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NVIDIA’s biggest partners releases an 790i Ultra SLI motherboard

This is the XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard and with XFX being one of NVIDIA’s biggest partners, expectations are high for this board.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be another NVIDIA reference clone; this makes the choice of which board to get an easier one. The features and extras bundled with the XFX offering also make it a prime mover.

Tweak Town have given this motherboard a full hands-on review and this is what they said in their final thoughts “One thing is for sure, NVIDIA has done a fantastic job on its reference design. Not only have they managed to fit just about every possible expansion option into their boards, but also 3-Way SLI is standard, it overclocks quite well and it supports the latest generation of CPUs.

Having said that, when companies just sell NVIDIA reference boards, this is where things get a bit boring. When two or more companies have identical looking and performing boards, it’s hard to recommend one over the other. In fact, there is no way to do it; this is where real motherboard makers like MSI, ASUS and GIGABYTE come in with their own styles and designs that do make a difference; in all, a better looking board.

XFX has simply slapped their sticker on the NVIDIA reference board, which is the same as what ZOTAC has done with theirs. So if you’re tossing up between these two, either will do as there are no differences to speak of”.

Read the 14 page review.

New AMD 780G chipset oriented motherboard

This is the ASRock A780FullDisplayPort Motherboard and while it performs as well as the ASUS 780G motherboard, its lack of HDMI and bad placement of onboard connectors make it a little hard to recommend over the other 780G Micro-ATX boards.

With AMD’s 780G chipset getting a lot of good press Tweak Town thought they would give the ASRock A780FullDisplayPort Motherboard a hands-on review and the results have been covered over 13 pages.

In their final thoughts they said, “ASRock’s latest series of boards have been reasonably impressive, however we still have a few issues with the layout of this particular board. First, the locations of the power connectors need a bit of work. Even for a cheap board, it’s still not acceptable.

ASRock has managed to bring some good prices to the market with their latest series of boards; while we didn’t get the full retail package with this board, we aren’t expecting a huge amount of additional features in the box. What was disappointing was not having the DisplayPort card included, which eliminated this from testing.

Overall, the board has good potential for a HTPC as long as you’re not after 5.1 audio or HDMI”

Read the 13 page review.

Nvidia Stock Drops Around 25 Percent

There were many reasons why Nvidia issued a profit warning and these included a price war in the industry, a delay in new products being launched and weak demand.

The moment Nvidia announced expectations of lower revenues; their stocks plummeted as much as 25 percent. To make matters worse they have also said to expect a charge of around $200 million to cover the costs of defected Nvidia chips.

This charge will cover returns and repairs that have affected some laptop GPUs to overheat and fail. The lower profit has been predicted due to all the different factors and does not look like a long-term problem for Nvidia.

At first the Nvidia chipmaker was expected to make $1 billion in its second-quarter but this figure has now been taken down to around $875 million. Still not bad considering the current market and problems.

Source: Read

3 Radeon HD 4870 cards in IBP’s 4GHz rig

This is the Radeon HD 4870 In CrossfireX at 4GHz, Tweak Town were impressed with the Radeon HD 4870 graphics card so they thought about putting three of them in IBP’s 4GHz rig. The results have been covered over 11 pages and in their final thoughts they said “The first thing I have to say is that it’s nice to see CrossfireX with the HD 4870s not having the same issues as we experienced with the HD 4850 setup. Adding three cards into the system, while for the most part did nothing, it didn’t offer horrendously backwards performance, bar one or two tests.

The numbers here today do have a big up on our 3GHz test bed, and it shows that you do begin to hit CPU limitation in some areas with such a massive amount of GPU power. At 3GHz we find 3DMark06 sits around the 16k mark; here today our CrossfireX configuration scored over 22k.

The good news is that 4GHz isn’t exactly out of reach for a lot of people these days; it’s one thing to turn around and test Crossfire on a 5.7GHz LN2 cooled system, but that doesn’t help 99.9% of computer users out there. 4GHz shouldn’t be too much of an effort with the right CPU and extremely good air-cooling, or some decent water-cooling like we used here today would certainly suffice.

The HD 4870 is an impressive piece of kit and does a good job of outperforming the GTX 280 when in Crossfire configuration, providing the game makes use of the technology, that is. Ultimately, the GTX 280 is the fastest single core GPU on the market at the moment; but that’s not the be all and end all these days. Sure, if you’ve got money to burn, buy one; buy two! – But truth be told; the everyman and women who wants a good gaming experience and doesn’t want to break the bank is going to be looking at the HD 4870 priced at 1/2 of the GTX 280. If they really feel like indulging and the games they play make use of CF technology, purchasing a second will put them at the same price as a GTX 280, and mostly with better performance.

AMD are now offering extreme performance at a very good price; NVIDIA on the other hand offer extremer (is that even a word?) performance at a higher price. Is the extra cost justified? - That’s really up to you. Which route you go is going to come down to how much money you’re willing to burn. Throw in the cost of a 780i or 790i over an X48 and going SLI becomes very expensive, very fast. But we’re not naïve; the ultimate gamer with no budget is still no doubt going to be looking at SLI, as it’s ultimately the fastest solution”.

Read the 11 page review.

Hands-on with ZOTAC NVIDIA 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard

This is the ZOTAC NVIDIA 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard and it shows that ZOTAC are back with a board featuring the socket 775 platform; this board may not be in Australia yet but it has a lot of potential. The added wireless Ethernet is a great feature that we don’t normally see on 790i motherboards, this gives ZOTAC’s version of the NVIDIA 790i Ultra chipset board a leg up.

Tweak Town have given ZOTAC’s motherboard a full hands-on review, the results have been covered over 15 pages and in their final thoughts they said “ZOTAC has definitely made its mark with us. While our first board we received from them that was based on the GeForce 8300 chipset failed to impress, the 790i SLI Ultra board really got us going. While it’s a great feat of engineering as to how it’s laid out, ZOTAC isn’t to thank for that since it’s based right off the NVIDIA reference design. But it’s good to see ZOTAC not trying to modify it too much.

The performance of the board was right up there with the likes of the X48 chipset, so if you’re planning on an SLI setup for your NVIDIA chipset, the 790i isn’t going to disappoint as much as the 780i does.

Overall, the ZOTAC board is definitely worth your dollar. With a good software bundle as well as a few added extras like the wireless networking, you’re not going to be disappointed”.

Hit the read link below to see the full specifications, what’s inside the box, BIOS and overclocking, benchmarks and a lot more.

Read the 15 page review.

XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition: Bargain compared to the GTX 280

This is the awesome XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition which has good performance and great value, the question is the GTX 280 XXX Edition which was posted yesterday is a good card also and choosing out of the two I would have to say the XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition is the one for me, this is down to great performance and at a fantastic price.

TweakTown have given this graphics card a hands-on review with 18 pages and in their final thoughts are as follows. I do have to say that it’s surprising to see just how close the GTX 260 performs to the GTX 280 in resolutions up to 2560 x 1600. Only at 2560 x 1600 does the GTX 280 begin to show clear signs of a performance increase. Considering the price of the GTX 260 compared to the GTX 280, it could be considered quite the bargain.

There are a few things we have to wonder though; the HD 4870 is just around the corner which is going to come in cheaper again, and the 9800 GTX+ should also begin to show up in the next few weeks. While the GTX 260 looks like an attractive buy at the moment, NVIDIA could be making a mistake by releasing the GTX+ at a cheaper price which may offer extremely similar performance once again. XFX has done a good job with the card; the price is alright, availability is growing, performance is attractive and the bundle is pretty good with a full version copy of Assassin’s Creed in the package.

As of this second, the GTX 260 does look like quite the card to buy. The thing is though; will the next 24 – 48 hours change this as we get samples of the HD 4870? – Well, we can’t see into the future so we won’t know ‘till tomorrow. For the most part though, the XFX does seem like a very good value card with some good performance to boot. For that reason we will give it the “Value” Editor’s Choice Award because compared to the GTX 280 it does offer very good value.
TweakTown have given this product a rating of 93%

Read the 18 page review here.

XFX GeForce GTX 280 XXX Edition: memory bumped way up

This is the XFX version of the GeForce GTX 280 XXX Edition and its had it’s memory bumped way up, XFX are known to be one of the aggressive graphics card overclockers and this version may not be the best value for money but the GTX 280 XXX Edition from XFX is still no doubt very fast. You will not be disappointed with its performance.

Tweak Town have given this card a hands-on review over 18 pages and in their final thoughts they said “XFX has done a good job with finding a very high clock on the memory, but it would have been nice to see the core be bumped to 700MHz out of the box. A little overclocking saw the card had no issue at 700MHz, so it does come as a little surprise that XFX didn’t aim for the 100MHz overclock on the core.

It’s good to see that XFX has also taken the time to include a recent full version game which makes it more appealing; the package on the whole is pretty standard with the normal cables and paperwork, but the little sign to hang off your door knob is a nice extra which we also saw in the XFX 9600GT Alpha Dog.

Unfortunately this all comes at a price, and the XXX edition from XFX is one of the more expensive GTX 280s on the market. That’s no real surprise though, since it’s also one of the highest clocked at the moment, but DIY overclockers will probably find themselves looking for a cheaper option. The good thing about the XFX offering, however, is that you’re guaranteed a 2500MHz memory clock, which is pretty attractive.

XFX has done a good job with the GTX 280 and the massive overclock gives it another speed bump. While we continue to feel disappointed with the fact that we don’t have a huge boost in performance over the last generation 9800 GX2, the fact remains that NVIDIA has been able to place the power of the two cores into a single one while adding new technologies such as CUDA and PhysX.

Hopefully we begin to see some games under NVIDIAs “Way it’s meant to be played” umbrella make use of physics and really begin to offer gamers a completely new gaming experience”.

Read the 18 page review

ATI Catalyst 8.6 driver for Radeon graphics cards: XP and Vista performance

The new ATI Catalyst 8.6 driver for Radeon graphics cards has just been released by AMD and you may want to know how well this driver performs under Microsoft Windows Vista and XP, Tweak Town take a closer look and show the results over 11 pages. They found that the new Catalyst driver has some good performance promises but wanted to give it a run on their mighty test bed.

In the final thoughts, they had this to say “While in the applications we tested there hasn’t been any notable gains with the HD 3870 X2 actually taking a hit in a few cases, the new drivers generally seem to be increasing performance in the promised sections for people.

What’s really interesting about this driver is if you take the time to read the performance improvements, they all revolve around DX10 improvements. It will be interesting to see if this is something we begin to see more of over the coming months; Vista has really picked up momentum in the gamers market with most people jumping onboard.

Considering how hard at work AMD has been on the new HD 4800 series, it’s surprising to see any real gains from this month’s driver, but they’ve managed to do it. No doubt over the coming months AMDs focus will begin to move to the HD 4800 series of cards in a continuing effort to compete against NVIDIA”.

If you want to get a detailed look at the results and how well these drivers perform on different games in XP and Vista then click the read link below.

Read the 11 page review.

Hands-on: Four HD 4850 graphics cards on the trusty 4GHz QX9650

How good would four HD 4850 graphics cards perform on a trusty 4GHz QX9650? This may be a system setup that most people would never dream of having but then there are some who will want to know the results as they are the few that want it. Tweak Town has set to finding out the pros and cons of such a system setup with a hands on review spread over 11 pages.

In their final thoughts they said, “It seems that the Hot Fix driver should simply be called the “Increase your 3DMark score” driver. Apart from the two synthetic benchmarks, the only game to really see an increase in performance was Unreal Tournament 3. Outside of that, most games had a negative affect when adding more cards.

Hopefully this is something that AMD attack over the coming months. With more and more boards offering two or three PCI Express x16 slots, placing a third card into your system at these prices could be more than doable.

Two cards really is the sweet spot for HD 4850s at the moment; we see some good gains over a single card and the cost is still relatively low compared to the competition. Now all we have to do is wait for the HD 4870 so we can see what that can do for us.

AMD have a winner on their hands with the HD 4850; just don’t expect to see the same value for money as you start climbing the ranks with three or four cards. It could still be a while before we see these kinds of setups represent any form of value for money, much like NVIDIA with their Tri SLI GTX 280 setup”.

Read the 11 page review.

X48 Crossfire Performance vs Intel P45 motherboards

X48 Crossfire Performance is already on the market, but the Intel P45 motherboard is not out until later this year however; this does not stop people like TweakTown from putting the pair through their paces. There are a few differences between the two boards, but there is only one thing that matters, and that is with the performance of each board.

Check out what TweakTown has to say, here are their final thoughts “This is really a very interesting article and is something people need to be taking note of. The first thing you need to be checking is if you’re reading a review where Crossfire is being tested. Make sure that the board there using is a x16 / x16 motherboard. The results really do speak for themselves and it’s clear that there is a performance difference between a x16 / x16 configuration which the X48 offers, and the x8/x8 one on the P45.
If you’re really thinking about going down the Crossfire path, we would be highly recommending that you spend the extra money to go to an X38 or X48 based motherboard over the P45. Of course, if you’re not then it doesn’t really matter. With one card the P45 runs at x16, which is exactly what you want.

The thing is, the X48-DQ6 is only about 10% more expensive, so you could easily say that you should just spend the extra money and get that. You may in future go Crossfire without knowing it yet, but admittedly the P45-DQ6 does have some very cool features such as the new ICH10R controller, loads of SATA ports and just some really funky new add-ons like the power buttons on board. Of course, we will cover all these in more detail in our full motherboard review at a later date.

Before you rush out and buy that P45 board thinking that x8 / x8 will be just fine, sit back and have a think if you’re really aiming to go down the Crossfire path in the near future.”

MSI P45 Platinum top of the range motherboard

MSI have launched the P45 Platinum, this is their top of the range motherboard which has been designed to compete with the likes of Asus and Gigabyte, both of which have high-end P45 offerings. TweakTown has one of these motherboards and has been putting it through its paces.

One thing that we have to point out though, is the fact that their MSI P45 Platinum is an early sample. This means that it is not the full retail package, but the board will be the same that will hit the store shelves. Here are TweakTown’s final thoughts about the board “Intel’s 4 series chipsets are now starting to make mass production. With Computex 2008 finished, and Intel’s official launch of the final chipsets to make the 4 series now unveiled, motherboard companies are able to finally release their boards. As expected, we are now beginning to see quite a few offerings surface.

MSI’s first P45 motherboard has impressed us; despite not having a full retail package with the board, the silicon used was retail quality, so we are testing what you will receive on the store shelves, and what we have found to be very impressive.

The P45 chipset has a good overall feel; its overclocking at this early stage is impressive, and while we only managed to hit 504MHz FSB, we only had a few hours to really test the board compared to a full 24 hrs of tweaking. In just 2 hours we managed to make over 500MHz. We can only see a better result if given more time to play.”

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition Overclocked: 50% faster than 9800 GX2

We all know how great the old 9800 GX2 GPU was, but there is now a big boy on the block and that is the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition. This Graphics card has been overclocked and is thought to be at least 50% faster than 9800 GX2. As with all GPU’s that state they are a 50 percent faster than another model, this does not always seem to be the case so the guys at TweakTown have decided to put the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition through its paces, they have even pitted it against the top of the range AMD HD 3870 X2.

TweakTown’s thoughts on the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 AMP Edition are “So, that’s the GTX 280. There is no doubt that you’re probably left as underwhelmed as myself at the moment. The rumors that the card was going to be 1.5x faster than the 9800 GX2 were clearly un-true, which is disappointing. But at the same time, it’s probably a bit optimistic.

There are definitely some good things about the card; the performance we got in World in Conflict with AA and AF on is extremely impressive and does show that the card has massive potential.

The other thing that is worth noting is that we still don’t have a PhysX driver for the card, which is a bit of a joke I must say. It seems that NVIDIA these days is so rushed to get the cards out the door that the drivers aren’t yet ready to make full use of the card. This was also seen with the release of the GX2 were the Quad SLI driver wasn’t available at launch.
The other thing is that unlike the 9800 GX2 we tested with today, the GTX 280 is overclocked out of the box from ZOTAC, making the card a little faster than the stock clocked offerings that we will no doubt see.

So what are my actual thoughts on the card? – Okay, yes it’s nice that we’ve got the performance of two GPUs on one card that takes less power, but at the moment an immature driver doesn’t give us the gains that we probably expected to see with a 512-bit memory interface and an increase in stream processors. Do I think that the GTX 280 is going to be performing significantly better in a months’ time? - Absolutely! Will it be too late? - We’re not too sure.

The other thing I have to say before I wrap this all up is that I’ve tested the HD 4850, and I’ve tested it in Crossfire. Now, if I hadn’t tested those cards I may have been more impressed with the GTX 280, but I have. I’ve seen the performance figures the cards put out. We also know the price on a pair of HD 4850s is going to be under $600 AUD, while the new GTX 280 in stock form seems to be launching at the absolute cheapest in Australia in the low $700 AUD area. Ouch.”

AMD FireStream 9250 Processor at Teraflop level: Offers gaming rig additional 5 Teraflops of Power

AMD is gaining a lot of respect it seems when it comes to the it’s second generation FireStream 9250, the second-gen FireStream 9250 has just topped the single-precision teraflop barrier at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany, which is fantastic news to most.

The processor will now take full advantage of AMD’s GPU knowledge to augment the processing power of your loving rig’s CPU with an additional 8-gigaflops per watt of processing from this 150 watt processor, this is a 55x performance rise, when obviously compared to crunching financial analysis code, for example, on a CPU alone. The AMD FireStream 9250 processor will fit into a single PCI slot and will include double-precision floating point hardware performing at more than 200 gigaflops. The all new processor and supporting SDK are due for release in Q3 for $999.

Just so you know it has been said that the 9250 features ATI’s upcoming RV770 GPU at its core and that the foundation of future 4800-series graphics cards. In basic terms this all means 4x cards setup in Crossfire X should indeed be capable of offering your next gaming rig an additional 5 Teraflops or power. Read the full press release below for more information.

Official Press Release:

—Next-generation AMD FireStream™ 9250 processor accelerates scientific and engineering calculations, efficiently delivering supercomputer performance at up to eight gigaflops-per-watt —

At the International Supercomputing Conference, AMD (NYSE:AMD) today introduced its next-generation stream processor, the AMD FireStream™ 9250, specifically designed to accelerate critical algorithms in high-performance computing (HPC), mainstream and consumer applications. Leveraging the GPU design expertise of AMD’s Graphics Product Group, AMD FireStream 9250 breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance. It occupies a single PCI slot, for unmatched density and with power consumption of less than 150 watts; the AMD FireStream 9250 delivers an unprecedented rate of performance per watt efficiency with up to eight gigaflops per watt.

Customers can leverage AMD’s latest FireStream offering to run critical workloads such as financial analysis or seismic processing dramatically faster than with CPU alone, helping them to address more complex problems and achieve faster results. For example, developers are reporting up to a 55x performance increase on financial analysis codes as compared to processing on the CPU alone, which supports their efforts to make better and faster decisions.1 additionally, the use of flexible GPU technology rather than custom accelerators assists those creating application-specific systems to enhance and maintain their solutions easily.

The AMD FireStream 9250 stream processor includes a second-generation double-precision floating point hardware implementation delivering more than 200 gigaflops, building on the capabilities of the earlier AMD FireStream™ 9170, the industry’s first GP-GPU with double-precision floating point support. The AMD FireStream 9250’s compact size makes it ideal for small 1U servers as well as most desktop systems, workstations, and larger servers and it features 1GB of GDDR3 memory, enabling developers to handle large, complex problems.

Driving broad consumer adoption with open systems
AMD enables development of the FireStream family of processors with its AMD Stream SDK, designed to help developers create accelerated applications for AMD FireStream, ATI FireGL™ and ATI Radeon™ GPUs. AMD takes an open-systems approach to its stream computing development environment to ensure that developers can access and build on the tools at any level. AMD offers published interfaces for its high-level language API, intermediate language, and instruction set architecture; and the AMD Stream SDK’s Brook+ front-end is available as open source code.

In keeping with its open systems philosophy, AMD has also joined the Khronos Compute Working Group. This working group’s goals include developing industry standards for data parallel programming and working with proposed specifications like OpenCL. The OpenCL specification can help provide developers with an easy path to development across multiple platforms.

“An open industry standard programming specification will help drive broad-based support for stream computing technology in mainstream applications,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. “We believe that OpenCL is a step in the right direction and we fully support this effort. AMD intends to ensure that the AMD Stream SDK rapidly evolves to comply with open industry standards as they emerge.”

Accelerating industry adoption
The growth of the stream computing market has accelerated over the past few years with Fortune 1000 companies, leading software developers and academic institutions utilizing stream technology to achieve tremendous performance gains across a variety of applications.

“Stream computing is increasingly important for mainstream and consumer applications and is no longer limited to just the academic or engineering industries. Today we are truly seeing a fundamental shift in emerging system architectures,” said Jon Peddie, president, Jon Peddie Research. “As the industry’s only provider of both high-performance discrete GPUs and x86-compatible CPUs, AMD is uniquely well-suited to developing these architectures.”

AMD customers, including ACCIT, Centre de Physique de Particules de Marseille, Neurala and Telanetix are using the AMD Stream SDK and current AMD FireStream, ATI FireGL or ATI Radeon boards to achieve dramatic performance gains on critical algorithms in HPC, workstation and consumer applications. Currently, Neurala reports that it is achieving 10-200x speedups over the CPU alone on biologically inspired neural models, applicable to finance, image processing and other applications.2
AMD is also working closely with world class application and solution providers to ensure customers can achieve optimum performance results. Stream computing application and solution providers include CAPS entreprise, Mercury Computer Systems, RapidMind, RogueWave and VizExperts. Mercury Computer Systems provides high-performance computing systems and software designed for complex image, sensor, and signal processing applications. Its algorithm team reports that it has achieved 174 GFLOPS performance for large 1D complex single-precision floating point FFTs on the AMD FireStream 9250.3

Pricing and availability
AMD plans to deliver the FireStream 9250 and the supporting SDK in Q3 2008 at an MSRP of $999 USD. AMD FireStream 9170, the industry’s first double-precision floating point stream processor, is currently available for purchase and is competitively priced at $1,999 USD. For more information about AMD FireStream 9250 or AMD FireStream 9170 or AMD’s complete line of stream computing solutions, please visit http://www.amd.com/stream.

NVIDIA’s back helping Phenom with its IGP based GeForce 8300 chipset

This is the ZOTAC GeForce 8300 AM2+ Motherboard and it supports quite an array of feature, but its layout does need a bit of work. Overclocking is non-existent; meaning if you’re after a budget booster this board won’t really deliver. Great for HTPCs if you don’t mind using the DVI to HDMI converter.

With NVIDIA back helping Phenom with its IGP based GeForce 8300 chipset, Tweak Town have given the ZOTAC GeForce 8300 AM2+ motherboard a hands-on review and spread the results over 14 pages. In their final thoughts they said “This has been the first ZOTAC motherboard we have managed to acquire, and most certainly won’t be the last. We have more waiting for us. For our first board we managed to get, we were left with a reasonably good impression. However, ZOTAC needs to do a little more planning on its budget boards. While cheaper is better, there is always room for improvement, even on the lower scale.

NVIDIA’s GeForce 8300 chipset is an extremely impressive unit; its IGP is rather good for a cheap offering, but can’t stand up to the might of a discrete GPU. If you’re going for a budget HDMI based setup, the GeForce 8300 will do you if you’re after an NVIDIA solution. It depends on your preference, as we have seen that the NVIDIA and AMD solutions are extremely competitive with each other. So, depending on what you’re after, it’s a bit of a research game these days.

Overall, we were satisfied with the board. However, we hope to see ZOTAC introduce some better layouts on their next series of boards”.

Read the 14 page hands-on review.

More memory with GIGABYTE GeForce 9600GT TurboForce 1GB

If your looking for a graphics card with a lot more memory then the GIGABYTE GeForce 9600GT TurboForce 1GB could be just the card, but how much more performance do you get for the extra memory. It’s hard not to be impressed with the cooler and its design, unfortunately the extra 512MB really does very little for performance and Tweak Town find this out in their 17 page hands-on review.

In their final thoughts they said, “While we did pretty consistently see the 1GB model beating out the 512MB one, the gains are so minimal that ultimately in-game you wouldn’t notice the difference between the two. Even extremely intensive games like Crysis at 1920 x 1200 show no real performance increase.

With that said though, we understand that some people simply can’t comprehend that 512MB is going to offer the same performance as 1GB, and since some people are so set on the idea, GIGABYTE like most other companies have to offer the option to prevent those buyers from going to another brand.

There is no way we would recommend a 1GB card 9600GT over a 512MB model to anyone, but the fact of the matter is if you’re looking for a completely silent 1GB 9600GT then the GIGABYTE card is a good choice thanks to the cooling technology in place.

While it’s not a card we would use, some people are going to love having the option of an overclocked 9600GT with 1GB of RAM that is completely silent. Fortunately, the hefty overclock that GIGABYTE has given the card makes it a worthwhile option over stock clocked 9600GTs along with showing just how effective their cooling package is.

We would have loved to have seen a full version game in the package along with a DVI to HDMI adapter, making the card an excellent choice for HTPC enthusiasts who want something that can do a bit of gaming while being completely silent. Hopefully GIGABYTE make note of this and think about it in future releases”.

Read the 17 page review.

E-Power Thunder EP-650-TD1 affordable but capable 3-in-1 PSU

For those of you who have been building their own computer systems for a while now, well now that there is a huge influx of power supply units on the market. Choosing the perfect one is a huge task in itself, but E-Power might just have the answer for you. The E-Power Thunder EP-650-TD13-in-1 PSU, is very affordable but still capable of doing the job.

The guys over at Tweaktown have been putting the PSU through its paces, and have come up with a few surprises. Here are their final thoughts on the E-Power Thunder EP-650-TD1 3-in-1 PSU are “For those in the market for a mid-level power supply, there are a lot of choices. With the features and performance of this Thunder 650, it fares well when placed against the competition. While it certainly isn’t the most powerful product on the market, it has ample power for a vast majority of systems currently in use and still offers enough connectors and amperage to allow for future upgrades. This power supply is priced at about $130US and falls squarely in the middle of the price point for similar models with basically the same features. Add to this the external cable that allows you to power and charge devices using either USB or SATA connectivity and the value goes up a notch. It will certainly handle the load and is well worth taking a look at for your own upgrading needs.

The unit is not modular, but with the sturdy construction of the wiring harness and the inclusion of mesh wrap from end to end, this isn’t a big issue. Cable management is still reasonably easy to handle and is made even easier with the included Velcro straps. It also has a lot of appeal to the eye with the chrome finish and the blue LED lighting included with the fan. Overall it is a worthy contender.”

Very Fast BFG Tech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX 512MB

This is the very fast BFG Tech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX 512MB graphics card and its BFG’s first OCX card with a 9800 GTX core. This card is really the whole package with a good overclock, lifetime warranty and 24/7 tech support for the US. Tweak Town have given this card a hands-on review and in their final thoughts they said “I’ve been quite a fan of the 9800 GTX from the word go, this simply due to the plain fact that it’s brought good performance at a reasonable price. While the BFG Tech OCX is one of the more expensive 9800 GTX cards on the market, the lifetime warranty and healthy out-of-the-box overclock make it quite an attractive purchase.

While the 9800 GTX at the higher resolution is for the most part slower than the more expensive 9800 GX2, it still offers excellent performance. If you have an SLI motherboard as well, we would be optioning for a pair of 9800 GTX cards versus a single 9800 GX2 as the GX2 really is nothing more than a pair of 8800 GTs in SLI.

If you’re on an Intel based chipset where SLI isn’t an option, we’re also probably still leaning towards the GTX due to the plain fact that on a whole it offers a whole lot better performance to price ratio.

With all this said though, who knows where the 9800 series of cards are going to be in a few weeks once the new GT 200 based cards are on the market. Will NVIDIA drop the price of these cards or will we simply see them discontinued? – My bet is that the 9800 GTX is probably still going to fill a price gap that won’t be seen with the GT 200 line-up of cards come launch day.

Either way, it’s hard not to be impressed with the offering that BFG has her. If you’re in the market for a graphics card that you expect to keep for years to come, or you’re just finding that when it comes time to sell it, the fact it has a lifetime warranty is more attractive, then you can’t go wrong with the BFG Tech 9800 GTX”.

Read the 17 page hands-on review.

Hands-on with the Inno3D GeForce 9600GT iChill Hurricane graphics card

This is the Inno3D GeForce 9600GT iChill Hurricane graphics card and it’s a good cooler with a nice package, excellent performance and just generally a great card. The Inno3D GeForce 9600GT ticks all the right boxes. Tweak Town have given this graphics card a full hands-on review and covered the results over 17 pages, in their final thoughts they said “I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the iChill series from Inno3D; they’ve always offered coolers that we don’t really see on other cards. The 9600GT we have today is no different, but we do have to wonder about this whole build-it-yourself process. While the experience was kind of cool and a bit fun, it’s not something that we would want to get used too.

The design behind the cooler is also very good in that you can have it run silently while still keeping the overclocked speeds, making it an excellent choice for people who want a silent 9600GT that comes overclocked out of the box.

On the topic of the overclock, the speeds that Inno3D offer out of the box, while not being the fastest we’ve seen to date, are definitely above the standard overclock that we get from a lot of companies.

There isn’t an iChill product we haven’t been impressed with, and we can’t see that changing any time soon. We’ve got some good, fast cards on the market from them that have unique coolers that help them stand out from the pack.

Availability on the card is good and the price isn’t something we would complain about. There’s no reason to be wary of installing the cooler, as it’s an absolute breeze with no tools needed. So if you’re looking for a 9600GT that’s a little different, this could be one that’s worth buying”.

Read the 17 page review.

ECS A780GM-A 780G Motherboard: not same level as GIGABYTE and ASUS

This is the ECS A780GM-A 780G Motherboard and although it’s not on the same level as GIGABYTE and ASUS, ECS are still producing some impressive boards. While it does run equal in performance to the 790FX, its feature set leaves a bit to be desired. Given the lack of digital features, this board best serves in the mid-range to value oriented market.

Tweak Town have given this board a review and covered the results over 16 pages, in their final thoughts they said “AMD’s Phenom platform in its current state is definitely not going to push Intel off any performance crown, not until AMD is able to increase its clock speeds from its current stand point of 2.5GHz. While it’s not a monster performer, it’s a definite choice for a power conscious gamer that just wants a good all round system without burning a hole in their wallet.

So far the boards for the Phenom range are starting to finally emerge, and ECS has done a fantastic job on its 780G installment. It is fast, supports all the Phenom processors and has a reasonable array of features.

However, there are a few issues we have. First off, the lack of BIOS overclocking rules it out for hardcore users, or even the average tweaker. There are no dividers to control the CPU FID or the Hyper Transport link speeds, making it virtually impossible to get any real speed out of the system. Next is the feature set; missing FireWire means that if you have any FireWire devices (I know I have at least three) you’re going to have to get a separate controller. This should be a standard feature on every digital home board these days.”

Read the 16 page hands-on review.

Hands-on with MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer Graphics Card

If you need to keep a graphics card really cool that will certainly get hot, then why not stick a freezer on it. This is the MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer graphics card and looking at the card you notice the cooler right away and just how smart it looks. Tweak Town have given this latest addition from MSI a full review and in their final thoughts they said, “Since the card isn’t really of final specification, we won’t give it a rating. But we have to admit that the Hybrid Freezer technology MSI has on offer is looking pretty impressive. The cooler alone looks very cool and the design on a whole seems excellent. Hopefully it’s something we see more of in the MSI design.

Before we ramble on about all the great features of the card, the choice to currently restrict the cooler to the 1GB model is a bit disappointing. While it’s good the option is there at all, the decision to place it on the 512MB model will represent better value for money. The 9600GT is an excellent performing card, but in all fairness it really isn’t up they’re with the likes of some of the higher end models that are actually able to make use of the extra memory on board.

With that said though, we can understand why MSI has the cooler on the 1GB model. It doesn’t matter that the performance increase is really non-existent; people just like to say that they have 1GB of graphics card memory on hand.

The main thing I can’t get over however is the look of the cooler; it’s simply awesome with everything looking great, from the mesh over the fan to the plastic that covers the fins. We would have liked to have heard the fan spin up just to see what its noise levels are like, but we’re not exactly going to complain about the fact that under all the benchmarks we threw at it the fan didn’t once have the need to spin up.

Now we just have to hope that MSI go for a decent overclock, which we’re sure they will if past experience is anything to go by. The current crop of 9600GT OC cards from MSI comes with a 700MHz core and 1900MHz DDR memory clock. Hopefully we see at least 2000MHz DDR on the memory clock with this new model, and maybe another 20MHz on the core to really make the card stand out.

Hopefully we see more cards in the MSI family pick up on the Hybrid Freezer technology soon, because it really has the ability to impress.”

Read full 17 page review.