If you're mulling over upgrading your system with one of Intel's new Core i5/7 CPUs and a P55 chipset-based motherboard when these parts launch just a few days from now, and you live in the UK, then you might want to consider a fantastic offer coming your way courtesy of MSI.
Sounds like a cracking deal, and MSI tells us it will offer the promotional prices on a limited quantity of stock - meaning the offer could last only hours. The promotion will run at SCAN*, Ebuyer, CCL and Overclockers, and we're told purchases will be limited to one board per customer.
Earlier today, we published our review of Sparkle's Calibre X265 GeForce GTX 260 896MB video card - Be sure to check out our findings. Otherwise, here's the rest of the latest news and reviews from around the web.
Video cards, CPUs and motherboards
- GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD3H review at Bjorn 3D
- XFX Radeon HD 4770 review at Tweak News
- MSI 785GM-E65 review at Bjorn 3D
- MSI to offer a 55% launch-day discount on P55 motherboards at HEXUS
- Geforce G210: Nvidia's first DirectX 10.1 card review at PC Games Hardware
Cases, cooling and power supplies
- NZXT Cryo S Notebook Cooler review at Phoronix
- CoolAge Orb X120 Transform X120TF CPU Heatsink Cooler review at Tech Reviews
- SilverStone Fortress FT01 All Aluminum Case review at Metku
- Exclusive: XFX Black Edition 850W Power Supply Hands-On preview at Hardware Canucks
- NZXT Sentry 2 Touch-Screen Fan Controller review at Tech Gage
- OCZ StealthXStream 500 W Power Supply review at Hardware Secrets
- Zalman CNPS10X Extreme review at Overclockers Online
- CoolerMaster UCP 900W Power Supply review at Hi-Tech Reviews
- Evercool Buffalo HPFI7-10025 Intel i7 CPU Cooler review at Think Computers
- Rosewill FORT120 revuew at Pure Overclock
- Titan Fenrir TTC-NK85TZ CPU Cooler review at Modders Inc.
- Silverstone Element ST85EF 850W PSU review at Jonny Guru
- Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro review at Hardware Bistro
- Aquacomputer AquagraFX GTX295 Single PCB water cooler review at Hardware Overclock
- Lowepro Flipside 200 Camera Backpack review at Think Computers
- PC TrickleSaver review at Hardware Secrets
Storage and memory
- PhotoFast G-Monster V4S 32GB Indilinx SLC Solid State Disk review at Tweak Town
- OCZ Vertex Turbo 120GB SSD review at Pure Overclock
- Intel X25-M Gen2 34nm 160GB review at OCaholic
- Verbatim 2.5" Portable Hard Drive USB 2.0 Executive 500GB review at RB Mods
- ioSafe Solo 500GB Rugged USB External Hard Drive review at Big Bruin
- In Win AMMO 2.5 Inch External SATA HDD Enclosure review at Tech Reviews
- PhotoFast G-Monster eSATA V2 Portable SSD on a Stick review at Tweak Town
Systems, communications and input devices
- How to Build a Wireless Network Using a Broadband Router at Hardware Secrets
- Mionix Alioth 400 Mouse pad review at Dragon Steel Mods
- Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 Netbook review at Tweak Town
- Midland Premier Cobra mkIII PC system review at HEXUS
- Ozone Smog review at XS Reviews
Audio and video devices
- Vuzix iWear AV920 Video Eyewear review at Future Looks
- Razer Megalodon 7.1 Surround Sound Headset review at Driver Heaven
Software and gaming
- WinX iPod Video Converter review at iGadget Life
- Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay review at Driver Heaven
- Section 8 preview at The Tech Lounge
- Presto Instant-On Operating System review at Hot Hardware
- Extra Video Converter Pro review at iGadget Life
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We managed to learn some interesting details about the top-end, Radeon 5800 series. Unlike some inaccurate publications that toyed with the name "Radeon 7", the Radeon 5000 series is a natural continuation of trend started with X1K series.
The top dog carries the name Radeon HD 5870X2, and we are talking about single-PCB, dual-GPU card that will retail for cool $599. This is still $50 cheaper than GTX280 at the time of its debut [do you remember the outrageous $649?], but bear in mind that this is a top dog part.
For some odd reason, the $499 bracket will remain without a card. We expect that slot will be filled with a water-cooled edition of 5870, or more likely - 5870X2 once that nVidia launches their competing products. Afore mentioned Radeon HD 5870 is set to go on sale for $379-399, while the cheapest entry into the 5800 series, the Radeon HD 5850 is priced in the $279-299 bracket.
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While much of the positive talk this generation may have surrounded AMD's Radeon HD 4800 series of graphics boards, NVIDIA's competing GeForce GTX 200 parts still have a lot to offer in their own right, particularly when matched up with some smart thinking on the part of AIB partners. Today, we take a look (for the first time on this site) at a graphics board from Sparkle, who have looked to add their own particular spin to the GeForce GTX 260 in terms of both clock speeds and cooling solution. Have they succeeded in creating a compelling offering? We check it out.
This little bit of software (which sets itself to run at start-up by default) allows you to choose between three clock speed profiles for your card - Standard Mode, which utilises NVIDIA's reference clocks, Overclock Mode, which uses the factory overclocked speeds we mentioned earlier, and Green Mode, which attempts to save power by reducing clock speeds below NVIDIA's reference clocks (to a core clock of 400MHz, shader clock of 800MHz and memory clock of 300MHz on this occasion). The application can also monitor GPU temperatures and fan speeds as well as reporting on clock speeds, and switching between performance profiles is as simple as clicking the option you require and confirming the selection.
Sparkle Calibre X265 GeForce GTX 260 896MB video card review
As always, your thoughts and comments on this article are very welcome, and can be left in our forum.
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One of the first out of the gate here in the UK is Novatech, who are now advertising their own Elite Pro system on their web site. This particular configuration features an as-yet unidentified Core i5 processor (to avoid NDA-related wrist-slaps I assume), 4GB of DDR3 memory and a GeForce GTX 260 amongst other things.
For more details, you can find Novatech's Elite PC range displayed on their web site here.
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Xbit labs reckons it will be socket AM3 compatible, will be branded Phenom II and be based around the Istanbul six core server processor design. It points out that Thuban is the name of a star in the Draco constellation and thus speculates whether AMD is indulging in a Dan Brown level of cryptic clues and intends Thuban for its Dragon platform.
HEXUS has the full story.View/Post Comments
Tim: No, absolutely the former. We’ve been doing a lot of stuff in the mean time, but for me personally AvP has been a bit of an obsession of mine and I think that’s true for a lot of the people I work with. Especially my bosses, who’ve been working on reacquiring the rights to work on AvP for many years. It’s been a long-road coming, but it’s been a thrill getting there and, in the mean time, we love all our games and all other things geeky. Especially with 2000AD being part of our studio, which means we’ve got lots of cool stuff going on.
bit-tech has the interview in full.
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In order to play one of these tracks you have to properly implement what’s called a Protected Audio Path (PAP). I go into much greater detail about the encryption/decryption requirements for a PAP but you need OS, software, driver and hardware support for it. Windows Vista gave us OS support, ArcSoft and Cyberlink gave us software support and the GPU vendors gave us driver support - all we were lacking was the hardware.
The GPU vendors didn’t include support in their designs for a number of reasons, so no integrated or discrete graphics currently support sending these compressed audio streams over HDMI. Next year that will change, but for now it is what it is.
You can check out the full preview (and the mixed success that using this card brings) over at Anandtech.
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Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but here goes ...
On the evening of September 10th in San Francisco, AMD would like to invite fans to join us for the unveiling of a new visual PC experience. Basically, I can't say exactly what you're going to see there, but I can tell you that we’ll be holding a big party with food, drink and tunes, very cool demos of unreleased games, incredible hardware set-ups you have to see to believe and a lot more.
Interested in joining us?? Send me an e-mail at MonicaAMD@gmail.com with the following details:
Name:
Forum name:
Age:
City:
Blog/website (if you have one):
I didn't know if anyone else was interested, but they are handing out invites if you're lucky enough to get one. You'll need to have a print-out of your invite to get in, so send in for one now if you're interested.
Oh yeah, I'm going. Hope to see a few people there I know.
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