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TEMPERATURE, POWER, AND EFFICIENCY The ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 yielded some excellent results when it came to overall efficiency: ASRock’s Intelligent Energy Saver (IES), however, is highly worth mentioning, as it has contributed its fair share to keep the entire system as adept as possible. This feature can be found in the snazzy ASRock BIOS, which I will be getting …

Z68 CHIPSET-SPECIFIC BENCHMARKS LucidLogix Virtu In a nutshell, Virtu is software developed by LucidLogix that allows the use of a dedicated GPU and the CPU’s integrated GPU (as present on Sandy Bridge processors) simultaneously. There are three modes of operation: ‘Off’ (use of dedicated GPU only; integrated GPU is not being used), ‘i-Mode’ (integrated), and ‘d-mode’ (dedicated). ‘i-Mode’ is limited to …

OVERALL SYSTEM BENCHMARKS Futuremark 3DMark 11 Professional Edition 3DMark 11 is the latest version of the worlds most popular benchmark for measuring the graphics performance of gaming PCs. Designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX …

GAMING BENCHMARKS Alice: Madness Returns The Wonderland that you knew from childhood has gone horribly wrong … again. This is the follow-up to designer American McGee’s twisted take on the classic Lewis Carroll tale. Designed with the same dark style of the original, but now featuring entirely new visuals, story and game design, Alice: Madness Returns follows Alice on a …

MEMORY BENCHMARKS SiSoftware Sandra Professional Business Edition SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information and diagnostic utility. It provides most of the information (including undocumented) needed by testing hardware, software and other devices. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level, Sandra presents information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, …

CPU BENCHMARKS Finalwire AIDA64 Extreme Engineer Edition AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software suite. AIDA64 Extreme provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. NEXT: Computation and Productivity Benchmarks INDEX …

  COMPANY:  ASRock Incorporated PRODUCT:  Z68 Extreme 4 PRICE:        ~$200 CAD AVAILABILITY:  Global WARRANTY:  Two-Year   INTRODUCTION While starting the year in a promising and dominant fashion, Intel veered a bit off-track with Cougar Point malfunctions and setbacks. Fast-forward seven months and things have finally begun to stabilize. Without going into a rant about the Cougar Point chip set as …

Now that the all mighty NDA has lifted on the new Llano platform, we’re able to bring to you all those motherboards that support the new APU from AMD. Today we’ll be looking at the GIGABYTE A75-UD4H. Like the ASUS board, we have already done an extensive preview on this one, so if you haven’t already looked at it. I …

NZXT has come a long way since the early days as seen in their latest Classic Series case; the H2 Silent Midtower case. The H2 is designed to minimize noise and offer a long list of premium features without breaking the budget. With a sub $100 MSRP, the H2 has its work cut out for it. Full story at Ninja …

July 1, 2011: Canada turns 144. July 4, 2011: USA turns 235. But what about me? July 3, 2011: That’s one year and month anniversary since I have started here at APH Networks. It is also exactly five years and one month ago on this day, that I was given a special present after fully completing karate. What else is …

The Sapphire HD 6950 Dirt3 Edition Video Card uses a stock clocked HD 6950 with 2GB GDDR5, but certainly comes in with quite a bit more than a reference board.Naturally, the Sapphire HD 6950 Dirt3 Edition is named for its inclusion of a free copy of Codemaster’s newest driving game Dirt3, as well as Sapphire’s own TRIXX utility, but the …

NZXT supplied three quiet 120mm fans with the H2 and there are two more spots to add more fans. All fans and optional fan areas have filtering to keep most of the dust and debris out of the interior of the case. And with an integrated fan speed controller and lots of sound dampening material throughout the case, the system …

The Force Series GT 120GB SSD is Corsairs premium SATA 3 SSD Series offering and our review today falls directly on the heels of its younger brother, the Force Series 3 SSD a few days back. As similar as these SSDs are, there is a key physical difference that affects performance and cost of each Corsair Force SSD significantly.  Conceivably, reading …

The front of the Force Series GT PCB displays the SandForce SF-2281 processor which is proving to be the hottest thing in solid state drives these days.  There is not a company around that has moved to SATA 3 and not shaken hands with SandForce in some way, shape or form. In fact, I only know of one SSD manufacturing …

COMPRESSIBLE vs INCOMPRESSIBLE DATA Before we venture into the meat and gravy of the review, lets start with a bit of background on data samples used in evaluations and, more importantly, by the user in daily computer use.  An understanding of compressible and incompressible data will help us incredibly as we move through this report.  Compressible data includes such things …