Weekend Reviews

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In our last few reviews, we've stated that HDCP isn't a big deal right now and we still don't think it will impact the majority of consumers for at least another year to 18 months. HDCP is a reality though and we will need hardware that can decrypt the signal in hardware for optimal performance. That said, the MSI Geforce NX7900GT-VT2D256EHD is a superior product to most 7900GT products, including MSI's own non-HDCP 7900GT due to it's higher default speeds and HDCP support.

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At Intel Developer Forum 2006 in Prague a presentation explained many of the obstacles that need to be overcome on the long way to Terascale computing. A Terascale computer is a machine that can perform one trillion operations per second, more than 50 times of what today's high-end CPUs can achieve. But Terascale is about much more than just building a CPU that can go that fast...

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If you want to setup a network archive server easily, N2100 is definitely a product that you should take in on your list of choices. It has the performance to serve even the largest files and with RAID1 it offers safery for your valuable data. Stock it up with two 750 GB drives running either JBOD or RAID0, you have a huge amount of storage space in your disposal.

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To get the IHS off we used four razor blades and placed two under opposite corners to apply force on the IHS. We then got out the Craftsmen propane torch and fired it up. After the CPU was cleaned we used four layers of electrical tape on each side of the core to prevent cracking the die and removed the load plate off our abit AW9D-MAX motherboard so the water block would make contact with the core and not the load plate. We applied Arctic Silver Lumiere to the core and after a test fitting to make sure the water block made contact with the die we fired up the test system...

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Large storage capacities, portability, and user friendly designs have aided in the wide acceptance of USB Flash drives among computer users. The Corsair Flash Readout USB drive takes the benefits of USB Flash drives one step further by featuring a Bi-Stable Cholesteric Display (BCD) showing data usage, availability and allowing for an 11 character alphanumeric personalized ID or labeling. The Corsair Flash Readout is available at an estimated retail price of $39.99 and is backed by a 10 year warranty.

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When it comes to high-end, uber-overclocking, record-breaking motherboard manufacturers, you usually do not think about the ECS. ECS has been a huge OEM for many years, and has never really produced anything that would be considered top-dog as far as performance goes. They did have the K7S5A that may bring back a lot of memories (good and bad) for those that have been in the overclocking scene for awhile. I went through a few of those boards myself! Today, we have the ECS KA3MVP Extreme motherboard to look at. ECS touts this board, as the name suggests, as an MVP board and they say it is extreme. Well, let's take a look at the board and see if it is all that!

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The Cooler Master NotePal P1 does do one thing quiet well, and that is create a very comfortable, ergonomic typing angle. I found it to be much more relaxing to type with the NotePal P1 in place, and could go much longer without feeling like I had to take a break... The problem is that its primary function is to cool, and it leaves something to be desired in that department.

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Put aside the obvious: Given GameCube's piddling market share (hovering around 15% of the total sector) and universal lack of third-party support, there's nowhere for the company to go but up. Ignore expert commentary as well. I believe doom and gloom forecasts such as analyst firm the Yankee Group's recent prediction that Wii the Japanese giant's new motion-sensing machine will sell 11 million units by 2011, boosting its share to just 16%, are fundamentally flawed. Let's do a little common-sense analysis. At just $249.99 (as compared to $299 or $499 minimum, respectively, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), price point alone proves a huge differentiator.

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This is when I saw where the reputation for the hot Prescott cores came from, I had problems keeping this chip from setting off alarms. I thought it might not be set properly so I removed it, cleaned it and reset it, and still was getting high temps. Letting this one stay on there a week for the AS5 to cure was a hard decision and I was glad to take it off and put the Zalman 9500 back on, but this time with the AS5.

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Just over a year ago I first began hearing of Zippy power supplies. At first I didn't associate them with the well Zippy-Emacs power supplies that have been quite well known in the Server arena for some time. This was mostly due to the fact that the reviews I was reading were listing their Zippy reference PSU as 'Class A' Computer Enthusiast grade product. I even went as far as looking into purchasing one after being highly impressed by the literature that I had consumed. At the time New Egg was carrying the gaming models of this PSU as well as some of their server class products, but the price was a bit more than I was willing to pay. This was just before SLI and later Crossfire burst on to the scene.

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When contemplating my upcoming review of the X1650 PRO, I considered this card to perform exactly like the X1600 PRO tested earlier. They are essentially the same other than the slightly different core and its' smaller manufacturing process. Now add in the fact that it is lacking one texture unit and I was also contemplating maybe even a slight decrease. But surprisingly, the card performed well beyond my expectations and proved to be a valuable mainstream alternative for your next purchase..

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One of the biggest issues I had when wanting to use Icydock's other internal drive enclosures was space. If you are using a full tower then you might not have a problem with fitting all of the drives in there you want, but if you are using a mid-tower or something else you may not be able to fit all of those enclosures in there. Well today we are taking a look at another enclosure from Icydock. This enclosure is a 3 drive enclosure, but only takes up 2 5.25 spots. So it saves you space and allows for up to 3 drives to be installed. So let's take a look at the MB453 drive enclosure.

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Brando, the maker of the popular IDE/SATA to USB cable, is back with their latest in IDE/SATA to USB2.0 devices. The product is called Double Dragon: All-in-one driver. Whether or not they got the name from the awesome NES game is unknown but it's a cool name none-the-less. The Double Dragon shares the same major features of the original IDE/SATA to USB device but takes it a step further with the OTB (One Touch Backup) feature.

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NVIDIA has just announced the GeForce Go 7950 GTX as their new flagship mobile gaming graphics solution and Legit Reviews is here to bring you the low down on what the changes are. The GeForce Go 7950 GTX features a core frequency increase of 75MHz and depending on the notebook a 100MHz on the memory. Read on to see what this 45W part is all about and to take a peak at the performance numbers.

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There are times when air-cooling is just not enough. At the same time you might not want to deal with the financial and maintenance costs of dealing with a water-cooling setup. What else is there? There is extreme cooling which may consist of phase change or chilled water or even LN cooling. All three are great forms of cooling but can be very hazardous to your equipment. That leaves us with TEC cooling. The method of using a thermoelectric plate, or peltier, to cool your processor has being around for ages, and it can be completely safe if done right. Well Titan may have made it as simple as it can be with their new cooler, the Amanda.

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It's not so much that the specs of this unnamed Olympus camera are really exciting - no, not at all - but rather the looks are killer. I know this is shallow comment to make, but what can I say? Sometimes specs really aren't that important. For the sake of the

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Let's face it, these days it takes a special breed of individuals to be able to successfully create and maintain websites for a living. Those who choose this career path likely have their own special brand of tools that they use on a daily basis to get their workload under control. As for the rest of us, however, we need a HTML editor that is usable, yet remains robust enough to get the job done right with no excuses.