Browse > Home / Search

iBUYPOWER launches new Paladin 998 performance gaming desktop

iBUYPOWER, known for it’s innovative and powerful gaming PCs, is excited to launch its newest gaming rig – the Paladin 998. Housed in a Cooler Master Haf Gaming case, the new Paladin 998 packs a powerful punch with an Intel Core 2 Quad Processor (Q9550), 4GB DDR-3 1333 memory and a 500GB SATA-2 7200 rpm hard drive Read more

Hands-on: Point of View GeForce 9500 GT Graphics Card

This is the Point of View GeForce 9500 GT graphics card and its been given a hands on review by Tweak Town. In their final thoughts they had this to say “It wasn’t looking good for Point of View when the sample arrived, but the bottom line is pulling the card out of the box and seeing that HDMI port brought a whole new perspective to the card Read more

Hands On: Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Graphics Card

The HD 4870 Sonic Graphics Card has performed much better than anyone had ever imaged from the word go. We are never satisfied with what we have and neither was Palit which is why they have overclocked the Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Graphics Card.

Like so many gamers you will want to know how much faster this GPU is now that it has received an increase in performance. Tweaktown has decided to put the cars through its paces. Read more

XFX GeForce 9800 GTX+: Overclocked Graphics Card

Here we have the XFX GeForce 9800 GTX+ Graphics Card, for those of you who are in the know you will understand that the 9800 GTX+ is just an overclocked version of the 9800 GTX.

For those of you who would like to know a little more about this graphics card, then Tweaktown have done an extensive review on it. Here are some of their final thoughts on what they thought of the XFX GeForce 9800 GTX+. Read more

Hands-on: Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic Graphics Card

This is the Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic graphics card with some ramped up clock speeds; it’s a nice HD 4850 with a decent aftermarket cooler and a high clock speed. If only Palit did a bit more with the memory clock, there’s no doubt it would have been able to shine a bit brighter.

Tweak Town have given this graphics a 18 page hands-on review, and in their final thoughts they said “There’s no doubt that we’re going to see more and more HD 4850s with aftermarket cooling hit the market. The Palit is a nice little option that comes with a decent cooler, which helps keeps temps down whilst offering a decent overclock on the core Read more

Hands-on: ATI Catalyst 8.8 Analysis - Windows XP & Vista

AMD has just released ATI Catalyst 8.8, how does this driver for Radeon graphics cards perform under Microsoft Windows Vista and XP? This is just what Tweak Town aimed to find out.

They covered the details over a 12-page review and in their final thoughts they Read more

Extreme Liquid Cooling for ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Cards

CoolIT Systems, the leading innovator in liquid cooling technology, announces the Dual Drive Bay VGA Cooler designed to aggressively cool AMD’s new ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 X2 Graphics card. The unique form factor enables extreme computing performance for PC Enthusiasts and Gamers.

In recent testing, the liquid cooled cards were stably clocked up to 880MHz (13.5% Increase) core clock speed and the GDDR5 memory pushed to 1GHz (11% increase) Read more

Sony Vaio VGCLS30E All-in-One Desktop PC

There is no denying that the Sony Vaio VGCLS30E is a great All-in-One Desktop PC. This computer is compact in its design but still offers high-performance thanks to its Intel 1.7GHz Dual Core Processor.

The PC is hidden well inside the 19-inch LCD monitor. The frame of this PC has an elegant design, one that we are not that familiar with from PCs. If you love to have your technology on show, then this should be your center piece.

The specifications of the Sony Vaio VGCLS30E All-in-One Desktop PC show that it is a powerful system. Firstly we have the 1.73GHz Intel Pentium dual-core processor with 533MHz front side bus and 1MB L2 cache.

The hard drive is a 250GB7200 RPM SATA, then we have 2GB of RAM as well, so this PC is no slouch. The graphics card used is the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400.

Woot currently have the Sony Vaio VGCLS30E All-in-One Desktop PC for $799.99

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

HP EliteBook 8730w Mobile Workstation with DreamColor

Today at SIGGRAPH 2008, HP expanded its DreamColor technology portfolio with the introduction of a powerful mobile workstation – the HP EliteBook 8730w Mobile Workstation with DreamColor Display – that offers professionals exceptional color accuracy.

In addition, HP introduced the HP EliteBook 8530w Mobile Workstation, the HP EliteBook 8530p Notebook PC, a customer calibration kit for the now-shipping DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display, and two additional high-performance displays to meet the demands of a new generation of visual computing customers Read more

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

HP Compaq 6820s 2GHz 17-inch Widescreen Notebook

The HP Compaq 6820s does not rely on silly gimmicks to make this a great notebook, HP have decided that going for a conservative design was the way to go. The laptop itself can handle itself in this modern age of computing, but the lack of extra features makes it a little tough to sell.

The weight of the laptop is very impressive; just 3kg which is great considering that it has a 17-inch screen. One great sell though has to be the battery life, around 191 minutes, perfect for those business users.

The HP Compaq 6820s comes with a 2.0GHz Intel Celeron 550 Processor and 2048MB of RAM. The notebook comes with a 160GB hard drive as well as a dedicated graphics card from ATi, allowing complex multimedia presentations run smoothly.

The notebook comes complete with Windows Vista Basic Operating System and a DVD/CD-RW combo LightScribe DVD±RW SuperMulti with Double Layer optical drive. The HP Compaq 6820s 2GHz 17-inch Widescreen Notebook has three USB ports as well as SecureDigital Multi Media Card.

Woot are currently offering this laptop for $529.99.

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

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.

New Catalyst driver for Radeon graphics cards under XP and Vista

There is a new Catalyst driver for Radeon graphics cards and if you are wondering how it will perform under Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, then you need to check out Tweak Towns 12 page review and test.

The ATI Catalyst 8.7 analysis under XP and Vista goes into depth to find out the real performance and in their final thoughts Tweak Town said, “While the new drivers don’t offer massive performance gains or anything like that, there are a number of nice little bumps on offer here today.

With the fixes implemented in the driver, they’re a good upgrade for most users. People who will be particular happy, however, are mid-range HD 3650 users who want an extra few FPS here and there.

There’s no doubt that the AMD guys are extremely busy at the moment with the HD 4800 series of cards, but with the X2 just around the corner, hopefully it begins to calm down a little bit and the team can get stuck into the drivers and try and get us some more performance from the new cards”.

Read the 12 page review and test.

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.

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

Next Page »