Merry Xmas & our wishes for a happy, healthy and successful in every aspect New Year!!!
Have fun and take care, remember partying is nice, but our safety is #1, if you drink, do not drive.

Have fun ladies & gentlemen, see you again in a few weeks with more hardware reviews & articles!

Hello everybody,
We're happy to announce to you that we have a brand new article online for you to read today!

In this article we're focusing on what gives us ( and what does not ) higher performance in our favorite computer games.
We test various CPUs and graphics cards at various frequencies, quantities, overclock various components, try a few sound cards, and go through various scenarios and "myths" originating from various computer & gaming forums ( such as the "HyperThreading myth" and the 16x-16x SLI performance against 8x-8x slot SLI performance ).
We test if we get any higher FPS by overclocking our RAM, our Core i7 980X & Core i5-2600K CPUs, overclocking the PCI-Express BUS, overclocking the BCLK, and many more.

If you're a gamer, you REALLY NEED to read this article.

So, grab a cup of coffee or your favorite energy drink ( oh yes, you're going to need a lot of energy, you're looking at a 23 page reading :-p ) and read the article now!

Hello everybody!
Long time, no "see".

How are you doing ? Hope all is well over there.

We're finally back, and planning to remain active again, outputting a bunch of reviews, guides & articles each month.

Let's start November ( OMG, the winter's coming, nooooo! ) with a preview of the newest flagship processor of AMD's Bulldozer series, the FX-8150!
In this preview we'll take a look at the specifications of the new processor and its performance in various tasks on Ubuntu 11.10 x64 Linux.
We might release another preview covering some basic applications & benchmarks on Windows 7 before we release the full review ( 100's of benchmarks, lots of pages, architecture analysis, feature & future looks, etc etc ).

Apart from the text, charts and comments, you'll also be able to view 2 videos we took using the AMD FX-8150 processor, a video that was taken during our measurements, and an extreme overclocking video in which we insulate the motherboard, overclock the processor using liquid nitrogen ( LN2 ) and run various benchmarks like 3D Mark Vantage, SuperPi, wPrime, etc etc.

So, go ahead, check out our preview of the AMD FX-8150 CPU now!

FutureMark Corp. the famous benchmarking software house informed us a few hours ago about the final release date of their new installment in the general PC performance evaluation benchmarks, PC Mark 7!
PC Mark 7 will be released this Thursday, May 12th and will more than likely become the PC Markers' new favorite benchmark ( think PC Mark05 ).

As you can guess from its name, it will only run under Windows 7.
The free edition will be more than enough for the average & pro benchmarker, as you'll be able to run the standard benchmark ( System Test Suite ) suite as many times as you wish, and store all your results on FutureMark's new ORB ( Online Result Browser ).
If you want to use the results saving feature, you'll have to buy the advanced version though.

Get ready to bench guys 'n' girls!!!

A few months ago I was notified by a reader that our forum had an issue causing an error whenever somebody tried to register.
Wise people say "Better late than never", right ?
Yesterday I wiped the forum's database and started re-installing & configuring our forums, introducing a few new interesting sections & new forum organization as well.

I'm still making changes, adding sections, getting ready to change the forum scheme & layout, add more features and add-ons, but you may register safely as of now.

Visit the new BenchZone & BenchBot forums now!

We just learned that a dear friend of ours, Cyril Pelupessy, who was a technical PR officer at MSI Europe passed away 2 days ago suffering from pneumonia for 1 month.
He was a great man, a hard working person and a great friend.

Thank you very much for the good times in Amsterdam Cyril.

We'll miss you man.

R.I.P.

The results, 3 lucky winners!

Ladies & gentlemen, the time has come!
We can announce the lucky winners today.
First off, let's start with the correct answers:

1. What is nVIDIA Fermi ?
  b. The next generation CUDA Architecture
2. What is MSI Afterburner ?
  b. An overclock utility for VGA developed by MSI and rivatuner
3. How is the high-end VGA series of MSI called ?
  c. Lightning
4. Which one of the below names is not an MSI VGA cooler ?
  b. Fridge
5. What is the thickness of the MSI Superpipe ?
  d. 8mm

You can hold your breath now... here comes the lucky winners list:
Out of 17.568 participants the following 3 were the luckiest:

1. MSI GeForce GTX 480 goes to... Oscar Olsson from Sweden!
2. MSI GeForce GTX 480 goes to... Asger Hansen from Denmark!
3. MSI GeForce GTX 480 goes to... Dora Christodoulou from Greece!

Congratulations to the winners and thanks everybody for participating.
The official page of the contest will be updated later on today.
http://www.msi.eu/fermi

A few days ago FutureMark, the developer of the well-known 3D Mark series benchmarks sent us an e-mail with footage & information regarding their upcoming DirectX 11 benchmark called "3D Mark11".
If you would like to see some screenshots, a 720p tech demo video and some information regarding their upcoming benchmark read our mini-article now!

Click here to read the 3D Mark11 tech preview article now!

Hello everybody,

I'm very pleased to be able to announce that I have a new review for you guys ( and girls ) to read today!
I've been working on this one for quite a few days, but things got complicated due to various reasons and breaks ( personal stuff & some business trips ) and some delayed hardware arrivals ( everything's ok now and we'll be back with another review ASAP! ) resulting in a relatively big delay.
Anyway, I guess you're looking for the product I reviewed and present to you today, so here it comes:

It's a nice and relatively affordable 6GB DDR3 triple channel memory kit from Kingston, the HyperX DDR3-2000C9 kit ( part number: hmm.. hold on... ok! KHX2000C9AD3T1FK3/6GX ).
Its specifications might seem very conservative to you, 9-10-9-x at DDR3-2000 at 1.65V. How far can these DIMMs overclock ? Will they hit anything noteworthy ? DDR3-2000 at CAS 7 ? DDR3-2300 at relatively good timings and low voltage ?

Grab a cup of coffee or your favorite drink and read the review now!

The past Saturday me and my benching partner Chris "Crio" Christopoulos were invited to bench on the stage at an internet cafe in Athens called "BattleNet".
I had little to no time to prepare the hardware for the event ( mostly because most of the hardware arrived at my place at the very last second, thanks for the support though Intel, Gigabyte, Antec, A-data ) so I prepared just the motherboard/CPU ( eVGA X58 SLI Classified E760 and an Intel Core i7 980X E.S., Q4EG B1 Stepping ) and the GeForce GTX 480 graphics card for LN2 ( Liquid Nitrogen ) cooling.
Unfortunately the CPU wasn't what I'd call a decent chip, so we were kinda limited to 3D Mark03 ( which is mostly VGA dependent ) and a few attempts of completing 3D Mark06 & 3D Mark Vantage at 5.4GHz-ish.

I have to finish several reviews, so there won't be an "article" covering this event ( for the time being at least ), but we do have some photos from the event to show you



Also make sure you subscribe ( "like" ) to our FaceBook page here to find out what we're working on and any events/contests taking place or coming up shortly!

Stay tuned, there's a memory review coming up shortly!