Hardwareslave

Zalman Trimon ZM-M220W 22″ Stereoscopic Monitor Impressions

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:38:05 +0000

While visiting Zalman at a few trade shows, I was introduced to their new stereoscopic 3d monitor: the Zalman Trimon 22-inch monitor. nVidia has been showing off their own solutions that use any regular monitor, so what makes this monitor different, and why would you want to buy one?

I spoke with Richard Chung of Zalman, who gave me the lowdown on thi explained to me the differences between the Zalman monitor and nVidia’s 3d solution. For one, this 22-inch 3D LCD monitor is optmized for gaming purposes, supporting 3D and 2D realizations.

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Kingwin Dock Master 3.0 Hard Drive Dock

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:36:42 +0000

Today, we get to take a look at a new USB 3.0 peripheral from another great company. We will be taking a look at the Kingwin DM-2535U3 hard drive dock or the Dock Master. Me personally am a big fan of the dock over the enclosure as they are easy to deal with. There is no assembling to deal with. Simple insert drive and format. But now I get to do this with a faster dock then my present Thermaltake BlacX Duet that I currently use.

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GIGABYTE M8000 Xtreme Gaming Mouse‏

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:35:04 +0000

I’m reviewing a mouse! It’s been a while since I’ve looked at a peripheral and when I say a while, I mean years. Since Chinese New Year was coming in fast and GIGABYTE wanted to get a sample of the M8000X out before the factories shut down, I said to send it over to me.

With the press document sitting in my inbox on the GIGABYTE M8000X, I took the time to really look through it. Damn, it looked oh so sweet. But features and software are only half the story; what really matters is how it feels. Something that most companies struggle to achieve is the greatness in a fantastic feeling mouse. Let’s find out how GIGABYTE is traveling in this segment these days.

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ATI Radeon HD 5830 – AMD Completes its HD 5000 Line-up

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:32:17 +0000

In what might be a record, AMD managed to release both the first and final normal model from its HD 5000-series in a mere five months. The final card is of course the HD 5830, which falls comfortably between the HD 5770 and HD 5850, and has the $240 price tag to prove it. So regardless of your given budget today, AMD has a card for you.

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ASUS P7H55D-M EVO Clarksdale Motherboard

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:30:13 +0000

Intel-land is becoming a very confusing place of late. An Intel Core i7 processor might be Socket 1366, or it might be Socket 1156. A Core i5 processor might be dual core or quad core; it might have Hyper-Threading or not, or integrated video or other features, and there’s no way to tell just from the name. And to make things even more confusing, there are now four consumer-level chipsets for Core i5 processors: the original P55, as well as the new H55, H57, and Q57 chipsets.

The newer chipsets are required if you want to use the integrated video feature of some of the Intel 2010 Core Processor Family CPUs, and ASUS, as always, is ready with new motherboards to support the latest technology. In this review Benchmark Reviews covers the new ASUS P7H55D-M EVO motherboard, based on the Intel H55 chipset.

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G.Skill Pi Series 17600 4GB Kit‏

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:42:29 +0000

G.Skill have launched the Pi Series of RAM and today we have the 2200MHz P55 kit to test. Is such speed worth the investment?

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Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced review

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:37:55 +0000

Here we test the CM 690 II Advanced Case. The new version enhances the original CM 690 striking features with a seductive all-black interior, additional capacity, superb cooling system and user-friendly design.

And though looks can deceive, the Cooler Master CM 690 II indeed does very similar to the original, make no mistake internally there have been a good number of changes.

The original CM 690 was the building block of something better and Cooler Master certainly improved on it.

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How to Install Windows 7 From a USB Flash Drive

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:42:15 +0000

It took me about a day of messing around with Linux�s Easy Peasy OS, designed for the EEE netbook, to realize that I wanted anything but Easy Peasy. So I went on a Google search trying to figure out how to get Windows 7 on my netbook without springing for an external optical drive.

The answer was obvious; I had to use a flash drive. Now, getting a computer to see a flash drive as a bootable source isn�t easy. You basically have to turn your flash drive into a hard drive with boot sectors, an exact replica of the original Windows CD or DVD. It sounds hard, and unless you know what you’re doing, it is. It took me hours of searching before I came across a forum that had instructions that worked. That�s what I�m sharing with you today.

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Coolermaster CM690 II Advance Mid Tower

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:37:46 +0000

I remember when I tested the Coolermaster CM690. It was one of the best budget cases around. It was so great of a case that many people looking to pay $150 plus for a case would buying the CM690 which cost a mere $80 or so. Even though it was not the first case to offer the now trendy mesh front facial, it did help a lot to make it as popular as it is.

The CM690 was feature rich for the dollar and still popular today. But keeping intact with the scenario above Coolermaster has revamped the CM690 into what we will be reviewing today, the CM 690 Advance II. Even more feature rich the Advance II and undoubtedly will make history again.

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NVIDIA and it’s troubled GeForce 400 series

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:06:22 +0000

Today I wanted to write a little ‘opinionated’ editorial. Typically we do not address rumors and gossip. But an accumulation of things that have been going on over at camp NVIDIA and the Internet leading us to believe things are not as they should be.

What we will tell you is that the clock frequencies on these boards surprised me, the GeForce 470 seems to be clocked at roughly 650 MHz, that’s lower than I expected. And that indeed will have an effect on performance. I think it’s safe to that the GeForce 470 and 480 will be worthy competitors to towards the Radeon HD 5850 and 5870. Will it be a knock-out ? I doubt it very much. But is it important for NVIDIA to deliver a knockout to the competition ? The rumors are creating a rather negative stigma for NVIDIA.

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