gig of ram solution all on one PCB just like it's big brother the 4870 X2. And these are not enough numbers let me give you a few more. The clocks are preset at 625MHz on the core, 1000MHz for the memory and 800 stream processors times two. Enough of the preliminaries lets get into some testing.

"On the whole, overclocked GTX 260 cards with 216 stream processors catch up with the GTX280 in a number of tests. So users will again have to painfully choose what to buy. Why cannot NVIDIA make products for crystal-clear price segments that wouldn't overlap?"

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"Overall, the Radeon HD 4830 is a great all-rounder that offers very good performance and excellent value. Costing around £90.00 ($140), it's cheaper than the HD 4850, but you get performance that nearly matches it. This card is perfect for any gamer who's on a budget."

"The OCZ Gladiator Max has 4 'U' shaped heatpipes giving it 8 vertical pipes for dissipating heat. The fins on the Gladiator Max are quite thick and even feel sturdy. It would have to take a decent hit to bend one of the fins on this cooler. The base of the Gladiator Max has an interesting feature to it. There are 4 pillars that are part of the cast aluminum base and are connected to the first 4 fins. This should help wick heat away from the aluminum base..."

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" Gelid Solutions has sent me over the Silent Spirit CPU cooler for review, it's their first foray into the CPU cooling game and it looks to be a decent performer overall. The Silent Spirit is a small cooler that's meant to keep things cool and quiet at the same time, the cooler features four copper heatpipes with an angled heatsink design so it should fit in just about any case and configuration."

Being priced at reasonable $419, the Sapphire HD 4850 X2 is designed to take some market share from NVIDIA's GTX 280. The card features 2 GB of GDDR3 memory and comes with a custom designed cooling solution. Even though you would expect very little overclocking from a dual-GPU card, we saw an amazing 15% performance increase from overclocking without touching any fan settings.

"The R-3 Corona is the latest edition from GMC’s middle tower series. Incorporated in this new design is a very innovative idea where the optical drive (ODD) is mounted on the chassis front allowing it to operate vertically. However, how will these stylistic changes affect the performance of this particular case? Let’s find out…"

Antec has brought to the market a number of great power supplies; the NeoPower, EarthWatts, TruePower, including the TruePower Quattro, and now, the Signature series. The Signature series marks the first, of what I hope to be many more Delta based Antec power supplies. From what we have seen here today, it would definitely not be a bad mix.

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Today we are going to look at the HD4850 X2, an exclusive beast from Sapphire set to slot in directly below the class leading 4870 X2, a card which has scooped our highest awards in several reviews. We have high hopes for the new Sapphire board as the single core 4850 has been a big success in the enthusiast market with a potent combination of great value for money and strong performance.

ATI has learned that being the king of graphics means you must raise the bar for performance with each product release. The Radeon HD 4850 X2 is the latest evolution in graphics cards, and ATI delivers a product nearly as grand as their Radeon HD 4870 X2. Benchmark Reviews has been fortunate to test the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 Dual-GPU video card 11139-00-40R against a collection of todays hottest video cards available.

"Viewing your HD content has never been easier with the addition of support for four different monitors at one time. The last card I have seen to feature four DVI outputs was the Asus EAH3870X2. If you have plans on using this card with an HDMI output you can with the supplied DVI to HDMI dongle. To further expand on the HD aspect of this card, Sapphire has included an accessory pack that includes several suites of software from Cyberlink as well as a licensed copy of the latest benchmark from Futuremark. With pricing suggested in the $350 range, this card is right around the price of two separate HD4850 cards. If the Big Dog HD4870x2 is a little rich for your blood, then the Sapphire HD4850x2 will fit both the price and performance requirements for the vast majority of the public. The performance was a surprise."

Today marks the official release of the next step in Intel's march to market domination and with it they are hoping to put the competition to shame. What we get is a processor with four physical cores which through the "miracle" of Hyperthreading operates as if it has eight cores. Words like QuickPath Interconnect, Turbo Mode and Triple Channel Memory will all become familiar lexicons in no time at all since they are all integral technologies this new 45nm processor family uses.

Our review is coming out tomorrow and was delayed by a videocard driver malfunction.

Here are the rest of the reviews:

Driverheaven
Bit-tech
Overclockersclub
Overclockers.com.au
Madshrimps
Legitreviews
CPU3D
Ocinside
Techreport

This new processor is no joke. I am seeing favorable imcreases in performance even though the speed of the processor has not gone up.

What I am seeing is a freeing up of the bottlenecks that were hindering past Intel processor generations.

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Sapphire's HD 4650 Overclocked comes with a solid overclock out of the box. But during our own overclocking tests we saw an amazing untapped overclocking potential resulting in more than 20% real world performance increase. Even without overclocking this card, that's in the $70 price range, is an excellent deal considering price/performance.

Today´s hottest thing is the new ultra portable EEE laptops from Asus. Alot of companies have started to manufacture similar products but Asus is still leading in the market. What can we expect from this small little "laptop", can we game with it or it is just for surfing the net or working? Let´s take a closer look.

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"Lian Li has provided a solid entry into the home theater enclosure market with the PC-C36 MUSE. The enclosure features an attractive design that looks right at home in an entertainment cabinet, and runs almost silently."

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Like most things Apple, iPods don't come cheap, and there are many things that can go wrong. Has the battery stopped holding a charge? Maybe you dropped your iPod and cracked the LCD screen or killed the hard drive (depending on the model you own). Even the click wheel can give up the ghost. Repairs through Apple can run up to $260, which might even be more than you paid for the media player to begin with! If you're thinking there has got to be a better way to service and repair iPods, you're absolutely correct. In fact, there are several companies out there who specialize in reviving iPods, and we decided to look into one of them. Our candidate? The Pod Drop.

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"Today I will be looking at the smallest of the latest line of power supplies by Sunbeamtech, the Tuniq Potency 550 watt. With 80Plus and SLI certification, and a pair of +12V rails at 25A each, this little guy should be able to power my energy sipping Phenom rig. Will it make the trip? Read on to see!"

Here it is a few days past Halloween so it only seems fitting that we are doing a review on one of Antec's newest items, "The Antec Skeleton". This open frame design is one of the most unuque designs we have seen to date. You can be the judge of that once your finish the review.

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We've already mentioned that a reference Radeon HD 4850 X2 sticks with the clock speeds allocated to a reference Radeon HD 4850, and Sapphire's board sticks to these speeds, giving us clocks of 625MHz and 993MHz for core and memory speed respectively.

The first big surprise comes from taking a look at the length of this board's PCB - Put simply, it's bigger than both the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and GeForce GTX 280 at around 11.5 inches long (compared to 10.5" for those other parts). Make sure you have plenty of room in your case before picking up one of these monsters; we only just managed to squeeze it into our Cooler Master 690 chassis that we use for testing here.

"You've made the investment in a new HDTV, but ask yourself: Are you really getting the most for your money? Something many new HDTV owners might not realize is that they likely aren't enjoying the best possible picture quality right out of the box. In fact, unbeknownst to certain users, some may not even be viewing programs in high-definition! In this short guide, we'll help you make sure that you're not only enjoying a high-def image, but also provide essential tips on eking every last bit of performance out of your HD television set."

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Swiftech has been a leading innovator in the computer cooling business almost from the very beginning. And by offering the computer enthusiast nothing but the best in quality and performance, they have earned themselves a reputation that's second to none among water cooling enthusiasts. Today we're going to be looking at their newest release in their water cooling line of products, the APOGEE Extreme Performance CPU Water block. The APOGEE GTZ replaces their out going APOGEE GTX water block and it's designed to offer the end-user a high performance solution to Swiftech's own top model.

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Here are some links from the new Intel i7 Nehalem based core rippign around the net. From personal experience, this is an AMAZING CPU.

Benchmarkreviews
Bjorn3d
Hothardware
Tweaktown
Techgage
Tbreak

We will be releasing OUR coverae on this new and exciting processor tomorrow. These guys kick some major ass.

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“At present, extended ATX cases are very limited and cost a pretty premium. Only a handful are available with the cheapest coming in around the $100 mark and it doesn't have near the storage or expansion capabilities. Anything offering the same features or close to that of the Whisper are going to run you $170 and more. That's something definitely worth considering if you're in the market for a quiet, spacious super case like the NZXT Whisper.”

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“Leather is a very interesting material. From master of survivor in wild nature up to regular bar visitor, every one of them found something suitable in animal derma. Where is on this scale someone that likes leather stripe under monitor screen? There is no disputing about tastes, so we’ll stick to facts. It is brown colored and that is, if anything less, strange color selection for a computer component. Over the screen and its frame is put firm safety plastic, for which Asus has nothing but praise…”

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“Palit is one of the few companies that manufacturers both ATI and Nvidia cards, so today we pit Palit’s GeForce 9800GTX+ against their Radeon 4850 Sonic in a no-hold’s-barred match, complete with all the latest and greatest games that have just hit the market. We even busted our butts to include Call of Duty 5 Beta results, a game that was just released on the PC. Needless to say, bleary-eyed and suffering from caffeine withdrawal, we live for this stuff.”

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"Revoltec isn't very well known in the United States by most people, many gamers and enthusiasts know them though for their excellent products for gaming and PC related stuffs and accessories. So today I've got the Revoltec Fightboard Advanced Gaming Keyboard for review, it's got the ability to program 20 separate macros, interchangeable keys and multimedia/internet keys as well. The Fightboard is a great choice for a gaming keyboard and a decent general use on as well."

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“Imagine that you are about to go on a vacation or a business trip, and that instead of carrying number of different chargers for your laptop, camera and PDA, you can bring only one device. If you like this vision, than Prestigio Power Bank 501 is the right choice for you. In simple, this is external battery which can be used for supplying all kinds of power consumers. This is a good quality device that seems firm with dominant black color and a couple of silver details. Bigger part of front surface has nice piano finish with dominant Prestigio logo…”

Having successfully challenged NVIDIA in the $150+ market, AMD/ATI releases a new member of the 4800 series family- the HD 4830. We find out if ATI can further erode more market share from NVIDIA.

"Today I've got the bgears b-Tarantula 650Watt Power Supply for review, it's a modular style PSU but it's a unique style of modular connections. Most modular PSUs have cables that plug into a socket on the PSU, but the b-Tarantula has a short cable with the female connection on it coming from the PSU, this allows for making connections in tight cases easier. The b-Tarantula also features a very quiet 135mm fan to keep it cool and quiet as well "

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With games ramping up their requirements and with the never-ending needs of enthusiasts on the rise, it seems like everyone is looking for a more powerful GPU that offers speed they need now, and that little extra 'umph' for future proofing. Others are just looking for blazing fast frame rates with immersive graphics, while a select few are looking not only for blazing graphics performance, but a world record class GPU.

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"For this review I will be taking a look at a product from a company that whilst not totally unknown unless you are into modifying your pc's you may not have heard of as a lot, but not all, of their products are used for modifying pc's. The item I am reviewing is a hard drive docking station the Udock from AC Ryan, yes that's correct a docking station NOT a caddy, all will be revealed."