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Hands-on Review: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 260 Graphics Card

Many graphics cards drop in price after a given time like the GTX 280 for example, well it looks like the GTX 260 graphics card is going down the same road. Read on for the low-down on the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 260 Graphics Card.

With the GTX 260, NVIDIA really have managed to tie up most of the price brackets. Working in AUD, the under $150 bracket has the 9600 GT, $150 - $200 you can pick up a 9800 GT, $200 - $300 will get you a 9800 GTX+, over $300 can get you the GTX 260 while at the $500+ mark you can get yourself a GTX 280.

Really, the only price bracket that isn’t covered is around the $400 mark. We’re sure NVIDIA have something up their sleeves, though. The current price on the GTX 260 is pretty attractive these days, thanks to recent price drops and its performance against the other NVIDIA cards giving us a good idea of where the card sits on the market.

If you do have the money and you’re happy to spend it, we would probably suggest the GTX 260 over the 9800 GTX+; this for a few reasons, mainly. We have some more memory, it’s built on newer technology and it’s the most recent NVIDIA release which makes us tend to think that NVIDIA are going to be working hard to increase performance on these cards more so then the older models through the means of driver updates.

While the GIGABYTE card doesn’t offer us a huge bundle or anything, it does what it’s supposed to do; give us a good performing graphics card for a decent price. By avoiding all the extras like HDMI convertors and games, GIGABYTE can keep the price down.

The GTX 260 is definitely a good card in this price bracket and for people on SLI based motherboards we know that two of these cards are just going to absolutely fly along for only slightly more than a single GTX 280.

Read the full 18-page hands-on review of the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 260 Graphics Card over on TweakTown

Meet ‘the world’s most eco-friendly Monitor’ from LG

This new monitor from LG, the W2252TE claims its ‘the world’s most eco-friendly monitor’ as it power consumption is considerably less than that of its competitors.

For such a confident claim, it actually can back that up which some important statistics which confirm that the monitor does indeed cut power costs by a lot. Tests over at SmartPlanet concluded that the monitor used about 19.4 watts, if you compare that with the standard monitor from dell using 44.6 watts that is a very considerable difference and an impressive feature indeed.

They also said the monitor’s other aspects performed ‘above average’ and contained all the features that you would expect in a standard LCD.

There is no information on pricing for this monitor yet, but I’m sure details will be announced soon since its due to hit retail stores next month. Head on over to SmartPlanet for more details for this product.

Source: Read

Hands-on: Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 in CrossfireX

There have been so many graphics cards released over the last few months like the one we talked about the other day which was the GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850, now there is the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 in CrossfireX that boasts two HD 4870 cores on a single PCB. Will this be the graphic cards of all graphic cards?

The HD 4870 X2 performance isn’t really much of a surprise; it’s two HD 4870s clocked at exactly the same speed on a single PCB. For the most part we see the card performing almost in line with a pair of standard 4870s.

The thing is, though, that the P45 chipset from Intel at the moment is one of the hottest pieces of kit, thanks to the massive overclocks it’s achieving. The only problem with the chipset is that it doesn’t come with two PCI-E x16 slots; most configurations are x8 / x8 which actually hits the performance of two cards quite considerably.

If you find yourself a bit of an AMD fanboy (or fangirl) in the graphics card department, a single HD 4870 is still going to score behind a single GTX 280 consistently, meaning that you’re not buying the fastest graphics card available. And while a pair of HD 4870s would be great, the performance hit from not having a x16 / x16 configuration is just too much to justify the associated cost vs. performance increase.

Thanks to the release of the HD 4870 X2, this is something you don’t need to worry about anymore. It really is great news for people who want a super fast graphics card solution from AMD in their P45 rig.

Unfortunately Crossfire X still has issues, but hopefully the AMD driver team is still working hard on new drivers. It’s not something that we would rush out and do at the moment, or even recommend to most people.

The HD 4870 X2 is an excellent card and it really gives you the chance to buy a P45 board confidently. With the HD 4870 X2 I can now build a new system that will overclock extremely well, thanks to the ability of using the very fast P45 platform. It’s also an added bonus for a lot of people in that it’s cheaper than its X48 brother.

There wasn’t really anything else AMD could do with the HD 4870 X2; no doubt over the coming weeks we will see companies overclock the card and hopefully we will see companies like ASUS go for a new cooling arrangement just to mix it up a bit more. But on a whole, AMD have done a lot right with this card, including the fact that they didn’t downclock the core or the memory from the already very impressive HD 4870.

Like we said before, Crossfire X still has some issues, but the ability for big performance is there with a minimum FPS count of 25 in World in Conflict at 2560 x 1600 with 4x AA and 16x AF. I think my own personal mission over the coming days or weeks will be to crack that 30 FPS minimum mark with a pair of HD 4870 X2s in hand. With a bit of overclocking on both the CPU and the graphics cards, it should be doable.

Without forgetting the company behind the sample, Sapphire have done a decent job with the package by including a number of applications, including a full version copy of 3DMark Vantage.

The HD 4870 X2 is going to quickly become a popular card among people at launch and hopefully can allow AMD to become a fearsome force in the graphics card arena once again over the next 12 months.

Now we just have to see how NVIDIA are going to retaliate; it’s doubtful that they’re just going to sit back and watch AMD enjoy the sales of their new card.

Read the full 18-page review over on TweakTown

High powered Intel Atom vs. cheaper VIA Nano CPU

When people talk about CPUs for their PCs we often talk about the high powered ones like Intel, but we never talk about the cheaper ones like VIA ones. I am not certain if anyone has ever done a comparison of the High powered Intel Atom vs. cheaper VIA Nano processor, but the guys over at Tweaktown have.

Both are high powered, but as wel know the Intel is the more exspensive of the two. Many of us will not want to take the risk with the lesser known VIA Nano CPU, but Tweaktown give us all the details to help us make that choice. Here are their final thoughts “Well, it’s clear the battle for the budget and low power PC market is on. VIA has had driven this home for some time with its EPIA motherboards and now it looks like VIA is able to really push this with Nano. While it may have seemed like VIA finally had some competition, Intel really hasn’t given us much to get excited about.

It’s nice to see Intel has taken up the challenge to introduce a power efficient CPU like Atom with a companion chipset platform. However, a little more thought could have gone into its R&D. First off, the in-order design of the CPU severely limits its processing abilities. Its single channel memory approach really cripples it as well, especially when the IGP has to suck a portion of the system memory and bandwidth in order to operate. Add to this the limiting of peripherals with 10/100 Ethernet only and no HDMI or DVI-out for the IGP, making the Atom a bit too constrictive for a real HTPC market.

Bringing our attention onto VIA; they’ve done it again. Though, not surprisingly, they have had over six years to perfect the mini-ITX standard as well as having quite a long time to refine the CPU process to increase its processing power without raising the amount of power drawn. In fact, Nano doubles the performance of C7, adds 64-bit instructions yet consumes less power.

The platform for the Nano is extremely flexible. VIA hasn’t put any constraints on itself with DVI and HDMI being possible as well as discrete VGA, HD audio and Gigabit LAN inclusions and a plethora of expansion possibilities with the CF card and Mini-PCI slot. VIA undeniably has a winner on its hands here.

Hands-on: GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Card

Now this looks like it could be something special, welcome to the stunning GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, the question is “Is this the card that has put AMD/ATI back on the graphics card map?

The GIGABYTE HD 4850, like every other reference design HD 4850 carries with it good performance and an excellent price to performance ratio. We can see against the mid-range 9600 GT at the lower resolution there isn’t much difference. As we increase the load on the card by upping the resolution or turning on AA and AF, the HD 4850 really begins to shine against the competition.

Inside the package we have everything we need, from a Crossfire bridge to a DVI to HDMI adapter. It would have been nice to have seen a full version game included in the package, but it doesn’t seem to be something that many ATI partners are doing at the moment.

If you’re looking for a good valued HD 4850 that goes fast and doesn’t cost much money, the GIGABYTE HD 4850 is a good choice. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but this helps keep price down and means that you can enjoy high frame rates at a decent resolution for a good price.

Let us know what you think of the GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850.

Read the full 18 page review over on TweakTown

Intel’s Nehalem CPU to be called Core i7

Intel has said that their next-generation Nehalem will be given the name Intel Core i7. The new CPU will enter production in the fourth quarter. As with most of Intel’s processors, there will be a whole range of Core i7’s. However; Intel has not given any details as to the model ranges.

Intel has said that the model numbers used will be the same as they do with their other processors. The new Intel Core i7 CPU’s will be used in high end desktop computers, with a black label version for the highest-end “Extreme Edition.

These processors will contain two to eight cores along with a 4-instruction-wide ISA and two-way simultaneous multithreading. The new Intel Core i7 CPU’s have some great additions, like QuickPath interconnect, an integrated memory controller and up to 25 Gbytes/s per link. The Processors also comes with a new 8-Mbyte shared level 3 cache

On August 19, Intel will be talking about the Nehalem, as well as discussing their Larrabee graphics card at the Intel Developer Forum at San Francisco.

It looks as though the Core i7 is yet another leap ahead in the world of CPU’s, AMD now have a lot of ground to cover.

Source

Hands-on: GIGABYTE GA MA78GM S2H 780G Motherboard

This is the GIGABYTE GA MA78GM S2H 780G motherboard, and the performance is on par with 780G boards, but its ability to overclock makes it a much better option for a HTPC with some kick. HDMI, eSATA and FireWire make this the ultimate HTPC board.

Tweak Town have given this motherboard a full hands-on review over 13 pages, and in their final thoughts they said, “Overall, the 780G chipset is extremely impressive; that much is certain. However, it’s usually put into cut-down boards using the Micro-ATX format. While this makes for a great HTPC, some of the potential of the 780G chipset is left unused.

GIGABYTE has done a fantastic job with this board. While it’s aimed at the HTPC users and even the office environments, it still has a bit of kick in it in regards to overclocking.

While it’s not able to push the boundaries like that of Core 2, it’s still able to give the AMD platform a kick in the pants and we know that AMD is no where near as easy to overclock as Intel since there are more tweaks needed to get them to run in a stable fashion”.

Read the 13 page review.

Intel Larrabee Chip Update

We learned yesterday that Intel is to launch something new to the graphics market by 2010. The product is codenamed Larrabee and will be all set to go head to head with some of the other big names in graphics cards.

Not much is known at the moment about Larrabee however: Intel will address that at SIGGRAPH 2008 on 12th August. Intel will give us an update and more details about Larrabee, while there they will describe some of the features and its capabilities.

Many are saying that it is a mistake to say that Larrabee is a GPU, but Intel does claim that it can do it all. We will just have to wait until Intel gives us more information and show off Larrabee.

Intel will find it hard to make a dent in ATI and NVIDIA’s market place, as they own about 98 percent of the graphics market. Intel does have something going for them though, deep pockets and great resources.

What do you think we should call Larrabee, a GPU or a GCPU? That stands for capable processing unit, bit of a mouthful though.

Source

Will Intel Larrabee Details change gaming history?

Not sure if you have heard about Intel releasing details about a brand new chip which is going to be aimed at the gaming market, but we will let you know what we know already.

Apparently the new chip will be aimed at the gaming market which we all know is already dominated by giants NVIDIA Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Santa Clara-based Intel has said that the technology is code-named Larrabee and should be available as soon as 2009 or possibly 2010.

At the moment Intel is now offering quad-core processors but plans on offering eight-core processors based on its Nehalem architecture, Larrabee is expected to have 12 to 48 such calculating engines.

Santa Clara-based NVIDIA are selling chips with 240 processors and Sunnyvale-based AMD has one with 800 processors.

Intel is revealing their information about its brand new chip just ahead of Siggraph 2008 show which will bring an around about 30,000 computer graphics and interactive technology professionals to Los Angeles from six continents.

Will Intel Larrabee Details change gaming history?

Source - Read

Hands-on Review: ASRock P43 and P45 Motherboards

First off, we talk about the ASRock P45R2000-WiFi. In all, it’s a board that while having all the bells and whistles you could want, some of them come at a price. This for instance is the dual memory support. While great for the up-graders in us, the placement of the power connectors suffer; not good at all for over-clockers.

The other major gripe is that if you want to use eSATA, you have to run two cables from the bottom of the board to the top left of the board. This not only gives you two less SATA ports internally, but again, you’re getting more cable clutter. With digital switching readily available, why wasn’t this used? - Or better yet, a two port SATA controller to run the eSATA system independently?

Last on the list of complaints is again the lack of digital switching for the PCI Express slots. If you want to use Crossfire, you have to use an old style paddle card that splits the bandwidth.

The P43R1600Twins-WiFi board, while almost a mirror image of the P45R2000-WiFi, it lacks Crossfire support. So this is eliminated for dual GPU users unless you settle on a HD 3870X2 or HD 4870X2 (when it arrives). Next; again due to the dual memory controllers, you lose out on power connector placements. And the routing of the SATA cable to run the single eSATA port means more cable clutter and the loss of one internal SATA port.

Read the full 17 page review over at TweakTown

Visiontek ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB Graphics Card

When it comes to some gamers they tend to spend a lot of money upgrading their computers, from motherboards to CPU’s just so that they can get the latest PCI-e cards. Well some go for the cheaper route and that is to purchase the latest and fastest AGP solution available.

One such solution is the Visiontek ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB, this card also has AGP support.

The GPU has a lot of life in it, so is perfect for future gamers. If funds are limited, then this is a cheap alternative to getting the ultimate gaming experience.

When you first unpack the Visiontek ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB, you will find it is a little on the heavy side. The main reason for this is the oversized fully copper heatsink which has been mounted to the board. Hopefully this should keep things running cool.

The normal price for this graphics card is $300, but Woot have it for the special price of just $79.99 + $5 shipping.

Palit GeForce 9800 GT: Overclocked 512MB Sonic Version

This is an overclocked 512MB Sonic version of the Palit GeForce 9800 GT. The new 9800 GT from NVIDIA is basically the old 8800 GT. The names changed but the product is the same.

The Palit GeForce 9800 GT has aftermarket cooling, out of the box overclock, a full version game and an excellent price. There isn’t much that’s not to like about the card.

Tweak Town have given this graphics card a hands-on review over 18 pages and in their final thoughts they said “Palits decision to come straight out of the gate with an overclocked model is good news as it helps compete against the HD 4850 at stock clocks a bit better. It is very often we see it right on the tail of the HD 4850, or even passing it.

While the cooler Palit are using these days is probably becoming a bit dated, it still does an excellent job of keeping the card at a reasonable temperature, be it a bit louder than a lot of other aftermarket coolers.

It’s also nice to see that Palit have chosen to include a game in the package, which is good news for people who want to install the card and get into something that doesn’t look too bad straight off the bat.

Like we’ve already said, while the 9800 GT might be nothing more than an 8800 GT, the aggressive pricing of the card, the overclocking capability and the availability of the product make it a very strong competitor against the HD 4850. Then you add in the fact that out of the box the card is able to pass the performance of the HD 4850 in a lot of situations and it does become quite appealing.

Palit have done a good job with the 9800 GT and there’s no doubt it’s going to quickly become a popular card thanks to the aforementioned pros”.

Read the 18 page review or view other computer hardware news.

Intel Gigabit Ethernet Controllers Go Small

Intel has launched a new family of low power Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) controllers: the Intel® 82574 series. These tiny silicon packages take up 40% less space than previous generations and consume as little as 710mW in GbE mode and 300mW in 10/100 mode.

These controllers perfectly complement Intel® Atom™ Processor Z500 Series designs for small form-factor embedding computing applications in such industries as telecommunications, medical, industrial and infotainment Read more

NVIDIA 9800 GT Gigabyte vs. HD 4850 graphics card

NVIDIA seem to be releasing new graphics cards at a fast rate, this time round they have released two new GPU’s. One such card is the 9800 GT, this has been pitted against the mid-range king, the HD 4850.

The guys over at Tweaktown have pitted the two of them together; here is what their thoughts were on the two graphics cards. “After testing the card I found myself feeling nothing over the 9800 GT. It wasn’t till I actually really sat down and looked at the results here and compared them to the HD 4850 that was I becoming more impressed with what the cheaper 9800 GT had to offer over the HD 4850. Read more

ZEROtherm’s flagship CPU cooler; the Nirvana NV120 Premium

This is the ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 Premium and it’s the brands flagship CPU cooler. The high initial cost and poor acoustics hurt the cooler, but otherwise its another must have since it performs very well. The launch of the ZEN 120 hurts the NV120 since the ZEN actually performs better at lower cost.

Tweak Town has given the Nirvana NV120 Premium a seven page hands-on review and this is what they said in their final thoughts “If this article was a benchmark on build quality, I would put the ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 Premium near the top of the list. Unfortunately build quality is not the only measurement of a good CPU cooler and that leads us to the shortcomings of the NV120.

The first thing most consumers look at when considering a CPU cooler is price. This doesn’t play well with the Nirvana since it costs more than the ZEROtherm ZEN 120 before the rebate and the Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer; our 40 Dollar performance leader.

Performance wise, you can’t go wrong with the Nirvana NV120 Premium, but that can be said about a couple of coolers in this price range. The extras, such as the fan controller and premium thermal paste help sway us to ZEROtherm, but if it were my money it would go for the ZEN and not the Nirvana.

Speaking of fan controllers, you are going to want to play around with yours after installing the Nirvana NV120. The fan is capable of dishing out a hum that you can hear across the room when run at full speed. Luckily, motherboards onboard sensors and fan adjustments are getting better, so as long as you set your BIOS up properly you can pass on using the fan controller and turn full fan speed control over to your motherboard.

The ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 Premium is a mixed bag. Good cooling performance vs. poor acoustics vs. a little higher cost. The 40-50 Dollar market is filled with several great coolers that will satisfy most enthusiasts’ needs. Recommending the Nirvana NV120 over the ZEN 120 or Core-Contact Cooler is just not an option unless it comes down to availability. The NV120 is a really good cooler, but there are better available”.

Read the 7 page review or view more computer hardware news.

Hands-on: Rosewill RX630-S-B Xtreme 630W PSU

This is the Rosewill RX630-S-B Xtreme 630W PSU and it offers a stable performance and price tag that’s at or near the bottom of the price point in this range of power supply. If you are looking for a mid-range PSU and have a limited budget, this one deserves a look.

Tweak town have given the Rosewill RX630 PSU a hands-on review and the test has been spread over four pages, in their final thoughts they said, “Rosewill is in the business of selling quality products at a good price.

This has been their business model for a long while, and the RX630 Xtreme is a worthy addition to their product line. Aimed at gamers, this power supply provided surprisingly good results given the test conditions it was put through. With a performance that was acceptable and a very nice outward appearance, this PSU is worth considering.

You will be limited to either a single high-end video card or a pair of mid-range boards, but this is to be expected with the power level of the product. The cabling harness provides enough connectivity for most systems and the cable lengths were long enough to work in all but the largest of enclosures. Any mid-tower being made should be well suited with the cabling of this PSU.

Pricing for this model has a MSRP of an unsightly $189.99US as posted on the Rosewill web site, but online retailers are selling this power supply for about $80US. At this price point, it is one of the most inexpensive units available in the 600-700 watt range with similar features.

As far as those features are concerned, this model comes with an efficiency rating of about 80-85%, has Active PFC (Power Faction Correction), protection from over-voltage, under-voltage, over-current, over-power and over-temperature. It also features four 12v rails and support for both SLI and Crossfire applications. While not one of the fancier power supplies ever tested, it proved to be both reliable and aesthetically pleasing”.

Read the 4 page review or other news on computer hardware.

Hands-on: ZOTAC 9600 GSO 384MB Graphics Card

This is the ZOTAC 9600 GSO 384MB Graphics Card and while this card is very good, it doesn’t help make buying a graphics card any easier. Only $20 separates the 9600 GSO 384MB / 768MB and the 9600 GT 512MB, making it all very confusing.

Tweak town have given the 9600 GSO 384MB card a hands-on review over 18 pages and in their final thoughts they said:

The 9600GT and 9600 GSO continue to remain extremely close in pricing. The thing is that while the 9600 GT is 20% more expensive than the GSO, it’s only $20 AUD more. However, the 9600GT for the most part is really only 10% faster than the 9600 GT.

The 9600GT does have the added advantage of extra memory, but you could get the 768MB version of the GSO that has more memory than the 9600GT and for roughly the same price; give or take $5.

It’s all very confusing really. If you throw overclocking into the mix, the 9600 GSO is able to outperform the 9600GT for the most part. So what do you buy? - On a whole, the 9600 GSO is actually a pretty good buy. Like we said, it’s 20% cheaper and only 10% slower than the 9600GT. If you feel like spending some extra dollars, however, you could go the 9600GT or even the 9600 GSO 768MB if you love lots of memory.

All in all, the 9600 GSO ZOTAC card is a good card and represents some excellent value for money. Performance on the most part is only just behind the 9600GT and availability on the model is good as well. If you want to do a bit of mid-res gaming and don’t have a load of money to spend, the 9600 GSO is going to be a good choice.

Read the 18 page review.

Intel Core 2 Duo Processors: Big drop in price

When looking at new laptops my processor choice has been Intel Core 2 Duo for a while now and also the best battery life you can get.

Today we hear things are about to get much cheaper for buyers of Core 2 Duo products, Intel announced big price cuts last week and this worked out at a 31% price drop on the top-end E8500.

With money getting tight for a lot of people around the world, its good news to hear that Core 2 Duo processors have got cheaper and lets hope we see this discount passed onto the laptops that house them.

The Core 2 Duo E7200’s will now cost $113; the E8400 is priced at $183 and the E8500 at $183. Another reason we are seeing these price cuts would be to make room for the new Core 2 Quad series.

Do you prefer to get value for money when buying new laptops and processors or do you like getting the best technology, i.e. Core 2 Quad series?

Read the latest Intel news or computer hardware news.

Hands-on Kingston HyperX PC3-14400 2GB Memory Kit

The world of DRAM production is a cut throat business and Kingston has become one of the best memory technologies out there, this is the Kingston HyperX PC3-14400 2GB Memory Kit.

The performance of this 1600MHZ DDR3 Kit has allowed overclocking to get a lot easier since the memory speeds aren’t the bottleneck.

Tweak Town have given Kingston’s memory kit a hands-on review and in their final thoughts they had this to say:

DDR3 memory is now starting to show its true colors. Yes, at this stage it’s more expensive, but for the ultimate system experience, for those who want top performance and overclocking, then DDR3 based systems are the way to go. DDR2 based systems just can’t clock as high due to a bottleneck in the DDR2 bus; 1200MHz is the limit, and unless something happens (die shrinks or super high yields) DDR3 is set to take over quite convincingly as the overclocking memory of choice.

Kingston’s HyperX memory range has really come of age; its performance is extremely impressive, as well as its ability to overclock. After all, it may be rated for 1800MHz, but remember that 1333MHz is the official speed recognized by JEDEC. NVIDIA has its SLI ready recommendations that are overclocked profiles, so beyond 1333MHz is an overclock. With that said, 1800MHz is a quite a massive jump.

Kingston already has its 2000MHz line coming soon, so stay tuned for a review of this up against the SLI-ready memory. How well it performs may impact your buying decision.

Read the 7 page hands-on review.

Corsair 4GB DDR3 kit

Just what can Corsair’s 4GB DDR3 kit do and can this memory give you the performance you’re looking for? Well the short answer is yes with size; performance and overclocking are all in abundance.

The Corsair XMS3 DHX 1600MHz 4GB Memory Kit has been given a hands-on review by Tweak Town; in their final thoughts they said “Corsair has been one of the biggest overclocking memory companies for nearly eight years now.

In fact, it may be longer as Corsair memory was some of the highest clocking back when PC-133 memory for the 440BX chipset was around, allowing bus speeds to 150MHz. What an achievement that was. Moving into the 21st century, Corsair still holds its own.

The XMS series of memory is the cream of the crop; hand picked and designed to overclock for the enthusiasts. You’re going to be hard pressed for find a better module, XMS3 continues this tradition.

The larger size, while not showing a huge benefit today in our gaming tests, it really does help Windows XP multi-task. While only 3.5GB of it was used under our 32-bit OS, it still loaded the games up slightly quicker than the 2GB setup, and for 64-bit OS users, you will get the full benefit”.

Read the 7 page hands-on review.