june 30 2010

reviewed the Thermaltake Armor A90

This case is aimed at gamers and comes with a new and good looking design, has a Solid construction and an Excellent design. There's not enough room for large graphics cards and the Tool-less system for Hard drives is no good. There's Plenty of space around the mainboard and the processor gets a good airflow.

The interior has not changed in the last year, it uses the same interior as the Element T and thus has the same shortcomings. The Armor A90 is a good chassis, with cool looks, fans that are are positioned well, nifty window and I/O on two seperate locations are probably the reasons one would go for this chassis. One aspect you should keep in mind however, while there is plenty of space for large CPU coolers, your VGA card length is limited to 260 mm so make sure that your gaming gear will fit. ....More

june 29 2010

hardocp reviewed the HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo X

Conclusion:

The HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo X is an out of the box overclocking experience that is cooler and quieter than a standard card. Under load it consumes a lot of power but at idle it was the same as the reference graphic card. The price tag of $100 above the price of the reference card is a huge overpay, in this price range there are better options.

Temperature Testing

With the NVIDIA system monitor tools and the Overdrive utility in the Catalyst Control Center the reviewer had a look at the GPU temperature. The difference with the standard 5870 is double what they claimed 81 degrees Celsius instead of 91 degrees under full load. After overclocking temperatures were still 6 degrees cooler than the reference card. The iCooler V Turbo X also draws more power when under load so the result is even better.....More

june 28 2010

tweaktown reviewed the AOC iF23

AOC makes budget displays in the sense of cheap without loosing quality.

AOC say the monitor is designed in almost a photo frame design and looks really nice and elegant. A little stand is at the back of the display which can be twisted to adjust the angle. Connectivity is a little lacking with only DVI and VGA being present. After installing the software the reviewer couldn't get the OSD up and running. It turned out that the i-Menu software wassn't compatible with Windows 7. ....More

may 26 2010

tbreak reviewed the Sony VAIO Z117

This notebook has a Core i5-520 CPU running @2.4GHz, 4GB DDR3-1066 RAM, 802.11n Wireless Networking, an NVIDIA GT330 discrete video card with 1GB GDR RAM as well as Intel HD graphics and a 128GB Solid State Disk running in RAID 0 mode. Next to that it has a 13 inch LED screen (1600x900) and a carbon-fibre body. This laptop is incredibly light and weighs under 1.4kg.

Connectors:

Left side connectors: power connector, Gigabit lan, HDMI out and two USB ports seperated by an Express Slot in the middle.

Right side connectors: USB port, DVD Writer and the power switch.

Front: SD and Sony's Memory Stick, audio input/output jacks and a Wi-Fi on/off

New features:

MBP, the keyboard now has a backlight for people that work under darker conditions. Above the keyboard there is a three-way switch that lets you select between the NVIDIA GPU and the Intel GPU or automatically let the system decide using Auto position.....More

may 25 2010

techspot reviewed the Inno3D GTX 480 iChiLL

Based on the Fermi third-generation Streaming Multiprocessor architecture, the GeForce GTX 480 boasts 480 CUDA cores, twice the shader power of the GT200 architecture used by the GeForce GTX 280. Not only has the number of cores doubled, but so have the number of ROP units with 48 total. 8x MSAA performance has been optimized through enhanced ROP compression and texture units are also said to have been redesigned for improved efficiency and better real-world performance. In total, there are 60 of them.

Conclusion:

The Inno3D GTX480 iChill Black Series graphics card is a beast overclocker will be rewarded because of the water cooling. Out of the box it's 3% faster than a reference card. When OCed you'll find performance gains of 10 up to 20%. There was a lack of voltage adjustments and overclocking software support. The Inno3D GTX480 iChill Black Series is just a reference card with a water- block slapped on, the Inno3D GTX480 iChill pricing will probably app. $150 over the price of a GTX 480 standard card, which can be considered a hefty additional charge to pay.....More

may 22 2010

reviewed the Palit GeForce GTX 470 Dual Fan

Palit uses a dual-fan cooling setup instead of the single fan on the NVIDIA heatsink. Another change is the voltage regulation circuitry which has been designed with cost in mind.

Conclusion:

This video card is cheaper than reference design cards and has a great overclocking potential. Only two outputs can be active at the same time and next to that it's noisy under load and has a higher power consumption than the reference card. During gaming there is an increase in power draw of app. 20 Watts. A higher power consumption means more heat which needs to be handled by the heatsink, the Palit card is running a few degrees Celsius cooler the the reference model. The dual fan design has about the same noise as the reference cooler in both idle and load.

Overclocking:

The GPU core was OCed @740 MHz (22% increase) and the GDR5 RAM @925 MHz (11% increase).....More

may 21 2010

cce reviewed the Samsung NB30

This 10.1 inch (1024X600) netbook comes with an ATOM N450, 1GB DDR2, 250GB HDD, Bluetooth and weighs 2.2 Kg. The NB30 is avalable in black and in blue.

Conclusion:

The NB30 is exactly as you would expect: Small, light, Intel Atom, 10 inch screen and a long battery life. It has protective finish, a free fall sensor and is semi- water resistance. Windows 7 Starter edition isn't the most appealing operating system, but it runs fairly well given the unit's hardware specifications, 2 GIGs of memory would be better of course.

Benchmarks:

Crystalmark 2004R3 and PC Mark Vantage. The PC Mark vantage bench of 1109 was on par with other netbooks.

Compared to:

This netbook was not compared to another notebook-netbook in the benchmarks.

Photo editing: The NB30 handled large files fine, though only one at a time, it's OK for Small jobs like color correction and basic editing.....More

may 18 2010

overclock3d reviewed the ASUS MATRIX 5870 P-2DIS-2GD5

This RoG branded graphics card with a special fan, has the Voltage Tweak Technology with Up to 17% performance increase.

Conclusion:

There can be no doubt that the Matrix Platinum is a performance powerhouse. It's the fastest stock card around. In short ASUS have put everything possible together so if you really want to push it to the maximum, the card shouldn't let you down at the vital moment. You'll have to pay for this feature set though. The cooler is alright, but not as hgood as the Frozr 2 or similar air cooler. So what you need to ask yourself is, is a Super ML cap, a reset button and a logo that changes colour enough to justify the extra amount of money you'll have to sped over a reference HD5870?

Overclocking:

The reviewers finally settled on 1004MHz for the GPU Core.....More

may 15 2010

kitguru reviewed the XFX ATI Radeon HD 5870 Black Edition

This card is a 1GB model with a 900mhz Core clock and the GDDR5 memory runs at 5Gbps.

Conclusion:

XFX has released an overclocked card that outperforms the reference card and also runs cooler and more quiet. This is probably one of the best HD5870's on the market and is next to that a very good overclocker.

Overclocking:

An OC result of 985MHz for the GPU core and 1340MHz for the GDR5 memory, for the GPU core this is almost a 10% increase.....More

may 14 2010

samsung announced the Samsung P580 series

The P580 business laptop

This notebook comes with Windows 7 professional and is based on the Intel HM55 Express mobile chipset. It has been shown to the public in Vienna and London, the shown model had a 15.6-inch 1,366 x 768 LED-lit anti-glare, matte screen and a keyboard with numeric keypad.

The 'inside' has a Core i3 or i5 CPU and the IGP graphics an NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 1GB GDDR3 memory....More

may 13 2010

dragonsteelmods reviewed the Sparkle GeForce GT240 SXT240512D5-NM

Compared to:

GeForce GTX 460.

Conclusion:

This is a cheap graphics card that needs no HDMI adapter and is quiet, so this might be a good choice for a home thatre PC, it needs no extra power connectors and has a low power draw. The gaming results were a bit diappointing, it's not fit for modern games @ high resolution. The reviewers rated it 4.5 out of 5.

Benchmarks:

3D mark Vantage, 3D mark2006, Crysis, Power Consumption.....More

may 11 2010

tweaktown reviewed the Toshiba Satellite L555D-S7930

If you are in the market for an AMD based notebook with a big screen, decent performance and a good price, the Toshiba Satellite L555D-S7930 might be right for you. The CPU is an AMD Turion II Dual-Core Mobile Processor M500 and the IPGP an ATI Radeon 4100.

Benchmarks:

iTunes MP3 to AAC, Battery Life, Movie Encoding.

3DMark Vantage was not tested on this notebook since it is not a gaming rig.

Conclusion:

This notebook isn't a multimedia machine, nor a high-powered workstation, nor a gaming rig. It is a moderately capable general use computer with a big screen for a ow price.....More

may 10 2010

fudzilla reviewed the Gainward GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5

The Gainward GTX 480 is an Nvidia Fermi GF100 GPU based video card that runs @reference clocks with 1536MB GDDR5 memory.

Overclocking:

With the fan speed @MAX this graphics cards was OCed @810MHz, without raising the voltages. Noise levels were high and there was a higher power consumption, the entire card consumes about 280W when overclocked, close to its 300W maximum power draw.

Conclusion:

This video card can beat the HD 5870 in almost every benchmark, in particular DX11 games with tessellation. Gainward's GTX 480 is the fastest single-GPU card on the market. ....More

may 8 2010

neoseeker reviewed the Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD

The HD 5870 reference design HD 5870 has been out now for a while, Gigabyte is trying to get your attention with the overclocked HD 5870 Super OverClock, but is the extra performance worth the money (app. $100) you'll have to pay for it?

Conclusion:

The HD 5870 SOC costs app. the same as the GTX 480. Often the HD 5870 Super Overclock was beaten by the Nvidia GTX 480 in the benchmarks. If you want pure performance, the GTX 480 might be a better choice for DirectX 11 titles.

The HD 5870 SOC uses less power, is cooler and runs quieter, than the GTX 480, besides that it's a far better overclocker. ....More

may 6 2010

xtremecomputing reviewed the Nexus VCT-9000

The Nexus VCT-9000 has heat pipes directly on the CPU core and is ultra quiet. The 120mm fan can be controlled between 500 and 1600 RPM creating a very low noise.

The test with the P55 Motherboard, an MSI P55-GD65 and an Intel i5 750 failed, the reviewer had better results with an AMD system.

Conclusion:

This is a good looking cooler with Excellent cooling capabilities, even at slightly lower speeds it's quiet and it gets very quiet at maximum speed. The dowside of this cooler is that it's Awkward to fit on an Intel system. As expected the Nexus VCT-9000 was better than the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro64, 5 degrees Celsius cooler @idle and @full load. The excellent results made the rather awkward fitting worthwhile and there's no doubt it can keep a CPU with a higher TDP under control.....More

may 5 2010

hothardware reviewed the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324

This ultraportable notebook is part of the T135 series thin-and-light notebooks with a good price/performance balance. This particular model has an AMD Turion Neo X2 L625 1.6GHz, ultra-low voltage processor, which is faster than an Atom CPU. AMD Turion Neo X2-powered models cost app. $100 less than the Intel models.

This 13.3-inch(1366x768) lightweight laptop of app. 3.8 pounds has a glossy black coating that attracts fingerprints. There's a small bulge at the back because of the battery. There's no built-in DVD/Blu-Ray ReWriter.

Connectors:

Left side: eSATA/USB port for charging a cell phone, MP3 player, or other device. HDMI out, VGA port and security lock slot.....More

may 4 2010

hardwarecanucks reviewed the Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD

Conclusion:

This card is an extremely good overclocker that allows voltage tweaking and comes with with low temperatures. The power consomption is very high, the software is unintuitive and the air cooler is quite loud.

Overclocking: Gigabyte's OC Guru Software: Current (in Amps) as well as GPU power consumption as well as energy savings show completely out of wack numbers. It's relatively easy to increase core and memory speed as well as adjust voltages to a maximum of 0.10V over standard.....More

may 3 2010

pureOC reviewed the ASUS GeForce GTX480 ENGTX480-2DI-1536MD5

Design: The look of the cooler is quite good, but nothing flashy either. While design is a personal matter, the GTX 480 looks rather stylish, and it should fit in most computer cases.

Benchmarks:

Gaming tests were run at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200.

3D Mark 2006, 3D Mark Vantage, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Resident Evil 5, Crysis Warhead, FurMark, FRAPS GPU-Z

Temperatures wer tested with FurMark.....More