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- PDP PC5600 DDR
- ABIT AN8-SLI
- CompactFlash Compared
- CCX2 Workstation
- Zalman CNPS9500
- Writemaster 16x16x
- Intel P4-D 840
- PCstats Weekly Tips |
AMD X2 4800+ SLI Workstation Benchmarked!
Hello,
Wondering how an
Athlon64 X2 4800+ handles workstation applications and games with an SLI
videocard setup? We were, until we tested this massive Canada Computers
Rig. A comparison of the Athlon64 X2 4800+ against the Pentium D 840
is also worth a quick look. Samsung bust out a 16X external DVD
burner which recently crossed the test bench, along with a set of PC5600 DDR from
Patriot Memory and the ABIT AN8-SLI
motherboard. Getting the best from high speed CompactFlash memory
cards and digital cameras isn't as simple as looking for the fastest
CF card.... the camera has to support those
speeds first. PCSTATS has this round-up of
CompactFlash cards, tested with several classes of camera, that
explains the Catch22 of it all. Last but not least, the Zalman
CNPS9500 LED low noise heatsink gets put through the paces on your
friendly neighbourhood Frostytech.
If you know of anyone faced with data
recovery from a salt water-logged PC due to the recent hurricane,
all may not be lost. PCstats own guide to hard drive
data recovery certainly won't help in situations of water damage, but
professional data recovery services may actually be able to recover the
data. Some handling tips for salty hard drives are posted here, from one such
service.
One such company to introduce a platform
specific set of performance tuned PC5600 'DDR700' RAM is Patriot Memory. The
companies' newest dual channel DDR modules are fast; a default speed of
350 MHz! In fact, these new DDR DIMMs are so fast that we are approaching
DDR2-level speeds here.... Ironically, the new super high speed DDR700
DIMMs also have DDR2-type latencies.Continue Here>>
Based on the nVidia nForce4 SLI chipset, the ABIT AN8-SLI supports any
current and future Socket 939 AMD Athlon64/FX/X2 processor on the market.
Its four DDR RAM slots can be installed with up to 4GB of PC3200 DDR RAM,
and thanks to the two physical PCI Express x16 slots, two videocards can
run in SLI mode for pixel kicking speeds that boggle the mind. The most
eye catching feature of the ABIT AN8-SLI is its heatpipe cooled NF4 SLI
chipset, which takes up the remainder of the I/O space, but we will get
into that a bit later. Overall the layout of the motherboard is decent,
although there are a few things that leave me scratching my head.Continue Here>>
Buying the right CF card for your digital
camera can be difficult, well mostly confusing since there are size, type and speed
considerations to wrap your head around first. But, it should be
noted that the digital cameras themselves also have a maximum writing
speed. In some cases, buying the fastest CompactFlash card won't
help because the digital camera becomes the limiting factor... so it can
pay to do a little digging into your manual to know the limits of your
digital camera. In this roundup of 1GB CompactFlash
cards, PCSTATS
will be testing out four CF memory cards of various speeds, as well
as a 1GB IBM Microdrive hard disk, with an
eye to comparing their performance in digital cameras as well as
various data transfer tasks.Continue Here>>
In
the workstation arena, dual processor or SMP systems are common, and much
of the software written for dual processor systems is compatible with dual
core processors. Processors like AMDs 64-bit Athlon64 X2 series - dual core processors which are 32/64-bit operating
system compatible - are a prime example. In this system
review, we'll be turning to Canada
Computer's top of the line AMD X2 system, the Content Creator X2 + SLI Bundle.
Built around a top of the line 2.4GHz dual core Athlon64 X2 4800+ CPU, and
pre-installed with Microsoft WindowsXP Professional, the system should
have plenty of potential pixel kicking power for anyone involved in heavy
duty new media or content work.Continue Here>>
The Zalman CNPS9500 LED heatsink is
compatible with all current AMD and Intel socket formfactors (including
Sockets 775, 478, 939, 940, 754), and weighs in at roughly 530grams. The
heatsink is voluminous, but designed to operate quietly and cool under low
noise, low fan-speed conditions. At full speed, its translucent 92mm
diameter fan spins at conservative 2600RPM, but turn down the dial on the
FanMate 2 and that speed drops to 1350RPM. Three heatpipes bent into a figure-eight form the backbone of the CNPS9500 LED heatsink, and the rest
of the design is simply form following function to a "T."
Continue Here>>
The
Samsung
WriteMaster SE-W164 is a USB 2.0 only device and sports a rather
impressive maximum writing speed of 16x for single layer DVD media, 8x
DVD+R DL burning, and 4x for DVD-R DL
burning. That is
smoking fast even when compared to today's internal DVD burners.
One thing to
consider is that while the drive is USB 1.x backwards
compatible (it is USB2.0 itself),
burning DVD media is out of the question since USB 1.x can only move a
maximum of 11Mbps.... way to slow. Continue Here>>
The flagship Intel Pentium
D 840 processor, clocked at a respectable 3.2GHz and built on the
90nm process uses a pair of Prescott cores running at 16 x
200MHz to bring multi-processing to the desktop in a LGA775 pinless package. The Intel Pentium D 840 has a maximum power requirement of 130Watts (as opposed
to 169million transistors and 115W for the 3.8GHz P4 670). Each
core has access to its own L1 and L2 cache memory, 16KB
and 1MB respectively. Continue Here>>
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PCstats Weekly Tech Tips: Tell IE to forget it! |
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I'm a big fan of IE's auto complete feature, but occassionally I prefer my digital tracks be silent.... as it's not always appropriate for a computer to save all this data. For instance, if a computers is used by multiple people at work, its users would probably prefer that information like banking information (such as log in IDs/passwords) are not automatically saved for easy access.
Luckily PCSTATS has an easy fix for this; first load up your internet options by opening up IE then clicking the 'Tools' menu and selecting 'Internet Options'. Click on the 'Content' tab then the 'AutoComplete...' button. From there unchceck the 'User names and passwords on forms' box and press the Ok button twice.
From now on IE will no longer prompt users to save sensitive passwords. ;-) If you do save something by accident, go to the same place and click the 'Clear Passwords' button and Windows will purge all passwords stored by IE.
All of the PCstats Weekly Tech Tips have been archived in the Forums for your reference. |
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PCstats Issue
No.190
Circulation: 195,205
| This Issue By |
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Editor-in-Chief
. Max P.
Weekly Tips
. Colin S.
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PCSTATS Q & A:
Send in your tough tech
questions today! |
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