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Sapphire HD 5750 1 GB GDDR5
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Sapphire's HD 5750 is priced competitively below $150 and offers all the new features like DirectX 11, AMD Eyefinity, native HDMI & DP and more. Even though the cooler does not look like it, it works extremely well and keeps the card cool and very quiet. We were also able to overclock our sample by more than 20% which essentialy brings the HD 5750's performance to levels of the HD 5770.
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Toshiba Satellite T135 Win 7 CULV Notebook Review
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We're seeing more and more CULV notebooks hit the market these days. The growing sector of Consumer Ultra Low Voltage machines attempts to bridge the gap between lower cost netbooks and full-size notebooks, offering a more powerful chip than the ubiquitous Atom options we see in netbooks, but one that consumes less power than the mainstream Core 2 Duo processors we see in many full-size notebooks.
The Toshiba Satellite T100 Series fits in the CULV segment and attempts to offer the comfort and convenience of a standard laptop in an ultra-thin package. As the larger model in the T100 series, the T135 we look at ths in article features Windows 7, a 13.3-inch widescreen display and measures only 1.35 inches at its thickest point...
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Thermolab BADA Heatsink Review
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"From the makers of the wavy BARAM heatsink comes the Thermolab BADA; a 136mm tall mid-tower heatsink that fills in the performance cooling void where taller coolers can't go. Height you see, can quickly throw a wrench into PC plans when the cooler doesn't fit in the case. Thermolab's BADA heatsink is equipped with one 95mm PWM fan mounted to the heatsinks' raw aluminum fins via sturdy rubber vibration absorbing posts. Interestingly for a commercial heatsink, Thermolab are pre-lapping the base of the BADA to ensure the three 6mm diameter exposed copper heatpipes are flat, smooth, and ideal for mounting onto the processor."
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AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE C3 Revision (LostCircuits)
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It is not huge as in breakthrough what AMD has accomplished with the C3 Revision but it is still worth writing home about it. The two things that are noteworthy are the increased overclocking potential at "slightly altered stock settings" and the pretty dramatically reduced power consumption of the C3 revision. It is difficult to judge how much of this is caused by the hardware-based power management compared to the earlier software/firmware-base power management but the results definitely speak for themselves.
In the same context, it is absolutely necessary to stress the point that benchmarking scenarios are probably the worst case to hi-light the accomplishments of the new power management because we are running either at idle or else at full load. Consider just the situation of typing this article, where the input is frequent enough to keep the CPU from entering the lowest power states, simply because the older scheme was too slow. This is where the new, CPU hardware-based power management can make a much bigger dent in the overall power budget than what we can show in our benchmarks, since the CPU will enter idle states much more frequently than before, and do so without causing the infamous "CnQ performance bug" to surface.
In so far, we are probably under-appreciating the overall achievement of the C3 stepping. At the same time, there is, however, still a bitter pill.In the mobile sector, AMD has very successfully implemented a throttling of the NB under idle conditions. We sort of anticipated the same thing to happen in the desktop space with the C3 stepping, alas, nothing on this front seems to have happened. Knowing how much power the NB consumes, this could be another significant power savings feature if brought to the desktop.
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HIS Radeon HD 4830 512MB Graphics Card Video Review
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"Today we are looking at the HIS Radeon HD 4830 512MB Graphics Card. This is a budget to mid range card from AMD delivering good performance in some of the latest games. HIS aren't heard from very much in the UK, but they offer good value for money, decent cooling, and a good warranty."
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GeForce 210 and GeForce GT 220
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"While we can't fault Galaxy for this at all, the new GeForce 210s
and GT 220s have a hard time standing up against the almost exactly
one-year-old Radeon HD 4670 card. The gaming performance of the AMD option
just blows away NVIDIA's new parts and the added benefit of CUDA-support is
really the only outstanding feature that might tempt us into picking up an
NVIDIA offering."
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Logitech Cooling Pad N100 notebook
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“After passive Lapdesk laptop stand/cooler, Logitech released active
laptop cooler. Although we are accustomed to high price tags on Logitech
products, this time it’s not the case. There are two reasons for such
“phenomenon”. First of all, Logitech is relatively new when it comes to
(active) laptop coolers, and secondly, N100 isn’t designed to offer top
performances but rather to be suited for as wide as possible audience…”
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Kingston Threaded DDR3 Deep Dive
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In the same workload presented to the conventional memory modules, the threaded modules will require 16 transactions for each 64 Byte transfer, but will combine two parallel hemichannels, thereby achieving full bandwidth. The duration of the burst is 8T (12.5ns), which is long enough to completely mask tRRD at 5T, hence the modules can do seamless back-to-back transactions. On average, 2.5 row activates are necessary within each 30 ns tFAW window, which is less than the limit of four, therefore no wait states need to be inserted and the modules can utilize the full theoretically available bandwidth.
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DFI LanParty BI G41-T33 Motherboard Review
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"Today we have the opportunity to take a look at another board in the LanParty series from DFI. The LanParty series has always been a favorite of mine because of the tweaking options and the overclocking ability that they have. The board we get to look at today, though, was one that most would not think would belong in that series of boards. It is a micro board, uses the older LGA775 socket coupled with DDR3 memory, and has the G41 chipset that sports the GMA X4500 on-board graphics chip..."
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Windows 7: Security Features
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"Unfortunately, the Windows operating system that we've grown to know and love (or hate) is not the most secure operating system by any means, but Windows 7 promises to change that. TechReviewSource.com agrees too: Windows 7 is the most secure operating system Microsoft has ever made. This exposé of the many security features in Windows 7 include the new Action Center, improved UAC, and more."
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EnhanceBox E4 External Storage Hard Drive Array Review
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I want you to imagine for a moment that your laptop or desktop has just crashed. Every personal document, every e-mail, every file and photo is gone. All of the data on the hard drive is gone. . . What do you do? Attempt to recover the data by yourself? Use an expensive data recovery service? Try to recover what you can from older copies on thumbdrives or on CD or DVD that may be months old or older? Keep in mind that much of who we are in these modern times exists in a digital format. So I ask the question "When does your data become important?"
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More AMD Radeon 5770 Linux Benchmarks
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"Earlier this week AMD launched the Radeon HD 5700 series GPUs
using their Juniper GPUs as part of the Evergreen family. We published
Linux benchmarks of the Radeon HD 5750/5770 on Tuesday with our thoughts
on these new mid-range graphics cards, but today there are a few more
Ubuntu results to add in for these ATI graphics cards."
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ATI Radeon HD5970 Video Card Review
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"Another day, another ATI GPU launch - AMD is getting good at this! Today marks the launch of AMD's new GPU product codenamed Hemlock. Join us as we take a look at it to see if its worth your hard-earned cash!
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Thermaltake BlacX Duet Dual Hard Drive Docking Station Review
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"The BlacX Duet is a very simple yet effective product for quickly accessing data on any two hard drives. And when I say any two drives, I mean it in a literal sense. The docking station supports all 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives up to 2TB, so the chances of incompatibility with any current drives you have are slim to none. Furthermore, installation is completely tool-free and the absence of fans allow for silent operation."
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Kingston SSD Now V 40GB
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The biggest obstacle to mainstreaming SSD's has been price per gigabyte and overall cost of individual SSD's. Leave it to Kingston to break the price barrier and deliver a 40GB Kingston SSDNow for a measly $115 (Before MIR). Not only are they delivering a $115 SSD, they are delivering an Intel controller and Intel Nand flash SSD.
You can reach up and close your mouth now, yes it's a $115 SSD with an Intel controller and Nand flash in it. Not only that, it's also not the old 45nm SSD rehashed for Kingston, it's the new 34nm design with a totally new Intel controller that offers marginally better performance than the uber expensive (at launch) Intel X25-M. At launch the Intel X25-M was running in the $600 - $800 range for an 80GB MLC SSD. Short months later you can get a better drive, with 40GB capacity for $115, take the $115 times two and you get the same capacity for $230 pre MIR, after MIR (At Launch) the total cost for 80GB would run a measly $170.
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The new Radeon HD 5970
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'While we still are waiting for NVIDIA:s first DirectX 11-capable cards and probably will have to wait a few months into 2010 for them, AMD is getting busy releasing a steady stream of new cards to the consumers. When the HD5870 and the HD5850 was released AMDS spelled out their strategy and promised to follow up the cards first with the HD5770/HD5750 and then with the 'Hemlock' card, the rumored HD5870X2. So far AMD has kept their promises and it is indeed the 'Hemlock' that we are looking at today although the name has been changed to HD5970.'
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Gigabyte's GA-P55M-UD4 and MSI's P55M-GD45 motherboards compared
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The first wave of P55-based Lynnfield motherboards has included not just the usual ATX fare, but also number of interesting MicroATX models. We've rounded up a pair of micro boards from Gigabyte and MSI to see how they stack up against full-size competition.
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Gigabyte GTX 275 1792MB Super Overclock video card
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Amid the torrent of new ATI releases, Gigabyte has introduced their GTX 275 Super Overclock which is billed as the highest clocked GTX 275 available today. While some may question this move and others may scoff at it, we take an in depth look at this card to see if it has what it takes to stand up to the DX11 competition from the current crop of ATI cards. If anything, Gigabyte has a fight on its hands.
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