Hardware News

Lenovo Y500 15.6-inch Gaming Notebook Review

May 24, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


PC Perspective have posted a review of the brand new Lenovo Y500 gaming notebook, which features a 15.6-inch 1920x1080 display, quad-core/eight-thread 2.4-3.4Ghz processor, 16GB of RAM, 16GB SSD, 1TB HDD, and two NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPU's in SLI.

Let's see what they had to say:

"The Lenovo Y500 won’t win any portability awards—it’s both imposing in its weight and subpar in terms of battery life (thanks to the lack of Optimus functionality). But in exchange, you get a seriously competitive gaming PC that leverages the power of SLI to provide a combination of value and performance that is literally unparalleled to date in the notebook gaming market.

This sucker tears apart nearly every graphics performance test we threw at it, besting models equipped with GTX 670MX cards and decisively conquering anything with a single GT 650M (of which the Y500 we reviewed has two). It can easily handle most any modern game on High settings, and many even on Ultra. And best of all, it’s got one heck of a nice screen, sporting 1080p with good color reproduction, decent brightness, and a respectable level of contrast. The only drawback is the glossy finish."


For the money, this is one of the best equipped gaming notebooks on the market.  Check it out!

Click here to read the full review.


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Google Glass Review

May 24, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


Tomshardware have posted a review of the unique Google Glass, which are augmented reality goggles.

Let's see what they had to say:

"As Google improves Glass through updates like XE5 and gets the platform onto more heads (hopefully at a better price than the $1,500 we spent), you’re going to see a lot of people using Google’s software products that weren’t before. I’m on Facebook fairly often. I use Twitter occasionally. Google+ is not in my regular rotation. Post-Glass, however, it’s obviously a lot more important. And there are clear paths to the company’s other technologies, too.

How about Glass in the Angelini household? It’s certainly not leaving with me every time I run an errand, and mostly because of the form factor. I’m just not comfortable wearing Glass everywhere, and I’m not carrying them around in a pouch when they’re off my head. I don’t have unrealistic expectations about the battery, the projector doesn’t give me a headache, and I had minimal trouble with Google’s voice recognition—many of the gripes I’ve read elsewhere haven’t soured my experience. But Glass is as inconvenient in your hands as it is helpful sitting on your head, I’m not particularly enthused about adding $20 to my cell plan, and some of the rough edges (like low call volume and poor A/V quality in hangouts) still need to be smoothed over."


While far, far from perfect the Google Glass' does hint at a very exciting future.  Check it out!

Click here to read the full review.


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Diamond Radeon HD 7790 1GB Graphics Card Review

May 24, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


Bjorn3D have posted a review of the enthusiast-oriented Diamond Radeon HD 7790 1GB graphics card, which features a custom cooler and uses the new Tahiti LE chip.

Let's see what they had to say:

"The Diamond model we got today showed small variances and performance overall that nudged ahead of the others, although that difference is slight. The performance from card to card in most cases is within a single FPS difference and the fact that they all shipped with the same clock speed explains that as they all are basically very similar functional parts.

The cooler for the Diamond model could definitely be better as it is bested by a decent margin from the other cards offerings which means less in chassis thermal dump and also more possible headroom should a program with a higher overclock limit come out. It is worth noting that the card even though it ran a bit warmer on overclock still was just as stable as the other models tested."


Although this is an OK decent video card, the market is filled with just as good to better 7790's already.

Click here to read the full review.


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Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Graphics Card Review

May 24, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


Hardware Canucks have the new Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 which based on the 'Kepler' GK110 core and features an immense 2304 CUDA cores, 48 ROPs, and 192 texture units. The 28nm core is clocked at 836Mhz core clock, but can Boost up to 900Mhz. There is 3GB of 6008Mhz GDDR5 mated to 384-bit memory interface, and capable of 288.5GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Let's see what they had to say:

"For someone buying a $650 graphics card, performance concerns always come first and the GTX 780 delivers in spades. It thoroughly outpaces NVIDIA’s own GTX 680 by an average of 31% and manages to stay well ahead of AMD’s HD 7970 GHz Edition while also treading dangerously close to the TITAN. In many titles it was a dominant figure in terms of framerates and frame times. NVIDIA still needs to work on optimizations for Tomb Raider and Dirt Showdown but even in these two instances, the GTX 780 had no trouble delivering a playable, stutter-free experience.

The GTX 780 is surprisingly efficient and provides an excellent performance per watt ratio, items which previous flagship GPUs couldn’t lay claim to. It requires the same amount of juice as AMD’s HD 7970 GHz Edition while offering much better framerates. This relative frugality is backstopped by one of the quietest fans we’ve come across on a reference card. "


While it may not compete against the already released Titan, this new 780 is one impressive new video card.  Check it out!

Click here to read the full review.


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Intel Z87 50+ Motherboard Line-up Preview

May 24, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


Anadtech have just posted a preview of 50+ upcoming Z87 Motherboards, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI & more.

Let's see what they had to say:

"In an industry where Intel is continually putting more elements onto the CPU, the motherboard manufacturers have to innovate to differentiate themselves from each other.  As a result we now have a number of gaming ranges and overclocking ranges to choose from.  Of course motherboard manufacturers also have SIs to consider, some of which require specific connectors on various models.

There are a number of features I want to get my hands stuck into.  Having the first motherboards with 802.11ac is going to be interesting for sure.  Other features such as the ASUS OC Panel, the Maximus VI Hero, the Gigabyte OPAMP and x8/x4/x4 + x4 PCIe layout, the ASRock Waterproof coating and LCD screen, the MSI XPower, the EVGA one, and those ECS buttons are all piquing my interest."

While all of these models are exciting the Asus ROG and MSI XPower are real standouts.  Check it out!

Click here to read the full review.


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Corsair Vengeance M95 Gaming Mouse Video Review

May 22, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


Hardware Heaven have posed a video review of the high end Corsair Vengeance M95 laser gaming mouse, which is a timely upgrade to the well received M90.

Let's see what they had to say:

"Kaeyi Dream gets hands-on with the Corsair M95 gaming mouse the latest in the Vengeance Gaming Series. Remember to like and subscribe."


This mouse seems like a good higher-end alternative to Corsair's already excellent M65. Check it out!

Click here to read the full review.



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Sapphire Radeon HD 7990 6GB QuadFire Performance Review

May 22, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


KitGuru have tested two Sapphire Radeon HD 7990 6GB graphics cards in quadFire configuration.

Let's see what they have to say:

"While we experienced a ton of issues with the non reference AMD HD7990 design earlier this year in QuadFire, AMD have clearly been working hard behind the scenes to ensure their drivers work when two Malta HD7990′s are paired up. If you have read the complete review you will have seen that Quad Crossfire performance varies a lot depending on the benchmark or game being run. While some of the titles don’t offer great scaling yet, they at least run without crashing, or hard locking the system. We never had so many blue screens when we tried this back in January this year, so it is great to see this problem no longer ruins the experience.

When building a rig enthusiast users often make the mistake of buying the highest wattage power supply they can get their hands on. You don’t need a 1000W supply to power a high end 3770k and HD7870 build, even if its a Crossfire configuration. This system we built today however is a very different story."


If you're looking to build a truly overkill system, then this article is definitely worth a look.

Click here to read the full review.

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Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 5 Gaming Headset Review

May 22, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


Mad Shrimps Have posted a review of the moderately priced Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 5 stereo gaming headset which feature 50mm drivers.

Let's see what they had to say:

"The F.R.E.Q. 5 headset from Mad Catz is quite robust thanks to the light metallic components and has also proven to be comfortable even after one hour and a half of continuous use while listening to music, playing games and watching TV shows over the web. Depending on the audio content, we can switch the EQ settings on the fly, by using the carefully placed button. Also, the volume wheel precision is good and can be used while we have the headset connected via USB.
 
The sound quality on 3.5mm also depends on the input but when trying it along with a Creative Titanium HD, the headset reproduced both high and low frequencies in a good manner. Using the USB interface will deliver the same audio quality on all platforms, with the ability to make subtle changes by switching the EQ profiles; the headset does not come with extra software and it will work with the default drivers."


This seems like an good stereo headset. Though for the money, the Cooler Master Storm Sirius 5.1 USB & analog headset would also be an excellent choice for gaming enthusiasts.

Click here to read the full review.


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Crucial M500 480GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD Review

May 22, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


eTeknix have posted reviews of the new Crucial M500 480GB SATA 6Gb/s solid state drive, which features 500MB/s read and 400MB/s write speeds.

Let's see what they had to say:

"Focussing on the 480GB model that I’ve played around with today, I have to say that after the M4′s success I did have a bit of a raised expectation with what the drive had to offer. Crucial have not failed to deliver on this front either. Right across all my benchmark utilities, the M500 on the write front was consistently ahead of Crucial’s specifications and this was not just on the sequential read speeds. Very rarely do I see a drive that sticks so close to the rated IOPs levels and in this case giving more than expected. This gives me a clear indication that the collaboration of a Marvell controller with the new 128Gbit NAND chips is a well chosen marriage."


The new M500 is an excellent drive in its own right and an excellent update from the venerable M4.  Check it out!

Click here to read the full review.

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Seagate HDD.15 4TB Hard Drive Review

May 22, 2013 - Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan


Hardware Canucks have posted a review of the new and humongous Seagate HDD.15 4TB  hard drive, which is an enthusiast-oriented 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s model.


Let's see what they had to say:

"For the most part, the lower spindle speed is not overly indicative of the HDD.15’s actual performance. In testing the ultra dense 1TB platters, combined with the massive capacity made for a drive that behaved more like a 7200RPM model than anything in lower-tier markets.

The HDD.15 4TB has been created for one purpose: to help solidify Seagate’s future in the quickly changing storage marketplace. In this, they have succeeded in creating a great secondary drive which is packed with capacity and retains its performance without costing a fortune. While we would think long and hard about using this drive as a computer system’s only long term storage device, for most other tasks it would be very high on our list. "


This is obviously a very impressive HDD, though the short warranty is rather disappointing.

Click here to read the full review.

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