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Remember that the Tracer series from Crucial is very mature. I even reviewed the original set of black modules last year. These new red modules mark a trend in computing that Crucial is good to follow. The fact of the matter is that people like personalization. I'm guilty of that myself. I know that these modules are hardly better than the normal Ballistix breed, but the fact that it is red and has lights adds something of value to people. Red is my favorite color and I would naturally gravitate to these in a computer I would build.

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Even though my previous reviews on Kingston Technology products were about their flash division, Kingston still is very much an enthusiast RAM company. Their HyperX series now comes in DDR3 at very high speeds. While DDR3 is still very new, Kingston offers a kit that runs at a scathing PC3-14400 which is 1800MHz DDR. The KHX14400D3K2 is on the bench for review.

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Kingston Technology produces all kinds of memory including RAM for a computer to flash memory. Kingston is pushing harder and harder into the consumer flash market. Kingston sent over their high speed SD flash memory for review and the SD2/2GB-U is really fast.

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These modules are rated for operation at DDR3-1600 which is PC3-12800 at 1.8V. The modules have SPD values for lower speeds (DDR3-1066) at JEDEC specs to provide boards the needed initial boot to provide the RAM with the proper voltage and timings. The stock timings at DDR3-1600 are 8-8-8-24. DDR3 latencies are very high compared to DDR2 and should only get better in time. These modules are lead free which helps the environment. Nothing like being green in today's world. I almost forgot that the command rate is 1T which means you get an extra performance boost.

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With the big focus on the environment and how much of a negative impact the 21st century society is having on it, it's not surprising we are seeing things moving towards green. When we refer to green, we aren't talking about the colour, we are taking about measures used to reduce the devastating impact we are having on the environment because of our industrialised society. Computer companies are now starting to take the green initiative very seriously with new production methods to make them more environmentally sound. The first stages have already been implemented with the RoHS designs from GIGABYTE and ASUS, this is accomplished by moving from lead based solder to a totally lead free substitute, thus reducing the overall amount of lead required.

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For Linux distribution vendors, right now is proving to be an awkward time for them as they decide which ATI driver will ship as the default choice in their spring distribution refresh. The problem used to be whether to ship a binary-only driver in the distribution in order to provide "out of the box" support for all available graphics hardware, but on the ATI/AMD side the software distributors are now facing the challenge of which open-source driver they should call the de facto standard. In this article we are briefly looking at the matter of the xf86-video-ati vs. xf86-video-radeonhd drivers, the highly political issue of AtomBIOS, and what some of the popular Linux distributions are deciding to use this spring.

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One of those reputable name brands in today's market is Samsung and today we will be reviewing one of their new SyncMaster 2243BW 22 monitors which is boasted to be an affordable thin bezel monitor which will be enjoyed in the home/office as well as in a gamer's den. Let's see if that claim is true.

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Quote: Rated at 5-5-5-18, the OCZ Technology PC2-8000 Platinum Edition 4GB DDR2 kit is quite impressive in terms of timings, speed, and capacity. Running at 1000MHz it was able to outperform competition in the form of DDR2 from Patriot and DDR3 from OCZ Technology. While overclocked to 1080MHz it was even able to outperform the DDR3 kit running at 1333MHz.

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Noctua has been known for serving up one of the best coolers on the market. I am sure most of us have heard of the NH-U12P. It was one of the top coolers on every website's list. And coupled with their newest fan the NF-P12 there aren't too many coolers that can come close. Now take this cooler and fan and throw in the NT-H1 and you have everything you need to cool that new processor. So do we have another compound that is capable of taking down the old king? We will find out soon.

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Back when Socket A, and later Socket 939, were the preferred platforms for enthusiasts, one motherboard company emerged as the king of overclocking, DFI. DFI's LanParty boards had it all: colorful UV reactive components, excellent BIOS conducive to overclocking, rock-solid stability, and excellent reliability. Today we will be looking at the DFI LanParty UT IFCX3200-T2R/G. It is an LGA775 motherboard powered by the ATI RD600 chipset, and featuring ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 IE. This board has been around for some time but is still available, and at an excellent price, I might add. So rather than spend time comparing it to newer boards with newer chipsets that cost up to triple the price, I am going to attempt to review it on its own merits, and look at it more as an economy board rather than the upper-end board it was a year ago.

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I've never before found myself in the position where I've been this rushed off my feet to get an article online. This afternoon I was e-mailed the Quad SLI Vista Driver! - At the same time, a second 9800 GX2 rocked up in my hot little hands. It was clear what I needed to do. We found ourselves in the IBP bunker sitting in front of a 4GHz Water-cooled system with an SLI capable motherboard and an 8GB Pen Drive in hand with the 174.53 Quad SLI Driver installed. You want results? We've got 'em!

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After introducing the 9000 series with a mid-range graphics card, nVidia gives us a taste of its power with their first high-end 9000 series graphics card. Like AMD\'s 3870X2, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a dual GPU solution with 1GB frame buffer divided equally amongst the two GPUs. Unlike AMD, nVidia already has some experience with their dual GPU based graphics card- the old 7950GX2 which was certainly a breakthrough product and much liked at our labs. Lets find out what the new GeForce 9800 GX2 brings to the table.

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Even though my previous reviews on Kingston Technology products were about their flash division, Kingston still is very much an enthusiast RAM company. Their HyperX series now comes in DDR3 at very high speeds. While DDR3 is still very new, Kingston offers a kit that runs at a scathing PC3-14400 which is 1800MHz DDR. The KHX14400D3K2 is on the bench for review.

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Kingston Technology produces all kinds of memory including RAM for a computer to flash memory. Kingston is pushing harder and harder into the consumer flash market. Kingston sent over their high speed SD flash memory for review and the SD2/2GB-U is really fast.

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These modules are rated for operation at DDR3-1600 which is PC3-12800 at 1.8V. The modules have SPD values for lower speeds (DDR3-1066) at JEDEC specs to provide boards the needed initial boot to provide the RAM with the proper voltage and timings. The stock timings at DDR3-1600 are 8-8-8-24. DDR3 latencies are very high compared to DDR2 and should only get better in time. These modules are lead free which helps the environment. Nothing like being green in today's world. I almost forgot that the command rate is 1T which means you get an extra performance boost.

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The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, LDAP for short, is a 'fork' of the original X.500 specification for Directory Access Protocol. This X.500 was large and heavy. It also required an OSI protocol stack to run. LDAP was made to be leaner and able to run on top of TCP/IP instead of the OSI complete stack. Active Directory, the directory software that many Windows based enterprise networks use, is LDAP at its heart. Directory services can provide many benefits to a home network or a business. With LDAP setup, it is relatively easy to setup a single sign-on on every computer or have a global address book. The first step is the installation which is very easy on Ubuntu.

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The Honeywell SecuraDrive portable USB hard drive is perfect for storing MP3 music files, videos files and photos, or for protecting sensitive and private data while on the go. Featuring Password Protection Technology, the SecuraDrive allows the user to allocate part or all of the hard drive's capacity to be public or private, with the private areas only accessible with the proper password, regardless if the SecuraDrive is lost or stolen. Benchmark Reviews tests the 80GB SecuraDrive FM-HWS80U2 for modern-day performance and reliability.

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Our latest sticks come to us via Patriot and sport a PC2-6400 sticker on them, they also have this nifty little stamp RoHS Compliant, while not a big deal (yet) in the US, in European countries, without it, it means you can't even sell it. The most important aspect that I can see of RoHS Compliance, is that the gear must be built without any lead whatsoever.

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Kingston is one of the oldest names in the PC world, and they are the largest manufacturer of system memory purchased by third party buyers. I remember hearing of Kingston in the late 1980s, a time when most PCs only had a megabyte or two of system memory, and I used their memory in my first RAM upgrade about a decade later. Recently I reviewed the Kingston HyperX PC3-11000 2 gig kit. Kingston considers it an entry-level enthusiast DDR3 HyperX kit. Today I will be looking at the PC3-13000 HyperX 2 gig kit, which at present, is considered the sweet spot of DDR3 memory by some. Will the HyperX PC3-13000 impress us more than the HyperX PC3-11000 did? Read on to see.

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The latest company to come to the 9600GT parade is MSI, and like most other cards we've looked at they've decided to move away from the stock cooler and use their own design. They also figure if they're going to do that, they may as well bump up the speed of the card and see what it's capable of. I feel like we've looked at so many 9600GT cards in such a short period of time that there isn't all that much to say here. The 9600GT has quickly become a popular little offering thanks to its performance not being like that of normal x600GT offerings from NVIDIA in the past.

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How do you define the ultimate gaming system? Is it the best price/performance system or just the system with the most power, regardless of the cost? Intel's answer goes by the name of SkullTrail, which gives you the opportunity of using two high-end processors and two high-end video cards in one system. Today we'll take a look at what Intel is offering in terms of performance compared to a regular high-end system.

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Last month we had measured Ubuntu's boot performance via the open-source Bootchart utility and had done this on all Ubuntu releases between Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and the latest development build at the time for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. From this testing we had found the boot time to decrease with each official release and the maximum disk throughput increasing. With Fedora 9 Sulphur due out next month, we have done this same boot performance testing on the Fedora side with Core 4, Core 5, Core 6, 7, 8, and 9 Rawhide.

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Quote: The AMD 780G chipset is the first new chipset that was designed by AMD after the AMD/ATI merger and it performs like a winner. Usually when a company designs a chipset with integrated graphics they just take half of a desktop GPU and stick it inside the chipset, but the 780G is the first chipset generation to have the whole graphics engine inside. The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard is a great example of what the 780G chipset can do when properly used. The board didn't leave us with any bad to say as it was found to be stable with a BIOS that could easily worked with...

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Today NVIDIA launches their GeForce 9800 GX2 dual GPU card. It comes with two G92 GPUs and uses a new cooling design where a single cooler sits in the middle and cools both GPUs. We have the card from Zotac on our testbench today which follows the reference design specification. Unlike many other publications all our testing was conducted in Windows XP because we think that's what the majority of users still plays on.

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A new desktop chipset complete with a DDR3-based memory controller is here, along with a dual-GPU powered monolith of a graphics card that is NVIDIA's most powerful to date. Together, the combination of a GeForce 9800 GX2 (or two GX2s) with the nForce 790i SLI Ultra chipset redefine the high-end of desktop PC gaming hardware.

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It's been nearly two years since NVIDIA has produced a dual PCB video card design and they feel they have a winner in the works with the GeForce 9 series. One of the reasons NVIDIA feels so strongly about the GeForce 9800 GX2 is because they have a whole new approach at how the video game frames are being rendered. The first generation Quad SLI technology seen on the GeForce 7950 GX2 back in 2006, used a hybrid mode of split frame rendering (SFR) and alternate frame rendering (AFR) to enable concurrent rendering on four GPUs. With the latest games utilizing complex shaders, inter-frame effects, and multi-pass rendering, SFR becomes less efficient...

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Well today NVIDIA and its board partners are introducing NVIDIA's new high-end GPU the 9800GX2. We should actually just call this NVIDIA's new card since like AMD/ATI's 3870X2 this is a card using 2 GPU's. NVIDIA has been down this road before with the 7950GX2 of 2 years ago.

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For most folks, the name Rosewill means peripherals. Whether you are looking for enclosures, switches, keyboards, KVM devices or external enclosures, Rosewill likely has something that fits the bill. They are also generally known for offering a product for a reasonable price, something that isn't always a common practice in today's marketplace. On the table this time around is one of their newer external hard drive enclosures, the RX81-MP-SC; this is an enclosure designed to fit SATA hard drives in an easy to use manner. With SATA drives becoming the standard, IDE devices are getting to a point where they are no longer needed, but an external SATA enclosure can be a true friend for those looking for a means to back up important data.

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The last time we had looked at a Tagan power supply was last October when exploring the Tagan ITZ 1300W and comparing it to Thermaltake's ToughPower 1200W power supply. While most enthusiasts don't need power supplies in excess of 1,000 Watts, for those that do the ITZ 1300W did perform admirably but its voltage rails did fluctuate some, though it did have the WOW factor on its side thanks to the stunning paint job. Since then Tagan released a new power supply, which has a maximum power output of 900W, boasts six +12V rails, and is modular with LED indicators for each cable. This new power supply is the Tagan BZ 900W, and today we are reviewing it at Phoronix.

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MSI 8800 GT That we review today belongs to the most popular group of slightly overclocked 8800 GT cards. The RADEON HD 3650, in its turn, is basically a RADEON HD 2600 made using a finer process technology. Its clock rates are lower than, but close to those of 2600 XT.

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Cooler Master's Cosmos case made waves last year because of its incredibly silent design, awesome size, and excellent accoutrements. This year, Cooler Master altered the Cosmos design and released a new model: the Cosmos S. Whereas the Cosmos case was a silent beast, the Cosmos S is designed to keep things inside as cold as possible, sacrificing silence for performance. After salivating upon seeing this case in Cooler Master's booth at CES, we had to get our hands on it. ThinkComputers blasts off to explore the unknown regions of this expansive case.

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The Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme CPU cooler is very popular among enthusiast circles as the reigning champion of CPU coolers and most people will quickly recommend a TRUE to someone asking. So today I've got the TRUE for review, and I've put it to the test using both C2D and C2Q processors, is it all that? Well you'll have to read on to find out...

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Sleek-Audio SA6 is the name of a brand new pair of earphones with customizable performance. The earphones feature both a treble and bass tuning system that allows the user to alter the audio performance according to their needs and preferences. This is not done via electronics as one might expect, but by physically replacing parts of the earphone.

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Last month right before FOSDEM 2008, the 3D programming documentation for the R500 GPUs (Radeon X1000) series was released. This documentation consisted of a register reference guide for the R500 GPUs as well as a programming guide covering such areas as the command processor, vertex shaders, and fragment shaders. While the register reference guide for the R600 series is still being worked on, for those with older ATI graphics processors, AMD has went back and created a register reference guide for the R300 series.

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Last July we had looked at the Reaper HPC DDR2 memory from OCZ Technology, which not only was clocked well for its time with a memory frequency of DDR2-1066MHz, supported NVIDIA's EPP (Enhanced Performance Profiles), and boasted OCZ's admirable lifetime warranty with EVP (Extended Voltage Protection), but it was the first model to bring forth their next-generation patent-pending memory heatspreaders. The Reaper HPC (Heat Pipe Conduit) cooling solution is made up of normal heatspreaders attached to the ICs, but bonded to the top of that is a single copper heatpipe in a loop that passes through an aluminum fin array. We were pleased by both the cooling and memory performance with the Reaper HPC, but OCZ Technology didn't stop there in their quest to deliver 110% customer satisfaction. OCZ has taken their Reaper HPC design to the next level by strapping on two copper heatpipes, ensuring that each memory IC is in direct contact with one of these thermo-conductive pipes, and greatly increasing the size of the aluminum fin array. This newest memory cooling solution is known as ReaperX HPC and can be found on the PC2-6400 ReaperX HPC EB 4GB dual channel kit, which we are reviewing today.

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Aerocool is widely known for introducing the world to extra large case fans. I am sure you are familiar with the ExtremEngine case. If you don't know it by name, maybe by description - it was one of the first to have a 25cm cooling fan on the side and 14cm at the front as an intake. Well, putting the ExtremEngine to the side, Aerocool is introducing the HorsePower line of PSUs. This power supply comes in two models, 720 watts for the modest PC builder and 1020 watt model for the extremist. When you consider that Crossfire using two 3870X2 cards can be done on a high performance 620Watt PSU you can see how much further Aerocool is trying to push things. Each unit divides the power between four different rails and boasts an Aerocool trademark a large fan. A 140mm one with blue lights.

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Petite- check!, Stylish- check! Beautiful- check! No, Im not going through my list of specifications for what you might be thinking. Let me make it more obvious- full featured- check!, speedy- check! What I am looking at is the new ultra-mobile from ASUS modeled as the U6S. I received this little wonder from ASUS a couple of weeks back and it came packaged nicely in a box with CDs full or applications, drivers and user guides as well as the power adapter and two batteries.

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The two companies are expected to announce Monday that Microsoft has signed a license to use Flash Lite and Reader LE in future Windows Mobile handsets as plug-ins for Internet Explorer Mobile. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, such as what the companies plan to do when Microsoft releases Silverlight for Mobile, a competing technology. Flash Lite is a stripped-down version of the ubiquitous Flash video player that allows mobile handsets to view Web sites created with the Flash technology. Think of Flash Lite as a slightly older version of Flash; the most current version of Flash Lite can't properly display Web sites created with the newest version of Flash, Flash 9, but it works with sites created using older versions of the technology.

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Kingston Technology produces all kinds of memory including RAM for a computer to flash memory. Kingston is pushing harder and harder into the consumer flash market. Kingston sent over their high speed SD flash memory for review and the SD2/2GB-U is really fast.

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These modules are rated for operation at DDR3-1600 which is PC3-12800 at 1.8V. The modules have SPD values for lower speeds (DDR3-1066) at JEDEC specs to provide boards the needed initial boot to provide the RAM with the proper voltage and timings. The stock timings at DDR3-1600 are 8-8-8-24. DDR3 latencies are very high compared to DDR2 and should only get better in time. These modules are lead free which helps the environment. Nothing like being green in today's world. I almost forgot that the command rate is 1T which means you get an extra performance boost.

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The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, LDAP for short, is a 'fork' of the original X.500 specification for Directory Access Protocol. This X.500 was large and heavy. It also required an OSI protocol stack to run. LDAP was made to be leaner and able to run on top of TCP/IP instead of the OSI complete stack. Active Directory, the directory software that many Windows based enterprise networks use, is LDAP at its heart. Directory services can provide many benefits to a home network or a business. With LDAP setup, it is relatively easy to setup a single sign-on on every computer or have a global address book. The first step is the installation which is very easy on Ubuntu.

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Honeywell makes products that fit nearly every market. Since they have a partnership with SOYO, they have also entered the computer peripheral consumer space. One of their first products to be released is the SecuraDrive. It is a 1.8" USB hard drive built for the security conscious.

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The Honeywell SecuraDrive portable USB hard drive is perfect for storing MP3 music files, videos files and photos, or for protecting sensitive and private data while on the go. Featuring Password Protection Technology, the SecuraDrive allows the user to allocate part or all of the hard drive's capacity to be public or private, with the private areas only accessible with the proper password, regardless if the SecuraDrive is lost or stolen. Benchmark Reviews tests the 80GB SecuraDrive FM-HWS80U2 for modern-day performance and reliability.

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Our latest sticks come to us via Patriot and sport a PC2-6400 sticker on them, they also have this nifty little stamp RoHS Compliant, while not a big deal (yet) in the US, in European countries, without it, it means you can't even sell it. The most important aspect that I can see of RoHS Compliance, is that the gear must be built without any lead whatsoever.

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After an exhausting six days at CeBIT 2008 we bring you pictures of the hot booth babes and all other pretty girls that were working there. By popular request we have added ultra high-res versions for all 231 pictures.

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When the Intel Quad-Core Clovertown Xeon processors were introduced in late 2006 we had reviewed (among other motherboards) the Tyan Tempest i5000XT (S2696) motherboard. We had found this i5000X-based motherboard to work incredibly well with Linux and it ended up being awarded with our Editor's Choice Award for its impressive feature-set, Linux compatibility, and top-notch performance. It has been a while since last looking at a Tyan motherboard, but with the emergence of Intel's Wolfdale and Harpertown processors requiring new motherboards, today we are looking at the Tempest i5400XT S5396 motherboard. The Tempest i5400XT is similar to the i5000XT, but it's been upgraded to the new Intel 5400 MCH.

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The ways we can watch TV have increased over the years. In the beginning we were forced to sit by the TV and watch one of the few analogue channels that were broadcasted through the airwaves. Today however we have a lot more options. Not only can we still watch TV on our TV-sets, though now in various digital form, but we also can watch TV on our computers, either through the internet or through a TV-card in our computer.

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Benchmark Reviews recently reviewed the ZOTAC 8800GT ZT-88TES2P-FSP, NVIDIA's very impressive answer to the HD3800 series. Though the NVIDIA beat ATI/AMD to market, the 8800GT release is a direct result of ATI/AMD's HD 3800 series. Today we'll be looking at one card responsible for the exceptional mid-range offering we are enjoying, the Diamond VIPER 3870PE4512 - ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 PCIE 2.0 512MB GDDR4 Video Card; ATI/AMD's mid-range card that curiously happens to be their top performing single GPU card.

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Kingston is one of the oldest names in the PC world, and they are the largest manufacturer of system memory purchased by third party buyers. I remember hearing of Kingston in the late 1980s, a time when most PCs only had a megabyte or two of system memory, and I used their memory in my first RAM upgrade about a decade later. Recently I reviewed the Kingston HyperX PC3-11000 2 gig kit. Kingston considers it an entry-level enthusiast DDR3 HyperX kit. Today I will be looking at the PC3-13000 HyperX 2 gig kit, which at present, is considered the sweet spot of DDR3 memory by some. Will the HyperX PC3-13000 impress us more than the HyperX PC3-11000 did? Read on to see.

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The latest company to come to the 9600GT parade is MSI, and like most other cards we've looked at they've decided to move away from the stock cooler and use their own design. They also figure if they're going to do that, they may as well bump up the speed of the card and see what it's capable of. I feel like we've looked at so many 9600GT cards in such a short period of time that there isn't all that much to say here. The 9600GT has quickly become a popular little offering thanks to its performance not being like that of normal x600GT offerings from NVIDIA in the past.

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Even though the GeForce 8800 GT has already been out for a while, it still has the punch to play all the latest games. The VVIKOO 8800 GT Max 1 GB comes with the Zalman VF1000 pre-installed and also features double the video memory. But is there any performance to be gained by going from 512 MB to 1024 MB of memory?

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Quote: The AMD 780G chipset is the first new chipset that was designed by AMD after the AMD/ATI merger and it performs like a winner. Usually when a company designs a chipset with integrated graphics they just take half of a desktop GPU and stick it inside the chipset, but the 780G is the first chipset generation to have the whole graphics engine inside. The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard is a great example of what the 780G chipset can do when properly used. The board didn't leave us with any bad to say as it was found to be stable with a BIOS that could easily worked with...

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The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, LDAP for short, is a 'fork' of the original X.500 specification for Directory Access Protocol. This X.500 was large and heavy. It also required an OSI protocol stack to run. LDAP was made to be leaner and able to run on top of TCP/IP instead of the OSI complete stack. Active Directory, the directory software that many Windows based enterprise networks use, is LDAP at its heart. Directory services can provide many benefits to a home network or a business. With LDAP setup, it is relatively easy to setup a single sign-on on every computer or have a global address book. The first step is the installation which is very easy on Ubuntu.

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Honeywell makes products that fit nearly every market. Since they have a partnership with SOYO, they have also entered the computer peripheral consumer space. One of their first products to be released is the SecuraDrive. It is a 1.8" USB hard drive built for the security conscious.

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This is an editorial about my experiences with the Intel DX38BT motherboard. It is not a review, so please do not take it as such. There are no benchmarks and no testing. There was just annoyance. If you are looking for a review of the DX38BT, search on the web. ASE Labs will not be reviewing this board.

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Flash drives are really ubiquitous. If you look around your computer desk, you will probably find a few USB mass storage devices near your work area. They are a boon for taking documents from one computer to the next and are fast and simple to use. They replaced the floppy that the ZIP disk could not supplant. The one area that USB flash drives are lacking is the ability to boot. Even though many computer motherboards support USB booting, it is difficult to get the right combination. Using this guide, you will be able to make a bootable USB "hard drive."

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* Well it's finally here, the 9 series of GPUs has hit the shelves and the reviews have already poured in thick and fast. I know we're a little behind everyone else on this one, but our 9600GT review is a bit different. Vvikoo's monstrous 9600, comes with a whopping Zalman heatsink and some hefty factory overclocking. Let's see what it's made of.

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Recently ago we looked at some liquid pro, a couple of liquid metal pads. And now it's time to see some more competitors and put them all in one round up. We've received a bunch of Tuniq TX2, Arctic Cooling MX2. Arctic Silver is also in the pool with their award winning AS5. And we include Coollaboratory's Liquid pro and Liquid metal pads to make the circle complete.

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Audiotrak has launched an external USB device, Maya EX5 CE. It differs from the previous Maya EX5 product only in colors. The title of the new product now includes CE, which stands for Crystal Edition. Unfortunately, such a nice name did not affect technical characteristics of the device, all parameters remain the same.

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Like most people neither wear designer clothes nor live in villas, most users cannot afford expensive powerful graphics cards like GeForce 8800GTX or RADEON HD 3870 X2 and choose cheaper solutions instead. So, this time we are going to review three Mid-End graphics cards of the $100-$180 price range and a more expensive HD 3870. All our contenders today are based on AMD (ATI) RADEON GPUs.

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What would it take to get more Linux users playing video games? A better selection of native games for the Linux platform? It has been tried over and again with very limited results. But perhaps it's worth trying again, this time with real, obtainable tools and help? Enter Garage Games.

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The latest HD 3870 X2 to make its way into the labs comes in the form of a stock clocked Sapphire. We actually haven't checked out the X2 on our new test bed in any real detail, so we'll have to see how it goes here today. If you're looking for a HD 3870 X2 that doesn't do anything but produce some good numbers, this could be the card for you. Fortunately, there is only one way to find out so let's get stuck into the card and see what we have on our hands today before we get into the benchmarks.

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It seems to me that every manufacturer in the industry is getting into the power supply business. We have seen memory makers, such as OCZ and Corsair, graphic card makers, such as BFG, and cases manufacture, such as NZXT and Tuniq are making power supplY. Combine these newcomers to the old and established power supply makers, such as Antec, Enermax, and Seasonics, we are having a big battle among power supplies. Even so, it does not deter other manufacturers from entering the arena and tries to fight against all odds to hopefully come out as a winner.

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Whether you like it or not, if you are big into the use of external peripherals, you will sooner or later being taking a hard look at a USB hub in your future. There will never be enough USB connections on your motherboard and realistically, who wants to have a rats nest of USB cable running to and from the front and rear of your computer when with one neat connection you can have seven components connected with no problems.

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FSP group first opened its doors in 1996. A decade later they have built themselves into one of the top 10 suppliers of power conversion products in the world. The 700 watt FX700 FX-Epsilon we are testing today is touted as a high efficiency, quiet operation, SLI ready, ATX V2.2 compliant unit. Well, we'll just see about that. Nurse, bring us our screwdrivers! (shaken, not stirred).

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If you are a computer enthusiast then you have heard of Lian Li. They make some of the best cases out there and have been doing it for years. One of my favorite cases of all time was the Lian Li PC-6089 case, to bad you can't really find it anymore. Today we are looking at a brand new case from Lian Li, the PC-A77. It features an all aluminum design, removable motherboard tray, and so many features that you just won't find on other cases. Let's take a look and see if Lian Li can impress us again.

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A while back I took a look at a decent wireless FM transmitter for transmitting music from your portable audio player to your cars' radio, today for review I've got the 2nd version of that, aptly named the Wireless FM Transmitter Version 2. It looks and works pretty much the same as the first version but the 2nd version features a clock and a thermometer built in as well.

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Quote: These headsets performed quite well during our battery of tests over the weeks that we tested them. Both the Maximo iMetal iP-HS1 & iP-HS2 headsets reproduced sound clearly and loudly. When using the iPod player, the iP-HS2 seemed to reproduce lower frequency better than the HS1's. Both headsets were able to stay in our ears for long periods of time listening to music before our ears showed signs of fatigue. Of course, the key for comfort when using the iP-HS2 Isolation Headset is choosing the right eartip size...

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With success in the OEM/ODM market Auras is now ready to move into the public spotlight with their name featured right on retail packages. Auras' headquarters is situated in Taipei, and with three factories in China it is clear that the company is off to a great start. Today we will be looking at the Auras TwinW, also known as the SMF660. This copper base, aluminum fin cooler places a single fan in the middle of two moderately sized cooling fin areas that utilize the push/pull effect of the fan. Let's dive in and see what the TwinW is all about.

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How many times have you misplaced your thumb drive and all you could think about was what information was saved on it. Was it personal? Was it sensitive to your job? Well Kingston has sent us one of their Data Traveler series thumb drives that is designed to help protect that data and not cost a bundle in the process. Today we look at the Data Traveler 400, read on to see if its a good fit for you.

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Earlier this week we previewed the Quadro FX1700, which is one of NVIDIA's mid-range workstation graphics cards that is based upon the G84GL core that in turn is derived from the consumer-class GeForce 8600 series. This PCI Express graphics card offers 512MB of video memory with two dual-link DVI connections and support for OpenGL 2.1 while maintaining a maximum power consumption of just 42 Watts. As we mentioned in the preview article, we would be looking at this graphics card's performance not only under Linux but also testing this workstation solution in both Microsoft Windows and Sun's Solaris. In this article today, we are doing just that as we test the NVIDIA Quadro FX1700 512MB with each of these operating systems and their respective binary display drivers.

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As the 9600GT cards continue to roll on in, we see lots of variants trying to stand out from the pack. The latest card to rock up in the labs is an offering from ECS that carries with it an Accelero S2 made by Artic Cooling. We've compared the ECS 9600GT against the Galaxy 9600GT which is slightly lower on the core and a fair bit lower on the shader clock. The Galaxy memory clock does come in a little higher though.

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AMD's new HD 3650 is basically an improved version of the 2600 XT without any major technological advances other than a smaller die size resulting in cheaper cards. PowerColor's HD 3650 Extreme comes equipped with 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory and runs at higher clocks than the AMD reference design.

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Up on the block today is the GFXChilla VGA Cooler from Coolink and I've tested it with my ATI X1800GTO video card and with my two Nvidia 8600GTS video cards as well. I've got comparison results with the GFXChilla going up against names like Thermalright, Arctic Cooling, Aerocool and of course the stock coolers. One thing cool (pun intended) about the GFXChilla is that it is small and able to be used with my Nvidia cards in SLI. From my testing I've found that the GFXChiila is virtually silent and performs extremely well, especially if you consider just how small it is.

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Today we'll test the Krait mouse for RTS & MMORPG games. It's designed specially for the click'em all style. The brightest representative of such games is Diablo and its clones, which are not mentioned among the target applications for some reason. A description of this mouse focuses on the buttons, which can process many actions per second (up to 20) and are designed to be pressed as easy and fast as it's physically possible.

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The enclosure that I have for you today comes from Cooler Master and is the latest model that had been recently released (February 22nd). It's the highly anticipated Cosmos S featuring an updated look, better thermal solutions and plenty of more functionality. The biggest upgrade over the older Cosmos 1000 however is the aluminum design. Worth mentioning is the fact that while designing the Cosmos S, the Cooler Master team had been greatly inspired by the world's finest race cars. The effect is simply stunning, see for yourself.

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The latter of the aforementioned boards was one of first to hit the market at the launch of the P35 chipset. The GA-P35, in which ever format you got it, overclocked like a monster with a tweak here and a tweak there. But now that the world is on the energy saving kick Gigabyte has released an updated version of the P35 range called the GA-EP35 range. According to Gigabyte this new line of boards has a power saving rate of 70% which should make your parents, partner or roomy happy when it comes time to fork over the money to pay the utility bill. The Dynamic Energy Save or DES for short will automatically adjust CPU phase power during idle and load activity. Which means when at idle the power will drop down to dual phase and when a load is poured on up to four or higher dependent on the load.

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Honeywell makes products that fit nearly every market. Since they have a partnership with SOYO, they have also entered the computer peripheral consumer space. One of their first products to be released is the SecuraDrive. It is a 1.8" USB hard drive built for the security conscious.

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This is an editorial about my experiences with the Intel DX38BT motherboard. It is not a review, so please do not take it as such. There are no benchmarks and no testing. There was just annoyance. If you are looking for a review of the DX38BT, search on the web. ASE Labs will not be reviewing this board.

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Flash drives are really ubiquitous. If you look around your computer desk, you will probably find a few USB mass storage devices near your work area. They are a boon for taking documents from one computer to the next and are fast and simple to use. They replaced the floppy that the ZIP disk could not supplant. The one area that USB flash drives are lacking is the ability to boot. Even though many computer motherboards support USB booting, it is difficult to get the right combination. Using this guide, you will be able to make a bootable USB "hard drive."

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Since 1986, Antec has been providing the computer hardware community with grade A cases and power supplies. Their tradition continues on to this day with their power supplies being the best in the business. Antec's cases are equally well known for quality. Today, ASE Labs looks at the Antec 900 which is one of Antec's premier cases.

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Accessories for the iPod come in all shapes and sizes. Today I will be looking at the uniquely shaped mStation 2.1 Stereo Orb. This speaker is designed to work with any iPod ranging from the first generation to current iPod models. Besides acting as a set of speakers, the Stereo Orb can function as a charging/syncing dock and includes a stereo mini jack which allows the ability to hook up other devices such as other MP3 and CD players. Plus with the 10 key remote, you can control basic functions on your mStation.

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The sticker on one side of each module contains the full specs of the memory modules; these are rated for PC2-9200 or 1150MHz with timings of 5-5-5-12 and a maximum voltage rating of 2.3v. Our test system is identical to the one used in the PC2-6400 test setup, this time however we are using the PC2-9200 memory and the Geil. For our stock setup we used 800MHz memory dividers.

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The driver is out that does it all. Crossfire X; we've wanted it, we've asked for it, we've (finally) got it. Crossfire X is the next generation of Crossfire technology for Radeon based graphics cards. With a pair of HD 3870 X2 cards in hand it's time to check out what Crossfire X is capable of. For comparisons sake we've also included a single HD 3870 and a single HD 3870 X2.

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Quote: If you happen to have a device that needs a CompactFlash card, there is no reason not to look at the ATP Electronics ProMax II line. Transferring large amounts of data is best done at high speed, and a UDMA capable card provides the best transfer rates you are going to get at this time . If you do get a ProMax II CompactFlash card, be sure to pick up the ATP Electronics ProMax UDMA card reader.

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On the run all the time? Transferring large documents through silly USB sticks? The Honeywell SecuraDrive has the perfect solution for you. Available in three different capacities: 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB, the SecuraDrive offers security and portability for all of your files. The included software allows you to partition the external drive into two different partitions: public and private. Keeping your friends and co-workers away from your personal files has never been so easy. Read on to see what other features the SecuraDrive has to offer.

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The main purpose of this review is to see how each product performs in the game Crysis. The BFG 8800 GTX Video Card has a slight advantage in all Crysis tests. This is no real surprise considering the drivers for the 3870 X2 are immature and not yet tweaked for Crysis. With more mature drivers for the 3870 X2 I suspect it would pull into the lead, but I'm just guessing. Also consider that Crysis has its issues and is coded to work best with NVIDIA video cards. For fun I ran a few 3DMark tests and it's very clear who the winner is. The 3870 X2 is much faster than.

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Intel's Open-Source Technology Center is involved with a number of open-source Linux projects such as Threading Building Blocks, Moblin, PowerTOP, and the X.Org graphics driver. Intel also has vested interests in numerous other projects such as Xen and KVM. One of Intel's lesser-known projects, however, is the Linux-ready Firmware Developer Kit. The Linux-ready Firmware Developer Kit is a bootable CD that analyzes the BIOS or EFI on the test system to see how well it's able to work with Linux and what features are supported via the firmware. The primary purpose of this kit is for use by firmware developers, but it's also able to aide end-users in determining what BIOS features on their system will work with Linux.

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Honeywell makes products that fit nearly every market. Since they have a partnership with SOYO, they have also entered the computer peripheral consumer space. One of their first products to be released is the SecuraDrive. It is a 1.8" USB hard drive built for the security conscious.

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This is an editorial about my experiences with the Intel DX38BT motherboard. It is not a review, so please do not take it as such. There are no benchmarks and no testing. There was just annoyance. If you are looking for a review of the DX38BT, search on the web. ASE Labs will not be reviewing this board.

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Flash drives are really ubiquitous. If you look around your computer desk, you will probably find a few USB mass storage devices near your work area. They are a boon for taking documents from one computer to the next and are fast and simple to use. They replaced the floppy that the ZIP disk could not supplant. The one area that USB flash drives are lacking is the ability to boot. Even though many computer motherboards support USB booting, it is difficult to get the right combination. Using this guide, you will be able to make a bootable USB "hard drive."

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Since 1986, Antec has been providing the computer hardware community with grade A cases and power supplies. Their tradition continues on to this day with their power supplies being the best in the business. Antec's cases are equally well known for quality. Today, ASE Labs looks at the Antec 900 which is one of Antec's premier cases.

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Last week we attend a small CeBIT preview for the press in Taiwan were MSI talked a bit about ECOlution, which is MSI's take on being more environmentally friendly among other things. Possibly the most exciting of the things shown in terms of what was easy to make out was their prototype CPU fan which uses a technology similar to a sterling engine which we told you about here. Now we've gotten around to uploading a short video we shot at the event which will give you a better idea of what it looks like in action. The noise you're hearing is actually from the fan itself, but MSI reassured us that this was only a prototype issue and that production fans should be quiet, due to different materials being used and a better manufacturing process being applied. This was of course far from the only thing on show and we've got pictures of a fair few other things to show you. First up we have a couple of pictures of MSI's EFI BIOS and it looks like a cracking way of access and changing all the BIOS options. Our Editor, Cameron Wilmot had a quick go as you can see from the picture below, although we weren't allowed to change any of the settings.

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The Tagan power supplies have continued to impress me. First their TG900-U95 900W power supply rated top notch and was the envy of many back in 2006. Then I had the chance to personally review the 1300watt power supply of the Tagan ITZ series and it just blew me away with the included features, strength, looks and scalability. The Tagan BZ series takes everything I loved about the ITZ series and improved upon it...

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Quote: Jason Dumbaugh takes the SimpleTech 160Gb portable drive for a test spin and shows you if this drive is worth your hard earned cash. With the growing usefulness of these small, large drives there is no reason not to own one. SimpleTech has a good selection of drives at varying sizes to meet your needs. How do these drives perform? Read our review to find out.

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Today we have the distinct pleasure of introducing the XFX's rendition of NVIDIA's 9600GT 512MB graphics solution. The model of the card we received for testing from XFX, the PV-T94P-YDF4, has the same specifications as NVIDIA's reference standard card. We have been assured by XFX that two other factory overclocked models will be available in the very near future. It has been our experience in testing a base model card such as this that often we're able to achieve an excellent overclock, in many cases even superior to the factory overclocked models. We'll soon see!

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The Logitech G15 ticks many boxes on the gaming keyboard requirements list, along with a few that are not even on it. You have the soothing orange backlight of the keys, and not distractingly illuminating the whole key either, just the letter in the center of the matt-black mini-monolith. This also makes it much easier to read the key in the dim darkness of your den. A nicely positioned LCD unit, while not completely necessary for gaming, does have some advantages. It is capable of displaying stats, windows info and media related activities. Four soft buttons underneath allow you to select an LCD option defined by a program.

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The NF-B9 is a 92mm fan that is very different from every other fan out there on the market today, it has teeth on the blade, well technically they are called Vortex Control Notches, but they look like teeth to me. Anyway, the NF-B9 also has beveled blade tips, and Noctua's own SC Drive system and SSO bearing to make for one very quiet fan that still can move quite a bit of air.

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Windows security is a big deal these days. It's hard to keep up with all of the viruses and spam and other malicious things which threaten Windows. Protection software can be expensive, too. On top of that cost, as much as 30% of system resources can be devoted to protecting against these threats, according to Yoggie, maker of the Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico. This tiny computer plugs into a Windows-based computer, and the driver offloads network traffic onto the device so it can be scanned for threats. Let's check it out...

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After taking a look at the Cooler Master Hyper 212 and Sphere CPU coolers, I am back to finish up the trifecta by putting the Hyper TX2 through our TECC system. The two previous coolers both suffered from Cooler Master's aging mounting system that requires you to remove the motherboard for all installations. On the TX2, a cooler costing half that of the previous two tested, surprisingly you do not have to remove the motherboard and mounting goes much easier. Let's dig in and see how the lowest priced cooler from the Cooler Master line-up performs against our previously tested heatsinks.

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As of Catalyst 8.3, a.k.a. The New Beginning a.k.a. The Big One a.k.a. The Humptyback Zinglebert, it's clear that CrossFireX has picked up where SLI left off. Right now, it's a better arrangement, with a lot of advantages not limited to performance. It's just that now there's even more reason for NVIDIA to improve SLI, and when they do, they're likely to start with a hardware advantage. When is this going to happen? AMD didn't include a slide on that subject.

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The looming arrival of solid-state hard drives (SSD) for notebooks seems like a rather exciting development at first blush. Unlike their mechanical counterparts, which have spindle motors, rotating platters and read/write heads, solid-state drives typically consist of flash memory chips and have no moving parts whatsoever. The benefits that these drivers offer compared to a mechanical drive are numerous, and include lower power consumption, improved performance, increased durability, less chance of data loss (no heads to crash into the platters), no noise and no heat output.

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During a recent trip to visit ATI we got a chance to see numerous AMD 780G motherboards and while we are finishing up our 780G review this should hold you over. AMD expects 780G based motherboards to be priced between $80-$120 with some manufacturers boards available this week and others later in the month. With the 780G and SB700 chipsets motherboard manufacturers can come up with some interesting designs and today we will be showing you what ASUS, ECS, Foxconn, Gigabyte, MSI, J&W and Jetway have developed...

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This is an editorial about my experiences with the Intel DX38BT motherboard. It is not a review, so please do not take it as such. There are no benchmarks and no testing. There was just annoyance. If you are looking for a review of the DX38BT, search on the web. ASE Labs will not be reviewing this board.

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Flash drives are really ubiquitous. If you look around your computer desk, you will probably find a few USB mass storage devices near your work area. They are a boon for taking documents from one computer to the next and are fast and simple to use. They replaced the floppy that the ZIP disk could not supplant. The one area that USB flash drives are lacking is the ability to boot. Even though many computer motherboards support USB booting, it is difficult to get the right combination. Using this guide, you will be able to make a bootable USB "hard drive."

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Since 1986, Antec has been providing the computer hardware community with grade A cases and power supplies. Their tradition continues on to this day with their power supplies being the best in the business. Antec's cases are equally well known for quality. Today, ASE Labs looks at the Antec 900 which is one of Antec's premier cases.

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The EPIA series from VIA has really come a long way since its initial inception years ago. When the series was first released, it was a unique formfactor. The problem is that it was slow and the expandability was not there. Fast forward a few years and the later designs are nothing like what it was. You get speed and expandability in a great size. If Windows is your thing, this board is Vista certified.

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Targus' line of backpacks is among the best. ThinkComputers' admires the line's durability, solid construction, versatility, and protection of the contents of the bag. We got our hands on the Targus Grove Convertible Messenger/Backpack. It looks and feels like a World War II rucksack re-imagined in the twenty-first century. The olive color certainly contributes to it. As part of the Targus EcoSmart green initiative, this case is PVC-free and features recyclable plastic accents and nickel-free metal to reduce the amount of toxins released into the environment. Read on for the review...

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DDR2 is still kicking, and today we have a new kit from Patriot memory who have come through with a bang in the last six months with new modules hitting the shelves. We have been given their latest PC2-6400 4GB kit with low latency timings on offer. Each module has a sticker on one side that includes the model number, speed rating and timings. These modules are designed for a 4-4-4-12 rating and support up to a maximum of 2.2 volts under the manufacturer's warranty.

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Overall, I have to say that the Razer based Microsoft Reclusa is a solid constructed piece of computer hardware that should be permanently placed on your desktop for many years with little to no problems.

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Workstation GPUs are not our main focus at Phoronix, but with the increasing use of Linux on workstation systems, we will be starting to look at professional graphics products this month and likely more of them in the future. We are beginning this expedition by looking at the Quadro FX1700, which is one of NVIDIA's mid-range workstation graphics cards. This Quadro graphics card boasts 512MB of video memory, support for CUDA, and OpenGL 2.1 support. According to NVIDIA's product literature, the Quadro FX1700 is engineered to deliver exceptional performance, quality, and price for professionals.

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Quote: AMD has just released the new 780G chipset and the 4850e low power processor. We have each of these in house and ran them through a few rounds of testing for you. The 780G provides users with an all new level of performance and gaming at an unbelievable low cost all while introducing the world to something called hybrid graphics. Get ready for a wild ride.

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VVIKOO's GeForce 9600 GT Turbo brings many changes over the NVIDIA reference design. You can see one of the first DisplayPort implementations, an HDMI output, two DVIs and optical SPDIF-in. The card also features the Zalman VF-1000 cooler which makes sure the card stays cool at all times. Since the card runs cooler, the card comes overclocked straight from the factory.

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It did not take Coolermaster long to update their high end chassis, the Cosmos S is based on the Cosmos, but made from aluminum, more cooling options, comes with a massive 200mm fan and has a very unique I/O panel. We compare this S(port) version to the original to see how it stacks up.

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Back in December we looked at the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 motherboard and compared it against the ASUS P5K-E WiFi, which was also backed by Intel's P35 Express Chipset. In that review, the Gigabyte motherboard had presented a slight lead when it came to the Linux desktop performance, but both motherboards received our recommendations. Since then, Gigabyte has made a few changes to their latest motherboards in order to provide heightened power efficiency. The newest Gigabyte motherboards support DES, or Dynamic Energy Saver, technology. In this review we are taking a brief look at Gigabyte's efforts into green computing with their Dynamic Energy Saver technology on the GA-EP35-DS4 motherboard.

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I have wanted to build a fully passively cooled computer case since I had my first Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHz. That time the fan noise was amazingly high, and manufacturers didn't much care about the noise levels, and didn't offer products for building a quiet PC. Nowadays a quiet PC is not much of a challenge to build, but totally silent?

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Quote: The cooling performance of the Noctua NH-U12P Heatpipe CPU Cooler is exceptional. With the fan at full speed it produces minimal noise and provides excellent thermal results, and cutting the fan speed down to near silence doesn't impact the cooling at all. Even though the performance was exceptional, achieving it took more effort than I am used to needing in order to install a CPU cooler.

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Since 1986, Antec has been providing the computer hardware community with grade A cases and power supplies. Their tradition continues on to this day with their power supplies being the best in the business. Antec's cases are equally well known for quality. Today, ASE Labs looks at the Antec 900 which is one of Antec's premier cases.

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The EPIA series from VIA has really come a long way since its initial inception years ago. When the series was first released, it was a unique formfactor. The problem is that it was slow and the expandability was not there. Fast forward a few years and the later designs are nothing like what it was. You get speed and expandability in a great size. If Windows is your thing, this board is Vista certified.

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Noctua is a new company that promises quiet cooling with good performance. Their first entry into the market is very well built.

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Last week, I happened upon a forum thread about thermal compounds; asking which was best for a variety of scenarios. This got me thinking that maybe it was time to take a look at the various cooling solutions available on the market. After a visit to Newegg.com, and spending $85, I now have more syringes than Amy Winehouse. Today, we'll cover every thermal compound we can find (more than 20), and explain things like thermal resistance, conductivity, and which thermal compound is the best choice for you. While the performance results may not be dramatically different (which is actually a good thing), we'll dig a little deeper and look at things a bit differently.

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Quote: TechwareLabs tests out three new CPU coolers from Kingwin that use direct thermal transfer to integrated heatpipes. This is supposed to result in a great decrease in your CPU operating temperature. Does it work? Read our review on these three to find out.

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GIGABYTE graphics cards seem to be few and far between these days because they like to do things a bit differently. We're all for standing out from the pack, and the latest card from GIGABYTE to jump into that category would be the TurboForce Edition of the 8800GT. The Zalman cooler that they use isn't anything new, we've seen it used on the HD 3870 that GIGABYTE released a few months back. With that said though, it really is a tried and tested cooler that seems to be extremely efficient. The copper in the middle of the cooler helps move the heat and the aluminum fins help the heat dissipate quickly.

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But what if you want a great overclocking experience at a price closer to home? A price that won't equal that of mid range Mercedes Benz monthly payment. What if you only could scrap up the funds to obtain a Intel Dual Core 2200 or 6420? Chances are you will want a board that is packed with all the features you must have like eSATA, voltage selections, Crossfire support and the rest of the features necessary to overclock the hell out of your CPU.

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Not everyone needs a top of the line LCD monitor with a 2ms response time and all of the connections imaginable. Some people just want an LCD monitor to replace their huge CRT monitor. It is much easier moving around a few thin LCD monitors than a big CRT. Today we are taking a look at the VL2018W from Princeton. The 20.1-inch LCD features a 1680 x 1050 resolution and 8ms response time. You can get it from Geeks.com for a very decent price of $179.99. Let's take a look...

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It was a year ago that AMD had replaced its aging FireGL Control Panel inside its Linux driver with the AMDCCCLE, or AMD Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition. Since that time, this Catalyst Control Center for Linux continues to mature with a few new features being added here and there, and version 2.0 could in fact be introduced in an upcoming release. At the same time, the control panel utility that ships with NVIDIA's binary driver, nvidia-settings, has stayed more or less the same for the past few years with only a few minor revisions. How do these two Linux control panels compare though when it comes to the features? For this article we have put AMDCCCLE and nvidia-settings side-by-side to compare and contrast both utilities.

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Legit Reviews was able to snag one of Alienware's first High Definition Media Servers off the assembly line to take a closer look what could be the future of home computing and entertainment. These high-end media servers are designed for users looking to create a connected and fully-integrated home theater. The price of the media server is between $5000 and $7000 depending on the configuration that you desire. In the next few weeks Legit Reviews will partner with two custom home theater installers in Los Angeles to get their views on the functionality and operability of the Alienware HD Media Server (HDMS). Because this flagship media server is not intended for normal consumers to install, Alienware is only making these servers available to profession installers. Until our installers have a go at it and report back to us, we wanted to at least give you a sneak peak as to what you will see after our installers get through...

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I'll be honest to say that I was quite surprise by the results. The idle temps were nearly identical but to see a 5 degree difference in load temps really surprised me. The numbers obviously speak for themselves and Ultra's Aluminum Hard Drive Cooler with Heatpipes obviously does its job well and pretty much matches the results of the stock setup in the Cosmos.

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We've been talking about CrossFireX drivers since November 2007 and it's been a long four months of waiting, but it seems like it was worth the wait. The drivers we used for testing are still in development, so once the final CATALYST 8.3 drivers are delivered we will take a closer look at CrossFireX. CrossFireX looks good and the scaling from two cards to three shows performance gains of 5-50% with the average being right around 33%. We can't wait to see what Quad-CrossFire looks like and what CATALYST 8.4 and 8.5 drivers will bring to the table.

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When we first reviewed NVIDIA's new GeForce 9600 GT we noticed a discrepancy between the advertised core speed and the frequency reported by the clock generator. After further investigation we can now answer what causes this.

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Quote: NVIDIA's 3-way SLI indeed works but at the price of entry, it had better. The problem however is that in this instance it is based on technology that is approaching the end of its life. The 8800 GTX and Ultra have all but been replaced by the 8800 GTS 512MB and the 9000 series cards have already started to launch. The Quad SLI launch of the 9800GX2 is imminent and should undercut the cost of either Triple GTX's or Ultra's and perform on par or better. So really the only way this is going to be of benefit to anyone is if you've already got a 680i or 780i and a pair of GTX's or Ultra's...

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Aeneon memory is a division of Qimonda, a German memory manufacturer which is also a division of Infineon Technologies. While Infineon has been around for quite some time, Aeneon hasn't made any major jumps into the DRAM market, so it's about time we see a new player come in. Aeneon has rated these modules for 1333MHz with a timing rating of 8-8-8-24, which is about normal for 1333MHz modules. The SPD doesn't support Intel's XMP setup, but this doesn't stop them from running on X38/X48 chipsets.

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Leadtek honored us today by allowing Bjorn3D to review a brand new, just released, Nvidia 9000 series card, more specifically the WinFast PX9600 GT Extreme. One thought popped into my mind when I heard we were going to be reviewing this, 'Why are they releasing a 600 series card first and not an 800 series like all the previous releases, as in the 8800?' My opinion is that they have there eyes set and ears open to the people out there that aren't enthusiasts but are instead weekend gamers that can't afford the enthusiast cards or don't want to pull multiple one hundred dollar bills out of there wallets, or purses (for all you lady gamers). Join me as we take a closer look at the brand new WinFast PX9600 GT from Leadtek.

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As with all Sonic models from Palit this card comes out with an increased core and memory clocks so we'll just have to see how it goes today against the competition. But before we check that out, we of course need to have a look at the package and card which should prove to be very good. It's clearly got some stand out features; what are they? Well, there's only one way to find out and that's by moving forward. The Palit 9600GT could be one of the best graphics cards we've seen to date, so let's see if first impressions hold up as we get stuck straight into it.

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The Vista feeling slow? Speed it up with one of the many drives in the A-DATA Nobility N702 Series. Available in red, blue, or silver, and sizes of 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB the N702 should be attractive to most people. This drive supports Windows ReadyBoost as well as having some decent transfer rates. The Nobility N702 has a couple unique features that you probably aren't going to find on any other flash drive. Take a further look into the review to find out what separates this drive from the rest.

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Dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability shown by various database and other benchmarks, in some cases showing peak performance improvements as high as 350% over FreeBSD 6.X under normal loads and 1500% at high loads. When compared with the best performing Linux kernel (2.6.22 or 2.6.24) performance is 15% better. Results are from benchmarks used to analyze and improve system performance, results with your specific work load may vary. Some of the changes that contribute to this improvement are...

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The EPIA series from VIA has really come a long way since its initial inception years ago. When the series was first released, it was a unique formfactor. The problem is that it was slow and the expandability was not there. Fast forward a few years and the later designs are nothing like what it was. You get speed and expandability in a great size. If Windows is your thing, this board is Vista certified.

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Noctua is a new company that promises quiet cooling with good performance. Their first entry into the market is very well built.

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SOYO was established in 1999 at the time when computer hardware was easy to list off in your head. Their Dragon series of motherboards were excellent and many enthusiasts employed their boards for computer builds. Today, SOYO is a vastly different company. Gone are the motherboards but SOYO has reinvented itself and now produces displays. They have a partnership with Honeywell for dual branding. Today, we are looking at the Topaz S 24" LCD Widescreen Monitor.

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When browsing the shelves of your local B&M you will find there are several different sizes and brands to pick from. Some drives are small enough to fit in the front pocket of your shirt and there are other units that can house numerous drives. These types of unit can be a big as shoe box or two. Depending on your needs someone will have you covered. Besides storage size another major factor would be what brand of drive to buy. Seagate and Maxtor seem to be two of the more popular brands. Personal preference usually is the deciding factor in this case.

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Bgears has burst onto the case modder/enthusiast scene with some pretty innovative products. With the new b-Envi Small Form Factor (SFF) case, Bgears tosses its hat into the ring and wants to spar with the other manufacturers in a crowded case market for the SFF crowd. Does this case have what it takes to make your friends b-Envious? I think you will find this to be a special case in many ways, so... step on through and learn about one of the best kept secrets in town!

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Currently, the high-end motherboards are fairly similar her in terms of performance and features. Unlike old motherboards where they differ from each other in terms of overclockability, amount of ports, bundles, and features. Current motherboards seem to be performing so close to each other that often motherboards with same chipsets will have performance less than 5% from each other. In order to differentiate themselves among other boards, motherboard manufactures are starting implement different approaches. Asus is probably the most ambitious with their motherboard bundle and avant-garde chipset cooling and designs. MSI, on the other hand, tries to stands out by incorporate Audigy onboard audio. Gigabyte is doing something slightly different than either Asus or MSI. They have decided to produce greener motherboard with their latest DES motherboard family. In fact, Gigabyte is commented to the greener products as many of their current line-up of products (graphic ! cards and motherboards) are designed to reduce power consumption.

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Linux on Sony hardware has been done before, but not to any great success. Some of you may remember that the PS2 could run a strange version of the open source OS with a bought package that gave you a 40GB HDD, a keyboard and a mouse. However, it did not allow for any functionality of the DVD-ROM because Sony thought you might start using your PS2 to rip off all their games. There was a lot of noise in the beginning of the PS3's marketing-hype-launch that the console would have Linux pre-loaded, but Sony came to their senses when they realized how much more work that was going to be for them. So we are left to figure this one out for ourselves.

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One of the most interesting things about the growth of Skype is the development of Skype-specific devices, which are (presumably) meant to ease the shock of talking on the phone using a microphone and some computer speakers instead of a headset, but take away the free aspect of Skype and impose a more organized, made-for-business feeling on the VoIP network. Of course, appearances can be deceiving, so today's task: find out whether or not one particular Skype phone - the IPEVO Trio - makes the tradeoff of more features worth paying extra for your Skype hardware.

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* *After finalizing my key bindings for CoD4, it went great. I was actually able to complete the last three quarters of the game using only the mouse on normal difficulty. There were parts of the campaign I knew I could not complete on higher difficulties because of lack of a controller I was used to *cough* keyboard *cough*. For casual play, however, I could relax quite comfortably while playing my favorite game. *

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When you think of discrete graphics, your probably don't think low-end. It's very common, as with most things we can buy, for people to immediately shoot for the stars. In the video card world, this usually means discussing only the best money can buy, and this is the start of a bigger mistake. Very recently NVIDIA released their newest addition to the GeForce family: the 9600 GT. While it offers solid performance for the lower mid-range of discrete graphics, NVIDIA's 9th generation of video cards has only one offering thus far. Essentially, the latest is by far not the greatest.

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With a big video card comes a lot of information I suppose and the HD3870X2 is amongst the biggest available at this time. We have learned a lot about this card today and thanks to some immature drivers, there is plenty to learn down the road. Overall though, the experience we had with the HIS HD3870X2 is a rather positive one. ATI has done well with the reference design and HIS stuck to that design to the letter. The performance of the HD3870X2 is quite impressive and as we saw in the benchmarks, pretty much the same as a pair of HD3870s in CrossFire. Performance issues aside, the HD3870X2 looks to be ready to play with the big boys in the GPU market and with future driver updates and game patches, things will only get better.

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It's not something that we in the enthusiast world really think about, but there is a market out there for high-end computers that will probably never do any gaming, be overclocked, water cooled, or any other of the cool stuff that geeks do with their rigs. For example, a design engineer might desire a CAD workstation using multiple large screens...as many as six or eight...at high resolution. Anyone designing animation would like such a rig. So, what does someone desiring to build a modern upper-end graphics workstation do? Asus has an answer with the P5K64 WS, a workstation motherboard based on the very successful Intel P35 chipset. Today we will be looking at the P5K64 WS, to see if it has anything that would hold the interest of the enthusiast. Can it satisfy the geek? Read ahead to see.

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We're all still waiting on an official supporting Crossfire X driver from AMD (said to come in next month's Catalyst 8.3 drivers) which will allow a couple of HD 3870 X2s to be paired up. AMD are going to run into a problem when they release the HD 3870 X2 driver. That problem is that the hype is going to be gone on the card and everyone will be waiting for the 9800 series of cards from NVIDIA.

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Graphics Tablet, which is more than just a graphics tablet, the pen has built in mouse buttons so it can act as a mouse, and Adesso included a small travel mouse to be used with the tablet as well so there's no need to carry an additional mouse with you. One of the great things about this product is the price, I honestly expected it to cost much more than it does, coming in at around seventy dollars it is well worth that price and could easily sell for more.I've been using it for a couple weeks now and have come to enjoy what it can do for me to make my life a bit more easier and even enjoyable. It's been a long time since I've used a graphics tablet at all, and I had forgotten just how useful they can be...

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Starting off the X.Org talks at FOSDEM 2008 was AMD's John Bridgman, who has been leading the AMD GPG open-source efforts. John had talked briefly about the history of their open-source efforts for the R500+ series and the evolution of AMD GPU hardware. Among the interesting comments made were that TexturedVideo/X-Video support for the R500/600 may be coming quite soon, DRM and Mesa work forthcoming, open-source multi-GPU CrossFire support is on the road-map, and they will be re-releasing R200 programming documents. The RV620 and RV635 documentation is expected in the near future.

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Today for review I've got what is probably the world's smallest Bluetooth USB adapter, it's not much bigger than a dime, and that's only because of the USB part of it, the actual Bluetooth chip is a fraction of the overall size. It's called the Super Mini Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR USB Adapter, but don't let it's diminutive size fool you, it's fully loaded, being Bluetooth v2.0with Enhanced Data Rate it allows for longer range and faster file transfers.

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For the past several weeks we have been referencing AMD's tcore in several of our articles, which is a user-space software suite that has been developed and used internally at ATI by engineers to work on various aspects of their binary drivers. Tcore is primarily used for testing prior to the availability of the actual silicon for their forthcoming graphics processors. John Bridgman and Alex Deucher have been working tediously to get this tcore source-code sanitized and cleared for public release, and finally they have reached this milestone. AMD has just published the first bits of open-source 3D programming documentation for ATI GPUs. This 3D programming documentation covers the R500 series and even goes back with information on the R300/400 series as well. The R600 3D programming guide will also be out soon. This information available today is what will foster the growth of open-source R500/600 3D support for the Radeon and RadeonHD drivers as well as R600 2D acceleration.

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We sometimes forget that not everyone has the money or the need to use these higher end cards. So that's what we're doing today, we're going to look after the people on the other side of the fence, who don't need big 3DMark numbers or 200FPS in Half Life 2 at 2560 x 1600. Today we'll simply have the two cards together. We won't be comparing them against each other as such, but rather just simply looking at exactly how they perform and how much extra performance a HD 3650 gives you over the HD 3450.

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Many may not recognize the Tuniq brand name in the North American market but they are planning on changing that. If their recent power supply releases are any indication, they will have no problem making a name for themselves. This product comes with a large 140mm fan so it remains quiet and cool even under load. It's also small so not only would this be great for a server environment, but it would be well suited in a HTPC or a SFF PC.

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Microsoft's acquisition of Danger could be a game changer. Danger, before the iPhone, was arguably the hottest Smartphone for the young celebrity and under-20 set of teen phone users. This is the company that created the extremely popular SideKick series of phones for T-Mobile (and often used by stars like Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan etc). Vastly easier to use than any other previous Smartphone, and actually still better than the iPhone for anything that is text related, the Danger phone only lacked two things: The elegance of the iPhone's hardware, and Steve Jobs to make it as big as the iPhone.

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Following the launch of its exciting new gaming portal, http://www.sapphireatomic.com – SAPPHIRE Technology introduces a new limited edition product under the SAPPHIRE ATOMIC brand.

The SAPPHIRE HD 3870 ATOMIC version features an exciting new single slot cooler – the first in the world to feature Vapour Chamber Technology (VCT). This advanced cooler provides more efficient and quieter cooling allowing the ATOMIC edition to ship overclocked out of the box, and to allow enthusiasts even more scope for performance tuning. The single slot design allows the use of multiple cards in the latest CrossFire-X configurations even where PCI-Express slots are sited closely together.

SAPPHIRE HD3870 ATOMIC ships in an exclusive aluminium case, with an unrivalled bundle including CCL UV lamp, HDMI adapter and 3m HDMI cable, Black Box games bundle and a discount voucher ($30 in US, 20 Euros in Europe and £15 in UK) in addition to all the standard cables and software.

The SAPPHIRE HD 3870 ATOMIC has 512MB of high performance GDDR4 memory, clocked at 1200MHz (2.4GHz effective) and the GPU core is pre-overclocked at 825MHz. Supporting the new CrossFireX technology, two high speed connectors on each card allow 2, 3 or even 4 graphics cards to be daisy-chained together for enhanced performance when installed in a CrossFireX mainboard.

Models in the HD 3000 series incorporate the latest ATI Avivo HD Technology for enhanced Video display and feature a built in UVD (Unified Video decoder) for the hardware accelerated decoding of Blu-ray and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, considerably reducing CPU loading. The dedicated HDMI adaptor delivers true audio and video output on a single cable for direct connection to an HDMI ready display.

SAPPHIRE HD 3000 series graphics cards are Microsoft Windows Vista Premium certified and supported by the ATI Catalyst® suite of software, ensuring customers have ongoing access to software updates for performance, stability and added features. Support for DirectX10.1 provides developers with access to enhanced programming techniques and new lighting effects.

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SAPPHIRE Technology has just announced global availability of its exciting new HD 3870 TOXIC edition high performance graphics accelerator.

The SAPPHIRE HD 3870 TOXIC version features the award winning - and SAPPHIRE exclusive -Vapor-X single slot cooler, SAPPHIRE’s implementation of Vapour Chamber Technology (VCT). This advanced cooling solution provides more efficient and quieter cooling allowing the TOXIC edition to ship overclocked out of the box, and to allow enthusiasts even more scope for performance tuning. The single slot design allows the use of multiple cards in the latest CrossFireX configurations even where PCI-Express slots are sited closely together.

The SAPPHIRE HD 3870 TOXIC has 512MB of high performance GDDR4 memory, clocked at 1152MHz (2.3GHz effective) and the GPU core is pre-overclocked at 800MHz. Supporting the new CrossFireX technology, two high speed connectors on each card allow 2 (now) and 3 or even 4 graphics cards (with a future driver release) to be daisy-chained together for enhanced performance when installed in a CrossFireX mainboard.

All SAPPHIRE graphics cards in the HD 3000 series incorporate the latest ATI Avivo HD Technology for enhanced Video display and feature a built in UVD (Unified Video decoder) for the hardware accelerated decoding of Blu-ray and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, considerably reducing CPU loading. The dedicated HDMI adaptor delivers true audio and video output on a single cable for direct connection to an HDMI ready display.

SAPPHIRE HD 3000 series graphics cards are Microsoft Windows Vista™ Premium certified and supported by the ATI Catalyst® suite of software, ensuring customers have ongoing access to software updates for performance, stability and added features. Support for DirectX10.1 provides developers with access to enhanced programming techniques and new lighting effects.

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Noctua is a new company that promises quiet cooling with good performance. Their first entry into the market is very well built.

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SOYO was established in 1999 at the time when computer hardware was easy to list off in your head. Their Dragon series of motherboards were excellent and many enthusiasts employed their boards for computer builds. Today, SOYO is a vastly different company. Gone are the motherboards but SOYO has reinvented itself and now produces displays. They have a partnership with Honeywell for dual branding. Today, we are looking at the Topaz S 24" LCD Widescreen Monitor.

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Thermaltake is a company that is very well know to the enthusiast computer builder community. They provide many great products including a line of heavy (as in weight) power supplies, modding, cooling, and cases. ThermalTake was founded in 1999 and has really grown every since. They have always put out good looking products and the SopranoRS 101 is no different. Let's take a closer look.

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* Most cooler reviews are of products designed for the latest, greatest and usually hottest GPUs. But what if you have an older system, with a once powerful 6600GT or x800? The fan dies or you want to squeeze a few more MHZ in your OC, where do you turn? Well, Gigabyte of all companies have made the Cyclops, which comes with changeable front covers, RAM sinks and a solid aluminium core. Let's see how our 6600GT feels with it attached.

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A-Data continues to innovate the USB Flash Drive segment with new and unique designs. The Sport series features a sturdy metal frame with rubber padding, to make it durable for use during outdoor activities. A-Data's Sport S702 will sure go well on any key chain.

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Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2008 is a program suite from Paragon that promises to make everything around the hard drive easy. It can defrag your hard drives, make it easy to take an image and restore it and even make sure that any data you want removed stays removed. After using it for over a month my personal feeling is that this is a great toolkit for both novice and experienced users. Read on to find out why.

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You wouldn't know by looking, but Intel's a little new at the chipset business. It's not that they haven't been doing it for decades, but just that they've never made a business out of it. Until recently. Intel's 975X did well; i965 blew doors off hinges. And, though it's a little long in the technospheric tooth, i965's footprint is almost too big to fill. Without presuming that its successor, P35, is shiny and better, I've tested what looks like a crowd-pleaser: Asus' P5K-E WiFi- AP. For less than $150, it's priced right where everyone can reach it, and comes with the right amount of flash to nab attention from the rest.

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If I say Razer, immediately everyone says, Boomslang! The mouse that was superior compared to other gaming mice. Razer's motto is, for gamers, by gamers. They design their products in cooperation with pro gamers and everyone at Razer are actually gamers as well. It's nice to see that their philosophy is a way of life carried into their products as well. What we are looking at today is their latest mouse, apart from the recently launched special edition boomslang. It's the Razer Diamondback 3g Gaming mouse.

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While the relatively new line of Extreme Edition memory products by = A-Data still carry the Vitesta model name, the EE modules offer very = aggressive timings, more comparable to other manufacturers of high-end = performance memory. It is one of these sets of memory sticks I will be = taking a look at today, the ADQVD1A16K 2x1GB PC2 6400 Extreme Edition = DDR2-800+ Dual Channel Memory Kit.

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We take a look at the newest DFI Intel motherboard, based on the X38 chipset, the successor of the high end version of the P35. Can DFI work their magic and produce a tweakers dream X38 board? We find out.

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The HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 comes with a high end dual slot cooler, 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory and increased clocks at a price tag of $199. This winning combination gets very close in performance to the much more expensive HD 3870 and can even surpass it when overclocked.

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After looking at the new 9600GT just the other day, it became clear to us that the HD 3870 really does still have some life in it. It's not dying off anytime soon thanks to the aggressive pricing that has been implemented recently. It did get us thinking though; with an MSI HD 3870 OC sitting around doing nothing, it was time to see what would happen when we put overclocked part up against overclocked part. It's really going to come down to how well the HD 3870 is able to make use of the increased clock speeds that MSI have offered.

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Quote: Altec Lansing's SnugFit design does indeed provide great noise isolation to the user. As we used our various MP3 players from Apple and Cowon, we found the UHP336 to be one of the better headsets we have had in our ear. For me personally, I wanted better base response for the headphones and was annoyed by the amount of adjustment I had to keep making to hold the headphones in the sweet spot of my ear canal. This is most likely due to the weight of the headphone and cord...

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Another reason to use expansion cards rather than onboard SATA controller would be free up the resource for other uses. In addition, SATA expansion cards often offer extra features and have wider support for multiple operating systems that are not found with onboard SATA controller. All of current motherboards will only work with Windows and/or Linux but not Mac due to the fact that Mac operating system usually comes with pre-designed components unlike PC counterparts. Despite the fact that the underlying hardware and chipset maybe same, the drivers are simply not there for a Mac system to use PC components (of course you can always use boot camp or the hacked operating system but that is not truly running under Mac OS). This is where the expansion cards can be useful.

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Even though the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GS comes with just 96 shaders and 12 ROPs it can easily compete with AMD HD3850 and HD3870. The card offers great price/performance and is very very quiet. With up to 30% overclocking this card is every overclocker's dream being able to surpass the much more expensive 8800 GT when overclocked.

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As we went into the 4th quarter of 07, Toshiba and the HD DVD camp was certain they had this wrapped up. Their player prices were well below the Blu-Ray offerings, they had picked up several new studios and Sony's PS3 was looking more like an anchor on Sony's future than a help to Blu-Ray. In addition, they seemed to believe that Time Warner was going to go exclusively HD DVD shortly after the end of the year and had planned a massive announcement with Microsoft for CES.

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Motherboards are at the heart of every computer, and their importance is central to stable system operation. No matter if you are a low-demand office worker who plugs away on letters or spreadsheets or if you are a high-performance hardware enthusiast who demands extreme framerates from your video games, one component alone will determine your ability: the motherboard. Because everything rides on the system mainboard, it must be based on a solid and dependable foundation. Gigabyte isn't a new name to the industry, and for years now they have offered some of the most reliable and stable motherboard sold. In fact, over the past year there really only seemed to be two realistic options for motherboard manufacturer's when you shopped for new hardware; and Gigabyte was one of them. In this article Benchmark Reviews challenges our reigning champion against the Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 Ultra Durable 2 DES motherboard.

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Speaking of temperatures, the Zalman GPU after-market cooler on the 8800GT TurboForce is a godsend and certainly keeps the temperatures in the lowest range we've again seen on any stock 8800 series card. It averages 10 degrees Celsius cooler than any other card we've tested in this performance range. Even when this card was overclocked to a gargantuan level we only experienced a load temperature of 52 degrees Celsius, which is amazing!

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Going back to performance, at stock speeds, the K9A2 Platinum performed very well with the Phenom 9600 Black, despite the TLB issue which never affected us. The 790FX platform as a whole is quite solid and shows a lot of promise. Provided you're planning to stay closely within specifications, we think the MSI K9A2 Platinum AMD 790FX motherboard is a solid and reliable platform but the overclocking results surely vary depending on the processor you have.

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Though the memory manufacturers are still designing and building new DDR2 memory modules, DDR3 memory is here and being used. There are plenty of motherboards out there that utilize DDR3 memory, and new modules are being introduced monthly. No, you have probably not yet heard of Aeneon. Aeneon is a division of a German company Qimonda, the world's third largest manufacturer of DRAM, part of Infineon Technologies AG. So, there is really nothing new about Aeneon but the name.

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"Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth," he said. "That is very exciting." Mr Meyer's team used the US space agency's Spitzer space telescope to look at groups of stars with masses similar to the Sun. They detected discs of cosmic dust around stars in some of the youngest groups surveyed. The dust is believed to be a by-product of rocky debris colliding and merging to form planets. Nasa's Kepler mission to search for Earth-sized and smaller planets, due to be launched next year, is expected to reveal more clues about these distant undiscovered worlds.

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Toshiba Corp is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony Corp, a company source said on Saturday.

The move will likely put an end to a battle that has gone on for several years between consortiums led by Toshiba and Sony vying to set the standard for the next-generation DVD and compatible video equipment.