Reviews 52192 Published by

Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

AMD Mantle & TrueAudio Patch for THIEF Tested
Antec GX500 Mid Tower Case Review
ASUS GeForce GTX 780 Ti Matrix Platinum
AVEXIR Blitz 1.1 Memory Series Review
Crucial M550 512GB SSD Review
Crucial M550 Series Solid State Drive Review
Crucial M550 SSD (512GB) Review
Crucial M550 SSD 128GB to 1TB Review
Crucial M550 SSD Review (1TB)
Crucials M550 solid-state drive reviewed
Darksiders 4-Years Later Review
Feenix Autore Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review
Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 vs Surface Pro 2 Head to Head Review
GAMDIAS NYX Speed Gaming Mouse Pad Review
Gigabytes Brix Pro reviewed
Nvidia GTX Titan Black v Palit GTX780 Ti Jetstream OC (1080p, 1600p and 4K)
PowerVR Wizard brings ray tracing to real-time graphics
Sony Xperia Z1 Compact Review
SteelSeries H Wireless Gaming Headset



AMD Mantle & TrueAudio Patch for THIEF Tested

While Battlefield 4 was the first game to support Mantle, Thief by Square Enix is the first game to support both Mantle and TrueAudio. TrueAudio is implemented to enhance environmental sound effects. This was done by taking a snapshot of the echo characteristics of a real-world location and importing it into software to be translated into how the sound should react within the games environments. Let's take a look at how Mantle affects the performance of Thief, and whether TrueAudio can enhance the games audio.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Antec GX500 Mid Tower Case Review

Today we are going to take a look at one of Antec’s value cases, the GX500. This is targeted at those users who are looking for a capable chassis on a tight budget. Antec has designed this case from the ground up for gamers, so we are interested to see the new design.

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASUS GeForce GTX 780 Ti Matrix Platinum

Today ASUS lifted the NDA for two new Matrix graphics cards. One of them is based on AMDs recent high-end chip and the other, which we're looking at right now, features a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti core. Furthermore this new high-end card comes with a shedload of features, which not only interesting for gamers but also for overclockers. At this point we're now really curious to find out what these cards can do in our review.

Read full article @ ocaholic

AVEXIR Blitz 1.1 Memory Series Review

This is the first time that we have the opportunity to review AVEXIR memory which is known as a high quality and quite unique memory series designed for gamers, modders, and power users.

This will be a slightly different review than we are usually presenting due to the fact that we have received seven different memory sticks of the latest Blitz 1.1 series showing nearly all available models of this really special RAM.

Today we are going to begin this review with AVEXIR's motto that is found on the box of memory, which will be reviewed today.

Read full article @ FunkyKit

Crucial M550 512GB SSD Review

In the face of increasingly stout competition, Crucial has again put their faith in a Marvell controller to power their latest flagship drive. Marvell hasn’t had the fastest SSD controllers in the past and was often left on the sidelines with many manufacturers favoring parts from Indilinx, Samsung, Intel and SandForce instead. However, they’ve always been dependable and we’ve seen their performance improve substantially as of late so we were extremely eager to get Crucial’s new M550 drive powered by the Marvell 88SS9187 controller on our test bench. We won’t give away all the goods in the first paragraph but suffice it to say that we were duly impressed with the results...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Crucial M550 Series Solid State Drive Review

The solid state storage market continues to be one of the hottest in the PC industry. Over the last few weeks alone, we’ve seen the release of the Intel SSD 730 and the OCZ Vertex 460 series of drives and there are still plenty more on the horizon, as many companies ready products with different capacities, form factors and connectivity options.

Today is Crucial's turn to make some noise. The long-time memory maker is launching a new line of solid state drives, dubbed the M550 series, targeted at performance-minded, but budget-conscious enthusiasts. The M550 family of drives will be offered in array of form factors, including mSATA and M.2 flavors, but we’ve got a couple of 2.5” SATA models on tap for you here...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Crucial M550 SSD (512GB) Review

Our report today examines Crucial's latest SATA 3 SSD release, the M550 2.5" 512GB SSD. The M550 is directed towards the personal computing market and is advertised with increased performance, expanded battery life for mobile users, a more fluid set of form factors and the standard high capacities.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Crucial M550 SSD 128GB to 1TB Review

When it comes to creating an SSD Crucial, due to being part of the Micron family, have an advantage over many other SSD manufacturers... they have access to their own brand storage and cache chips to build a drive round. For some time they have matched those with Marvel controllers and with the release of the M550 we see that continue.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

Crucial M550 SSD Review (1TB)

Today’s introduction of the Crucial M550 SSD family is intended to cross that speed hurdle, offering the consumer the perfect combination of performance, capacity and value. Crucial has accomplished this, not only through introduction of a new Marvell SATA 3 controller, but also by effectively using both 128Gb NAND, as well as 64Gb NAND, to tackle the performance numbers we saw in the M500. Will the Crucial M550 have what it takes to conquer the SSD triangle of speed, capacity and value?

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Crucials M550 solid-state drive reviewed

The Crucial M500 is one of the most popular SSDs around. Now, there's a updated version with more storage, better performance, and smarter NAND configurations for lower-capacity variants. We take a closer look at the new M550 to see how it stacks up against its predecessor and a stack of other top contenders.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Darksiders 4-Years Later Review

Should War ride again or be abandoned to his final judgment? In my opinion, you should definitely help the Horseman to the end of his quest. Darksiders is a very good example of its genre and a strong title on its own, with its story, characters, and gameplay. The combat is satisfying, exploration is rewarding, and the story is well crafted to grab and hold your interest. The graphics could be better, but graphics are not the only thing of importance.

Read full article @ OCC

Feenix Autore Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

Many of you may have never heard of the PC gaming boutique company Feenix. They are a company that focuses extremely high quality gaming gear. Feenix only makes up to a 1000 of each product a month. Each person who purchases their products will receive their own personal own support manager. Which means you will always talk to the same person when you send them an email. Feenix handles everything in house from making sure each customer gets the highest quality product with hand checking each product before it is sold. The Feenix Autore is a mechanical gaming keyboard that features Cherry MX Brown key switches, a unique color design and is resistant to water damage. Lets take a look at the Feenix Autore and see how it handles up to the competition.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 vs Surface Pro 2 Head to Head Review

We check which business-minded tablet is best for corporates

Read full article @ V3

GAMDIAS NYX Speed Gaming Mouse Pad Review

I notice an interesting thing as I sit here and try to write. I realize I write about cars a lot, which is made even more surprising because I am not a huge car guy. I like a good sports car as much as any guy and I love to drive, but I do not read car magazines or get into the stats or know anything about all the newest models. So I thought to myself, “I’ll make an awesome sport analogy!” Then I realized I know even less about sports, I mean, I am fit and I used to be quite athletic but I was never much of a team player. Where does this leave me? Well, it leaves me trying to segue into talking about surfaces and how different surfaces affect your performance.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

Gigabytes Brix Pro reviewed

The first, Intel-built NUC (short for Next Unit of Computing) debuted a little over a year ago, and our own Scott Wasson picked it apart at the time. Today, we're back with a mini-PC that's based on the same form factor but trades the power-sipping mobile CPU for a quad-core desktop specimen.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Nvidia GTX Titan Black v Palit GTX780 Ti Jetstream OC (1080p, 1600p and 4K)

Even though the Nvidia Titan was never truly designed as a gamers card, the high end enthusiast audience have been buying them en masse since they released. A muted launch in February this year saw the new Nvidia GTX Titan Black hit retail shelves. Nvidia didn't sample the new card, with the reasoning that it was not a target for the gaming audience. Nvidia partners didn't really sample the cards either, as they were forced to adhere to the Nvidia reference cooler design.

Even though the Titan Black retails for around £800 - the wealthy enthusiast gamer has been snapping them up to play the latest Direct X 11 titles. Is the Titan Black really worth the £300 premium over some of the best GTX780 Ti's currently available today? Does the Titan Black's extra 3GB of GDDR5 memory really make a difference with current games at Ultra HD 4K resolutions?

Read full article @ KitGuru

PowerVR Wizard brings ray tracing to real-time graphics

When we visited Imagination Technologies at CES, they were showing off some intriguing hardware that augments their GPUs in order to accelerate ray-traced rendering. Ray tracing is a well-known and high-quality form of rendering that relies on the physical simulation of light rays bouncing around in a scene. Although it's been used in movies and in static scene creation, ray tracing has generally been too computationally intensive to be practical for real-time graphics and gaming. However, Imagination Tech is looking to bring ray-tracing to real-time graphics €”in the mobile GPU space, no less €”with its new family of Wizard GPUs.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact Review

In the world smartphones there have been typically two choices to go with: large-screened handsets with top-end specifications, and smaller devices with mid-range internals. Recently companies such as Samsung (with the Galaxy Mega) and Nokia (with the Lumia 1320) have shifted to producing large devices with weak specifications, but the complete opposite has been neglected. Simply put, there’s very little choice for those who want a highly portable smartphone, but don’t want to sacrifice the hardware inside to get it.

Sony has an answer in the form of the Xperia Z1 Compact. Nearly everything about this smartphone is the same as its large-screened brother, the Xperia Z1. There’s a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC inside, a 20.7-megapixel rear camera, and a fully water resistant aluminium-glass build – but it’s all in a body barely larger than its 4.3-inch display.

Read full article @ Techspot

SteelSeries H Wireless Gaming Headset

From basic, advanced and audiophile grade stereo models up to virtual and real 5.1/7.1 surround models the market has an abundance of headsets designed to cover the needs of every consumer out there. However strangely enough although there's a massive number of wired headsets available from a huge list of companies i can't really say the same about wireless models and with just a couple of exceptions the very few available ones currently are far from what a gamer would ever like to have on his desk. SteelSeries has been in the design and manufacture of gaming headsets for over a decade now and although they are well aware of what gamers are after in terms of audio clarity, positioning audio, build quality and design they never did believe in wireless connectivity, until now that is. Today we have their flagship headset model which just might be their best headset to date the H Wireless Gaming Headset.

Read full article @ NikKTech