Tuesday Reviews

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»Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 100243L @ ASE Labs

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Just a few weeks ago, the Radeon HD 4850 was released and with it came a huge boost of performance for the price. The 4870 is the highend version of the RV770 series of GPU released from AMD. Sapphire provided a card for this review and the Radeon HD 4870 is here.

»Sans Digital MS1U Media Saver @ ASE Labs

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You are probably like most people when they go on vacation and use a digital camera with a few memory cards. It would be great if you didn't need a computer all the time to constantly backup your photos. The MS1U from Sans Digital is billed as a digital photo bank and it does just that. It takes a laptop (IDE) hard drive and converts it into portable storage for your memory cards.

»Eagle Tech N-Series Pro SATA Enclosure @ ASE Labs

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ASE Labs prides itself on giving you fair and honest reviews for all types of computer products. This is one of the reasons that ASE Labs has been around for over seven years and keeps going strong. Today ASE Labs has the Eagle Tech N-Series Pro Serial ATA to USB2 Hard Drive Enclosure on the review bench. The fair and brutally honest review follows.

»Logitech Quickcam Vision Pro @ ASE Labs

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Logitech is a company that should be well known to the readers of ASE Labs. The company specializes in computer peripherals which include their line of mice and keyboards all the way to webcams. The focus of the review is the newest webcam from Logitech, the Quickcam Vision Pro which is billed to be Mac ready with ease. In reality, it works on every operating system.

<a href="http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1521/leadtek_winfast_geforce_px9500_gt/index.html">Leadtek WinFast GeForce PX9500 GT</a>

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If you find yourself getting sick to the stomach when you see how much cards like the GTX 280 and GTX 260 are and just can't understand why people would spend so much money on a graphics card, the 9500 GT could be in your league. The 9500 GT, as you might have guessed comes in below the 9600 series and well below the 9800s. It's designed for people who are looking at getting away from onboard graphics but don't want to blow too much money. You have to wonder with the new GTX 280 / 260 naming scheme as to why NVIDIA are still continuing to update the older 9000 series of cards. Either way, we have a new low to mid-range graphics card that's cheap and can hopefully offer low resolution gamers something that doesn't break the bank.

<a href="http://www.hothardware.com/articles/NVIDIA_GeForce_9500_GT_Mainstream_GPU/">NVIDIA's GeForce 9500 GT Debuts, Solid Graphics For Under $100</a>

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In comparison to the recently released GeForce GTX series, the GeForce 9500 GT has only a fraction of the number of stream processors, ROPs, and texture units available, but the GPU's configuration does put it on par with or ahead of the GeForce 8500 / 8600 series of graphics cards, that the 9500 GT will eventually replace (along with the already released GeForce 9600 GT).

<a href="http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1520/gigabyte_9800_gt_zalman_edition/index.html">GIGABYTE 9800 GT Zalman Edition</a>

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It seems like NVIDIA graphics card releases run as clock work with the Catalyst drivers from AMD. With the GTX 280, GTX 260 and 9800 GTX+ released not all that long ago, it comes as no real surprise that NVIDIA has gotten up once again and released not only one new card today, but two. The first card is the 9800 GT which is what we have here with us now. The other is a 9500 GT which of course sits at the lower end of the scale when it comes to performance. Unlike some of the more recent releases, it seems that companies are already prepared to attack the 9800 GT with new cooling methods and overclocks. We see here that GIGABYTE has already strapped a Zalman cooler onto the newly released card and Palit are ready to go with an overclocked model carrying the

<a href="http://www.bigbruin.com/2008/tuniqensemble_1">Tuniq Ensemble 1200W Power Supply Review @ Bigbruin.com</a>

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Quote: I expected the Tuniq Ensemble 1200W power supply to perform well after seeing what the 950W Tuniq Miniplant had to offer a few months ago, and my expectations wound up being exceeded. The unit ran cool and quiet, managing to provide stable power to the beefiest system I could put together while producing a trivial ripple of a fraction of one percent.

<a href="http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/Kingston_KHX6400_DDR2/index.shtml">[News] Kingston 4GB PC2-6400 HyperX Memory Review @ Virtual-Hideout</a>

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When it comes to our computers, we'd love to always have the biggest and the best. However, reality indicates that isn't always possible. But that also doesn't mean we have to settle when it comes to memory options. For the PC enthusiasts who are looking for quality and value, Kingston offers the KHX6400D2LLK2/4G Memory Kit, a product in their HyperX DDR2 line. The HyperX DDR2 offers faster speeds, lower latencies, higher data bandwidths and lower power consumption than DDR.

<a href="http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AirLive/AirTV_1000U">AirLive AirTV-1000U @ techPowerUp</a>

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The AirTV-1000U DVB-T TV Tuner is something you would not expect from a company like AirLive. They are known for their excellent networking products, not TV Tuners. The USB based AirTV-1000U features some interesting features, like recording, EPG and time shifting support.

<a href="http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/CoolIT/Dual_Drive_Bay_Cooler_NV_Reference">Cool IT Systems NV Reference SLI Cooler @ techPowerUp</a>

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The CoolIT Systems coolers are certainly a unique way to get into liquid cooling. They come pre-assembled and are maintenance free. We are taking a look at their dual card cooler for two GeForce 8800 GTXs, but CoolIT offers a very similar variant for the GTX 260/280 and for AMD cards as well.

<a href="http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12662">ECS GeForce 8800GT 256MB</a>

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When AMD had unveiled the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and ATI Radeon HD 4870 last month, NVIDIA was left in an awkward position. The Radeon HD 4850 had sharply outperformed the (more expensive, at the time) GeForce 9800GTX, which led NVIDIA to immediately begin slashing prices and introducing a slightly faster GeForce 9800GTX+ that ramped up the memory and core frequencies. ATI's flagship Radeon HD 4870 also had no problems competing with the more-expensive GeForce GTX 260 / 280. Many of NVIDIA's partners as a result have slashed their prices on their earlier GeForce 8 and 9 products. One of the NVIDIA products that was previously considered a good budget graphics card was the GeForce 8800GT, but now how does it stand up against the latest from ATI and NVIDIA? In this article we are looking at the ECS GeForce 8800GT. What is particularly special about this card and some of the other newer models shipping the GeForce 8800GT GPU is a BIOS revision that should yield a performance increase.

<a href="http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/review/5268/maxtor-blackarmor-160gb-review">Maxtor BlackArmor 160GB Review @ Digital Trends</a>

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If you're the paranoid type or just someone who cannot afford to have his or her data stolen, the Maxtor BlackArmor external backup drive will likely bring you a large dose of piece-of-mind. Data on the drive is encrypted with a key at the hardware level using government-grade 128-bit AES encryption, so if you lose it whoever finds it will have zero chance of recovering the data. Even better, if someone steals the drive and doesn't have the password, they can reformat the drive but the process destroys the encryption key, making all the data inaccessible even by data recovery professionals. This high level of security comes with a high price tag though, and the drive also suffers a few design drawbacks too, so you should only consider it if data security is a top priority.

<a href="http://www.overclockersonline.net/?page=articles&num=1891">News - Thecus N5200B Pro Network Attached Storage at Overclockers Online</a>

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The Thecus N5200 Pro is no doubt, an awesome unit. It is flexible, fairly easy to use, and it's fast, oh let me tell you, it is fast. But, it also is not without a few kinks. When it comes to hardware, Thecus knows a thing or two and have assembled a cutting edge NAS powered by common everyday off-the-shelf hardware tied together with a custom mini-ITX motherboard, a combination resulting in unmatched performance.

Please add your comments below.

On the nVidia 9500GT:
Once again nVidia shows that they are perfectly content with handing over every performance category below the top tier. Why bother with a 9500 when a Radeon 3850 is twice as powerful for the same money?