Archive for July, 2009

Predict winners in MSI’s OC competition for a chance to win prizes

MSI is currently organizing an overclocking competition, the Master Overclocking Arena 2009, in an attempt to bring together the world's finest overclockers and let them show off their skills on MSI and Intel hardware. TR has been providing sponsored coverage of the event, and now, we've teamed up with MSI to offer prizes to folks who can correctly predict the winners of the ongoing North American qualifying round. Participation is free, and those who guess right stand a chance to win either...

Apple’s future iTablet: hot or not?

The rumor mill seems adamant: Apple will release a tablet device early next year. That little prediction has led TR bloggers Jason Fox and Cyril Kowaliski to argue over the possible pros and cons of the device. In his post, Jason sums up the rumors then questions the utility of what could end up as an overpriced, super-sized iPhone with a 10-inch display. Could the product flop like some of Apple's previous experiments? Read more Cyril, meanwhile, draws a parallel with the flow of...

ARKANOID Live! Reviewed

Remember Arkanoid? I do, it’s an old game that’s been around for quite some time, even though it’s old it’s still a bit of fun, breaking blocks by bouncing a ball around the screen is not a bad way to spend some time. Taito has recently released an updated version onto the Xbox360 console, specifically Xbox Live only. It’s a download only game that costs 800 points, and if you want to get in some old school gaming it’s quite worth it.  Arkanoid Live! is revamped for the Xbox360...

Crucial M225 256GB Solid State Disk Review

In our first Crucial solid state drive review we tested the companies first generation product at the same time other companies were releasing their second and third generation drives. As you can imagine, the drive didn’t perform as well as the newer drives. A few months after the review, Lexar, the parent company of Crucial, announced that a new SSD was headed our way, but after weeks of waiting we found out that the product wouldn’t materialize. Looking back now it is easy to see why...

QNAP TS-219P NAS Review

When it comes to a cool feature packed Network Attached Storage device you'll be hard pressed to find anything more versatile than the QNAP TS-219P NAS. It comes with a whole laundry list of features specific to the task of serving up files but also for serving up other things like web applications, multimedia content, dynamic database content and even downloading files over BitTorrent. Read...

Runcore Factory Tour Video – Production of an SSD

This week we were invited to visit the folks at Runcore at their Hangzhou office in China and get a look at its full range of Pro IV SSDs which launched just the other day. During the five day trip, we arranged a factory tour of the Runcore facilities, which is conveniently located only about ten minutes down the road in the economic and development area of Hangzhou, officially known as 'HEDA' by the Chinese government. Read...

Wii Sports Resort Reviewed

The original Wii Sports came bundled with the console and it included a variety of games that basically showed what the console was capable of, Wii Sports Resort though takes things to a new level with more interactive, entertaining and fun games being added to the line up. Wii Sports Resort is Wii Sports 2, but it’s much more than that, it’s more polished, the graphics seem to be improved upon, as much as they can be with the limitations of the console and the games are different, with a...

MSI 770 C45 Review

MSI are a big brand when it comes to motherboards and they've received world wide regard for their P35 motherboards. Since then, not everything has gone their way, though, with some critics disappointed with their P45 range in part down to the BIOS configuration. However, MSI have never been one to roll over and they have come fighting back with their AM3 boards. Although AMD’s 45nm processors and DDR3 memory has now been out for a while, they are still very much ‘new’ and the launch...

WD VelociRaptor 300GB SATA HDD WD3000HLFS

Considering the state of the global economy, along with local recession and unemployment, performance computer builders have had to make some difficult decisions. It's not easy to convince enthusiasts that they should invest their money in mechanical hard disk products in the age of Solid State Drives, especially when performance favors SSD's almost two-fold. But the cost of high-performance HDDs has remained very affordable, and the capacity is ever-expanding. In this article, Benchmark...

SteelSeries Siberia Full-Size Gaming Headset

SteelSeries is all about gaming. Their mission is to create performance enhancing gaming gear, created for and by leading professional gamers. SteelSeries continuously strive to better themselves and work with leading professional gamers from three different continents to create their products. With that said, we’re expecting a high quality pair of gaming headphones here and look forward to seeing how they fare as a top notch choice for serious gamers. Read...

Garmin nuvi 255W Reviewed

Today I will be looking at the nüvi 255W which is a widescreen model in Garmin’s entry line of GPS units. This GPS can be found online for under $200 and includes text-to-speech (TTS) which is usually found in more expensive devices. TTS allows the device to announce directions with street names instead of the generic turn left/right at a certain distance. The nüvi 255W comes preloaded with Navteq data of North America + Hawaii + Puerto Rico and includes 6.5 million searchable points of...

ATI Catalyst 9.7 Vista Driver Analysis

I had to check the Game.AMD website the other day to make sure I didn't miss the email about the release of the latest Catalyst drivers. As I expected, when I checked the website there wasn't a new driver. A few days later, however, and that email came through saying a new driver set had been released. While running a bit late this month, the AMD team finally managed to get a new driver out. This month also saw the release of Windows 7 to manufacturers and over the coming months we'll be...

Exclusive hands-on with Runcore Pro IV 1.8″ SSD

We are here in Hangzhou, China in the technology and development area (or HEDA as it’s known officially) at the moment visiting the Runcore office to get a hands-on look at its range of Pro IV SSD drives that will launch later today and go on sale very soon. We spent some time exclusively testing the new Runcore Pro IV, specifically the 1.8-inch Micro SATA 128GB. We compared the performance of this new SSD against a standard notebook HDD in two identical Lenovo X301 laptops. We confirmed...

Intel’s second-generation X25-M solid-state drive

Intel has updated its X25-M SSDs with new 34nm flash chips, tweaks to reduce latency and speed random write performance, much lower prices, and the promise of TRIM support for Windows 7. We've tested the gen-two drive against its peers, and the results speak for themselves. Read...

MSI N275GTX Twin Frozr OC Video Card

The graphics card market is pretty much a two man slugfest at the moment. ATI and NVIDIA trade blows at irregular intervals in a brutal game of strategy. The GeForce GTX 275 was a punch that NVIDIA held in reserve, just waiting for ATI to release their HD4890 card. When launch day came for ATI, lo and behold, NVIDIA had the GTX 275 up their sleeve, ready for production. Essentially, the GTX 275 combines the GPU of the GTX 285 with the memory architecture of the GTX 275 with performance and...