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Displaying items by tag: Performance

Saturday, 16 March 2013 20:37

Corsair Vengeance Extreme is really extreme

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Corsair has introduced the Extreme Vengeance DDR3 memory kit, which is currently the fastest available memory module. It is a dual-channel DDR3 memory kit with two plates of 4 GB (8 GB total) that run on a standard clock speed of up to 3000 MHz at voltage of 1.65 V and 12-14-14-36 latency.

Published in News
Saturday, 12 January 2013 20:53

Kingston at CES 2013

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Las Vegas, NV, CES 2013 – One of our must see companies at CES is Kingston. We have been partnered with Kingston since early 2006 and they are truly one of our favorite companies not only for the things they do, but also for the people that are behind the PR. Yesterday we stopped by their showroom (they had a half ballroom at Caesar’s Palace to see what they had going on. When we walked we saw quite a few displays that contained the history of Kingston Memory and storage products. These cases were quite full considering the fact that Kingston is 20 years old and their HyperX line of memory products is 10 (their first HyperX memory module was DDR… just DDR). However they have come a long way and are now one of (if not the) leading memory and flash storage company in the world.

Published in News
Friday, 30 November 2012 20:07

Scythe USA… Not Gone Yet

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Rumors of the demise of Scythe USA may be just that.  In a press release yesterday, Masahiro Sakai, CEO of Scythe USA Inc., published a post on their website stating in part that "Scythe USA had to make the difficult decision to end its operations as a result of the closure of its parent company."

Published in News
G1-snipe-Into

Two years ago Gigabyte announced their G1.Kille series of motherboards with an interesting event featuring camouflage and tons of military imagery. The concept behind it was that the G1.Killer was meant to be a series of “super-soldiers” for gaming. Each of the products would be tailored after an imaginary persona: The Assassin, The Sniper and the Scout.  These would have super sight, hearing, speed, and shield all to assist you in your gaming dominance. We have taken a look at some of these for the X79 lineup and now have one from the Z77 chipset line; the G1.Sniper M3. This $180 board from Gigabyte features a full audio card built into the motherboard, SLI, and a Micro ATX form factor. So let’s take a look at what Gigabyte has stuffed into this little package.

Saturday, 18 August 2012 20:13

Thecus N5550 NAS Intro and Teardown

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With the big push for everything in the cloud we have been focusing on ways to consumers and businesses to bring their data back into their own control. One of the least expensive methods for this is through the use of a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. These are devices that have a minimum of two drive bays and allow for you to set up RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) Volume for performance and/or redundancy. Today in the Lab we have a five-bay NAS device from Thecus. This is an Atom based system with support for up to 15TB of RAW space and 3GB of memory. So let’s take a look at the Thecus N5550 and see what this $600 (empty) NAS has to offer as we dig deep into its design, build and features.

Sunday, 10 June 2012 19:17

Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Performance Review

board03In 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.

win8logoredesignedIt is no secret that we are not fond of the direction that Microsoft is moving in with Windows 8. The new operating system with its phone and touch based MetroUI is a step back from what many feel a Windows system is supposed to be. What many wonder is why this push of the MetroUI and the cloud services that are linked to it.

Published in Editorials

board-intMoving through some of the more prominent Z77 motherboards that are out right now we come to another one from Gigabyte. Here we have the Z77X-UD5H WiFi Motherboard (Model number GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB). The UD5H is typically their second in line for the top spot in Gigabyte’s food chain The Z77X-UD7 currently holds that top crown. However the UD5 boards are always very functional and tend to combine the best of both performance and features. With this review we will be covering not only the features of the Z77X-UD5H WiFi but also come of the design choices that go into the board to get you the performance you expect on the other end. So let’s get right to it and find out if the Z77X-UD5H WiFi is worth the $210 that Gigabyte is asking.

img_03Ivy Bridge has not been the best launch for Intel in terms of enthusiasts. Since the release of the Core microarchitecture many overclocker’s, gamers and plain PC nuts have loved the performance and overclockability of Intel’s CPUs. However, with Ivy Bridge despite the performance improvements there are some that are not happy. We have seen countless articles talking about the difficulty of overclocking Ivy Bridge even in our labs our best non-stable OC has been to 5GHz (CPUz only) we have not hit anything above 4.8GHz with any type of stability.

Published in News
Wednesday, 09 May 2012 18:33

Asus P8Z77-V Motherboard Performance Review

board05So 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.

Published in Consumer Motherboards
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