Thursday Reviews

Case :

Antec Fusion Micro @ XS Reviews - Cooler Master ATCS 840 @ Benchmark Reviews - Silverstone Grandia GD02-MT @ Overclock3D.net

Cooling Device :

OCZ HydroFlow HF-MK1 @ Overclock Intelligence Agency - Coolink GFXChilla @ Real World Labs - GELID Solutions Silent Spirit @ Hardware Bistro

Motherboards :

ECS A790GXM-A @ Overclockers Club - Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H @ HardwareSecrets - Asus P6T Deluxe @ Bjorn3D

Mouse & Keyboard :

Microsoft Wireless Desktop 8000 @ Hi-tech Reviews - Antec Veris @ Hexus.tv - NZXT Avatar @ R3VIEW

PC Games :

Sniper: Art of Victory @ IGN - Call of Duty: World at War [UK] @ IGN - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King @ Games Radar - Left 4 Dead @ Games Radar - Left 4 Dead @ Gaming Heaven

PSU :

Antec TruePower Quattro 1000W @ Hardware Zone - Coolermaster UCP 700W @ Pro-Clockers

Storage :

Thermaltake Black X @ TweakNews - Kingston DataTraveler Mini @ Hardware Bistro - Seagate Free Agent Go 320GB @ Big Bruin

UMPC :

Asus EEE PC 1000H (160 GB HD) @ DriverHeaven - Asus N10Jc @ HotHarware

VGA :

Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe 4870X2 @ VR Zone - ZOTAC 9800 GT @ Tech Lounge - XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition @ LegitReviews - Asus EAH4850 @ PCStats - Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 Budget Overclocking @ Overclock3D.net

Friday Review

Case :

Silverstone LC02 @ OverClocked Inside - Sunbeam Automation @ ThinkComputers - Cooler Master HAF 932 Black @ Overclockers Online - Cooler Master UCP 900 @ Real World Labs

Cooling Device :

Asus Lion Square and Asus Triton 85 @ Digit-Life - Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev.2 with Turbo Module @ BCCHardware - Xigmatek DK S1283 @ FrostyTech

Desktop :

Velocity Micro Edge Z55 i7 @ HotHardware - Laptop and PC Buying Guide @ Digital Trends

Memory :

Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC3-12800 @ XSReviews - Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2×2GB DDR3 10666 @ Overclockers Club

Monitors :

HannsG HG221AP @ Bit-Tech - Samsung SyncMaster T240 @ Tech Review Source

Motherboards :

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P (P45) @ Overclock 3D - Gigabyte EX58-UD5 / MSI X58 Eclipse @ Tech Report - EVGA X58 SLI @ Anandtech - ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition @ Tech Gage

Mouse & Keyboard :

Microsoft SideWinder X5 @ Futurelooks - OCZ Dominatrix @ Overclock Intelligence Agency

PC Games :

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa @ IGN - Far Cry 2 @ Test Freaks - Fallout 3 Gameplay Performance and Image Quality @ Hard OCP

Processors :

Intel Wolfdale vs. AMD Agena @ Digit-Life - Intel Core i7-920 @ Benchmark Reviews

PSU :

BFG Tech ES-800 800W @ eXtreme Outer Vision - Corsair HX1000W @ Bjorn3D - Be Quiet! Pure Power 350W @ Technic3D

Storage :

Seagate 1TB FreeAgent @ ThinkComputers - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB @ Overclockers Club - Super Talent Pico C Gold @ R3VIEW

VGA :

Sapphire HD4550 @ OverclockersOnline - MSI N280GTX @ ModReactor - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (216 SP) @ HardwareSecrets - Sapphire Radeon HD 4550 @ Hexus - XFX GEFORCE GTX 260 BLACK EDITION @ Legit Reviews - HD 4870 Vs. GTX 260 @ Guru3D

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2

Nearly three months ago, AMD laid claim to the world's fastest mainstream single-board graphics card with its Radeon HD 4870 X2 - a benchmark-pummelling solution that takes two Radeon HD 4870 GPUs and slaps them together on one board with the aid of built-in CrossFire.

NVIDIA, knocked convincingly off its perch, hasn't yet conjured up a means to reclaim its lost crown and has instead opted to focus on tapping into its GPUs' parallel processing power. The result, says NVIDIA, is a series of GPGPU (general-purpose computing on graphics processing unit) solutions that do more than just push 3D framerates, and the likes of Adobe are already taking advantage.

Despite NVIDIA's branching out, there's no denying that the single-card performance crown is the most coveted trophy in the increasingly-competitive GPU market. With AMD having made the crown its own, it then promised a Radeon HD 4850 X2 and claimed it could push NVIDIA's current line-topping GeForce GTX 280 down to third place.

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 - which, if you hadn't guessed, is two Radeon HD 4850 GPUs on a single board - has arrived courtesy of Sapphire, whose board is the first - and currently only - 4850 X2 in production. So, let's take a closer look and see if it really is the world's second fastest mainstream single-board graphics card.

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 had been rumoured to be on its way ever since the performance-leading Radeon HD 4870 X2 made its debut on August 12th.

Oddly enough, now that it's here, there's just one card to choose from and it comes from Sapphire. According to the Hong Kong-based manufacturer, other AMD partners will join in sooner or later but Sapphire is the first to complete its design and get it into production.

As you'd expect from a dual-GPU solution, it isn't small. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 measures in at about the same size as a Radeon HD 4870 X2 or a GeForce GTX 280, and it's hungry enough to require both 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors.

Steering clear of the reference one-fan cooler found on AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2, Sapphire has instead opted for a dual-fan solution that has its pros and cons. Temperatures - which we'll come across later - are very cool, but the fans are noisy when the card is idle or under load.

Also worth noting that despite being a dual-slot card, the cooling system doesn't vent heat through the rear of a users' chassis, and you'll see why shortly.

Over to the back, and you'll see both RV770 Pro GPUs and a single CrossFire connector that'll allow users to tie-in another board for a possible four-way CrossFireX setup.

Hello! Here's something you don't see everyday - four dual-link DVI outputs, all of which are HDCP compliant, and a TV-out. That back panel explains the lack of a rear-end-venting cooler, but it brings other benefits to the table. It'll allow for three-or-four display multi-monitor setups from a single board, and that could come in handy for a workstation user, we feel.

Users looking to power displays via HDMI adaptors will hit a minor snag, though. All four DVI ports can be equipped with an HDMI adaptor, but only two will be able to output audio.

Summary

Unsurprisingly, the card is two Radeon HD 4850 1GB cards on a single PCB, and the duplication is so precise that even the DVI outputs have been X2'd. The usual video-related goodies are present, including ATI's AVIVO HD and hardware-accelerated video thanks to the Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2).

As a side note, and a personal pet peeve, it's worth mentioning that the Radeon HD 4850 X2 highlights an obvious flaw in AMD's chosen nomenclature. The average consumer may believe that a higher number indicates a better product, and that's often the case. Joe Bloggs, then, might assume that a Radeon HD 4870 is superior to a Radeon HD 4850 X2 - and that simply isn't so.

256-Core Windows '08 Server Coming

The next version of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 will support up to 256 logical cores. Microsoft has slowly leaked out information of Server 2008 release 2 at recent events like WinHEC and Professional Developers Conference, but Microsoft’s Mark Russinovich is now revealing just exactly how the operating system will scale. In a video interview posted on the MSDN website, the founder of Sysinternals and programming guru, explains how Microsoft will remove bottlenecks, specifically the dispatcher lock, to handle dozens to hundreds of cores.

Windows Server 2008 will be based on Windows 7 code-base and will borrow heavily from Vista. Russinovich says most of the code will remain the same and this will help maintain application compatibility. As servers utilize more processors and cores, Microsoft will have to change to keep up with the times and Russinovich explains that Microsoft coders are working hard to eliminate the 32-core limitation that hasn’t changed since the Windows NT days.

Threads are assigned a 32 character binary bitmask that marries the thread to a particular logical core. Microsoft defines the number of logical processor cores as the number of physical CPUs times the physical cores times the threads. For instance, a two CPU system with quad-cores and Hyperthreading would be considered a 16-core system in Microsoft terms. The bit mask determines a thread’s processor affinity or what core it can run on.

Here are some quick examples

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 = thread can run on all processors (affinity is basically off)

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 = thread runs only on the first processor

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000010 = thread runs only on the second processor

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000100 = thread runs only on the third processor

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000111 = thread can be distributed across the first three processors

So you can see how this works perfectly with up to 32-cores because there is a bit for each core, but this same system has to be tweaked to work with more cores. Russinovich says Windows 7/2008 Server will use processor groups where threads will be assigned to groups of cores. This means old bitmasks, and thereby existing applications, will work with the upcoming operating system.

But running threads on more cores doesn’t really help if those cores spend most of the time idling. Current Windows operating systems have a global dispatcher lock which essentially stop all cores to prevent objects from being accessed by more than one core. While this lock isn’t such a big deal on systems that have up to 8 cores, it presents a problem when scaling beyond that, Russinovich says.

Microsoft coders have tweaked threads to now lock objects locally, that is within their processor group, by adding two more wait states – the pre-wait state and the “real” waiting state. Confused? Well take a look at Russinovich’s 44-minute interview on MSDN and exponentially increase your geek knowledge.

Catalyst drivers boost Far Cry 2 performance on AMD Radeon GPUs

November's revision of AMD's Catalyst drivers, v8.11, are now available to download from game.amd.com.

The release, available for Windows XP and Windows Vista, brings the Radeon display driver up from version 8.541 to version 8.552, and provides two healthy performance boosts for Radeon HD 3000 and 4000-series products.

Ubisoft's graphically-demanding Far Cry 2 is said to receive a single-GPU performance boost of 3-10 per cent, and multi-GPU CrossFire users can expect to see gains in the region of 8-14 per cent.

The second jump in performance applies to GSC Game World's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. AMD promises single-GPU gains of 6-18 per cent and CrossFire improvements of up to 30 per cent.

On the new-feature front, Catalyst 8.11 adds HydraVision support to Windows XP, and there's a lengthy list of resolved issues.

For a complete breakdown of what Catalyst 8.11 has to offer, including all the resolved issues, please refer to the official release notes at game.amd.com.

Useful links
Download Catalyst 8.11

SLI on X58

For years now, Nvidia has maintained that it's dual-GPU solution, SLI, is to be available only on motherboards that use its nForce chipsets. The release of Intel's forthcoming Core i7 processors (the new Nehalem architecture) poses some problems, though. Intel is moving the memory controller into the CPU with the Core i7, obviating the need for a north bridge.

The X58 motherboards that accompany the Core i7 launch later this year will be, at first, the only supporting platform for Intel's new CPU, and it will have enough PCIe lanes to provide two x16 graphics slots.

Nvidia's hand is sort of forced. There's no real need for an nForce chipset, yet if SLI is not supported on X58, their fastest enthusiast dual (or triple, or quad) graphics solutions won't work on what is sure to be the fastest CPUs around. The company has said it doesn't plan to make chipsets that work with the X58's Quickpath Interconnect (QPI), we assume due to unfavorable licensing terms.

Nvidia's solution? Enable and certify SLI on X58 boards—even with no nForce chip on board. Standard X58 motherboards are eligible for SLI certification. A dual-card SLI setup would have two PCIe x16 lanes, a board with three PCIe slots would have one x16 and two x8 slots, and four PCIe slots would be four x8s.

Of course, Nvidia would still love to sell some motherboard chips, and they'll find a way to do so on X58 motherboards. In three-slot and four-slot enthusiast level boards, Nvidia will sell the nForce 200 chip to board vendors essentially just to use as a PCIe switch—it will connect to the "Tylersburg" south bridge on X58 motherboards and switch one or two of the PCIe x16 lanes to two x16 lanes.

So how does this work? X58 motherboard makers will submit each board model to Nvidia for certification, which will take place in its Santa Clara lab. This is a for-pay certification program, not free—vendors must display the SLI logo on their boxes and marketing materials, and Nvidia hasn't disclosed what the certification fee will be.

It may be a single up-front fee, a per-board royalty, or some combination of the two. Nvidia has said that not all board makers will be offered the same licensing options and prices. In other words, big guys like Intel might have to pay a lot more for the same certification work, while a big valued OEM partner like Dell may get more generous terms.

Once the board is certified, Nvidia will provide an approval key to the vendor which must be embedded in the system BIOS. The graphics drivers look for this key, and if they find it, they enable SLI in the drivers.

This is good news, overall. AMD/ATI maintains that it will allow Crossfire on X58 boards (and insists there is no licensing or certification fee). With Intel likely to have the fastest desktop processor on the market and chipsets that may optionally support both SLI and Crossfire, that certainly removes some headaches for PC enthusiasts.

Still, it raises some questions. The tech press has often been told that Nvidia will not certify SLI for anything other than their chipsets because there is secret technology within their nForce chips that helps make SLI faster and more robust.

We have been told time and time again that, simply put, SLI wouldn't work well without nForce technology. With SLI on X58 boards that have no nForce chip on them, we can see that it most certainly isn't true. Perhaps certification is necessary to maintain a certain level of quality, but it is most definitely technically possible for SLI to work on boards with no Nvidia technology in them at all.

The broadcast and PW Shortcut features built into nForce chipsets are not entirely necessary now that PCIe Gen 2 has made peer-to-peer writes a standard feature. So why stop at X58 chipsets? Why not support other current motherboards with this certification program?

The G45 Express and GMA X4500 HD

The G45 Express chipset is a step up from older Intel-based budget chipsets. It supports front-side bus speeds up to 1333 MHz, PCIe 2.0, DDR2 800 or DDR3 1066, and a whole mess of SATA ports through the ICH10 controller hub. The DG45ID in particular is a DDR2 motherboard, so that somewhat limits our memory bandwidth. It's pretty small as MicroATX boards go.

There are six SATA ports and no IDE ports at all, so you'll need to make sure you use a SATA optical drive. There is one PCIe x16 graphics slot, two x1 PCIe expansion slots, and a single PCI slot. Note that this motherboard does not support the really high-wattage Intel processors; the fastest supported chips are the quad-core Q9550 or the dual-core E8500.

Looking at the back plane, we see a whopping six USB ports, firewire, eSATA, five analog audio jacks, a TOSLINK optical audio output, and gigabit Ethernet. There are two digital video outputs—dual-link DVI and HDMI. 7.1 audio is supported through the IDT 92HD73E audio codec.

The GMA X4500 HD graphics in the G45 chipset is a relatively minor upgrade to the old GMA 3100/3500 in previous boards. It's a very similar part, only with 10 unified shader processors instead of 8, running at a higher clock speed. Intel says it's 2–3 times as fast as the GMA 3100 and as much as 70% faster than the GMA 3500 found on G35-based motherboards.

The X4500 HD is built on a 65nm manufacturing process, as opposed to the 90nm technology used to build the GMA 3xxx. The process shrink is what enabled the extra shader processors and higher clock speed.

Intel claims that the GMA X4500 HD supports DirectX 10, as the GMA 3500 did (with the right driver update). We tried it and it only "sort of" works. It's far too slow to be usable even in the most forgiving of DX10 titles, and even with all the details turned way down. It's also a little buggy—the Parallax Occlusion Map test in 3DMark Vantage crashes the system, and we saw little white dots all over the place when running Crysis in DX10 mode (at low settings).
So while DX10 may be a "bullet point" for Intel here, you might as well ignore the fact that it exists. No DX10 title runs well enough to even enable DX10 mode, even if they all ran perfectly (which they don't)

Intel DG45ID Motherboard

It's no secret that we're not big fans of integrated graphics solutions. You know, the graphics built into a lot of the low-cost motherboards (and even some of the high-end models), where you plug your monitor right into the back plane and don't need a graphics card.

Integrated graphics just don't perform well enough to be used for "real" gaming (that is, stuff beyond simple Web-based flash games and the like). Intel, Nvidia, and AMD/ATI all make integrated graphics solutions, and while Intel's are the most popular in the marketplace, they're also our least favorite—often slower than the others, with common driver issues that cause games to look wrong or not run at all.

Integrated graphics have their place, though. If you're building a home theater PC or just a plain business box—they'll get the job done. You can save a few bucks and a few watts of power utilization using integrated graphics, and if the IG you have does a good job with video processing, that can be all you need to put together a pretty good home theater PC.

Intel's GMA 3100 and 3500 were not too impressive at the time, but the company promises big improvements in the GMA X4500 HD, debuting in the G45 Express chipset. Today we're taking a look at one of the first shipping Intel-brand motherboards to use this chipset, the DG45ID. We'll focus on graphics performance and features, including video, with the aim of answering one simple question: Did Intel get it right this time?

Nvidia has license to make Nehalem QPI chipsets

There may be plenty of rumours about Nvidia pulling out of the chipset market, but Nvidia claims that it’s still licensed to produce chipsets for Intel’s future CPUs, which includes Bloomfield Nehalem processors that use Intel’s new QuickPath Interconnect (QPI).

While chatting to UK tech site Bit-Tech, Nvidia’s director of technical marketing for chipsets, Tom Peterson was apparently ‘adamant that Nvidia’s cross-licensing agreement with Intel includes a Quick Path Interface licence, enabling the company to develop chipsets for Intel’s latest processors.’

Interestingly, though, he also added that Nvidia had chosen to focus its efforts ‘on developing DMI chipsets at this time.’ DMI (Direct Media Interface) is a slower CPU interconnect system that’s used in current Intel chipsets, although it’s also rumoured to be the interconnect system in Intel’s forthcoming mainstream Lynnfield and Havendale Nehalem CPU cores. These cores are also said to feature a dual-core DDR3 memory controller, rather than the triple-core memory controller found in Bloomfield CPUs.

Nevertheless, while Nvidia may have a license to produce a QPI chipset, the company has been very quiet about its intentions regarding its own Bloomfield chipsets. The company recently announced that it would allow SLI to be enabled natively on Intel’s X58 chipset, and that it would also supply NF200 chips for some X58 boards. All of this would appear to negate the need for an Nvidia Bloomfield chipset unless it offered another must-have feature.

Nvidia has been previously rumoured to have plans to exit the chipset market, although the company has vehemently denied these rumours. Speaking to Custom PC earlier this month, Nvidia’s PR manager for the UK and Northern Europe, Ben Berraondo, described the rumours as ‘complete fabrication,’ adding that ‘Nvidia is still very much in the chipset business and has no plans to exit, as several exciting new products on the horizon will show.’

Nvidia is currently rumoured to have a new nForce 770i chipset in development, which is said to support DDR3 memory and two-way SLI, so Nvidia may still have plans for future chipsets, at least in the short term.

Should Nvidia produce a chipset for Bloomfield CPUs using QPI, and is there still room for Nvidia chipsets in an industry where an Intel chipset can support SLI? Let us know your thoughts.

Hauppauge HD DVR Review

Recording high definition video to your PC has always been problematic. You can do it, if you invest in an expensive Media Center PC with a built-in CableCard tuner. You can spend money on pricey gear more oriented towards video editing and content creation.

Now Hauppauge delivers a small box that promises to capture component video in full 1080p glory from almost any source. The secret: The Hauppauge HD DVR takes advantage of the analog hole.

Most video that feeds into set top boxes—particularly from premium sources, such as HBO, Cinemax, or Showtime—are encrypted. Even those non-premium channels aren't so easy if you have a non-cable TV source. (Cable TV viewers have been able to capture high def using tuners capable of clear QAM capability—but only non-premium, unprotected content.)

One of the capabilities built into set top boxes, Blu-ray players, and other similar devices is the ability to downscale high definition signals when they're played through analog outputs. To date, we've heard of no set top box or high definition disc that activates this feature. So most content is played through component video at full 1080p, assuming the output device is 1080p capable.

This is the so-called "analog hole." The signal isn't digital, it's analog, and hence is unprotected and capable of being captured. The downside is potential image quality degradation. The signal is converted from digital to analog, then back to digital when it's captured. That's two generations removed from the pristine, original digital content.

Still, even when converted in this matter, high def content can look pretty good. And if you're looking for a solution to archive unlimited amounts of high definition content—provided you've got enough disk space—then the Hauppauge HD DVR seems pretty attractive, especially at its $249 MSRP.

So does Hauppauge's HD DVR deliver? We spent a little quality time to find out.