There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe and it has a longer shelf life - Frank Zappa
SOME LUCKY FELLA at Hexus got hold of a very limited edition - no more than 1,000 made - of the R.O.G. MARS GeForce GTX 285 4GB graphics card. Some might call it “innovation” but slapping a 4GB frame buffer on a graphics card doesn’t qualify as innovation. Although the card did obliterate most benchmarks it ran.
Bit Tech has a review of a lighter breed of graphics card, the Galaxy GeForce GTS 250 1GB. It’s a pretty cheap and cool part. Get two of these and you should get a very reasonable gaming machine.
Mobo makers are churning out more and more premium versions of top-listed motherboards, products like the Gigabyte EX58 Extreme. You do pay $70 extra over the standard version but get four Gb teamable NICs, an ultra advanced cooling system and the bragging rights.
Thrusting Reviews gets it on with an HP Pavilion dv6 1240ea 15.6-inch lapwarmer. It comes loaded to bear, and it looks like the only downside to it is the sub-par battery life.
In Win isn’t as well-known a name as Cooler Master, but it does build some sci-fi-inspired cases like the X-Fighter. You’ve got some “vector thrust” exhausts on the side panel and a “VGA turbo cooling system”.
The Corsair H50 is Tech Gage’s next test subject. As pre-assembled as it is, Corsair seems to have nailed the pricing/performance ratio, easy to assemble and quite powerful (with the added bonus of semi-silent operation).
Silent PC Review tests the Luxa 2 LM100 Mini PC. Luxa is a Thermaltake brand for premium products. The LM100 is great for mini-ITX motherboards but some of the internal design options make it a bit of a let-down.
Revioo is analysing the Pavilion dv2, AMD Neo-based notebook. Now the Neo doesn’t seem to be very powerful, but overall the whole package – Radeon HD graphics, HDMI output and price – give the light performer a good spin.
Following-up on its analysis of the AGP HD 4650 graphics card, Tom’s Hardware tried its luck at pushing the overclocking boundaries. With a new CPU even, modern games became very playable… but then again, they splashed for the CPU / motherboard, which kinda defeats the purpose.
Kyle at HardOCP was in high hopes the brand spanking new Core i5 750 had a chance at breaking some Phenom II overclocking records. The CPU broke no records, but did leave a warm impression.
6Gb/s SATA promised a lot but, ultimately, integrating a high-end piece of hardware in the mainstream desktop market made little sense (whatever the technical argument mobo makers made). Asus, for example, slapped a new I/O chip on their P755D Premium (hence Premium) in between the PCIe and SATA BUS and got rid of the bottlenecks. PC Perps has the skinny.
OCIA is feeling quite impressed by the OCZ Agility 120 SSD, the company’s “budget” kit (retails at about $270) delivers high performance numbers and absolutely annihilates JMicron and HDD competitors.
Hilbert has his socks blown off by a very unique proposition from MSI, the N275GTX Lightning. The card comes with all the geeky frenzy-inducing bells and whistles like active phase switching, 10 phase voltage design, 10 layer PCB. It does come at a premium price, 300 €urobucks, to be precise. µ
Warning Will Robinson, P7P55D, D Meaning ?DiLithium,Something to Swallow AfterBreaking or maybe NOT. Heres some Real Wait & See ?Probs:
ASUS has figured out, apparently, how to get around the issues with integration of the Marvell 9123 SATA 6G chip. Remember that nearly all the motherboards from ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte were originally going to include this technology -Except Theres Been 100% Failure of That Specific Controller.
MORE:
using 4 lanes of PCIe 1.0 lanes from the P55 chipset, the PLX8613 has access to nearly 1 GB/s of bandwidth and the PLX provides 500 MB/s of bandwidth over a single PCIe 2.0 connection. That is the key factor here: obviously the Marvel 9123 chip can only accept a single PCIe connection for data - but it can be either Gen1 or Gen2 PCI Express(Yet, This Is Both, Together). Since the P55 chipset only supplies PCIe 1.0, the most if can offer over a single lane is 250 MB/s; the PLX bridges as many as 4 lanes of PCIe 1.0 to PCIe 2.0 where a single lane-=WOULD=- provides 500 MB/s.
So, while ASUS has essentially doubled the speed available to the Marvell 9123 chip,9Not Entie System) they have done so at the cost of additional logic and traces on the board and without actually meeting the 600 MB/s theoretical speed maximum. Still, 500 MB/s is still much better than 250 MB/s(Asus Claims You recieve Aggreate Average of Two-Also, NOT Likely) and I think that users will be able to see a noticeable difference - once we actually get SATA 6G devices out and available.
If Yous thunks HARD, its pci-e 2.0 on one side of controller & Pci-e 1.0 on other, Now Hows That Gonnads Works, ?cheapf/ So Maybe OK compared to last springs 100% first failure, this promises to BURST at 350 Mb/s. On 6 G Line. It Might be bit of some UnThink Here? we ALL wish them, well, How much can You test it with NO Sata 3 =6G HDD Made.
Ahso, So NOT to burn pucker out of Your Smile on first boot, manual switches that are meant to both enable and prevent overclocking on the board. In the disabled position, the BIOS will only allow for a certain amount of voltage adjustments on the CPU, DRAM and integrated memory controller.
Allows most to warm mainboard up for few months before twisting evry dial to impossible setting. has O/C external hand controller,too.
So little is known that enabling options is all known of what options might be, Is there Might Be Options.
2nd TOP $Costa main from Asus, NOT R.O.G., though.
Still if it can deliver, it delivers more. yet, this is second round for Marvell 9123, & it might NOT Be Pretty.
Basicly from controller to second controller,NOT Even Same Generation of Part, which hopes if 4 lanes where available to one lane signal, then maybe tech specs might have some credibility*How Could They?) or maybe You Just Bee Stupid.STuPid.
Uses' Lynfield Processor, still NOT Out or Tested, Also ISN"T TOP end, or even middle. So Go Figure or Just USe NO BrainerPlex Mode, NOTSEE & Smile.
vondrashek
its 2x285s, not a 295.
Simon
Not to Worry, Sata 6 is on seperate line from rest on P7P55D, Heres Last weeks details:
ASUS has released a P55 motherboard,dubbed P7P55D PREMIUM.It has extravagant 32 phase power circuit design,more than previous 24 phase of Gigabyte.P7P55D PREMIUM becomes first motherboard with the most phase power.Apart from the introduction of 32 phase power circuit design,it also uses controversial Marvell 9123 control chip.
Plus theres 3 other phasie looking boxes in row. So Use this as extrordinare main with Penryn lynfield & bunch o' cards, probably Hop Up & Kiss You.
DRASHEK
768MB on the 295 is the crippling factor. Far over it's down clocked shader/core/mem speeds.
@768, AAA titles have to swap more frequently, which holds up the GPU/Shaders waiting for the pcie bus to feed ram (both GPU Ram Banks (SLI) in pararllel I'm guessing)...
There is a sweets spot for sure. I think it's at 2GB which is what is available to each of the GPU's on the ROG285. (2gbx2)
Someone should tell hexus to update their software and games collection...