Wed Reviews

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While the next generation of graphics cards from ATI are just around the corner, you can get some amazing performance with full open source support for a great price. Some of the readers might also be looking for a silent solution while having good performance and the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate steps up to provide that. It combines a truly massive heatsink with the powerful 3870 GPU to create a fast and completely silent graphics card for your quiet PC.

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I've always been keen to recommend Crucial in the past when people wanted RAM with a lifetime warranty that works as expected. Not until a few years ago did Crucial start offering their Ballistix overclocking RAM. Fast forward to the new DDR3 days of today and we find a new Ballistix PC3-16000 kit that offers speeds of 2000MHz! You'll be pressed to find a board that can even handle this speed, I know I didn't have one.

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My first orb was the Thermaltake Golden Orb way back when the Abit BP6 was the thing to have. Imagine having to shave a bit of a heatsink off to have it fit on your motherboard. Those were the days when you had to work hard for every once of performance. These days, you can squeeze so much out of new CPUs. Thermaltake has released a brand new orb, the DuOrb. It combines heatpipes and two huge orb coolers.

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Thermaltake makes an entire range of PC supplies including cases, cooling, hardware and much more. The last Thermaltake product I reviewed was the excellent Armor full tower case. Thermaltake is known for making great cases and the M9 looks like a mid tower case with ventilation as its prime agenda. Should the Antec Nine Hundred be worried? Perhaps...

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We mentioned the other day when we reviewed the BFG 9600GT OC2 that BFG had recently expanded its OC line-up with the addition of the OC2 and OCX models. While the 9600GT only goes to OC2, the 9800 GTX is the first model to make use of the OCX naming scheme. The OCX naming is the highest level of overclock from BFG; while the company has been a bit conservative with overclocks over the past year, they felt it's time to kick it up a notch and expand upon the popular OC naming scheme.

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Palit's GeForce 9800 GTX follows the specifications of the NVIDIA reference design to the letter. Even then it is one of the fastest cards out there that you can buy, constantly delivering excellent FPS in games. Our sample allowed up to 16% additional overclocking on the GPU for a final clock speed of 784 MHz.

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In-Win continues to make a name for themselves by releasing excellent cases like the Metal Suit GD. I was impressed by the build quality - every part of the case was solidly constructed; nothing about it felt cheap. It packs in a lot of features like liquid cooling readiness, an internal VGA cooling system, and plenty of drive bays while maintaining a sleek, uncluttered look.

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When the Eee PC was announced many people were excited for it, myself included. The thought of a small 7-inch laptop for under $400 would excite anyone! Now this is a budget notebook so you're not going to be playing games on it, but for most people they do 2 things on their computer, surf the web and word processing. Having a small notebook that can easily be carried and used for those functions for that price tag is pretty amazing. Now the notebook comes with Linux pre-installed, that might be a barrier for some people, but we will have to see how we like it. Read on to check out the ASUS Eee PC!

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Up till now the easiest way to increase the amount of displays was to connect more display adapters to the computer. This may not be possible or cost effective in every situation so Gefen went out and added this new USB to DVI Adapter to their product lineup. This might change our way of dealing with multiple monitors.

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Yuin OK2 is the name of the second best earphone from the Chinese brand Yuin. Unlike their bigger brother these earphones are easy to drive, and are also optimized for use with a normal modern DAP. The OK2s can function both as normal earbuds and as in-ears which makes them quite unique.

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technology and radiation shielding may seem gimmicky, but these great-sounding cans give our trusty Sennheiser HD280 Pro's a serious run for their money. To our ears, they're best suited for applications where sonic accuracy is key; though we'd have virtually no qualms about recommending them for casual as well as critical listening.

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There are a number of interesting things coming out of Computex in Taiwan this week. The two that initially stood out were from AMD's ATI unit and NVIDIA. Both promise a dramatic change in how some of us do things and with only few days to go till the iPhone launch, one of them could redefine the competitive landscape. Let's chat about how these announcements could change our mobile future.

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ThermoLab recently introduced the Micro and Nano Silencer PCT (Power Clamping Technology) CPU coolers aimed at those of want to lower noise levels. 'Power Clamping Technology' is a new technology developed by ThermoLab that helps the heat sink cooling fins make better contact with the heat pipes. Does the technology work? Read on as we look at the ThermoLab Micro Silencer PCT and Nano Silencer PCT on a system running an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor!

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Thermaltake played a large role in the evolution of the water-cooling phenomenon. With their manufacturing capability and R&D teams, the company has made improvements in the quality of components used and the level of skill needed to install a unit successfully. The Thermaltake ProWater 850i is a step above the company's entry level water cooling kits and is a good choice for those looking for stable performance with a low acoustic footprint. The fan is able to crank up to very high speeds, giving overclockers who are less worried about noise and more focused on performance the opportunity to let their system run wild.

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Today. we take a look on MSI's upcoming P45 Diamond motherboard that is equipped with Intel latest EagleLake chipset aka P45. The new chipset brings official support for 1333MHz FSB along with the option to use DDR3-1333MHz. We say option as the chipset also supports DDR2-800MHz and the motherboard manufacturer can decide which way to go. In MSI's case, the P45 Diamond is their highest-end P45 board and thus, it's no surprise to see it equipped DDR3 slots.

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With both AMD and Nvidia readying a new arsenal of videocards, the real battle for GPU supremacy won't be fought until later this summer. In the meantime, gamers are enjoying attractive price points nearly across the board, and unlike days of yesteryear, enthusiasts needn't plunk down $600+ for a high end gaming experience. Remarkably, AMD's HD 3870 has nestled into the $150ish tier, unheard of territory for a higher performance part.

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This article serves only one purpose: test three of the industry's most coveted coolers. Not very long ago Benchmark Reviews published the article Best CPU Cooler Performance - Q1 2008. At the time, the effort we gave in producing our test results seemed well worth the trouble. However, months later we see that there's a lot more to a cooler than just measuring performance with the same common fan. So after even more testing, we now have a full understanding of each CPU coolers individual characteristics and deliver the results to you. Benchmark Reviews is proud to present a three-way fight to the finish: The OCZ Vendetta 2 vs. Thermalright's Ultra-120 eXtreme vs. Xigmatek's HDT-S1283.

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Digital cameras revolutionized the consumer photography scene and it seems that we are currently undergoing a similar revolution in the arena of digital videos. Up until now, most digital camcorders have been too expensive for the average consumer. With products like the Samsung SC-MX10 Flash Memory Camcorder, it just got a heck of a lot easier for Joe Public to transform into the next Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. Oh, I guess you should have some movie-making talent before you can make that leap.

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The Zalman Reserator XT offers more than your typical external water cooling system. It includes detailed gauges and sensors for the avid water cooler wanting to know what's going on. It also allows, with ease, the support for additional water blocks. Don't worry about remembering to refill this system because it will tell you when it's thirsty. Read on further to see what other features the Reserator XT has to offer.

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AMD's progress of late has been rather slow. With Phenom being initially delayed due to poor clocking, and then being bitten by the TLB bug in its B2 stepping core, AMD's Phenom has been a late bloomer. Although it has now come out of its shell, it's still not able to kick Intel off the performance ladder. Today we are testing out ECS' AMD 780G chipset variant that is designed to replace the 690G chipset which was very popular as a value option. How does ECS' 780G compare to the ASUS 780G we have already tested? Let's take a gander.

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Mistakes happen. We are all human and sometimes we do things we later realize were not the best way to do them. Most of the time these mistakes are small and harmless and sometimes they cost you. In this regard, I am referring to the NVIDIA 780i chipset. Yes, that's right, I called it a mistake. With native PCIe 2.0, eSATA and support for Intel's 1600MHz FSB CPUs, the 790i Ultra is what the 780i should have been, thereby making the 780i a very costly mistake for anyone who purchased one. But like all mistakes, we need to put the past behind us and look forward to better and brighter things. Better and brighter is just what XFX specializes in and with this board they aim to keep the good times rolling. As stated before, this board comes with lots of goodies including PCIe 2.0, on board eSATA, triple-SLI support, DDR3 support, and a sexy black PCB. If that wasn't enough, just wait until you look at all the accessories XFX throws into the mix. Without further ado I present to y! ou the XFX 790i Ultra.

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Quote: No doubt the PNY Verto GeForce 9600 GT was up against some stiff competition when we tested it at a resolution of 2560x1600. Given that the card is a reference model it performed admirably against the GeForce 8800 GT and GTS, and outperformed the Radeon HD 3870 in many of our tests at both resolutions. Considering that currently the Radeon HD 3870 has to have a rebate to match the price of our PNY 9600 GT it's hard to argue against what a great value this card is...