Overview

We have a adore-hate relationship with all-in-1 PCs. They ought to be something we enjoy. A slick single-unit design can be as glorious as the Apple iMac 21.five-inch model, but then numerous seem to be vastly pricey. That high price is one thing pioneered by the Apple iMac 27-inch unit and undoubtedly matched by the Sony VAIO L Series, which we again had mixed feelings about.

A low cost did not put us off the bargain Advent Discovery MT1804, so we’re keen to see if the well-priced MSI Wind Best AE2210 can manage to balance a £700 price tag with very good performance.

Contemplating its 21.5-inch size, this all-in-one pc with touchscreen capabilities can definitely fulfil the remit of becoming a stealth Computer hidden in the corner of any room, happily doubling up as a Tv, media jukebox or completely-fledged Windows 7 Computer.

It comes with a mini wireless media remote, mouse and keyboard, all styled in the identical shiny black plastic as the all-in-1 body. Portion of the styling of the MSI Wind Top AE2210 is its &quotinvisible&quot clear plastic surround, which provides the display a floating look.

Wire-free of charge is one thing the MSI Wind Best AE2210 practically achieves – the only lead you in fact want connected is the main power supply. MSI has opted for an external energy provide unit, which is something to shed and an extra factor to have to lug around. We’d argue that this could help with cooling, but the unit has an apparent cooling fan. Whilst it mostly ticks over at a low level, it’s a small disappointing that it is audible at all.

Controls on the body of the MSI Wind Top AE2210 are kept to a minimum, with energy and brightness controls tucked behind the outside rim. It’s the exact same for the optical DVD rewriter, too, with the remaining expansion ports – which includes an HDMI port – hidden about the back.

Specifications

We believe it is sensible that MSI has opted for the base Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3 2100 processor for the Wind Leading AE2210. This is the second generation of Core i3 processors, and comes with the enhanced integrated HD Graphics 2000. And when we say &quotenhanced&quot, we mean not utterly useless. This offers what is a reasonably reasonably priced all-in-one laptop or computer a solid dose of CPU grunt and a base level of 3D performance, despite the fact that it is only DirectX 10.1 capable.

In numerous techniques, the specification for the MSI Wind Leading AE2210-031UK model that we reviewed feels far above the cost tag, because it provides 1TB (1,000GB) of challenging drive storage and 4GB of DDR3 memory.

As we’d hoped, Windows 7 Property Premium is the 64-bit version, so you can take full benefit of the installed 4GB of memory.

MSI hasn’t skimped on the connections, offering two USB 3. ports on the side. So you can simply get high-speed external storage with a further 4 USB two. ports at the back. Not offered to your average user, there are two mini-PCIe slots inside. One’s utilized for the digital Television tuners, but the other is potentially accessible for anybody wielding a screwdriver.

MSI has been diligent in equipping the program for entertainment. A digital Television tuner is included for Tv reception, there is the integrated Media Center remote, a 1.3MP webcam with microphone and integrated speakers, which are Lucasfilm THX certified.

We also have to mention the 21.five-inch screen with an impressive 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution. As this is a smaller sized screen, this results in a high pixel density for impressive detail.

It is also a full touchscreen. If you are planning to use it as a media jukebox, this enables straightforward control in practically each way possible. It also seems to have an oleophobic coating that assists to preserve it fingerprint totally free, but this tends to drag on your fingertip in the course of use.

Connectivity on the MSI Wind Best AE2210 is also great, with the basics covered by the wireless N capabilities and wired Gigabit LAN. A side-mounted six-in-1 memory card reader is provided alongside the normal DVD rewriter.

Efficiency

You know as soon as anyone hears that the MSI Wind Top AE2210 is a touchscreen laptop or computer, they’ll have their mucky pups all more than your when clear, shiny all-in-1 screen. That is going to leave embarrassment if the touch functionality isn’t up to significantly, but we’re glad to say that MSI appears to have learnt from the folly of the Asus Eee Leading and even the fairly useless touchscreen functions of the Acer Z5763.

MSI does not specify the sort of touch system it utilizes in the Wind Top AE2210. It detects activity just prior to you really touch the surface, so we suspect it is an infrared bar rather than resistive or capacitive.

Normally we found it to be accurate and responsive. The supplied Wind Top software lacks design refinement, and there is no suggestion to run through the calibration procedure, but you are supplied with the regular Microsoft touch demos and a child-friendly touch paint package. We also happily employed Media Center and other programs with just our fingertips.

The display itself does exhibit a modest amount of light leakage at the leading and bottom. Oddly, we felt it could have been a touch brighter, but far more importantly accurate colours and excellent viewing angles with that high resolution assist to give an enjoyable display.

That is also backed up by the performance of the THX speakers, with genuine range from deep base via the mid range with high tones all becoming produced, even though with no much volume.

The 3D efficiency on the MSI Wind Leading AE2210 is its most obvious weakness – don’t expect to play games produced in the last couple of years. The recent Lost Planet two benchmark even at a 720p resolution returned an unplayable 7fps average. The ageing 3DMark 2006 returned a score of 2654, showing it capable of playing games around the age of Half-Life two.

We’re fans of the latest Sandy Bridge Core i3 processors – for what is an entry-level processor you get a huge amount of processing energy that contains Intel HyperThreading and a 3.1GHz CPU speed. This delivers high speed media encoding and effortless HD playback.

Verdict

A extremely effectively balanced all-in-1 program, the MSI Wind Top AE2210 does a superb job of juggling very good aesthetics, a sensible cost point with the latest Intel technologies all wrapped up in a technique that will not break the bank too heavily.

We liked

We like touching, and the MSI Wind Best AE2210 undoubtedly enables us to do that. Accurate, precise and multi-touch functionality pushes all the proper buttons. The display itself is a plus point, too. We have niggles about it, but the popping colour and that glorious 1920 x 1080 resolution will not be beaten for a very good number of years at this size.

Thinking about the target market place, we also think MSI has nailed the styling. We envision most individuals won’t want a Pc-seeking all-in-1 Pc, and the MSI Wind Best AE2210 surely manages that. The wireless mini-keyboard and mouse can be effortlessly hidden away too, leaving just the Media Center remote for enjoying Television, music and films.

We disliked

It is straightforward to criticise in the Pc globe – there’s often one thing better already out or about to come out. The major weakness inside the MSI Wind Best AE2210 is the 3D graphics, but that’s irrelevant for this model due to the fact if you’re thinking of playing a lot of games, you shouldn’t be looking at an all-in-one pc.

We’re slightly much more concerned by the minor light leakage at the leading and bottom of the screen, which is visible in dark scenes. Yet another minor annoyance is the internal fan – it’s really quiet but surely MSI could have managed a silent answer, particularly because the PSU is external? While we appreciate the range of the THX speakers, ensuring that crisp response has lowered the total volume output.

It’s also a real shame that Windows 7 cannot actually preserve up with the touchscreen functions, because it is basically not designed as a touch interface, but that’s not a weakness of the MSI Wind Leading AE2210.

Final verdict

You can pay less than this for other machines, but you’ll definitely be acquiring a far much less capable system. To get considerably a lot more, you’d have to pay nearly double. Naturally gamers ought to look elsewhere, but for everybody else there’s a lot to like about the MSI Wind Top AE2210.

The touchscreen is like a devilishly red cherry perched on a delicious cake begging you to touch it. Go on, you know you want to.

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AMD FX-8150 – Overview

We’ve waited a long time for AMD to release a brand new processor architecture, but finally the AMD FX-8150 has arrived.

This first chip is the vanguard of the somewhat tardy Bulldozer technology and is this top-of-the-line AMD FX chip, code-named Zambezi. This is the full-fat, eight-core AMD super-chip running at a not inconsiderable 3.6GHz straight out the box.

The FX moniker isn’t a new one for AMD chips.

The last time we saw it used for its high-end parts was in the 90nm Athlon 64 FX-74 in late 2006. It’s been reborn this year to cover the first in what AMD hopes will be a long line of Bulldozer-based CPUs.

The AMD FX CPUs represent the chip maker’s first real new architecture since the exciting times of the first Athlon back in 2003.

And it is very much a new architecture; AMD has started from scratch with the design of the Bulldozer modules, taking a very different approach to what makes up a CPU core than anyone else.

We’ll explore the depths of that architectural change later, but the real key is the use of that word ‘module’.

Each of these modules holds the essential makeup of a standard dual-core processor, sharing certain non-timing sensitive parts.

The AMD FX-8150 has four of these Bulldozer modules and AMD claims that makes it the world’s first eight-core desktop chip. It’s tough to ignore the sickly sweet scent of fudge here, though this hardware-based solution ought be a lot more effective than Intel’s mostly software-oriented HyperThreading.

The Bulldozer module represents the future of AMD processors going forward.

Speaking with Bernard Seite, an AMD Technical Advisor, last month he told us that the Bulldozer modules are likely to last as the basis for its CPU range for the next 5-7 years.

At the moment we’ve only seen the roadmap for the next couple of years, with the Piledriver update coming next year, Steamroller coming in 2013 and Excavator in 2014.

Yes, we know it sounds like a joke, but AMD’s latest roadmap really does read like the Urban Dictionary Karma Sutra.

But hopes are still high for these new AMD FX processors, especially after it managed to snag the Guiness World Record for highest CPU clockspeed in September.

We saw this top CPU here running at well over 8GHz.

That is impressive, but realistically it’s just numbers. The world record didn’t demand the machine to actually run any applications, it just needed to boot into Windows and report it’s clockspeed. It also didn’t need to be running all its cores. The world record was actually only broken by a single Bulldozer module in operation and under serious liquid helium cooling too.

The precedent is there though and means the AMD FX-8150 ought to be one hell of an overclocker’s chip. What that will mean in real-world applications though we’ll soon see.

So how does the new AMD FX CPU stack up then? Can it give Intel’s Sandy Bridge a run for its money and can it make AMD a performance chip manufacturer once more?

AMD FX-8150 – Architecture

The AMD FX-8150′s new Bulldozer technology is a fairly radical departure from the standard model of processor design.

The big news is the modular design housing the constituent components of a dual-core CPU in one.

It’s also AMD’s first 32nm desktop CPU. Sadly that does make the chip seem a little behind the times with Intel set to release it’s first 22nm processor in Spring next year.

But like Intel’s shift in process size the change to this modular design allows the AMD engineers to squeeze more performance into a smaller space, and therefore also cut the costs of manufacturing.

Essentially the idea is to share parts of the module with lower utilisation, such as the Level 2 cache, Fetch and Decode components, while high utilisation parts, such as the Integer pipelines and Level 1 data cache, are separated out per core.

According to AMD that should give each Bulldozer module around 80% of the performance of a standard dual-core CPU.

It’s this squeezing of two cores into each module that means AMD can produce an eight-core CPU for less than the price of Intel’s top Sandy Bridge quad-core.

And seeing as competition on price rather than performance is more of AMD’s concern than Intel’s that’s something it had to do with the AMD FX CPUs.

Still, like the AMD FX-8150 the Core i7 2600K – that top Sandy Bridge chip – can run eight processes in parallel.

Intel doesn’t call it an eight-core chip, instead uses its HyperThreading technology to split the four cores in its die into eight processes. There is a certain amount of hardware in the Sandy Bridge die to make the HyperThreading magic happen, but mostly it’s a software-oriented model.

Intel’s way of spreading out four cores into eight processing threads operates mainly by effectively managing instructions going into one core and separating that out into two parallel threads for the operating system.

Turbo

Again like the Intel chips, the AMD FX CPUs use a form of on-the-fly overclocking to boost performance when there’s spare capacity available.

The AMD Turbo Core technology has been used in the Phenom II CPUs before, but has been specifically enhanced for the Bulldozer architecture. Now it can use the Turbo Core to offer increased performance when all cores are active should the TDP headroom exist for it to do so.

The AMD FX-8150 has a standard clockspeed of 3.6GHz, with a possible Turbo Core available to it to allow it push up to around 3.9GHz.

When only a single core is needed though then Max Turbo comes into play.

This essentially takes the available TDP headroom for the entire chip and focuses it onto a single core giving it the ability to push even further in terms of clockspeed.

On the AMD FX-8150 that means it’s theoretically possible for the chip to hit 4.2GHz as standard when only one thread is needed.

But what about the platform?

Despite the delay to the actual CPUs themselves the motherboard platform was actually launched a fair while back. The AMD 9-series motherboards have been doing a roaring trade out there even without the chip to back them up.

There’s precious little difference between the 8-series and 9-series motherboards save for one vital ingredient; the AM3+ socket that supports the new AMD FX CPUs. That also means they aren’t the priciest boards in existence.

Still, to get the best out of your Bully CPU, at least in overclocking terms, then dropping some cash on a decent board should be well worth the money.

To this end AMD is shipping out the Asus RoG Crosshair V Formula with each review kit.

That’s a brief overview of the technologies behind AMD’s latest chip architecture, and mighty impressive it looks on paper. But how does it perform in the real-world? Overclocking records aside, what will happen when you drop this chip into your motherboard at home?

Let’s take a look.

AMD FX-8150 – Benchmarks

The first benchmark below is possibly one of the most telling.

Taking the eight-cores of multi-threading out of the picture you can see how the individual cores actually stack up. Running in single-threaded mode shows the FX-8150 cores actually running slower than the hexcore Phenom II it’s replacing.

With the multi-threaded benchmarks though the FX-8150 starts to look more interesting. However the gaming benchmarks tell a worrying story.

When it’s just relying on the GPU the story is much the same across the four CPUs we tested. DiRT 3 is shown here, but in Just Cause 2 and World in Conflict all four processors spat out roughly the same performance figures at the top resolutions.

Take the GPU out of the equation and the Sandy Bridge chips stretch out ahead.

Things aren’t too pretty in terms of multi-GPU performance either.

In overclocking terms though the FX-8150 is a success. Stably running at over 4.7GHz is impressive and really pushes it ahead of the Core i5 2500K.

If the chip had been released at the 4GHz it can easily manage we might’ve been looking at a higher score…

Single-threaded performance

Multi-threaded performance

CPU gaming performance

High-end gaming performance

Multi-GPU performance

Overclocking performance

Platform power draw

AMD FX-8150 – Performance

All the clever architectural tricks in the world count for nought if the performance isn’t there, so how does the top-end AMD FX chip stack up against it’s rivals?

The short answer is not as well as we might have hoped.

AMD really needed this chip to be at least a rival for the current generation of Sandy Bridge CPUs, especially with a new production process and accompanying chips arriving in the first half of next year for Intel.

With the high clockspeed and nominal eight cores, we had hoped to see the AMD FX-8150 taking the resolutely quad-core Intel Core i5 2500K to task.

Indeed with that chip artificially hobbled by the switching off of HyperThreading you’d think it wouldn’t be much of a contest.

In fact it’s a lot closer than Intel could have dared hope, and certainly a lot closer than AMD would have wanted. Especially in the multi-threaded benchmarks, and that’s quite a surprise.

In the heavily multi-threaded Cinebench R11 test the AMD FX-8150 comes away with a decent 5.98 index score, but with only four threads of processing grunt against the FX chip’s eight the i5 2500K manages to get awfully close at 5.90.

That test is also interesting when you compare the previous top AMD chip, the Phenom II X6 1100T.

That’s a full six-core CPU, but is running on the older 45nm hardware and at a slower clockspeed too. Yet that older brother still manages to put up a score of 5.88.

The eight-threaded Core i7 2600K however is streets ahead of all three.

Still, those extra threads come into account with the X264 video encoding benchmark. Even at stock speeds the FX-8150 actually starts clawing back some ground on the i7 2600K, beating the quad-core i5 2500K easily as it does.

Unfortunately the actual cores in the Bulldozer modules look like the weak link in the multi-threaded chain.

A quick check on the single-threaded performance of the FX-8150 highlights that weakness.

Using the single-threaded Cinebench R10 benchmark you can immediately see the problems the FX-8150 faces. Even the ageing Phenom II cores run faster than this brand new Bulldozer core.

And the two Sandy Bridge chips demonstrate just what an advantage their cores have over the AMD processors.

Gaming

The gaming benchmarks are similarly telling.

On the whole at the high end of the graphics spectrum, at the high resolutions, it’s all about the graphics hardware. As long as the chip’s not getting in the way then the GPU can operate with impunity.

Take the GPU out of the equation however and things get more interesting.

World in Conflict is a great CPU benchmark in gaming terms as different CPU hardware genuinely can show a difference. We ran the benchmark at the lowest resolution and lowest graphical fidelity, while retaining CPU-heavy operations such as physics, just to make sure the CPU was taking the load.

The two AMD CPUs behaved much the same, while the Sandy Bridge chips were well over a third faster.

We were hoping to run the Shogun 2 CPU benchmark too in order to see how things stood on a more modern engine. Sadly the game refused to load for the Bulldozer chip…

The AMD FX-8150 though is meant to be a rather capable gaming chip, and with a high-end GPU it delivers performance every bit as good as the Intel chips.

So there’s nothing holding it back in gaming terms.

What about multi-GPU though? The FX-8150 ought to be a better bet for dual-graphics setups thanks to the two native x16 PCIe lanes within the platform.

And if you just took DiRT 3 as the only gaming benchmark worth a damn then all would indeed be rosy.

Using the AMD-sponsored title it garners an extra 3FPS over the competing Core i5 2500K. Not an impressive lead, but a lead nonetheless.

In the DX10 World in Conflict and Just Cause 2 benchmarks though the FX chip lags behind, in the case of WiC by over 25FPS.

There’s no problems with the GPUs, or how they’re talking to each other, as the GPU-centric Heaven 2.5 test ignores all the other hardware and just gives a score based on what the GPU is capable of. In both AMD and Intel setups the Heaven score was identical.

AMD will argue that legacy software is not where you’ll see the benefits of the new hardware.

It may have a case, but still the vast majority of games released today are not DX11 games, they’re DX10 and in some cases DX9.

The OC

But there is at least some good news for AMD though, and that is all down to the fact it has finally created an overclocking-friendly processor.

We’ve been used to 1GHz+ overclocks from Intel chips for a while now, and with the AMD FX-8150 we’ve managed to get the same scale of improvements.

With a Corsair H100 water-cooling block we were able to push the FX-8150 to an impressive 4.73GHz. With the same cooler we could only get 4.6GHz out of the two Sandy Bridge chips.

When you’re pumping out that sort of performance then the benchmarks start to look a lot more impressive.

Now with the CPUs at their maximum overclock the Cinebench R11 test shows the FX CPU easily outstripping both the Phenom II X6 1100T and the Core i5 2500K.

The i7 still remains way out in front, though in the X264 test only by a single frame per second on average.

AMD FX-8150 – Verdict

Inevitably the performance of these chips is where they are going to be judged in real terms.

And somewhat inevitably it’s something of a disappointment.

It’s somewhat inevitable as AMD simply doesn’t have the vast research budget of its Silicon Valley rival, Intel. We don’t want to start making excuses for AMD though, and the FX-8150 is by no means a bad chip.

It is definitely the fastest CPU AMD has on the market right now.

Take Intel out of the equation and we’d be lauding the Bulldozer architecture as a truly remarkable thing.

The problem is Intel is most definitely in this equation and we’ve had this sort of performance, for around this sort of price, since we first clapped benchmarks on Sandy Bridge.

But Bulldozer remains the future for AMD.

And there is genuine hope on the horizon. The Trinity APU for example will be running the enhanced Piledriver architecture alongside discrete-class graphics in the same die.

For now though the top-end, eight-core AMD FX CPU struggles to keep pace with Intel’s middling, ageing, cheaper and resolutely quad-core, Sandy Bridge i5 2500K.

And that’s the big problem.

The FX CPUs are almost competitive with their Sandy Bridge rivals, but still can’t beat them.

The 2500K is a cheaper chip and represents a better bet for gamers. If you want multi-threaded prowess too then for only another £50, at worst, over the FX-8150 you can pick up the awesome i7 2600K.

This is though only one of the Bulldozer-based chips AMD has launched, and the lower-end CPUs may actually be far more worthy.

The 3.1GHz FX-8120, for example, is available for around £165 – less than the 2500K – and should still have the overclocking chops thanks to the unlocked nature of the entire FX range.

Topping 4GHz with that CPU could turn it into a really very good gamer’s chip with added multi-threaded extras to boot.

Still there is more to come from Intel, with another LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge reportedly on its way and the brand new, ultra high-end Sandy Bridge E is soon to touch down too.

We liked

The modular architecture is impressive and ought to pay off for AMD further down the line.

As it is the FX-8150 is an impressive overclocker’s chip. Hitting 4.7GHz gives the chip one hell of a boost in performance terms.

We disliked

Unfortunately the chip’s just not competitive enough against its rivals.

At stock speeds it struggles against the non-HyperThreaded i5, even in some multi-threaded applications. And while it keeps pace with the competition in gaming terms it loses it when you come to adding in extra GPUs.

Even AMD ones.

Final word

We can’t help but feel disappointed with the lack of performance progress the FX-8150 represents. It’s not a bad chip, but we wanted more.

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Overview

A dedicated sound card in the existing PC hardware landscape wants to be capable of all kinds of stunts to justify its existence.

Does Creative’s Sound Blaster Recon3D, its new £90 external sound card, have a deep sufficient bag of tricks to succeed?


It’s the world’s initial quad-core sound processor, which gives it the power to pull off impressive feats such as separate mic audio and in-game sound steams, and apply separate effects – such as compression, surround and noise cancelling – to every single stream.

It is best buddies with THX TruStudio, works with PC, Mac, PlayStation three and Xbox 360, and sports a ‘Scout Mode’ button, which amplifies sound cues in-game to highlight nearby enemies.


There was a time when Creative and other PC audio peripheral specialists produced most of their dough from internal sound card sales, but advances in onboard sound chips quickly pushed aside internal PCI cards such as Creative’s classic Audigy two ZS (a veritable metropolis of capacitors) to the realms of fringe peripherals.


Built-in motherboard HD audio chips such as those from By way of and Realtek, plus Creative’s X-Fi range, have swallowed the gap in audio fidelity and processing performance that employed to exist in between PCI sound cards and onboard sound to the point that couple of would consider shelling out added cash on sound hardware over other efficiency-enhancing components.


As the Southbridge chips on both Intel and AMD chipsets and CPUs themselves become far more effective, we get significantly less of a efficiency hit, because the silicon is crunching the numbers faster and more efficiently to decode digital audio to analogue so that your speakers can made sense of it.

This decoding employed to eat up frames per second, but contemporary CPUs and Southbridge chips aren’t troubled by integrated X-Fi 7.1 audio.

So the gap between integrated audio and kit such as Creative’s Recon3D needs to be noticeable, beneficial and sizeable for the latter to appeal. Let’s see how it performs.

The actual breakthrough tech here is SoundCore 3D, the world’s 1st quad-core devoted sound processor.

You can expect to see this chip feature on high-end motherboards as an integrated sound resolution as well as powering the Recon3D.

4 cores are advantageous due to the fact they can manage simultaneous digital signals and crunch away at them with HD audio codecs much much more quickly and efficiently than a single processor – just like AMD and Intel’s multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs with video encoding.


Long story brief, you do not need to have to fret about losing frames per second to voice and sound processing. The Recon3D’s got that covered. It possibly has that covered with out breaking a sweat in fact, which is why Creative has thrown a generous heap of functionality at it.


As we mentioned, the Recon3D is full to the slick black brim with Dolby THX TruStudio Pro features. The most beneficial for gamers will be Pro Surround and Pro Dialog Plus.

The former creates a 360-degree soundscape, with sounds panning horizontally and vertically about you. Rather than cram its headsets full of drivers, Creative has opted for the digital approach, interpolating sounds as they travel from one point to yet another. In practice, this is 1 of the Recon3D’s most successful and enjoyable characteristics.

It genuinely tricks your ears into hearing sounds way behind or above you and from some distance away. The intensity of this effect can be tweaked in the software program layer.


Pro Dialog Plus is all about clearing up noisy voice communication and compressing incoming voice comm streams, so that you do not jump out of your skin when a French teenager starts babbling at you in Team Fortress two.

Equally, the Recon3D lets you clean up your own outgoing mic signal by compressing it, applying noise cancellation or even making use of the effects software to make you sound like a little girl. Absolutely nothing creepy about that, right?


Then there’s Scout Mode. Hit this button and the Recon3D creates a bubble of amplified sound around you in-game, the theory getting you’re less likely to get backstabbed if your enemies’ sound cues are deafening. We had mixed results with this, with some games faring far better than other people.


Console owners can save profiles they’ve produced on PC and apply them to their small gaming boxes too, and the optical cable setup means it’s a pressure-free encounter hooking it up to any device.

Verdict

The Recon3D gives fantastic gaming sound and voice comm tweaking on PC and consoles, with some nice THX effects to play with. It is high-priced for what it provides, though.

We liked

It is a function-filled, high quality item, and versatile too. Nonetheless, the best factor about it is that Creative is bundling the Recon3D with its wireless Tactic3D Omega headset. That is a quality set of cans, with wonderful sound reproduction and beefy but not overcooked bass levels. The headset’s worth £180 on its own, but paired with the Recon3D, the price tag’s £209.

That is nonetheless properly in the realms of enthusiast ware, but a a lot a lot more enticing prospect than acquiring the Recon3D alone. If you are going to acquire a headset that costs more than the console you’ll be using it with, an additional £20 for a powerful sound card with some nice gaming functions ain’t too shabby.

The excellent surround effect also makes the Recon3D (with the headset, of course) a excellent selection for movies.

We disliked

Our greatest concern is that as a standalone £90 obtain, we’re not sure gamers will be that enamoured with it. It is 1 for enthusiasts definitely (though not audiophiles), and however carefully you tweak your settings in the software program suite, there is still one important variable: your speakers. It is your headset or desktop speakers that have the final say over sound top quality.

On these grounds, we discover it tough to recommend the Recon3D alone, due to the fact it does not magically turn bad speakers good, and if you have a basic set of speakers or low cost headset, this isn’t the gear for you.

Also, regardless of the Recon3D’s versatility and functionality, don’t believe this is your 1-quit audio solution. Positive, it is wonderful across different platforms, but geared very considerably toward gaming.

Verdict

If you obsess over sound high quality and ‘variable bit rate’ is a profanity to your eyes, appear elsewhere. There’s too considerably bass in the headset and little consideration for music in the Recon3D and software suite.

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Zotac A75-ITX WiFi – Overview

Zotac is genuinely producing a mark for itself as a motherboard manufacturer, specifically in the small form factor arena, and this Zotac A75-ITX WiFi certainly looks to continue that trend.

We checked out the Z68-ITX WiFi a small while back and its mixture of packed PCB and impressive efficiency produced it an incredibly interesting prospect for a wee Intel Sandy Bridge machine.

A lot more suited to the smaller PC although is AMD’s Llano APU. In a form factor where space is at a premium getting decent graphics energy on-chip makes for a properly-rounded machine in a quite tight space.

Intel’s Sandy Bridge may possibly also have integrated graphics but that hardly gives you a lot power beyond a small light media play and normal net-crawling.

The Llano APUs although have discrete-class graphics prowess, maybe not of the high-finish calibre, but definitely far much better than something we’ve seen ahead of.

So what compromises have been made to the A75 platform to squeeze it down into this tiny form factor?

Zotac A75-ITX WiFi – Benchmarks

You can see from the outcomes below the CPU component of the Llano APU is getting hobbled by the motherboard itself. In each the Asus ATX and MSI mATX boards the chips perform far far better at straight, conventional CPU tasks.

On the gaming side though there is no such compromise in performance great news for the mini PC gamer.

CPU rendering performance

CPU gaming performance

DX11 gaming performance

Zotac A75-ITX WiFi – Verdict

Inevitably there is much less space on the motherboard itself to enable a lot more than two DIMM slots and a single x16 PCIe connector, but in such a tiny form factor neither represent a massive compromise.

Indeed given the restraints having a discrete GPU in the PCIe slot locations on the CPU component of the Llano APUs you could argue that perhaps you don’t require one at all.

That stated dropping in a little discrete card, like a half-height AMD Radeon HD 6670, provides you a hell of a boost in graphical performance with Llano’s Dual Graphics functionality.

We notched up over 25fps in DiRT three at 1920×1080 on the Ultra settings, and for a tiny PC sat beneath your HD tele that wouldn’t be poor at all.

You’d need a rather chunkier GPU to be able to do that on an Intel platform.

But nonetheless performance does suffer. The straight line CPU scores are a way down compared with the sort of numbers we’ve been obtaining out of either ATX or micro-ATX desktop Llano boards. Searching at either Cinebench or the CPU score from Shogun 2 and the efficiency of the Zotac A75-ITX is noticeably off the pace.

Thankfully that’s only on the CPU side – if you appear at the gaming efficiency of the Llano APU in the little Zotac board it stands toe-to-toe with the larger boards out there.

And as you are unlikely to be doing any seriously processor intensive tasks on such a tiny box, at least you shouldn’t be expecting to, that’s not a main difficulty either.

As such you wouldn’t be expecting it to be much of an overclocking board either, in spite of the massive quantity of processor head-room the A-series, desktop Llano chips have in them. This appears to be exactly where 1 of the major places of compromise lies there is no way to enhance the performance of the APU.

In the BIOS there is an alternative which looks like it ought to up the multiplier, but as the A-series multipliers are locked down, a la Sandy Bridge, there’s absolutely nothing happening in the performance stakes. It’s a bit of a shame given what we’ve managed to squeeze out of the A-series chips prior to, but for an inexpensive little board critical CPU performance is not a needed requirement.

But becoming an inexpensive small board is. Regrettably you’re paying really a premium for the size of the Zotac A75-ITX WiFi, even our favourite A75, the Asus F1A75-V Pro is well more than a tenner less expensive and that does have the efficiency chops.

We liked:

The fact there is so significantly squeezed into the Zotac A75-ITX WiFi is impressive. With such critical connectivity options too that’s no mean feat there’s dual Gigabit ethernet ports on the back with twin WiFi antennae sticking out too.

The lack of compromise on the gaming efficiency too is a really welcome surprise, specifically given how hobbled the CPU component seems in this board.

We disliked:

Sadly that CPU performance is a shame. It is not a large problem in tiny form factor boards, but knowing you are missing out on efficiency you have in fact paid for is disappointing.

As is the lack of any overclocking possibilities that we could see with the long legs of the AMD A-series APUs.

There is also the reality it is rather much more pricey than greater performing, though bigger motherboards. Even the mATX boards keep the CPU parts ticking over nicely.

Final word:

So if form factor is an problem for you, then you’re going to have to pay for it.

But still, Zotac has crammed a massive amount onto this tiny slab of PCB and as the basis for a fully-functional Fusion mini PC it is tough to beat.

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For Joe PC enthusiast, it is usually a worry acquiring a cheap motherboard. How cheap can you go before boards don’t have the features you need to have?

Producers ought to be faced with a bit of a quandary in how to spec out their low-end boards too. This 970A-G45 from MSI is quite cheap, so inevitably some sacrifices have had to be produced to maintain the cost down.

Most prevalent is the chipset. As opposed to 990X and 990FX boards, models built around the 970 chipset don’t support the brand new flavour of AMD-based SLI, but they do support two AMD graphics cards in CrossFireX configuration.

SLI slam

That makes sense for a £75 board, though it might frustrate owners of numerous Nvidia cards. As a rule of thumb, AMD chipsets play nicer with AMD graphics cards anyway, so you may possibly be backed into a corner as far as GPU selection goes, but at least it is a corner with benefits.

In other locations, it is pleasantly bountiful for such a inexpensive mobo. Like its 990FXA-GD80 cousin (and most 990FX boards) it heaps six SATA 6Gbps ports on its slender PCB.

That’s great on paper, but alas, their placement provides away the 970A-G45′s weaker breeding. With a graphics card occupying the top PCI-e slot, the SATA ports lie awfully close to its fan, creating it quite a hassle to drop in and pull out cables.

TechRadar Labs

AMD 9-Series

CPU video encoding efficiency
X246 v4: Frames per second: Greater is much better
ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX: 33
Asus M5A99X EVO: 33
Asus RoG Crosshair V: 33
Asus Sabertooth 990FX: 32
Gigabyte 970A-UD3: 33
Gigabyte H67MA-UD2H: 33
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7: 33
MSI 970A-G45: 33

CPU rendering efficiency
Cinebench 11.five: Index score: Higher is better
ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX: 5.86
Asus M5A99X EVO: 5.86
Asus RoG Crosshair V: five.86
Asus Sabertooth 990FX: five.72
Gigabyte 970A-UD3: five.78
Gigabyte H67MA-UD2H: five.83
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7: 5.74
MSI 970A-G45: 5.71

Verdict

Still, thanks to the comparable performance of all AMD’s chipsets you will not shed out in that regard.

A cup of sugar, a cup of dirt if you are seeking to save money this motherboard won’t bite you on the bottom with a glaring lack of capabilities, but it’s hardly luxurious.

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Really should you be about to invest almost £80 on a cooler, you’d much better live somewhere incredibly hot, or make damn confident that you’re going to overclock the pins off your CPU. Let’s assume you are, because this Corsair H100 liquid cooling kit is a wet dream for those who genuinely require it.

Small, split-flow manifold liquid cooling kits such as the H100 have been about for a couple of years now. They were pioneered by CoolIT, which is the firm behind the latest Corsair liquid chillers.

Fitting your own water cooler is very a challenge, and in a lot of methods a kit such as the H100 takes away that hard function. Considering that the H100 is backwards-compatible to Intel LGA 775 and AMD AM2 sockets, Corsair has created a refreshingly straightforward fitting for each and every socket type.

We’ve observed some otherwise exceptional liquid coolers ruined by improbably difficult bracket designs – Antec Kühler series, we’re seeking at you. There are no such dramas with this Corsair number. It is the easiest to fit liquid cooler we’ve come across. You may well locate the 240mm radiator a bit trickier to fit. In truth, you may locate it impossible if your case does not have mountings for it.

Corsair is becoming a bit devious here, due to the fact your ideal bet for compatibility is to use one of its circumstances. However, just as Apple imposed limitations on its hardware and software program to guarantee almost everything works perfectly together (which of course it does, without fail…) so Corsair does with its interlinking component style.

If the H100′s radiator is too huge, there is often the H80, fitted to a single 120mm radiator and compatible with every case in existence. If you had been to plump for the H100 and fit it in a Corsair Graphite series case with a fan controller at the front of the case, then you’d be able to connect the H100 to the fan controller and add CPU temp to your case fan controller’s repertoire.

Severe cooling

Then there is Corsair Link. Connect the H100 to Corsair’s Link hardware and it’ll monitor temperatures about the case and enable you to control each component’s fan on-the-fly. If you’re significant about cooling, that’s a huge deal. Nobody has taken temp management to this extreme at a consumer level.

This is all properly and very good, but it is the H100′s cooling chops that in fact matter. It ran a Phenom II X6 100T at 20ଌ idle and 34ଌ below load – our Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 is a excellent air cooler, but cannot get near those temps, running at 33ଌ idle and 51ଌ load.

The H100 recovers swiftly too, returning to idle temp just 25 seconds soon after operating at it’s highest temp. That took the Freezer 13 a full 58 seconds.

It’s not all ice-cool roses, although. The two fans strapped to the radiator are hella noisy, and it’s impractical to adjust the fan speed by pressing a button on the cooler itself unless you are running a barebones technique.

TechRadar Labs

Idle temperature efficiency
Idle: Degrees centigrade: Lower is much better
Corsair H100: 20
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13: 33

Load temperature performance
Load: Degrees centigrade: Lower is much better
Corsair H100: 34
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13: 51

Max to min temperature recovery time
Max to min: Seconds: Quicker is much better
Corsair H100: 25
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13: 58

We really like the H100′s design, Corsair Link compatibility and efficiency, but the radiator size poses compatibility issues and we also do not like reaching into our case to turn down the deafening fans.

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The Lenovo G770 packs amazing power and excellent graphical efficiency into a solid big-screen laptop which is excellent for the residence. We’d advocate it to any individual searching for a desktop replacement, but movie buffs will be disappointed about the lack of a 1080p screen.

The 1st thing that strikes you when opening the G770 is the wonderful develop quality. There’s an expanse of brushed metal, in which sits a generous isolation-style keyboard with nicely-cushioned keys. It took us a while to get used to the travel in between the keys, but it was comfy to use for lengthy periods.

Below the hood is a generous quantity of power, and enough for any person who’s looking for a few years of great use. The processor is a Sandy Bridge Intel Core i7 2620M two.7GHz, which is the exact same located in the MacBook Pro, which expenses £1000 a lot more.

Elsewhere, the AMD Radeon HD 6650M is almost identical to the MacBook Pro, and there’s much more RAM with 6GB packed in. This simply shows that the Lenovo is able to manage anything that is thrown at it for a couple of years to come. Editing pictures using Photoshop, producing property videos, and dealing with demanding video content material are all effortlessly within the G770s capabilities.

If you are seeking to play games, the G770 will not disappoint either. It is no accurate gaming machine, like the Alienware M18x, but it will play most of the latest games. We played Battlefield two with no genuine issues, and it looked excellent on the 17.three-inch screen, even though we did have to turn down the graphics to stay away from the frame rate dropping.

Potent processor

In our tests the Lenovo fell brief of the dizzying heights of the Acer Aspire 5750G, but still out-performed the far more pricey HP Envy 14. There was a powerful score from the processor, which trounced the likes of the Dell Inspiron 17r and the Samsung R720.

Again there was no 1080p panel supplied, which will disappoint movie buffs seeking for the ideal doable picture, but if you already own an HD display such as a Television, then you can connect the G770 via HDMI. We’ve seen greater, sharper screens, but it’s adequate for working and enjoying media and pictures.

Once again, there’s a lack of Blu-ray, but we honestly feel that a future-proof system can do without having this as a lot more media moves to the cloud. At 2.9kg, the Lenovo G770 is a accurate desktop replacement technique, and it is truly too big and heavy to take into account taking around with you on a daily basis. Nonetheless, the significant screen a lot more than makes up for it and, unlike the HP Envy 14, its weight pays off with a considerably far more comfortable encounter.

The Lenovo G770 is a wonderful obtain for any person looking for a future-proof desktop replacement. It’s packed with power and matches a lot of of its more expensive competitors for speed and performance, without having breaking the bank.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater ’05: 158 minutes
Cinebench: 11524
3DMark 2006: 7667

We’d like to have noticed a Full HD screen in a laptop of this type, and if you are searching for a future-proof media centre for watching movies, then you may want to look at much more costly alternatives like the Dell XPS 15Z.

Nevertheless, if you just want to ensure you can carry on using your favourite programs and surfing the web for a couple of years to come, then this machine will definitely provide a wonderful return on your investment.

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Acer is one of the most prolific producers we know, producing everything from massive multimedia powerhouses such as the Aspire Ethos 8951G to stripped-down budget models. The Aspire 5742Z is 1 of the latter, and yet another powerful entry-level contender.

At this price range, you won’t be finding the latest technology and efficiency will be limited. Nonetheless, the 5742Z capabilities an Intel Pentium P6200 processor backed up by a staggering 6GB of memory, much a lot more than we typically see at this cost. Only the MSI CR620 and Asus K52F performed far better in our tests.

We managed to write this review, stream music over the internet and back up our files all at as soon as, with no slowdown at all. Applications started up rapidly and ran smoothly.

Nonetheless, you only get simple integrated graphics to keep the price low. This means that you are restricted in what you can do with your media. Browsing your photo collection and touching up images with fundamental editing tools are perfectly achievable, and we had been impressed that high-definition movies played smoothly. Nevertheless, do not expect to be able to edit videos or play anything but fundamental or elderly games.

Optical drive

You can watch DVDs thanks to the built-in optical drive, though the 5742z’s speakers are far too quiet for enjoying music or movies. We recommend you attach an external pair.

Thankfully, the 15.6-inch screen is fine for enjoying films, with sharp contrast and rich colours. If you want to work on a larger display, VGA and HDMI ports can be utilized to hook up an external television or monitor.

Of course, you possibly want a laptop for work as properly as play, proper? The Acer is a excellent choice in this respect too, thanks to the firmly constructed keyboard which stretches the full width of the interior. Some may possibly locate the perfectly flat keys a small awkward at 1st if they’re utilised to bevelled keys, which feature slanted edges.

Even so, the keys are properly sized, with the exception of the arrow keys which are flattened into a single row. You also have a separate numeric keypad to the right. The rest of the laptop is nicely constructed, although the palmrests do flex when you push on them.

The lid is solid sufficient to safeguard the screen against any knocks. We weren’t large fans of the plain black design, but it doesn’t look particularly poor. The 5742Z simply will not be winning any beauty awards.

At 2.3kg, it is a lightweight laptop and would suit the normal commuter. The slim 35mm body slips quickly into a bag or rucksack massive sufficient to hold a 15.6-inch laptop, but make sure you pack the charger too.

The battery died ahead of we finished a two-hour film and only lasts half an hour longer if you limit your use to standard office software.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater ’05: 113 minutes
Cinebench: 5661
3DMark 2006: 1703

Still, at least you can carry your whole media collection if you take to the road, thanks to the generous 640GB challenging drive. This is the largest quantity of storage offered by any laptop here, and some thing we would anticipate from much more pricey mid-range models.

The Aspire 5742Z delivers robust value for dollars, although the poor battery life is a shame. If you want a extremely portable laptop, the Lenovo IdeaPad S205 may be far more suitable.

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The Buffalo MiniStation Plus is a very impressive external challenging drive, thinking about it has capacity to hold 1TB of information in such a tiny case. It might not be very as slim as the Seagate GoFlex Slim, but it holds lots far more files.

Although it’s tiny, the reason why it is not quite as tiny as its ultra-thin competitors is that it has a shock-proof chassis.

Due to its little size and significant capacity, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be carrying a lot of your crucial files and documents around on it, so its sturdy create good quality is really welcome.

In contrast to some USB 3. external tough drives, the Buffalo MiniStation Plus doesn’t use a Solid State Drive, opting for a a lot more old-fashioned five,400RPM difficult disk. This indicates that it lags really a bit behind SSD-based external difficult drives when it comes to speed, with write speeds of about 44MB/s in our tests.

The software program that comes with the Buffalo MiniStation Plus promises to speed points up, but we discovered that it produced little distinction.

Verdict

In our tests, making use of a five,400RPM hard disk fails to make the most of the USB three. connection’s possible.

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The iPad two is a great device, but typing on the onscreen keyboard is not as speedy or as comfy as using a correct physical keyboard.

iLuv iCK826 iPad case not only protects your iPad, it also makes it simpler to use by which includes a removable Bluetooth wireless keyboard.

The keyboard itself is big enough to use comfortably, however nonetheless light adequate to be portable. Even though we found that the style of the keyboard lacked some of the ergonomic comfort of standalone keyboards, it proved to be a big improvement over relying on the iPad’s onscreen keyboard.

The style also meant that it was simple to carry with the iPad – at no point when testing the iLuv iCK826 did we feel like we had been lumbered with a bulky accessory.

The keyboard uses its own battery, so it does not drain the iPad’s charge, and it can be simply removed and reattached to the case through Velcro straps.

Verdict

If you often type on your iPad then this is an excellent selection that can creating working on Apple’s tablet far a lot more comfortable.

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The mouse. An icon of computing. An crucial tool of the workplace and the residence. It can show off great style, be purely functional or be an out and out gaming plaything. It can boast two buttons, seventeen buttons or be buttonless. The mouse can be a huge, hunch-backed beast, or a svelte thin-as-a-PC Card travel buddy.

The laptop or computer mouse, in other words, can say as much about you as anything else you attach to your PC or Mac. The latest mouse to enter this throng is the cautiously stylish Microsoft Touch Mouse, and it’s a freak of nature.


Let us backtrack a little. Those sober lines could be observed as the height of style to some. Plus there are some neat little tricks and concepts on display to make you want to rub its sleek form.

There is a major issue that requirements voicing for this chunky rodent though. It fails on one key level, and that’s that it is horrible to in fact click anything with.

The quantity of force required to click an icon, menu or application with the Microsoft Touch Mouse is much more than any other mouse we’ve come across. It is extremely frustrating, and this alone had us reaching for any other mouse we could lay our hands on rather than attempting to interact with this monstrosity.


The gestures themselves on the Microsoft Touch Mouse are welcome adequate.

Smoothly slide two fingers to the left and you’ll snap the existing window there. Two to the right and it’ll snap that side instead. Lay three fingers on its textured surface and push forward and you’ll see all the current open windows, while three down will minimise all.

The problem is, whilst messing about with your window arrangements you’ll also locate you are scrolling about inside those Windows, and typically performing points you do not actually want to do. Combine this with not becoming able to effortlessly click on anything, and you have an input device that fails at its most simple level.


There are some good style selections – the tiny USB wireless dongle can be stowed in the belly of the mouse when not in use, for example, which is very neat indeed.

Wireless mice do boast a particular freedom compared to their long-tailed brethren, though their reliance on batteries weighs against them.

If we have to use a wireless mouse then we’d a lot prefer to have one that recharges when plugged in, or has the choice of getting wired or wireless, such as with Microsoft’s own Sidewinder X8. 


Overall, this is a poor excuse for a mouse. It is attractive adequate (if not very for everybody), and an important addition to the Microsoft stable (it did require to show that anything Apple could do, it could do… badly), obtainable for about £50, but it is not the winner it could have been.

It is horrible to use, and prone to randomness. Microsoft is responsible for some of the most essential mice in history of PCs. This, regrettably sufficient, really is not one of them. 
 


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Sky has united its live streaming and download package for Apple devices and laptop-owning PC users below the umbrella term ‘Sky Go’. But this hasn’t been solely a rebranding exercise.

Each subscriber can now watch the (SD only) service on a maximum of two devices at as soon as, plus an Xbox 360 or Fetch Tv box if needed.

This may appear stingy, specially if you have several family members members wanting to watch Sky at the same time, but you can ‘swap out’ devices as you go, via the web. Sky says it regards this as becoming sufficient for most users but is thinking about raising the limit.

As soon as again, what you can watch is dependent on your Television subscription if you have 1 (in which case Sky Go is free of charge). Non-subscribers can take out a ‘monthly ticket’ subscription directly by way of the Sky Go internet site with rates beginning at £15. Apple mobile users ought to download a cost-free app from the iTunes store.

PC and Mac viewers can log in through the Sky Go site and watch it through their internet browser (you’re required to have Microsoft Silverlight installed). Sky also offers a totally free Sky Go desktop application for managing downloads. There is no Android version but – we’re told it could seem by the finish of the year.

As ahead of, PC/Mac users can stream live channels they subscribe to from a list of 32 that includes Sky Sports 1-4, Sky1, MTV, Nat Geo and four Sky Movies channels. The PC/Mac interface remains largely unchanged.

You can decide on from a list of channels or browse an EPG. On-demand shows seem in the Anytime+ menu and downloads are handled progressively (so can be watched even though becoming downloaded). Normally, Television shows ought to be watched inside seven days and films inside 30.

Licensing concerns mean that only a few channels (Sky Sports 1-4, 4 Sky Movies channels, Sky News, ESPN included) can be streamed to Apple devices with no downloading.

The Sky Go App is essentially a stripped-down, touch-enhanced version of its Mac/PC counterpart. Channels are listed on the main page with the live stream displayed in preview form in the best right. Tapping this brings up the fullscreen version. A now-and-next EPG is adequate for streaming.

Employing a 2MB 3G connection on an iPad outcomes had been jerky and blocky, although 3G usage restrictions mean this will not be an solution for numerous. Making use of 2MB Wi-Fi on an iPad and PC laptop, nevertheless, brought smooth results.

Verdict

Any VoD service stands and falls as considerably on what’s on provide as how straightforward it is to access (as it is here). Hopefully, offers can be closed soon to make Sky Go far more appealing to Apple acolytes.

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When the GTX 560 Ti 1st arrived Nvidia was fast to point out it wasn’t a like-for-like replacement of the GTX 460, as the GTX 550 and GTX 570 had been for their respective brethren.

The GTX 460 then still had life left in it. Realistically though that life was snuffed out with the non-Ti version of the GTX 560. With the same core configuration as the out-going 1GB GTX 460: 336 CUDA Cores, 56 texture units and 32 ROPs – and the GTX five-series’ transistor-level enhancements over the GTX 4-series GPUs, this was often going to be putting the old classic out to pasture.

Indeed exactly where once the 1GB version of the GTX 460 cold be picked up for about £120, now you are lucky to be able to discover it for the £150-odd you can choose up this overclocked version of the GTX 560 for.

And with a decent overclock this card can perform graphical wonders. Sadly Gigabyte has only noticed fit to supply 20MHz on top of the 810MHz core clock of the standard GTX 560, but with the impressive Windforce cooling array sitting atop it we managed to hit well more than 900MHz without the card breaking a sweat.

Nonetheless, at this rather conservative factory-overclock it’s fairly comfortably the fastest GPU at the spending budget end of the market. It may possibly be at the top of the £150 budget category but it’s still a quite impressive small card.

This card can hit 20fps in Metro 2033, bats about the identical as the HD 6850 at 1080p in Shogun 2 and virtually hits 100fps in Far Cry 2. Any game you throw at it at 1,680 x 1,050 you will be able to play at the highest settings very comfortably. And you can be fairly certain that will continue to be the case for a fair whilst yet with contemporary game requirements not truly altering considerably these days.

TechRadar Labs

Thermal performance
100% Load: Degrees Centigrade: Lower is much better
XFX HD 6850: 55
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 58

DirectX 11 tessellation performance (two,560 x 1,600)
Heaven two.5 Frames Per Second: Higher is greater
XFX HD 6850: 12.3
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 13.5

DirectX 11 gaming performance (1,920 x 1,080)
Shogun 2 Frames Per Second: Higher is greater
XFX HD 6850: 32
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 31

Power performance
100% Load Watts: Lower is much better
XFX HD 6850: 210
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 270

DirectX 11 gaming performance (1,680 x 1,050)
DiRT 3 Frames Per Second: Higher is better
XFX HD 6850: 47
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 58

DirectX 11 gaming performance (1,680 x 1,050)
Metro 2033 Frames Per Second: Greater is greater
XFX HD 6850: 18
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 20

DirectX 10 gaming performance (1,680 x 1,050)
Just Cause 2 Frames Per Second: Higher is much better
XFX HD 6850: 39
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 52

DirectX 10 gaming performance (1,680 x 1,050)
Far Cry two Frames Per Second: Greater is greater
XFX HD 6850: 75
GIGABYTE GTX 560 OC: 96

Quick sufficient?

Whilst it is the fastest card on test it’s nonetheless tough to suggest more than the HD 6850 for those on a budget. The added silicon and performance of the GTX 560 indicates that it’s also the most power hungry card here.

We measured it topping out at 270W under 100 per cent GPU load, that is 60W much more juice than the AMD enemy. The AMD card also only wants a single 6-pin PCI-e energy connector to link it up to the PSU, whereas the GTX 560 needs to have two of them to get the GPU up and running.

For most men and women that’s not a huge thing, but if your PSU only has a single PCIe connector then it could be an concern. It will still only genuinely want a 500W power supply but unless you’re rocking a modern unit it may well become an issue.

In the end though it all comes down to pricing. At the leading-end it is a fight among the GTX 560 and HD 6850 and with the AMD card coming in £30 less expensive for just as relevant performance. The HD 6850 just about pips the Nvidia card to the post, even in this overclocked Gigabyte guise.

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We may have mentioned once or twice how much we like Corsair’s Graphite Series 600T case. Not only did we give it 4.five/5, we stuck it on last issue’s cover too. If any program is going to win us more than, this is the outfit to do it in.

But by the exact same principle that got Susan Boyle recording contracts and Wayne Rooney a career in skilled football, it’s what’s inside that counts. Do the components inside deliver the goods, or is the pretty case a distraction from a mediocre develop?

Categorically, yes they do and no it isn’t. The AT-FX Polaris is a really potent, future-proofed, nicely-cooled, extremely overclockable machine that manages to keep a reasonable cost tag regardless of some fairly luxurious attributes.

The feature-rich ASRock Z68 Fatal1ty Pro Gen3 is a worthy motherboard for this rig. Its most enticing feature, in our opinion, is PCIe 3. compatibility. It presents not only a bit of future-proofing peace of mind by means of compatibility with PCIe three. graphics cards further down the line, but also improves the performance of PCIe-based flash storage drives such as the OCZ Revo Drive.

There’s still no word on when we may see PCIe 3. graphics cards, but then we’re waiting for Ivy Bridge for that enjoyable to begin in earnest.

Fatal-1-tified

As you might expect from a board endorsed by a rather renowned pro gamer, there is an emphasis on overclocking, too. Along with an all-in-one auto-overclocking program that tweaks everything from memory frequency to fan speeds, there wellare gold capacitors and huge heatsinks over both bridges and PLL.

You’re not starved for USB 3. or SATA 6Gbps ports either. That sets the stage nicely for a graphics card and CPU both ripe with overclocking possible. Advancetec has pumped the i5 2500K in this rig up to a very respectable 4.8GHz, and the overclocked KFA2 GTX 580 runs incredibly cool at 48஬ under load, especially contemplating that GF 110 core’s running at 800MHz.

Out of the box, the 1TB tough drive and 60GB Corsair F60 SSD are set up in a Wise Response array, which is becoming increasingly well-liked amongst method builders and with very good reason – it’s a wonderful way to bridge the gap among solid state and magnetic platter storage even though keeping costs down by opting for a smaller SSD 60GB is more than sufficient capacity to function as an efficient cache device.

In all areas, the AT-FX Polaris delivers with bags of energy. So how does it measure up against the competition?

TechRadar Labs

CPU rendering performance
Cinebench R11.five: Index: Greater is much better

AT-FX Polaris: 7.80
Phoenix Hydro X: 7.84

DirectX 11 tessellation performance
Heaven two.5: Frames per second: Higher is much better

AT-FX Polaris: 21.7
Phoenix Hydro X: 38.4

DirectX 11 gaming performance
Shogun two: Frames per second: Higher is much better

AT-FX Polaris: 47.5
Liquid i7 High: 48.8

Nicely, it’s a hugely far more enticing alternative than the last rig we looked at from Advancetec, the AT-FX Tron, priced practically identically.

Last month’s Liquid i7 High from Cyberpower arguably presents far better value with the inclusion of a screen and peripherals, but if you are already set for those then we think the Polaris matches it in the components department, thinking about the overclocking and cooling on provide.

The existing cream of the sub-£1,500 crop is nonetheless Palicomp’s Phoenix Hydro X, providing an i7 2600K and two 2 GB HD 6950s.

Advancetec’s Polaris is less expensive although, and ideal for any gamer who can afford it.

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Motherboards supporting AMD’s latest Llano technology are arriving thick and quickly at the moment: the latest 1 to pass across this test bench is Gigabyte’s A75-UD4H.

Even though priced for the mainstream industry, the GA-A75-UD4H comes with a few bits of hardware generally linked with high-finish boards.

For example, it utilizes Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable style, which makes use of 2oz of copper in the PCB. This, together with the Japanese capacitors, makes for a far more stable platform, particularly when overclocking. This copper-heavy design helps to reduce each board temperatures and electrical noise.

Talking of overclocking, there are also dual BIOS chips: always handy should you fry one by taking overclocking too far or if you’re unfortunate enough to get hit by a especially nasty virus.

The first thing that strikes you about the A75-UD4H is the appearance of two PCIe x16 slots. This indicates that not only does the board support dual graphics (hybrid integrated/discrete graphics) but it supports CrossFireX as well. With all the AMD-ness floating about, though, it’s not going to be supporting Nvidia’s SLI.

However since of the restricted number of lanes Llano supports – just 24 – the graphics have only 16 lanes to play with, so in CrossFireX mode both the PCIe slots run at x8 speed. In reality that is not truly a big deal as there is still small difference in general overall performance terms.

Bizarrely, all four of the rear USB 3. ports are controlled not by the A75 chipset but by a third-party controller. This means you can’t plug a keyboard/mouse into the ports under the PS/2 port, like you would usually, and expect them to work if you enter the BIOS. For this you have to use the two yellow coloured USB 2. ports, which are placed in a stack halfway along the rear panel.

On the other hand, the truth that each and every USB port has its own fuse is a good touch. So if 1 port blows a fuse for some reason it means it does not take all the ports out with it, like most other motherboards with only one fuse searching after the USB stack.

Testing efficiency

The 1st A75 boards we’ve looked at don’t truly show a lot of a performance difference among the manufacturers. With them all sitting at the stock speeds of the Llano APU there’s precious small clear air among them, but the Gigabyte A75-UD4H does sit at the best of most tests.

The pure gaming CPU test of Shogun two, although, had the UD4H noticeably behind its two competing boards, and they both come in under the £100 mark.

TechRadar Labs

CPU rendering performance
Cinebench R11.five: Index: Greater is much better

Gigabyte A75-UD4H: three.46
Asus F1A75-V PRO: three.42
MSI A75MA-G55: 3.40

DirectX 11 gaming performance
DiRT3 (Ultra 4x AA): Frames per second: Higher is greater

Gigabyte A75-UD4H: 13
Asus F1A75-V PRO: 13
MSI A75MA-G55: 12

CPU gaming efficiency
Shogun two (CPU test): Frames per second: Greater is much better

Gigabyte A75-UD4H: 17
Asus F1A75-V PRO: 20
MSI A75MA-G55: 19

The addition of the second PCIe lane does give the UD4H a bit of a special selling point. That said, getting a conventional, dual discrete card CrossFireX set-up does sort of miss the point of the whole Fusion program. With the integrated APU graphics dormant there is just the weaker CPU component in operation.

On these Llano Fusion motherboards price is a essential component, and far a lot more important than the wealthy feature set on offer with this Gigabyte board.

It’s a good performer, but will struggle against cheaper opposition, such as the F1A75-V Pro from Asus.

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With so numerous manufacturers attempting to emulate the iPad’s sleek black bezel and paper-thin form factor, it is excellent to see a tablet that’s a little diverse as soon as in a while. Enter the Packard Bell Liberty Tab, offered in cherry-red or brown with a stylish chrome frame and Android 3. Honeycomb below the hood.

Any person familiar with an Android smartphone will begin to feel at home with the Liberty Tab very speedily. There are five separate homescreens, all fully customisable with widgets and applications. Swiping in between the various homescreens is rapidly and responsive and a fast tap of the capacitive, multi-touch screen will open applications promptly.

We had no trouble skipping via web sites with the Flash-supporting browser and had the BBC homepage open in five seconds.

If you’re thinking this tablet looks familiar, it is due to the fact it is from the same stable as the Acer Iconia Tab A500 and, like the Iconia, has Nvidia’s Tegra two processor at its heart. This keeps overall performance strong and on a par with other Tegra two tablets, such as the Motorola Xoom.

In terms of weight, it’s a fairly hefty tablet – particularly when compared to the light 7-inch Galaxy Tab or the iPad 2. But a little added girth is often very good when it comes to connectivity and the Liberty Tab has an HDMI port for connecting the tablet to a Tv as well as USB and micro-USB sockets for peripherals.

Wireless connectivity is the standard fare with 802.11n Wi-Fi and 3G support, as nicely as Bluetooth 2.1 and GPS built in.

Decent sound

Stereo speakers produce decent sound and are managed by an on-board Dolby chipset. Then there’s the regular three.5mm headphone jack for when you want to maintain the music to yourself. A five-megapixel front-facing camera and two-megapixel rear-facing camera are each included and, while sufficient for taking photos, you are far more likely to use them to video-chat across the web.

We located the battery life to stand up well against other tablets, with the exception of the Asus’ Transformer. As long as you restrict oneself to standard tasks like surfing the web or working via emails, you will get most of a day’s work out of the Liberty Tab.

But if you are planning to use it as a gaming machine or to watch HD movies, expect the battery to drain out a lot quicker. We ran a looped normal-definition movie and managed to get 287 minutes out of the battery.

The Packard Bell’s 1280 x 800-pixel resolutions indicates the screen holds up effectively when watching films or searching at photographs. To get the best outcomes from the screen although, we had to put the brightness appropriate up to the highest level. We did uncover that the viewing angles had been good enough that far more than one individual could comfortably watch the Liberty Tab’s screen.

Overall, the usability and efficiency of the Liberty Tab is on a par with other Android tablets of the Honeycomb era, but two favourable points make this worth taking into consideration. Firstly, the cost is reasonable – the Liberty Tab comes in at £100 more affordable than its tablet twin, the Acer Iconia A500.

Secondly, the cherry-red design admittedly looks very good and we surely recommend this colour more than the brown choice – it’s so much far more fascinating than getting just an additional dark slab lying about the house.

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Toshiba’s Tecra range strikes a fine balance between consumer and company laptops. The Tecra R840-11E delivers tons of company capabilities and fantastic performance in a light and slim body, but at a price that is not out of grasp for the typical consumer.

The first of the organization features is a built-in fingerprint scanner wedged among the mouse buttons. You can use this to log on to your laptop, which saves the hassle of remembering complicated passwords.

An ExpressCard slot allows you to add peripherals, such as graphics cards, Television Tuner cards and additional storage, even though an eSATA port can be employed to back up your files to an external tough drive.

DisplayPort and VGA ports mean you can hook up an external monitor or projector. You can even connect wirelessly with compatible televisions.

Your data will be protected from theft by the aforementioned fingerprint scanner, but it is also protected against accidental harm by the challenging drive. If the drive detects an unexpected motion (for example, the laptop plummeting off a desk), it will reset itself. This lowers the risk of failure on impact.

Although 320GB of storage space isn’t a lot, it should nonetheless suit most users who just want to carry their crucial files around, as nicely as a modest collection of songs and photos.

More impressive is the reality that Toshiba has squeezed in a DVD drive. Not a bad effort, contemplating the slender body measures just 31mm at its thickest point and weighs a modest 2.1kg. With its compact chassis, it fits with ease into most bags.

You can discover a lot more portable enterprise machines out there, such as the Samsung 9000 Series and Sony’s VAIO Z-Series, but they tend to cost much more than the Tecra R840′s cost tag.

However, even though the Tecra might be slim and light, we weren’t precisely excited by the plain black style. The frame and lid have a bevelled plastic texture, which does a fantastic job of hiding fingerprints and scuff marks, but isn’t visually appealing. Thankfully there isn’t much flex, and the lid is particularly solid.

One of Intel’s newest Sandy Bridge Core i5 2520M 2.5GHz processors is the brains behind this laptop. Combined with 4GB of memory, overall performance is even greater than we expected. Not only can you run all of your company software program, you can frequently run them together at the identical time, with no kind of slowdown evident.

Fundamental integrated graphics mean you can’t run the most recent games, but then you would rather be working on a spreadsheet, correct? We still discovered some down-time to watch a high-definition (HD) movie, which played perfectly, and you can even edit pictures from your collection and movies.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater ’05: 239 minutes
Cinebench: 10,650
3DMark 2006: 3741

Of course, with its matt TFT finish, the 14-inch screen was not developed for enjoying films. Images are crisp, but the finest component of this display is the lack of reflections when used outside or in bright offices. If you’re constantly on the move and need a machine for staying productive, then think about this laptop.

Portability is further improved by the outstanding battery life. We watched movies for 4 hours before the Tecra died, although less power-sapping activities such as browsing the internet stretches battery life out to five or six hours.

Sleep-and-charge technology indicates you can connect your portable devices via USB, such as smartphones and MP3 players, and charge them even when the laptop is hibernating.

Usability is an additional essential consideration and even though the keyboard looks and feels rather plasticky, it is well-sized with covered gaps between the keys. The keys have a shallow travel when you hit them, which we weren’t massive fans of, but it did not stop us touch-typing at our usual pace. You also have an ‘eco mode’ shortcut key which lets you fiddle with energy settings.

The touchpad is a generous size and perfectly smooth. The mouse buttons are firmly mounted, but are strangely sunken into the palmrest, which makes them awkward to push at times. Toshiba has included a pointing stick alternative to making use of the touchpad, which is a tiny nubbin mounted in the middle of the keyboard. Pushing it about moves the on-screen cursor, but we personally prefer the touchpad.

Managing to cram impressive overall performance and a mass of exceptional business capabilities into a slim and light body, Toshiba has impressed with the Tecra R840. The design is fundamental and there are some slight usability concerns, but if you want a portable enterprise remedy on a limited spending budget, you could do a lot worse.

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Hand on heart, you know that drives with the latest SandForce SF-2200 series controller are most likely the quickest you can buy. Is there any point in seeking elsewhere? Effectively, yes.

Cost and reliability also come into the equation. Enter the Crucial M4 from one of the biggest outfits in memory. The new M4 256GB is hardly a slouch thanks to 6Gbps SATA support and 415MB/s read and 260MB/s write ratings. Not long ago, those would have been completely spectacular numbers.

Admittedly, not so considerably nowadays, but then once more the M4′s input-output operations per second (IOPS) overall performance which is around the 40 to 50K mark is far from shabby and really should make for strong real-world overall performance.

As for what makes the new M4 tick, it sports a mildly reworked version of the older Vital C300′s Marvell 9174 controller. As just before, it remains an eight-channel controller, just like the SandForce SF-2200. Of course, the C300 was one of the first SSDs to offer you SATA 6Gbps support, so it’s no surprise to find the M4 does likewise.

As for the flash memory chips, they are the latest 25nm NANDs from parent business Micron. The chips are fabbed in a joint venture with Intel. Oddly, Micron badged chips from this venture are rated at 3,000 write/erase cycles to the 5,000 of the same chips from Intel. In theory, that makes the Intel chips longer lasting.

The moral of the story here is take such specs with a healthy pinch of salt. A lot depends on how a given vendor chooses to validate its products. Indeed, it’s also worth bearing that in mind when comparing two totally unrelated drives.

Of course, genuine-globe longevity takes years to shake out. What we can comment on, even so, is performance. The headline sequential read and write performance exceeds Essential claims, clocking up 440MB/s and 286MB/s respectively. That’s nonetheless really a bit slower than drives powered by the newest SandForce SF-2200 controller, but then the Marvell 9174 controller doesn’t do the exact same uber data compression thang as the SandForce.

Movie muncher

But hang on, since that’s not always a poor factor. When it comes to shunting incompressible information around, like music and video, the Vital M4 takes significantly much less of a performance hit. It’s 50MB/s quicker with incompressible writes than the mighty OCZ Vertex three.

It’s fairly darn nifty in our file decompression and game install benchmarks, too, running the Vertex three very close. It’s also a small larger at 256GB rather than 240GB. All of which makes for a fairly intriguing alternative to the defaultoption OCZ Vertex 3 and its SandForce controller.

Or at least it would were it not for the truth that the Essential M4 is generally £20 a lot more expensive. It’s not a enormous difference, but it’s definitely in the incorrect direction.

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The Tritton AX Pro surround sound headphones ship with their own Dolby Digital 5.1 decoder module and employ a quartet of devoted channel drivers in each and every ear cup.

Peel away one of the felt pads and you’ll uncover a pair of 30mm drivers, one for the front left/correct and the other for a surround channel, plus a 23mm driver for the centre and a huge 40mm driver to deal with the .1 LFE.

The method is compatible with any surround sound source. Run an optical lead from your chosen component into the AX pro DD5.1 decoder this then feeds the speaker drivers via a 4m cable.

The AX Pro headphones are nicely built and substantial, with firm padded cups and head rail.

The resulting surround experience is undeniably authentic. Dialogue is anchored mid-forehead whilst panned effects encircle your skull. Aggressive surround mixes are surprisingly intense. You can also adjust the volume level of every individual channel, controlled by a lit in-line adjuster.

The Tritton AX Pro are at their best with games. In-game Dolby Digital processing dynamically steers audio effects based on what you are performing in the game.

The AX Pro headphones supply immersive multichannel sound. There’s a sense of objective to their sound steerage which replicates a multi-speaker sound method. The cans can also be utilised with a Blu-ray/DVD player, Sky box etc or games console (Xbox 360, PS3).

Even though steerage is convincing, the sonic high quality of the headphones is less so. Their timbre is much more brutal than musical. Not for late-night classical listening.

Also worth contemplating is while they are well built, the weight of the headphones becomes onerous right after a while.

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Samsung’s Series 9 T27A950 drew massive crowds when it was very first unveiled at the 2011 CES. A hybrid 27-inch Freeview HD 3D Television and PC monitor, it’s a leading-edge screen for your desktop that presents all the functions of the brand’s high-finish LED TVs.

The design is inspired, with a panel that is effectively suspended above its pedestal via a swooping proper-hand bracket. This tilts backwards for a relaxed viewing position.

Slimline 7W stereo speakers fire forwards from the front of the super-thin pedestal, although inputs are ranged along the rear.

Just as on the brand’s normal TVs, the TA950 sports Samsung’s Smart Hub apps and IPTV portal, home to the BBC iPlayer YouTube, LOVEFiLM and the new and exclusive Explore 3D content material channel.

The set uses LED backlighting, which runs up the left and right sides of the panel. Despite the fact that edge lit the backlight is extremely even – a benefit of the smallish screen size.

A sub-32-inch screen could appear inappropriate for 3D, but the reality that you will be sitting close to the monitor contributes significantly to the sense of immersion. The smaller screen size also assists minimise crosstalk. One pair of 3D spex is included.

Nonetheless, Wi-Fi isn’t integrated you’ll want to use a Samsung dongle which will price additional.

Regardless of offering S-RGB, there is no dedicated card slot to view your digital snaps directly.

The significance of the Wise Hub IPTV portal is decreased. As a monitor, all this content material will be accessible via your connected PC anyway. The screen can also stream media across your network, even though this function is also likely to be bettered by a connected PC.

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