Friday Reviews

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The MSI PCX 5750 does have two things going for it: a great bundle and good overclockability. However, those two features are nice, but not nice enough to warrant you to buy this graphics card. Bottom line is that if you are going to be gaming on your new PCI Express system, any card based on the PCX 5750 is not what you should buy.

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The SimpleTech package is similar to most matched pair product packaging. It encases two golden modules and has all the features of the modules listed minus one; the timings. Other than the rated speed of the modules, this is by far the most important bit of information users will be looking for.. Nowhere can you find the timings of the modules; not on the package and not even on the site. This missing piece had the three of us searching high and low to find them but it was nowhere to be seen. I fired off an email to the SimpleTech folks and they provided us with the timings but I feel, as I’m sure most of you do, that this information should be included on both the packaging and website.

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And so, without further delay, PCstats is testing out a pair of Crucial's brand spanking new Ballistix PC5300 DDR2 memory. Each heatspreader encapsulated DDR2 module is 512MB each in size, and features sleek black PCB shielded by orange aluminum heatspreaders! By default the DDR-2 Ballistix memory is capable of running up to 333 MHz (or PC5300 speeds) while maintaining 4-4-4 memory timings at a voltage of 1.9V. It appears as though Crucial is not to wary of consumers raising the voltage a bit to reach those higher speeds either. The memory timings are on the conservative side but then again so are most PC5300 DIMM's on the market.

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If you can honestly find a meaningful use for 2GB of unbuffered memory, OCZ's £400 dual-channel pack is as good as any. We'd pair it with AMD's new S939 Athlon 64 FX-53 and ATI's Radeon X800 XT PE. That would lead to a multi-purpose system that's equally at home with the most demanding of games and adept at handling professional image and rendering applications. For most users, though, it's one of those options you select when deciding on your dream system. 2GB of system RAM has its uses, sure, but they are few and far between for most of us.

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This card is fast, very fast. With only four high end cards to choose from (X800 Pro, XT, 6800GT, Ultra) this card should be on your very short list. With stock overclocking that for sure can't be beat, this is surely a winner.