Far Cry 2 rounds up the cards

THERE’S A LOT of stuff on the web today. Starting off with Guru3D’s enactment of the Far Cry 2 performance review with no less than 17 modern(-ish) graphics cards. Although the game is based on a new, proprietary, engine – it performs very well under a number of graphics cards. Even at very high detail and fairly high resolution (1920x1200) it’s plays well. The 9800GX2 fumbles around at a higher resolution, tho’, but even an “old” 9600GT will provide decent gameplay ~30fps at 1600x1200… read the full barrage, here.

PS: what’s up with that editor’s name?

There’s still fire in the ol’ P45 belly, if you read what XBit Labs has to say about the Biostar TP45 HP. This motherboard offers high-end overclocking features and stability at a budget cost. Naturally you’re forfeiting some features, but they are easily overlooked when you get down to the reason you’re buying it: overclocking. Both auto and manual overclocking modes are quite interesting as they keep the CPU’s power saving features active. Very good kit, if you’re into this.

Legit Reviews is testing something out of the ordinary. Something people like us usually have in our jacket pocket: a Rexus PST-3, otherwise known as a power supply tester. Quite frankly it’s a pretty nifty tool ‘cos it’s small, easy to use and it’ll read out all the necessary power data – just like the one read from your BIOS. No, it won’t read the power consumption, that’s an entirely different product. Read the article here.

Over at OC Workbench you can see an Asrock G43Twins-FullHD mobo on the bench. It’s a (sort of) budget mobo with some extra features. First of all, it isn’t FullHD at all, it’s “just about HD”, as the G43 uses the X4500 and not the X4500HD (that’s the G45). However it does sport a DisplayPort and a DVI bracket so you can plug in a high-end LCD panel/TV. It also supports DDR2, DDR3 and quadcore Intel CPUs, putting it on the wish list for many upgraders on a budget. Give it a look, it’s worth it.

Tom’s Yank boyz are testing a PC. That’s a bit unusual for that crew, but the rig in question is quite worth a few minutes of browsing. It’s called the MaxForce GTX3. GTX3 prolly means the tri-sli GTX280 config that it is… and if you think that’s weak, then there’s the QX9650, 10K RPM 300GB Raptor. Oddly memory is “only” 2x1GB but at least it’s DDR3-1800. Basically, you pony up $5K for something that’ll be impervious to most games, at the highest settings (although we’d have said 4GB at least). Read it here.

This isn’t really a review, but some data Nvidia foolishly left hanging around somewhere and VR-Zone picked up: internal comparisons between Tri-SLI GTX 260 and Tri-SLI GTX 280 with lots of benchmarketing. Of course a company can leave these things hanging around on purpose and whoever picks it up seems to have found buried treasure. Give it a look anyway.

Extremetech has been pushing data onto a couple of Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5GB drives and comparing them in RAID 0 to their Hitachi and WD competitors. The Barracuda shows great performance throughout, although it doesn’t quite top the competition in real world apps (does, though, in synthetics). For a $180 price tag, ET says it’s outta this world.

Swiss site Ocaholic is looking at the tweaked GTX 260 Core 216. The logic behind this card is to compete with DAAMIT’s HD 4870, which it manages to do quite well at the higher rezes. Pricing is the only issue here, and the HD 4870 still beats it with a very big stick. Put your fanboy factor to work, in case you’re in doubt. Read the review. µ