G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1600 MHz CL9

G.Skill was kind enough to send us one of their new G.Skill Ripjaws series kits. This time around we get to take a look this dual channel kit, running at 1600 MHz CL9. While this does not really seem like something extordinary, remember that this is an 8 GB dual channel kit - not one with only 4 GB capacity. This kit is intended for LGA 1156 and LGA 1155 systems, requiring only 1.5V to achieve the rated speed.

Starting out the memory was set to 1600 MHz CL9 and 1.5 V, with which the system worked flawlessly. Next the memory was pushed, and pushed and pushed. At 1.5V 2050 MHz was the end of the line, additionally that was the most I was able to tickle out of our test bench too, so the memory may be capable of a tad bit more as voltage does seem to help out a bit. Still a 550 MHz increase is huge and I do have some doubts if every G.Skill Ripjaws kit can manage this speed - but hey, that may even be the case.

The next step meant dropping the latency as far down as possible, starting with CL5-5-5-15. With this setting the G.Skill Ripjaws were not able to boot, so on to CL6-6-6-18 it was. At this point doing 1333 MHz worked flawlessly right at the JEDEC Voltage setting and I was able to push them to a very respectable 1460 MHz without changing any settings. Pushing the voltage higher did yield some better overclock ability with a maximum of 1540 MHz at CL6. Next, with CL7-7-7-21, the 1600 MHz milestone was easily conquered with a mere 1.5 V once more and pushing things further, 1680 MHz was the end of the line with this configuration. Once again, raising the voltage did yield more headroom up to 1770 MHz. At this point it is safe to say that an increase in voltage does help out, but only to a certain point. Over 1.7 volts, the memory did not allow me to push further.

Next, using CL8-8-8-24, the G.Skill Ripjaws blew past 1800 MHz, but the end of the line was reached once more with 1.7 V at 1870 MHz. So it seems additional voltage always yields around 70-90 MHz more. As mentioned before, with CL9 the kit ran past 2000 MHz and pushed the limit of our testing rig - impressive for a high-capacity kit. The end of the line was 1025 MHz across the board - no matter which voltage was applied. This seems to be the most we could tickle out of the kit with our X58 board and the limiting factor could very well be our system, not the memory.

For those who require a high capacity kit with the fastest speeds possible, the G.Skill Ripjaws 1600 MHz kit is rather interesting. Even though it is sold at such speeds, it has many of the characteristics of the Trident 2000 MHz CL8. The one big difference between the two seems to be the inability of the G.Skill Ripjaws to scale with voltage. While this is not really a deal breaker at all, the G.Skill Ripjaws will only set you back around 90 Euro. The Trident kit still sells for 300 Euro at the moment. So considering the average price, the excellent performance and overclocking abilities, the G.Skill Ripjaws are an excellent choice and should also work well on Sandy Bridge boards. With a whooping 400 MHz overclock at stock settings, the kit is bound to put a big smile on your face!

source:techpowerup.com

Asus EAH6970 graphics cards with dual fan

ASUS EAH6970 introduce exclusive DirectCU II technology with copper heat pipes directly contacting the GPU and twin large fans for 600% better airflow and 20% lower temperatures compared to reference. ASUS Super Alloy Power and Voltage Tweak further enable ultimate hardcore performance and smooth DirectX 11 gaming.

The Super Allow Power technology uses a special alloy formula in power components like chokes, capacitors and MOSFETs for a 15% perfor-mance boost, 2.5 times longer lifespan* and 35°C cooler operation compared with generic models.

Exclusive ASUS Voltage Tweak technology makes it easy for users to increase voltages to the GPU core, video memory and board to raise card speeds by up to 50%* faster- a major advantage much sought after by hardcore gamers.

ASUS EAH6970 card takes up three slots and, as mentioned, makes use of the DirectCU II cooler boasting direct contact copper heatpipes and two 100mm 'sound-dampened' fans that move 600% more air than the reference solution, leading to 20% lower temps.

ASUS EAH6970 creation is 12 inches long and also features two 8-pin PCIe power connectors to ensure enough watts are available when overclocking, the Super Alloy Power technology to increase component (capacitors, chokes and MOSFETS) life, 1536 Stream Processors, a GPU clock of 890 MHz, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory @ 5500 MHz

ASUS HD 6970 graphics cards with dual-fan cooling performance includes two DVI and four DisplayPort outputs and should become available later this quarter.

Nikon Coolpix S80 Digital Camera for Valentine Memories

High style meets high tech with the ultra-slim, Touch Control Nikon COOLPIX S80, in a variety of colors. The 14.1-megapixel S80 features a 5x Wide Zoom-NIKKOR ED glass lens, and HD (720p) stereo sound movie recording.

The Nikon Coolpix S80 is equipped with a widescreen 3.5-inch electrostatic OLED touch panel with a wide viewing angle. Compared to the Approximately 288k-dot monitor built into its predecessor, the Nikon COOLPIX S70, the S80 monitor offers resolution increased to approximately 819k-dots. Performance has also been greatly increased for more natural operation with a more vivid monitor display and faster response to touch panel operations. In addition, the Nikon Coolpix S80 is equipped with a variety of Nikon technologies, including a monitor with an incorporated touch mechanism, which is an on-cell touch panel, and a thin right-angled optics zoom lens, which help to make the 16.5-mm slim camera more compact and portable. The Nikon Coolpix S80 is a stylish compact digital camera with an extremely functional design.

PowerColor HD 6950 PCS++ gamer experience like never before

Taipei, Taiwan –January 20, 2011–TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, announces a dual mode setting design in the HD6950 series: the PowerColor PCS++ HD6950. The PowerColor PCS++ HD6950 features a dual BIOS setting, allowing a bump in performance with factory overclocking to at 880MHz core speed and 1250MHz memory speed. The bump enables performance to increase out its own segment and maximize gaming experience like never before.

The PCS++ HD6950 also has embedded with a back up setting, easily delivering the extreme performance to tackle the game titles. Gamers can manually switch the different settings to meet their own demands.

“This product is like nothing else on the market with its dual mode setting design,” said Ted Chen, CEO of TUL Corporation. “The PCS++ HD6950 is an innovative product with all the key features, it should be the solution which can fulfill any gamer’s demand.”

Furthermore, the PowerColor PCS++ HD6950 features cooling through its dual 92mm fans, enlarging the air flow to lower the GPU temperature in a lower fan speed. Heat it dissipated through the heat from its copper base that fully covers the GPU efficiently. All this combined results in high performance in a quiet environment.

PowerColor's HD 6950 PCS++ is an interesting product creation. Even though it is marketed as a HD 6950 with official standard specifications, it will magically turn into an almost HD 6970 card at the flick of a button - a feature that PowerColor does not really advertise, probably for political reasons. "Almost" HD 6970, because the card will have the same shader count of 1536 as the HD 6970, but it will run at a lower memory clock speed. HD 6970 uses higher-grade memory chips which are officially qualified by AMD to be able to handle its 1375 MHz memory clock whereas the chips on the HD 6950 are not. The big surprise is that the memory on the HD 6950 PCS++ can actually handle much much higher clocks. We have seen 1600 MHz rock stable on our sample, which uses the same chips that many other cards, which can't reach those clocks - maybe PowerColor found some secret sauce that improves memory overclocking.

In terms of performance the HD 6950 PCS++ in HD 6950 mode does not bring any surprises, since it is running at HD 6950 reference specifications it performs just the same. Once unlocked to all-shaders performance mode the card gains 7% over the normal mode configuration, but is still trailing behind the regular HD 6970 by 3%, due to the lower memory clock.
Power consumption in "performance" mode is considerably reduced compared to the HD 6970 mainly thanks to the different memory chips, running at lower clock rate which results in a significant power difference. Unfortunately the card is still plagued by the same high Blu-ray playback power consumption that we have seen on all recent AMD cards, but this is not something PowerColor can address on their own. A PowerColor specific issue are the noise levels of the card, which do not seem to be optimized to the capabilities of the thermal solution. In idle the card is quite noisy. With 3D load added, fan speed barely changes - a clear sign that someone didn't choose the right settings for the BIOS.

Price-wise, a $15 price premium is asked for the HD 6950 PCS++ which is reasonable considering you get to keep full warranty, receive a guaranteed unlock and a free full version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. So basically, if you are lazy or feel that a manual BIOS flash, possibly with some BIOS editing is too complicated for you, then the PowerColor PCS++ HD 6950 is a great choice to gain some extra performance over a regular HD 6950. If you feel comfortable doing the flash yourself then a reference design HD 6950 would also be a viable choice.

ROCCAT Kave 5.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset

A Desert Eagle isn't worth its fancy name, if you don't know where to aim. Imagine your advantage within the heat of the battle when you exactly hear where your opponents are before you can actually see them. Knowing the position of your enemy is half the frag. Realistic 3D surround sound makes you locate your opponents easily by the noise they generate. The desktop control enables you to adjust to situations quickly with sound and microphone mute buttons and volume control for different channels.   

"WHERE IS HE?"
Do you enjoy playing first person shooters with headphones?
Then sure enough you have asked yourself this very question before. But you won't have to, ever again.

Imagine a headset, not with simulated, but with very real 40mm speakers plus an additional vibration unit, arranged at a 12° angle, embedded into each earcup. A true advantage, because no matter which game you play, opponents coming from behind and from the side you can find in almost any game.

WITH ROCCAT YOU ALWAYS STAY IN CONTROL
That also goes for the ROCCAT Kave. With the Tip'n'Control Desktop Remote, you receive a tool with extraordinary functions. Designed for maximized comfort and functionality, it can be placed firmly on your desktop. Beside the over-all volume, you can separately control the center, front and rear volume as well as the bass. You can even switch between the sound-profiles.

Thanks to the microphone with mute LED, the times of accidently giving away information are over. Due to the illumination on the micro itself, you can tell whether the micro is muted. Easy as never before. Furthermore, you can switch between the sound-profiles. You can choose between game and movie sound.

Great attention has been paid to convenience while wearing the ROCCAT Kave. The headband contains 3 separately bedded pads, which guarantee an equal weight distribution. The generous earcups are hand-sewn and especially comfortable, featuring external noise cancelling. The ROCCAT Kave is foldable and of compact design, it's safe and easy to carry.

source:roccat.org

ASUS GeForce GTX 580 Direct CU II high-quality monster product

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 came as a surprise to many, who didn't expect NVIDIA could pull off another high-end GPU release in 2010. The new card delivers significantly improved performance over the GTX 480, while keeping power consumption in check and emitting reduced noise levels.

ASUS has taken this successful base design and customized it on their GTX 580 Direct CU II using a brave approach: triple slot cooling design. The additional slot on the GTX 580 DCII allows a bigger cooling solution for improved cooling potential. ASUS has focused on reducing fan noise instead of delivering the lowest temperatures possible, which makes a lot of sense in my opinion. For you there is no difference whether the card is at 60° or 80° under load, but fan noise is something you will have to constantly live with.
The ASUS GTX 580 Direct CU II also comes with a small overclock to squeeze some extra performance out of the card. While other board vendors would charge a hefty price premium for such a design approach, ASUS only adds $5 to the cost of the GTX 580 DCII which is extremely reasonable and makes this card attractive for users who would only be looking at the reference design otherwise.

Visually the most important feature of the ASUS GTX 580 Direct CU II is its huge cooler that occupies three slots in your system. Yes, three slots. ASUS promises that this will add more cooling capability to their beast, so the card can run cooler and quieter. We have heard that promise in the past for triple slot cards and it didn't work out every time. First of all I have to praise ASUS for making the bold move of bringing a card to the market that requires three slots. In our testing the noise levels of the ASUS GTX 580 Direct CU II are simply amazing. After lots of complaints about the GTX 480's fan noise, NVIDIA already put a lot of effort into quietening their GTX 580 reference board, and they did well. However, the ASUS GTX 580 DCU2 is a lot quieter than that. Its idle fan noise is in the neighbourhood of other "quiet" cards from all performance ranges, so that's good already if you are planning on doing a lot of desktop work. Under load the card's fan noise is outstanding. It is quieter than most mid-range cards but can still deliver a massive performance punch being able to handle anything you can throw at any single monitor setup.

ASUS has applied a small factory overclock on their card, which is probably limited by NVIDIA policy. This increase results in about 1% extra performance, something you won't notice in every day gaming. Manual overclocking yielded a dissapointing 827 MHz, we heard other colleagues got better results on their review boards, so this might just be me getting a card that doesn't overclock as well. In the hands of a pro with LN2 cooling, we have seen well over 1500 MHz GPU clock. Our voltage scaling testing supports that the card has really a lot more potential than what can be easily reached without extensive mods and complex cooling.

ASUS has also improved on the display connectivity options by providing full-size HDMI and DisplayPort connectors instead of the single mini-HDMI on the reference board. However, you are still limited to two active display outputs due to NVIDIA's GPU design. Another small point worth mentioning is that the card consumes less power than the NVIDIA reference GTX 580 - even though it's running higher clocks. This is more evidence that ASUS did a good job at re-engineering the GTX 580 design to fit their needs.

Last but not least, the good news is that ASUS will only ask a $5 price premium for their GTX 580 Direct CU II over other NVIDIA reference design based boards. So the bottom line is, if you plan on investing into a single powerful GTX 580 card that will last you for a few years and don't plan on using SLI (or have a board with triple slot spacing between the PCI-E slots) then the ASUS GTX 580 Direct CU II is the best card you can get. Trust me, the low noise makes a huge difference. On the other hand, if you are planning to most certainly upgrade to SLI at a later point, possible triple or quad SLI, then you should consider going with a dual-slot card, so you won't run into space issues later.

source:techpowerup.com