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WHERE WE PUT STUFF C 0 N T E N TS m
JULY
FE" M FEATURES Bl? DEPARTMENTS
22 Upgrade on a Budget Quickstart
İn the Lab
Our high-performance upgrade 08 NEWS The FCC's proposed replace- 71 REVIEWS
recommendations get you the most bang ment for CableCARD; death to Microsoft's
for your upgrade buck. -.. 92 LAB NOTES
14 THE LIST An array of ultra-luxe 96 BEST OF THE BEST
,ş = + dit 5
36 AMD’s Big Six a
AMD debuts the hexa-core Thurban. R & D EE E E] LETTERS
x 60 WHITE PAPER Internet Protocol e
44 Monitor Myths -.
We walk you through the fact and fiction of 61 AUTOPSY Sonos 3M Mpro150 94 COMMENTS
specs for modern monitors. LCOS Projector.
ə e 62 HOW TO Convert and manage
54 Made in Taiwan :
your ebook library with Calibre; «
An inside look at Gigabyte’s motherboard remotely control your PC —-
production line.
vvith LogMeln. Y
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www.maximumpe.com | JuL 2010 | MAXIMUMPE | 05
MAXIMUMPS
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mu
ATHING ORTWO ABOUT ATHINGORTWO ED WORD ||
Unfrozen
Caveman
Editor
or any tech-head, Maximum PC headquarters are hallowed grounds. A sacred
place. I worked here as Editor-in-Chief back in 2003 and 2004, and I couldn't be
happier about being back. (By the way: There no truth to the rumor that previous
EIC Will Smith defeated me in a traditional Vulcan Death Match and sent me packing.)
Not surprisingly, Maximum PC is a different place than it was in 2004. I mean that
both literally and figuratively, and it’s making me feel a little bit like Unfrozen Caveman
Editor-in-Chief. For starters, our office space is much improved. Ample natural and in-
direct light. A huge laboratory. Large test benches and tons of storage space.
But more importantly, Maximum PC is now online in a big way. Six years ago,
being online meant you had a website. Now it means websites, message boards,
Facebook, Twitter, and more. These extra dimensions might intimi-
date your average everyday journalist, but for us, they’re just extra
opportunities to talk directly to and with you about PC-based tech- T H E B l G
nology. Knowing full well how smart our readers are, I’m super- ,
excited about that. C H E ES E s
As I write this editorial, I’m looking back at my last issue of PI CKS
Maximum PC. February 2005. In it we covered a slew of Windows aan
XP tips, an 850-watt power supply, a 40GB USB 2.0 external drive, a rege sial from
handful of MP3 players, and a kick-ass Velocity Micro system with page 54
a 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 processor, 1GB of RAM, two 74GB
WD Raptors in RAID 0, and a 250GB storage drive. (That Athlon Bowers & Wilkins MM-1
CPU was a fave of mine, by the way.) Computer Speakers
Wow, have times changed. I’m inclined to view the futurist no- page 80
tion of pending “technological singularity” with a raised eyebrow,
but after contemplating the rapid technological evolution of the The Power of Six:
AMD”s Thuban
page 36
last six years, I’m beginning to wonder if the futurists have it right.
Maybe we are just hitting the beginning of some crazy hockey-stick-
shaped growth cycle. Smartphones. Touch-based computing. Cloud-
based computing. Multicore processors. Solid State storage. Social networking. These
aren't just evolutionary hops. They're paradigm shifts—legitimate transformations in
the way computers work and the way we use them.
Singularity or not, I guarantee this: The next decade is going to be extremely
interesting. I'm happy to be back at a magazine that not only “gets” these things,
but embraces them.
ve
—
PS. In honor of our upgrades-oriented cover story, email me at george@maximumpce.
com (or if you prefer to tweet, hit me @lizzunchbox). Tell me about the best or worst
PC upgrading moment in your life. I’m going to pick the 10 best tales—you'll each
get a handful of coins.
ə” LETTERS POLICY Please send comments, questions, and Pocky to
georgefamaximumpc.com. Include your full name, city of residence,
and phone number with your correspondence. Unfortunately, George
is unable to respond personally to all queries.
JUL 2010 Æ 07
EH
Bi Q U | C KS TA R T THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
HEN: New Vision
for PC TV
Farewell, CableCARD; we hardly knew ye —ıcHAEL Brown
hose who believe that the interests of con-
To have been routinely subjugated to
the will of big business—Hollywood, cable
companies, ISPs, phone companies, and so on—
for most of the last decade will applaud the Fed-
eral Communication Commission's latest move.
The FCC is soliciting ideas for a new technology
standard that will finally integrate PCs, gaming
consoles, and televisions with digital cable and
satellite television services. Yes, they Te talking
about a replacement for the much-maligned
CableCARD. The agency has dubbed this theo-
retical successor AllVid.
You don’t need to read much beyond the first
two paragraphs of the FCCs Notice of Inquiry
to get excited about what's envisioned. “...the
Commission seeks comment on specific steps
we can take to unleash competition in the retail
market for smart, set-top video devices that are
compatible with all multichannel video pro-
gramming distributor (MVPD) services.”
By specifying “all MVPD services,” the FCC
is describing not just cable TV systems, but also
satellite TV and any similar services that might
pop up in the future. It gets better. “In particular,
we wish to explore the potential for allowing any
electronics manufacturer to offer smart video de-
vices at retail that can be used with the services
of any MVPD and without the need to coordinate
or negotiate with MVPDs” (emphasis ours). The
commission wants to return to the days when
consumers “...could connect their ‘cable ready’
video cassette recorders and television sets
directly to a cable operator's system without the
need for any other equipment.”
But the folks at Ceton Corporation, who
are about to ship a brand-new quad-tuner
CableCARD product (the InfiniTV 4) into retail
channels, are saying hey, not so fast. It would
be easy to dismiss Ceton’s complaint as self-
interested—after all, the company has
invested considerable R&D resources to
develop this new card—but Ceton has a solid
argument against throwing the baby out with
the bath water. While the FCC has pegged the
08 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
The FCC’s AUVid proposal could dampen the markets enthusiasm for Ceton Corporation’s brand-
new InfiniTV 4 quad CableCARD tuner.
many flaws inherent in the CableCARD spec,
there’s no denying that it’s the only technology
you can buy today that enables a PC to con-
nect to a digital cable TV service.
“We think it’s premature to call the death
of CableCARD,” says Ceton’s chief market-
ing officer, Ed Graczyk. “CableCARD an-
swers most of the FCC’s requirements. It lets
us deliver on a single PC board the ability to
receive and decode four [digital cable TV]
streams.” Graczyk admits that CableCARD
has its shortcomings—including its inability
to support program guides or deliver video-
on-demand services, as well as spotty sup-
port among service providers. “In-the-field
support is very touch and go,” Graczyk
says, “depending on which cable operator
you have and which market you happen
to be in. And the entire pairing process is
so antiquated—the way you need to activate
the card; there’s no reason that couldn’t
be automated.”
But it’s hard to argue with Graczyk’s point
that a broadband-connected PC with access
to services such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube,
and to a CableCARD is vastly superior to any
dumb set-top box. And its available today,
whereas AllVid is just a collection of goals.
“We are proponents of the FCC’s ideas, but
many of them can be realized with Cable-
CARD today,” Graczyk says. “The technology
has been around for several years on paper,
but its only really been on the market for a
couple of years.”
TV on the Go
Broadcasters unite to create a
national mobile TV service
magine getting over-the-air television pro-
gramming from your smartphone, netbook,
or car—no Internet connection required.
That’s what a newly formed coalition of
national and local broadcasters, known col-
lectively as Pearl Mobile TV, are working on.
Currently, the group consists of three nation-
al television networks—Fox, NBC/Telemundo,
and Ion Television—along with nine of the
largest owners of local stations, which plan
to pool their existing spectrum, content, and
marketing resources in support of the effort.
The proposed service, which was made
possible by the national adoption of the DTV
broadcast standard, has received the blessing
of FCC Chairman Julius Genachovvski, as it
assists in the Commission’s goal of unclogging
the nation’s wireless broadband network. The
broadcast group expects to have enough band-
width to deliver mobile
video to 150 million U.S.
consumers, and predicts
as many as 150 mobile
DTV stations by the end
of the year. -KS
For mobile DTV to be
realized, device makers will
need to build TV tuners into
their products.
Google Gets a
Scolding
Google has taken flak for its
seeming lack of regard for
people’s privacy. First there
was fuss over the company’s
intrusive Street View
technology; then Buzz, Google’s
social-networking extension
for Gmail, raised hackles for
being an “opt-out” service.
Now, the data-protection
authorities from 10 countries
have come together to
lambast the company. Ina
letter addressed to Google
CEO Eric Schmidt, the Privacy
Commissioner of Canada,
Jennifer Stoddart, slammed
the Internet behemoth for
“introducing services without
due regard for the privacy of
its users.”
The letter, dated April 19,
is also signed by Stoddart’s
counterparts in France,
Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland,
Netherlands, New Zealand,
Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Stoddart calls on Google to
ensure that its services honor
fundamental privacy principles
and asks the company to
outline ways in which it plans to
ensure such conformity. -Pc
MS Pulls Plug on Courier
Rumors that the company would ship the sexy
dual-screen tablet early next year have been put to rest
After tech blog Giz-
modo broke word of
the Courier’s existence
last September, it
gave gadget hounds—
particularly those
with an aversion to
Apple—a tablet to
dream about. Now,
not only has Microsoft
nixed plans for Cou-
rier, but word that HP
is abandoning the Slate
dashes hopes of any
Windows tablet. -KS
İM H FAST FORWARD
> TOM HALFHILL
Apple Catches a
Hummingbird
pple keeps getting more serious about
custom-chip design. In its latest move, the
company has stealthily acquired a small
processor-design company called Intrinsity, based in
Austin, Texas. Apple hasn’t publicly announced the
deal, the price paid, or its plans.
But it’s not as mysterious as it looks. Lately,
Intrinsity has specialized in making processor cores
that are fully compatible with those from ARM, the
British company whose processors are found in
almost every cell phone. Apple’s iPods, iPhones, and
iPads also use the ARM architecture. (Of course,
Macs use the Intel x86.)
Intrinsity’s processor cores are generally faster
and consume less power than ARM's, relative to their
performance. Last year, Intrinsity introduced a core
nicknamed Hummingbird. It's 100 percent compatible
with the ARM Cortex-A8, one of ARM's most powerful
processors. When manufactured in a 45-nanometer
low-power CMOS process, Hummingbird can reach
1GHz while using less than 750 milliwatts.
That clock frequency may not seem fast
when compared with PC processors, but it’s the
combination of gigahertz speed and sub-watt power
consumption that’s important for mobile devices,
like smartphones and tablets.
Note that Intrinsity designs processor cores, not
processor chips. A core is merely a building block for
a custom system-on-a-chip (SoC). An SoC typically
surrounds the CPU core with peripheral logic (such
as USB), a graphics engine, and memory. SoCs are
vital for small devices that, unlike PCs, have no room
for a large motherboard with many separate chips.
Hummingbird is rumored to be the ARM-
compatible processor in the iPad’s custom-
designed A4 chip. (Apple isn’t talking.) Even if the
rumor is wrong, Hummingbird will likely appear
in a future iPhone or iPad.
| believe Intrinsity has developed an even faster
processor that’s compatible with ARM”s dual-core
Cortex-A9. | call it Hummingbird-II. | think this
dual-core clone will exceed 2GHz, and | predict it will
appear in a future iPhone or iPad.
By designing its own custom chips, Apple gains
more control over its platforms and can continue
differentiating them from competing products. Differ-
entiation is the key to maintaining the higher prices
and profit margins that make Apple so successful.
Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor
for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for
Microprocessor Report.
Powerline
Networking
Standard
Advances
The IEEE moved one step
closer to establishing a
global standard for broad-
band over power-line
networks as 81 percent
of IEEE P1901 Working
Group members voted to
approve Draft 3.0 of the
IEEE standard in April.
The votes were accompa-
nied by 857 comments,
which the working group
will discuss at their meet-
ings in June, August, and
October, when a final vote
is expected to take place.
The IEEE P1901
standard is based largely
on HomePlug Powerline
AV technology, and the
HomePlug Powerline
Alliance will serve as the
certification body for the
| IEEE P1901 standard in
much the way that the
Wi-Fi Alliance certifies
IEEE 802.11-vvireless net-
working devices. Current
HomePlug AV products
should be interoperable
vvith future IEEE P1901
devices. -MB
“—.”
`~
THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
5
»
PC Sales
Surge
Who says the PC’s
days are over? Sales
of personal comput-
ers appear to be ona
major rebound, with
market researchers
IDC and Gartner both
reporting an increase
in sales figures in the
U.S. and globally.
According to
Gartner, PC sales were
up 27.4 percent for the
first quarter of 2010
compared to 2009.
Its competitor IDC,
meanwhile, reported
sales of PCs up 24.2
percent over the
previous year.
The increase in
sales is attributed to
large companies re-
placing old machines,
as well as a rise in
laptop sales and even
higher-performance
CPUs. In the U.S.,
HP continued to be
the number-one PC
maker, followed by
Dell, Acer, Toshiba,
and then Apple. “GU
THOMAS MCDONALD
If all goes according to plan, HomePlug AV devices such as this
Trendnet TPL-303E2K will be interoperable with future products
based on the final IEEE P1901 Broadband Over Powerline standard.
10 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
İİ BYTE RIGHTS
A
THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
`
m QUINN NORTON
Company finally offers overclocking-
friendly features in midrange CPUs
From British
Backrooms to
Your Room
ack in April, the British Parliament
BR passed the Digital Economy Act (nick-
named DEAct), a law affecting the whole
of the British Internet. It gives everyone in Brit-
ain lit fiber, unlimited Doctor Who, and a Corgi.
Just kidding. It takes away their human rights.
DEAct doesn’t really kick in for a while, but
it will require national monitoring of ISPs, and
also require ISPs to monitor their users. People
accused of file sharing face account capping
and suspension, unless they have the time and
money to fight it, because punishment comes be-
fore trial in DEAct. The presumption of innocence
is enshrined in hundreds of years of Anglo-
American law, and pretty much every human
rights declaration, but the Labour government
just threw that out for any Brits who use the
Internet. It’s a bit like the British government
ntel breaks with tradition by offering two unlocked
LGA1156 CPUs, and makes a serious price cut to
one of them. The new 2.93GHz Core i7-875K will
cost $342—down from the $562 Intel had been charging
for its 2.93GHz Core i7-870. Oddly, Intel will charge $216 for
the 3.2GHz Core i5-655K. That’s up from the $176 it charges
for the equivalent locked model. These processors should be
available by the time you read this. -Gu
Hulu for a Fee
Details of a paid subscription model emerge
available for free. Free content will
still be available, say the sources, but
in limited supply, restricted to the
five most recent episodes of popular
network shows. Content on Hulu,
whether paid or free, will continue to
carry commercials, and it’s expected
that the number of commercial spots
will increase. “Ks
f a recent report in the LA Times is
true, Hulu is on the verge of testing
its long-rumored subscription
service. According to “people with
knowledge of the plans,” the website
will offer a Hulu Plus service for $9.95
a month that will give viewers access
to a comprehensive selection of the
television content that has so far been
12
LOC Archives
Twitter
In April, the Library of Congress
acquired a copy of the entire public
Twitter archive. Why would the
LOC want to store billions of pos-
sibly inane tweets forever? Wrote
Matt Raymond, an LOC blogger,
“Individually, tweets might seem
insignificant, but viewed in the ag-
gregate, they can be a resource for
future generations to understand
life in the 21st century.”-NE
twitter
MAXIMUMPE | JuL 2010
w.maximumpc.com
You ve Got
the Touch
For everyone who's been wonder-
ing how Windows 7’s multitouch
functionality might change their lives,
Microsoft is now offering Touch Pack
for Windows 7 for free (http://bit.ly/
cİBDM), The pack lets you install and
experience three multitouch casual
games and three Microsoft Surface
applications, including Surface
Globe and Surface Collage, provided
you have a Win7 PC paired with a
multitouch-capable monitor. “Ks
turning off your electricity because someone
accused you of adultery. Parliament did get rid of
DEActs Great Firewall of Britain provision, which
allowed national blocking of websites that might
permit copyright infringement, but plans to bring
it back in the new session.
How did this legislative abomination get past
the reasonably sane people of Britain? It was
done during the washup—a lame-duck period in
the British political cycle when few representa-
tives are even in town, and laws get passed by
backroom deals with powerful interests. DEAct,
with the paw prints of record labels all over it,
was no exception. Like the secretive ACTA, DEAct
was the undemocratic product of secret meet-
ings between government and lobbyists.
What measures like ACTA and DEAct really
show us is that rights holders realize that if they
had to go through the regular democratic pro-
cess, We The People would run them out of town
on a rail. | don’t like sounding paranoid, but they
are acting like we are the enemy, to be fought
and controlled, all while being bilked.
Why should we Yanks care? Because now that
the idea has a foot in the door, it’s sure to cross
the pond soon. Let’s pay attention when it does.
Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired
News and other publications. Her work has
ranged from legal journalism to the inner life
of pirate organizations.
THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
8 Signs a Geek Has Too
Much Money
Leatherman | CHROME-PLATED PC
Del Rey f | Our dual-Core 2 Extreme Dream Machine
Custom-made to order, TA 2008 isn't anything to boast about these
the Leatherman Del Rey 25th days, but its custom chrome-plating
remains the height of decadence.
Anniversary multitool is craft- ” *
ed by artist Adrian Pallarols A ko $5
and boasts handles made of jẹl
18K gold from the Andes.
40,000 ' : Muay
2000 ( : i EIAN |
.
“——————.
eevee ie
You're looking at 108 inches of 1080p goodness. İt
comes with three HDMI ports, two component ports,
and a single DVI input, so you can peel your eyelids back
with multiple HD devices. It weighs 430 pounds, but if
you're buying this, you re not lugging your own hardware.
$150,000
http://bit.ly/aJZV5V
Cie LB-1085 LCD
14 | MAKIMUMPG | JUL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
TRANSMISSION AUDIO
ULTIMATE SPEAKER SYSTEMS
Imagine if you will, six seven-foot-high
panels loaded with supertweeter ribbons and sub-
woofers bundled together with six 500-watt dual-
mono amplifiers and a preamp. If your friends
object to the price, you can jack up the volume
and blow them out the nearest window.
$2,000,000/set
www.transmissionaudio.com
Xten Pininfarina
Office Chair
Made by the
renowned team
that dresses Ferrari
interiors, the Pininfarina
Xten is maximized for
comfort and durability,
offering a Dynatec
fabric seat and the 4
patented Armtronic
system, which adjusts
to fit people of all sizes—
but only the uppermost
economic strata.
$1,500,000
— re
y
—_
t right!)
om
ART LEBEDEV
OPTIMUS MAXIMUS
KEYBOARD
Every one of this board's 113 keys is embedded
with a micro OLED display capable of up to 10fps
video, allowing the user to reprogram each of the
keys to perform different tasks for different apps.
$2,400
http://bit.ly/313k8e
Intelligent
Design
Emotion
Mouse
When no
luxury is too
small, an artfully
designed wireless laser
mouse hand-crafted from
grade 1 titanium and
high-quality plastic resin
makes sense.
SONY XEL-1
OLED TV
This 11-inch display is small, but it
gives you the bragging rights of owning
a TV based on the long-vaunted OLED technology.
Organic light-emitting diodes are reported to
improve contrast ratios and offer superior color
quality, including absolute black
levels. Couple that
with a panel
that’s 3mm
thin, and
you've got
some big
technology
in a tiny
package.
$2,500,
http:bit.ly/
7G9uT6
www.maximumpc.com | JuL 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 15
HM
iH D 0 C T 0 R IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT ATIME
This month the Doctor tackles...
» Setting Your Processor Affinity
Are Default Drivers
Enough?
Every time I try to join a multi-
player server in Battlefield 2,
my computer freezes with
no sound for nearly a min-
ute, then resumes again. I
can’t seem to diagnose the
problem. I have installed the
newest patch (1.5). I have
reformatted my hard drive
and reinstalled Windows 7
Home Premium 64-bit. All the
drivers were automatically
installed by Windows, so I
only had to install my sound-
card drivers. My computer is
connected to a cable modem
via a Linksys wireless router.
Ihave also manually updated
my PunkBuster files. Any idea
what’s causing the pausing?
—rtschchand
There s your problem right
there, as they say. Your issue
actually highlights one of the
things Windows 7 does too
well. Because VVin75 native
drivers are so good (especially
compared to Vista's), nearly
everything works fine immedi-
ately after install, and you might
think the days of manually
hunting down and installing
drivers are gone. If only.
Although the Windows 7
native drivers are quite solid,
its always better to manually
install the latest version of
your motherboard chipset and
videocard drivers from the
manufacturers’ respective web-
sites. You should even check
on your network card drivers.
If that doesn’t fix it, make sure
that if you're running a firewall
or antivirus program, its not
16 | MAXIMUMBPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
blocking BF2—or worse, pop-
ping up notifications under the
game window where you can’t
see them.
What’s the Deal with
PCI Express?
Are x1 PCI Express cards and
x16 PCI Express slots compat-
ible? Can I insert my x1 PCI
Express soundcard into a x16
PCI Express slot? And maybe
this question isn’t relevant, but
why do motherboard compa-
nies always put their x1 slots
between two x16 slots? Even
if you install one videocard
it will block access to the x1
slot. Of course, you can install
your videocard in a secondary
x16 PCI Express slot, but how
do you know it’s not running
at x8 speed? Moreover, if
you want to install only one
videocard, the motherboard
manufacturer instructs you
to install it in the topmost x16
slot. But is that required?
—Vitaliy
Short answer: Yes, a x1 PCI
Express card will fit and is
fully compatible with a x16
PCI Express slot. Why do most
board companies sandwich x1
slots between x16 slots? They
do that because if you use a
double-width GPU, you only
lose access to the x1. If you had
ax16 slot next to it, you would
lose access to that one. How
do you know what speed the
slot is running at? Most boards
will have the speed printed
somewhere on the PCB, but
the easiest way is to consult
your motherboard manual. We
suspect that most motherboard
Shrinking RAID Partitions
High idle temps? Replace your stock cooler with a higher-
performing one.
makers recommend that you
always install a card in the top
x16 slot because those slots
are almost always x16. Since
the lower x16 slots on many
boards actually run at x8 or
even x4 data rates, installing
in any slot other than the top
could be problematic. If you Te
curious about what speed your
GPU is running at, download
the free GPU-Z tool from www.
techpowerup.com. In the Bus
Interface tab of the utility, you
can see what mode your GPU
is running under.
Is My CPU Running
Too Hot?
Ihave a custom-built gam-
ing computer made by
Magic Micro housed in a
Thermaltake Soprano case. It
has 4GB of RAM, a 3GHz Core
2 Duo (model unknown), a
500-watt Antec power sup-
ply, two 1TB Seagate hard
drives, and a Sapphire
Radeon HD 4870. Things
are fun and fast here. The
desktop sits right under the
air-conditioning vent in my
library. Using SpeedFan, I
recorded the max temps to
be 158 degrees in the Core
0-1 areas and 124 degrees
at the CPU. Am I in trouble?
Normally it runs around 98
degrees combined, but it was
a hot night. I turned the AC
on and it all cooled down
quickly back to 98 F. Is my
desktop OK or do I need to
do something?
—Chris Buemi
Your desktop5 probably fine,
Chris. 158 F (70 C) is within
normal operating tempera-
tures for your processor (likely
a Core 2 Duo E8400, by the
way), though definitely on the
high end. The ambient air tem-
perature in your house with
the AC off no doubt contrib-
uted to the high temperatures.
Though the temps you're
seeing aren't too worrying,
they're higher than they
should be. Make sure noth-
ing is blocking your intake
and exhaust fans—vacuum
to remove dust, pet hair,
small rodents, etc.—and
make sure your CPU cooler
is firmly mounted. If it is,
and Magic Micro stuck
with the stock cooler, you
might want to consider an
upgrade—as always, we
recommend the $30 Cooler
Master Hyper 212+ for
an inexpensive, high-
performance CPU cooler.
Shrinking Partitions
inRAID
Iread your answer regard-
ing partition resizing
with 64-bit Vista (“64-Bit
Partition Resizer,” December
2009). My 1TB of storage
consists of two 500GB hard
drives in RAID 0. I would
like to shrink my partition
to allow a dual-boot with
64-bit Windows 7. Should
Vista’s Disk Management
utility be able to handle this
(the menu option I get is
Shrink Volume)?
—Lawrence
If you're using a hardware
RAID setup (either onboard or
through an add-in card), Vista
will see your RAID as a single
disk, therefore you ought to be
able to use Disk Management
to shrink the partition—in
theory. However, we tested
this method ona RAID 0 of
two 40GB Intel X-25V SSDs on
a 64-bit Windows 7 machine,
ə”
Partition Wizard 5 can resize partitions where the Windows tool
fails—even with RAID. And the free version has 64-bit support,
arare feat.
and although the Shrink
Volume let us set a new size
for the partition, the actual
shrinking procedure failed.
Fortunately, the free home
version of Partition Wizard 5
(www.partitionwizard.com)
succeeded where Windows’
built-in solution didn’t,
allowing us to shrink the parti-
tion on the disk and create a
new one in the freshly unallo-
cated space. Given that you're
attempting to shrink a system
partition on a RAID, though,
you should definitely defrag
the array and back up every-
thing beforehand; some RAID
controllers can be weird about
shrinking partitions, especially
on striped drives.
One final note: We ques-
tion the utility of dual-booting
Vista and Win 7. There's
almost no software that runs
on Vista but not Win7, and
Win7 is all-around better,
more stable, and more secure.
Dual-booting is useful if
you're running two totally
different operating systems
(say a Linux partition and a
Windows partition), but we’re
not sure why you d need to
boot into Vista at all, once you
have Win7.
Playback Sucks
Irecently purchased a Sony
Handycam HDR-CX150.
It records in full 1080p
HD and saves the files in
-m2ts format. When I first
transfer these files from the
cam to the computer and
play the .m2ts files on my
Sony software, the video is
clear, crisp, and looks the
way I think full HD video
should look. But .m2ts won’t
play on any media player
on my computer except
VLC Player, and then the
quality is horrible—it tears
and won't play right. Sol
am forced to convert it toa
full HD H.264 file or some-
thing of the same quality. I
have tried every converter
program from HandBrake
to AVS Video Converter.
I don’t care about cost or
hard drive space; I just want
to know if there is any way
to convert my full HD .m2ts
files to a format that will
not lose any, or barely any,
video quality. I don’t care if
the output file is larger than
the input file! I have 12TB
of storage between my com-
puter and server. I’m using
a 2.66GHz Core i7-920
SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First,
grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has
fizzled, email the doctor at doctorfamaximumpc.com for advice on how to solve
your technological woes.
um
Lİ D 0 C T 0 E IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT A TİME
overclocked to 3.7GHz, a
Radeon HD 4890, and 6GB of
DDR3; I don’t think my hard-
ware is the problem.
—Christopher Basquit
Christopher, the opinion of the
Maximum PC staff is that rather
than try to re-encode your .m2ts
files and potentially lose out
on that sweet HD goodness,
you should invest in a media
player that handles .m2ts files
with ease, like the latest ver-
sions of InterVideo WinDVD
or CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra.
That way you won't lose any
of the quality of the original.
Unfortunately, Spencer, there
are very few applications that
are currently able to use the
memory bandwidth available
on today’s PCs. That’s mainly
the result of Intel’s very efficient
and very large on-die caches.
These large caches were spe-
cifically designed to ameliorate
bandwidth bottlenecks.
In fact, if you were to run
your system in single-channel
mode instead of dual-channel
(and effectively gut your
bandwidth), you’d be unlikely
to see a difference in the
vast majority of games and
apps you use. Only synthetic
DOES WIN7 THINK PEOPLE
SHOULDN'T HAVE MORE
THAN ONE, OR MORE THAN
ONE TYPE OF, BURNER?
Incidentally, .m2ts is a container
format just like mkv; the under-
lying video codec can vary. And
the reason VLC seizes up when
you try to play HD .m2ts files is
that the player lacks GPU accel-
eration—although the recent 1.1
preview build supports it.
Yet Another RAM
Timing Question
Can you please explain to me
this idea of the front-side bus
and memory timings being
the same speed? This doesn’t
make any sense to me. I have
an EVGA 750i FTW board, a
2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600
running at 333MHz FSB,
or 1,333MHz effective, for
3GHz, two EVGA GeForce
GTX 260 cards, and 8GB of
OCZ Gold 1,066MHz. I had the
memory set (all “unlinked”)
to 1,066MHz at 5-7-7-18 28,
2T @ 2.15 V. Several forums
on OC’ing the Q6600 recom-
mended an 800MHz speed, so
now I have the memory set to
800, 5-6-6-16 26, 2T @ 2.1 V.
Tdon”t see any real difference
in performance. Should 1066
not be faster than 800? What
is the story, Doc?
—Spencer Taylor
memory tests such as SiSoft
Sandra or Everest would show
you that your RAM at higher
clock speeds is actually giv-
ing you increased bandwidth.
You should also keep in mind
that it looks like the PC2-8500
OCZ Gold Edition has rated
timings of 5-6-6-18 (CAS-
TRCD-TRP-TRAS) at 2.1 volts
when run at 1,066MHz. You
were actually running relaxed
timings initially. By running
at 800MHz, you can probably
run even tighter timings than
you tried. However, the Doctor
must again note that you'll
probably see only very slight
performance improvements, if
you see any at all.
RAM Preventing
Wakeup?
Doc, I have a 2-year-old Dell
XPS 720. It has a 2.4GHz
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, a
GeForce 8800 GT, and runs
on Windows XP. It shipped
with two 1GB DIMMs. A few
months ago, I decided to
upgrade to four 1GB DIMMs. I
bought the RAM from Crucial.
The machine boots and shows
the correct amount of RAM
and runs great. My problem
18 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
is coming back from a sleep
or hibernate state. The PC’s
hard drive just spins and
nothing happens. If Itake out
one DIMM, it will boot right
up. I can shut it off, replace
the fourth stick of RAM and
it comes right up. It doesn’t
matter which stick I remove
or what slots they are in. I’ve
updated the video drivers and
BIOS but it didn’t make any
difference. Any ideas?
—Jim Leiferman
While running greater than
4GB of RAM with Windows
XP is known to cause hiberna-
tion issues, the Doc's uncer-
tain about the cause of your
problem. The sad fact is, you
could write an entire book
troubleshooting hibernation
and sleep issues in Windows
XP. When you add RAM, your
hiberfil.sys file will grow in size
to match the amount of RAM
you have. Your page file may
also increase in size. If you are
running particularly tight on
hard drive space, this could be
the source of your issue. It’s a
little hard to follow what you
did, but you didn’t actually
add RAM to the machine while
it was hibernated, did you?
Adding RAM to Windows XP
while in hibernation would
likely induce strange results
with the OS. If you Te just ready
to give up on trying to figure
this out, the compromise might
be to run just 3GB of RAM
instead of 4GB. Since 32-bit
Windows XP cannot gener-
ally access more than 3.5GB of
RAM, you won't be giving up
too much by losing that one
DIMM. The lost memory band-
width is also unlikely to impact
performance very much, either.
Persnickety Second
DVD Drive
Ihave a problem with my sec-
ond DVD drive: Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn’t.
My system is a home-built
Biostar TA790GXB A2+ moth-
erboard with an AMD Athlon
II X2 250 running at 3GHz, a
GeForce GTS 250 videocard,
8GB of RAM, two 500GB
Hitachi hard drives, and
Windows 7 32-bit, with all the
required updates installed.
There is also an LG CH08LS10
SATA Blu-ray ray drive
(assigned drive F by Windows)
Now to the problem:
drive E. Sometimes it runs,
sometimes it doesn’t, and
there is no rhyme or reason
to it. Sometimes it starts fine,
recognizing DVDs or CDs and
burning DVDs and CDs as
necessary, and runs well all
day. Sometimes it starts and
won't even recognize any CD
or DVD (to read or to burn) I
put in it—and won't all day.
Originally, I had installed
an LG SATA DVD drive. When
it acted up as described above,
Ireplaced it with a BenQ DW
1640 from my old computer.
It’s an IDE drive. Same thing
happened. No problem with
the Blu-ray drive.
So, there you have it. Two
different drives, using differ-
ent controllers on the mother-
board but malfunctioning the
same way. Any ideas? Does
Win7 think people shouldn’t
have more than one, or more
than one type of, burner? Is
there some jumper I should
be moving or software setting
I’m missing? Did I just find a
Win7 bug?
—Rick Thompson
The Doctor is stumped as
well, Rick. We don’t know
of Windows 7 having any
problems supporting multiple
optical drives. You’ve clearly
done all the obvious trouble-
shooting by trying different
drives, cables, and controllers,
so faulty hardware doesn't
seem to be the issue. You didn’t
mention whether you're run-
ning any drive-cloning or
virtualization software, but if
you are, we’d recommend you
uninstall it. Othervvise, you
mighttry updating your BIOS,
or as alastresort, reinstalling
the OS to see ifthatremedies
the problem. (0)
HIGH-PERFORMANCE
UPGRADES..
ON THE CHEA
Upgrading your PC can be a head-spinning process.
Our Lab experts help you sort through the chaos with
18 products that won't break the bank sy tHe maximum PC STAFF
he art of the PC upgrade is simultane-
ously an expression and a test of one’s
diagnostic skills, computing savvy, and
fiscal sensibilities. Identify the bottle-
neck. Research the parts that will fix
the bottleneck. Remove the bottleneck.
As always, price and performance are the
pivot points. After all, you can’t just toss $1,000
at your system to level it up. Well, you can, but in
most cases you'd be a fool for doing so.
When the Maximum PC staff convened in
conference room Spock to plan this story, we de-
cided to establish some ground rules. First, we
challenged ourselves to stick to our theme of a
successful budget upgrade. This meant avoiding
the tendency to fall back on the most expensive,
22 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
best-of-breed components in each category.
Instead we forced ourselves to take a more
nuanced approach. In each category, we expended
considerable energy determining which product(s)
owned the sweet spot—top-left on the 2x2 grid if
you're graph-happy—of the price-performance ra-
tio. Staying consistent with our real-world theme,
we used real-world pricing from sites like New-
Egg and Amazon. Because we're talking about up-
grading an existing machine, you'll find no case or
mobo recommendations here.
Without further adieu, we happily present
the results of our research. Inside you'll find a
bevy of product recommendations that prove
you don t have to break the bank to achieve sub-
stantial gains in performance.
THESE COINS
CAN BE YOURS!
Tell us about your
best or worst PC
upgrading moment.
We're going to pick
the top 50 replies
and coin you. More
details at www.
maximumpc.com/
upgrade_contest.
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www.maximumpc.com | jut 2010 | MAXIMUMPE | 23
SOLID STATE DRIVE
40GB Intel X-25V
It’s easy to argue that a budget SSD doesn’t
actually exist. That said, a $125 solid state
drive can qualify as a budget upgrade in
some contexts—and only some of those
contexts involve recreational drugs.
Intel’s X-25V solid state drive (the V
stands for Value) doesn’t have the fastest
sustained write speeds (think 50MB/s, not
200MB/s), but its sustained read speeds top
150MB/s and its random-access writes are
v SSD FOR $125
V TRIM SUPPORT PREVENTS DEGRADATION
MECHANICAL DRIVE
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
In the old days, the prospective hard drive
buyer had to choose between high perfor-
mance and high capacity. Heck, if you’re
planning on upgrading, you probably don't
have either.
Fortunately, while solid state drives
have thoroughly usurped the highest end
of the performance spectrum, mechani-
cal drives still rule the capacity roost, and
they’re only getting faster. To wit: the 1TB
triple any of its peers’. This makes it perfect
as an OS drive, which relies more on reads
and writes than on sustained writes.
If you don’t mind keeping data on an
external drive or SD card, a 40GB Intel
X-25V can also offer a substantial speed
boost to the 5,400rpm drive on your net-
book or older laptop. And if you're moving
to Windows 7, the X-25V supports TRIM,
which will prevent performance degrada-
tion. $125 is a lot for a hard drive, but for
an SSD, it’s downright reasonable given
the performance bump you'll experience.
Give your
aging laptop
a kick in the pants
by replacing its hard drive
with an SSD.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12, which costs
just $80 and offers sustained read and
write speeds of over 100MB/s.
While it can’t match the speeds or
random-access times of WD’s VelociRap-
tor drives or SSDs, the 1TB Barracuda is
capacious enough for all your apps and
data—unless you're in the habit of ripping
Blu-ray discs, of course. So, if your OS drive
is getting long in the tooth (or just running
Speed and
capacity
unheard of
when you
out of room), moving to a 1TB Barracuda
7200.12 will buy you some breathing room
and a substantial speed boost.
V 1TB FOR $80 DEFINES BUDGET UPGRADE
v/ PERFECT SINGLE-DRIVE SOLUTION
OPTICAL DRIVE
samsung SH-BÜSS” “”ombo Drive
If you Te currently performing DVD chores
vvith a 16x burner, an upgrade to a higher
burn-speed rating is beyond cheap (shoot, our
current Best of the Best 22x Samsung SH-S223
is $20), but not all that satisfying in terms of
performance gains. VVith DVD media stuck at
16x, higher-rated drives only exceed that limit
when burning to discs of a particular brand.
And even then, you're looking at a time savings
“ of maybe a minute. Big whoop.
Instead, consider the benefits of upgrading
to a BD-ROM combo drive. You can get Sam-
sung’s SH-B083L for $100. It gives you the abil-
In our opinion,
a BD burner is still too pricey an upgrade for its
limited usefulness, but a BD ROM combo drive,
like Samsung's SH-BO83L, makes sense.
24 | MAXIMUM PG | JUL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
bought your
rig, now
yours for
less than
$100.
ity to enjoy HD Blu-ray movies on your newly
upgraded display, while still offering respect-
able 16x DVD+/-R write speeds. In our tests,
the SH-B083L's performance was on par with
the more expensive Plextor PX-B320SA (which
received a 9/Kick Ass verdict in December
2009) in everything but DVD ripping, where
the Samsung took 15:17 to copy a dual-layer
disc vs. 10:47.
V AFFORDABLE, SPEEDY BLU-RAY
PERFORMANCE
VIDEOCARD
ATI Radeon HD 5850
When it comes to videocards, you can count on today’s
$300 product being superior to the top-shelf product from
two generations back. That’s certainly the case with cards
based on the ATI Radeon HD 5850 GPU, which not only
deliver superb performance, but do so without requiring a
massive power supply.
What might it be replacing? If your gaming rig is three
years old and you invested in a high-end videocard, it
would have been based on Nvidia's 8800 GTX, and the card
alone would
have set you // HELLO, DIRECTX 11 GAMES!
back $600. V PERFECT REPLACEMENT FOR THE 8800 GTX
Besides cost-
DISPLAY
ing a fortune, that card required a massive heatsink and fan
and sucked power from two 6-pin power cables in addition
to what it drew from the PCI Express bus (165 watts in
total). That GPU boasted amazing performance at the time,
and it heralded the arrival of DirectX 10. Today, the card
is performance-limited with next-gen DX10 games and it
doesn’t support DX11 at all.
A Radeon HD 5850 card will deliver excellent
performance and should — viable for Yea to This IPS display
come—as long as you don’t upgrade to a 30-inch display. excelledlninün
At 1920x1200 resolution vvith antialiasing disabled, these Lab tests.
cards can run Crysis at 30fps. Boost AA to 4x and you'll
lose just four frames per second in a game that used to
bring even the highest-end GPUs to their knees. You'll fare
even better with other titles: Far Cry 2, for example, can z z
easily hit more than 60fps at 10001 Vi ewso n l C V P 2 3 6 5
Upgrading to the HD 5850 is a simple decision in other
ways, too: It’s 9.5 inches long, so it will fit in any case that Twisted Nematic LCD panels blow. After running
housed an 8800 GTX, and you won't need a new power through our DisplayMate, Blu-ray, and gaming gauntlet
supply. Lower price, excellent frame rates, and decreased of Lab tests, the TN displays we've reviewed retreated
power consumption—vvhats not to like? with their DVI cables tucked between their legs. So
what's a budget upgrader to do?
If you want our advice—and you do—pick up View-
_- “id Sonic’s VP2365wb. It’s a 23-inch IPS panel offering 8-bit
At $300, the Radeon "m ”? color depth. It’s equipped with a four-port USB hub and
HD 5850 is a great deal. a height-adjustable stand that tilts, rotates, and pivots.
And you can find it selling online for about 300 bucks.
You will encounter trade-offs: Although it’s mar-
keted as a “professional” monitor, its max resolution is
a consumer-ish 1920x1080. It’s dimmer than its pricier
competitors, and it doesn’t have an HDMI input. But in
Lab tests, we had no problem playing games or mov-
ies, and it’s a better photo-editing monitor than any TN
display we've tested.
Y IN-PLANE SWITCHING DISPLAY OFFERS
SUPERIOR IMAGE AND VIEWING QUALITY
www.maximumpc.com | jut 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 25
UPGRADES |
Belkin Play Router
Belkin has been hit or miss on the router front over the past few years,
but its Play router is a definite hit. Here’s a concurrent dual-band 802.11n
Belkin”s PL
router (it runs 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios simultaneously) with a virtual Meee ey
router is
guest network, a USB port that can share either a storage device or a loaded with
printer over the network, and very respectable throughput and range that nəə,
eatures,
sells for less than $100.
The router is self-healing, too. It automatically detects and attempts
to resolve network problems, and it will automatically reinitialize itself
on a weekly basis (you choose the day and time—or turn off the feature
if you don't like it). If that doesn’t deliver enough value for you, Belkin
also throws several applications into the mix. Memory Safe is a utility that
runs on your client PCs and automatically backs up whichever direc-
tories you designate to an external drive
attached to the router. Music Mover is an
including two
radios and the
ability to host
a virtual guest
network.
rə
UPnP- and DLNA-compliant media server. (RM
And Daily Dİ analyzes your music library
and automatically creates playlists based on one of three user-designated
moods: High Energy, Steady Groove, or Kick Back. We haven't used this
last feature long enough to have a solid opinion about it, but it wouldn't
detract from this router’s value even it if was unusable.
In fact, there $ just one feature we find wanting on the Play router: It
has a four-port 100Mb/s switch, versus a gigabit switch.
EEE RAM
The Real Question is: 4GB
or 6GB?
For budget buyers, it makes no sense to get caught up in the
It will keep
bandwidth wars that memory makers are waging today. The you regular.
truth is, unless you use applications with particularly high
bandwidth requirements, DDR3/1333 will work fine.
Ultimately, the amount of RAM you should run in a modern PC really
depends on your CPU. If you are running an AMD system with dual-chan-
nel DDR3, the minimum is 4GB. Likewise, if you are rolling a dual-chan-
nel Intel system, then 4GB should be in your sights. Intel systems with
tri-channel memory should run a minimum of 6GB of RAM. Anything
above 6GB is gravy.
Invariably, first-time upgraders want to know whose memory
to buy. Since RAM is generally a commodity component, our
guideline is to stick with known brands: Corsair, Crucial,
Kingston, OCZ, Patriot. No yellow-box memory, please.
The good news is that RAM prices seem to have
stabilized somewhat. We found 4GB of brand-
name DDR3 for $100 on the street, with 6GB of
brand-name DDR3/1333 in the $160 range.
YIMUMPG | suL 2010
www.maximumpc.com
g É
””
se Ol
RAM bran: ~ cəx
MOUSE AND KEYBOARD
POWER SUPPLY UNIT
Corsair 750TX
Picture a raft full of PC components. It'll take seven days
for the rescue boat to arrive, but only five days of food
and water remains. Who gets pushed off the raft first? The
GPU? The CPU? No way. They're first-class passengers.
The case? The lowly keyboard? Don’t kid yourself. The
power supply will be the first to go. Do you know why?
Because no one respects the power supply.
And sadly, that’s the strategy everyone takes when
they build a budget PC. We mean everyone. Hell, we've
even occasionally given the PSU short shrift when push
came to shove.
Fortunately, Corsairs 750TX is one component that
might force something else to swim with the sharks. (Yeah,
take that, mouse!) With a five-year warranty, a high power-
efficiency rating, and a single 62-amp rail, this PSU will
keep any budget PC running, even on those sweltering
Ra Z e r Abyss u S G a m i n g summer days when your components are broiling at 120
degrees. With a street price of $99 and SLI certification for
M o u se a n d M i C ros (0) ft dual GeForce GTX 470 cards, the 750TX strikes a good bal-
ance between budget and midrange. Sure, it lacks modular
S i d eWi n d e r X4 Keyb (0) a rd cables, but that just means you can’t misplace the cables.
v SLI CERTIFIED FOR DUAL GEFORCE
Basic mice and keyboards are commodity-priced goods, GTX 470 CARDS
available for as little as 10 dollars. They get the job done
just fine. But if you’re planning to do any gaming at all,
you owe it to yourself to upgrade to a gaming-grade
mouse and keyboard combo. This upgrade—one of the
The Razer
Abyssus and
Microsoft Sidewinder
XA: Lots of features for
surprisingly little dough.
cheapest you can make—may very well make the biggest No one respects
difference. the power supply.
Except us. And you
For a budget gaming mouse, we recommend the Razer
Abyssus ($30). Although it sits at the bottom of Razer’s
sizeable gaming lineup and lacks a few of the features we
appreciate in a mouse, such as thumb buttons, the Abyssus
will feel like a noticeable step up from any non-gaming
mouse. With ultra-tactile buttons, a 1,000Hz polling rate,
and a very-respectable 3,500dpi optical sensor, the Abyssus
should be more than responsive enough for all but the most
(hopefully).
hardcore gamers.
Our keyboard recommendation is Microsoft's Sidewinder
X4 ($50), which eschews some of the over-the-top bells and
whistles of its more expensive X6 sibling, but retains all the
features we really care about in a gaming keyboard. These
include anti-ghosting (which allows many simultaneous key
presses), programmable macro keys, and multiple profiles
that switch when you load a game. Physically, the keyboard's
a real beauty, and the extra-springy keys are a joy to use for
extended gaming or typing.
v/ 1,000HZ POLLING RATE = RESPONSIVE GAMING
v/ ANTI-GHOSTING KEYBOARD
28 MAXIMUM PG | JUL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
30
=
BUDG
UPGR
ET
ADES
SPEAKERS
Logitech Z523
Few things suck harder than cheap speakers—well, except maybe
cheap TN displays. So we have to wonder how Logitech manages
to sell the 2.1-channel Z523 speaker system for less than a hundred
bucks. Heck, we've seen them selling online for as little as $70!
4 Now, we'll be the first to admit that these puppies can’t compete with
HEADPHONES
MAXIMUMPG | su. 2010
Creative Fatal1ty HS-1000 USB
Headphones
At around $60, the Fa-
tal1ty HS-1000 headset
is hardly the cheapest on
the market, but it contains several features we
consider a must.
First, we like our gaming headsets to have
cans big enough to surround the ear, for maxi-
mum noise isolation and comfort. The HS-1000
fits the bill here, with large, oval cans and ample
foam padding. Second, we need a decent, ad-
justable mic—bonus points if it's removable, for
when we're not playing games. The Fatality gets
a gold star here, as well. Third, the set should
have some sort of in-line volume/mic control,
to make it easy to fine-tune your settings mid-
game. Creative's set has this as well.
Last and most importantly, for us to call any
gaming headset an “upgrade,” it has to actually
sound good. That means bass deep enough to let
www.maximumpc.com
v/ X-FI DRIVERS PRODUCE HIGH FIDELITY
v/ REMOVABLE MIC REDUCES GEEK FACTOR
V SURPRISINGLY RICH SOUND
V REAR-FACING DRIVERS = LARGE SWEET SPOT
the likes of BSW’s glorious MM-1 system, which we review on page 80,
but if you're seriously considering those bad boys, you aren't reading a
story about budget upgrades. The Z523 isn’t appropriate for critical lis-
tening, but it can fill a small room and it has an exceedingly large sweet
spot, thanks to the presence of a second driver mounted on the back
of the two satellite speakers. These rear-facing drivers bounce audio
waves off the wall behind them so that the sound arrives at your ears a
microsecond after they ve heard the front speakers.
The 40-watt amp in the subwoofer sends 9.5 watts to the two-inch
full-range dome drivers in the satellites and 21 watts into a four-inch
down-firing subwoofer, which is
augmented by a six-inch side-facing
pressure driver. There an input for a
digital media player, and separate vol-
ume controls for stereo and for bass,
so you can crank the lows for gaming.
Lastly, there’s a headphone jack for
those times when you d prefer to rock
out in private.
It’s hard to believe Logitech’s 2523
speakers cost just $70.
you really feel each
exploding frag gre-
nade, and highs that
let you hear the bullets whizzing past your head.
This category is what makes the HS-1000 really
shine as a budget headset, thanks in large part to
Creative's excellent X-Fi drivers, which emulate
the functions of a full-fledged X-Fi soundcard,
including EAX effects and simulated sur-
round sound.
You could go cheaper, and you could
certainly go more expensive, but we think
that the Creative Fatality HS-1000 hits the
budget sweet-spot: strong performance at
an amazing price.
Creative’s X-Fi drivers emulate
the functions of a full-fledged
X-Fi soundcard.
T———— ——---—
CPU Upgrades
Does it make sense to upgrade your CPU today? What’s the sweet spot for price
and performance? And how about Intel’s LGA? 7? 5? Answers below!
When it’s time to pep up an old PC, the
CPU is usually the first candidate that
springs to mind. By leveraging microar-
chitecture changes, larger cache sizes,
and additional cores from a new chip,
you can turn that tired old dog into a
prancing pony.
At least, that’s always been the
promise of a CPU upgrade. While we're
certainly champions of the value of a fast
processor, we're also the first to admit
that the CPU is not always the most
severe bottleneck holding you back. So
before we weigh in on the intricacies of
which CPU you should upgrade to and
how to form a logical upgrade plan, here
are a few reasons why you should think
THE GPU-CPU DIVIDE
You're familiar with the not-so-quiet
war between the GPU and CPU crowds
these days, right? While both factions
seem quite happy to float big, fat stink-
ing lies about the other on occasion,
we generally agree that if your PC
suffers from low frame rates in games,
investing in a bigger GPU will usually
be more impactful in delivering higher
frame rates and a better gaming experi-
ence. This is especially true for those
of us who play games at resolutions of
1920x1200 or higher.
This doesn’t mean the CPU is worth-
less in gaming. You probably won't be
happy with the performance you get
by pairing a Radeon HD 5970 witha
it if
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high-clocked dual-core in the 3GHz or
higher range, although the new baseline
you should shoot for is a tri- or quad-
core processor in the 2.5GHz or greater
range for gaming. More on that later.
LOW RAM? FULL HARD DRIVE?
BE WARNED!
Other scenarios to consider before
upgrading your CPU are instances when
you have abnormally low amounts of
system RAM or a particularly full hard
drive. If you Te running 2GB or less
memory on a modern OS, strongly con-
sider moving to 4GB. And sure, that hard
drive may have been fast when it was
an empty 1TB vessel, but at 80 percent
capacity, it will read and write much
slower because the heads have to grab
data from the inner portions of the plat-
ter. In this case, buying a secondary hard
drive and migrating data files to the new
drive will improve overall performance
more than a new chip.
HOW TO PICK ’EM
OK, let’s get down to it. When weigh-
ing your own chip upgrade, when is the
right time to pull the trigger?
Within the same family of chips,
adding clock speed will normally
give you corresponding performance
benefits. For example, upgrading from
a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 to a 3GHz
Core 2 Duo E6850 will give you roughly
a 25 percent boost in application perfor-
mance. With this in mind, you should
ask yourself if its worth buying a $180
CPU for a 25 percent lift.
If you run multithreaded apps such
as encoders, RAW file converters, or 3D
modeling, you'll see the biggest perfor-
mance gain by adding extra CPU cores.
Upgrading from a dual-core 2.93GHz
Core i3-530 to a 2.93GHz Core i7-870,
for example, can yield a 100 percent
increase in threaded app performance.
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 31
UPGRADES
Since we’re working under the pa-
rameters of an upgrade story, we'll skip
major overhauls, such as moving from
a Core 2 Duo E6700 on the LGA775
to a Core i7-930. Such an undertak-
ing requires a new motherboard, new
RAM, a new heatsink—and well, just
about new everything. We're going to
stick with upgrades that work within a
certain platform.
Intel’s premium socket has never really
been your budget buddy. Mother-
boards that support it demand a price
premium over other Intel platforms and
also require buying three sticks of RAM
instead of two. Still, Intel’s original
2.66GHz Core i7-920 has always been
a rocking deal, and its replacement, the
$300 2.8GHz Core i7-930, is our first
choice as a step up.
If you’re looking for a higher-end
upgrade, we recommend passing on In-
| (ME cPUCOOLER
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
tel’s $500 3.2GHz Core i7-960. Assuming
that the Internet rumors are correct, it
makes more sense to wait for the 3.2GHz
Core i7-970 successor, which will allow
you to make the jump to a hexa-core
processor. The i7-970 is expected to re-
lease as early as the end of this summer.
The price is unknown, but we expect it
to cost around $500-$550.
Other than this, there’s not much
more maneuvering room on Intel’s
LGA1366 platform for budget-minded
shoppers. Lets move on.
The LGA1156 is Intel’s real budget plat-
form. On the top end, the 2.93GHz Core
i7-870 on LGA1156 is so fast that, until
the hexa-core Core i7-980x was intro-
duced, it was hard for us to justify even
considering LGA1366 processors at all.
If you originally built a machine
using the dual-core 2.93GHz Core i3-530
and you're finding that this $113 chip
The CM Hyper 212 Plus quite epitomizes the “budget upgrade”
concept. It requires minimal investment ($30 and half an hour) but
can yield big returns for nearly any system. Skeptical? So were we.
The Hyper 212 Plus is a CPU cooler with direct-contact heat pipes,
which give it excellent performance for its size. It’s one of the best
air coolers we've ever tested: On our test bed, it cooled a stock-
clocked Q6700 at 100 percent CPU utilization down to just 43 C—an
18 C difference from Intel's stock heatsink.
But why bother upgrading your CPU cooler at all? For the
clocks, of course. Overclocking your CPU is the cheapest way to
squeeze more performance out of your rig, but overclocked chips
put out more heat. By getting a better cooler, you can sustain
higher overclocks. Given that the Hyper 212 Plus can install on
virtually any socket, performs better than any other air cooler
vve”ve tested, and only costs $30, it’s one of the best things you
can do for your PC.
32 | MANIMUMPG | suv 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
doesn’t have the pep for your video
encoding or content-creation needs, the
sweet spot in the LGA1156 category for
budget buyers is the 2.8GHz Core i7-860.
At $284, this gives you a Hyper-Threaded
quad-core processor. In terms of perfor-
mance, upgrading to the Core i7-860 cut
the time it took us to encode video from
an iPhone in HandBrake by 51 percent,
and RAW conversion for still photos was
cut by as much as 84 percent.
If $284 is too rich for your blood,
our next pick is Intel’s Core i5-750.
With this $200 CPU, you lose Hyper-
Threading, but retain Turbo Boost.
Again, compared to the Core i3-530,
your HandBrake encodes would be cut
by 40 percent and RAW conversions by
40 percent. Generally speaking, gaming
performance with the Core i5-750 is
also much improved.
So what to do if you already have
a Core i5-750 or Core i7-860? The next
step up is the stellar (albeit pricier)
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— —————ı
2.93GHz Core i7-870
chip. This CPU is slovver
than Intel’s $1,000
Core i7-975 Extreme
Edition but not by as
much as you”d expect
from a chip costing half
the price. One thing to
keep in mind: Internet
chatter indicates a
potential replacement
for the Core i7-870 in
coming months. Dubbed
the Core i7-880, this new chip is said to
clock in at 3.06GHz with Turbo Boost
pushing it as high as 3.73GHz. Expected
to sell at the same $550 price point as
the Core i7-870, it’s probably worth
waiting a few months for.
AM2+/AM3 PICKS
The AM2+/AM3 platform is a glorious
playground for upgrading. Because this
platform allows anything from power-
conserving dual-core CPUs to six-core
chips on the same motherboard, it’s
difficult to pinpoint a single baseline
CPU that most upgrades will be coming
from. So instead, we'll give you a range
of top picks.
If you're upgrading from dual-core
and living on a tight budget, the quad-
core 2.8GHz Athlon II 630 is our choice.
At $99, it’s a steal and leaves its dual-
core siblings in the dust.
The real steal, however, are AMD’s
new six-core processors. The hexa-core
3.2GHz Phenom II X6 1090T sells for
less than $300 and the 2.8GHz Phenom
II X6 1055T is going for $200. At those
prices, this is a no-brainer upgrade,
particularly given that with Intel, you're
going to have to fork over $1,000 to get
six cores.
Are AMD’s hexa-cores capable
of slaying their equivalently priced Intel
counterparts? Yes and no. The Phenom
II X6 1090T aced Intel’s $562 Core i7-
870 in some of our Lab tests involving
heavily multithreaded apps. However,
in most other applications, the top-end,
$300 hexa-core AMD chip had a tough
time beating even the $200 Core i5-750.
OUR PICKS
INTEL
Ultimately, since you can’t
buy the Intel chip without
buying a new board, CPU
cooler, and practically re-
building your system from
scratch, the comparison is
moot. The takeaway is this:
At $300, the Phenom II X6
1090T is a great upgrade
for this platform.
LGA775 PICKS
We've long considered In-
tel’s LGA775 platform to be a non-starter.
Intel hasn't introduced anything new for
it in a year. The chipmaker also hasn't cut
prices on LGA775 chips enough to keep
them competitive with AMD or even its
own Core 33 parts. İn many ways, these
CPUs are simply not competitive with
anything on the market today. Add the
mish-mash of incompatible chipsets and
motherboards to the mix and it’s clearly
time to bail on LGA775.
Despite all this, the LGA775 con-
tinues to make up the majority of new
desktop PC sales thanks mostly to bot-
tom-feeder boxes. So what do you do
if you happen to have an LGA775 box
that you're itching to upgrade? First,
make sure you can upgrade it at all. If
you have an old nForce 680i machine,
for example, you probably cannot run
a 45nm Core 2 Quad chip. (Thank you,
Nvidia and Intel.)
Most of the lift you’re going to get
on the LGA775 will come from moving
to quad-core. There, you'll get the best
bang for your buck from the 2.83GHz
Core 2 Quad Q9500. At $183, it resides
squarely within the budget-minded
price-performance sweet spot. We don’t
think the 3GHz Core 2 Quad Q9650
makes much sense at $316, but when
you consider that the 3GHz Core 2
Extreme Q9650 cost $1,000 a few years
ago, you might want to do it just for
bragging rights. But you have to ask
yourself: Does it make sense to buy a
new chip for a platform that’s a dead
man walking when a new platform and
a Core i3 or Phenom II will deliver a lot
more power for your money? (5)
EE” CPU UPGRADE CHECKLIST
What To Do
Before Svvapping
Your Proc
Don’t be that guy. You know, the rookie who
commits the cardinal sin of buying a non-
returnable CPU just because it fits the same
socket as his motherboard. That’s something
that will end in tears. Follow this quick list
before you buy any upgrade CPU.
FM Yes, read the frakking manual and
Á | motherboard maker's website to find out
h CPUs will work on your board. If it’s not
listed, there’s a good chance it just won’t work
no matter how much you wish that it would.
‘Update the BIOS ok, you ve deter-
that the shiny new CPU will work on
ard. Before you install the new chip and
oot though, make sure you update the BIOS.
Otherwise, you'll have to put the old chip in just
to update the BIOS to POST your new chip.
ss Your Cooling if you just went
fr dual-core CPU to a six-core CPU, that
(Sisheatsink might not get the job done any-
more. Think ahead. Be prepared to meet your
[porescad canlina naade
—
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 33
THE POWER
OF
AMD’s new Thuban
hexa-core CPUs
come out swinging
with prices that belie
their size
BY GORDON MAH UNG
If we’ve learned anything from years of watching action
movies, it’s that you never, ever count out the underdog.
Such is the case with perennial underdog AMD.
Bloodied, beaten, and bruised by months and months
of Intel chips that outpaced its parts, AMD isn’t giving up.
Instead, it’s hitting back with its own hexa-core CPUs and
doing everything just short of yelling yippie kai-yay!
And now for the shocker: These hexa-core CPUs are
affordable. Hell, one of the parts is practically budget-
priced. Intel’s high-flying hexa-core Core i7-980X is
$1,000. Contrast that with AMD”s new 3.2GHz Phenom II
Xö 1090T at $295. Want more? The 2.8GHz Phenom II Xö
1055T costs $200. Yes, $200 for a hexa-core processor.
So, yippie kai-yay motherfrakker, indeed!
AMD’S TOP PROCS COMPARED
Phenom II X6 1090T
Phenom II Xö 1055T
ix
Want even more good news? AMD's new chip will
be backward compatible with the vast sea of AM3, and
even older AM2+, motherboards out there. We're quite
glad to hear this, because at one point the company told
us it planned to jettison DDR2 support, which would
have cut off the AM2+ folks. Fortunately, the company
changed its mind and both new chips include DDR3 and
DDR2 support.
Just like with those Hollywood action movies,
this story wouldn't be complete without an element of
suspense: Are AMD's Phenom II X6 processors capable
of whipping Intel's similarly priced quad-cores, or even
its $1,000 wonder, the Core i7-980X? To find out, you”re
going to have to read on.
d
- i
Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Athlon II X4 630
CODE-NAME Thuban Thuban Deneb Propus
CLOCK SPEED 3.26Hz 2.86Hz 3.AGHz : 2.86Hz
TURBO SPEED 3.66Hz 3.36Hz N/A : N/A
CORES 5 6 4 : 4
L2 CACHE 3MB : 3MB 2MB : 2MB
L3 CACHE 6MB : 6MB 6MB : N/A
SOCKET AM3/AM2+ AM3/AM2+ AM3/AM2+ : AM3/AM2+
TDP 125 watts 125 watts 125 watts 95 watts
PROCESS 45nm 45nm 45nm 45mm
DIE SIZE 346mm? 346mm? 258mm? 169mm?
TRANSISTOR COUNT 904 million* : 904 million” 758 million : 300 million
PRICE $295 : $200 $185 : $100
*Transistor count not released. Figure is derived from AMD's hexa-core Opteron part.
36 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
IOR DM:
al.
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 37
THUBAN
UNDER THE HOOD OF
AMD’S PHENOM II X6
In many ways, AMD’s new Phenom
II X6 isn’t all that different from the
Phenom II X4 processors. Both chips
are built on a 45nm process, have the
same 125-vvatt TDP rating, and feature
the same microarchitecture. Of course,
the Phenom II X6 is far larger than a
Phenom II X4. A typical Phenom II X4
is 258mm”. The Phenom II X6 is about
40 percent larger at 346mm?”. Oddly,
AMD wouldn't disclose the transistor
TURBO CORE OVERCLOCKS
THREE OF THE CORES IN
THE CPU WHEN THREADING
LOADS ARE LIGHT
count of the Phenom II X6, but we’d
guess its the same or pretty close to
the hexa-core Opteron 2435 at 904
million. On the surface, it would appear
that AMD just took a Phenom II X4 and
glued on two more cores. It’s not quite
that simple, though. The L2 cache of the
new chip remains at 512KB per core.
The 6MB of L3 cache is also the same as
İMİ MOBO MATTERS
the older quad-core. That’s actually a
reduction, since the 6MB of L3 is shared
among six execution cores instead of
just four. Whether that plays into the
performance of the chip isn’t yet clear.
But AMD has introduced some other
changes to boost performance.
TURBO BOOST, MEET
TURBO CORE
AMD's top-end Phenom II X6 1090T
has a lower clock than the Phenom
II X4 965 BE, but AMD makes up
for that, and addresses the lack of
applications and games optimized
for six cores, by introducing a new
Turbo Core mode. Turbo Core over-
clocks three of the cores in the CPU
when threading loads are light. The
1090T will Turbo Core from 3.2GHz
to 3.6GHz, and the 1055T will Turbo
Core from 2.8GHz to 3.3GHz. The
mode is transparent to the OS and
works without the need for drivers.
It’s also not as discriminatory as Intel’s
similar Turbo Boost, where apps that
hit only one core get more of a boost
than apps that hit two or three. AMD
said its tests show that the biggest
benefits come from the three-core
Make Way for the 890FX Chipset
With the new chip, AMD is also introducing a new chipset series:
the 8 series. The top chipset from AMD is the 890FX, which will
replace the 7
Intel counter)
2.0 lanes the
supports. On
problems we
into with the
is the lack of
PCI-E lanes t
from USB 3.0
6 drives. Witt
motherboard
ing two GPUs
x16 PCI-E slo
handcuff the
38 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL
increase in games and apps that have
not been optimized for four or more
quads. Folks who want to mess with
overclocking limits and ratios for
Turbo Core can do so using AMD’s
OverDrive utility.
KEEPING THINGS
COMPATIBLE
AMD's strength has been its ability
to make new chips work in older
motherboards. In the three years that
Socket AM2+ has been out, Intel has
retired Socket 775 and introduced
two new sockets that are incompat-
ible with each other. That AMD can
get its newest Phenom II X6 to work
in older AM2+ boards (and probably
even a few AM2 boards, too) is a
testament to good planning. The only
limiting factor for upgraders with the
new Phenom II X6 is likely a board’s
thermals: The mobo must support
125-watt processors for the user to
expect long-term reliability. BIOS
updates will also be required, but
AMD says that at launch, no fewer
than 160 boards will have BIOS
updates available to support the
Phenom II X6.
of USB 3.0 and SATA 6 devices. Not all boards are affected, but
most are. With 42 PCI-E 2.0 lanes available in the 890FX chipset,
ther devices
without being constrained. Compare that to Intel’s P55 chipset
the CPU and
as in the P55
5B850 south
for six devices.
g from the
.0. Most board
"s are instead
integrating
NEC control-
lers to add
the feature.
As always, this is where the rubber
meets the road, and to get a good feel
for where Phenom II X6 1090T stands,
we compared it to a spate of chips,
including the $282 2.8GHz Core
i7-860, the $200 2.66GHz Core i7-750,
the $195 3.4GHz Phenom II X4 965
Black Edition, and, of course, the $1,000
3.33GHz Core i7-980X.
We used identical GeForce GTX
280 cards in all of our test platforms,
along with the same graphics drivers.
For the Athlon testing, we used the new
MSI 890-FXA GD70 motherboard. A
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 powered the
LGA1156 parts, and an Asus P6X58D
Premium handled the chore for the
LGA1366 procs. All of the dual-channel
boards used 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM,
El HM THURBAN UP CLOSE
Inside the Phenom Il X6
while the triple-channel boards had
6GB of DDR3/1333. Windows 7 Profes-
sional and matched 150GB Western
Digital Raptor 150 drives were used in
all the platforms.
For benchmarks, we ran more than
two dozen tests to find the strengths and
weaknesses of AMD’s new chips. The
results are interesting, to say the least.
In general, more cores mean better per-
formance with multithreaded encoders
and nonlinear editors, but there’s more
to the story than cores. Phenom II X6
chips continue to feature a three-issue
execution core vs. the Core i3/5/7
We match the Phenom II X6 up against Intel’s best and brightest
processors’ four-issue execution core.
Against its natural competitor, the
similarly priced 2.8GHz Core i7-860,
the 1090T is at a big disadvantage, with
encoding times in both Premiere Pro
CS3 and Sony Vegas Pro 9 taking about
22 percent longer. HandBrake saw the
1090T do a little better, but AMD’s hexa-
core was still about 14 percent slower
than Intel’s quad. The closest the 1090T
came to that chip was in our MainCon-
cept Reference encoding challenge.
The 1090T does a lot better against the
Core i5-750, which doesn’t have the
advantage of HyperThreading, but is
also $100 cheaper.
This is where the Phenom X6 1090T
shines the brightest. The 1090T aces
both the Core i5-750 and Core i7-860
in Cinebench 10 and 11.5, and POV
Ray 3.7. It even manages to outpace the
$562 Core i7-870 in POV Ray and Cine-
bench 11.5. For cheap 3D modeling,
Phenom II X6 is the go-to chip.
We saw hit-or-miss results here. Against
the Core i7-860, the 1090T was faster in
our Adobe Lightroom file-conversion
test by a healthy 10 percent, but it got
blitzed in our ProShow Producer slide
show-creation test by 17 percent. Photo-
shop CS3 also saw the 1090T trailing by
about 5.4 percent. In the heavily multi-
threaded Bibble 5.02, we saw both chips
on equal terms, with the 1090T trailing
just slightly by 2 percent. As you'd ex-
pect, the 1090T did much better against
the Core i5-750 and much worse against
the Core i7-870. We guess, as they say,
you gotta punch your weight.
AMD’s new Thuban core is essentially the Istanbul core used in the Opteron 2435. Packing
roughly 904 million transistors, the monolithic core has controllers for both DDR2 and DDR3
embedded in it. While the Opteron that it’s derived from has up to four HyperTransport links
for multiprocessor configurations, Thuban uses just one HT link to connect to the chipset.
The 1090T actually has the highest mem-
ory bandwidth of the AMD CPUs, but all
40 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
three Lynnfield parts and the two LGA1366
CPUs leave the 1090T behind. One thing to
keep in mind: Memory bandwidth is ap-
parently not the end-all, be-all as the Core
i7-980X has only mediocre bandwidth yet
is still the faster processor here.
GAMING
The area where the 1090T was most disap-
pointing was gaming. Against the Core
i7-860, we saw the 1090T trail by double
digits in Far Cry 2, World In Conflict,
Resident Evil 5, and the Valve Particle Test.
The best that the 1090T did was in Dirt 2,
where it beat the Core i7-860 by 28 percent.
However, we suspect that our Core i7-860
score is the result of an error on our part as
it doesn’t line up with how the Core i5-750
and Core i7-870 performed. Also, keep
in mind that we run our tests at very low
resolutions. At normal gaming resolutions
of 1920x1200, the performance really
shifts to GPU-land, and you would find the
margins closing up to the point where the
CPU simply doesn’t matter that much to the
average gamer. The gaming margins would
really only apply on a multi-GPU rig.
We didn’t promise you an action-hero
ending and you Te not getting one. In the
performance story, it’s a mixed message.
For the most part, Intel’s Hyper-Threaded
quad-cores still have the edge. However,
Phenom II X6 gets far closer than AMD
has been of late. AMD fans may be a little
disappointed that the X6 doesn’t spank
the equivalent Intel parts, but there’s still
a lot of good here. The Phenom II X6 has
a great price, it’s probably compatible
with the board you have in your machine
now, and it gives you six cores.
It may not be the happy ending some
were looking for, but think of it like the
end of Empire Strikes Back. Sure, Luke
got his hand cut off, Vader is his pops,
and Han got frozen in carbonite, but
maybe, just maybe, better things are
coming on the horizon. (İ)
BENCHMARKS
: : : : : 3.33GHZ :
; : : : : CORE 2
3.26HZ 5 3.AGHZ i 2.666HZ : 2.86HZ " 2.93GHZ 17-975 £ 3.336HZ
PHENOM 1 PHENOM : CORE : CORE : CORE : EXTREME : CORE
X61090T 11 X4 965 BE : 15-750 17-860 £ 17-870 : EDITION : 17-980X
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) 749 : 780 i 615 : 581 : 539 5 504 : 453
Sony Vegas Pro 9.0c (sec) 5,010 $ 5,990 i 4,899 İ 3,863 : 3,531 7: 5 2,675
HandBrake DVD to iPhone İsec) 1,580 $ 2,348 $ 1,702 7 1,360 £ 1,247 İ 1170 1
MainConcept 1.6 (sec) 2,816 £ 3,286 : 3,092 : 2,735 : 2,486 : 2,308 5 1,827
Cinebench 10 64-bit 17,892 7 14,282 $ 14,455 İ 17,516 İ 19,197 m : 27,479
Cinebench 11.5 64-bit 5.67 $ 4.00 : 3.83 : 5.15 : 5.54 Iİ 599 İ 892
POV Ray 3.7 4,656.5 £ 3,313 : 2,810 : 3,883 : 4,497 | 4,236 5 6,557
Photoshop CS3 (sec) 30 EE 118 İ 123 : 100 5 94 5 89
Adobe Lightroom 2.6 (sec) 426 Í 548 : 603 : 469 : 422 İ 418 İ 419
ProShow Producer 4 (sec) 669 £ 1912 1,425 1,382 $ 1,290 5 1,208 5 1,092
Bibble 5.02 (sec) 45 5 202 : 186 İ 142 IZ 5 120 : 97.2
PCMark Vantage 64-bit Overall 7,481 İ 6,811 7 8,504 : 8,903 : 9,120 : 9,260 10,470
Fritz Chess Benchmark (KiloNodes/s) 11,219 £ 8,196 : 8,407 : 10,997 11,995 $ 12,738 £ 12,733
Valve Map Compilation (sec) 32 5 126 5 110 P 116 : 106 5 100 | 99
Everest Ultimate MEM Copy (MB/s) 1,043 $ 10,083 $ 15,445 $ 15,372 $ 14,693 EE 13,086
Everest Ultimate MEM Latency (ns) 51.6 : 55.2 i 54.3 İ 49.5 : 52.5 5575 5 613
SiSoft Sandra RAM Bandwidth (GB/s) 3 12 5 17 517 577 IN) : 20
3DMark Vantage CPU 44,587 41,796 | 44,594 7 46,064 $ 48,816 İ 51,321 Iİ 62,893
Valve Particle test (fps) 20 zı sü İ 148 İ 159 £ 174 £ 259
Resident Evil 5 low-res İfpsi 00.3 F 91.6 : 110.3 $ 115.9 i 1266 5 130.7 5 13411
World in Conflict low-res (fps) 62 I : 256 253 E Hn 358
Dirt 2 low-res (fps) 21 : 174.8 : 155 94 : 153.3 5 157 5 155.7
Far Cry 2 low-res (fps) 99 : 1012 $ 146.53 : 150.2 £ 153.3 158.2 : 158.6
C
Best scores are bolded. The Core i7-870, Core i7-975 Extreme Edition, and Core i7-980X are shown for comparison only and are not weighted in determining the winner.
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 41
/.maxımumpc.com
4G IllIIIIIIII. JuL 2010 | www
Take everything you think you know about displays and
throw it out the window. It’s time for a clinic on what display
specs really mean—brace yourself for the alarming truth
BY DR. RAYMOND SONEIRA
CREATOR OF THE DISPLAYMATE TESTING SUITE
Vision is our most amazing and complex sense,
so it’s no surprise that display technology is so
amazing and complicated. It’s also no surprise that
most consumers don’t have a good understanding
of how displays function, or the best way to select
them, buy them, use them, and adjust them.
Not only are displays getting more compli-
cated and harder to understand, but the com-
petition between manufacturers has gotten so
brutal that marketing gimmicks—ploys that
exploit the average consumer's technical igno-
rance—are playing an increasing role in driv-
ing sales. The goal of this article is to point out
and explain some of the most important myths,
misconceptions, and misunderstandings about
display technology. Much of what you’re going to
read is like the classic tale of The Emperor’s New
Clothes. What you ve been told about the latest
and greatest thing really isn’t there, or better, or
meaningful, or even visible.
In the following pages, I’m going to discuss
user controls, contrast ratios, pixel response
time, and color gamut. These topics comprise
just a portion of what a savvy consumer needs
to know, so we'll be addressing other confusing
display topics in future issues of the magazine
and on MaximumPC.com. But for now, let’s just
start our journey with what should be the best
question to ask before buying a new display:
“What are the most important manufacturer
specs to compare?” Unfortunately, the answer is
none, because they’re all exaggerated market-
ing specs rather than objective scientific specs.
The only specs that are useful and meaningful
are those in reviews that evaluate every display
with the same consistent methodology—like the
reviews in Maximum PC.
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 45
DISPLAY MYTHS
Confusing
Users
with User
Controls
One reason why most consumers don’t
understand their monitors and TVs is
because some of the most important user
controls have misleading and technically
incorrect names. No wonder folks can’t
figure out how to adjust them. In fact, they
misadjust them, and then usually just leave
them misadjusted permanently. Here are
some highlights—well, lowlights really—
of inane user-control engineering.
WHEN BRIGHTNESS ISN”T
On mobile displays with only a single user
control, the control labeled “brightness”
does in fact actually control the brightness
of the image on the screen by increasing or
decreasing the backlight intensity. However,
on most monitors and TVs, the control labeled
“brightness” does not control the brightness.
It actually controls the signal-level setting for
black on the display, which indirectly has a
minor effect on brightness.
CONTRAST? NOT SO MUCH
The control labeled “contrast” has absolutely
no effect on image contrast. It actually controls
the brightness of the image, by increasing or
decreasing the amplitude of the video signal.
Monitors and TVs really should have a true con-
trast control, but the closest you'll find on some
HDTVs is an obscure control labeled “gamma,”
and I have yet to see one that works properly.
For more information on gamma, see my article
on color and gray-scale accuracy here:
www.displaymate.com/ShootOut_Part_2.htm.
CONTROLS OF A BYGONE ERA
Even more shocking, today’s digital moni-
tors and HDTVs still have the same basic
user controls that were found in the original
analog NTSC color TVs from 1953: brightness,
contrast, tint, and sharpness. These controls
TOP: Rotary controls
for a mid-century ana-
log CRT. Those Con-
trast and Brightness
controls are legit.
BOTTOM: Digital on-
screen controls for a
Samsung Syncmaster
242MP—that really
have no business be-
ing labeled Contrast
and Brightness.
46 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
only made sense for analog signals on the old
NTSC television system. Brightness controlled
the CRT direct-current bias, contrast controlled
the video amplifier gain, tint controlled the
phase of the color subcarrier, and sharpness
performed analog high-frequency peaking to
compensate for the limited video bandwidth of
the old vacuum tube amplifiers. Today, none of
these controls are necessary for digital signals.
Brightness and contrast controls shouldn't
be there because, for digital video, the black
level is fixed at level 16, reference white at
235, and peak white at 255. Similarly, tint and
phase have no real meaning for digital signals.
Finally, the sharpness control isn’t appropriate
for digital displays because in a digital image
there’s no transmission degradation—the
image is received exactly as it appeared at
the source. Sharpening the image involves
digitally processing the pixels, which leads to
artifacts and noise unless it’s done at resolu-
tions much higher than the final displayed
resolution, which, of course, isn’t the case
inside your monitor or HDTV.
CONTROLS THAT DO WORSE
THAN NOTHING
Most monitor and HDTV user-menu options
are actually unnecessary features added for
marketing purposes—gimmicks to suggest the
display has unique features that other models
lack. Even worse, most of these options actu-
ally decrease image and picture quality.
In many cases, its not even clear what these
sham controls really do. The documentation
seldom explains them, and I even know engi-
neers from high-level manufacturers who don’t
know what the controls do, either. When I test
TVs, I spend an inordinate amount of time using
test patterns to figure out what the options and
selections really do, and in most cases, turning
off the fancy options leads to the best picture
quality and accuracy.
The following is a list of useless (or near-
useless) menu options and selections from
three HDTVs sold by major brands: Black Cor-
rector, Advanced CE, Clear White, Color Space,
Live Color, DRC Mode, DRC Palette, Dynamic
Contrast, xvYCC, Color Matrix, RGB Dynamic
Range, Black Level, Gamma, White Balance,
HDMI Black Level, Fresh Contrast, Fresh Color,
Flesh Tone, Eye Care, Digital NR, DNIe, Detail
Enhancer, Edge Enhancer, Real Cinema, Cine
Motion, Film Mode, Blue Only Mode.
Some of the terms sound impressive, but
almost all of this is unnecessary puffery and
jargon that confuses not only consumers but
the pros, as well.
Contrast
Ratio, Ad
Absurdum
Both manufacturers and consumers are
obsessed with contrast ratios. Because many
people choose the model with the highest
number, manufacturers have developed new
contrast ratio specs to win at this game.
It’s a sordid business, but deserves
exposure, so let’s jump in.
Oh, Sony. Even you’re playing
the absurdly inflated con-
trast ratio game? A factor of
1,000,000 sure sounds like a lot!
WHEN CONTRAST RATIO
ACTUALLY MATTERS
A careful, objective measurement of contrast
ratio can be very revealing. After the display is
accurately calibrated for optimum picture qual-
ity, the contrast ratio is determined by dividing
the brightness of peak white by the brightness of
black. In principle, the greater the ratio the better.
Just be aware that contrast ratio is important
only for low-ambient-light viewing, which is
where black brightness values matter most. (In
high-ambient-light settings, reflections off the
screen abound, and they're all brighter than the
display’s own internal black.)
Even more to the point, a high contrast ratio
really only matters when there is significant dark
picture content, like you see in some movies. It's
much less relevant for most TV shows because
the picture seldom has much very dark content,
and the image never really dips down to black
except briefly between scenes. As for games,
well, just consider which games really run a lot
of “pure” black. If for some reason you're still
playing in the dark, underground worlds of
Doom 3, you need a high contrast ratio. But if
the colorful world of Plants vs. Zombies is more
your speed, you need not worry.
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
Contrast-ratio specs are tremendously inflated.
For the best LCDs, scientifically measured
contrast ratios are actually between 1,500 and
2,000. But manufacturers almost never publish
real contrast ratios anymore. You'll only find
these true values in a small number of articles
and publications. Yes, contrast-ratio values have
been steadily improving over the years, but the
year-to-year change is relatively small, which
isn’t good for marketing.
In their quest to quote ever-larger numbers,
some manufacturers invented a completely
meaningless spec called “dynamic contrast
ratio,” which is what's being prominently
advertised now. Sometimes they don’t even
bother mentioning the “dynamic” part. Sadly, all
manufacturers are now forced to play this game,
as consumers wouldn't be interested in monitors
and TVs that tout the true values. Meaningless
contrast-ratio specs help substandard manufac-
turers by making their displays appear to be just
as good as those from the best manufacturers, or
even better, because the biggest liar wins. This
not only hurts consumers, but it also hurts the
better manufacturers because they’re unable to
publicize their superior technology.
BIG BUT NOT BIG ENOUGH
So what's really so “dynamic” about this
bastardized contrast-ratio spec? It’s really quite
simple: When the display’s video signal is en-
tirely black or very close to black, the display’s
electronics go into a standby mode that signifi-
cantly reduces the light output of the unit. This
much darker standby value is then used when
computing the contrast ratio—instead of the
real value of when a picture is actually present.
Obviously, this trick doesn’t change the true
black or true contrast ratio for any picture that’s
not all black, so it’s meaningless for picture qual-
ity. The primary reason for measuring the spec
this way is that published contrast ratios can now
go from about 1,500 up to, well, infinity. In 2008,
many TVs were advertised with a “dynamic
contrast” in the range of 15,000 to 35,000. Now,
in 2010, some go into the millions and beyond.
There's no real improvement, of course. It’s just
the same trick with a bigger exaggeration.
WHEN INFINITE MEANS NOTHING
At my local Walmart in Amherst, New Hamp-
shire, the Sony KDL-52EX700, an LED-based
TV, is listed by Walmart as having an “infinite
contrast ratio” on its information label. First of all,
“dynamic” was left off—it should say “infinite
dynamic contrast ratio.” This is then technically
correct because the LEDs turn off when an all-
black image is present. This results in a division
by zero, and produces the infinite result. But this
is also nonsense because the LEDs need to be on
whenever an actual picture is present!
Labeling like this is intentionally misleading
to consumers. Walmart should set an example
for other retailers and refuse to show mislead-
ing manufacturer specs to its shoppers.
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 47
DISPLAY MYTHS
Response
Times:
How Fast
İs Fast
Enough?
All displays show artifacts of one sort or
another when their screen images change
rapidly. It’s most easily detected with
moving objects, or when the entire screen
moves due to camera panning. In many
cases, it’s not the fault of the display.
Rather, it arises somewhere in the signal
path from the source, which can be caused
by camera blur, interlaced scanning, MPEG
compression artifacts, poor video process-
ing, insufficient bandwidth, or insufficient
CPU speed in the case of games. Further
confusing matters, artifacts can occur for
different reasons with CRT, LCD, LCoS,
plasma, and DLP technologies. It can even
occur with OLEDs, if switching speeds
aren’t sufficiently high.
But when people discuss motion
artifacts, they are generally talking about
LCD response time. And not surprisingly,
the manufacturers’ published specs for re-
sponse time have become one of the major
deciding issues for many consumers. As a
result, in the last five years or so, manufac-
turers have somehow pushed response time
numbers from 25ms (milliseconds) to an
essentially untenable 1ms.
So what, if anything, do these specs
really mean?
Witness two photos shot by Lauren Soneira. On the left, a static image—thus no motion blur. On the right, the
image is moving at 1,018 pixels per second, and you can see six refresh cycles indicating a 50ms response time.
BEHIND THE BASICS
OF BLUR
Motion blur arises when the liquid crystal—the
active element within an LCD—is unable to
change its orientation and transmission rapidly
enough when the picture changes from one
frame to the next. Because the standard video
rate is 60 frames per second, a pixel is expected
to fully update its light-transmission opacity
within 16.7 milliseconds (that is, in one 60th of a
second). If it takes any longer than that, the image
will show some degree of lag, which appears as a
trailing smear or blur whenever there is motion.
LCD motion blur is generally evaluated with
an industry-standard spec called response time
that (supposedly) measures the time that it takes
for a pixel to go from black to peak-intensity
white, and then back to black again. However,
most picture transitions involve much smaller
and more subtle shades of gray-to-gray transi-
tions, which can take longer to complete.
But it gets even more complicated than
that because every pixel is actually made up of
independent red, green, and blue sub-pixels that
have their own separate intensities, frame-to-
frame transitions, and times. The upshot is that
visual blur within a detailed, moving picture is a
fairly complex and nebulous phenomenon.
MOTION BLUR: VISUAL PROOF
Motion blur is one of the most visually tangible
display problems—the evidence speaks for itself
in screenshots and photography, both of which
can illustrate the relationship between response
time and motion blur. In this article, I’ve included
high-speed screenshots of moving DisplayMate
test patterns, as well as moving test photos taken
The screen on the left was grabbed from a motion speed test of 1,093 pixels per second,
with the black and white squares indicating real-world pixel response times of 60ms and
40ms, respectively. The screen on the right shows the same lengthy response times during
a faster test of 1,609 pixels per second.
48 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
of a top-of-the-line, 120Hz Sony HDTV (shot with
a Nikon DSLR using a fast shutter speed of 1/160
of a second). These images were taken in 2008,
but the results wouldn't be much different today.
Sony’s published response time for this XBR
model is 8ms. Since this corresponds to a double
transition (from black to peak white, and then
back to black again), the single transition time
(from black to white, or from white to black)
should therefore be about 4ms.
But is the pixel response time really that
fast? To find out, I ran DisplayMate tests in which
black and white squares move across the screen
at measured speeds. In the examples here, one
photo shows the squares racing across at 1,093
pixels in a single second. The second photo
shows the squares moving about 50 percent fast-
er, covering 1,609 pixels in a single second. The
white tips seen on the edges of the ghost images
are artifacts resulting from electronic overdrive
processing that's being used to try to improve the
response time by exaggerating transitions.
As you can see from my screenshots—each
a brief snapshot in time with a shutter speed of
1/160 of a second, which is less than the refresh
rate—its possible to make out at least eight
individual screen refresh cycles on this 120Hz
display. Indeed, in the screenshots, each square
is shifted from the other by 1/120 of a second,
which is 8ms, and those ghosted squares indicate
that the older images haven't yet dissipated. The
upshot is that you're looking at a true response
time of about 65ms. In fact, a response time of
much less than the 8ms refresh rate would be
needed for there to be no visible blur. Obviously,
65ms blur in the screen shots doesn’t jibe with
the manufacturer's single-transition response
time spec of 4ms.
The DisplayMate tests clearly demonstrate
that the Sony's real LCD response time is con-
siderably longer than its published spec would
indicate. And by no means are we picking on
Sony, as it actually had the best performance of
all of the LCDs in our tests.
BUT WHAT ABOUT MOVING
PHOTOS?
It must be stated that DisplayMate test patterns
are very sensitive to imaging effects—this is by
Behold our 11-display shootout—with the lights on. Photo by Dieter Michel.
design. Photographic images, on the other hand,
typically consist of a very complex and varied
admixture of blended picture elements. With so
much going on in an image, motion blur is easily
obscured and lost within the complex, variegat-
ed imagery of a typical photograph. In particular,
photographs of real-world content lack uniform
backgrounds, and uniform backgrounds—like
those in my DisplayMate tests—make it easier
to see the motion blur trails. For this reason, we
would expect moving photographs to show
much less visible blur than what's demonstrated
with test patterns.
To wit: If you look carefully at the magnified
marching band images on the previous page, you
can see a total of at least six refresh cycles in the
second photograph. This corresponds to a real-
world pixel response time of 50ms. But the mo-
tion blur is still much less noticeable than what
we see in DisplayMate’s punishing test patterns.
Photographs are static images and moving
them across a screen is quite different from live
video, where images are a complex and varied
mixture of continually blending picture compo-
nents that are themselves constantly changing in
both time and position. With all this screen activ-
ity going on, we would expect to detect much
less motion blur in live video than with either of
the moving static photographs or test patterns.
AND NOW FOR THE TESTS YOU'VE
ALL BEEN WAITING FOR
To evaluate motion blur and artifacts in live
video with lots of high-motion picture content,
we set up a side-by-side comparison shoot-out
with 11 HDTVs, and had both consumers and
experts evaluate them. The top-of-the-line LCDs
from Sony and Sharp had 120Hz screen refresh
rates, the top-of-the-line Samsung LCD had
strobed LED backlighting, and the other units
had standard 60Hz screen refresh rates. Two of
the units were plasma displays, and one was
a pro-grade CRT studio monitor. The goal was
to determine the degree to which this varied
technology affected visible motion blur.
All of the HDTVs were fed identical,
simultaneous digital video using an all-digital
High Definition Tivo and a Blu-ray player.
They were all compared side-by-side in the
configuration as shown in the photo. The
content included both daytime and nighttime
sporting events, TV shows, and movies, all
with lots of action. If any viewer thought he
or she detected motion blur on any HDTV, we
would repeatedly press the eight-second Tivo
backup button and watch the sequence over
and over again on all of the units until we fully
understood exactly what was happening on
each display. We did the same thing with the
Blu-ray player and its content.
The conclusions from all participants were
consistent across the board, and will likely
surprise most consumers: There was essentially
no visually detectable motion blur on any of
the LCD HDTVs in any of the video content
we assembled.
When people thought they saw
motion blur, with only a handful of
minor exceptions, the blur was either in
the source video or a temporary visual
illusion that disappeared when the seg-
ments in question were reviewed. Unlike
what we empirically identified in moving
test patterns and moving photographs,
the eye is unable to detect the blur in live video
because the images are much more dynamic
and complex—and undoubtedly because of the
way the brain processes and extracts essential
information from visual images.
SO, IS BLURRING EVEN AN ISSUE
FOR VIDEOS, MOVIES, AND GAMES?
For all of the tests—the DisplayMate test pat-
terns, the moving photos, and the live video—we
found that there was no visually detectable dif-
ference in motion blur for the mid- to top-of-the-
line LCD HDTVs. This regardless of their claimed
pixel response times, 60Hz or 120Hz refresh
rates, strobed LED backlighting, or motion-
enhancement processing. If you find this sur-
prising then just re-read the classic tale of The
Emperor's New Clothes.
The underlying reason why higher refresh
rates don’t mitigate blurring is that the true pixel
response times of displays are considerably lon-
ger than the 60Hz video frame rate, so it doesn't
matter whether the screen refresh rate is 60Hz
or 120Hz, or whether the LED backlights are
strobed off during the frame updating. Similarly,
adjusting the electronic processing enhance-
ments that some models offer—controls that are
supposed to reduce motion blur—only served
to introduce objectionable contours, edges, and
other artifacts onto moving objects without
reducing the overall motion blur.
So that’s the story on video. What signifi-
cance do these results have for PC gamers?
First, while motion blur isn’t generally
noticeable with live video, it’s more likely
to be seen by gamers who intently focus on
particular moving objects. For this reason, the
blur illustrated above with test patterns and
test photos applies.
Second, don’t pay much attention to a manu-
THE EYE IS UNABLE TO DETECT
THE BLUR IN LIVE VIDEO
BECAUSE THE IMAGES ARE MUCH
MORE DYNAMIC AND COMPLEX
facturer s response time specs because they are
so different from the real response time and mo-
tion blur that we have demonstrated here.
Third, while 120Hz refresh rate monitors
and HDTVs don’t inherently improve on motion
blur over the 60Hz models, they are generally
equipped with better performing panels and
electronics, so they may still produce superior
image and picture quality. And if you're a movie
buff, the 120Hz units should offer better motion
interpolation from the 24 frames per second
used in all movies shot on film. The 60Hz models
need 3:2 pull-down, which produces judder, but
most people seldom notice it.
Fourth, be aware that the latest 240Hz dis-
plays don’t offer any real picture-quality perfor-
mance improvements, and are just a marketing
gimmick taken to an absurd level.
For more information and details, see my
article on LCD response time and motion blur
here: www.displaymate.com/LCD_Response_
Time_ShootOut.htm.
www.maximumpe.com | Jun 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 49
DISPLAY MYTHS
=
olor
amut or
arketing
ambit?
Color gamut, which is the range of colors
that a display can produce, is undoubtedly
the most misunderstood and exploited
spec—precisely because it’s natural to
believe that the range should be as large as
possible. While that’s true for most specs
(even when they’re exaggerated), it’s defi-
nitely not the case for the color gamut.
The color gamut that you want on all
of your PC monitors, laptops, HDTVs, and
even smartphones is the same color gamut
that was used when the content you’re
viewing was created. If a different gamut
is employed, you'll see different colors
than you're supposed to see.
Virtually all consumer content is cre-
ated using industry standards that specify
the exact color gamut to be used. For
computers and digital cameras it’s sRGB.
For digital HDTVs, it’s called ITU-R BT.709
(often referred to as Rec.709). Fortunately,
both of these standards specify the same
exact gamut. Yes, there are other color
gamuts for specialized applications (more
about that later), but sRGB and Rec.709
cover virtually all consumer content, and
that is the color gamut you want on all of
your displays. The color gamut in these
standards specifies the exact color coor-
dinates for the three red, green, and blue
primary colors, which are used to produce
all color mixtures on screen.
Now that you’re versed on what color
gamut is, let’s share what it isn’t—as
illustrated by six examples of manufac-
turer misinformation.
50 | MAXIMUMPS | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
BIGGER ISN’T BETTER
One common misconception frequently ex-
ploited by manufacturers is that a wider color
gamut indicates a better display that produces
more realistic colors. This is absolutely wrong.
A larger gamut will simply make all of the
screen colors for standard production content
appear more saturated than they ought to ap-
pear. Indeed, displays claiming more than 100
percent of the standard color gamut simply
can’t show colors that aren't in the original
source image. Expanded gamuts are just
gimmicks that make consumers think they’re
getting something better.
THE PERILS OF RECALIBRATION
If you do get a display with a larger color gamut, its
necessary to reduce the gamut back to the sRGB/
Rec.709 standard values by adjusting
color saturation via a user control. Unfor-
tunately, if the display isn’t calibrated at
the factory to match the standard color
gamut, its unlikely you'll be able to visu-
ally adjust it properly yourself. This kind
of adjustment typically requires profes-
sional calibration using instrumentation.
NTSC? NEVER!
The often-quoted NTSC Color Gamut is from
1953. It’s also obsolete and irrelevant. Comput-
ers, digital cameras, and HDTVs use the sRGB/
Rec.709 color spaces, and specs should refer
to them instead of NTSC. As explained above,
values greater than 100 percent of the standard
color gamut aren't desirable—unless you like
punchy, unrealistic, oversaturated colors.
ADOBE RGB OR NOT TO BE?
As stated above, there are specialized color
gamuts for specialized applications, and some
of these are larger than the sRGB/Rec.709. Ado-
be RGB, one of the more common ones, is used
by imaging professionals and you'll find it as an
option on some digital cameras and scanners.
Just be aware that if you use the Adobe gamut,
you will also need a display that produces
the Adobe gamut, and only a small fraction of
consumer displays can do this. If you display
an image produced with an Adobe gamut on a
monitor with a standard sRGB/Rec.709 gamut,
the colors will be incorrect and oversaturated.
HOW THE EYES PLAY TRICKS
Adobe RGB is a larger gamut than sRGB/
Rec.709, but be aware that for most applica-
tions, gamut size doesn’t matter very much.
The further out you go in color space, the less
frequent the colors appear in nature, so the
human eye doesn’t notice that they're not quite
right except in rare circumstances (like when
viewing a full-screen rendering of a very red
tulip). When faced with a gamut beyond their
rendering range, displays simply wind up
reproducing the closest most saturated color
they can under the circumstances.
BIT-DEPTH MISCONCEPTIONS
Manufacturers will also dupe consumers by ad-
vertising useless and misleading specs about the
number of screen colors produced by their dis-
plays. Screen color counts have absolutely noth-
ing to do a with display’s color gamut, though
manufacturers will attempt to tie them together.
In reality, a displays maximum number of colors
is a function of the total number of intensity-level
combinations that the device can produce.
Let’s do the math. Standard 24-bit color has
eight bits per primary color, and eight bits gener-
EXPANDED GAMUTS ARE JUST
CONSUMERS THINK THEY'RE
ate 256 intensity levels. Because there are three
primary colors, the number of possible color
combinations is 2565—16.8 million colors. Now,
if a manufacturer uses 12-bit color processing
internally within the same display, there are (in
theory) 4,096 intensity levels and 68.7 billion
possible colors. Sounds impressive, yes, but the
display’s color gamut remains the same as be-
fore and the additional number of colors doesn't
mean anything visually.
Still not convinced? First, remember that
essentially all consumer content is 24-bit color.
Thus, the source images have only 16.8 million
colors, and the display can’t “invent” intensi-
ties and color combinations that don’t exist in
the original.
Second, true onscreen 24-bit color does
a good job of meeting the human eyes color
and brightness discrimination abilities. You
can read more about that here under “Digital
Granularity”: www.displaymate.com/
ShootOut_Part_3.htm.
Third, be aware of the real reason why
additional processing bits are necessary.
Onscreen intensity levels are not supposed to
be linear. Rather, they should follow a standard
gamma curve with a nonlinear mathemati-
cal 2.2 power-law exponent (meaning the
screen brightness for any sub-pixel varies as
s’?, where s is the input signal intensity level
0-255). The extra processing bits are necessary
just to get the display to produce the gamma
curve accurately on screen.
Maybe Sharp Should’ve Consulted Mr. Spock Instead
By now, you ve surely seen ads for Sharp’s Quattron four-color technology.
George “Mr. Sulu” Takei dons a lab coat, and fawns over Sharp's introduc-
tion of a yellow primary-color sub-pixel to the traditional three-sub-pixel,
RGB primary-color arrangement. According to Sharp, this results in
“expanding the color gamut and faithfully rendering nearly all colors that
can be discerned with the unaided human eye, especially golden yellow.”
If you have read this far, you already know that Quattron is just an-
other shameful marketing gimmick. HDTV television and movie content is
produced and color-balanced on three-color displays that are accurately
calibrated to Rec.709. Sharp’s fourth primary color is yellow, and there
isn't anything for it to do because yellow is already being accurately
reproduced with mixtures of the existing red and green primaries. More
importantly, a Quattron display can’t show colors that aren't in the origi-
nal three-color source image. So what good is it? None, unless you like to
see over-exaggerated yellows.
But could it be that existing consumer HDTVs are unable to repro-
duce the standard sRGB/Rec.709 color gamut, so Sharp's fourth primary
color actually has something useful to do? We decided to find out.
Colors and color gamuts can be accurately measured and then
plotted in a chromaticity diagram to compare values to the standard.
What follows is from a 2008 article where | used a spectroradiometer
to measure the color gamut of HDTVs in the DisplayMate lab. To the
məl
right, are the results for a
Sony consumer LCD HDTV. | %700
The black triangle is the cond RFEN
Rec.709 standard and the RED
red dots are the measured 0.500-
values for the red, green,
and blue primary colors
of the Sony display. Notice
that the Sony measure-
ments all fall exactly where
they should on the triangle
vertices. It’s perfect! In
short, this Sony HDTV 0.000
accurately shows exactly tae 0.100 0.200 0.300 0.400 0.500 0.600 0.700
D6500
0.400-
0.3005
0.200-
0.100- BLUE
the same colors seen by,
say, the director at a TV
studio. Ipso facto, Sharp's
fourth color is absolutely
See that narrow strip of gamut real estate
between the top of the black triangle and the
inside of the white line? That’s where Quat-
tron technology would have to live.
ENDING DISPLAY FRAUD
It's both shocking and sad that display specs
have been exaggerated to the point of mean-
inglessness. And you're not the only one who
suffers—innovative manufacturers that develop
new and better display technologies can’t trum-
pet their hard work with superior performance
specs. Instead, they're forced to play the game or
lose significant business.
The National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) could help, but its display di-
vision was terminated in 2009. The only realistic
solution that I see is the creation of an organi-
zation (that is completely independent of the
manufacturers) to develop a set of straightfor-
ward, objective standards for measuring and ad-
vertising display specs. Manufacturers that meet
those standards would be allowed to advertise
their specs with a special controlled trademark,
like the EnergyStar program. Consumers would
learn to only trust specs with that trademark.
th
superfluous and can only decrease picture quality and accuracy!
Undoubtedly, part of the Quattron’s “Yellow Push” is being produced
with simple video processing. Some people have been impressed
watching the Sharp demos on the Quattron, but manufacturers demos
are always fine-tuned to get a maximum wow response, so be careful
before jumping to any conclusions about how it will perform displaying
content at home.
Note that in our figure, the outer white curve represents the limits
of human vision. While the Rec.709 standard is much smaller, it’s
important to note that the colors between the black triangle and white
curve aren't common in nature. Yes, a display can only reproduce the
colors that lie inside of the polygon formed by its primary colors, but be-
cause yellow falls between the red and green primaries, Sharp’s yellow
primary would need to lie somewhere outside of the red and green leg
of the color triangle. But there isn’t much room between the Rec.709
triangle and the human vision curve, is there? For this reason, it’s dif-
ficult to see why a yellow primary sub-pixel is needed unless Sharp isn’t
able to put its red and green primaries where they belong.
Sharp shows its Quattron color gamut in some promotional mate-
rial by using an old (x,y) distorted CIE Diagram from the year 1931
because it makes its extended color gamut look much larger than it
really is. Our figure is the (u'v’) 1976 Uniform CIE Diagram and shows
the color gamut accurately.
Well, if Shatner can debase himself
as a TV pitchman, can we really
begrudge Takei?
"el
I proposed this back in 2003, but it went
nowhere because too many manufacturers
resisted the idea. But it’s high time for this
solution to finally be implemented—or just
imposed. It’s in everyone’s interest except
for the subset of manufacturers that can only
compete using fraud. (0)
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 51
30 MILLION
MOBQS#
FROM i
NAN-PING $
Inside Gigabyte’s Taiwan-based
motherboard manufacturing plant,
tech reporter Dave James learns
first-hand how the company’s
P55 motherboards come to be
Three million motherboards is a lot. Just think about the amount of solder
alone that must take, the number of Japanese capacitors, the store of copper
needed to fulfill Gigabyte’s two-ounces-of-copper pledge for each of its
mobos. But the thing I was most struck by during my visit to Gigabyte’s Taiwan-
based Nan-Ping factory was the incredible amount of human labor it takes
to assemble and test each and every one of the 3 million boards the factory is
capable of producing in a single year. That’s 3 million boards assembled and
tested by hand.
But the manufacturing process, with all its immense scale, is only part
of the story. Before the Chinese-manufactured slivers of PCB even make it to
the gates of Gigabyte’s high-tech factory on the edge of Taipei's Xindian City,
the work of designing the new chipset at the heart of the boards has been
underway for a full year or more, while the research behind it stretches back
even further.
Sitting among the clouds above Taipei’s banking district, high up in the
101 Tower, | had the privilege of talking to Gigabyte vice president of moth-
erboards, Henry Kao, and manager of the product planning division, Jackson
Hsu, just as Intel’s P55 chipset was all set to go global. | learned what exactly
goes into putting a new chipset design out on the street.
MPG | JUL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
www.maximumpc.com | jut 2010 | MAXIMUMPS | 55
Gigabyte
vice pres-
ident of
mother-
boards,
Henry Kao
Manager
of the
product
planning
division,
Jackson
Hsu
“IZ?
GIGABYTE
THE ORIGIN STORY
The Taiwan-based company began work
on the latest P55 chipset a year in advance,
as one of Intel’s key development partners.
“We don’t need the Intel reference design
board, because we make the reference
design board for Intel,” says Henry Kao,
grinning broadly. “Intel has the idea for a
new chipset and once it gets it to a certain
level, the company brings the design idea
o Gigabyte so we can codesign the refer-
ence board.” It’s this board that gets taken
around to the other labs so Intel can show
hem the new design layout.
“With a new chipset, we usually spend
one year co-developing with Intel. Once
ntel feels comfortable, it releases that
design to the other motherboard makers.
From there we'll make our own specifica-
ions and it'll be another month before the
first working samples are available,” says
Henry Kao.
The initial design team working on the
co-development project will usually be a
very small group of people. “At that stage
you don” need many people involved, just
a single team, dedicated to Intel,” says Jack-
son Hsu. “Once the chipset is more mature,
then we expand the team.”
Once the reference design has been
AU of the smallest components for the motherboards are stored neatly on these racks.
finalized, the various motherboard manu-
facturers can fashion their own different
spins of the same board, creating high-,
mid-, and low-end iterations of the chipset.
.——— x.
2 dər) Rz qe \ WS N =
f Hü \'
+a
—
A big batch of controller chips stands by, ready for placement on the printed circuit boards moving dovvn
the line.
56 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
As a manager in the product planning divi-
sion, Hsu has to be heavily involved in this
stage: “As a planner you know the basic
chipset and CPU layout but need to start
thinking, ‘What do I add? What would my
competitors do and what does the customer
need? And what is the latest technology?’
“Once you Vve identified all the possible
elements, you have to start separating them
out. What do you need for your highest
high-end, then lower down the price scale,
what do you take off? It’s the same process
every year, but the elements are different.”
So, how does a manufacturer choose
which components go into the higher-end
boards and which get taken out? As ever,
the overriding principle is cost. Stick-
ing in the extra couple of USB slots that
Intel asked for on the P55 boards isn’t a
problem across the full range of mobos,
given the miniscule cost, but other parts
and features inevitably need trimming in
the move from the high-end.
GIVE AND TAKE
What's typically sacrificed in the lower-end
motherboards is the newer technology, or
the extent to which it’s used: “I can’t have
everything 24-phase,” says Hsu about the
24-phase power that’s used for stabilizing
the power signal on the top-end P55 moth-
erboards. That has to be reduced as you
move down the board pecking order, from
24-, to 12-, to 8-phase. Another example is
with 6GB/s SATA: “Most of our P55 boards
will have 6GB/s SATA; on the mainstream
and high-end boards we'll have four ports,
but lower down the line we'll have two
ports. So even at the low-end, consumers
will still have access to 6GB/s SATA, but it’s
limited,” says Hsu.
But cost concerns don’t necessarily gov-
ern Gigabyte’s motherboard division as a
whole. The current division CEO is Johnson
Lin, who rose through the ranks right from
the engineering floor, and thus has hands-
on experience with what goes into both the
design and manufacturing processes.
He’s responsible for the aforemen-
tioned two ounces of copper that Gigabyte’s
performance boards are known for. Slotted
between the layers of PCB is this relatively
generous layer of copper, absorbing and
distributing the huge amount of heat that
is generated by the processor, chipset, and
power-phase regulators. It has made the
motherboards slightly more expensive to
produce, but in the long run it has reduced
the number of RMAs to such an extent that
all of Gigabyte’s motherboards are now
adopting the same process.
Moving half of the company’s moth-
erboard manufacturing to this fairly new
Taiwan-based factory isn’t about cost, either.
The factory workers expect, and get, a far
higher wage than their Chinese counter-
parts in Shenzhen, for example. And with
three shifts working eight hours each, that’s
a lot of man (or young girl,
for the most part) power to
pay for every day.
But this factory produces
high-end motherboards and
graphics cards, as well as
notebooks, mobile phones,
And having a high-tech
factory of this sort on the
doorstep of the research
and development teams at
Gigabyte means that any
necessary product-design
changes can be turned
around rapidly. As Jackson
jonents into Hsu told me later: “Some of
our customers still like to
have that ‘Made in Taiwan’
stamp on Gigabyte products.”
PUTTING IT ALL ON THE LINE
So once all the design work has been done,
and all the various iterations of a specific
chipset have been hashed out, it’s on to the
manufacturing process itself.
The first thing that hit me—after I'd been
decked out in sexy blue overshoes, a surgical
mask, and had every speck of dust blown off
an GIGA
servers, and full desktop PCs.
my bloated form by the biggest hair dryer
this side of Sassoon HQ—is the amount of
motivational material dotted around the
factory floor. Much of it, in fairly broken
English, seems intended for the international
visitor. A particular favorite of mine was a
storyboard showing how a poorly fixed nut
caused the explosion of a Chinese Boeing
737—a reminder to focus on even the small-
est things or face the direst of consequences.
Another favorite was a sign in both Chinese
and English instructing workers to “Be more
responsible, complain less, be more attentive,
and make lesser mistakes.”
The company is doing something right,
given the Nan-Ping factory’s ability to shunt
out a quarter of a million motherboards ev-
ery month, as one of four Gigabyte factories
in Taiwan and mainland China.
There are four stages to the motherboard
manufacturing process carried out in Nan-
Ping. First is the surface-mount technology
sat
ree ais
ove Do
on...
www.maximumpc.com | Jury 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 5'7
(SMT), where the smallest components are
placed on the bare printed circuit boards
(PCB). Next is the dual inline package (DIP),
where the larger elements are attached.
Then there s the testing stage, and finally, it’s
down to packaging. Each of these processes
is carried out on separate production lines,
and often on separate floors. For a single
motherboard to go through the entire pro-
cess, though, takes only around 15 minutes
from the start of production to boxed finish.
The first step, the SMT process, is the
most automated of the lot. All of Gigabyte’s
PCBs are manufactured in mainland China
to its own specifications, and shipped over,
bare, to the various factories. Once they hit
one of the 11 SMT production lines in the
Nan-Ping factory, each PC board is put first
through a solder-paste printing machine.
This machine lays out the areas of solder
needed to hold the components, which are
then placed in the following step.
The smallest components, right up to
the north-bridge and south-bridge chips,
are held in different-size rolls, feeding
their chips into either the high-speed or
multifunction placers. These placers are like
58 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
component nail-guns,
shooting chips, resistors,
and capacitors into
the motherboard with
seemingly reckless
abandon. In fact, they
are incredibly precise,
with the high-speed
placer inserting a
component every
0.1 seconds.
Once all of these
smaller parts have been
placed on the board, the
entire PCB gets moved
into an oven for what is
called reflow soldering,
which is basically melt-
ing and resetting the
existing solder to lock
the new components
in place.
The final part of
the SMT process is the
testing. (At every step,
the motherboard goes
through the same test-
ing procedure.) First comes the inspection,
then in-circuit testing (ICT). In this case,
with up to 1,300 components on a moth-
erboard, the inspection is done automati-
cally with an optical inspector, which uses
a strobe to check that each component is
correctly placed. This takes seconds. Then
there’s the first manual inspection, then
the in-circuit testing, which checks the
electrical performance of the newly
placed components.
DIP AND COVER
In the DIP process, things become a whole
lot more labor intensive. There are only four
production lines in this part of the factory
compared to the 11 of the SMT, but there
are 50 operators on each of them manually
inserting parts into the PCB. The compo-
nents that are added in this stage are things
like the PCI connectors, memory slots, and
all the inputs and outputs.
Once all these larger components are
in place, the board is then put through a
wave-soldering machine to secure these
latest additions. Then it’s passed on to
At every step of the manufacturing pro-
cess, workers inspect the boards to make
sure everything is where it should be.
another manual technician to touch up any
missing solder or unsecured components.
It’s at this stage that all the heatsinks are at-
tached to the chipset. Once attached, there
follows an almost identical inspection and
in-circuit test as in the SMT process.
On the same floor as the DIP procedure
are the six testing lines, where all the boards
get a complete checkup. First is the function
test, where the motherboards are placed in
testing benches for a full functionality veri-
fication. Then comes the burn-in test, where
operational mobos, ready for retail.
each board is subjected to a high tempera-
ture of 45 C and then a low of -10 C, just to
make sure the final product can cope with
the daily rigors it might encounter. From
here it’s on to the final manual inspection
and then on to that final stage of packaging.
With such finely tuned electronics, it’s
tempting to think of the manufacturing
process as being completely automated,
something akin to a car manufacturing
plant, but with far, far smaller mechanical
arms. In fact, there’s a surprising amount
PCB Manufacturing Process Flow
The transition from bare circuit board to retail-ready motherboard
happens in four steps, and takes about 15 minutes
E i
Function test
SURFACE-MOUNT
TECHNOLOGY
DUAL INLINE
PACKAGING
Solder-paste Manual insertion
printing
Component
placement
VVave soldering Burn-in test
Reflovv soldering Touch up and heat-
sink assembly
İnspection
Test and inspection Test and inspection
x
y
of human labor involved in every step of
the process. So, the next time you purchase
a motherboard (or graphics card), or even
just peek inside your PC, take some time to
think of exactly how many hands that bit of
PCB has gone through on its way to you. O
£”
Box forming
Put in accesories
Packing
JUL 2010
59
EH
El R & D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE
et Dratnral
LU MA”.
U tUGUI
Ve ersi
n6
How the next-generation Internet protocol, IPv6, will save the day by increasing
the number of available addresses and adding new features -zack stern
re you prepared for the next Y2K?
A We've dubbed it “The Great IP
Address Shortage of 2011—or Shortly
Thereafter.” While “TGIPAS20110ST” doesn’t
roll off the tongue as easily as “Y2K,” this
creeping calamity could cause fundamen-
tal networking problems the day someone
claims the very last public IPv4 (Internet
Protocol version 4) address.
Fortunately, a solution is already here:
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), will create
trillions (times trillions times trillions) more
public addresses while introducing new
networking features. Both IP technologies will
coexist during the transition, so in many cases,
IPv6 devices will switch to an IPv4 mode to
communicate with old gear.
We'll explain the basics of how Internet
layers shuffle information across worldwide
networks. Then we'll discuss the changes
and improvements in IPv6; it’s about more
than adding addresses. With these details,
you'll be able to prepare for the dual-stack,
hybrid near-future and the eventual transi-
tion to IPv6 exclusivity.
PEELING BACK THE LAYERS
The Internet uses four main layers to transmit
data. You might think of them as nesting
matryoshka dolls, with each layer in the pro-
gression encapsulating the next. (You can read
more about this topic in the White Paper in the
August 2009 Maximum PC. You'll find the issue
in PDF form at http://bit.ly/gGSgC).
The Link Layer includes the hardware and
software (or firmware) to handle the lowest
level of communications, including Media
Access Control (MAC). (While some define
hardware connections as part of the Physical
Layer below this, we'll side with those who
combine the two.) The Internet Layer rides on
top of that, consisting largely of IPv4 or IPv6.
The Transport Layer transmits and delivers
data to specific application protocols residing
in the Application Layer, including HTTP
(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and FTP (File
Transfer Protocol).
The Internet Layer is especially important
60 | MANIMUMPG | suc 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
since you'll sometimes set its addressing while
configuring network equipment, such as a
router. More often, the other layers are invis-
ible to end-users; things just work.
CHANGE OF ADDRESS
A new addressing method marks the biggest
change between İPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 technol-
ogy uses 32-bit addresses that allow about
4 billion possible public nodes. Due to
growing demand and inefficient allocation
of existing IP addresses, the planet has con-
sumed nearly all of these. Estimates vary as to
exactly when we'll run out of IPv4 addresses,
but most experts anticipate it happening soon.
IPv6 solves the problem in a big way. It
uses a 128-bit addressing scheme that creates
2" possible combinations: roughly 34 trillion
trillion trillion (34 followed by 37 zeroes) IP
addresses—enough to support every Internet-
connected computer, phone, television, gam-
ing console, refrigerator, and toaster humanity
could ever want. Here’s an example of what an
IPv6 address looks like: 2001:0DB8:AC10:
2F3B:9C5A:FFFF:3FFE:02AA.
And that’s not all that IPv6 will provide. It
also eliminates the need for Network Address
Translation (NAT), a form of IP masquerad-
ing developed to get around the IP address
shortage by hiding entire address spaces.
The primary drawback to NAT is that a host
residing behind a NAT-enabled router does not
IB El” HOW IT WORKS
Transition to IPvö
IPvé over IPv4 traffic
Pv4 Internet
öto4 relay
Q 6to4 router
IPv6 traffic
Se
5:
öto4 host
Router Q
2 [Pvé Internet )
ERS
IPvé traffic
------ Local netvvork
Since IPv4 and IPvö will coexist for a time, IPv6 nodes will communicate with each other
via tunnels through IPv4-only infrastructures using so-called “6to4” technology. This will
enable devices (hosts, routers, etc.) with IPv6 address to reach IPvé6 infrastructures without
requiring a connection to the IPvé6 Internet.
have end-to-end connectivity and so can-
not utilize some Internet protocols.
Network devices connected to an IPv6
network will be able to auto-configure
much more robustly than is possible with
the existing Dynamic Host Configura-
tion Protocol (DHCP). You can also simply
reconfigure an existing network, keeping
the address suffix—and subnet—vvhile
changing the public prefix. And since an
IPv6 subnet can have 2" addresses, ISPs
and large institutions will no longer be
forced to fragment their networks.
As with IPv4, data exchanged using
IPv6 is contained inside packets. IPv6
packets consist of three elements: a fixed
header with addressing information, an
optional extension header that enables
additional features, and a payload. IPv6
packets can be processed faster than IPv4
packets because their packet headers do
not contain a checksum. Checksums are
used in IPv4 to verify that data has been
properly sent and received, but this task
is performed at a higher layer with IPv6.
In addition, some infrequently used pro-
cesses have been moved out of the fixed
header and into the optional header.
COUNTDOWN TO IPV6
All modern operating systems are ready
for the transition to IPv6, including
Windows XP with Service Pack 3. For the
moment, operating systems can run in
a dual-stack mode, juggling the two IP
standards and often two IP addresses at
the same time. For example, they might
use IPv6 internally and route to an IPv4
destination externally.
Operating systems also support
“6to4” translation. This method allows
IPv6 devices and networks to communi-
cate across IPv4 sections of the Internet.
The technique stores an IPv6 packet
inside the payload of an IPv4 packet,
like a ferry transports cars across a river.
Relay servers or a dual-stack destination
on the other side can unlock the IPv6
data once clear of the IPv4 network. As
long as you have a public IPv4 address,
the technique should work even if your
ISP hasn't yet adopted IPv6.
It’s harder for IPv4 devices to commu-
nicate with IPv6. Translational gateways
and proxies can help but they aren't reli-
able. Once your favorite Internet services
switch over to IPv6-only, your IPv4-only
equipment might not work. Thankfully, the
dual-stack transitional phase should stave
off that problem for many years. (0)
M” AUTOPSY
3M Mpro150 LCOS Projector
We disassembled this pico projector to see how 3M”s engineers packed a
self-contained presentation system into a package that’s just 5.12 inches
long, 2.4 inches wide, and 0.98 inches thick. You can connect a PC to this
device, but you don’t have to—the projector hosts its own software and
offer
LENS ARRAY The lens
mounted to the LED module
focuses the light coming from
the LEDs. A set of lenses
inside the black box takes
the polarized light from the
LEDs and directs it to the
LCOS imager. These lenses
then redirect the light from
the LCOS imager to the focal
lens inside the large gray
module. The user adjusts the
focal lens to focus the image
on the screen.
LCOS IMAGER AND
ASIC This component
fits vertically into the
slot in the lens housing
next to it and hosts
the LCOS (liquid crystal
on silicon) imager and LEDS AND
the ASIC (application- ©—— HEATSINK The
specific integrated LEDs provide
circuit) that drives the light source
it. The LCOS imager for the LCOS;
creates the image the heatsink
that is projected cools the LEDs.
onto the screen. ARM CPU
This processor
performs the
projector’s digital
signal process-
FLASH MEMORY ing work and the
AND MICROSD CARD bulk of its other
SLOT The projector functions.
is outfitted with 1GB
of embedded flash
memory and can host
uptoa 16GB MicroSD ANALOG INTERFACE
card (3M includes a PROCESSOR This chip
2GB card), so you can processes the analog
store documents,
photos, and presen-
tations right on
the device.
video sources con-
nected to the projec-
tor (VGA, composite,
and component).
MICRO-
CONTROLLER This
chip monitors the
projector’s keypad
and other digital
control functions.
Please note that we have
flipped the primary PCB over
in order to expose some of the
projector's most important
components.
www.maximumpe.com | sur 2010 | MAXIMUMBPG | 61
ne
Ei R & D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE
Step-by-Step Guides to
Improving Your PC
IB” THIS MONTH Ii” | WINDOWS TIP OF THE MONTH
63 MANAGE AND CONVERT YOUR EBOOKS
WITH CALIBRE
67 REMOTELY CONTROL YOUR PC WITH
LOGMEIN
Wi PIN MULTIPLE FOLDERS TO THE
WIN7 TASKBAR
ave you ever
wished you
could pin more
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than one folder to your rr T gra
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If you try to, it simply She məə.
saves them all in a Ə əəə Pay Ev ioe
Şu in Də ec —
single stack, requiring
two clicks when you ALEX CASTLE
only want to have to MANAGING ONLINE
EDITOR
Hein
.-s.......
Tore emt Tete
click once. Fortu- — — — — — — — — —-
nately, there’s a clever b,
hack that gets around this problem.
VVindovvs 7 allovvs you to pin shortcuts to
the taskbar. Unlike 7 shortcuts to execut- Use cC M D a n d
able files never stack. So, make a shortcut to
any executable that’s not already pinned to the Exp lo re r. exe To g et h e r
taskbar, and drag the shortcut to the taskbar.
Once its pinned, it'll stay pinned, even if you
modify it. That means that you're free to right- You probably already know that you can opena
click the shortcut in the taskbar, then right-
click again on the name of the program and
select Eiqperse" This will allow -younsieuange command prompt from the explorer in Windows 7
any of the properties of the shortcut, including
ie name ion end tarpoi TE Tan 0) 0: and Vista by holding shift and right-clicking, but
ate name, point it at the folder you want, and
voilà! This way, you can add as many folders
as you want to the taskbar. did you know you can also do the reverse? To
open an explorer menu at your current location in
the EET the command prompt, simply enter the following
idea for a How To project? Tell us
about it by writing to commentsfd
Bumu co. command [including the period): start.
62 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
m Manage and Convert Your Ebooks with Calibre
With the arrival of the much-hyped iPad and
the rest of tablet-mania, it seems like ebooks
are about to have their “iPod moment,”
when they’ll go from a favorite of early
adopters and bibliophiles to a mainstream
phenomenon. There’s one problem, though:
Unlike MP3s, there’s not a single, near-
universal standard for ebooks. Historically,
this has made it difficult to organize your
ebooks and transfer them between various
reading devices.
Fortunately, there’s one program
that can help you solve nearly all of your
ebook-related problems: Calibre. A free,
open-source project, Calibre is one part
iTunes-esque library-management program,
one part batch-conversion tool, and one part
file-transfer manager. In this article, we'll
show you how to use Calibre to manage
your ebooks and to get them working on any
reader. -ALEX CASTLE
SET UP CALIBRE To get started
with Calibre, visit the project
homepage at http://calibre-ebook.com
and download the latest version. Let the .msi
do its job and install the program on your
computer, and then launch the program. If
this is your first time running Calibre, you'll
be presented with a few choices.
First, you'll be asked where you want to
save your Calibre library (image A). Calibre
will use whichever location you select
as a home for its hierarchical file system,
containing all your ebooks. It’s worth
noting that whenever you import
a book into Calibre, it will actually
create a copy of that ebook in its
library, which can take up a lot
of space.
Next, you'll be asked to select
your preferred reader. If you have
one of the readers on the list (and
pretty much every reader is on the
list), make sure to select it, because
this will change the default output
settings Calibre will use when
converting ebooks. These settings
optimize the outputted file for
reading on the specific device
you choose, and take into account
screen size as well as file type and
DRM restriction.
If you told Calibre that you have an
iPhone or iPad, you'll be asked if you”d like
to run the Calibre content server. We're
going to show you how to use the content
server to access your files, so go ahead and
choose yes, but don’t worry if this option
didn’t pop up for you—its easy to turn the
server on at any time.
na
mi R & D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE
ADD BOOKS TO CALIBRE
Now that you’ve finished setting up
Calibre, you should be looking at a
depressingly empty ebook library (image
B). Unless you plan on reading the Calibre
Quick Start Guide over and over again,
you're going to want to add some books
to your library. For use as an example, we
downloaded a handful of classic books
from the Gutenberg Project (and one classic
comic book from goldenagecomics.co.uk)
in different ebook formats.
Loading books into Calibre is easy. Start
by clicking the Add Books button in the top
left corner, then browse to a folder contain-
ing ebooks (image C). You can select mul-
tiple books, then click Open to import them
all to Calibre. If you've already got an ebook
library spread out over multiple subfolders
in a directory, you can import all books from
a directory tree by clicking the small arrow
to the right of the Add Books button.
Hopefully, Calibre has properly read
the metatags from the books you’ve chosen
to upload, and you'll now be looking at a
populated, searchable library. Unfortunate-
ly, many ebooks are missing proper meta-
a mm.” book, and is generally
very accurate.
64 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
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ymmo erers ———— . 5 | you only have a few
5 Documents litt ary ə books you need to add
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ük əf" ayım ps rus Pas zon) and click Fetch
© Lemp Metadata from Server.
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© wanes cally pull down all the
R ə . information Calibre
ə görmə ee ee eng bö Ci "sə aş "40.7. € can find about the
Finally, if you want to enter the
same metadata for a vvhole bunch of
books at once (say, an author fora
series of novels or comic books) you
can select all the books at once, and
click the Edit Meta Information.
-— J ) | Once you ve gotten the important
——— . metadata (title and author, at the least)
entered for a book, you can open the
metadata editor for that book and
click Dovvnload Cover. This vvill attach
a cover image to the book (image E),
which allows you to use Calibre’s slick
“a Ge Cover Viewer feature. If Calibre fails
————— wee to download a cover, or downloads a
... - different cover than the one you vvant,
enter the ISBN for the version
of the book that you want, and
click Download Cover again.
BROWSE YOUR
m LIBRARY
There are a couple of
vvays to brovvse through your
ebook library in Calibre. The
default is a simple list vievv,
with a search bar at the top,
vvhich lets you vievv only books
vvith a certain title, author, or
tag. Tag vievv, vvhich lets you
vievv your library in a branch-
ing, hierarchical structure, can
= be accessed by clicking the tag
— —— icon in the lower right corner
Rə | of Calibre.
You can also view your
data, so you may have to add it in yourself. | library in a cool-looking Cover View mode
There are three ways to do this. (image F) by clicking the arrow button in the
First, you can simply click the book, lower right corner of Calibre. Cover View
click the Edit Meta Information button,
and enter the information (such as
title, author, and pub-
will show you the covers of whatever
books are currently being viewed in
either search or tag view. If you want
search view to open in a separate
window, or to view more covers at the
same time, those options are available in
Properties > Interface.
Calibre isn’t just an ebook orga-
nizer, it’s also the most powerful
tool for batch ebook conversion. This is
handy, because in the current, volatile
ereader market, ebook standards change
constantly, and it’s easy to end up witha
collection of books in multiple formats.
To convert ebooks, simply select
them, and click the Convert button in the
upper left of Calibre. A conversion win-
dow will open, with pages and pages of
options you can dig through, to produce
a perfect copy. For most books, however,
the default settings will work and you
can just click the OK button to start the
conversion. If you want to convert to a
different format than the default (which
is based on the reader
you selected when
installing Calibre), you
can do so using the
drop-down menu in
the upper right corner
of the convert window
(image G).
It will take Calibre
a little while to convert
each book (you can
view its progress by
clicking the Jobs but-
ton). When it’s done it
will store the created
file in its library, alongside the original.
You won't see the new file in Calibre by
default, unless you click a title, then click
the View drop-down list, then select
View Specific Format.
Transferring files from Calibre to
a reader is easy, though it works
differently, depending on which reader
you have. For most readers, such as the
Kindle, Nook, or Sony reader, you simply
connect your reader to your computer,
select the books you want to transfer,
then hit the Send
To Device button.
For the iPhone or
iPad, you'll need
to turn on the
Calibre content
server in Prefer-
ences > Content
server, then
download an app
that can retrieve
books from a re-
mote source, such
as readMe (for
iPad) or Stanza
(for iPhone and
iPod touch).
If you want
to be able to
access your ebooks from anywhere us-
ing a web browser, that’s also accom-
plished using the Calibre content server.
You simply activate the content server
and leave both your computer and Cali-
bre running (image H). After that, you
can view your library from any com-
puter, by pointing a web browser to your
static IP address (or, if you don’t have a
static IP, your dyn-dns.com account).
mu
BREAKING DOWN TECH-PRESENT AND FUTURE R & D A
m Use Your PC Remotely with LogMeln
Mobile devices like smartphones, tab-
lets, and netbooks have always had a
trade-off: What you get in convenience,
you lose in good old-fashioned power.
Even as modern smartphones close the
processing-power gap, you still can’t do
everything you could do at your primary
PC. Or can you?
In this article, we’re going to show
you how to use remote-desktop soft-
ware to control your PC from another
PC or mobile device. There are several
programs that let you remotely control a
computer, but in our experience LogMeIn
offers the most useful and consumer-
friendly software in the category. In light
of that, we’re going to show you how
to configure and use LogMeIn Free and
LogMeln Ignition to get desktop-grade
power, anywhere. “ALAN FACKLER
GET STARTED WITH LOGMEIN
FREE
LogMeln Free is (you guessed it) a free
version of LogMeln’s software that allows
you to remotely access your PC or Mac
computer from any computer or mobile
device, anywhere, just so long as there is an
available Internet connection (image A).
Getting started with LogMeln Free is fast
and simple. Visit www.logmein.com and
Create an Account
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5—
select LogMeln Free from the pull-
down tab below Products, then hit
Download Now. Like most web-based
software, you'll have to create an ac-
count to use the service.
When prompted, fill out the
information to create an account (im-
age B). The next menu will ask you to
choose whether you d like to install the
software on the computer you are cur-
rently using, or on a different computer
altogether. In order to keep things sim-
ple, use the computer that you want to
remote control when downloading this
software. After clicking Add This Com-
puter you will be asked to download
and install the remote-access software
and run the installation wizard.
Installation is very simple—
LogMeln walks
Bie you through
== = every step. Keep
in mind, besides
creating an
account name
(just your email)
and password,
you may also
need to type in
your desktop’s
— user name
and password
if your OS is
password protected. The first time you log
in, LogMeIn will ask you whether or not
you would like to allow the program to
make changes to your computer. Hit Yes
to ensure the smoothest possible synch
between your desktop and wireless device.
Once a connection has been created, punch
in your desktop’s user name and password,
and presto!
This will take you to LogMeln”s
interface, which will give you a couple of
options. In order to synch with your desk-
top, hit Remote Control (image C). This
will launch the most important part of
LogMeln—the remote desktop.
LogMeln’s browser-based remote
desktop lets you perform almost any
task you normally would using your PC,
over the Internet. You can save and make
changes to files, reorganize your desk-
top, surf the net, and even remotely run
heavy-duty apps like Photoshop, even on
www.maximumpc.com | Jur 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 6'7
HM
m R & D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE
an underpowered netbook (image D).
Another cool feature is LogMelIn’s
Customize Toolbar, found at the top of
the screen (image E). This drop-down bar
offers customizable widgets to help you
Customize Toolbar Y
explorer, but the functionality ends there.
Navigation around your desktop is
nowhere near as streamlined as witha
more well-equipped device; dramatic
movements cause lag, and double-clicking
Options
account and beginning a remote session
is exactly the same as with a mobile
computer. The interface, however, func-
tions differently.
Unlike LogMeIn Free s slow-moving,
point-and-touch interface, your finger is
now the mouse, which can be dragged
anywhere on the screen.
Ignition for iPad takes advantage of
the device’s touch screen controls. Pinch
your fingers to zoom in and out, single-tap
items to select or drag them, double-tap to
open them. The two-finger control scheme
also allows you to easily right-click items
or scroll through your web browser. The
toolbar is simpler than LogMeIn Free’s
toolbar, but has all the important elements.
A keyboard icon allows you to type
whenever you need to, as well as a
Ctrl+Alt+Del icon, which allows you to
remotely troubleshoot your computer if
you're having issues offsite. There’s also
an in-depth settings menu, which allows
you to adjust color quality, resolution,
and network speed, just to name a few
of the options. db
cout
remotely control your desktop, including a
magnifying glass (very useful for netbook
use) and laser pointer, as well as a plethora
of connection options if you'd like to sync
your keyboard or change your screen
settings. These helpful tools can really
streamline your experience.
All in all, if you want to access your
favorite computer remotely from a laptop
or netbook, LogMeIn Free is a must-have.
SMALL DEVICES: READ ON
Using the free software with smaller de-
vices, like a smartphone or iPad, however,
is a different experience.
Remotely controlling a computer using
LogMeIn Free works basically the same
way on an iPhone or other smartphone as
on a PC—you fire up the browser and navi-
gate to LogMeln.com. However, when using
these smaller devices, LogMeIn Free acts as
more of a “glimpse” than a workable inter-
face. Your desktop will appear, and you will
be given limited access to its content. You
can open folders, Word documents, and the
68 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
icons often doesn’t produce the
desired result. Instead, anytime
you try to access a program or
open software the page has to
completely refresh, giving you a
kind of slide show view of your
computer, rather than an actual
workable interface. Fortunately,
there’s another way, but it costs.
LOGMEIN IGNITION
If you have an iPhone or iPad, a
program called LogMeIn Ignition
addresses these issues, for a
price. LogMeln Ignition is avail-
able exclusively in the iTunes
App Store for $30. VVhat does
that price tag get you? Near-
desktop-level responsiveness, on
a mobile device.
After downloading, simply
launch the app and you will
be asked to punch in your user
name and password (image F).
The process of logging into your
a aie
REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE | N T H E LAB m
Tested. Revievve
Verdicti
Bi Hİ INSIDE
72 IBUYPOVVER PALADIN F PC
74 SAPPHIRE RADEON HD 5870
EYEFINITY EDITION
76 ALIENWARE M11X LAPTOP
77 WESTERN DIGITAL VELOCIRAPTOF
WD6000HLHX
78 APPLE IPAD
80 BOWERS & WILKINS MM-1 SPEAKERS
82 ASUS ENGTX480 VIDEOCARD
83 LINKSYS E3000 WI-FI ROUTER
84 CORSAIR 700D FULL-TOWER CASE
86 ACER H5360 3D VIDEO PROJECTOR
88 SAMSUNG N210 NETBOOK
90 CAINTERNET SECURITY SUITE PLUS 2010
91 METRO 2033
D ONLINE
= EVEN MORE REVIEWS! :
s BEST OF THE BEST i
= BREAKING TECH NEWS
= NO BS PODCAST |
eee
ee
ee
www.maximumpc.com | suL 2010 | MAXIMUMPE 171
nm
IB İ N T H E LA B REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
iBuupovver Paladin F
Hexa-core and Fermi on the cheap
ost readers knovv the name iBuy-
power by now, but they don’t know
our nickname for the company:
iStealpower.
OK, that’s not really true, we just made
that up to make this story sound sexier, but
there is some truth to our jest. Over the years,
we've often wondered how the hell these
guys can offer PCs for less than the cost of the
parts. You know, like getting $2,900 worth of
parts in a machine that cost $2,200.
We're not sure if the cost of the parts
in iBuypower’s Paladin F exceeds the price
of the machine, but it probably gets close.
The Paladin F sports Intel’s new hotness: the
hexa-core 3.33GHz Core i7-980X (clocked
up to 3.8GHz). Even with AMD’s new hexa-
core CPU now on the market, Intel’s Core
i7-980X is still clearly the recognized fastest
CPU in der verold! To the 980X, iBuypower
adds Nvidia's top-dog GeForce GTX 480
card, aka Fermi. Also aboard are 6GB of
Kingston DDR3/1600, a 1-kilowatt PSU, an
LG Blu-ray combo drive, a 1.5TB hard drive,
and RAID 0 SSDs, along with Windows 7
Home Premium. The entire system is embed-
ded in a Zalman GS1000 Plus enclosure.
Our first issue with the Paladin F stems
from the storage configuration. In the rush
to get a low-cost RAID 0 config in the PC,
SPECIFICATIONS
Processor Intel 3.33GHz Core i7-980X (OC'd to
3.8GHz] with Acetek 550LC cooler
Mobo Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5
RAM 6GB Kingston DDR3/1600 in
tri-channel mode
Videocard GeForce GTX 480
Soundcard Onboard Realtek
Storage Two Kingston 30GB SSDNow V Series,
1.5TB Seagate Barracuda
Optical LG Blu-ray combo drive
Case/PSU Zalman GS1000 Plus / 1000 Watt PSU
iBuypower used
a pair of 30GB
Kingston SSDNow V
Series drives. That’s
60GB for your pri-
mary boot partition.
We started to get
nervous about space
just by installing our
20GB of benchmark
files on the machine.
Fortunately, there’s
also a 1.5TB Seagate
drive in the mix—but
come on, 60GB?
On the perfor-
mance front, the
Paladin F turned in
good, but not insane,
application numbers.
Against our zero-
point machine,
a 2.66GHz Core
i7-920 overclocked to
3.5GHz, the 3.8GHz
Core i7-980 was
about 35 percent faster
in Vegas Pro 9 and Main Concept Reference.
In ProShow Producer, the Paladin F only man-
aged a 17 percent faster score. Lightroom saw
a 15 percent boost.
In gaming, however, our zero-point
dominated. Yes, the GeForce GTX 480 is the
fastest single-GPU card in existence, but
our zero-point uses a Radeon HD 5970 card,
the single-fastest videocard in existence.
That dual-GPU 5970 saw the Paladin F run
roughly 23 percent slower in both Far Cry 2
and STALKER: Call of Pripyat. The asterisk
on our 5970 card, though, is the cost and
availability. You”d be lucky to find a Radeon
HD 5970 for less than $700—if you can find
one at all. It’s not an easy card to get, folks.
of other gaming rigs.
BENCHMARKS
ZERO POINT
Vegas Pro 9 (sec) 3,049 : 2,273
Lightroom 2.6 (sec) 356 309
ProShow 4 (sec) 1,112 947
Reference 1.6 (sec) 2,113 : i 1,553
STALKER: CoP (fps) 42.0 32.3 [-23%)
Far Cry 2 (fps) 114.4 87.7 [-23%)
0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.666Hz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked to 1,750MHz, on a
Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate.
72 | MAXIMUMPG | suc 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
|
“1
m
| P |
LH
|
The Paladin F turns in solid performance without the price—or pizzazz—
Of course, neither the Paladin F nor
our zero-point can hold a candle to Digital
Storm’s tri-CrossFire Hail Storm (reviewed in
May) nor Main Gears tri-SLI Shift (reviewed
in June). But here’s the kicker: Those two
super PCs were $7,800 and $6,900, respec-
tively. The Paladin F is $3,000.
Is it the fastest rig in der verold? No.
VVe”re not even sure it’s the fastest in the
Tri-State area, but for $3,000, you're getting
Intel’s best and a DX11 card that’s actually
almost as fast as the dual-GPU 5970 card.
In the end, despite a couple configura-
tion issues, the Paladin F is a solid machine
and a darn good value. -GORDON MAH UNG
| VERDICT
IBUYPOWER PALADIN F
Quiet; affordable;
room to expand.
: Incredibly small main
: partition; could use a
. second GPU.
$3,000, www.ibuypower.com
74 | MANIMUMPG | suv 2010
Sapp
hire Radeon HD
5870 Eyefinity Edition
Six monitors + one graphics card =
eye candy heaven
o gamers really need six moni-
D tors? Having two displays—
maybe even three—on your desk
certainly makes sense for a productivity
boost. And having run some games on
three displays, we can say that the added
immersion in the game world can indeed
be compelling. But you can run three
displays with any Radeon HD 5000-
series cards, provided you have at least
one DisplayPort monitor.
Sapphire and AMD are betting that
some gamers will lust after more than
three displays, which is why Sapphire is
shipping the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity
Edition. This isn’t just a stock 5870 with
six monitor connectors; it also ships
with a 2GB GDDRS5 frame buffer. So even
if you aren't planning on running six
displays on your desk, the 2GB of VRAM
might itself be attractive.
Eyefinity is flexible as to monitor
configurations. You can have the six dis-
plays arranged in two rows, which can be
configured as one huge surface or two 3x1
surfaces. Or, you can have five LCD panels
in line for a wraparound gaming experience.
Sounds intriguing, right? But what
about performance? We put the Sapphire
card up against an XFX Radeon HD 5870
XXX Edition and the Asus GTX 480 card.
In single-display performance, what
you immediately notice is that the Eye-
finity Edition can’t quite keep up with the
overclocked XFX card, although the dif-
ferences are pretty small. The Asus GTX
480 pretty much wins across the board.
So if you're planning on using just one or
two displays, the Asus GTX 480 is likely
a better single-GPU card. But then, you
don’t want an Eyefinity Edition card for
just a couple of monitors, right? To check
the chops of the Eyefinity Edition, we
ran the benchmarks in both three- and
VVVVVV.maximumpc.com
six-panel configurations, at 5160x1080
and 5160x2160, respectively. None of our
three- or six-panel benchmarks had anti-
aliasing enabled, vvhich is fine since gam-
ing performance is already so limited.
HAVVX and Far Cry 2 seem to be play-
able on six panels, even vvith detail levels
pumped up, but minimum frame rates
will dip down into single digits. Three-
panel gaming, though, looks viable across
the board, particularly if you turn down
some of the graphics detail.
The one real gotcha with this card is
monitor support. The Eyefinity edition
has six mini-DisplayPort connectors,
but only five adapters ship in the box:
two mini-DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort,
two MDP-to-DVI passive, and one
MDP-to-HDMI. So if you want to go with
six-panel gaming, you'll need one to four
more adapters, which cost about $10
each. That’s in addition to the $500 cost
of the card.
Is it worth it? If you want more than
three panels with just one graphics card,
this is the only game in town, short of
some pro graphics cards that cost even
more. So if you Te lusting after—and have
the room for—four or more LCD monitors
on your desk, Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5870
gets the job done. -LOYD CASE
SAPPHIRE RADEON HD 5870 EYEFINITY
: Eİ WARREN
: Not the fastest card
: for the price, six-
: monitor gaming is
: performance-limited.
“Four, five, and six
displays vvith one
card, 2GB VRAM.
Sapphire HD XFX Radeon Asus GTX Three displays Six displays
5870 Eyefinity HD 5870 xxx 480 5160x1080 5460x2160
Unigine Heaven 2.0 (fps) 17 : 13 : 26 Unigine Heaven 2.0 (fps) 18 . 10
Battle Forge (fps) 47 E 49 1 61 Battle Forge (fps) 30 : 18
Dirt 2 (fps) 71 1 71 : 80 STALKER: Call of Pripyat (fps) 27 : 18
Far Cry 2 / Long (fps) 75 : 78 5 103 Dirt 2 (fps) 42 : 25
Far Cry 2 / Action (fps) 63 : 65 1 76 Far Cry 2/ Long (fps) 62 . 35
Tom Clancy”s HAWX (fps) | 89 1 92 1 104 Far Cry 2 / Action (fps) 47 : 30
Crysis (fps) 32 : 33 531 Tom Clancy”s HAWX (fps) 59 : 37
STALKER: Call of 37 7 38 5 39 Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising (fps) 46 5 29
Pripyat (fps) : : Crysis (fps) 15 ..
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.336Hz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition in an Asus P6X58D
Premium motherboard with 66B of DDR3/1333 and an 850TX Corsair PSU. The OS is 64-bit
Windows 7 Ultimate. All games are run at 1920x1200 with 4x AA.
9) 111777
The Eyefinity Edition sports
six mini-DisplayPort ports but
only comes with five adapters.
www.maximumpc.com | jut 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | '75
nm
IB İ N T H E LA E REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Alienware M11x
At last, real games on alittle laptop!
he terms petite and gaming notebook
are about as incongruous as self-restraint
and Wall Street, so our curiosity about
Alienware’s M11x was naturally mixed with
skepticism. Could this sub-five pound, 11-inch rig
do much more than play aged or anemic titles?
Small as it is, the M11x indeed has substance.
The first sign of hope was the GeForce GT 335M
graphics card—a slightly faster kin to the GT
325M we found in Asus’s N61J 16-inch notebook
(reviewed in May). Also stuffed into the wee
chassis: a 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo overclocked to
1.73GHz (which can be turned off in the BIOS),
4GB of DDR2/1066 RAM, and a 7,200rpm 500GB
hard drive. That's a lot of gear to cram into an
11.25x8.25x1.25-inch body—so much, in fact,
that there’s no room left for an optical drive.
Deciding on which notebook to use for our
zero-point was tricky, as the M11x straddles
the gaming and ultraportable categories. We
settled on our most recently reviewed notebook,
the aforementioned Asus N61), an all-purpose
mainstream machine. Like that notebook, the
M11x features hybrid graphics so you can en-
able or disable the videocard to suit your needs.
Whereas the N61J uses Nvidia’s new Optimus
hybrid graphics, however, the M11x features
the old-school method, requiring a manual
switch and reboot to implement. Be that as it
may, when the M11x’s discrete videocard was
activated, we were impressed with its chops.
SPECIFICATIONS
CPU 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 OC’d to 1.73GHz
RAM 4GB DDR3/800MHz
Chipset Intel GS45
Graphics GeForce GT 335M / Intel GS45
Hard Drive | 500GB Seagate $T9500420AS [7,200rpm)
Ports VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet,
three USB, FireWire, two headphone,
mic, 3-in-1 media reader
os Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Lap/Carry | 4lb, 8.6 oz / 5 lb, 4.3 oz
You can change the color
of the M11x’s various
backlights by using the
AlienFX utility within
Alienware’s Command
Center software.
Sporting an additional 24 CUDA cores anda
20MHz core clock boost, the M11x’s GT 335M
performed 40 percent faster than the Asus’s GT
325M in both of our gaming tests. And while
the M11x’s benchmark score of 18.2fps in Far
Cry 2 might not strike you as special, consider
that it hit a respectable 33.5fps when playing at
the notebook’s 1366x768 native res. Yes, on an
11-inch notebook! Other notebooks of this size
buckle under Quake 4.
In the applications benchmarks, the M11x’s
proc was overpowered by the Asuss 2.26GHz
Core i5-430M, not surprisingly. (For the record,
although the BIOS reports the M11x’s proc
as 1.73GHz, we never saw it exceed 1.6GHz
in CPU-Z during our benchmark tests). But
compared with other ultraportable machines,
the M11x is competitive. In fact, it beat out
the premium Toshiba R600, our ultraportable
zero-point, by 55.9 percent in ProShow and 18.4
percent in Photoshop. On top of that, the M11x
surpassed that machine and others of its kind in
battery life. With the graphics card disabled and
BENCHMARKS
ZERO POINT
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) | 1,260 | 2,400 [-47.5%)
Photoshop CS3 (sec) 164 245 (-33.1%)
Proshow Producer (sec) | 1,482 1,198 (-25.896)
MainConcept (sec) 2,453 5,040 [-51.3%)
Far Cry (fps) 13.0 : 18.2
Call of Duty 4 (fps) 25.5 35.8
Battery Life (min) 125 : : 300 (140%)
0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Our zero point notebook is an Asus N61J with a 2.266Hz Core i5-430M, 4GB DDR3/1066 RAM, a 500GB Seagate hard drive, a GeForce GT 325M, and Windows 7
Home Premium 64-bit. Far Cry 2 tested at 1680x1050 with 4x AA; Call of Duty 4 tested at 1680x1050 with 4x AA and anisotropic filtering.
76 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
the power-saving mode selected, we ran a video
file full-screen on the M11x for five hours. Of
course, the M11x’s 8-cell battery, not to mention
its videocard, make this machine a pound or
more heavier than most so-called ultraportables.
But even with the power brick included, we're
talking less than five and a half pounds.
Aesthetically, the M11x sports touches
befitting a gaming notebook: an Alienware-
esque contoured body and LED backlighting
behind the keyboard, power button, and front
grills. It also comes fairly well-equipped with
ports, including both HDMI and DisplayPort
outputs. It lacks an Express Card slot, but
mobile broadband is possible via the internal
WWAN option (an extra $125).
Frankly, we're amazed at Alienware’s
accomplishment. Are there sacrifices? Sure.
The biggest being the lack of an optical drive.
But all things considered, that seems a fair
trade for an otherwise thoroughly outfit-
ted ultraportable that can
actually play today’s games.
-KATHERINE STEVENSON
VERDICT
ALIENWARE M11X
Uberportability, : No optical drive,
robust gaming, and : no Express Card;
long battery life in one : old-school hybrid
kick-ass package. : graphics solution.
eer eee aa .,.,.——.———.
Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB
A much-needed refresh for WD's flagship speedy drive
or years, if you wanted the speediest sustained reads and writes,
consumer hard drive you could get your though random-access times
hands on, you went with a 10,000rpm are slower.
Western Digital Raptor. Its first incarnation, On the other end of the
released in 2003, was a 37GB single-platter drive price/capacity/performance
using a PATA-to-SATA bridge. The next year triangle, of course, are solid state
brought a 74GB SATA 150 drive, and thereafter drives. A 100GB SandForce-
the drives roughly doubled in size (and went up controlled solid state drive offers
a SATA spec) every couple of years. Last time read and write speeds north
WD refreshed the line, it bumped the capacity of 200MB/s, random-access wm «
to 300GB, named the resulting 100MB/s-plus times measured in the tenths LTT
drive the VelociRaptor, and promptly won our of milliseconds, and read and ~
Kick Ass award. But that was 2008—several write IOPS in the 5,000s—for
hard drive generations ago. And though Western $400. With SSDs much more
Digital’s latest VelociRaptor ups the ante with expensive but much faster, and
600GB of space and a 6Gb/s SATA controller, the 7,200rpm mechanical drives
drive now has to compete with solid state drives nearly as fast but with more
and high-capacity, high-performance drives like capacity per dollar, where does
WD's own Caviar Black series. the VelociRaptor fit in?
Make no mistake: The new VelociRaptor, We still think there’s a niche
with its 32MB of cache and 6Gb/s transfer rates, for the VelociRaptor. It does
is the fastest mechanical SATA drive we’veever deserve big props for being the
tested. With average sustained read and write fastest mechanical SATA drive
speeds greater than 130MB/s, it’s fully a third on the market, and its sustained
faster than the last-gen VelociRaptor, which read and write speeds are
averaged around 100MB/s for both. Random- faster than the fastest first-gen
access times hit around 7.1ms—about the same SSDs. It's the best single-drive
as the last-gen VelociRaptor, and about tvvice compromise betvveen the
the speed of a fast 7,200rpm drive. capacity and price per gigabyte
But both solid state drives and 7,200rpm of a 7,200rpm drive and the
mechanical hard drives have come a long way raw speed of an SSD. The 6Gb/s g
2 $ The label reads Enterprise Storage, but we
since the last Raptor reigned supreme, and SATA support helps bump up burst speeds, suspect that plenty of VelociRaptors will find
for sheer performance, the VelociRaptor isn’t if not much else, and 600GB is enough for an homes in enthusiast rigs.
top of the line any more. And it’s not even as operating system and every program and game
far ahead of the rest of the mechanical pack you're likely to install. Power users are likely complexity: worrying about OS TRIM support,
as it once was—a 2TB WD Caviar Black costs to prefer a solid state drive for OS and games default library locations, managing two drives,
$280 and offers nearly 115MB/s average and a 7,200rpm drive for storage, but that adds and so forth—things you don't have to stress
over with the new VelociRaptor.
BENCHMARKS The VelociRaptor isn’t the fastest drive
600GB 600GB 300GB Caviar 2TB . R
VelociRaptor VelociRaptor VelociRaptor Black you can get, nor the most capacious, but if
Controller 6Gb/sSATA 36b/s SATA— ; 36b/s SATA : 3Gb/s SATA you just want one drive that does it all, the
HDTune 4.01 : : : nevvly refreshed VelociRaptor is still a com-
Min Read (MB/s) 97.8 : 97.8 : 62 5 68.7 pelling choice. -NATHAN EDWARDS
Avg Read (MB/s) 132.6 : 132.6 : 99.9 7 dz
Max Read (MB/s) 157.8 : 158.2 i rials : 147.8
R.A. Read (ms) 7.1 : 74 : üz : MT
Burst Read (MB/s) 270.8 : 201.2 : 210 : 197.6 El El
Min Write (MB/s) 95.9 96.4 : 76.4 : 89 VERDICT
Avg Write (MB/s) 130.2 : 130.4 : 100.9 : 113.4
Max Write (MB/s) 163.4 : 1559 : 121 : 146.9 WD VELOCIRAPTOR WD6000HLHX
R.A. Write (ms) 7.1 : 7.1 : 7.1 5 11.8
BUTEEVİHTƏİMB ae TET. ; m — m 166500 00
urs Nis eis VELOCIPEDE CENTIPEDE
4KB Read (IOPS) 145 ; 139 . 145 : 81 5. 00000
4KB Write (10PS) 300 : 321 : 384 : 201 Fastest hard drive, : Occupies awkward
i : : : 6Gb/s SATA; wel- : performance/capacity
Premiere Pro (sec) 285 291 300 299 come capacity bump. | middle ground.
PCMark Vantage HDD 7,881 : 7,467 : 6,042 : 5,781
Best scores are bolded. All tests performed on an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with a Core i7-X980 CPU (ü3.336Hz with 66B DDR3/1600 running į PETERE a T iE a
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. SATA 3Gb/s tests performed using the ICH10R south bridge; SATA 6Gb/s tests performed using onboard Marvell 9123 controller.
www.maximumpc.com | JuL 2010 | MAXIMUMPS 177
BES
| N T H E LA B REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
The iPad’s wide black bezel
is unsightly, but provides
a good resting place for
smudge-inducing fingers.
78 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
Apple iPad Wi-Fi
Touch navigation works—it just plain works.
Netbooks beware!
ven if you reject the iPad on an intestinal
level—you know, because you don’t want
to be associated with mock turtlenecks and
man bags—then you should still view Apple's device
as a referendum on the looming wave of tablet
computers. The bottom line is that the iPad is damn
useful. The referendum has passed.
The LED-backlit display clocks 1024x768 pixels
across 9.7 diagonal inches. Those are netbook-like
specs in a physical formfactor that’s more attractive
(both aesthetically and functionally) than any net-
book. The best part about the screen is that it defines
the iPad in toto—without the baggage of a hinged
physical keyboard, track pad, or pointing stick, the
iPad thrives when typing, web-surfing, or doing
similarly simple tasks while lying on your back.
For couch-based computing, just prop the iPad
in the angle of your lap. In landscape mode, the
virtual keyboard stretches 7.75 inches edge-to-edge,
providing easy typing targets. But it’s really the iPad’s
touch navigation that makes the device so conve-
nient when working in a prone position. Scrolling,
panning, or just inserting a cursor is much easier
when all you have to do is tap your finger. Simply
put, touch-based navigation trumps every mousing
alternative we've ever encountered on a netbook.
And thanks to the iPad’s 1GHz ARM processor—a
system-on-chip that also handles 3D, audio, power
management, and bus traffic duties—the GUI is
extremely fast with speedy screen redraws. The iPad
eschews mechanical storage for flash, aiding app
responsiveness and load times, as well as battery life
(which consistently beat Apple" 10-hour estimate
for “normal use” scenarios).
When you're ready to hit the road, the iPad
provides a winning mixture of convenience and
functionality. Compared to most any netbook, it’s
lighter, slimmer, and more packable. It also boots
faster—near instantaneously. For plane trips, you
can watch HD movies in spectacular color and
clarity, read ebooks, listen to iPod tunes, and play an
ever-growing arsenal of addictive casual games. The
touch interface is an Achilles’ heel when it comes to
shooters and other action games, but pool, pinball,
board games, card games, and various PopCap ports
translate wonderfully to the touch screen.
When you hit your hotel room, you can web-
surf and email without compromise, but you'll final-
ly hit some snags when you attempt more complex
activity. The iPad runs the iPhone OS, which won't
support multitasking until later this year. But the
real bugaboo is the closed system of the OS. Neither
Windows nor Mac software is welcome to the party.
For 90 percent of all computing activity, Apple’s App
Store has an app for the job. But for the remaining 10
percent, you're on your own.
In the coming months, a host of PC makers
will be rolling out their iPad killers, and we can’t
wait to see one that runs Windows apps, multi-
tasks, supports Flash, and has a front-facing cam-
era for video chat—all features the iPad currently
lacks. HP’s Slate appeared to be the front-runner
in the non-Apple tablet race, but speculation has
the Slate running Palm’s webOS instead of the
resource-hogging Windows 7.
Regardless of which OS they're running, all
the new tablet competitors should dominate both
netbooks and old-school, stylus-controlled tablets.
Touch interface is the key, and it doesn’t need to
be Apple’s. JON PHILLIPS
H/W/D: 9.5x7.5x0.5 inches; 1.5lbs
1GHz Apple A4 [ARM-based SoC]
PowerVR SGX 535
256MB DRAM [integrated into SoC)
Flash memory (16, 32, or 64GB)
9.7-inch, LED-backlit IPS LCD,
132ppi
Footprint
CPU
GPU
RAM
Storage
Display
Battery Non-user-replaceable, 6600mAh
ithium ion polymer
/
t/Output
30-pin dock connector, 3.5-inch
headphone jack, built-in speaker
and mic
VERDICT
APPLE IPAD WIFI 32GB
peedy touch-base : an't multitask;
super-efficient SoC; light- : nonstandard OS,
weight and attractive; killer : no Flash support; no
display and virtual key- 1 Camera; limited asa
board; tons of killer apps. : gaming platform.
$600 (for 32GB Wi-Fi only version), www.apple.com
www.maximumpe.com | jut 2010 | MAMIMUMPG | 79
Hm
w | N T H E LA B REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Bowers &
Wilkins MM-1
Computer
Speakers
Yes, theu re that good
e’ve reviewed a number of great
speakers, but we haven't been
this excited about a set of boom
boxes since we laid hands on the eponymous
Cambridge SoundsWorks MicroWorks in the
very first issue of boot magazine—way back
in September 1996.
Listening to Peter Gabriel’s new album
Scratch My Back on Bowers & Wilkins’
MM-1 computer speakers sent chills down
our spines, a sensation rapidly followed by
slack-jawed awe. We downloaded the album
from B&W’'s Society of Sound music club,
which has the exclusive rights to distribute
the album in studio-master quality: losslessly
encoded in FLAC with 24-bit resolution at
a 48Hz sampling rate. The MM-1 delivers
audio quality that’s so exquisite, so pristine,
that it makes the mighty AudioEngine A5—
our previous favorite 2.0-channel speakers—
sound almost muddy in comparison.
We were particularly impressed with the
MM.-1’s bass response: There's no subwoofer,
so this system will never rattle your floor
joists; in fact, frequency response bottoms
out at 57Hz. But those lows are absolutely
clean, lusciously well rounded, and perfectly
balanced with the most scintillating highs
and midrange frequencies we've ever heard
from desktop speakers. In fact, this system
is already pushing the Klipsch Pro Media 2.1
off our Best of the Best list—and that product
took up its perch only last March (you'll find
our review at http://bit.ly/bP2aP6). And yes,
we're taking games and movie soundtracks
as well as music into consideration.
The MM-1 sounds so magnificent that
we don't even mind that it’s a USB speaker
system that bypasses the PC’s audio circuitry;
in fact, that’s a major plus—unless you Vve in-
vested in a high-end soundcard like the kick-
ass Asus Xonar Essence STX we reviewed
in June 2009 (read our review at http://bit.
ly/dP1Qv). Our only other mild criticism is
that B&W decided to use a proprietary cable
hardwired to the right speaker (which con-
tains the amplifier and DAC) to connect the
80 | MANIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
B&W tells us it didn’t need to move a lot of MM-1s to earn a profit—no surprise there—but would
the system sound as sweet if it were produced en masse?
left speaker, and the cable is just long enough
to position the speakers on either side of a
30-inch display.
If you ever needed proof that sheer power
doesn’t necessarily ensure great sound, give
the MM-1 a listen. The amp delivers just 18
watts to each of the four drivers (two one-inch
Nautilus tube tweeters and two three-inch
glass-fiber woofers), and while B&W considers
them strictly near-field monitors, we found
they had no difficulty filling our 80-square-
foot home office with music. The speakers
look as gorgeous as they sound, too, wrapped
in stretchy black fabric with spun-aluminum
tops and surface-mounted volume and power
buttons embedded in the aluminum band
around the right cabinet. You'll find a line-in
jack for a digital media player and a head-
phone jack there, too. A flat, ovoid remote
SPECIFICATIONS
Amplifier Power
Frequency Range
Tweeter
18 watts x 4 channels
-6dB at 57Hz and 22kHz
One-inch Nautilus tube [two]
Woofer Three-inch glass-fiber (two]
Inputs 1/8-inch line-in; USB 2.0
Outputs 1/8-inch headphone
controls volume and the transport mechanism
for your favorite music software (we tried it
with Media Monkey, iTunes, and Foobar 2000).
Thick rubber bases on both speakers isolate
them from your desktop.
We'd like to tell you that the MM-1 is
comparably priced to speaker systems made
by the likes of Logitech, Altec Lansing, or even
Klipsch, but 500 clams puts it at the opposite
end of the spectrum. If you Te as passionate
about audio quality as you are about the rest
of the components in your rig, on the other
hand, that’s not such a high
price to pay. -MICHAEL BROWN
VERDICT
BOWERS & WILKINS MM-I SPEAKERS
SIGNAL
Exquisite audio
reproduction; elegant
design.
: E Noise
Very expensive;
short-ish, hardwired
cable on right speak-
er cabinet.
$500, www.bowers-wilkins.com
nm
ie İ N T H E LA B REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Asus ENGTX480
The fastest single GPU can be made even faster
hot nevv Fermi graphics chip is liter-
ally hot. So, when Asus bundled its
new ENGTX480 card with a custom voltage
tweaker for overclocking, we wondered if it
was such a good idea.
After all, do you really need the card to run
hotter? And with the speed of the ENGTX480,
you probably don’t need the higher clocks
anyway. The ENGTX480 ships with 32 shader
processors (what Nvidia calls “CUDA cores”)
disabled, yet the card still manages to be the
fastest single-GPU card you can buy today.
In addition to 480 shader processors, the
GPU also offers 60 texture units and a whop-
ping 48 render output (ROP) units in its render
back end. This incarnation of the Fermi GPU
is built onto a board with 1.5GB of GDDR5
VRAM. The GPU core clock is 700MHz, while
the shader units run at 1,401MHz. The GDDR5
memory frequency is 924MHz, suggesting
that Nvidia’s GDDR5 memory controller is less
efficient than AMD's, which runs GDDR5 at
1,200MHz on the Radeon HD 5870.
All this graphics goodness comes with
a double whammy: a high price and high
power consumption. The Asus card typically
costs $520-$550, somewhat higher than the
expected $500. System power consumption at
idle is 159W (versus 134W for a stock Radeon
HD 5870) and a whopping 399W at full
throttle (compared to 268W for a
stock HD 5870).
We popped the Asus
ENGTX480 into our standard
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit test
system, which is built on an Asus
P6X58D Premium motherboard
and an Intel Core i7-975 Extreme
Edition. We ran six very different
games, all at 1920x1200 and 4x
AA, with graphics detail maxed
out, plus the Unigine Heaven 2.0
benchmark, with tessellation set
at extreme. We compared the
GTX 480 results to three AMD
cards: the dual-GPU Radeon HD
5970, a factory overclocked Rad-
eon HD 5870, and the similarly
priced Sapphire Radeon HD
5870 Eyefinity Edition (which
j ust about everyone knows that Nvidia's
82 | MANIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maxim u mR a ıq
offers 2GB of BENCHMARKS
1,200MHz GDDR5.) Asus HISRadeon XFXRadeon Sapphire HD
While the ENGTX480 - HD 5970 - HD 5870 XXX 5870 Eyefinity
Radeon HD 5970 Unigine Heaven 2.0 (fps) 26 21 : 13 l 17
won most of the Battle Forge (fps) öl £ 73 : 49 £ 47
Dirt 2 (fi 80 : 89 5 71 £ 71
benchmarks, bear te itpal : : :
: 2 m Far Cry 2 / Long (fps) 103 114 : : 75
im mindthatitisa Far Cry 2 / Action (fps) 76 575 65 i 63
ar Cr’ ction s i i i
dual-GPU card, so y ı i : ;
ı h : Tom Clancy”s HAWX (fps) 104 : 128 — i 89
it may have issues Crysis (fps) 31 İ AA 5 33 : 32
running some STALKER: Call of Pripyat (fps) | 39 i 54 1 38 537
games in dual-GPU
mode. The 5970 is
also hard to find for
$680. Most 5970 cards break the $700 mark.
Best scores are bolded. Our zero point uses a Core i7-975 Extreme Edition, an Asus P6X58D Premium, 6GB of
DDR3/1333, 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate, and a Corsair TX850 PSU. All games tested at 1920x1200 with 4x AA.
Even then, the ENGTX480 card won a couple | VERDICT
of benchmarks. If you compare just single-
GPU cards, the ENGTX 480 won every contest ASUS ENGTX480
except Crysis, which was a dead heat.
Despite the added power consumption
and higher cost, the ENGTX480 impressed us
with its overall performance. It’s very much a
forward-looking card—performance in recent
games is excellent, indeed. It is pricey, though,
at up to $150 more than a stock Radeon HD
5870. So while performance is excellent, the
price differential is pretty substantial. Bear
this in mind when deciding between AMD and
Nvidia. -LOYD CASE
: Very expensive;
: sucks vast amounts
: of power.
Excellent perfor-
mance, particularly
with DX11 titles.
$550, www.asus.com
Asus’s ENGTX480 ships witha
voltage tweaker for additional
overclocking—and heat.
Linksys E3000 Wi-Fi Router
Return of the flying saucers
isco’s new Linksys E-series rout-
ers look a lot like the WRT-series
routers they replace, complete with
the weird flying-saucer motif and internal
antennas. All the new features are under
the hood and in the setup software.
As befits a flagship product, the E3000 is
a dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) router that
enables you to operate two discrete wireless
networks simultaneously. You can also operate
a virtual guest network on the 2.4GHz band
that limits clients to Internet access, isolating
them from the rest of your network.
We typically ignore a router’s setup
software, but we’re of two minds when
it comes to Cisco Connect. It’s the most
foolproof tool we’ve ever used to set up a
router, but it’s very fragile unless you do
things exactly Cisco’s way. The utility as-
signs the router a unique, easy-to-remember
SSID (e.g., RubyPenguin) and a complex
password. Connecting additional PC clients
to the network is a simple matter of using
Cisco Connect to create a USB key and then
plugging the key into each client.
The Linksys E3000 has a four-port
Gigabit Ethernet switch onboard, but
only one USB port, which is limited to
hosting a mass storage device—you
can’t use it to share a printer.
You can use Cisco Connect to change
the router’s SSID or password, but doing so
from within the web interface breaks Cisco
Connect because the software doesn’t have
this new information. That wouldn’t be
such a big deal if the web interface exposed
all the router’s functionality, but it doesn’t.
If you want to configure the guest network
or tweak the router’s crappy parental
controls, Cisco Connect is the only means.
If you want to forward a port or accomplish
other complex tasks, the web interface
is the only means. Changing the router’s
SSID and password to their original values
restores Cisco Connect, but we’d prefer to
use one user interface for everything.
In our tests, the E3000 delivered much
less range than our current Best of the Best
pick, the Netgear VVNDR3700: and it deliv-
ered about 15 percent lovver TCP throughput
at close range. At most of our other test loca-
tions, hovvever, the E3000”s TCP throughput
vvas very close to that of the VVNDR3700. The
Linksys E3000 is a good router, but vve think
Netgear has a better product. -MICHAEL BROWN
Linksys Netgear
E3000 WNDR3700
Kitchen, 20 feet (Mb/s) 68.8 : 83.0
Enclosed Patio, 38 feet (Mb/s) | 45.7 : 46.9
Media Room, 35 feet (Mb/s) 29.8 : 30.9
Bedroom, 60 feet (Mb/s) 43.9 : 45.7
Outdoors, 85 feet (Mb/s) 08: 27
Best scores are bolded. TCP throughput measured using IPerf. N/C
indicates no connection at that location. Read more about our testing
methodology at http://bit.ly/16w270.
"M VERDICT
LINKSYS E3000
: Good performance over- : Two configuration
: all; USB port for storage; : tools; can’t share a
: can limit the number 1 printer over the net-
£ of clients on the guest : work; no BitTorrent
: network. : client.
ximumpc.com | JuL 2010 | MAXIMUMPE | 83
Hm
IB İ N T H E LA B REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Corsair 700D
Our favorite full-tower case gets a little more affordable
f you”ve been paying attention at all
1 to case reviews lately, Corsair’s 700D
should look familiar. That’s because it’s a
slightly stripped-down version of the 800D,
Corsair’s debut chassis (reviewed March
2010). We awarded the 800D 9 out of 10
points and a Kick Ass award, lauding its
roominess, features, and design. The 700D
only differs from the 800D in two respects:
Its side panel has no window, and the 800D’s
hot-swap SATA bays have been replaced
with four HDD trays.
Like its predecessor, the 700D is huge—
24 inches high, 24 inches deep, and 9 inches
wide—and painted in a matte powder-black
inside and out, except for the brushed-
aluminum faceplate. It has five toolless
5.25-inch bays and six hard drive bays with
slide-out trays, which can accommodate 3.5-
inch hard drives without the use of screws,
or 2.5-inch drives with screws. Two of the
hard drive bays are in the case’s lowest com-
partment. The 800D had two 3.5-inch bays
there too, but they were less accessible and
did not feature slide-out trays. The remain-
ing four hard drive bays take the place of
the 800D’s hot-swap bays.
The 700D is divided into thermal zones,
The Corsair 700D’s front-panel connections
(four USB, FireWire, audio) are hidden in the
compartment next to the power button.
84 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
just like the 800D.
The lowest part of
the case holds the
power supply and
filtered intake ports
(with room to mount
fans). The power
supply vents direct-
ly out of the case, so
hot air from the PSU
doesn’t go to the rest
of the case. Air from
the rest of the case’s
lower compartment
is drawn into the
motherboard com-
partment via a 14cm
fan and exhausted
via a 14cm rear
exhaust fan. A third
14cm fan draws air
up from the base of
the chassis to cool
the hard drives. The
air from the hard
drive compartment
exhausts behind the
motherboard tray and
lower price point.
exits through the rear
panel of the case. The top panel of the case
includes mounting brackets for three 12cm
fans or a triple-fan water-cooling radiator,
though no top exhaust fans are included.
The 700D supports micro-ATX, ATX,
and EATX motherboards, and makes the
most cluttered configs look spartan with
its generous interior dimensions. It’ll easily
accommodate the longest videocards on the
market with room to spare.
Corsair’s commitment to well-managed
cables continues to shine through—with
so many rubber-grommeted cable-routing
holes in the motherboard tray, and such
a roomy interior, it’s actually harder to
achieve a bad-looking wiring job than it is
to achieve a good one. That’s one reason we
kinda miss the 800D’s side window—what’s
the point of a pretty build if you can’t ogle
it? But getting rid of the window and the
hot-swap SATA bay helped Corsair knock
$50 from the 700D’s price, so we aren”t com-
plaining too much.
The one awkward thing about the 700D
is its airflow. By default, the case only intakes
air from the bottom, and for that reason the
The 700D eschews hot-swap bays in favor of sliding hard drive trays and a
bottom of the case is raised an inch above
the ground. If your computer room has thick
carpet, you might need to keep your rig ona
desk. And who has room on their desk for a
monster like the 700D? Other than that, the
700D is a hell of a chassis, succeeding where
the 800D does, at a lower price. If you can
do without the hot-swap ports and the side
window, and want to save $50 on a great
case, here ya go. -NATHAN EDWARDS
VERDICT
CORSAIR 7000D
A kick-ass case ata : Huge; we miss the
lower price. : side window.
$220, www.corsair.com
REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Acer H5360 3D Video
Projector
Just slightly ahead of its time
D Vision is one ace up Nvidia’s GPU
sleeve that AMD doesn’t have an
answer for. And if you enjoy 3D
Vision on the small screen, you'll really dig
it writ large with Acer’s H5360 DLP video
projector—provided you can accept the
shortcomings inherent to the projector,
Nvidia’s GPUs, and 3D Vision in general.
When it comes to putting an Nvidia
GPU in your home-theater PC, the biggest
drawback is that none of the green team’s
cards provide the protected audio path
needed to route encrypted HD audio to
the card’s HDMI output. So if you want to
hear the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master
Audio soundtracks on Blu-ray movies—and
you do—you'll need to invest in a special-
ized soundcard, such as Asus’s Xonar HDAV
(read our review at http://bit.ly/2U3HAB) or
Auzentech’s X-Fi Home Theater HD (read our
review at http://bit.ly/bAL65g).
The projector itself has two weak-
nesses: Most significantly, its native
resolution is 1280x720, versus 1920x1080.
That matters most when you Te watching
Blu-ray movies, because they look so much
better splashed across a wall-size screen
at 1080p. On the other hand, the limited
resolution becomes something of a per-
verse benefit when it comes to gaming, for
reasons we'll explain in a moment.
The profector s second deficiency has to
do with the fact that it’s a single-chip DLP
model: We'd heard about the DLP rain-
bow effect, but this is the first time we’ve
actually experienced it. DLP projectors
produce color by spinning a wheel with
red, green, and blue segments in front of
the light source (this one spins at 9,000rpm).
The projector displays each alternating
color of the frame at the same location for
the entire length of the frame. If your eyes
move quickly across the entire screen—as
happens frequently during gameplay—the
three colors might appear to separate into a
rainbow. This doesn’t happen to everyone,
MAXIMUMPE | JuL 2010 | w
v.maximumpc.com
and it didn’t happen to us while we were
watching movies; your mileage may vary.
Now let's get back to the resolution
issue: When the GPU is rendering a game
in 3D Vision, it produces two versions of
each frame—one intended for the right eye
and one intended for the left—so your net
frame rate for a given game will generally be
half what it would be while running in 2D
mode. For the sake of convenience, we con-
nected the projector to an AVADirect X1800
desktop-replacement notebook PC, which is
outfitted with two GeForce GTX 285M GPUs
in SLI. With 3D Vision enabled, that rig was
able to produce Batman: Arkham Asylum
at a respectable 45 frames per second. Had
the projector enabled us to run the game at
1920x1080, we likely wouldn't have been
satisfied with the results.
Nvidia is doing a good job of evangeliz-
ing 3D Vision to game developers, and game
developers are doing an increasingly strong
job of incorporating the technology into their
code. What’s more, the effects are much more
powerful on the big screen than they are on
a small monitor. Be that as it may, the images
that drew the most oohs and aahs from the
crowd that assembled for show time in the
Lab were static scenes from Nvidia’s demo
slide show. Early-adopter gamers won't be
disappointed with this projector, but we'll hold
onto our wallets until Hollywood releases
some Blu-ray 3D movies. -MICHAEL BROWN
ACER H5360 3D VIDEO PROJECTOR
EJ STEREOVISİON
Bright; compact and
portable; minimal price :
premium over conven-
tional projectors. :
: Limited to 720p; uses
DLP technology;
needs a fast Nvidia
GPU for gaming.
To take full advantage of Acer’s H5360 120Hz DLP
projector, you'll also need an Nvidia-powered
videocard ($200 plus), Nvidia’s 3D Vision kit
($200), additional pairs of glasses ($150 each),
a projection screen ($100 plus), and an HDMI
soundcard ($150 plus).
www.maximumpe.com | jut 2010 | MAXIMUMPE | 8'7
Hm
if | N T H E LA E REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Samsung N210
It's OK to judge this book bu its cover
y now, if you're buying a netbook,
you know what you're getting: All the
models of a given generation are the
same on the inside. So with the internals out of
the decision tree, how do you choose which of
dozens of near-identical netbooks is worthy of
your purchase? Sure, the old standby differen-
tiator of battery life still applies. But how about
aesthetics? Can you actually choose a netbook
based on design?
We think so. The Samsung N210’s internals
could be those of any current-gen non-lon
netbook—a 1.66GHz Atom N450 Pine Trail
processor, 1GB RAM, a 250GB 5,400rpm hard
drive—but it’s vvhats on the outside that
counts. The device has an embossed cream-
color lid covered with a clear plastic coating.
The interior is all matte white; and with its
chrome edge trim and crisp gray lettering,
it’s almost retro-futuristic. The keyboard puts
every other netbook keyboard to shame—the
chiclet-style keys aren’t cramped at all and the
keyboard doesn’t feel mushy. We could type
on it all day. The track pad’s multitouch ca-
pabilities help make up for its small size, and
the LED-backlit screen is readable even at low
brightness levels. Cranked up, the backlighting
is quite bright for an office environment.
Beyond the excellent aesthetics of the
case, we have a few complaints. Though the
RAM is easily accessible, the hard drive is not,
and the N210 has 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, but no
Bluetooth.
But we're more perturbed about the
N210’s software loadout. The Windows 7
Starter desktop contains more than a dozen
icons for software trials, nagware, and
bloatware. Useful shortcuts, like the one
that turns on the N210’s sleep-and-charge
USB port, are lost in the clutter. Even more
annoying: The installer for the FailSafe trial
(a LoJack-like theft-prevention tool) kept
auto-launching when we were trying to run
benchmark tests and wouldn't stop until we
uninstalled the application.
The N210 is pretty on the
outside but bloated on
the inside. Be prepared to
uninstall some nagware.
One useful feature included with the
N210 is the Linux-based Hyperspace instant-
on OS. Though “instant-on” may be a misno-
mer, the OS does boot to a usable state in just
20 seconds (the Win7 boot, by contrast, takes
more than a minute). Hyperspace offers an
office suite, Twitter and Gmail integration,
web browsing, and a list of app buttons,
though some of them are misleading—the
Photoshop button leads to Photoshop.com,
and the Bloggers button, which uses the icon
for Google’s Blogger, links to the unrelated
Bloggers.com. Despite these quirks, Hyper-
space is useful, though we didn’t find our-
selves using it much.
The N2105 performance in our bench-
marks was almost indistinguishable from the
other Pine Trail netbooks vve ve tested, like the
Acer Aspire One we reviewed in April and the
Toshiba NB305 we reviewed in May. The only
benchmark where the N210 lagged behind
was battery life—it lasted just five hours on
our video-rundown test, while both the Acer
and Toshiba netbooks topped seven hours on
similar 6-cell batteries.
BENCHMARKS
ZERO POINT
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) 708 675
Main Concept (min) 251 243
Quake 3 (fps) 60.9 56.2 (-7.7%)
Quake 4 (fps) 3.6 “m
Battery Life (mins) 255 300
0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Our zero-point netbook is a Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB of DDR2/667 RAM, a 160GB hard drive, Intel GMA950 integrated graphics
chipset, and Windows XP Home SP3.
88 | MAXIMUMPG | suc 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
We expect any Maximum PC reader to be
able to strip out the bloatware and nagware
that comes with a new PC (and may we sug-
gest PC Decrapifier to help with that?). But we
don’t appreciate Samsung 5 cluttering up the
OS install. On the one hand, the N210’s design
is fantastic and its performance is exactly
what we'd expect. And we appreciate the
(albeit quirky) Hyperspace instant-on OS. But
the less-than-stellar battery life and bloated
VVin7 Starter desktop lose the N210 some
points in our book. -NATHAN EDWARDS
SPECIFICATIONS
Processor | 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450
Chipset Intel NM10 Express
Graphics Intel GMA 3150
Display 10.1-inch LED-backlit matte LCD(@1024x600
RAM 1GB DDR2/667
Storage 250GB HDD (Seagate Momentus 5,400rpm)
Ports Three USB 2.0, audio in/out, SD/MMC reader,
VGA, 10/100 Ethernet
Wireless İ 802.11b/g/n
Lap/Carry | 2 lb, 14 oz / 3lb, 8 oz
| VERDICT
SAMSUNG N210
SAM’S SONG İİ SON OF SAM
Great design; bright © Bloated Win7 Starter
screen; good touch : install; no Bluetooth;
pad. : middling battery life.
$380, www.samsung.com/u
Hm
if | N T H E LA B REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
CA Internet Se
curity Suite Plus 2010
This AV app takes aim at inexperienced users but misses the mark
hen we ran our annual antivirus
roundup in the May 2010 issue,
many of you wrote in asking why
we didn’t include Product X or Product Y.
Fair question, so here’s the deal: We could
have filled an entire issue reviewing just AV
products, but that would have grown old by
about page 32. Rather than do that, we're
devoting space each month to cover apps
that didn’t make the cut, and CA Internet
Security Suite is first up to bat.
After we installed CA ISS, it quickly
became apparent that power users are not the
target demographic. CA took a wrecking ball
to last year’s version and completely rede-
signed the UI in an attempt to “eliminate the
technobabble that makes PC security difficult
to understand and control,” but in doing so,
it made it needlessly tedious to poke around
under the hood. The main interface consists
of four index card-shaped menus that you
can cycle through like a tie rack. Sounds easy
enough, but if you want to set up a scan sched-
ule, for example, you'll need to bring up the
My Computer card, click the Update Settings
link, highlight the Threat Settings tab, and then
scroll to the bottom. You'll fumble around like
this until you get accustomed to the interface,
and when you do, you'll discover there’s not a
whole lot to play with. Strike one.
Strike two came when we tested for
performance. CA ISS added 30 seconds to
our test bed’s startup time, trailing only Trend
Micro (32 seconds) as the worst offender we’ve
analyzed all year. When we fired up PCMark,
CA ISS came in dead last and was the only se-
curity suite to turn in a score lower than 5,000.
But our biggest gripe is that CA ISS
leaves your system vulnerable to malware,
though not because the scan engine is weak.
By default, a couple of critical modules are
left disabled, including Program Protection,
which prevents unknown programs from
spawning other programs when executed,
and Code Injection Protection, which
prevents programs
from gaining access
to system privileges.
Keep My Computer Sele
Navigating CA’s seemingly simple menu system is harder than it looks.
of use over everything else. Strike a
three, batter s out. uu “e+
There were a few redeeming — mes
qualities that leave us hopeful for next = mə ə
year s version, such as CA ISSs stellar ————- vE -r
subsequent scan times. As is becoming danaa
standard practice in the AV industry, ......77
CA ISS skips over files that haven”t ——- ”” də
changed since the last time they vvere
scanned, and this resulted in a subse- ——~ nee
quent sweep of our system in just three
minutes and 19 seconds. We also dig
the Link Advisor tool, which tells us if
a URL is a gateway to a dangerous site
before clicking on it. But these are just
a couple of diamonds, the rest is pretty
rough. “PAUL LILLY
If you see this screen (as we did after CA ISS failed to
protect our test bed), then something has gone terribly
wrong. The real Windows Security Center will never
direct you to a paid security suite.
| VERDICT
DARE TO COMPARE: PERFORMANCE
CA INTERNET SECURITY SUITE PLUS
CAISS Norton ESET MSE McAfee
eollectionvor malware Scan1 {min:sec) 12:09 16:18 7:45 16:56 13:33 PRINGLES : El SHINGLES
ll dö Scan 2 (min:sec) 3:19 4:47 7:43 16:56 6:45 | 0 0 O S,
vvas allovved torun Relatively fast scan Greatly slows down
amok on our test bed, | NTE 4,833 zı 6,067 5,622 5,645 times; effective link 1 boot time; default
“7 Boot (seconds added) | +30 +18 +12 +9 +13 scanner. : protection levels are
and that’s inexcus-
£ too low.
able for a security
suite that touts ease
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a Core 2 Quad Q9400, 8GB DDR2/800, a Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10 :
(-60GB filled across two partitions}, a Radeon HD 3650, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. The reviewed app is
compared to the top-performing apps from our AV showdown in the May 2010 issue (see http://bit.ly/cBésqN).
$70 (1 yr, 3 PCs), http://shop.ca.com
90 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
Metro 2033
Not quite the ride of your life
e liked Metro 2033. We really did.
But we wanted to love it. Its dusty,
downtrodden, nuked-to-oblivion
vision of a post-apocalyptic future is a thing of
perverse beauty. At once terrifying and unset-
tlingly believable, it threatened to suck us in
like no game before it. “Half-Life 2, who?” we
asked ourselves frequently during the game’s
opening moments—that is, when we weren't
left completely breathless.
Then the game made the mistake of put-
ting a gun in our hands.
At best, Metro’s shooting is serviceable.
The weapons—while compulsively upgrade-
able—are crafted in such a way as to be
realistic, which in this case means “boring.”
That would be fine and dandy if the other two
pillars of first-person-shooter fun—level de-
sign and enemy Al—did enough heavy lifting
to make up for it. Sadly, they don’t.
Levels, of course, are visually spec-
tacular, but at their core are linear corridor
crawls. Fittingly enough for a game called
Metro, the entire thing is almost glaringly on
rails. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing,
so long as you stick to the beaten path. Think
of the game as a roller coaster ride: If it stays
on track, it’s the ultimate thrill ride. If it goes
off track, everyone dies. That’s Metro 2033
in a nutshell.
Those flaws, however, are almost speck-
like in their insignificance compared to the
plank that is Metro’s enemy AI. Sure, when
it’s powering hordes of monstrous Dark
Ones, it does the job well enough, but human
opponents are a different story. On multiple
occasions, we were able to stand in plain sight
Actually fighting the creatures that go bump in the night is a bit of a
letdown, thanks to shoddy Al and by-the-rails play mechanics.
This screenshot—believe it or not—barely does Metro’s immersive qualities justice. Metro’s sound
design is absolutely fantastic, and plays a huge role in sucking you into the game world.
with our silenced weapon and pick off enemy
after enemy, and all the while our confused
quarry mounted no noticeable offense. Other
times, enemies ran right into us and carried on
as though we were nothing but a particularly
thick cloud of air.
It’s a shame, too, because the games cer-
tainly not all about shooting. In fact, its most
intense moments come creeping in when
the action grinds to a halt. Metro makes
excellent use of ambient sound, bringing the
proverbial roller coaster to its absolute peak
before the inevitable
climax. Also a bit
disappointing is the
game’s storyline,
which is surprising
considering that it
was actually adapted
from a novel by Rus-
sian author Dmitry
Glukhovsky. While
Metro’s world design
is almost uniformly
spectacular, its plot
relies too heavily on
convenient coinci-
dences and ultimately
resolves with a twist
gamers have seen
hundreds of times before.
In spite of all that, though, we're still
willing to recommend Metro 2033. The
game’s world design, attention to detail, and
dread-inducing pace are second to none.
Seriously. Rarely do such an uneven game’s
high points overshadow its glaring flaws,
but Metro’s an exception to the rule. The
game may have an unfortunate knack for
killing its own buzz, but even that’s not quite
enough to ruin the overall experience. That’s
what Metro is, really: an experience. Anda
damn good one at that. Its shooting—while
admittedly lacking—is only a part of that
whole, and Metro 2033 is greater than the
sum of its parts. -NATHAN GRAYSON
mu VERDICT
METRO 2033
" EloFF-TRACK —
ON-RAILS
Breathtaking atmo- : Mediocre-to-awful
sphere and world £ enemy Al; sometimes
design; unique setting. : stifling linearity.
$50, www.metro2033game.com, ESRP:M
www.maximumpc.com | gut 2010 | MAXIMUMPG | 91
HM
Eİ | N T H E LA B HANDS ON WITH THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Revisiting SSD Scores
A bug in our old test bed prompts a re-test of a drive reviewed in May
uring the testing for last month’s
SSD roundup, 1 identified a problem
with my SSD test bed: Some scores,
BENCHMARKS
Kingston Patriot ocz Corsair
Vertex LE Nova V128
SSDNowV+ Torqx
especially read speeds, were proportion- Controller Toshiba : Indilinx : SandForce : Indilinx
ally slovver on that test bed than on any Capacity 12868 : 128GB 1 1005955 : 128GB
other system. Fortunately, only one SSD vvas HDTune Avg. Sustained 202.2 : 220 © 197.5 : 210.8
revievved on the nevv test bed—the Kingston Reads (MB/s) : i i
SSDNow V+ (May 2010)—before I caught the HDTune Avg. Sustained 166.9 1 162.3 1 223.5 i 163.9
: : s NATHAN EDVVARDS Writes (MB/s) : : :
bug. We gave that drive an 8 verdict, citing SENIOR ASSOCIATE : : :
. HDTune 4KB Random 4,630 i 7,084 1 5,050 i 7,439
its TRIM support and strong performance. EDİTOR Read (10PS) l : :
VVhen vve re-tested the SPONDI V+ on the HDTune 4KB Random 3,700 3,435 5,271 i 2.829
test bed we used for last month’s feature, we Write (10PS) : i :
found read speeds of around 200MB/s and writes around 167MB/s, HDTune Random Access | 0.6 : 0.2 ilik) > 0.2
rather than 180MB/s and 175MB/s, respectively. Writes (ms) : ;
Upon retesting the Kingston SSDNow V+ under the same condi- Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) | 356 ; 364 : 381 į 361
tions as last month’s SSD roundup, we decided to keep the 8 verdict but PCMark Vantage x64HDD İ 20,105 ; 23,674 : 35,655 i 24,796
update the benchmarks. The updated benchmarks (including three of
last month’s drives for reference) appear on the right.
Best scores are bolded. All tests performed on an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with a Core
i7-X980 CPU (ü3.336Hz with 6GB DDR3/1600 running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.
GORDON MAH UNG
SENIOR EDITOR
ALAN FACKLER
ONLINE ASSISTANT EDITOR
MICHAEL BROWN
REVIEWS EDITOR
KATHERINE STEVENSON
DEPUTY EDITOR
ALEX CASTLE
ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR
I’ve never been a This month, I got to After spending tons An audiologist fitted First, Alienware
fan of voice chat for try out a couple of of time figuring out me for a set of cus- managed to pack real
myself (it’s fine for new levels from the Adobe's new Photoshop tom in-ear monitors gaming into an 11-inch
others in the party) StarCraft 2: Wings CS5, Inow see the from JH Audio for an notebook, now HP is
in online gaming, but of Liberty single- world through different upcoming review. boasting a reasonable-
Dolby’s new Axon player campaign, eyes. New features like She warned it might size notebook with sup-
audio enhancer has and it made me Content Aware Fill and hurt, but I shrugged it port for AMD's Eyefin-
me interested. Instead even more excited Puppet Warp will make off because my pain ity. Equipped with VGA,
of sounding like the about the game than it harder for even the tolerance is fairly HDMI, and DisplayPort
before. Blizzard is
promising a game
booming voice of
God, players sound
most die-hard photo
enthusiasts to gauge
high. Ay, caramba!
I almost cried when
ports, and a Radeon HD
5850 graphics card, the
positionally accurate where no two mis- what's real and what's she shoved the new 17-inch Envy will
with Axon. This has sions are alike, and I been altered with Pho- impression material let you run three 1080p
the potential to greatly really think that it’s toshop’s refined magical into my ear canal. monitors simultaneous-
enhance the immer- going to deliver. tool box. Adobe, it Those monitors bet- ly. And the notebook
siveness of gameplay. seems, is poised to do it ter rock my world. remains portable at
again. Again. 7.5 pounds.
92 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpe.com
E COMMENTS “MRTE we ResPonn
We tackle tough reader questions on...
LCD TV vs. Monitor
» Maximum PC iPad Subscription?
Dept. of Display
Justifications
Tm looking to upgrade from
my 24-inch Dell LCD moni-
tor. My choice is between a
30-inch LCD monitor from
LG that goes for a little more
than $1,100 and a 32-inch
Samsung LCD TV that costs
$600. I understand that the
monitor offers higher than
1080p resolution. But the
TV is cheaper. What other
advantages and disadvantag-
es should I consider? How do
I justify the more expensive
monitor? Will the TV burn my
eyeballs out like mom always
said it would?
—Robert Burnham
Reviews Editor Michael
Brown Responds: If you're
looking for a display to connect
to your PC, and you'll be using
your PC for productivity apps
(email, word processing, photo
editing, and so on) as well as
gaming and watching movies,
you'll be happier if you keep
screen size and resolution in
proportion. You don’t mention
exactly which models you're
considering, so we can make
only generalized recommenda-
tions here. A 32-inch television
with 1920x1080 resolution
will look just fine when you're
watching it from across the
CUTCOPYPASTE
room; but when it’s sitting right
in front of your face, you'll be
driven to distraction by the gaps
between the pixels. And when
it comes to rendering color,
monitors tend to be both more
consistent and more accurate
than TVs. Consider the more
expensive display justified.
In Favor of UAC
Ihave to disagree with your
recommendation to turn
down UAC in Windows 7
in your June cover story. In
fact, it’s better to turn it up to
max so that it also requires
Windows components to get
permission. If you don’t do
that, malicious software can
use parts of Windows to do
whatever it wants—basically
rendering UAC worthless.
I’ve never understood the
objection to UAC. Even turned
to max, getting a prompt
should be very rare. You're
not going to get any in normal
day-to-day use. I’ve also heard
people claim that power users
don’t need it, which is actu-
ally backward. “We” know if
something we’re doing should
require admin privileges, so it’s
actually better protection for
us than it is for a typical user
who just randomly clicks OK
to every prompt they get. Ilove
that NT 6 finally lets us basical-
als
> In our review of the Netgear WNDR3700 Wi-Fi router (May 2010), we
neglected to report that the parental controls can be customized.
> In our antivirus roundup (May 2010), we mistakenly listed
BitDefender as not including rootkit detection. It does. We also neglect-
ed to include the performance numbers for Avast. Those numbers can
be found in our updated chart online:
94 | MAXIMUMPG | JuL 2010 | www.maximumpc.com
ly run as normal users except
when we really need admin!
(All without actually having to
create a normal user account...
and come on, how many of us
ACTUALLY do that?)
—Andrew
Senior Editor Gordon Mah
Ung Responds: This is really
a philosophical discussion
as there is probably no right
answer for someone who is
security conscious, keeps his
or her OS, apps, and plugins
updated, and runs high-
quality AV software. But I’m
actually with you, Andrew:
I leave UAC turned on
(although not to maximum)
and don’t mind the messages.
But I am paranoid. I actually
know many power users
who prefer to hang loose.
Some run with UAC turned
down and without antivirus
software installed because
they know, just know how to
avoid getting infected. If you
ask me, that’s simply foolish
given the sophistication of
the exploits today.
Long-Term SSD
Testing?
Ihave been doing my
research in preparation for
the switch to a solid state
Five Apps to 3D-ify
Your Desktop
Google recently bought up Bumptop, the most widely known
3D desktop software project, and is ending its free beta. But
that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still plenty of ways to
give your desktop some 3D flair for free. In this week’s
ive of the best apps for desktop
freeware files, we round up f
3D-ification:
drive. While reading tons
of user reviews, I have seen
many people complaining
about their drives dying
or suffering performance
degradation over time. I was
wondering if Maximum PC
has done any long-term test-
ing of SSDs? Six months of
reads and writes and then re-
running your benchmarks?
—Steve
Senior Associate Editor
Nathan Edwards Responds:
There s really no way to do
long-term testing of SSDs
other than to use them in the
real world on a day-to-day
basis. Due to the way NAND
flash works—which you
can read about in our white
papers on SSDs (http://bit.
1y/1910GC) and TRIM (http://
bit.ly/7GhVfo)—using an
SSD without the benefit of
the TRIM command and/or a
garbage-collection program
will result in slowdowns after
all flash blocks are written to
at least once. That’s why we
recommend buying an SSD
with TRIM support (if your
right, though reports in early
2008 pegged failure rates of
first-gen drives at close to 30
percent—a claim that was
disputed by SSD manufactur-
ers—current-gen SSDs are at
least as reliable as mechani-
cal hard drives, and much
more durable.
Build Your Own
Notebook?
After reading the issue where
you listed three different-
priced PCs (September 2009),
I decided to build my own.
But now I’m wondering
if there has been an issue
where you built a notebook?
Is building one more compli-
cated than a desktop?
—Pablo Sanchez
Senior Editor Gordon Mah
Ung Responds: We actually
did a build-a-laptop story in
April 2006. Believe it or not,
at the time, Intel was even
pushing the idea of DIY note-
books, and many vendors
were also pushing notebook
kits. However, the initial
excitement soon fizzled as
| HAVE TO DISAGREE WITH YOUR
RECOMMENDATIO
N TO TURN
DOWN UAC IN WINDOWS 7
OS supports it) or regularly
running a garbage-collection
utility if your SSD and OS
don’t support TRIM—each
drive manufacturer has its
own. In short, TRIM allows
constant garbage-collection
on the OS level, enabling
Windows to erase deleted
blocks as soon as the data is
deleted, rather than waiting
until the next time the deleted
block is written to.
As for drives dying out-
py
notebook makers realized
that the delicate assembly of
putting together a notebook
and the warranty problems
for blown builds simply
wasn't worth it. The process
isn’t any more complicated
than building a desktop, but
the scale is much smaller and,
frankly, the flexibility isn’t
quite there either—you can't,
for example, put any GPU
you want in a notebook. You
can still find some bare note-
book kits on the market, but
they’re certainly not being
heavily promoted.
Pad Me, Bro
Long, long-time print sub-
scriber. I love reading the
archive PDFs on my iPad.
Any chance you'll do an iPad-
specific subscription plan so
we can get the current issue
right away on the iPad?
—Tom Bush
Editorial Director Jon
Phillips Responds: First
off, thanks for the long-time
support. As for your request,
we're not convinced that
enough Maximum PC readers
own (or plan to buy) iPads to
warrant an iPad-specific ver-
sion. The iPad is a great tablet,
but I’m not convinced its
going to dominate the tablet
universe (as the iPhone domi-
nates smartphones), let alone
ebook devices.
Tm a firm believer that for
long-form, leisurely reading,
folks want their content on
either printed paper or elec-
tronic paper (a la the Kindle).
Backlit LCD screens are just too
harsh on the eyes for extended
leisure-time reading. And my
opinion seems to be supported
by the fact that no magazine
publishers are making much
money from digital subscrip-
tions—people just aren’t
interested in buying them. This
could change when the wide-
format digital reader with color
e-ink hits the market.
Tell you what: Check
back with us in 2011. By
then, the tablet universe
should have expanded to the
point where print and web
publishers have a clearer
idea of what users really
want from these devices. (!)
LETTERS POLICY Please send your questions and comments to commentsfd
maximumpc.com. Include your full name, city of residence, and phone number
with your correspondence. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the
amount of mail we receive, we are unable to respond personally to all queries.
E E NEXT MONTH
COMING IN
MAKIMUM PE S
WHAT PART OF
MAXIMUM DID
YOU NOT
UNDERSTAND?
ISSUE
Cutting-Edge Home
Theater Products
We identify. 10=plus key new
technologies and products
that will have a significant
impact on the way you
build, operate, and enjoy
your home theater setup.
DirectX 11: What
Does It Mean?
Author Loyd Case takes
on the jargon surrounding
Microsoft's new version of
DirectX and explains how
these exciting-sounding
features will make a
difference to your games.
Can you say “tessellation”?
The Best Bookmarklets
As you read these very words,
Online Managing Editor Alex
Castle is hard at work testing,
tinkering, and toying with more
than 30 bookmarklets for your
browser(s). You won't believe
what he’s come up with.
Unlasalı youra4.s3:0
MAXIMUM
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Each-issue of
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E Brutally honest product
revievvs
=o INNOVATE | E Hard-hitting editorials
JE E Tips to blast your
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j
e wi
EHH
mi BEST OF THE BEST A PART-BY-PART GUIDE TO BUILDING A BETTER PC
AMD Phenom II X6 71055
0 ur pick for the budget CPU vvas
not an easy one to make. VVe
vvere dovvnright split on the decision,
but we ultimately decided on AMD’s
phenomenally great 2.8GHz Phenom
II X6 chip. In most of today’s games
and apps, the $200 Intel Core i5-750
still eclipses AMD's hexa-core parts.
However, when you get to apps that
exploit more than four threads, the
2.8GHz Phenom II X6 takes the lead.
Since we think the future will see
increased thread loads, the Phenom
II X6 will actually get faster as games
and applications are updated. And
hell, it’s a hexa-core CPU for $200!
www.amd.com
m High-End Processor
Intel 3.33GHz Core i7-980X
www.intel.com
m Midrange Processor
Intel 2.8GHz Core i7-860
www.intel.com
m Budget Processor
AMD Phenom II X6 T1055
www.amd.com
m LGA1366 Motherboard
MSI Eclipse SLI
www.msi.com
m LGA1156 Motherboard
THE REST OF THE BEST
m Socket AM2
Motherboard
MSI K9A2 Platinum
www.msi.com
m High-End Videocard
ATI Radeon HD 5970
www.ati.com
m Midrange
Videocard
ATI Radeon HD 5850
www.ati.com
m Budget Videocard
ATI Radeon HD 5770
www.ati.com
m Capacity Hard Drive
Western Digital Caviar
Black 2TB
www.wdc.com
m Performance Storage
Patriot Torqx 1286B
SSD
www.patriotmem.com
m DVD Burner
Samsung SH-S223
www.samsung.com
m Blu-ray Drive
Plextor B940SA
www.plextor.com
m Full-Tower Case
Corsair 800D
www.corsair.com
m 30-Inch Display
NEC LCD3090
www.nec.com
m Gaming Mouse
Logitech G9x Laser
Mouse
www.logitech.com
m 2.1 Speakers
Bowers & Wilkins
MM-1
www.bowers-wilkins.
Games we are playing
m Just Cause 2
www.justcause.com
m The Settlers 7: Paths
to a Kingdom
http://thesettlers.us.ubi.com
m Tom Clancy’s Splinter
Cell: Conviction
http://splintercell.us.ubi.com
m Battlefield: Bad
Company 2
www.badcompany2.EA.com
Asus Maximus III Formula
www.asus.com
com
For even more Best of the Best entries, such as speakers and budget components, go to http://www.maximumpc.com/best-of-the-best.
MAXIMUM PC [ISSN 1522-4279) is published 13 times a year, monthly plus
Holiday issue following December issue. Future US, Inc., 4000 Shoreline Court,
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