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Latest Madshrimps Articles and Latest Webnews |
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In this review we take a closer look at two budget friendly AMD motherboards from Gigabyte; 880GMA-UD2H with integrated GPU and the 870A-UD3. Do they stand a chance against high end AMD boards? Time to find out... |
by leeghoofd @ 2010-09-01 |
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The Eclipse Wireless Litetouch keyboard from Mad Catz comes with an interesting 3-in-1 LCD touch panel and functions can be assigned to each key like shortcuts to our preferred programs or up to a maximum of three individual websites, all of which will open at the same time and all at the touch of just one button.... |
by stefan @ 2010-09-01 |
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The NetBox-nT330i barebone from Foxconn is an interesting product for those that need a very small media center PC, which can be also used for office applications or browsing the internet; its performance varies depending on what 2.5inch HDD/SSD and DRAM you decide to use with it.... |
by stefan @ 2010-08-30 |
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The MX-4 thermal compound from ARCTIC COOLING is their latest product released to the masses, in this article it is compared to MX-3 and MX-2. The MX-4 claims to improve performance, easier to apply and retains a good price/performance balance. Time to put their claims to the test.... |
by stefan @ 2010-08-24 |
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Are you looking for a light, portable, wireless and cool looking mouse that fits in any hand? The ROCCAT Pyra might be for you and comes with rechargeable batteries included, a carry pouch and software with lots of options to make the deal even more interesting.... |
by stefan @ 2010-08-23 |
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Now that we have affordable unlimited internet in Belgium, the need for storage has grown. Of course you can fill your computer with hard disks, or to make it easier to share you can buy a bunch of external disks. But in my opinion a dedicated solution for storage, such as a NAS would be more practical. In this review we´ll be taking a look at some solutions.... |
by piotke @ 2010-08-22 |
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The Nobility Series S805 Flash Drive from ADATA sports a stylish look, can be easily clipped on our key chain or a handbag as a mobile storage device and delivers both good read/write performances. The Flash Drive is available in multiple capacities, ranging from 4GB to 32GB.... |
by stefan @ 2010-08-22 |
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EK waterblocks Extreme HF CPU and Rampage Extreme III full waterblock Gskill Flare 4Gb F3-1600CL7D AMD kit ...request a product (p)review More...
Hardware or Gadget/Multimedia News
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Intel recently dropped the price of its quad-core Core i7-950 processors to US$294 from US$562 to defend from AMD's recent price cuts for its quad-core Athlon II X4 640 CPU from US$122 to US$99, according to sources from motherboard makers.
In addition to the price cut, Intel also recently released Core i3-560, Pentium E6800 and Celeron E3500 processors with prices at US$138, US$86 and US$53, respectively, the sources noted. All the prices are in thousand-unit tray quantities.

Microsoft was at a loss when the original iPhone was released, it’s Windows Mobile platform was years behind at best, and needed to do huge amounts of catching up to be competitive. A few new versions of the iPhone were released, as well as Google’s Android Mobile OS, and Microsoft was left in the dust.
Then, earlier this year, Microsoft announced it’s successor to the Windows Mobile platform – still based on Windows CE, but entirely incompatible with the previous platform. The Redmond software company is reportedly pouring almost a billion dollars into the platform and plans to “make it succeed.”
Enter Windows Phone 7, a new, unique phone experience.


When XFX sat down to create their high end 5970 model the aim was to produce a product which was unique, one which differentiated itself from any other models on the market and we are sure that anyone looking at the Black Edition Limited will feel they have achieved this.

2x480GTX= $800 vs $1200 for one XFX 5970

Today LucidLogix Technologies (Lucid) announced its arming video card manufacturers with the new Unity graphics board architecture for the HYDRALOGIX engine (previously known as HYDRA). Now graphics board vendors for the first time can combine a single HYDRALOGIX 200 real time distributed processor with any single NVIDIA or ATI GPU, creating an affordable, flexible multi-GPU-ready graphics card that can make any motherboard a high performance gaming system.
Gamers and high performance PC enthusiasts will have even more options to configure multi-GPU systems, which until recently were limited to vendor-exclusive architectures or HYDRALOGIX equipped motherboards. And mainstream graphics users can now buy even a $99 graphics card and upgrade their system in the future with the brand graphics card of their choice.

After launching the X-Series, its first 80 PLUS Gold power supplies in September 2009, Seasonic announced a whole range at Computex, going from 400 to 1200 watts. The least powerful versions, the 400 to 460 watt supplies, are both fanless, which is a first among 80 PLUS Gold power supplies. Promising on paper, will the quality of these power supplies be confirmed in practice?

Four years ago AMD did the unthinkable: it announced the 5.4 billion dollar acquisition of ATI in a combination of cash and stock. What followed was a handful of very difficult years for AMD, an upward swing for ATI and the eventual spinoff of AMD’s manufacturing facilities to GlobalFoundries in order to remain profitable and competitive.
In the years post acquisition, many criticized AMD for blowing a lot of money on ATI and having little to show for it. Even I felt that for $5.4 billion AMD could’ve put together its own competent graphics and chipset teams.
Despite the protest and sideline evaluations, good has come from the acquisition. The most noticeable is the fact that AMD’s chipset business is the strongest it has ever been. AMD branded chipsets and integrated graphics are actually very good. And later this year, AMD will ship its first Fusion APUs (single die CPU/GPU): Ontario using Bobcat cores and an AMD GPU. Ontario will be the first tangible example of direct AMD/ATI collaboration since the acquisition.

Late last week we pulled back the covers on Intel's next-generation Core architecture update: Sandy Bridge. Due out in Q1 2011, we learned a lot about Sandy Bridge's performance in our preview. Sandy Bridge will be the first high performance monolithic CPU/GPU from Intel. Its performance was generally noticeably better than the present generation of processors, both on the CPU and GPU side. If you haven't read the preview by now, I'd encourage you to do so.
One of the questions we got in response to the article was: what about Sandy Bridge for notebooks? While Sandy Bridge is pretty significant for mainstream quad-core desktops, it's even more tailored to the notebook space. I've put together some spec and roadmap information for those of you who might be looking for a new notebook early next year.

One of the main reasons for the high price of many active adapters is their compatibility with the high bandwidth, high resolution dual link DVI standard. However, a single-link DVI connection still allows for resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 at 60Hz which encompasses the vast majority of monitors currently on the market. Even the soon to be standard 1080P computer display resolution falls well within the limits of a single link DVI. If you want higher resolutions you will still need to go with the dual link connection though.
Make no mistake about it, active single link DisplayPort to DVI adapters haven’t been seen on the market as of yet but things are about to change. AMD is aiming to satisfy the vast majority of the gamers out there by pushing several manufacturers to begin distributing both the standard and mini DisplayPort versions more widely. Board partners will also be including them as part of their standard packaging for some ATI GPUs. The price if bought separately will be a svelte $30 and retailers should begin stocking them over the course of the next week or so.


With Sandy Bridge, Intel integrated the clock generator, usually present on the motherboard, onto the 6-series chipset die. While BCLK is adjustable on current Core iX processors, with Sandy Bridge it’s mostly locked at 100MHz. There will be some wiggle room as far as I can tell, but it’s not going to be much. Overclocking, as we know it, is dead.

Cinebench was particularly surprising because it gives us a good opportunity to look at single threaded FP performance. Compared to a similarly clocked Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge can deliver 11% better performance. Compared to a similarly positioned Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge is about 20% faster. Note that this is without turbo enabled. The retail 3.1GHz chip should turbo up to 3.4GHz in this test, giving it a 9.6% frequency boost.

CrossFireX gets a performance boost in two games thanks to a new CrossFireX Application Profile update. Performance in Aliens vs. Predators and Battlefield Bad Company 2 has been greatly improved, finally. CFX users will want to make sure to check this out.

A Salt Lake City mortgage company employee allegedly got drunk, opened fired on his firm’s computer server with a .45-caliber automatic, and then told police someone had stolen his gun and caused the damage.
Joshua Lee Campbell, 23, has been charged in 3rd District Court with criminal mischief, a second-degree felony; carrying a dangerous weapon while under the influence and providing false information to police, both Class B misdemeanors; and public intoxication, a Class C misdemeanor.
Salt Lake County prosecutors say Campbell called police late on Aug. 12, claiming a man had stolen his gun and fired into the $100,000 computer server owned by RANLife Home Loans, located at 268 W. 400 South.

Over time your desktop collects dust and it’s important to blow out the case periodically. Get some Canned Air, and clean out all the dust bunnies in the machine. Also, this is a good time to reseat the systems RAM, check cable connections, Video & sound Card…etc.

Even with your Internet being down you can still be productive. Here are a few suggestions on ways to still be productive with no Internet. Provided you have local copies of Office Documents, you can certainly still work on them. Maybe you have a PowerPoint, Word Document, or Excel Spreadsheet to work on or review.

All testing of the coolers will occur, one again, inside our NZXT Tempest Evo case. This is per Thermalright’s installation recommendations and to create airflow similar to what you would see at home. Given this is a passive cooler, testing it on an open bench really does not tell us anything since we would not be creating an airflow dynamic around it. Our system will have installed a GIGABYTE X58-Extreme motherboard, six gigabytes of Corsair DDR3 RAM, with the Intel Core i7 920. With four cores and triple channel memory populated expect to see lots of heat. The video card of choice is the NVIDIA 9500 GT thanks to its low heat output and silent fan.

The top Core i7 2000 series, the one that we expect in Q1 2011 is going to work at 3.4GHz. The official name is Core i7 2600K and this quad-core CPU runs at 3.4GHz and boasts eight threads. The K stands for unlocked CPU, something that many overclockers plan to warmly welcome and for less experienced users Turbo 2 will overclock the core to 3.8GHz.

The Japan-headquartered Scythe keeps on turning out new CPU coolers. Recently we had a look at the Scythe Yasya and now it’s time for us to test the newest Ninja 3 and Rasetsu as well as the revised Mugen 2. We guess the most exciting product among them is the new model in the legendary Ninja series. The first Ninja (SCNJ-1000) provoked a sensation among overclockers and earned high popularity due to excellent performance in every operation mode. Then there were the Ninja Plus (SCNJ-1000P), Ninja Plus rev. B (SCNJ-1100P), and the mini version of the Ninja. The limited-edition Ninja Copper (SCNJ-CU1000) was but slightly superior to its aluminum counterparts and was mostly purchased by collectors. The second version (SCNJ-2000) followed three years after the original Ninja but met a much tougher market competition. What can we expect from the third version? Let’s find out right now.

Chief executive officer of id Software, a subsidiary of Bethesda and the developer of legendary Doom and Quake franchises, said that stereo-3D technology must become more affordable so that to impact video game industry. Before that happens, few game developers will adopt stereo-3D (S3D) for their titles.
"Maybe we are getting to the point where the people who have been pushing 3D, or are pushing 3D now, have figured out a way to make it cool and not so nerdy that nobody wants to do it," said Todd Hollenshead, chief executive of id Software in an interview with Eurogamer web-site.

Code names include Cayman (with GL XT, GL Pro, GL, XT, and Pro suffices), Antilles, Blackcomb, Barts, Whistler, Onega, Turks, Seymour, Caicos, and Caspian. All are prefixed by the letters "NI," which might stand for Northern Islands—strange

Had the IONITX-P-E been released a year ago, we’d have been singing its praises at this point. Trouble is, it’s being released today at an $170 MSRP, which puts it within a stone’s throw of an entry-level Clarkdale based mini-ITX build (and around $20 more expensive than "high-end" Atom based IONs). While Zotac’s MSRP fits at a mid-point between the two, the gulf in performance between the ION based systems and Clarkdale in certain benchmarks that fall outside the realms of video playback and web browsing is such that we think the ION systems should be cheaper, period.

The GTS 450, based on GF106, is set to feature 192 SP. The core and memory speed are slightly down from previous rumours to 783 MHz and 1804 MHz respectively. The GTS 450 will feature 1GB GDDR5 over a 128-bit memory bus, thus a bandwidth of 57.8 MB/s, well below the HD 5770 (76.8 MB/s), the previous 192 SP card GTX 260 (112 MB/s) and even the GTS 250 (70 MB/s).
Continuing with Nvidia's recent strategy of aggressive pricing, the GTS 450 is expected to retail at only $129. This prices it well under the HD 5770 and even the HD 5750. On paper, the GTS 450 can offer an excellent price/performance proposition. However, the low bandwidth may prove to be a bottleneck, if it remains at 58 MB/s.

Intel compiler and libraries often work suspiciously slow on processors from other vendors. The matter is that generated code has multiple versions of the most critical parts optimized for specific architectures and instruction sets. There's also a dispatcher that selects the needed code path. Thanks to Agner Fog, who has found out how to change the CPUID data of the VIA Nano processor, we now can conduct an independent "fairness" test and see what's going on.

Everybody takes life at their own speed. Some take it slow, some like it fast, and some aren't happy unless they're moving at ludicrous speed. For those people, SuperTalent has come out with a new set of performance DDR3 ram that is rated at 2000MT/sa full 666 MT/s faster than the fastest official DDR3-1333. Today, we'll be taking a look at the Super Talent Extreme Performance DDR3 dual channel kit, suited for Socket-1157 Intel or AM3 AMD-based systems.

Right after the review of In Win Griffin, Today let us bring you another exciting chassis from In Win; Dragon Slayer. Unique internal drive allocation and advanced thermal cooling solution are two of the major unique selling points of In Win Dragon Slayer which makes it unique and outstanding than those ordinary chassis. Without further delay, let us deep dive this beast further.

Corsair and Coolit are fighting head to head with 'high end', yet mainstream all in one liquid cooling solutions and as KitGuru recently reviewed the Coolit Vantage we felt it was time to publish our analysis of the Corsair H70 … the successor to the class leading, and very popular H50 CPU cooler.
The H50 was one of my favourite coolers, it was small enough to be easily moved from system to system and it was a long standing component which we used in many of our system builds. The H70 is bigger, with a double thick 120mm radiator for improved heat dissipation and the integrated pump and reservoir are sealed for zero maintenance

Sentey is a name that prior to working on this review, I hadn't heard before. This surprised me as I have been building machines for quite a few years. Sentey manufacturers their cases in Shenzen, China and is headquartered in Florida, USA. I wasn't able to track down an exact start date on their website. The case being reviewed, the GS-6400 I can only locate for sale via Amazon.com or the Sentey affiliates in Florida and has a first available date of June 1, 2010. This case is a product of their "Extreme Division", one of five case divisions ranging from a more classic look to slim models to gaming styles.

Silverstone set out to provide a case that brings a lot of value
for your buck and I think they are mostly on target with the PS05. With
tool less features for PCI expansion cards, hard drives and drive bays the
PS05 won't have you reaching for a screwdriver very often. The black
painted interior is a nice touch for anyone that likes to show off their
PC.

Not everyone wants to spend a small fortune buying the fastest processor sold, simply for the promise of factory-made speed. Overclockers are quite the opposite; they're known for taking a more affordable model and making make it into a CPU comparable to the top products. Overclocking can mean exerting additional performance from computer hardware, or it can be a hobby for anyone who likes to tweak settings the same way that some people wrench on cars. But like any race car, the high-performance computer requires the right components to keep it operating at peak condition. Heat is the problem, and overclocked processors generate plenty of it. CPU cooler heatsinks are the answer, and the Xigmatek Aegir SD128264 is the latest product to promise outstanding thermal efficiency and ease of installation. Benchmark Reviews tests the double-layer HDT design of the Xigmatek Aegir SD128264 against the best heatsinks in the industry, using both silent and ! high-output fan combinations.

Today we're looking at a beast: the Enermax Revolution 85+ 1020W power supply. It appears to have plenty of juice under the hood, it even looks like a brute, with a surprisingly edgy aesthetic that is complemented by some impressive features and performance claims. Let's take a look at the beast and see if it can meet our expectations.

With the release of the 890-series chipset, AMD firmly planted their flag in the enthusiast arena. Interestingly enough, most motherboards sporting the 890FX retail for significantly less than their Intel counterparts while being equipped with similar feature sets. In this review we take a look at one such board from ASUS' Republic of Gamers series: the Crosshair IV Formula.

Of course, as more people jumped into the game using Intel's building blocks, other companies like VIA (who started the form factor the nettop would be built on and built some of the first CPUs and chipsets for it) and NVIDIA wanted a larger piece of the pie. NVIDIA refashioned one of their older IGP flaunting chipsets, the MCP7A and renamed it ION. This move gave them a readymade solution to Intel's existing (and underpowered) chipset available for the Atom CPU.
We have played around with a couple of ION based systems, but have not been able to give one a full review (well, I have not been able to). Now we are able to change that. Today we have the ASUS AT3IONT-I Deluxe MiniMax Home Entertainment System. This board features a dual core Atom 330 (complete with Hyper Threading), the NVIDIA ION MCP, support for DDR3 (up to 1066MHz), built in WiFi and its own power supply. It is quite a nice package for only $189.99 from NewEgg.com.

The other day we had a look at the reference version of the HD 5550 GDDR5 model from ATI. Today we'll be having a look at a retail version from HIS; along with that we'll also be looking at the HD 5570 which has had the same treatment as its little brother, the HD 5550, with the addition of GDDR5 memory.
While we weren't initially all that impressed with what the HD 5550 GDDR5 was doing for us, when we put it all into perspective the card doesn't look too bad at all considering its under $100 price point.

The DEEPCOOL GamerStorm CPU Cooler proved to be a tried and true performer beating out the competition in the testing phase. Not only does this cooler look great, it performs great as well.

So you’re building a new computer and you want to wire your case to look nice on the inside. NZXT has come out with some single braided cables for all your power needs and nice looks for your case. The single braided cables have started to become mainstream after a few modders started to make their own and sell them. So NZXT decided to make their own cable and bring them to the mainstream. As we all know NZXT has been making some great high end products. I am for one happy to see how these will work out, being an avid modder and custom case builder. With many of these cables to review let’ s see what these cables are all about.

It's been ages since we've seen anything from Super Talent, but when we saw a press release from the company announcing a new 12GB kit, it was time to chase up a sample of a new kit of RAM to test. Over the last few months we've seen some larger memory kits arrive which is a bit of a sign of the times. Cheap memory and the ability to offer higher MHz on higher density kits means we're seeing some pretty fast high capacity memory kits.
While not quite as large as the 24GB kit we looked at from Kingston a bit back, this PC3-16000 kit is packing with it quite a decent stock clock speed; higher than we've seen to date from 4GB modules with even the A-DATA 8GB Dual Channel kit carrying only 1600MHz DDR.

Corsair®, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the general retail availability of the Professional Series™ Gold AX1200, AX850, and AX750 power supply units. These PSUs, which feature 80 PLUS® GOLD certification, were announced and shown at Computex in Taipei, and have won numerous accolades since then.

Microsoft's gotten a little carried away with its Internet Explorer 9 excitement and posted an early screenshot of the browser up on its Russian site. The post and the image have since been diligently pulled, but not before Mary-Jo Foley managed to snag the pictorial evidence. What's new to see? A resoundingly minimal interface, that's what. The Chrome comparisons should be raining down thick and heavy if this snapshot is anything to go by, as Microsoft has done a fine job of ridding its browser from pesky menus, consolidated its controls into a few icons in the top right, and combined the search and address bars into one.

Radeon users, time to take a short break and install the latest Catalyst drivers. AMD has just put up this month's Catalyst package, numbered 10.8, and it promises a handful of performance improvements and some new functionality, like prettier video playback and support for hardware-accelerated 3D in web browsers.

Still no difference |D
[QUOTE]The results are actually a bit shocking to us to be honest. We weren’t so surprised that in the previous evaluation x8/x8 did not cause any differences at 2560x1600 but did at 5760x1200. However, we thought certainly at x4/x4 PCIe 2.0 mode there would be some kind of a bottleneck at 2560x1600, but the results have proven otherwise. Even with all the data that GTX 480 SLI is pushing across the PCIe bus, x4/x4 is NOT a bottleneck in a single display setup at 2560x1600 with AA enabled. The only game to show us any difference was AvP, but it did not affect the gameplay experience. Therefore, if you are on an aging PCIe 1.X system at x8/x8 mode (equivalent to PCIe 2.0 x4/x4) on a single display fear not, you are not holding back the performance of GTX 480 SLI or we guess with any CrossFireX or SLI configuration. [/QUOTE]

XFX's limited edition DirectX 11 card comes in an assault rifle-shaped enclosure and is offered with a P90-themed LAN bag, and no less than six display adapters. Spec wise, the dual-slot Radeon HD 5970 Black Edition Limited has 3200 Stream Processors, a GPU clock of 850 MHz, a 2x256-bit memory interface, a memory frequency of 4800 MHz.


Canon claims to have developed a digital camera sensor with a staggering 120-megapixel resolution. The APS-H sensor — which is the same type that is used in Canon's professional EOS-1D cameras — boasts a ridiculous resolution of 13,280 x 9,184 pixels. The CMOS sensor is so densely packed with pixels that it can capture full HD video on just one-sixtieth of the total surface area. However, don't hold your breath waiting for this baby to arrive in a camera. Canon unveiled a 50-megapixel sensor in 2007, but that's not made it any further than the labs to date.

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