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Will 4GB of RAM really improve your computer?

Friday, May 26th, 2006 | News, RAM Memory | No Comments

A short while ago I wrote about how 2GB of memory is becoming the standard for gaming computers and enthusiast computers. Well today, Techgage takes a look at the possibility of 4GB and sees whether it can match up to the performance of 2GB options.

There have been many misperceptions and problems associated with 4GB or memory. For a long time there were issues with Windows not being able to take this much memory, or sometimes motherboards that could not actually support this much. Well, most of those are not issues anymore, especially with newer stuff that has sorted out many of those problems from before.

As outlined in the article, the main issue that comes in is a speed issue. The timings that are available for 2GB (1GB x 2) are much better than those available for 4GB (1GB x 4), which results from the amount of strain that the memory controller can take, and with 4 sticks it cannot take full speed.

These differences become most noticeable during gaming, especially games like F.E.A.R. which place a heavy strain on your whole computer. These differences are noticed less by designers who use programs like Photoshop, where the main emphasis is on more, rather than speed.

The results of testing showed a drop in performance in almost every situation, except where the motherboard ran and Intel chipset with an Intel processor. This is because the memory timings are already at the slower 2T speed setting, so it retains those settings for 4 sticks of memory.

Basically, if you want 4GB for now, suck it up and wait. With the introduction of 4GB as 2 sticks of 2GB, you will be able to take advantage of more memory without the drawbacks of 4 sticks of memory.

USB Touchscreen for LCD monitors

Thursday, May 25th, 2006 | Monitors, News | No Comments

Touchscreen monitors can add that something extra to a computer that has everything. Although the most common uses are not in the desktop computing market, they are still useful at times.

A new product from Japanese company Logitec (not Logitech) promises to offer this functionality to any desktop. The device itself just attaches to the monitor, is plugged in via USB and then you’re ready to go. It uses two straps that wrap around the monitor, in order to hold itself in place.
There is no report on it’s pricing, according to the report on usbeverything, but that should be settled by the time it comes to market.

The device does not need external power and takes what it needs from the USB power supply. The touchscreen comes with a pointing device to be used on the screen, but works with just your finger, although not as accurately.
LINK

AMD’s AM2: Athlon 64 FX-62 & X2 5000+

Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 | CPU Processors, News | No Comments

The new AM2 socket from AMD is developing a lot of interest in the computing world. With the untroduction of AM2 comes the introduction of nearly a full line-up of AMD processors.

AMD have released nearly all of their processors using this new socket. Most of this range have also been moved over to dual-core, which now makes up the majority of their range. As reported on bit-tech, this is in line with their strategy to slowly phase out single-core in favor of dual-core.

The 2 new top-end offerings are the FX-62 and X2 5000+. These processors feature all the new stuff to come along with these chips, both of them are dual-core and both of them have built-in DDR2 memory controllers.

The main rivals to these new offerings are the Core Duo series from Intel. Although they manage to beat out the AMD chips sometimes, there are other times where the AM2 chips shine above them.

The uniform socket connection through the range will certainly make upgrading that much easier, being able to upgrade straight to a high-end processor from a mid-range one without changing the motherboard is great.

Waiting a while would be the recommended course of action for those looking to upgrade, as there are likely to be changes made before the whole deal settles down and prices come to reasonable levels.

LINK

Western Digital Caviar 16 SE 500GB Hard Drive

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | Hard Drives, News | No Comments

Hard Drives are quickly increasing in capacity. With the introduction of perpendicular recording technology and tighter spacing on disc platters, hard drives of up to 750GB are coming into the mainstream.

Western Digital’s main claim to fame recently has been it’s Raptor drives, with their exceptionally fast performance they have made server SCSI quality speed available in the desktop market. The introduction of the newer 150GB Raptor and the Raptor X with the window into the workings of the drive have kept consumers smiling.

NCQ, which has still to make its way into all hard drives helps to speed things up by re-ordering reads and writes into the most efficient order, making the most of every rotation of the platter.

In testing at XYZcomputing the drive was found to have pretty average performance. Compared to the Raptor line from WD it certainly did not do as well, but against the competition it did pretty well.

With half a terabyte of storage space, this drives main focus is not on being the quickest of drives, but simply being a drive with a lot of space. In that respect it does well, allowing enough storage space for things you could want today and a certain amount of assurance that you will have enough for at least a year or two to come.

LINK

Systemax Nighthawk Intel Pentium Extreme Based Nvidia SLI Gaming Computer

Monday, May 22nd, 2006 | Desktop Computers, Reviews | No Comments

Of all the Systemax reviews I’ve done, this one is certainly the most expensive systemax computer I have seen. With a top of the line set of specifications, it will be enough for the most demanding of gamers, and the range of options will allow you to get just what you need.

As with many of the Systemax computers you get a range of options for a lot of the computer. In this case the base computer comes with an Intel Pentium Extreme Edition processor. This is a hefty processor, mostly because of it’s pricetag, which is over $1000 by itself. You do however get the fastest Intel processor available, albeit still a single-core processor.

Amongst the other parts in this Systemax computer you find appropriate choices for a high-speed computer.

It comes standard with 1GB of memory, which can be upgraded to 2GB, which I highly recommend. 2 BFG 7800GTX OC 256MB PCIe video cards are the standard fare in this system, but if you are really paying this much, dish out the extra $100 for 2 BFG 7900GTX OC 512MB video cards and reap the extra performance that those give.

Two Western Digital 74GB Raptor drives in a RAID 0 are an excellent choice in terms of performance. By themselves, these drives give the highest performance available in the desktop computer market. The RAID configuration pushes this even further and gives exceptionally fast performance. The RAID 0 does make it more vulnerable to drives failure, so the extra drive for storing your data is recommended to keep your data safe and provide a lot of extra capacity.

A DVD burner comes standard, but the second drive can just be a DVD-ROM, which I think is enough, or do without it altogether, unless you do a lot of disc to disc copying.

Rounding it out by adding a 19inch flat screen monitor brings the whole package to around $4000. Now, although I would personally choose all the parts of the computer seperately if I was spending this much money, the package here has been fairly well thought out and offers decent parts which are pretty much guaranteed to blow away anything else out there.

Sony VAIO UX Ultra-Portable Computer Unveiled

Friday, May 19th, 2006 | Laptop and Notebook Computers, News | 1 Comment

These first glimpses of a Sony ultra-portable were revealed on jkontherun. Reported to have an approximately 5″ screen, and with a keyboard that slides out, it looks quite portable as well as quite stylish.

It will have a slot for a memory stick, a qwerty keyboard, as well as support for USB and firewire, which are extended by the docking bay.

Reportedly it will come with Windows XP Pro as opposed to the tablet edition, which seems like a little bit of a stange choice, but there you have it.

This list was posted as well:

Price: $1799.99
Release date: June
4.5 inch 1024×600 touchscreen with XBRITE
slide-out QWERTY keyboard
Windows XP Professional
1.2GHz Core Solo processor
512MB RAM
30GB hard drive with shock protection
802.11a/b/g
WAN (Cingular EDGE)
Bluetooth
dual cameras (VGA on the front, 1.3 MP on the back) with a microphone
biometric fingerprint sensor
1 USB port
Memory Stick slot
headphone and microphone inputs
1.1 pounds
Dimensions: 6? x 4? x 2?
Battery Life:3 to 7 hours
Stylus and a case will be included
Docking station which adds 3 USB ports, 1 Firewire port, and VGA/AV outputs
GPS will also be supported through Bluetooth

Have to wait and see.

LINK

Sony VGX-XL1 Intel Pentium D 820 2.8GHz Media Center

Thursday, May 18th, 2006 | Desktop Computers, Reviews | No Comments

Now this is what I’m talking about. Sony computers have finally got it right in making a great media center computer. Without any other considerations, the look alone put it way ahead of many of their competitors in terms of style and design.

As the first computers started getting the media center treatment a few years ago, the computer case itself was always an eyesore. Computer cases can be pretty bland and were often hidden from view when put together with a home entertainment system. Home theater equipment has sleek smooth designs, with the components being slim and well styled to fit in a living room. This has always been true of their design.

The Sony VGX-XL1 takes this to heart and is a system with the looks to sit beside the most elegant of equipment. Thankfully their has been no need to downgrade the equipment in order to meet their styling goals.

The computer itself still maintains the functionality of an everyday computer. It has all the standard things inside to allow it to perform usual functions. It is not designed to be doubled as a desktop computer and is really dedicated to things going on in the living room.

The smaller of the two enclosures is the computer part itself. Bundled software allows easy management of the media on the computer and most other functions on offer.

The larger box is a massive DVD storage center, capable of housing 200 DVDs. These are manageable from the same software that is included. You just put the discs into the big box and thats it, they are then all accessible by remote control.

The specifications of the computer are fine and will give enough for the uses it is intended for.

The high price tag does put it out of the range of many people. Simple designs lead to lower costs, which is often a priority for many people. But in the end, the styling and ease of use are the best features, putting media center PCs comfortably in the home entertainment system without sticking out like a sore thumb.

Gigabyte’s AM2 Boards (NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI & 570 SLI)

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 | Motherboards, News | 2 Comments

Hardwarezone takes a sneak peak at the 2 motherboards for the new socket AM2 from AMD. These boards are not in production yet, but give a glance at what to expect.

The AM2 will be compatible with current AMD chipsets because of the hypertransport technology remaining the same. The 940 pin chips will not be compatible with the older 940 pin layout that was used before.

The AM2 chips will include integrated DDR2 controllers, allowing them to use DDR2, rather than the older DDR, which they were stuck with using for such a long time.

Despite the compatibility with older chipsets, Nvidia have released the new 500-series chipsets to compliment the release of these new chips.

Both of these fully-features boards make good platforms on which to build a new computer based on the new AMD chips. Check them out to see how they look.

LINK

Massive Graphics Card roundup at Tomshardware

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 | News, Video Cards | No Comments

Tomshardware have produced a massive writeup on 20 graphics cards. Giving details on all of these cards gives a good idea of what to expect from the video card you want to buy.

Although there is often not much to the purchase of a video card, and usually it makes little difference if you just use the computer for standard tasks anyway, and don’t push it far, it’s different when you require high-level performance.

The test is extensive, covering most of the cards they have in their stores, looking at how each of them performs and comparing them. If you do need to get a card, make sure to check this list first.

Looking at the different chipsets that come with the different levels of cards there are some conclusions to be made.

GeForce 7600 GT based cards were found to be similar in performance to Radeon X1800 GTO cards. The GeForce was found to be better, because of cooler performance. With only 256MB of RAM it gets good performance.

Although 7800 GT and GTX cards have a hard time keeping up with the Radeon X1800 XT, they are being phased out the 7900 series cards, which perform better then their ATI counterparts.

Radeon X1900 XTX based cards perform a little faster than GeForce 7900 GTX cards. The Nvidia’s have better cooling, but this might not mean as much to those who are simply looking for the fastest card out there.

LINK

Sony VAIO RB60G Pentium D 920 2.8GHz Desktop Computer

Monday, May 15th, 2006 | Desktop Computers, Reviews | No Comments

With a price just over a thousand dollars and a host of high-end features, this Sony computer will do nicely for a home-entertainment system, and give enough features do well as a stand-alone desktop computer as well.

It comes with the new Pentium D 920 dual-core processor. It’s not the newest of the processors on the market, but it’s pretty new, and will provide enough processing power for anything you care to throw at it. The 900 series are the next generation in dual-core processors from Intel, but do not offer substantial gains over the 800 series. They do however, come at only a small price premium and consume less power.

The rest of the features are suitable for a computer at this level. The gigabyte of RAM is about what is expected and will keep it performing well, and allow use of both memory intensive programs and extensive multi-tasking.

For storage, the SATA hard drive offers enough space at 250GB. The inclusion of SATA also means that when upgrading you will have more choice open to you, to allow you to get either a much faster or bigger hard drive.

For the features on the outside, there are firewire, USB and card reader slots at the front, behind a little cover. At the back of the computer you will see a further firewire port, 4 USB ports, the audio ports, as well as slots for video cables and a modem port.

The included remote control allows you to control features of the audio/visual software just by using th remote control. This really boosts this system as a media center because not many people want to get up and use a mouse when sitting in the living room.

A built-in graphics solution will fair well with gaming, but that is not the intention of this computer. For a media center it gives everything you could really want. It lacks the sleek design of many of the very new media systems, but it’s price does save it a bit, allowing that media center experience, without breaking the bank.