Thursday, March 29, 2007

Rock SLI Xtreme SL Pro laptop reviewed

Close your eyes and picture two 7950GTX graphics cards, an SLI motherboard, a dual core AMD processor, RAID SATA hard disks, 20" widescreen TFT and DVD writer, then squeeze all that into a laptop - you'll probably be thinking we're crazy... well rock has done just that!

Just a quick note, I wanted to add more of text and pictures of this laptop to my blog, but it seems that folks from Driverheaven are paranoid, and have copy-protected everythink on their web (from paragraphs to pictures). So there's isn't an easy way to include most of text or pictures. So head over there and read all about it
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Inno3D I-Chill introduces Passive Cooling solution with AC Accelero S2M S1M

Hong Kong 5th March, 2007 Press release – Inno3D® i-Chill series are excited to introduce noiseless passive cooling solutions with Arctic Cooling Accelero S2M (2pipes) for mainstream, and S1M (4pipes) for high-end NVIDIA® 7 series graphics cards design. It effectively helps remove heat from the graphics card and silently keeps all the components cool.
The Accelero S2M & S1M features a copper base and heatpipes that extend directly from the GPU centre to provide the ultimate heat conductivity and larger surface area. Heat from the GPU can rapidly reach through the Aluminum fins that extend beyond the height of the graphics card. The Aluminum fins are specially designed to allow air flow pass through easily and remove heat efficiently.
The AC Accelero S2M & S1M heatpipe design is highly efficient for heat transfer and is filled with liquid material that vaporizes the heat from one side of the pipes to the other. The vaporized liquid is then cooled and liquidated again.
For soundless gaming answers i-Chill Accelero S2M & S1M is now built with zero dB passive cooling solutions and ready for double the performance with SLI technology. For more information, visit
Inno3D press release
Reivew of Inno3D GeForce 7900GS 256MB IChiLL Accelero S1M Graphics Card at Tweaktown







These look like a great graphic cards! And quietness while they work, ah... it must be every hardcore gamer dream! I'm just wondering how come there isn't any GeForce 88xx cards with this cooling solution? But that chip is relatively new, so I'm sure that Inno3D will make something in the near future.

But currently there's one contest sponsored by Inno3d, and I wouldn't mind if I win one 8800GTS, even without I-Chill cooler :-)

Gigabyte n680-SLI DQ6 Overclocking Fun - Dry Ice/VapoChill

This is translated text, so you shouldn't mind some errors in syntax of this text..

Gigabyte still widened its range by proposing this time in a variation of its range DQ6 to knowing the chipset I680 of nvidia. Come to directly compete with chipset INTEL 975X or the chipset of AMD the RD600, the firm taïwanaise leave heavy artillery, by proposing a relatively interesting chart of share its design, these options, its cooling and its bios out of reinforced concrete. Es what the part hidden of the iceberg to knowing these real provisions with the overclocking are indeed founded, it is what we will check some lower lines... good reading with all.
Gigabyte puts quad in its product and that this sees, compatible Quad-core, Prêt for Quad SLI (7950GX2 SLI), Quad-triple phase of food improving the stability of your overclocking and making it possible to push the performances of the chart, Quad Gigabyte LAN, making it possible to create a mini network for the house to see carrying out a LAN party:D. Then comes Quad bios, option aiming at avoiding the flashages missed like finding the best adjustment for your overclocking, and to finish Quad eSATA 2 is also with the program of this mother chart faggot of options.


Wednesday, March 28, 2007

EVGA 680i LT SLI: NVIDIA's 680i Cost Reduced

Since Anandtech's first look at the 680i SLI chipset back in November we have been impressed with its performance and overall features. What was even more impressive was the fact that the chipset debuted on a motherboard that was designed by NVIDIA and built for NVIDIA's launch partners. This launch basically followed the path of the successful AM2 590SLI introduction except this time NVIDIA introduced and marketed the only board available with the 680i SLI chipset through a select number of partners. Although the 680i SLI motherboard was a reference design, it catered to the computer enthusiasts with a long list of features and a BIOS specifically aimed at the overclocking community.
It was several weeks before a motherboard manufacturer would offer a competing 680i solution. ASUS was the first non-reference board partner to offer competition to NVIDIA's reference design and it would take a few months before the likes of abit and Gigabyte were able to respond with their internal designs. We are still waiting on DFI's version to come to market and other motherboard manufacturers such as ECS and Biostar decided it was in their best interest to offer the reference board design that is built by Foxconn. The majority of NVIDIA's motherboard reference partners are actually heavily involved in the distribution of their graphics solutions with EVGA being the focal point of NVIDIA's reference program at this time.


Memory Module Analysis - High-Speed Titanium and SLI-Ready Memory Modules from OCZ (PC2-6400, PC2-7200, and PC2-8000)

Here's one great article about memory three memory modules which I'm sure all overclockers dream of..


Digit-life proceed with the analysis of the most important characteristics of high-performance DDR2 memory modules using RightMark Memory Analyzer. Today we are going to review high-speed solutions from OCZ — three dual-channel 2-GB memory kits, Titanium and SLI-Ready series, PC2-6400, PC2-7200 and PC2-8000:
OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Titanium EPP-Ready (OCZ2T8002GK, DDR2-800 4-4-4-1T)
OCZ DDR2 PC2-7200 SLI-Ready Edition (OCZ2N900SR2GK, DDR2-900 4-4-3-2T)
OCZ DDR2 PC2-8000 Titanium Alpha VX2 (OCZ2TA1000VX22GK, DDR2-1000 4-4-4-2T)


OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400

OCZ DDR2 PC2-7200

OCZ DDR2 PC2-8000

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Corsair 2gb pc10000 dominator memory kit

A couple months ago Legit Reviews was the first to show the world that Corsair was coming out with PC2-10000 memory kits and today we bring you our full review on one of these killer memory kits now that we've had one in-house for some time. The memory we are looking at today is the 2GB kit of Corsair DDR2 PC2-10000 C5D modules, which are rated for operation at 1250MHz . These recently released modules are optimized for the new NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI-base platform and that just happens to be the platform we will be using for testing. By designing a memory kit for Intel Conroe/Kentsfield-based platforms this kit is aimed at giving computer enthusiasts and gamers the most memory bandwidth possible for their applications and games.
The pair of Corsair CM1X1024-10000 C5D modules utilize the latest Corsair in heat sink design thanks to their use of the awesome looking black DOMINATOR heat sinks. These heat sinks have Dual-Path Heat Xchange (DHX) technology and can be coupled with the Corsair Dominator Airflow Fan to help keep the modules nice and cool. We have already talked about these heat spreaders in more detail before, so feel free to do some background reading before moving forward.

Alienware 7500 P2 with Blu-ray

Reviews of Alienware kit have previously caused consternation in these pages. Such pieces traditionally polarise readers into two camps - those who appreciate the engineering and build quality that goes into an Alienware system built for a specific target market, and those that can't see past the stupendously high price tag. We've always subscribed to the theory of different strokes for different folks, and we've consequently enjoyed the mahoosive towers the company has sent in for us to check out.So what's on the test bench this time around? Well, Alienware has a new chassis for one, a smaller version of the gigantic tower we have seen previously. This is more of a mid-tower size than a full-tower, although the styling is otherwise pretty similar. There are some neat new tricks in the case, which we will look at in just a tick.
The hardware has changed, too. Under the hood of this beast is an 8800 GTX SLI setup - absolutely the fastest graphics sub-system that money can buy.


Monday, March 26, 2007

BFG GeForce 8800 GTX Water Cooled (SLI)

Blimey .. what is cooler than a totally pimped up car ? Yeah a pimped PC :) Okay .. okay so admittedly .. that only counts for true hardware fanatics like you and me. But you can rest for sure that once you or me will get it's hand on a couple of water-cooled BFG GeForce 8800 GTX cards the world slightly changes.
Guru3d will guide you through the installation process of water-cooling, we'll look at the pro's and con's of this water-cooling madness and obviously we'll fire off a good range of gaming benchmarks at both cards to have a look at performance results for both a single and in SLI setup water-cooled BFG GeForce 8800 GTX.


Other photos from CeBit with SLI techonology

Hi people
Regarding yesterday news about Asetek water-cooling for Quadro Fx setups, here are a bounch of cool articles you can read about news in SLI world. Here are some news with new configurations, SLI setups, computer cases found at CeBit.


Vadim sells OC's wet dream
In bed with BFG, people from fudzilla have spotted this machine at Cebit and it came the moment when you can buy one in retail. It wont be cheap, as Vadim computers wants to sell this baby for about 4300 punds.
That kind of money gets you a Silverstone Tj07 Black case with a window and custom paint and UV modding, Liquo Cool Antarctic D water cooling for a CPU and 2x VGA.

The machine includes Core 2 Duo E6600, 2x1024 Corsair DDR2-1143 XMS dominator memory, 1000 W BFG PSU, 2x BFG 8800 GTX OC 768 Graphics cards, Physics card, one 150 GB Raptor drive and 400 GB Barracuda drive. The final touch comes with a NEC 7170S optical drive and Windows XP PRO SP2 or Vista voucher.
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Moving along to Leadtek,

Leadtek had their stand in a Hall where GPS and navigation devices were dominating; their new business products include GPS capable units so they were placed far away from the other graphics card manufacturers. They had the usual suspects from the NVIDIA range at their booth, but also a nice line-up of passively cooled models with custom heat pipe heatsinks, these silent video cards are available from the low end 7300GT up to high end 7950GT. Their live demo systems featured water cooled Geforce 8800 GTX cards in SLI, with this egg like pump/reservoir setup

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Silverstone

Silverstone welcomed us to their massive booth where a truckload of high end chassis were on display, ranging from high end ATX cases to compact ITX HTPC designs. How about this SG03 which has room for Quad SLI? With room for 2x120mm fans, cooling won’t be much of a problem

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Asetek water-cools the Quad FX



Hi people
I know it's weekend.. and I didn't have much time to work on my blog (hey girlfriend and rest of my family have said that it's a beautiful day for walking :-(
Anyway moving along..

Here's on great article again from CeBit

CEBIT 2007: An OEM water cooler cools FX74 and G80 / R600
Asetek, well known Danish company is today focusing more on the OEM business. The companies have some nice OEM deals with some big customers and for the time being it is showing of its water cooling achievements.

Its water cooler design looks really nice. It includes a water pump on the CPU socket cooler block and now it can cool G80 or R600 card as well. This small cooler and its tubes and radiators can cool a modern CPU and Graphics and the fan won't get lauder than 30 decibels. This cooling can be used for high end gaming PC, digital home PCs, small factor PCs and even the gaming consoles.

We saw the prototypes up and running and the same design can cool two FX74 CPUs and two Geforce 8800 GTX in a Quad FX system. You only need a 2x12 cm fans and a bigger radiator.

The best of all is that the system runs cool and it is almost completely silent. Here is how it looks.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

SLI is better then one.. don't you agree? Especially if it's free

Head over to Bjorn3d forums, participate in this contest and you'll have a chance to win two XFX 8800GTS 320Mb cards!

So here is what you have to do to have a chance to win the cards.
1. Be a forum member.
2. Post at least 10 post in the month
3. Make a video telling us why you should win the cards.

But hurry up!!! Contest is open until 31.3.2007, so you have only 6 days to compete on this.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12643

Friday, March 23, 2007

Commodore's Gaming PCs Revealed


Ghost Recon 2 painted Commodore is indeed back but it's no different from everyone else this time around. DailyTech previously reported that Commodore was expected to make a splash back into the gaming scene by introducing computers targeted specifically towards gamers. The company left the scene more than two decades ago after launching the famous Commodore64. Commodore confirms the reports after it launched its new website and revealed upcoming system specifications. Officially called the Commodore xx, the new flagship system will be based on current off-the-shelf components.

Official specifications include:
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core processor QX6700: 2.66GHz 8M Cache
ASUS P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard
2x 150GB 10000 RPM SATA Raid 0 and 2x 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Raid 1 hard drives
4GB Corsair Dominator 2xTwin2x2048-8500C5D memory: 1066MHz
Philips DVD-RW optical drive
1000W ICE Cube power supply
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
2x NVIDIA 8800 GTX 768MB graphics cards

I would just like to add that It's a great idea! I remember playing on my first-ever computer C64 some legendary games like Laser squad, Ghosts'n'Goblins, Rick Dangerous, Commando etc, etc...
It's really nice to play on PC thinking it's powerfull as much as legendary C64.
Ah... memories come to life with this computer. My first 'bloody eyes effect' happened with C64 and an old TV :-) ... ah, the nostalgia is all around me :-)

NVIDIA Ships 128-Core Graphics Cards for High-End Film Editors

NVIDIA just cranked up its highest-end Quadro graphics cards a notch or two, rolling out three products, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600, Quadro FX 5600 (pictured above), and NVIDIA Quadro Plex VCS Model IV that the company says represents the biggest leap in performance for its graphics cards yet. One giant leap indeed, because these parallel processing monsters have the rough equivalent of 128 1.35GHz processors cranking away at graphics in a whole new way.
These cards have more circuitry than ever, with three quarters of a billion transistors on board, and NVIDIA says not only can they display larger graphics faster than ever but use a concept called GP-GPU, allowing general-purpose programs to run on the GPU instead of the CPU.
Sharing some of the same technology with NVIDIA's GeForce 8 series of consumer cards released last November, these cards are aimed at high-end film effects artists and oil and gas explorers, and maybe a few absolutely fanatic gamers. More info, pics and pricing, plus a tantalizing hint from NVIDIA about Apple's interest in this technology, after the jump.

Additional features in the new Quadro solutions include faster 3D texturing and massive 8Kx8K texture processing for better performance when zooming and panning of high-resolution images; NVIDIA® SLI™ technology for improved graphics performance; dual dual-link display connectivity; and NVIDIA® PureVideo™ technology for outstanding picture clarity, smooth video playback, and accurate color and precise image scaling for SD and HD content. NVIDIA GSync and HD SDI options are also offered.

DDR2 Memory latency performance with nForce 680i SLI chipset

Recently published an article titled “DDR2 Memory Frequency Performance” which looked at the value of high speed memory. The reason I found the need to write such an article was to demonstrate that there really is no need to try and overclock your memory when pushing a Core 2 Duo processor to the max. Often readers complain about poor Core 2 Duo overclocking performance and 99% of the time it comes down to memory instability at higher frequencies. This article showed that when running a Core 2 Duo E6700 on a 500MHz FSB, DDR2-667 was just as fast as DDR2-1181 memory and in some cases even faster.
The point of the DDR2 Memory Frequency Performance article was to prove that when overclocking, the 1:1 ratio is not important and we proved this with the 1066MHz configuration. Moving on, there were a few good suggestions made by readers about the first article that they would have liked to have seen. That being a broader range of memory timings, not just memory frequencies, so it could be determined whether low-latency DDR2-800 memory for example, was really required. While this kind of testing could have been done with DDR2-533 or even DDR2-667 memory, we chose DDR2-800 memory as it is the more popular choice. Furthermore, the price difference between these three standards is often very minimal.

Therefore the DDR2-800 memory was tested with CAS 3-3-3-8 T1, CAS 4-4-4-12 T1, CAS 4-4-4-12 T2, CAS 5-5-5-15 T2 and even CAS 6-6-6-18 T2 timings. This time all the testing was done on the ASUS Striker Extreme which uses the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset with the Core 2 Duo E6700 processor clock at its default operating frequency. Again this is primarily gaming related and not a general usage article, since high-speed expensive memory is generally associated with gaming!
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XFX showcased 680 LT SLI at CeBit



XFX wants to make a lot of noise with Fatal1ty and we saw Jonathan playing around XFX boot and fragging some butts. If you didn’t get yourself arrested by XFX police girls you would be able to take a picture of a new stuff that is coming from this company.
The most interesting one is of course Mother board how XFX calls it branded as 680LT SLI. This is nothing more than 680I stripped for some features. The board looks very reference to me and you can notice that two PCIe 16X are far from each other and there will be a lot of place for two 8800 GTX dual slot cards. The board also has two PCI slots but its clear that if you have two 8800 dual slot cards inside that you will lose one PCI slot. You can plug four memory modules DDR2 only of course. The board supports socket 775 CPUs only and it is designed by Nvidia. Lets simply say it’s a reference board as much as EVGA is reference but with a nice XFX sticker on.