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Roger "splmann" Tanner from OCaholic.ch published a review of the Kingston HyperX KHX2800C12D3T1K2/4GX high performance 4GB Dual Channel Memory Kit.


Marc "rewarder" Buchel from OCaholic.ch once again, reviews Toshiba's 2.5" 1TB HDD.
Is it a good performer ? Who cares! At least now you can have 1TB of data to carry with your notebook!


TechPowerUp published their review of the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC.
Their sample failed to overclock ( stably ) any further than 1060MHz! ( some proof that not every review sample is cherrypicked as some people claim ).
I thought my friend's reference GTX 670 that only clocks up to 1128MHz was the worst GTX 670 out there, but this GTX 670 at TPU is on its own league... frustratingly cr@ppy GPU core
They were lucky at least memory-wise, the memory on that Gigabyte worked fine at 1925MHz ( GDDR-7700 )!


Lab501.ro reviewed the Asus ROG Desktop CG8580, a custom built gaming desktop PC by Asus.


XbitLabs.com features its own clash of the... Graphics card titans of today, having the MSI Radeon HD 7970 Lightning duke it out against the Asus GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II Top.

Who told you ( hmm... Asus did, and some people or reviewers ) that the little beast that goes by the name Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z, the almighty MicroATX Z68 motherboard can't operate its PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot in PCI-E v3.0 speeds ( "mode" ) ? No, I'm not talking about the Gene-Z/GEN3 which is pretty much the very same motherboard with the only difference being the different, now PCI-Express 3.0 certified on-board switches and the "PCI-Express 3.0" sticker on the box.

Not much has been changed from PCI-Express 2.x to 3.0 electrically, that's why some chips are capable of doing things they're not supposed to do.
In this case, the Maximus IV Gene-Z is capable of running the first ( top ) PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot in PCI-Express 3.0 mode, granted that you're using an Intel "Ivy Bridge" ( Core i5 / i7 3xxx ) series CPU.

You just need to flash your motherboard with this BIOS and of course own an Intel "Ivy Bridge" CPU and a PCI-Express 3.0 graphics card such as the AMD Radeon HD 7XXX series and the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 6XX series.

Here's a screenshot ( click on the thumbnail to view the full size image ) with GPU-z and a measurements teaser from a forthcoming article, part of which is a PCI-Express 3.0 comparison on the "unofficially supported" Maximus IV Gene-Z versus the Maximus V Gene Z77 ( official PCI-Express 3.0 support ):

If you have any doubts, I will upload a video on our youtube channel as soon as I finish some more measurements

Avexir demonstrated their new RAM heatsink design for the Blitz gaming & overclocking memory series at Computex recently. It certainly looks like Avexir pays a lot of attention to the visual presentation of their memory kits not just on their performance. In case you missed it, we reviewed the LED lit ( alternating patterns & dimming ) Core Series DDR3-1600 32GB kit a few months back. If you thought those look good, then you've got to reconsider right after looking at the video of the Blitz series new design:

Welcome to our first Daily Reviews Roundup!

Christian Ney at OCaholic.ch presents his third driver performance analysis for the AMD Radeon HD7970 with AMD's newest driver, the Catalyst 12.6 beta.

While Marc "rewarder" Buchel reviews the HP Envy 14 Spectre Ultra Portable Notebook again at OCaholic.ch

Power_user_EX at OCfreaks.com reviews the Gigabyte GA-880GM-USB3L motherboard

Andy "aruffell" Ruffell at eteknix.com reviews the Biostar TZ77XE4 Z77 motherboard

Dave "cadaveca" Rennie at techpowerup.com reviews the ECS Golden Board Z77H2-AX Z77 motherboard

About 2 months ago Intel released their 3rd generation of Core i5 & i7 CPUs, namely the Core i5-3570K and the Core i7-3770K featuring the "Ivy Bridge" Core architecture, an enhanced version ( in terms of performance and power efficiency ) of Intel's "Sandy Bridge" architecture.
The new processors are pretty good, they have a 3% to 17% percent performance advantage over their predecessors at the same clock frequencies, they overclock pretty good ( although lower frequency-wise than their predecessors mainly due to their heat output ), and consume less power at the same time!

A lot of people are asking on various computer forums if buying a new Core i7-3770K or a 3570K will increase their fps in their favorite games.
That's exactly what we're going to find out today with this article!

We'll compare the new Core i7-3770K with a Core i7-2600K in various games running at the same operating frequency, and in various overclocked frequencies as well ( 4.2GHz, 4.5GHz, 4.7GHz and more ) in a head to head battle of Intel's 2nd and 3rd generation CPUs from the "Core iX" family.

We'll also run more tests with the Core i7-3770K at various frequencies, including the stock frequency ( 3.5GHz ) and show you how our framerates in some of the most demanding computer games scale with the 3770K's operating frequency as we overclock it up to 4.6GHz on air cooling!

What are you waiting for ?!
Click here to read the article now!

Our friends at OCaholic.ch, Christian Ney to be precise, released the review of a Dual Socket Asus workstation motherboard for Intel's LGA2011 DP Processors, the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS ( what a weird name )
Christian installed two 8 core / 16 threads Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs along with 32GB of DDR3-1333 CL9 DIMMs from G.Skill and a Radeon HD 7970 graphics card and run a couple of synthetic and real-life performance tests on it.

It surely looks like a F@H beast, doesn't it ?

Click here to be forwarded to OCaholic to read the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS review now!

Our friend Sumon Pathak at OCFreaks.com published a review of the Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe Z77 motherboard.
Included in the review is a detailed look at the new Fan Expert 2 feature which allows the user to control the fans connected to the motherboard in a "revolutionary" way ( this feature is also present on the P8Z77-V and the P8Z77-V Pro ).
Like most of Asus's "Deluxe" edition motherboards the P8Z77-V Deluxe follows suite and introduces to the consumers a handful of new features ( whether they're useful or not, it depends to you and how you plan to use your PC ).

Click here to get redirected to OCFreaks to read the Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe review now!

In a similar fashion to what we did in our "Driver Maturity" article, OCaholic's Christian Ney took 2 AMD Radeon HD 7970s, an Intel Core i7-2600K, 16GBs of DDR3-1600 G.Skill RipjawsZ RAM and tested the performance of the Radeon HD 7970 CrossFire in various games & benchmarks using the first official driver from the release of the HD 7970 graphics card, the Catalyst 11.12 and compared the results with the latest official driver, the Catalyst 12.4

In contrast a driver's effects on a Single graphics card's performance, the drivers can make a big difference in multi-graphics cards configurations ( CrossFire / SLI ).
Aren't you curious to see how much performance we gain using newer drivers ?

Click here to get redirected to OCaholic and read the article now!

Starting from today and with this news post, we'll be linking you on a daily basis ( most of the time ) to selected reviews, articles & guides from other computer hardware websites, like this one, OCaholic.ch

Steven "sin0822" Bassiri wrote an overclocking guide ( normal air / water cooling & extreme dry ice / LN2 cooling ) regarding the Intel Core i5-3570K and the Core i7-3770K ( most of the things are also applicable to the non-K models ) processors.

It's a pretty good guide, suitable for everybody out there, from the overclocking beginner, to the "casual" overclocker, and also useful for experienced overclockers with limited or no experience with Intel's "Sandy Bridge" who are looking to overclock the new "Ivy Bridge" processors under subzero cooling.

Click here to read the guide from OCaholic.ch now!