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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Monday, 09 July 2007 |
Pentiums E2140 and E2160 work at clocks of 1.6 GHz (8x200 MHz) and 1.8 GHz (9x200 MHz), while another model, E2180, is expected to launch in 3rd quarter of the year and will work at 2 GHz. The two processors we have tested this time can be bought for around 80 € and 90 €, respectively. This price should somewhat drop when the E2180 appears. The overclocking potential of this series is more than good. This is precisely where the difference between AMD and Intel is. It is well known that AMD's processors are faster than C2D ones when working at the same clock, but also that Intel has a greater overclock potential. We succeeded in making the CPUs at hand to work at 3.1 GHz (the E2140 model) and 3.2 GHz (the E2160 model). These results were achieved with voltages of only 1.42 V and 1.44 V, respectively.
The HIS IceQ3 X1950pro is a very large videocard. Seeing the stock standard X1950pro videocard itself is rather large, you have to keep in mind that this card has a ridiculously huge copper based VPU/Memory heatpipe cooler strapped on for good measure. As you will see in the following section, this is one of the most complete videocard coolers I have yet to review and should keep this card cool even during the hottest gaming binges.
The SATA to Molex adapters are a truly awesome innovation. Not only are they low profile and all in one, so that no extra cables are left dangling, but they also fit snugly without falling off and at the same time are easy to remove. By including adapters you can tailor your connector arrangement; if say you have an older Molex only hard drive between a couple of SATAs or you have a combination of SATA and IDE optical drives it can really save time spent managing or rearranging the mess of cables.
Lexmark X4550 at TrustedReviews:
USB installation is very simple, as the supplied software installs and discovers the printer without problem. If you want to use it as a wireless device, and there's little point in paying for the feature if you don't, you need to run a separate wireless installation routine, which requires a USB connection until it’s completed. The process is transparent though, assuming you have a working wireless network and the orange wireless indicator on the X4550 switches to green when it detects your wireless gateway.
Now that NVIDIA has had the high end Geforce 8 cards on the market for a while, it was time for the mid and low-end cards to make an appearance. The product family has grown and we now have 8500, 8600, 8800 with a mix of GT(S) extensions to choose from. To find out if NVIDIA keeps its tradition of providing better performing cards at same price point, we pitted the new 8500 GT budget card (available in stores from $80+) to the old reigning champ: the 7300 GT.
Looking at the digram provided by GIGABYTE we can see why we have some extra features that do not come standard with the Intel© P35. Using a chip they labeled 'GIGABYTE SATA2', GIGABYTE is able to offer an IDE connection for older optical drives as well as providing two additional SATA-II ports. Both welcomed additions in my opinion as I have yet to switch over to a SATA based optical drive. The chip runs off the PCI-e bus which ensures it has plenty of bandwidth. Since they included 2 additional SATA-II ports RAID level 5 is not supported using only the purple connections as it needs a minimum of three drives to function.
The rear of the case consists of the normal things we always see on cases. But one small noticeable factor is that NZXT used reusable slot covers not the break-away ones like on most cases. A nice touch, and one that many case manufacturers seem to skip due to cost. In our opinion, unnecessary open slots at the rear of the case just look really silly, and can also have an effect on the airflow within a case.
However, the design considerations for a case that's well-suited to a home theater PC are generally quite different from what's required for an enthusiast case. HTPCs are typically built with cooler-running CPUs that don't see much overclocking action, so instead the focus is on cooling systems which run quietly and efficiently. We'll see how well Thermaltake addresses the concerns of noise and usability with the Mozart chassis, in addition to the usual thermal tests.
The most obvious physical change to the ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe is of course the fact that the card now uses the PCI Express interface. The ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe has kept its half-height PCI design, which allows it to fit easily into low profile HTPC systems. Although a PCI Express model was inevitable, browsing the halls of Computex this year we noticed that many barebones HTPC manufacturers have dropped PCIe x1 slots all together in their barebone systems, replacing them with standard PCI slots due to the lack of PCI x1 hardware on the market today. It’s been over three years since Intel first introduced PCI Express with their 925 and 915 chipsets, and we’re only barely starting to see PCI Express x1 products enter the market.
The x1950Pro video card requires you to supply it with an extra six pin power cable from your power supply. Most new PSUs come with these available to plug directly in, but some do not and some users are still holding on to their high powered PSUs of the past. GeCube has kindly included a dual four pin Molex to single six pin video power adapter. Very handy.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 09 July 2007 )
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