Displaying items by tag: Crossfire

Yesterday Microsoft may have confirmed what many have speculated, DirectX 12 will have a multi-GPU component that will allow AMD and nVidia to play nicely together. What this means exactly no one is sure, but we do know that some form of code is there to allow this. This is not the first time that someone has tried to setup a cross vendor system for GPUs. Not all that long ago Lucid Technologies tried it with dubious benefits.

In the world of computer enclosures things can get boring pretty fast; after all how much can you do with a box? For too many companies the way to differentiate their products is to put in a window and extra LEDs and call it a day. There is little that is new to be perfectly honest with you. However, every now and then something comes out that does stand out from the crowd. We have seen it before with some very unique designs and concepts. One company that has done a fairly good job at keeping things interesting is Cooler Master and in particular their CMStorm line. While at CES this year (2012) we were shown a case that caught our eye and imagination. It was the CMStorm Stryker. We called it the Storm Trooper, not only for its connections to the CMStorm Trooper, but also because it reminded me of the Strom Troopers from Star Wars.  We have one of these in our lab now and well… let’s dive in to see what you get and how well it performs.

In the enthusiast world you can never seem to have enough power or enough headroom for your system. Although you might hear rumors of the “post PC” era or that the desktop is dead nothing could be further from the truth with regards to Asus and their Republic of Gamers line up of boards. We have covered a number of these going all the way back to before the ROG line was even established and can tell you that when it comes to this line Asus spares no expense in components or research and development. Today we have the ROG Rampage IV Formula in the lab and will be covering the design, features and component choices that Asus has made with this this board and across the entire ROG line.

In our continuing coverage of the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H WB we are moving into the performance side of things. Here is where it becomes difficult to differentiate between companies. The problem is that if you are testing Z77 Express based motherboards you are testing very similar platforms. It is only when you start adding in features to the mix that they separate. So the big deal here is how well do these products perform when you throw in all the advertised features (or at least as many as will work at once)? This is what we try to do with our performances testing. In our feature and design review we showed you what the Z77X-UD5H has to offer, and now we will show you how well it performs when you ask it to give you all of that at once.

After what seemed like a long time we are finally getting into the full performance section of our review. The Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe is a board that really has quite a bit going on which makes properly covering everything something of a chore. You can check out our design and feature coverage to see just how much there is packed into this board. Still we have tested out all of the pieces and parts and had the time to use the board in some of our testing with Ivy Bridge and the heat issues that have popped up. With that said let’s dive in right now and talk about the performance you can expect from Asus’ P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard.

So now that we have covered all of the features and design choices for the P8Z77-V we are about to dive into the performance of this board. So far if what we have seen on paper adds up we should see some very good performance. After all Asus has been working on tuning their Z77 boards for a while and with the new trace layout we are seeing we might actually get to see some of that pop-up in every day performance. So without waiting too long let’s just get to it.

As we continue our coverage of both Ivy Bridge and the Z77 Express chipset we now head over to Gigabyte. Gigabyte is a company that has worked very hard for the position they have in the market. They were originally a manufacturer who concentrated on compatibility and stability rather than working on pushing the envelope in terms of speed and performance. However that was a long time ago. Now they are definitely working to get the most out of each product. We have watch them develop their line up since the P55 days and know that they are more than capable of putting out a motherboard (and other products) that can satisfy your performance needs. So with that in mind let’s take a look at what Gigabyte has built into the GA-Z77X-UD3H in terms of design choices and features.

Now that we have taken a look at most of the rest of the P8Z77 line up we are going to check out what was originally the flagship for the mid-range line the P8Z77-V Deluxe. Earlier today Asus announced and addition to the P8Z77 line which puts this right below the top-end. That does not take anything away from the –V Deluxe with its USB 3.0 Boost, Dual Band WiFi Go (with Bluetooth), SLI and Crossfire support and more. We will be taking a deeper look at the performance very soon, but for now let’s see what Asus has packed into the P8Z77-V Deluxe and if it is worth the $275 that it will cost you.

Although the Intel Z77 Express chipset has been available for a while now we chose to wait until the official launch of Ivy Bridge to begin our reviews. After all the Z77 with Panther Point was designed to get the best performance when tied with Ivy Bridge so why not show that off first. To kick off our coverage of the Z77 we deiced to try out Intel’s reference design in the DZ77GA-70K. This performance desktop board from Intel is a great starting point and will give us the feel of how Intel meant things to work. So let’s get to it shall we?

With the apparent delay of Intel Ivy Bridge and of course the Z77 chipset that goes with it) we there is going to be a continued demand for the X79 chipset and the pretty much every flavor of the LGA2011 CPU. To be honest I think that even after Ivy Bridge there will be a demand as the replacement for the LGA 2011 CPUs will not hit the market until around Q4 2012 or even later. So with that in mind we are taking a look at what at first glance appears to be a low cost X79 motherboard from Gigabyte. However, once you take a look at it you just might begin to see the serious overclocking and GPU benchmarking potential that it has. Let’s take a look at the Quad-SLI/Crossfire capable X79-UD3 from Gigabyte.