Jan 5, 2011

Gigabyte launches its G1 Killer series of gaming motherboards

CES 2011: A little bit gimmicky, but loaded with features

ASUS JUST GOT some serious competition for its R.O.G. series of motherboards, as Gigabyte has just announced its new G1 Killer series which have been specifically designed for gamers. Now these boards do have some gimmicks that are meant to be for the target audience, but they also have a lot of features that we think will appeal to a broader market and they’re features that none of Gigabyte’s competitors have, as yet, implemented on a board level.
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Jan 5, 2011

Sapphire announces the Pure Fusion Mini E350

Returns to the motherboard market with Brazos

WE’VE BEEN EXPECTING this product from Sapphire for quite some time, although we didn’t quite know what to expect and it seems like the company has managed to churn out a pretty decent Brazos board that differ somewhat from its competitors. The Pure Fusion Mini E350 as the board is called is the first consumer Brazos board that we’ve seen so far that uses SO-DIMMs and it’s one of the few to offer a mini card PCI Express slot as well.
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Jan 3, 2011

Gigabyte launches its GA-E350N-USB3 Brazos mini-ITX board

We give you a quick tour of the new board

AMD’S BRAZOS PLATFORM has finally arrived, well, ok so AMD has already showed off what it has to offer, but the first retail products are launching today and one of the first out of the gate with a mini-ITX motherboard based on the new platform is Gigabyte. We headed over to Gigabyte’s HQ for a quick hands on with the board and to snap a few candid shots of it.
Updated: January 4, 2011 12pm, Added pricing information.
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Jan 3, 2011

Intel Core i7 2600K review

Performance increase doesn’t justify the price premium

YESTERDAY WE TOOK a look at Intel’s Core i5 2500K and today we’re going to take a closer look at the Core i7 2600K which is currently Intel’s flagship processor based on Sandy Bridge. The big feature difference is Hyper Threading support, although the Core i7’s also feature an additional 2MB L3 cache, slightly higher clock speed and a higher turbo frequency for the integrated graphics to set them apart from the Core i5 models.
Editor’s note: Additional Sandy Bridge coverage on it’s way.  Overview, Benchmarks, Linux, Disappointment
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Jan 2, 2011
1

An introduction to Sandy Bridge

Model names, chipsets and so on

DUE TO A LAST minute change by Intel, the expiration of the Sandy Bridge NDA has now, well, expired and as such we’re going to start off our coverage with a quick introduction of the various processors, chipsets and what not before we start digging into the tech and benchmarks. Much of what will be covered here contains information that leaked out ahead of the launch, but Intel still managed to hold on to plenty of details available now for your reading pleasure.
Editor’s note: Additional Sandy Bridge coverage on it’s way. Benchmarks, Disappointment, Linux
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Jan 2, 2011
4

Intel Core i5 2500K review

Impressive performance for the money, but not without its flaws

IN RECENT TIMES Intel’s biggest jump in performance was when the company moved from the Netburst architecture to the Core 2 architecture, a move that wasn’t repeated when the company moved to Nehalem. Today we’ll take a closer look at Sandy Bridge and without giving away too much; we can tell that it offers an impressive performance boost, although not in every single category.
Editor’s note: Additional Sandy Bridge coverage on it’s way.  Overview, Disappointment, Linux

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Jan 2, 2011
20

Sandy Bridge is the biggest disappointment of the year

A rant

SANDY BRIDGE WAS shaping up to be the killer CPU of the year, a huge step forward in the ‘uncore’, decent graphics and big gains in the core as well. Instead, we got broken graphics, non-working feature sets, and a showstopper bug. What a shattering disappointment.
Editor’s note: Additional Sandy Bridge coverage on it’s way.  Overview, Benchmarks, Linux
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Dec 29, 2010

ASRock’s Brazos board detailed

Previewed in Vietnam

WE EXPECTED A FEW Brazos boards at launch, but it seems like we might end up seeing more than just a few which is good news for AMD if nothing else. ASRock is readying a board of its own called the E350M1 giving away both the CPU and chipset being used and it’s said to be a low cost solution, but it appears that ASRock might be offering a few different SKUs.
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Dec 29, 2010

MSI’s other high-end P67 board detailed

Should launch at CES

WE HAVE TO start by apologizing for the poor picture that we snapped of this board, as unlike the Big Bang Marshal board, MSI didn’t have the P67A-GD80 on display in the same fashion. Well, that’s not quite true, as there was a system with a board in it, but thanks to a large shiny heatsink and a large graphics card combined with poor lighting, we didn’t manage to get a good shot of the board.
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