Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including MSI Z68A-GD80 Revision G3 Review, A quick look at Bulldozer thread scheduling, and Battlefield 3 Benchmarked: GPU & CPU Performance Test



MSI Z68A-GD80 Revision G3 Review
OCC has published a review on the MSI Z68A-GD80 Revision G3

Putting the screws to the MSI Z68A-GD80 G3 gave me almost identical overclocking results as the B3 revision did. No surprise there! The way to the promised land is through adjustments of the bclock, clock multiplier, vcore, and turbo boost settings. The CPU I am using needs the PLL overvoltage option enabled to reach a multiplier greater than 44 and really does not care to run over 47. But it is tolerant of increasing the bclock at higher multipliers. On this board, that equated to a bclock 105.6MHz. The vcore needed to get to 4.96GHz on this chip is in the 1.48 to 1.49 range, depending on the board and how the Load Line calibration options are structured to manage the vdroop. In this case, a setting of 1.485v in the BIOS would show as 1.472 under load.

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BitFenix Outlaw Review
PureOverclock has published a review on the BitFenix Outlaw case

Today we have the BitFenix Outlaw Mid-Tower ATX chassis on the bench. This mid-tower chassis offers premium features, inverted internal layout, and advanced styling come with a very attractive price tag of $50. While priced very affordably, Outlaw comes with some of the same features that are found on some of their higher end chassis. The exterior front bezel is coated with the BitFenix signature SofTouchT Surface Treatment for stain resistance and a luxuriously soft feel.

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Lian Li Cowry PC-U6 Special Edition mATX Case Review
Hardware Canucks posted a review of the new Lian Li Cowry PC-U6 Special Edition case.

Computer cases usually fall into one of two categories: boring and bland or functional and good looking. Lian Li’s new Cowry PC-U6 Special Edition doesn’t fit into any of these preconceived molds but it does blaze a somewhat unique trail in a market niche that hasn’t seen much innovation of late.

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EVGA Z68 FTW Motherboard Review
Ninjalane has posted their review of the much anticipated EVGA Z68 FTW motherboard.

The EVGA Z68 FTW joins an elite group of motherboards aimed at satisfying the needs of overclocking, gaming and hardware enthusiasts. While this group is small by comparison the things they look for in a motherboard can be rather specific and often difficult to plan for.

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Phanteks PH-TC14PE Premier CPU Cooler Review
Hi Tech Legion posted Phanteks PH-TC14PE Premier CPU Cooler Review

The Phanteks PH-TC14PE Premier CPU Cooler comes to market with some new technologies, complete with acronyms. The Phanteks PH-TC14PE uses all of Phanteks ingenuity and packages it into one (rather large) package. The PH-TC14PE is a twin tower design using dual fans aligned to draw the air through, but is also capable of a three fan setup and comes with all of the accessories needed to do so. Rather than higher rpm 120mm fans, Phanteks opts for slower rotating 140mm fans featuring MVB (Maelstrom Vortex Boost) Technology to provide equivalent airflow while keeping noise levels down, even in a three fan setup. Five 8mm heatpipes run through the nickel plated copper base and through the aluminum fin array to draw the heat away from the CPU.

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Enermax ETS-T40-TA CPU Cooler Review
HardwareHeaven.com posted Enermax ETS-T40-TA CPU Cooler Review

Using one of their high quality fans and a tall heatsink the Enermax ETS-T40 is a high performance CPU cooler which is aimed at those with midrange budget. That said the cooling potential is rated at 200w so this could well be a great buy for enthusiasts too...

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ASUS X79 Motherboard Preview
Techgage posted a look at upcoming ASUS X79 motherboards and technologies.

At its annual tech summit held a couple of weeks ago, ASUS talked in great detail about what's coming to its X79 mobo line-up. Certain NDA's have not yet lifted, but we can talk about a few of the new things ASUS is introducing, and also take an early look at four of the company's X79 motherboards.

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Intel Core i7 2700k Flagship Showdown Review
eTeknix.com posted a review on the Intel Core i7 2700k processor

We've known for a little while now, that Intel had something up their sleeves with regards to Sandybridge and now that the cat is out of the bag, we can shout out that it's the i7 2700k. Taking over as the Sandy Bridge flagship processor is quite vital information to us as we will now be using it for all of our Sandy Bridge based tests, and we can tell you now; that's a lot.

The i7 2700k isn't anything too spectacular as simply put, it's a cherry picked 2600k with 100MHz extra speed, which reminds us very much of what AMD did with the Phenom II range of processors, periodically releasing processors with 100MHz faster clock speeds, and a slight bump in price. Why Intel have decided to go down this route is anyone's guess, but for us, we simply believe it's to keep that firm step on bulldozer, by giving it no chance to breathe.

As said, the i7 2700k is 100MHz faster than the 2600k, meaning that it comes with a 3.5GHz core clock speed, still maintains the socket 1155 structure and much like the 2600k, has a 95Watt TDP. Also much like the 2600k, it comes with four physical cores and hyperthreading allowing for 8 threads (2 per core) opposed to the likes of Bulldozer and the FX-8150 which has 8 physical cores, though we've seen from first hand information of the results from this.

So it seems that Intel have simply released a processor with a multiplier of 35x instead of the 34x multiplier that the 2600k sports, and with the 2600k easily able to achieve these speeds, we can only assume that this chip is here to spoil the launch of Bulldozer, but isn't it true that AMD did that all by themselves?

What we will be doing today is having a bit of a showdown between the AMD FX-8150 and the new Intel Sandy Bridge Flagship i7 2700k, and whilst we're aware of which will come out on top, we're more interested to see by how much, and that's why we're putting the i7 2700k through its paces.

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A quick look at Bulldozer thread scheduling
The Tech Report takes a quick look at Bulldozer thread scheduling

Is an awareness of the shared nature of AMD's Bulldozer architecture the key to unlocking its performance? We investigate.

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Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Review
Neoseeker takes a look at the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO heatsink

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is a cost effective heatsink that gets the job done in mild to medium overclocked setups. It maintains the design of its predecessor while introducing the new Continuous Direct Contact design that basically reduces the gaps typically seen between the heatpipes on the base of similar heatinks. That makes for better contact between the heatsinkn and the CPU heatspreader, but does it make for better value? Hit our latest heatsink review to find out!

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Hard Drive Prices Spike on Thailand Flooding
PC Perspective published an article on the recent Hard Drive price spike

Chances are good you have heard about the recent flooding in Thailand - as Yahoo puts it: "The country's worst flooding in half a century, caused in part by unusually heavy monsoon rain, has killed 373 people since mid-July and disrupted the lives of nearly 2.5 million." Obviously this is a horrific disaster and we feel for the people affected by it.

But there is a tech angle to the story that has been showing up in many of our discussions as late and is the impact this disaster has had on the production of spindle-based hard drives.

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CryoPC Alto HTPC Part 2 Review
XSReviews has posted part 2 of their CryoPC Alto HTPC review

Yesterday we took a look at the raw performance of the Cryo PC Alto HTPC. Today it's more about the usage experience. I won't lie to you, it's going to get subjective and opinionated, but that's what makes these types of reviews that much more fun.

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Lower East Side Media Speakers Review
TestFreaks posted a review on the Lower East Side Media Speakers

Designed with a retro appearance that provides a modern sound the Lower East Side Media Speakers are being marketed with a hipster ethos. This is immediately noticed with their use of Instagram style photos on their packaging and website for this product.

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Battlefield 3 Benchmarked: GPU & CPU Performance Test
TechSpot posted Battlefield 3 Benchmarked: GPU & CPU Performance Test

Earlier this month we checked out the beta version of Battlefield 3 to see how it played on a range of DirectX 11 graphics cards. The results wereconcerning as even the latest and greatest graphics cards struggled, especially those who planned to enjoy the game in all of its visual glory.

The good news is that only one month later reviewers are finding the final game to be quite enjoyable and considerably more polished than the beta. Today we'll take a peak at what's required to play Battlefield 3 as we test a number of GPU and CPU configurations.

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