Our Most Recent Reviews
Asus Z77 Roundup
When doing all of our Ivy Bridge launch prep we spent a LOT of time benchmarking and testing a whole collection of boards. You guys have seen our reviews of the Intel and Gigabyte boards. When it came time to write about the four different Asus Z77 boards I realized that most of you are not going to want to read through a lot of information that we would cover over and over on each review. We decided to roundup all four of the boards and cover them together. This way we can get to the point a little quicker, saving you time, as well as giving us a chance to talk more about the differences between the variety of boards that we tested.
ASUS P8 Z68-V/GEN3
Perhaps one of the most daunting tasks after making the decision that you do not wish to purchase an off-the-shelf computer is attempting to figure out which components go in the machine. There are fun aspects, like the graphics card and processor, and then there are the not-so-fun aspects, like the motherboard (at least in my opinion). Why do I think it is a whole lot of not fun? There are so many out there to choose from, with all sorts of features. When shopping you will likely come across the ASUS board that I am going to review today. Arguably, it is one of the better all-around boards out there, with features like good integrated graphics and killer sound. But to a gamer that generally does not mean squat. Does the ASUS P8 Z68-V/GEN3 board have what it takes to function as a serious gaming component? Read on to find out!
XFX R7750 Black Edition DD
Not everyone is looking to spend $500 on their video card, in some cases that is the total budget for a build. When you are up against a wall trying to pack the best performance you can get into a budget build you still want to get the most performance you can out of your video card. That’s where cards like the XFX R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation come into play. XFX has taken the styling and cooling from their high end cards and combined it with the price of budget cards like the HD 7750. Today we are going to take a look at how those two things do combined in XFX’s R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation.
Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X
Earlier this year when AMD introduced the HD 7770 we took a look at cards from both Sapphire and XFX. Although we were impressed with the cards performance it was a little ill-timed due to AMD still clearing out discounted back stock. Three months later we are able to revisit the situation with today’s release of Sapphires new HD 7770 Vapor-X. With Sapphires Vapor chamber cooling technology along with a nice overclock over the reference design, the Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X could be a great option for a gamer on a limited budget. Let’s take a look.
Motherboard Sizing
When we got in a few oddly sized dual CPU motherboards from EVGA and Asus I posted up a few pictures on our forums and on Facebook. The problem was that even though they looked large there wasn’t any prospective. So we tossed in a couple other boards to give everyone a little perspective. This lead us to digging out even more motherboards to put together all of the standard motherboard sizes all together for everyone to be able to see the differences. Along with the picture we also have a breakdown on the dimensions of each size standard; I hope this helps everyone as some point. Sometimes it can be hard to understand all of the different motherboard sizes and how they all relate.
Android to the Maxx, DROID Razr Maxx
The list of different Android based phones available at any time is both overwhelming and frustrating. It’s almost impossible to get good feedback from friends who have the same phone because of this. So it’s rare than you have any one phone that manages to stand out. Doing something different is the only way to do this normally, but most times this ends off coming off as gimmicky or just lame. When Motorola introduced the Droid Razr Maxx it caught my attention right away. This was just before our trip out to San Francisco for the GTX 680 Editors day, what a better way to put the Maxx’s proposed batter life to the test!
Lian Li PC 100 “The Hammer”
We have had a few different Lian Li chassis come through the LanOC Offices and there hasn’t been a time that we haven’t been impressed with the new and interesting features Lian Li always seems to slip in. When they wanted to ship over their new case “The Hammer” PC 100, we signed up right away. We had seen the case previewed from a few shows prior and this time around Lian Li took a new perspective with its design, I was very interested to see how their changes worked out. Let’s jump in and see what it’s all about!
Nvidia GTX 670
When Nvidia launched Kepler with the GTX 680 I was impressed with the launch price of the card but even at such a great value it is still out of reach for some people. Just because you can’t afford the top card doesn’t mean you don’t want to experience Kepler’s performance. Of course it was only a matter of time before we saw Nvidia filling in the gaps in their product line, starting first with the GTX 690 then going to the next step down from the GTX 680, the GTX 670. Today we get to have a look to see how the performance compares to both the GTX 680 as well as AMD’s offerings. We are also very curious how it compares to the GTX 580, a card that has found its way into most of our office PC’s.
ioSafe Rugged Portable
So you do the smart thing, you backup your data from your laptop and your home PC to an external or network drive and go on with life feeling confident that you have gone well and above what most people do. For the most part, you did. What about when you’re traveling, have you seen how much abuse a device can take when on the go? For some people, and I know I’m one of them, some of the data you carry with you while traveling is more important than the laptop or device that you actually carry it on. In that situation you need a way to not have to worry about your data, no matter the situation, and to have a guarantee to back it up as well. The folks over at ioSafe focus specifically on this crowd. Not only do they offer products that are according to them build to handle almost anything, but they back it up with data recovery if something does happen. Today we are going to take a look at that Rugged Portable hard drive to see what all of the fuss is about, without any more buildup, let’s dig in.
Cooler Master Storm Trigger
Just two years ago the only mechanical keyboards you would find were from companies like DAS keyboard trying to create a nitch market. Over the past two years things have really exploded with every manufacture you can think of introducing their own mechanical keyboards. Cooler Master has been especially aggressive with multiple unique designs like their Quickfire series. What they did lack was a full featured mechanical keyboard with full backlighting, until now. Today they officially introduce their Storm Trigger, although it you look around the board was available Globally before now. With full backlighting it falls into a small category of Mechanical Keyboards with very little competition. I am excited to see how it performs.
Cooler Master HAF XM
The topic of cleaning your computer out came up last week on our forums and it got me thinking about how often I really need to clean out my computer. As it turns out it’s not very often anymore. All because of improvements in case design like fan filters. You don’t really see them on low end cases yet but they have been slowly trickling down. At CES this year we had a chance to get our hands on one of Cooler Master’s upcoming chassis, the HAF XM. A mid-range case packed with the features we have come to love from their high end HAF line. Today we are going to dig into the final product and see how it came out.
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
Z77 boards come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and prices. Just about every manufacture has a whole lineup of boards covering the whole range to make sure you can find what you are looking for. Gigabyte is no different; they have a whole selection of boards that will fit your needs. Today we are taking a look at their Z77X-UD3H, one of their budget boards. It may not be a high end board but it is still packed with features. I am curious how it will perform now that the cat is out of the bag with Ivy Bridge. Let’s jump in and see what it’s all about.
LanOC Reviews and News
This morning Nvidia announced two new Geforce drivers. For those of you who are testing out Windows 8 you will be happy to see that Nvidia will be supporting Windows 8 from now on with driver updates. Todays drivers are 296.17 for Windows 8 and 296.10 for Windows 7/Vista/XP. Enjoy!
NVIDIA Begins Regular Windows 8 Driver Updates
March 13th, 2012
Microsoft‘s Windows 8 Consumer Preview was only released two weeks ago and as part of our partnership to support NVIDIA GPU-based systems, we have already released our first driver update for NVIDIA GeForce and Quadro GPUs.
This release represents the start of regular NVIDIA driver updates for Windows 8. These drivers, version 296.17, are available for both GeForce and Quadro GPU-based desktops and notebooks on NVIDIA.com and on Microsoft’s Windows Update.
Download the new NVIDIA 296.17 drivers for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Windows 7 and Windows XP users aren’t left out. An equivalent driver, version 296.10 (WHQL-certified), can be downloaded on GeForce.com today. These drivers are a quick refresh from the recent version GeForce 295.73 drivers and are a must-have for gamers looking for the best experience in upcoming games like Blacklight: Retribution. These drivers also carry all of the R295 goodness that we told you about just a couple weeks ago.
Download the new GeForce 296.10 drivers for Windows 7/Vista and Windows XP.
A final note about NVIDIA’s Windows 8 driver support: NVIDIA’s Windows 8 drivers support all the features of the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) v1.2 and also support the award-winning NVIDIA 3D Vision and 3DTV Play products, allowing you to play more than 600 games, watch Blu-ray movies and view photos – all in 3D. With Windows 8’s new built-in stereoscopic 3D support in DirectX 11, 3D Vision is poised to provide users the best platform for games and applications.
For more information on 3D Vision and 3DTV Play support in Windows 8, please read oura Windows 8 FAQs.
For more information on the Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview, please visit Microsoft's dedicated Windows 8 Consumer Preview page.
Today Twitter introduced their new redesign on both the website and on their mobile apps. Paired up with the constant redesign of Facebook and Facebooks new Android app my online social life keeps changing. What do you guys think of the new design?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-57339466-52/twitter-launches-major-redesign/?tag=TOCcarouselMain.0
An interesting article over at Cnet this morning points out that as Google's Chrome usage increases at the expense of IE's usage, Chrome gets closer and closer to becoming the number 2 browser on the market.
If one in 50 people on the Web move from Firefox to Chrome, Google's browser will unseat Mozilla's for the No. 2 spot in worldwide usage.
Yesterday was officially the last day for Napster. Some of you may actually be to young to really know about Napster but I think most of us will never forget using it. We can thank Napster for bringing the MP3 into most households and by that leading to the introduction later on of the game changing iPod. Although Napster may have been less helpful to the music industry, I believe that it did play a pivotal role in pushing us into the digital age. Can anyone imagine playing on their smartphone with its built in CD player?
Here is a short quote from CNN, be sure to check out the link to read more.
It's the end of a tumultuous road for Napster, a controversial but iconic site that has blinked in and out of existence over the past decade.
Futuremark announced late last night that they will be introducing a 3DMark benchmark for the Anroid platform. This is goes along with their introduction of a 3DMark for Windows 8 last week. They are planning on making the results comparable. As a reviewer I find this interesting. I will finally be able to see how slow that tablet is compared to my pc! What do you guys think?
Click the link below to read the full press release!
While checking my email before bed tonight I noticed that google now allows you to log-in to multiple google accounts at once. This means if you are someone who has both a personal and work account you won't have to log in and out or use two different browsers. This feature is in the top right hand corner of your screen. You can run two different gmail accounts in different tabs or just switch between them as needed without having to log out or in.
MeeGo is an open sauce mobile OS similar to Android, announced collaboratively by Intel and Nokia back at February's Mobile World Congress. According to Intel, it was developed because Microsoft did not offer comprehensive Windows 7 support on their Atom processors. The software is supposed to combine Nokia's efforts on Maemo, and Intel's efforts on Moblin.
You can follow the source to see a few shots of the OS, but the one I'm ripping out here, the application manager, looks almost directly taken from Palm's WebOS. Not that that's a bad thing.
Source: MyNokiaBlog
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News aggregate Digg recently redesigned their website, adding personalization options and the ability for companies to automatically submit feeds/articles, becoming a little more Twitter-esque. Lastly, it removed the ability to "Bury" links/articles that a user didn't like, shortened summaries about feeds, and made it harder to distinguish which posts are adverts. Many users voiced their disgust for the redesign, and have complained that Digg went "Corporate." Furthermore, they joined competitor Reddit, and collaboratively uprated Reddit's stories on Digg's pages, such that Digg's front page is almost redirecting every link to Reddit's website.
Reddit's gotten a kick out of the added support, and even redesigned their logo to look more like Digg's given the current scenario.
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Hulu Plus, for those of you who aren't familiar, is Hulu's $10/month paid service that includes content not found on the free version of Hulu. This handy chart details exactly what you're missing if you're not a subscriber. 'Meh' might be a bit of an overstatement, eh? Although to be fair, it is the early days of the service offering by Hulu. Additional content may be available in the future.
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Beginning today, users of Gmail now have the option of performing a Google Voice call straight from their inbox. Calls are free to the U.S. and Canada, $.02/min to international landlines, and $.19/min to international mobile devices. It appears you can also receive phone calls as well from your inbox -- with a Voice account, of course. Wait, people still have landlines?
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