Radeon HD2900XT (Asus and Sapphire)
With AMD's acquisition of ATI for vast amounts of money, it would be fair to say there have been high hopes for the long awaited and by now almost mythical R600. If hype and rumour could sell product, then the cards we have in front of us today would guarantee AMD several hundred million in the first week of launch. However, in the internet age we are all all way too savvy to part with money before reading reviews and opinions, this is a luxury in 2007 we should never take for granted. Educated decisions mean we end up buying the product we need, not what companies say we should buy. It has been a quiet six months for ATI, not only have Nvidia been ruling the roost with their excellent 8800 series, but with AMD getting trounced by Intel in the processor sector, every sane enthusiast is praying that their graphics division can finally deliver a competiing product which gives us all good value for money as well as a stellar gaming experience. So, the question is, can the R600 take on the huge success story that is the Nvidia 8800? Today our UK Editor and graphics card specialist Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson is going to answer all your questions with real world gaming performance on multiple operating systems against 8800 counterparts, as well as delving into Image Quality concerns and Video Acceleration. We are sure by the end of this review you will know if it is money worth spending...
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Icemat Siberia In:Ear Headset
Icemat may be known for their mouse pads, but the company also produces some high quality audio products. We take a look at the white Icemat Siberia In:Ear headset today, which does not only look great and is built very well, but does deliver some very respectable audio performance too.
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ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT
AMD's new flagship video card is the Radeon HD 2900 XT which is based on the brand-new R600 GPU. It comes at an amazing $399 price point and offers many unique features. While performance may not be as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTX, its price will definitely make this card a good choice for users who are looking for the best price/performance ratio.
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Mushkin HP2-6400 (PC2-6400) 4GB DDR2 Kit
With 2gb becoming more of the 'norm', many people are looking into 4GB kits to satisfy their memory hungry games and applications. Today we look at Mushkin's 4GB PC2-6400 kit to see how it performs.
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Razer Deathadder 1800dpi Gaming Mouse
Today we put Razer's latest mouse: the Deathadder in the hands of our very own professional gamer - Chris "Ins" Buer. How does it perform compared to some of Razer's previous mice? Read on to find out...
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XFX 680i LT SLI Can a graphics card builder make a good motherboard?
"Nvidia also only released one chipset in its nForce 500 series for Intel, however, since it was based on the older, poorly overclocking nForce 4 SPP northbridge, Nvidia quickly dumped 500 series for Intel, which gave birth to nForce 600i series chipsets. Today there are four chipsets in the 600i series, 680i SLI, 680i LT SLI, 650i SLI and 650i Ultra in order from high-end to value. nForce 680i SLI while offering the best features and performance also costs an arm and a leg for just the board, leaving little in the budget for a high-end CPU. Nvidia has however come to the rescue with a slightly cut down version of the 680i SLI, the LT SLI series."
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ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT – AMD's long awaited R600 DX10 GPU arrives
"Today AMD is launching an enthusiast part HD 2900 series with the HD 2900 XT, performance parts with the HD 2600 series including HD 2600 XT and HD 2600 PRO, along with value parts including HD 2400 XT and 2400 PRO. The HD 2600 and 2400 series have had issues of their own and you will need to wait a little longer before being able to buy these various models on shop shelves (July 1st). The HD 2900 XT will be available at most of your favorite online resellers as of today. Quantity is "not too bad" but a little on the short side with most of AMD's partners only getting between 400 – 600 units which is not that much considering the huge number of ATI fans out there. You may want to get in quick and place your order, if you are interested – some AIB companies are not sure when they will get in their next order, too. Our focus today is solely on the HD 2900 XT 512MB GDDR-3 graphics card – it is the first GPU with a fast 512-bit memory interface but what does this mean for performance? While it is AMD's top model right now, it is actually priced aggressively at around the US$350 - US$399 mark in United States, which puts it price wise up against Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB. After taking a look at the GPU and the card from PowerColor as well as some new Ruby DX10 screenshots, we will move onto the benchmarks and compare the red hot flaming Radeon monster against Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTX along with the former ATI GPU king, the Radeon X1950 XTX."
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OCZ VBoost USB drive review
Since the launch of Windows Vista quite a few memory makers have released special "ReadyBoost ready" USB drives. This basically means that these drives are fast enough to take advantage of the new ReadyBoost feature in Vista. A few weeks ago OCZ released their first ReadyBoost drive, the OCZ VBoost. The VBoost flash drive from OCZ is available in 1GB, 2GB and 4GB capacities. In this review I'm taking a closer look at the 1GB OCZ VBoost.
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PowerColor Radeon HD 2900 XT Review
"The PowerColor Radeon HD 2900 XT arrived Technic3D. The new Graphic Card with R600 Chip from AMD better than the NVIDIA High-End Graphic Cards? Technic3D will see that, with Overclocking, in the following Review."
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How to Defragment Your Hard Drive Guide
Many computer users forget that Windows comes with a nifty system utility that is called Disk Defragmenter. This utility can assist you in speeding up your system and keeping your hard drive moving along at a healthy pace. Our guide explains the defragmentation process, how to use and access the program, and how to get the most performance through the use of this single tool.
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HIS X1550 IceQ
HIS has put together another package that triumphs over the other two X1550s Overclockers Online has looked at in the past. The card balances great performance to price and noise level. The only hurting factor has to be the fact that HIS does not make dual DVI a standard feature.
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Razer Pro Solutions Pro|Click v1.6 and Pro|Type
You know that Razer makes great gaming peripherals, but did you know they also produce products suited for the professional and stylish type? Today we are taking a look at their Pro|Click mouse and Pro|Type keyboard which both look great and function well.
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Pervasive Software DataRush
"Let's face it, humans are expensive. The cost of humans combined with the dominance of single-threaded applications in the market place spells trouble for companies wishing to seek the greatest return on investment for their latest multi-core servers. Pervasive Software, however, has developed an alternative for companies not wishing to spend valuable man hours on rewriting their software in order to benefit from a symmetric multi-processing environment. DataRush from Pervasive Software is a Java framework that allows software developers to quickly and easily create new or existing applications that are hyper-parallel. Pervasive's DataRush had made its debut last week at JavaOne 2007 and in this article, we have a few words about this unique framework."
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AMD Radeon HD 2900XT Preview
"It's late, but it's finally here. This morning AMD will be formally announcing their long-awaited Radeon HD 2000 series, or perhaps better known as the ATI R600 GPU. The AMD Radeon HD 2000 series features DirectX 10.0 (well, for those that use Microsoft products), Avivo HD, a programmable tessellation unit, CrossFire support, and much more. This morning we have our technology preview of ATI/AMD's next generation GPUs along with what's in store for Linux and the R600 series support."
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ASUS HD 2900XT: Overclocking
"We will publish a full scale review of the HD 2900 XT up ahead, but already today we can present a lot of goodies for those who want to see some overclocking. Marcus has been resting the last couple of months, but now he's back; bigger, stronger and more beautiful than ever."
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Cooler Master Stacker 832
Cooler Master has created some of the most wanted cases for the PC enthusiast. Their usage of aluminum and creativity with styles has made them one to watch to see what they will produce next. The Stacker 830 was released and quickly on its heals was the NVIDIA 830 Edition. Cooler Master kicked it up a notch and delivered the 832. How good is it, let's find out.
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Let Mine Be Yours - Scythe CPU Cooler Movie Part 1
"In cooperation with Scythe the Madshrimps organized a MAD give-away of five Mine CPU Coolers. We didn't simply give them away though, we dropped by personally to deliver and install them and now we report back with the temperature and noise results in this (hopefully) entertaining movie"
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ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX Review
"Today AMD finally released a competitor to nVidia?s GeForce 8800 family, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX (formerly known by its codename, R600). We will take a look on the performance of this new release by AMD and compare it to other video cards."
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AMD ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series Architecture
"AMD is announcing today its new ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series. This is the first series from AMD/ATI featuring DirectX 10 and five desktop models were announced: Radeon HD 2900 XTX for the high-end market (previously known by its codename, R600), Radeon HD 2600 Pro and XT for the mid-range market and Radeon 2400 Pro and XT for the low-end market. While Radeon HD 2900 XTX can be found on the market starting today, the other models are just ?paper launches?, as they will be released by the end of June, with no specific date set yet. In this article we will explore the details of the new architecture brought by this new series."
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EPP Investigation
It has been almost a year since the introduction of EPP by Nvidia, and it is becoming a surprisingly common feature in performance memory. Is it worth using, or are overclockers better sticking with the traditional overclocking methods?
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AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Review And Evaluation
“On some levels, the R600 borrows technology from the Radeon X1000 series and the Xenos GPU found in the Xbox360, but there is plenty of new technology employed in this GPU as well. The R600 has a new command processor that processes command streams from the graphics driver and can reduce overhead by as much as 30%. There is also a new setup engine that more efficiently prepares data for processing by the stream processing units. Also, there are 320 Stream Processing Units, beefed up texture units and render back-ends, or ROPs if you prefer.”
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Open hard drive surgery
"What do you do when you have a dead drive with data that you really, REALLY need to recover? Well, you can either send the drive to a data recovery outfit and spend lottabucks, or you can take the approach of the hardware hacker, and find another drive in your junk pile that is similar enough to swap platters."
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Vizo Saturno 2.5-inch One Touch Backup SATA Hard Drive Enclosure Review
"Hard drive enclosures are very popular. A lot of people use them for multiple computers because they are easy to move and usually have USB connections so they connect to any computer. We usually see large 3.5-inch drives, but today we are looking at a smaller 2.5-inch enclosure. What makes this enclosure so special is that it has a one-touch backup feature as well as an eSATA connection for fast transfers. Let's check out the Vizo Saturno 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure."
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HD2000 - the first GPU\'s under the AMD name
Maybe it is just me, but after covering video card launches for 11 years it is not always easy anymore to get excited about the new products that are being unveiled. Most of the time all we get is a bit faster clock speeds and a couple of new features. The last year however has been different. Several events have set up the stage for an interest launch of AMD's new products. First we had the acquisition of ATI by AMD. This caught me by surprise as I would rather have thought a marriage between AMD and NVIDIA would have been the logical choice. What plans would AMD have with ATI? Would they still want to participate in the speed race? Or would AMD rather concentrate on merging the CPU and the GPU?
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Jetway HD2900XT
In addition to our big article on the whole HD2000 series, Jetway was kind enough to make sure that we would have a retail HD2900XT from them in time for the launch. In this review I have put the Jetway HD2900XT to the test to see how well it stacks up against the rivals from NVIDIA.
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Antec P182 Case Review
"We see it all the time; a company puts out a product on the verge of greatness, but ultimately hampered by a few deal-breaking flaws. Such was the case (giggle) with Antec's P180, a quiet enclosure that suffered from a poor blueprint for cable management. They've heard your complaints, and the redesigned P182 attempts to be what the P180 should have all along. Can they pull it off, or should Antec have stuck to the drawing board just a bit longer?"
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