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MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr III OC 2 GB
Posted on 05-14-2012 - 0 Comments |
Tech Power Up have reviewed the MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr III OC 2 GB which was launched recently - here's what they thought about the card overall:
Quote:
"MSI's GTX 680 TwinFrozr III uses NVIDIA's GTX 680 reference PCB, but improves on it by coming with MSI's own Twin Frozr III cooling solution pre-installed. GPU clock speed has also received a little bump, up to 1058 MHz base clock, which gives the card a 3% real life performance boost averaged over all our testing.
The new TwinFrozr III cooler does an excellent job keeping the card at low temperatures. We see the best temperatures of all GTX 680 cards, including heavily customized triple slot designs. Fan noise is lower than NVIDIA's reference design, too, but other custom GTX 680 cards do a better job here.
Price-wise MSI is asking a hefty $50 price premium for their GTX 680, bringing the total to $550. Even at that price the card is out of stock in most shops. Given that the GTX 680 TwinFrozr III is a GTX 680 reference design, with a relatively small overclock out of the box and custom cooling, I find $550 a bit steep, something like $530 would have been more reasonable. Nevertheless, GTX 680 is an awesome card and MSI's GTX 680 Twin Frozr III is so, too."
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You can read the full review here. |
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Corsair Vengeance 1500 Dolby 7.1 USB Gaming Headset
Posted on 05-11-2012 - 0 Comments |
Metku Mods have reviewed the Corsair Vengeance 1500 Dolby 7.1 USB Gaming Headset - here's a snippet:
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"Corsair Vengeance 1500 is a very felicitous product. Gaming headsets have been suffering from an unaccurate frequency response with overemphasized bass. Vengeance 1500 manages to avoid these traps by having a very neutral sound. It is difficult to recommend headphones or speakers, because preferences are very subjective. Some may want to have a brain-melting bass, whereas others can't stand to sound like that. Usually I listen with AKG K 701, which are known as very neutral headphones. Vengeance 1500 has a lot of same characters in its sound, so the sound of 1500 is pretty pleasant for me.
Vengeance 1500's price is very tempting being about 100 euros. In that price category it is a very good purchase, even though there are some minor drawbacks in the usage comfort."
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You can read more here. |
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NVIDIA GTX 670
Posted on 05-10-2012 - 0 Comments |
NVIDIA have released the latest in their 600-series - the GTX 670. Lan OC have taken a look and seem to be impressed with the results:
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"When Nvidia launched Kepler with the GTX 680 I was impressed with the launch price of the card but even at such a great value it is still out of reach for some people. Just because you can’t afford the top card doesn’t mean you don’t want to experience Kepler’s performance. Of course it was only a matter of time before we saw Nvidia filling in the gaps in their product line, starting first with the GTX 690 then going to the next step down from the GTX 680, the GTX 670. Today we get to have a look to see how the performance compares to both the GTX 680 as well as AMD’s offerings. We are also very curious how it compares to the GTX 580, a card that has found its way into most of our office PC’s.
The GTX 670 is packed with the same features that we saw on the GTX 680 including their unique take on overclocking and GPU Boost. The 670 uses the same GK104 GPU, 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at the same clock speed as the GTX 680 as well. The GTX 670 comes with 1344 CUDA Cores and 7 SMX units compared to the GTX 680’s 1536 CUDA Cores and 8 SMX units. The base clock speed of the GTX 670 is 915MHz with the typical GPU Boost speed reaching 980MHz with this changing depending on the game/application as we explained in our original Kepler launch writeup."
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You can read their full review here. |
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Thermaltake BigWater 760 Plus CPU Liquid Cooler
Posted on 05-08-2012 - 0 Comments |
Nikk Tech have recently reviewed the Thermaltake BigWater 760 Plus CPU Liquid Cooler, which gives very good build quality but falls down on noise levels:
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"During the course of this review i was glad to see that Thermaltake has taken the quality and performance of their BigWater series of liquid CPU Coolers a step further than what they used to be. Still this effort although good was not enough and so if you are after the best possible bang for your buck then the BigWater 760 Plus will simply not give it to you and i suspect that the largest reason behind this is the medium-performance water block (i had nothing here to replace it with in order to verify my suspicion). The noise levels coming from both the 120mm fan and the pump are also something i didn't expect and although you can control the fan speed still there will be times when you will need to switch it at full speed and that's something only enthusiasts and overclockers may ignore. Still the BigWater 760 Plus has a set of interesting features including a small dual 5.25" size which allows it to fit in pretty much every PC Case out there (unlike dual/triple 120mm radiators), UV reactive tubings, manual fan speed control knob and an pre-assembled all-in-one design that includes a high performance 500L/Hr. pump, an 130cc reservoir and a 120mm radiator. Ontop of that much like with every liquid cooler out there you will also have zero clearance issues with the rest of the system something that counts a lot for some users."
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You can read more here. |
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Intel SSD 910 PCI Express SSD Performance
Posted on 05-04-2012 - 0 Comments |
Hot Hardware have reviewed the Intel SSD 910 PCI Express SSD which is relatively fast and offers good write performance:
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"...with the significant traction PCI Express SSDs have started to gain in the market, it was about time Intel offered up a solution of their own. In this arena, though there have been a few "prosumer" or high-end workstation-targeted solutions launched from the likes of OCZ and Fusion-io, the large majority of products in this class of SSD are targeted to the Datacenter and the Enterprise. The Intel SSD 910 is definitely in the latter camp. With an MSRP of $1929 for 400GiB of capacity and $3859 for an 800GiB card, even mainstream performance enthusiasts would have a hard time justifying the cost, though at about $4.82 per GB you could see a high-end workstation professional, with large datasets to crunch, making the justification perhaps.
That said, as you'll see in the pages ahead, where the new Intel SSD 910 really excels is in datacenter applications with literally thousands of concurrent IO requests that would otherwise wreck havoc with lower bandwidth solutions."
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You can read the full review here. |
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690: The Dual-GPU Beast Arrived!
Posted on 05-03-2012 - 0 Comments |
NVIDIA has been making some big claims about their latest GPU - the GTX 690 - namely that it can outperform two GTX 680 cards in SLI. The card has been extremely well received, with most reviewers describing it as the best card they have seen by a long way. Bjorn 3D have been taking a look:
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"The GTX 680 was the fastest single GPU card when it was launched a few weeks ago. We were quite impressed with what NVIDIA achieved with the card’s power consumption, heat output, and the performance. With the GTX 690, NVIDIA has raised the performance bar even higher.
With the GTX 690, NVIDIA is essentially able to cram two of the fastest GPU into a single card and the result is rather impressive. The GTX 690 delivers about 90-95% of the performance of two GTX 680's in SLI, while consuming 80 fewer watts of power. Not only is the card much more power efficient, it is also quiet thanks to the vapor chamber heatsink. While the card may not be exactly as fast as two GTX 680, the trade off is definitely worth it.
And lets not forget about all the key advantages of the Kepler architecture, like the dedicated H.264 video encoder called NVENC, and GPU Boost. While FXAA, TXAA, and Adaptive vsync will be avilable on Fermi as well, it is also a nice feature on the Kepler architecture.
The one point that may dissuade some is the $1000 retail price. While we do like the card a lot, the asking price can be hard to swallow. The pricing of the card leaves a very difficult decision for a potential buyer when shopping for the fastest card. Should one buy two GTX 680s and have slightly better performance but higher power consumption, or a single GTX 690 for its power efficiency? It is a quite tough decision to make. Also it is important to note that only ASUS and EVGA will be selling GTX 690s in North America."
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You can read the full review here. |
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CM Storm Trigger Gaming Keyboard
Posted on 05-01-2012 - 0 Comments |
Ninja Lane have reviewed the CM Storm Trigger Gaming Keyboard - here is a closer look:
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"Today we will be looking at the latest gaming keyboard in the CM Storm line, the Trigger. Cooler Master works with high profile professional gamers and enthusiasts through their eSports sponsorships to co-develop products like the Trigger at a military grade level. The result is some of the most attractive and functional products on the market today.
The CM Storm Trigger is the fourth keyboard in the lineup and like its brothers in the Quick Fire models, it is a full mechanical keyboard based around the popular Cherry MX switches. It comes in an attractive two tone black and grey color scheme accented by the bold red lighting found in all CM Storm products."
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You can read the full review here. |
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Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 CPU Cooler
Posted on 04-30-2012 - 0 Comments |
Kit Guru have reviewed the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 CPU Cooler which has both good looks and good performance... for a relatively high price tag:
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"Since their release of the Dark Rock series of CPU coolers, Be Quiet! has made quite an impact on the high end CPU cooler market. Their products have a reputation for combining fantastic appearance with great performance. We have looked at a number of their products in the past, all of which have won awards.
Today we are going to look at the latest addition to their CPU cooler range, the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 which is a refreshed version of the existing Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro which we reviewed here. This replaces the old model as the flagship of the Be Quiet! range with a few updates including an improved mounting system and larger fans."
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You can read more here. |
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