Scaling: GeForce 7900GS vs Radeon X1950 Pro
Every gamer knows that choosing a graphics card is a little harder than choosing a processor. With graphics cards, we have a lot more to be concerned about: raw performance, performance at higher resolutions, performance with and without anti aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering (AF), image quality, graphical features, shader support etc. To get the most optimal performance, games need a balanced system - what's the point of having a new fast system - processor, chipset and memory - if you do not have a powerful enough graphics card to keep up with the processor or vice versa. Today we're going to take a look at the mainstream favorites - the GeForce 7900GS and Radeon X1950 Pro to see which one offer more headroom for future games.Read the article here.
News from the Web
Gigabyte sent a press release announcing their latest GeForce 8800 based card, the Gigabyte GV-NX88S320H-B-RH or for those who like easier product names (ahem) - the GeForce NX8800GTS 320 MB."GIGABYTE UNITED INC., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today announces the launch of their new graphics accelerators GV-NX88S320H-B-RH with 2006 WCG Official Game Warhammer 40,000 series: Dawn of War Dark Crusade ,equipped with NVIDIA’s latest GeForce® 8800 graphics processor.
Gigabyte's been upgrading their bundles with new games recently - if you're interested in Chris Taylor's Supreme Commander, check out their GeForce 8800 GTX and 7900 GS bundles.
Interested? Then check the details out at Gigabyte's website, here.
Experiences with the Core 2 Duo E6300
The Core 2 Duo processors without a doubt are one of the best piece of engineering from the biggest semiconducter manufactuer, Intel, for a long time. Power consumption, thermal dissipation, performance per watt - these are the areas Core 2 Duo processors excel in. These are also the characteristics of a very overclockable processor. We played around for quite some time with our Core 2 Duo E6300, particularly looking for ways to push this processor to the limit. We found the bottleneck is not the processor itself, but the chipset Intel paired it with - Intel P965 chipset. Read the article to see what we found.Read the article here.
News from the Web
Leadtek sent a press release announcing their latest GeForce 8800 based card, the Leadtek PX8800GTS TDH 320MB."Powered by GeForce® 8800 graphics processing units, WinFast PX8800 GTS comes with 320MB GDDR3 memory enabling rapid frame rates in performance. More specifically, its GigaThread™ technology massively supports thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, maximizing GPU utilization to provide extreme processing efficiency in advanced, next generation shader programs."
| Specification | PX8800 GTS TDH |
| GPU | GeForce 8800 GTS |
| Graphic Bus | PCI-Express |
| GPU/Memory Clock | 500/800MHz |
| Memory Data Rate | 1600MHz |
| Memory Size | 320MB GDDR3 |
| Memory Interface | 320bit |
| RAMDACs | 400MHz |
| Stream process | 96 |
| DirectX Support | DX10.0 Shader Model 4.0 |
| Latest Game Bundle | Serious Sam II, Spell Force 2: Shadow Wars |
| Output |
Dual Dual-link DVI, HDTV |
Interested? Then check the details out at Leadtek's website, here.
Not everyone can put their computer in an open environment. Casing have become more important these days, more so if you need to travel to all those LAN parties. Overclocker Cafe has a review Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570 case you might want to look into.
"My favorite part of the case would have to be the cable management system. Very few case manufacturers take this into account but with a very few clips and some thought to their end users, Gigabyte had made my (and your) job of building a clean looking machine quite a bit easier. The "Light Beam Projector" on the front of the case is very nice touch that helps to distinguish this case from the rest of the pack. The case is also about as quiet as can be, even with 3 120mm fans going."
Read Overclocker Cafe's review, here.
Here are some other reviews from around the web:
- EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS SLI Review at NVNEWS
- Tagan TurboJet TG1100-U95 PSU Review at Viperlair
- Coolermaster X Craft External Hard Drive Enclosure Review at Madshrimps
- OCZ ModStream 520 Watt PSU Review at TweakPC.de
- Crucial Ballistix 2GB Kit DDR2-1000/PC2-8000 (BL2KIT12864AA1005) Memory Review at OCInside.de
"The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) released the long-awaited SPEC CPU2006 on August 24, 2006. It replaced six-year-old SPEC CPU2000. SPEC is a non-profit group, which membership is drawn from hardware and software manufacturers as well as academic and research organizations. SPEC's CPU benchmarks have been the worldwide standard for measuring compute-intensive performance since their introduction in 1989. In this article we are going to analyze the contents of the new version of the test (SPEC CPU2006), its main differences from the previous version (SPEC CPU2000), as well as our first experience with its installation and usage."
Read Digit-Life's article, here.
Or perhaps after reading our article or the many Core 2 Duo reviews on the Internet you're finally getting a Core 2 Duo setup for yourself. If you're looking for ways to cool it down more than with the stock cooling, have you ever consider watercooling? TechARP has an article you should look into.
Read TechARP's article, here
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Four Intel P965 Motherboards Examined
If you're looking to build a PC right now, chances are you want to get yourself the Core 2 Duo processor. Intel's latest generation of processors are fast, cool and have lots of overclocking potential to be unlocked. The Core 2 Duo processors also mark the return of multiplier adjustments - a boon for getting the highest performance from your PC Now to get that high FSB, you'll need a good motherboard. Today we're taking a look at four motherboards - the ASUS P5B Deluxe, Gigabyte P965-DQ6 and P965-DS3 and last, but not least, MSI P965 Platinum.Read the article here.
News from the Web
Here are some news and reviews from around the web. First of, reviews of DDR2 memory modules. You'll be needing one if you're interested in a system with Core 2 Duo and newer AM2 Athlon 64 processors. Virperlair spent some time with Patriot's offering. Here's what they have to say."Overclocking was decent, impressive that they could stretch beyond 800MHz @ 4-4-4-12 but none the less, very little gained by doing so. Patriot once again brings a solid competitor to the market space, giving the consumer a nice alternative to the well known brands that also looks good while doing it with the all black heat spreaders! Another underrated feature is the warranty. Patriot offers a lifetime warranty which is a nice security measure for peace of mind."
Read Viperlair's review, here.
Meanwhile, TweakPC.de had the chance to reviw Kingston's latest offering from their HyperX series. Sure would like to get our hands on several of these. Running a Core 2 Duo at 533MHz FSB and a pair of DDR2 1066 at 1:1 would just be great. Be sure to check them out if you're interested in overclocking your Core 2 Duo.
"We finished 2006 with a review of high-end-ram, and so we get the party started 2007. We take a look at four Kingston HyperX modules from DDR2 1000 up to DDR2 1200. So here it is: Memory Deluxe!"
Read TweakPC.de's review, here.
Still memory related, this time around the guys at OCInside.de finished a review of Crucial's PC2-8000 offering.
"Crucial recently brought new Ballistix PC2-8000 memory modules to the market, which are particularly well suitable to overclock a PC or Mac. It was possible to reach excellence results also with default DDR2 voltage and fast timings in the test, so the modules are also well applicable on more inexpensive motherboards with less BIOS settings. The test report shows the performance of the Crucial Ballistix 2 GB DDR2-1000 kit and offers an overclocking comparison to 5 other memory modules.
Read OCinside.de's review, here.
Seems like everybody is overclocking their systems these days, particularly those with Core 2 Duo processors. To power your whole system, you need some heft power requirements. Madshrimp recently reviewed a power supply from Huntkey. Who? Well, read their review to see if this power supply can take the punishment of running a high end system.
"And they came from the East, a thousand strong. Like a storm, they ravaged the lands. Unknown, exotic, different than ever been seen. One sat down at my table, and ate, drank and laughed. We're all so different, yet all the same. HuntKey, a Chinese company let us test drive their 500W Power Supply"
Read Madshrimp's review, here.
For some rumors about the upcoming Intel processors, TechARP managed to get some details you might be interested in looking.
"We recently had a chance to pick up some juicy tidbits about future developments at Intel. Join us and find out about the upcoming Core 2 Quad
Q6600 and Yorkfield quad-core processors, as well as developments in the Santa Rosa platform."
Read TweakPC.de's review, here.
Rant of the Day
Sorry for the lack of updates this past few months. We were getting tired of looking at hardware, so we decided to take some time off. Thanks for all the responses and e-mail, we'll be sure to put them up as soon as we can!Last months' news.
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