Quadfire takes 2 to tango go-go

SOME MORE QUADFIRE scaling analysis is going on at FPSLabs.

In Part 2, Rafael is looking at the updated Quad driver release from AMD. 3DMark’06 is still the Achilles’ Heel of QuadFire as even the updated driver struggles to obtain performance gains from the benchmark. However, the driver seems to have matured a lot more with 65.5% scaling in F.E.A.R. and 36.3% in Crysis. The author can’t say it enough: these benchies are not AMD supervised, nor are they final values on the final version of the Catalyst Quad drivers. Read about it here.

We were shopping last week for a higher-res display and considered buying a 22-inch LCD (we didn’t though, we went 24-inch 1920x1200 – it’ll make hardware testing easier and you'll thank us later). However, 22-inchers are a tad bit more competitive price-wise, like the new Samsung “Pebble” 2232BW display on review at Doomed PC. It’s cheap, it’s attractive and it attracts dust like a magnet. Apart from that, they loved it to bits. Read it here.

XSReviews.co.uk has the Tuniq Ensemble 1200W under review . As they note, the power requirements in gaming rigs have recently been upped by Tri- and Quad- configurations, throwing power specs into the 4 digits – as is the case of this particular PSU. Boasting an efficiency of 86% and hardly any noise to complain about. The four 12V rails can power up to 1080W of graphics (20A+20A+25A+25A). It’s also quite big, and will require additional planning ahead if you want to fit it to your rig. XS thinks 1200W is overkill. How much do you need?

OCC is out to find a good bang-for-your-buck mobo and they’ve taken ECS up on the challenge. ECS makes the GF7100PVT-M micro-ATX, that’s uhhmmm... cheap. Based on the GeForce 7100 chipset, it’s built to withstand Intel CPUs up to 95W dissipation, on a 1333MHz bus. Performance-wise it’s delivering some good numbers, on par with Foxconn and even some X38 mobos – however, it’s neither a gaming board, nor an enthusiast’s overclocking kit, so it’s really suit at the remaining 99% of the market... Get on it, here.

Some hardcore literature (and ballroom dancing) for you chappies down at Anandtech. Rajinder is doing some explaining on how Intel’s MCH handles the upping and downing of the FSB and memory latency. It’ll save you a ton of time if you’re an enthusiast looking to overclock the bus and not lose any memory efficiency – that includes which CPU to choose when actually going for a certain clock. Hardcore. Mandatory reading for us geekistas.

Finally, Extremetech has a face-off of two soundcards – you know, those things we used to bung into our rigs so we could be spared the pain of integrated audio chips, but made redundant by integrated HD Audio? Well, maybe not so redundant, if you’re an audiophile or a pro. Asus takes on Auzentech right here. µ