HP Pavilion Elite m9550f

As Gwen Stefani, U2, and Lenny Kravitz know, you have to keep reinventing yourself to stay relevant in an ever-changing world. The HP Pavilion Elite m9550f ($1,199 list) is the latest in a long line of high-end multimedia systems from HP, and unfortunately, even though previous systems have won our esteem and highest honors, the m9550f comes across as competent yet unexciting. To stick with the musical analogy, the m9550f is like the 1970s Elvis: still pretty entertaining and able to perform, but largely coasting along on a reputation and the glory of what once was.

The m9550f's case is the same as the one for the m9040n we saw back in 2007. Though dated, it is totally functional, with a rubberized tray on the top to hold your MP3 player, external hard drive, or digital camera during sync sessions. What's more, it still has the same excellent Personal Media Drive and Pocket Media Drive bays. Both let you use HP's hard drive cartridges to boost the 1TB of installed storage in the system by up to another 1.5TB (one 1TB Personal Media Drive plus one 500GB Pocket Media Drive, the maximum current capacities).

The features inside the m9550f are both a step forward and a step back. It has a newer Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor (replacing the older Q6600 in its predecessor, the Elite m9400t), 8GB of DDR2 memory (the most you're likely to need as a home user), a 1TB hard drive, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a more-powerful midrange ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. All of these components are improvements over those we saw in the m9400t. However, to add these features and keep the price similar to that of the m9400t, HP had to leave something out. Unlike the m9400t, the m9550f lacks a Blu-ray drive (so no high-def movies from Netflix or Blockbuster) and an ATSC TV tuner (no over-the-air high-def).

Like all HP Pavilion PCs, the m9550f has a load of crapware on it. When I was looking at the m9400t, the extra multimedia-oriented hardware made up for the points that were lost to crapware. That's not the case with the m9550f. The good old Microsoft Office 2007 60-day trial is there, as are a Norton Internet Security 60-day trial (the m9400t came with 15 months), ninedesktop icons for stuff like eBay, and ads for Juno and NetZero dial-up ISPs—which doesn't make sense, as the m9550f lacks a modem.

Another nit to pick is that the chassis is packed to the gills, leaving only one PCI slot and one PCIe x1 card slot free. The interior is messy, with wires covering up the motherboard and most of the free space. I don't expect custom hand-routed wires in a $1,200 system, but even at that, it's pretty unruly in there. Luckily, you'll have few reasons to open the chassis, since hard drives can be plugged into the Media Drive bays.

The system's multimedia performance is decent. The m9550f finished the Windows Media Encoder test in 43 seconds, coming in a good bit under the 1-minute average score for a multimedia system. It was also able to complete the Photoshop CS4 test in 1:33, good for a high-end multimedia system. The current Editors' Choice Dell Studio XPS 435 completed the same tasks in 36 seconds and 1:12, respectively. The m9550f's 3D performance is mediocre—45 frames per second (fps) at a resolution of 1,280 by 1,024 is too jerky for playing Crysis smoothly, though the 55 fps the m9550f scored on World in Conflict at the same resolution is playable. Both games are unplayable at 1,920 by 1,200, but that's okay; the system is multimedia-oriented, not a gaming rig. If you want to play games on this system, you'll have to use a more modest resolution.

The m9550f is more capable than systems like the cheaper Acer Aspire X1700-U3700A and the Gateway LX6200-01, and is less capable overall than the more expensive Dell XPS 435. Where the m9550f really falls short is in comparison with its predecessor. The m9400t had a few lower-grade components (less memory, slower processor) but had a better bang for the buck with other features like Blu-ray and the 15-month Norton subscription. As for crapware, the Acer and Gateway are also guilty of having too much, but that's a pitfall the Dell avoids. For these tough times, I'd recommend getting a less-expensive system like the Acer if you don't need 3D (or the Gateway if you do), or springing for the Dell if you need higher-end features like Blu-ray and 3D.

The HP Pavilion Elite m9550f is a competent multimedia PC that will serve people well if they already have HP Personal or Pocket Media Drives, but it's ultimately less compelling than other choices. Worse, it's a step backward from its predecessor. The Elite line is just treading water at this point—it's up to HP to update the line to keep it relevant. Although the m9550f's basic hardware is sound, its new features didn't make up for those that were taken away.

Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q725

If you're a closet gamer who hides behind a screen name and isn't the trash-talking type, the Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q725 ($2,699.99 direct) is probably not for you. Its outlandish design, which conjures up images of fiery balls of flames striking a bloody canvas, seems fit for those who crave bragging rights for their systems. Within this 9.2-pound beast sits a mobile quad-core processor and an Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTX graphics card—parts that will set you apart from casual gamers. Performance, overall, lived up to expectations, but there is a cheaper alternative that turned in better gaming scores.

Gaming laptops cater to different personalities. For a practical gamer who isn't obsessed with looks, something like the Gateway P-171XL FX would be a good fit. Gothic-loving gamers might prefer the LED-crazy Dell XPS M1730, while the Alienware M17's stylish and subtly classic design is calculated to appeal to a wide range of gamers. To say that the X305's fiery red design caters to colorful personalities is somewhat of an understatement. It's a daring design, just a pitchfork symbol short of something Satan himself would be proud of. Upon close inspection, you can actually see your reflection through the red flames.

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The fiery theme extends to the interior, only in a darker red that surrounds the 17-inch screen, the area above the keyboard, and the speaker grilles. This Qosmio is devoid of color-shifting LED lights, like those for which the Dell M1730 is notorious. Because it takes numerous fans and heat sinks to cool the quad-core processor and the Nvidia graphics card, the X305 is thick, and its 9.2-pound frame is as heavy as that of the Gateway. At 9.4 pounds, the Alienware M17 is fractionally heavier, while the Dell M1730 is the back-breaker of the group at 10.7 pounds.

The 17-inch LCD widescreen is as large and as bright as the ones on the Alienware M17 and the Gateway P-171XL FX. The 1,680-by-1,050 screen resolution, however, is a feature Toshiba should have paid closer attention to, as both the Alienware and the Gateway laptops bundle screens with a resolution of 1,920 by 1,200 (1080p), which makes for substantially better viewing at a lower cost. The full-size keyboard is very much like the ones found in Toshiba's Satellite line—comfortable and pleasant to type on. Unlike in the Satellite line, the keyboard includes a numeric keypad to the right, ideal for entering serial codes and number crunching. Adding a keypad, though, aligns the touchpad further toward the left-hand side of the frame so that it's centered with the keyboard. In doing so, your left palm rests on top of a speaker grille, whereas the right palm has almost too much space.

Four speakers above and below the keyboard and a subwoofer underneath the X305 immerse you into a phenomenal surround-sound experience. Because of its size, the X305 can accommodate every single connectivity port that matters. There are four USB ports, one of which doubles as an eSATA port, for storage expansion. In the back sits a FireWire port, HDMI-out, VGA-out, and an Ethernet port. Toshiba is still recovering from the HD DVD debacle, so don't expect a Blu-ray drive anytime soon, but the unit does have a dual-layer DVD drive. Both the Dell M1730 and the Alienware 17 offer optional Blu-ray drives for those who wish to take their cinematic experience to the next level. Storage capacity is a differentiating feature in the X305. While the Alienware (160GB) and the Gateway (400GB) are bundling spinning drives only, the X305 gives you both a 320GB spinning drive and a 64GB solid-state drive (SSD), for a total for 384GB. The SSD drive is costly, which factors into the X305's price.

The X305 is one of two laptops that are the first to use a 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 processor. The other is the Acer Aspire AS8930-7665 (check back soon for our review), a media center laptop. As a group, these mobile quad-core CPUs are less expensive than the mobile Extreme processors found on the Dell M1730 and the Gateway M-171XL FX, but their performance is as impressive. Aided by 4GB of DDR3 memory, the X305's video-encoding scores beat out the Gateway's by 35 percent and the Alienware M17's by 37 percent. On CineBench R10, its score pummeled the other two by margins of 63 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

The X305 has a clear advantage in overall performance over the Alienware M17 and the Gateway P-171XL FX. On gaming tests, however, it's a different story. The Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTX is a magnificent gaming card, but as a single card it was no match for the M17's dual ATI Radeon 3870 CrossFire graphics cards. At a low resolution (1,024 by 768), the quad-core processor couldn't help 3DMark 06 scores; the X305 trailed the M17 by 8 percent. On 3DMark 06 at native resolutions, the M17's higher resolution was enough to beat the X305's by 17 percent. Crysis benchmark scores favored the M17 as well, whereas there was more parity on World in Conflict tests. Unless you're an extreme gamer, however, these score deltas won't significantly affect your actual playing.

Against single-graphics-card systems like the Gateway P-171XL FX, the X305 shone brightly on my gaming tests. Keep in mind, though, that the X305 uses the most recent Nvidia GTX card, while the other two already will have had updated systems by the time you read this review.

With the amount of heat these parts generate, battery life is bound to suffer. The problem I have with the X305's battery life is that Toshiba didn't even bother putting in the biggest battery it could accommodate. The 58-Wh battery seems small considering that the Alienware M17 and the Gateway P-171XL FX are using 90-Wh batteries. Even though the Gateway scored only 1 hour 35 minutes on MobileMark 2007, the manufacturer's inclusion of a high-capacity battery shows at least an attempt to optimize battery life. The X305's 1:32 score deserves less sympathy because Toshiba should have put in a bigger battery, given the unit's higher price.

The fiery motif and daring colors may not appeal to everyone, but the parts inside should trump whatever doubts you may have about the design. The Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q725 has the fierce performance to go with the look, integrating one of the first Intel mobile quad-core processors and the most powerful Nvidia graphics card to date. Nonetheless, the Alienware M17 outperformed the X305 in a variety of gaming tests, at different resolutions and at a lower cost, which makes the M17 still the gaming laptop to beat.

Microsoft SideWinder X6 Review

Lefties are always left out when it comes to the ergonomics of a device and ambidextrous peripherals are often entry level, or they just aren’t good enough. Microsoft sees the problem and came out with the Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard. The Sidewinder products are usually meant for gamers, making the X6 a gaming keyboard as well!

Lefties are always left out when it comes to the ergonomics of a device and ambidextrous peripherals are often entry level, or they just aren’t good enough. Microsoft sees the problem and came out with the Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard. The Sidewinder products are usually meant for gamers, making the X6 a gaming keyboard as well!

The X6 is decked in a very hard and sturdy black plastic. The build quality is really good on the X6. There are plenty of extra buttons, keys and knobs on the X6, for example there are two huge knobs on the top part of the keyboard, one for volume and the other for the backlit LEDs in the keyboard. Yes, the keys are backlit so gaming in the dark will not boring anymore.

The best part of the X6 is that the number pad can be detached and attached to the left of the keyboard! The number pad is another part by itself that is magnetically attached on either side of the monitor. This will be a godsend to the lefties who uses the number pad for gaming.

Like what we said earlier, the X6 is a gaming keyboard and is evident at all the little touches put in my Microsoft for the gamers. For example, there is a “Cruise Control” button that lets you continue an action without holding down a key. Then, there is a “Mode Button” for switching in between standard mode and gaming mode.

There is also a very interesting “Macro Record”. All you need to do is to press the button, record the keystrokes you want, and press the button again to assign it to one of the 30 macro buttons. The next time you press the macro button, the keystrokes will be repeated. Great for those who play games with plenty of keystrokes!

The only thing that we didn’t like about the Sidewinder X6 is that it doesn’t have the ability to adjust it height unlike other keyboards. We found that the X6 is a little too low for our likings and not being able to adjust it means we have to live with it.

The Sidewinder X6 is really nice for gamers, as well as lefties with its removable number pad. The height of the keyboard is a little too low for us and it didn’t have adjustable legs. We hope that Microsoft can take this into consideration for future keyboards.

Pros: Ambidextrous keyboard, Backlit keys and Programmable buttons

Cons: No height adjustable and the keyboard is too low for us

Intel X58 Extreme DX58SO Motherboard

Introduction:

Intel’s recent launch of the X58 chipset has led to many reviews praising the new chipset and CPU as being the fastest available to the consumer right now. Intel has the entire high end covered with the under $300 Core i7 920, the $500+ Core i7 940 and the $999 Core i7 965 XE. Intel sells their chipsets at a retail price of nearly the same as the CPUs meaning that a new system based upon the new CPU will cost over $1000 when you add in the cost of memory and hard drives and other components.

AMD has a hard time competing as their CPUs are not competitive with the latest offerings from Intel. I’ve reviewed motherboards from ASUS, ECS, and MSI based upon this chipset but what about the reference board from Intel? Intel generally makes good stable reference boards leaving the tweaking to the other board manufacturers based upon their reference design. Intel has tried to shake the feeling by releasing tweaked boards like the X48 Bonetrail 2 reference design. Last month they released the X58 chipset with the codename Smackover. The reference board is called the DX58SO and is on the review bench today.

Features:

Intel launched their new LGA (Land Grid Array) Socket 1366 Core i7 CPUs just a month ago and the only motherboard chipset that supports the new CPU is the Intel X58 chipset. The Core i7 re-introduced Hyper-Threading technology and supports Intel’s Shared Smart Cache technologies. The LGA-1366 is the first Intel CPU to have the memory controller on the CPU not the Southbridge as earlier chipsets would have.

The X58 chipset is the first Intel chipset to natively support both SLI and Crossfire on the chipset level. Unfortunately, NVIDIA has not certified the Intel X58 motherboard for SLI though the various motherboards based upon this from other manufacturers support SLI out of the box. The DX58SO motherboard does fully support ATI’s Crossfire multi-GPU solution where you can install two ATI cards and run them together, but it is not currently SLI capable.

One of the key features of modern motherboard design that have been adopted by many manufacturers is the Solid Capacitors. An issue with some motherboards is leaking capacitors that cause the motherboard to not function properly. Solid capacitors have the advantage of not breaking off and leaking making the motherboard last longer and more stable at higher power frequencies. Intel’s DX58SO board has Solid capacitors.

Intel first introduced support for DDR3 support to their motherboard chipsets with the launch of the X38 chipset in 2007. The X58 chipset got rid of support for the earlier DDR2 standard and standardized on DDR3 memory support. As the memory controller is now on the CPU the Core i7 has direct access to the memory instead of going through the Northbridge as earlier CPUs would. The X58 chipset supports up to triple channel memory with memory bandwidth up to 76.8GB/second.

Conclusion:

Intel has a lot to be happy about with their new CPU and X58 family launch, firmly taking over the enthusiast market with new processors that are clearly faster than the last generation. The DX58SO motherboard is nearly as fast as the other boards on the platform, with minor differences due to the board manufacturer tweaks in performance. Feature-wise, the DX58SO has done away with legacy connections like IDE and PS/2. The only troubling thing about this board is the layout, with SATA ports that are not sideways facing and the positioning of the 8-pin power connector. I wish everyone a safe and prosperous Holidays as this article was written in the midst of them.

HP Pavilion dv2 Review

Our HP Pavilion dv2 (dv2-1030us)

features the following specifications:
1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo Processor MV-40
4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM 666MHz (1 Dimm)
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
12.1" WXGA High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1280x800)
320GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 Graphics (512MB)
802.11a/b/g/n wireless and Bluetooth
5-in-1 card reader
External Lightscribe SuperMulti 8x DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
6-Cell Li-ion battery
Dimensions: 11.50 in (L) x 9.45 in (D) x 0.93 in (min H) / 1.29 in (max. H)
Weight: 3.95 lbs (with 6-cell battery)
Price as configured: $749

Build and Design

The design of the Pavilion dv2 is brand new for HP and features the AMD "Yukon" platform designed specifically for ultrathin laptops. The body of the dv2 is smooth with rounded edges, making it extremely comfortable in your hand while carrying it around. The design is compact, but the overall footprint is almost as wide as a 13-inch notebook because of the bezel around the keyboard and screen. The screen also sports a latchless design, making it easy to open the notebook with one hand. Although the lid lacks any latch to keep it held shut, the hinges feel nice and strong, keeping the lid secure. Pressing firmly onto the back of the screen cover will produce some ripples on the screen ... but you must apply significant pressure to cause this.

What might look like a giant beefy hinge for the 12-inch display is actually a standard 6-cell battery with a small hinge on either side of this thin and light laptop. The plastic covered, alloy-reinforced lid features a glossy black finish that looks subtle and stylish and doesn't scream "LOOK AT ME!" the way that the HP Imprint Finish does on most HP Pavilion notebooks.
The magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis is quite rigid and suffers from no flex or creaks even when twisted between my hands. Granted, this is due to the fact that the dv2 is less than one inch thick ... meaning there isn't much empty space inside the notebook for anything to bend under pressure. Bottom line, this notebook can survive the use and abuse from students who will toss it into a backpack every day for several years in a row.

In terms of upgradeability, the dv2 is much easier to upgrade than most netbooks and even some notebooks currently on the market. One panel provides access to the single RAM slot and a place for a Gobi WWAN card (available on custom configurations starting in June). Another panel gives you access to the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card, and a final panel contains the hard drive. Although the dv2 provides easy access for upgrades, you won't be able to add more RAM to this notebook since it comes maxed out with a 4GB RAM module.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Most low-priced, full-size notebooks currently on the market feature poorly built keyboards that show significant flex/bounce when typing pressure is applied. This isn't the case with the dv2 thanks in large part to the ultrathin chassis design. There simply isn't space inside the notebook for the keyboard to flex or bounce.

Each key press has the perfect amount of resistance with soft, quiet clicks. The keys are accurate and responsive and I enjoyed typing on this keyboard. The overall size of the keyboard looks virtually identical to what we've seen on other 12-inch notebooks from HP ... and that's a good thing. This keyboard is much nicer than what is featured on most netbooks. The keys are easy to read and are a good size ... except for the top row of Function keys which are a little too small and not particularly easy to press without hitting another key by mistake.

The touchpad is an ALPS model and feels very responsive with little lag. The entire touchpad surface is made of a high gloss plastic, and can sometimes be hard to use depending on how dry or oily your fingertip happens to be. The surface needs to collect some of your finger's natural oils to allow for easy movement on the touchpad. While the reflective touchpad surface looks cool HP probably would have been better off using the same type of textured touchpad surface used on the HP Pavilion tx2500 and TouchSmart tx2. The touchpad buttons are in a great location and are easy to control with your thumb. The buttons provide mild feedback with a shallow movement that gives an audible click when pressed.

Display

The 12.1" WXGA glossy widescreen display features LED backlighting and is bright and vibrant with excellent colors for viewing images or movies. Contrast seems a little better than what we've seen on the larger 14-inch screens on the HP Pavilion dv4, but blacks aren't quite as deep as we would like to see. The 1280 x 800 resolution is significantly more than what you get on the average netbook screen and is the perfect match for a 12-inch screen.
Viewing angles are average with limited vertical viewing angles that give you a sweet spot of +/- 15 degrees. Horizontal viewing angles are much better with colors staying true even out to very wide angles. Brightness levels are more than adequate for viewing in a bright office setting. Sunlight readability is limited, but as long as the sun isn't shining directly at the glossy screen the dv2 is perfectly usable outside on a table at a coffee shop.

Ports and Features

The HP Pavilion dv2 comes equipped with most of the ports you need, including three USB ports and a media card reader. While three USB ports might not sound like a lot, that's the same number of ports found on most 13-inch and 14-inch notebooks. The other thing to keep in mind is that the dv2 is between 0.93 and 1.29 inches thick. Some ultrathin notebooks like the Apple MacBook Air only have a single USB port. The really impressive thing to mention here is the addition of a HDMI port for connecting video and audio to an external monitor or HDTV.
We would have liked to see at least one USB/eSATA combo port and possibly even a docking station connector on this notebook, but given the ultrathin form factor and $750 price point we can forgive these omissions. One thing worth mentioning is that the HP website claims the dv2-1030us configuration of the dv2 doesn't include Bluetooth. However, our review unit does indeed include Bluetooth and several new dv2 owners in our discussion forums also report that the dv2-1030us inlcudes Bluetooth. That said, here's a quick tour of the sides:
Front: No ports, just indicator lights and the speakers.

Performance

HP offers the Pavilion dv2 with the new AMD Athlon Neo 64-bit processor. This single-core processor is bassically a scaled-down version of AMD's current 65nm notebook processors with a lower TDP (15 watts) which means this notebook shouldn't get as hot on your lap and should last a little longer on battery power. While the power consumption of the new Athlon Neo isn't as low as the Intel Atom, it's clear from our synthetic benchmarks that the 1.6GHz AMD Athon Neo is faster than the 1.6GHz Intel Atom. Likewise, the processor inside the dv2 can encode video or run Photoshop filters in a fraction of the time it takes the Intel Atom processor to perform the same task.
The only time the Athlon Neo processor seemed noticeably slower than a low-voltage Intel Core 2 Duo processor was when we attempted to launch multiple applications at the same time. Multitasking in this way generally created a delay of a few seconds, but the delay was never severe enough to cause problems.
Not only does the dv2 run 64-bit Windows Vista with ease, but it's packed with a full 4GB of system RAM in a single DIMM module. That's four times the amount of RAM you get in a netbook! The 320GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue hard drive also gives you plenty of storage for a full entertainment library. As great as all that sounds, the big news with this laptop is the availability of discrete graphics thanks to the new ATI Radeon HD 3410 graphics and 512MB of dedicated memory.While it's true that a few netbooks (such as the ASUS N10) offer discrete graphics, the reality is that the Intel Atom platform lacks the muscle to truly take advantage of discrete graphics when playing games ... at least based on the netbooks we've reviewed so far. Our own lab tests confirm that Atom-based netbooks with dedicated graphics cards only perform marginally better than Atom-based netbooks with integrated graphics when playing games. This is yet another reason that the dv2 should be labeled as a notebook rather than a netbook. For the first time ever consumers have a low-cost ultra-portable that offers flawless 1080p video playback and can even play many 3D video games at reasonable frame rates!
The dv2 was able to play Bioshock at 1280 x 800 resolution at 12-30 frames per second with detail settings at medium and at 24-40fps with detail settings at low. Likewise, the dv2 can handle Unreal Tournament III at 1280 x 800 and keep frame rates in the low to mid 30s. A newer title like Left 4 Dead only managaes an average of around 26fps, but that's still pretty impressive. Notebooks equipped with Intel integrated graphics just can't handle games like that.
The dv2 is at least several hundred dollars less expensive than other thin and light 12-inch notebooks that offer similar or superior processor performance and lower quality graphics, so it's hard to find serious fault with the dv2 in the performance department

Sony Vaio VGN-Z11WN/B

Sony isn't shy about charging premium prices for its laptops, and the cost of the ultra-portable Vaio VGN-Z11WN/B is fairly eye-watering, at about £1,500. To justify this level of expense, the laptop needs to be truly superb. Fortunately, it is.
DesignThe Z11WN/B has a carbon-fibre casing, which makes for a light, yet strong, chassis. It's an ultra-portable, weighing just 1.5kg. There's no clasp to hold the upper and lower sections together in transit, though. To be safe, you should use a carrying pouch or ensure the machine has its own pocket in your travel bag.
The Z11WN/B measures 31.4cm by 21cm by 3.3cm. This rather large footprint (for an ultra-portable) is due to the display.
This laptop's screen simply bowled us over. It's a 13.1-inch unit with LED backlighting and Sony's X-Black image-enhancing technology. The screen's surface is semi-reflective, which we much prefer to the over-reflective screens on some other laptops.
Even better is the 1,600x900-pixel native resolution. This widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio means it's easy to work with two document windows open side by side.
Ultra-portables need to strike a balance between portability and screen size. We think Sony has got it just right with this laptop.
The Z11WN/B shares some key design elements with its recent stablemates, including the cylindrical hinge, one end of which houses the on/off switch and the other the power input. The hinge gives the system a distinctive look and, when the laptop is powered up, the on/off switch area is attractively backlit.
Another design element shared with other Vaios is the Apple-like keyboard. The keys protrude from a backplate made from a single sheet of aluminium that runs down the wrist rest and into the front of the casing. This forms what Sony calls an 'isolation keyboard'. The keys are well spaced -- indeed, touch typists with smaller hands may find they are too far apart. The keys give good feedback and feel well-built, though.

The wrist-rest area houses a large touchpad. Although it takes almost two full sweeps to move the cursor right across the screen, we like the wide-aspect touchpad. It has vertical and horizontal scrolling built into the bottom and right edges, and, underneath, there's a pair of wide mouse buttons flanking a fingerprint scanner.
To the right, above the row of function keys, is an eject button for the optical drive caddy. It's unusual to find a physical button for this task, and we're not sure why Sony bothered with it, particularly as there's a button on the caddy itself.
Above and to the left of the function keys are buttons marked 'S1' and 'S2'. These can be configured to launch applications of your choice. By default, one switches between display types (normal, mirror and extended desktop), while the other opens up a 'Vaio guide' that walks you through using the laptop.

Features

There are several Z-series models, including one with a 128GB solid-state drive. You can further configure some of the models, altering their hard-drive size and other components, should you choose to.
Our review sample had a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor and the maximum 4GB of RAM installed. The operating system is Windows Vista Business with Service Pack 1, but the box includes an install CD for Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2, should you wish to downgrade.
The graphics sub-system is a dual-mode affair, comprising a discrete Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS GPU with 256MB of dedicated video memory and the integrated GMA 4500MHD module in the Intel GM45 Express chipset. A slider button on the keyboard area lets you switch between 'stamina' (integrated) and 'speed' (discrete) modes, depending on whether you need to conserve battery life or maximise graphics performance respectively.
As befits an ultra-portable aimed at mobile professionals, communications features are exemplary. Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g and Draft-N) and Bluetooth are present, as expected, along with Gigabit Ethernet and a V.92 modem. More excitingly, the Z11WN/B also has integrated 3G/HSDPA connectivity (up to 7.2Mbps download) courtesy of T-Mobile. You get a 30-day trial of T-Mobile's service, so you can judge whether it's for you.

Performance

Because the Z11WN/B supports stamina (integrated graphics) and speed (discrete graphics) modes, we ran the Windows Experience Index twice. In both modes 'processor' (calculations per second) and 'primary hard disk' (disk data-transfer rate) scored 5.3, while 'RAM' (memory operations per second) scored 5.9. All Windows Experience Index scores are out of 5.9.
In speed mode, 'gaming graphics' (3D business and gaming graphics performance) scored 5.1, and 'graphics' (desktop performance for Windows Aero) 4.4. In stamina mode, gaming graphics dropped to 3.8 and graphics to 4.1. Overall, performance -- especially in speed mode -- is excellent.
Sony rates the system's li-ion battery life at 4.5 hours in speed mode and just under 5.5 hours in stamina mode. We ran two battery tests, in each case asking the laptop to play a DVD movie continuously from a full battery charge under the Vaio Optimized power scheme.
In stamina mode we got just under 2.5 hours, while in speed mode the system managed just over 2 hours.
Although these are reasonable battery-life figures, you're not going to get a day's work done on battery power, especially if you're a heavy user of Wi-Fi or HSDPA when on the move. You may, therefore, want to consider buying the optional extended battery, which costs roughly an extra £160.

Conclusion

The Sony Vaio VGN-Z11WN/B is beautifully designed and reassuringly robust. It marries a decently sized 13.1-inch screen with good portability, and has the advantage of integrated 3G/HSDPA support. There are some downsides, though, including a meagre two USB ports. It's also packed with pre-installed software, such as Skype and Google Earth, much of which is eminently removable.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 285

Nvidia GeForce GTX 285

2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture

• Second generation architecture delivers 50% more gaming performance over the first generation through 240 enhanced processor cores that provide incredible shading horsepower.
• 3-way SLI Technology¹
  Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI® technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world’s premier gaming solution under Windows Vista® with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.
• DirectX 10 Support
  Microsoft® DirectX® 10 GPU with full Shader Model 4.0 support delivers unparalleled levels of graphics realism and film-quality effects for today’s hottest games.
• CUDA Technology²
  NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processor cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks - such as video transcoding - delivering up to 20x performance over traditional CPUs.
• PCI Express 2.0 Support
  Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.
• SLI Multi-Monitor support
  Switch seamlessly between multi-display desktop mode and full screen 3D gaming with SLI. And enjoy full multi-GPU support for dual-display capable 3D games such as World in Conflict, Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, and Flight Simulator X.
• GigaThread™ Technology
  Massively multi-threaded architecture supports thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, providing extreme processing efficiency in advanced, next-generation shader programs.
• NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine
  Delivers stunning image quality and floating point accuracy at ultra-fast frame rates.
• 16x Anti-aliasing Technology
  Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.
• 128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR) Lighting
  Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects—now with support for anti-aliasing.
• OpenGL 2.1 Optimization and Support
  Provides top-notch compatibility and performance for OpenGL applications.
• Dual Dual-link DVI Support
  Able to drive the industry’s largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600 and with support for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).³
• HDMI Output⁴
  Support for HDMI output enables sending both high-definition video and audio signals to an HDTV via a single cable.
• NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology⁵
  The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
• Discrete, Programmable Video Processor
  PureVideo is a discrete programmable processing core in NVIDIA GPUs that provides superb picture quality and ultra-smooth movies with 100% offload of H.264 video decoding from the CPU and significantly reduced power consumption.
• Dual-stream Hardware Acceleration
  Supports picture-in-picture content for the ultimate interactive Blu-ray movie experience.
• Dynamic Contrast Enhancement & Color Stretch
  Dynamically provides post-processing and optimization of High Definition movies for spectacular picture clarity.

ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

3: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

Speeds and Feeds, Dual-GPU Tradeoffs

Here's a look at some of the specs of current high-end graphics cards. This is Nvidia's top two GPUs, and the top two from ATI.

	GeForce GTX 280	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 4870 X2	Radeon HD 4870
Price	~$450	~$300	~$550	~$300
GPU	GT 200	GT 200	RV770 x2	RV770
Manufacturing Process	65nm	65nm	55nm	55nm
Transistor Count	1.4 B	1.4 B	1.9 B	956 M
Core Clock	602 MHz	576 MHz	750 MHz	750 MHz
Stream Processor Clock	1.29 GHz	1.24 GHz	750 MHz	750 MHz
Memory Clock	2.2 GHz DDR	2.0 GHz DDR	3.6 GHz DDR	3.6 GHz DDR
Stream Processors	240	192	1600	800
Texture Units	80	64	80	40
Render back end (ROPs)	32	28	32	16
Frame Buffer	1024 MB	896 MB	2 GB	512MB
Memory Interface	512 bits	448 bits	2x 256 bits	256 bits
Memory Bandwidth	141.7 GB/sec	111.9 GB/sec	230.4 GB/sec	115.2 GB/sec

Those are some mighty impressive numbers in the 4870 X2 column, but that's just because it's really two 4870s crammed onto a single board. In fact, it's two 1GB 4870s, for a grand total of 2 gigs of graphics memory. Note ATI's aggressive pricing: It's more expensive than the GeForce GTX 280, but it's less than twice the price of a Radeon HD 4870, despite having four times the GDDR5 memory.

Addressing the high-end of the market with a dual-GPU board carries with it a series of tradeoffs—positive and negative aspects that are inherent to the process in today's graphics landscape. Here's a short list of pros and cons of having two GPUs on a stick approach:

Pro:

• It's cheaper to put two small GPUs on a card than on one big one. Defects increase at a non-linear rate when chip size increases, and economies of scale kick in when you can address a bigger range of products with the same chip.
• It's easier to cool two smaller chips than one big one. Heat production is spread out to two areas.
• Whenever your driver team makes one of your single-GPU cards go faster, odds are that it'll make the dual-GPU card faster. Work to improve dual-GPU scaling also pays off. In short, there are more avenues of attack for software optimization.
• Two chips with their own memory controllers is an economical way to achieve really high memory bandwidth.
• You get the performance of two GPUs, but don't need a CrossFire/SLI capable motherboard. Just one PCIe x16 slot is all you need.

Con:

• Not every game scales well to multiple GPUs, so in some titles you pay a lot more but don't get much more performance.
• Twice as much memory is needed on the card because most graphics data has to be duplicated in the memory attached to each GPU.
• Multi-GPU rendering doesn't work in a window, so all your players that prefer windowed mode get the performance of a single GPU even though you paid for two.
• Multi-monitor setups don't like multi-GPU rendering, either. ATI manages this better than Nvidia by shutting off the secondary display and running dual-GPU on the primary, but it's still less than ideal. Especially if you want to run the game on both monitors at once.
• Dual-GPU cards tend to have higher power utilization, both at idle and under load.
• Dual-GPU cards are almost always long (10.5-inch for the 4870 X2) and won't fit in smaller PC cases.

The above tradeoffs are true for both Nvidia and ATI dual-GPU products, and it's true of two-card solutions, too. The RV770 GPU includes a "CrossFire X Sideport" that makes for more efficient communication between GPUs, and which ATI says should help improve scaling from one GPU to two. But neither ATI nor Nvidia has really come up with solutions to the common dual-GPU problems.

If "two GPUs on a stick" is going to be the way ATI addresses the high end of the market from now on (and the company confirms that is the case), it needs to work hard on three major areas in addition to the ongoing battle to improve performance scaling:

1. Make multi-GPU rendering work just as well as a single GPU in windowed mode and on multi-monitor setups.
2. Allow each GPU to read from the other's memory efficiently, so graphics data doesn't have to be duplicated in each memory bank and twice as much memory isn't needed on a dual-GPU card.
3. Reduce power consumption, especially at idle, to be in line with single large GPUs.

Now that we know what the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is and what it can and can't do, it's time to see where the rubber meets the road: performance.

ATI Radeon HD 4870

ATI Radeon HD 4870

RADEON HD 4870

• Codename: RV770-2
• Process technology: 55 nm
• 956 million transistors
• Unified architecture with an array of common processors for streaming processing of vertices and pixels, as well as other data
• Hardware support for DirectX 10.1, including new Shader Model 4.1, geometry generation, and stream output
• 256-bit memory bus: four 64-bit controllers supporting GDDR3/GDDR5
• Core clock: 750 MHz
• 10 SIMD cores, including 800 scalar floating-point ALUs (integer and floating-point formats, support for FP32 and FP64 in compliance with IEEE 754)
• 10 enlarged texture units supporting FP16 and FP32 formats
• 40 texture address units
• 160 texture fetch units
• 40 bilinear filtering units that can filter FP16 textures at full speed, trilinear and anisotropic filtering for all texture formats
• Dynamic branching in pixel and vertex shaders
• 16 ROPs supporting antialiasing with programmable sample patterns (over 16 samples per pixel), including FP16 or FP32 formats of the frame buffer. Peak performance is up to 16 samples per cycle (including MSAA 2x/4x and FP16 buffers), 64 samples per cycle in Z only mode
• Writing results up to eight frame buffers simultaneously (MRT)
• Integrated support for two RAMDACs, two Dual Link DVIs, HDMI, HDTV, DisplayPort

RADEON HD 4870 Specifications

• Core clock: 750 MHz
• Unified processors: 800
• 40 texture units, 16 blending units
• Effective memory frequency: 3600 MHz (4*900 MHz)
• Memory type: GDDR5
• Memory: 512 MB
• Memory bandwidth: 115 GB/sec
• Maximum theoretical fillrate: 12.0 gigapixel per second
• Theoretical texture sampling rate: 30.0 gigatexel per second
• 2 x CrossFireX connectors
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus
• 2 x DVI-I Dual Link, 2560x1600 video output
• TV-Out, HDTV-Out, support for HDCP, HDMI, DisplayPort
• Power consumption: up to 160 W (two 6-pin connectors)
• Two-slot design
• Recommended price: $299

As you may have noticed, we publish articles related to 48xx series with much delay, for which AMD is to be blamed. Inviting mass media five days prior to the announcement and then shifting the event is pure disrespect to IT reviewers. To all appearances, the marketing department forgot that users and retailers do have to read mass media publications to learn about new products. They changed the announcement date only because HD 4850 based products have already leaked into retail channel.

This actually ruined our review schedule. Alexey Berillo brought a sample from the event only on June 20 - the day this series was announced. With HD 4870 it was even worse: cards got stuck at the customs somewhere in Europe and were delivered to Russia already too late - only to be stuck at the local customs. What a pity. As you can see, that's not our bias in any way, that's just the way it is.

Anyway, HIS has kindly provided us with a sample of HD 4870, so we can finally publish our test results.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 260

Nvidia GeForce GTX 260

Experience high definition worlds, lifelike characters, and forces of nature so powerful that your palms sweat and your heart races with every frame. Beyond games, watch Blu-ray movies and transcode video up to 7X faster than traditional CPUs¹.

GEFORCE GTX 200 GPUs		GAMING BEYOND		BEYOND GAMING
View Video Clip		View Video Clip		View Video Clip
Introducing NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 NVIDIA talks with developers about GeForce GTX 200 performance for their games		NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPUs take gaming and effects beyond levels previously seen before Medusa demo by NVIDIA and NVIDIA® PhysX™ Technology, and NaturalMotion.		More than just games - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPUs accelerate the latest consumer applications Video transcoding from Elemental Technologies and the Stanford Folding@home project

Gaming that shakes you to the core With more gaming horsepower than ever before and 896 MB of memory, the GeForce GTX 260 GPU’s 192 processing cores make games such as Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures and Bionic Commando® feel like the real thing. Its powerful NVIDIA PhysX™ technology creates rich, immersive physical effects with stunningly accurate realism. Experience absolute immersion and a 50% pure performance boost than prior generation GPUs with the GeForce GTX 260 GPU.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. © 2008 Funcom, All rights Reserved, © 2008 Conan Properties International LLC. CONAN®, CONAN THE BARBARIAN® and related logos, characters, names, and distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Conan Properties International LLC unless otherwise noted.

PicLens. © 2008 Cooliris, Inc.

The power to take you beyond Beyond the field of play, GeForce GTX 260 seamlessly shifts tasks from the CPU to the GPU, allowing you to dive into the latest Blu-ray movie, surf the web in 3D, or transcode video to a personal video player up to 7x faster than traditional CPUs1. Now you can work and play at full speed.

¹ Requires application support for CUDA technology.

• 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture: Second generation architecture delivers up to 50% more gaming performance over the first generation through 192 enhanced processing cores that provide incredible shading horsepower.
• NVIDIA PhysX™-Ready¹: GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.
• 3-way NVIDIA SLI® Technology²: Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world’s fastest gaming solution under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.
• NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology³: CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processing cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks – such as video encoding – delivering up to 7x performance over traditional CPUs.
• NVIDIA PureVideo® HD Technology⁴ The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
• NVIDIA HybridPower™ Technology⁵ Lets you switch from the GeForce GTX 260 graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a quiet, low power PC experience.

ATI Radeon HD 4850

ATI Radeon HD 4850

High-end performance at an unbelievable price he past few weeks have seen Nvidia raise the graphical stakes repeatedly, first with its new GeForce GTX 280 and then with the announcement of the beefed-up 9800 GTX+. But almost instantly its rival ATI is hitting back with a new Radeon HD 4000 series of cards.

Full technical details will have to wait for a formal announcement, expected next week, but PC Pro has been given a preview of the Radeon HD 4850, already available to order online from a handful of suppliers.

AMD has yet to officially confirm details of other cards, but the 4850's model number suggests it will occupy a mid-range position similar to the current HD 3850's place in the current line-up. Online prices confirm that impression, coming in at around £120 exc VAT.

But for a mid-range card, the 4850's performance is outstanding. In our medium-detail Crysis benchmark, the HD 4850 easily outperformed its predecessor, scoring 63fps against the HD 3850's 47fps.

It beat the Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT too - that card only achieved 50fps - and even slightly outpaced the significantly more expensive GeForce 9800 GTX,which managed 60fps. Only the GeForce GTX 280 beat it, scoring a mammoth 84fps, and that card will cost you three times the price.

When we switched to high settings, the 9600 GT dropped to jerky frame rates of around 20fps, but the 4850 kept up a perfectly playable 32fps - effectively on a par with the 9800 GTX's 33fps. Again, though, the GTX 280 won out convincingly, averaging 45fps.

Our Call of Duty 4 benchmarks told the same story, with the Radeon HD 4850 achieving scores almost exactly on a par with the 9800 GTX, mid-way between Nvidia's 9600 GT and the GTX 280.

Finally, the Call of Juarez benchmark gave the 4850 its best result: its average of 42fps in the medium test was just a whisker behind the GTX 280's 46fps, and well ahead of the 9800 GTX's 32fps. Switching to high detail caused scores to drop, but the 4850's 31fps was closer to the 37fps of the GTX 280 than to the 21fps averaged by the 9800 GTX.

It's impressive to see such scores from a single-height card, but our sample used the same cooling as a stock HD 3850 and ran incredibly hot.

While blasting through our demanding Crysis benchmarks, the HD 4850 hit a searing 84 degrees Celsius - almost 20 degrees hotter than the GTX 280. Thankfully, there's nothing stopping third-party vendors beefing up the cooling.

If you can take the heat, the Radeon HD 4850 gives the best performance you'll find at anywhere near this price-point. It can't quite see off the GTX 280, but it keeps pace with the 9800 GTX at a significantly lower price.

In all, the HD 4850 is a fantastic bargain, and gives us very high hopes for the rest of the range when it materialises. Watch this space for further reviews.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX

NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology¹

• The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
• Hardware Decode Acceleration
  Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies.
• Dual-stream Hardware Acceleration
  Supports picture-in-picture content for the ultimate interactive Blu-ray and HD DVD movie experience.
• Dynamic Contrast Enhancement & Color Stretch
  Provides post-processing and optimization of High Definition movies on a scene-by- scene basis for spectacular picture clarity.
• 3-way NVIDIA SLI® Technology²
  Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.
• NVIDIA HybridPower™ Technology³
  Lets you switch from the GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a silent, low power PC experience.
• PCI Express 2.0 Support
  Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.

Posted by ©Unreachable Faraz at 12:13 AM 0 comments

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX

NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology¹

• The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
• Hardware Decode Acceleration
  Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies.
• Dual-stream Hardware Acceleration
  Supports picture-in-picture content for the ultimate interactive Blu-ray and HD DVD movie experience.
• Dynamic Contrast Enhancement & Color Stretch
  Provides post-processing and optimization of High Definition movies on a scene-by- scene basis for spectacular picture clarity.
• 3-way NVIDIA SLI® Technology²
  Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers.
• NVIDIA HybridPower™ Technology³
  Lets you switch from the GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a silent, low power PC experience.
• PCI Express 2.0 Support
  Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.

Posted by ©Unreachable Faraz at 12:13 AM 0 comments

ATI Radeon HD 4830

ATI Radeon HD 4830

ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series GPUs bring the power of graphics ‘supercomputing’ to gamers, setting a new standard for visual computing. Redefine the way you play and take HD gaming to the extreme with best-in-class performance. With up to 1.2 teraFLOPS on tap, the TeraScale graphics engine delivers an immersive, cinematic gaming experience. Add this graphics card to your PC and watch Blu-ray movies and play HD content with incredible visual fidelity or take your experience to another level with new multimedia capabilities. Do it all with break-through efficiency that doesn’t compromise performance.

Redefine HD Gaming
With more than twice the processing power of previous generation AMD discrete graphics cards, ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards deliver a cinematic gaming experience and unprecedented performance.

The new TeraScale graphics engine combines the power of up to 1.2 teraFLOPS, up to 800 stream processors and next generation GDDR5 memory to propel you deep into your gameplay with seamless frame rates and high resolutions.

Enhanced anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering create striking graphics with unparalleled realism so you can max out the settings of the most demanding next-generation games or revitalize your favorite titles.

Play today while preparing for tomorrow with tessellation, support for DirectX® 10.1 and scalable ATI CrossFireX™ technology.

Go Beyond HD Video
Add an ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics card to your PC and watch the latest Blu-ray and HD movies play with incredible fidelity¹ – upscale to nearly twice the display resolution of HD content.² Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities.

Sophisticated new features within ATI Avivo™ HD technology give you the freedom and flexibility to edit videos quickly and convert them to H.264 and MPEG-2 formats 1.8x faster than real-time.³

Support for the latest audio visual interconnects ensures you can take advantage of the latest display technology.

Break-through Efficiency
Like their predecessors, the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards offer optimal performance and break-through efficiency with platform-independent intelligent power management.

Regardless of platform, these graphics cards deliver the power needed to blaze through even the most intense games while intuitively conserving energy at idle or when demand is low.

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series – Key Features

• TeraScale Graphics Engine - The new TeraScale graphics engine features up to 1.2 teraFLOPS, nearly one billion transistors and up to 800 stream processors so you can enjoy the high resolutions and fast frame rates previously only available with dual-card systems.
• Advanced Memory - GDDR5 memory provides twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3.
• Enhanced Anti-Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering - High performance anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
• DirectX® 10.1 - Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
• ATI CrossFireX™ Technology - ATI CrossFireX™ technology with up to quad GPU support offers superior scalability so your system is ready to level up when you are.
• PCI Express 2.0 - Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
• Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) - UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for even the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Also, take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities.
• Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT) - AVT allows you to convert videos to H.264 and MPEG-2 formats up to 19x faster than when using a just CPU.3 Full 1080p files can be converted to H.264 and MPEG-2 up to 1.8x faster than real-time.³
• Upscale Beyond 1080p - Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond.¹
• Enhanced DVD Upscaling - Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling. The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
• Dynamic Contrast - Dynamic Contrast automatically adjusts the contrast and brightness during scenes to consistently deliver a crisp, vibrant picture.
• HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV.
• Dynamic Power Management - ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards deliver high performance when needed and conserve power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.
• More Performance Per Watt - ATI Radeon HD 4800 series delivers up to 2x the performance per watt of AMD’s previous generation GPUs.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT

He GeForce 9800 GT is quite a recent addition to the graphics segment but it has hardly generated any excitement among enthusiasts. "Why?" You might wonder. You'll know the reason once you take a look at the specifications of the "new" GeForce 9800 GT and compare it with the older 8800 GT. Don't panic. Your eyes are not playing tricks on you and there are no typographical errors here.

The truth is, this is all an elaborate marketing ploy by NVIDIA to resell some of their older cards, because the simple fact of the matter is this: the 9800 GT is really an 8800 GT. Honest. The only difference is in the name.

Not that we are complaining. You see, the 8800 GT was a particular favorite of ours due to its outstanding performance to price ratio so we can expect more of the same. Still, we had hoped for more. Some have speculated that it will get support for 3-way SLI, but sadly, that didn't happen. Still others have said that the 9800 GT might have a higher clocked core as well as memory and shaders, but that unfortunately didn't happen either.

So has anything changed at all? Well, we are glad you asked and we are somewhat disappointed to report that the only thing that did change was added support for HybridPower. This is a feature found only on GeForce 9 series graphics cards that allows systems running on NVIDIA chipsets to switch to onboard integrated graphics when running less graphic-intensive applications, thus helping you save power and money. Hence it should be a useful feature for the budget and environmental conscious crowd.

Another improvement over the 8800 GT is that NVIDIA plans to eventually have all 9800 GTs manufactured on a 55nm process, which would theoretically lead to greater efficiency and lower power consumption and heat. That however is also still in the works and all the 9800 GTs we have here are currently on the 65nm manufacturing process, as the screenshot below can attest. Having said that, that's just about all the difference there is to the "new" 9800 GT.

As you can see, the Gigabyte 9800 GT we have is completely stock.

For our GeForce 9800 GT round-up today, we have gathered four cards: one from Gigabyte that comes with reference clock speed, and another two overclocked ones from Palit and Zotac, and lastly, a rather unique albeit engineering sample from ASUS. But before we begin, let's take a look at how the GeForce 9800 GT stacks up against the competition.

Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

Nvidia has been under rare pressure recently, with ATi's launch of the Radeon HD 3800-series finally giving it a route back into the PCs of mainstream gamers.

The cards were eminently affordable, yet fast enough to run the latest games - a boast that Nvidia's mid-range GeForce 8600 cards couldn't match.

But ATi's success was always going to spur Nvidia into action, and its riposte is suitably hard-hitting: the next-generation Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT.

It's a longer card than the old 8600 GT, looking more like an 8800 GT. Like the 8800 series the GPU is a 65nm part, with 64 stream processors - twice that of the 8600's - and it also boasts 512MB of 900MHz GDDR3 memory.

It's the first mainstream Nvidia card to boast a 256-bit memory bus, and with a core clock of 650MHz, it's actually very similar overall to the 8800 GTS 512MB - perhaps it's not so next-gen after all.

We were eager to see whether the 9600 GT would be fast enough to wipe out ATi's recent gains in one fell swoop, so we slotted it into our test rig - an X48-chipset motherboard, with a 3GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9650 processor and 4GB of DDR3 RAM - and put it through our demanding set of 3D benchmarks.

Crysis is the game of the moment, and the 9600 GT coasted through the first test: it achieved an average of 50fps at 1,280 x 1,024 and Medium settings, which puts it ahead of the 8800 GS, was almost on a par with the 8800 GT, and it nearly doubled the framerate achieved by the 8600 GTS.

Bumping the resolution up to 1,600 x 1,200 still produced a playable 38fps, and only when we also lifted the quality settings to High did it drop to a shaky 21fps.

In the slightly less demanding Call of Duty 4 it performed just as impressively. At 1,600 x 1,200 with the quality settings at their highest, it managed 50fps in our benchmark; again, that's more than double that of the 8600 GTS, and around 25% faster than an ATi Radeon HD 3870.

It's a huge increase in performance over the old 8600 cards, and massively repositions Nvidia's mid-range. What once was only achievable by the upper-mid-range cards - the 8800 GT, for example, which currently retails at around £150 (inc VAT) - is now within reach of the affordable mainstream, even if it's not the huge architectural leap forward we might have hoped for.

Initial pricing for the 9600 GT puts it at around £130 (inc VAT) at various retailers. This would put it below the £135 (inc VAT) typical price of the HD 3870, and way below the 8800 GT, making it an absolute steal.

It's a bold move by Nvidia, one which will surely kill off several of its existing 8-series cards in one fell swoop. But it will also put a dent in ATi's recent resurgence, and right now that's exactly what Nvidia needs.