CD23

KILLER BUDGET CPU BATTLE SSD SPEED TESTS

APPS Intel vs. AMD, Mano-a-Mano! p. 46
Which Drive Soars Highest? p. 50

PC
On This Month’s Disc
DE
p.!xx

INSI

PC
MINIMUM BS • JUNE 2010

Windows 7
Ultimate
THE

Tune-Up
Tweak Your OS to Perfection:
Our Experts Share Their Most
Coveted Power-User Tips! p. 22 PC
NVIDIA GETS HOT & HEAVY!
Full Lab report on GTX 480. Is it
the best 3D card money can buy? p. 36

SODA SPILLAGE What to do when disaster strikes! p. 63

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 WHERE WE PUT STUFF
CONTENTS

JUNE FEATURES DEPARTMENTS

22 Windows 7 Tips Quickstart In the Lab

As good as it is, your new OS can be made 08 NEWS What’s HTML5 and how will it 71 REVIEWS
change your browsing experience?
even better with our power-user secrets
92 LAB NOTES
and tweaks.
14 THE LIST Can you identify what we 96 BEST OF THE BEST
36 Fermi (finally!) dug up when we dug out the Maximum
PC Lab?
Nvidia’s new GPU has hit the street. Was LETTERS
it worth the wait? (And is it worth your $?)
R &D
16 DOCTOR
46 CPUs on the Cheap 60 WHITE PAPER Advanced Format
Drive Technology 94 COMMENTS
How much CPU bang can you get for about
100 bucks? You might be surprised.
61 AUTOPSY Sonos ZonePlayer S5
50 Solid State Drives 63 HOW TO Recover from a beverage-
With performance up and prices lower, we
evaluate today’s SSDs. spill disaster; manage your music
collection with Foobar.

46

www.maximumpc.com | JUN 2010 | MAXIM

MAXIMU
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MAXIMUMPC
EDITORIAL
A THING OR TWO ABOUT A THING OR TWO
ED WORD

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jon Phillips

DEPUTY EDITOR Katherine Stevenson
SENIOR EDITOR Gordon Mah Ung
REVIEWS EDITOR Michael Brown
SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Nathan Edwards
ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR Alex Castle

Keyboards? Don’t
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Alan Fackler
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Loyd Case, Nathan Grayson, Tom
Halfhill, Paul Lilly, Thomas McDonald, Quinn Norton
COPY EDITOR Mary Ricci

Need ’Em. Can’t

PODCAST PRODUCER Andy Bauman
EDITOR EMERITUS Andrew Sanchez
CONTACT comments@maximumpc.com

Type Anyhow
ART
ART DIRECTOR Natalie Jeday
CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR Boni Uzilevsky
PHOTO EDITOR Mark Madeo
ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHER Samantha Berg
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Patrick Kawahara
COVER ILLUSTRATOR Adam Benton

Y
BUSINESS ou know who’s annoying besides inveterate fanboys, political extremists, and
VP / PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Kate Byrne
kbyrne@futureus.com men who wear scarves? Those touch typists who think they’re so badass be-
SENIOR REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Dave Lynn
dlynn@futureus.com cause they use all eight fingers and can knock out 120 words per minute. Well,
REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR David White
dwhite@futureus.com
I’m proud to declare that I can clock 65 words per minute, and that’s with only two
SALES MANAGER Aida Rodriguez fingers total. It may not be what they taught those fancy lads in secretarial school, but
arodriguez@futureus.com
INTEGRATED SALES DIRECTOR Joe Pomparelli it gets the job done. Even better, my hunt-and-peck style might be exactly the right
jpomparelli@futureus.com
method for entering text into the Apple iPad, the best tablet computer I’ve ever used.
SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER Andrea Recio-Ang
arecio-ang@futureus.com In the May 2004 issue of this magazine, I wrote a column that simultane-
MARKETING COORDINATOR Allyson Kardel
akardel@futureus.com ously celebrated and condemned an HP tablet running Windows XP Tab-
ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Jose Urrutia let PC Edition. I loved the basic formfactor, and found the HP stylus to
CAN YOU
jurrutia@futureus.com
be a good mouse replacement for basic screen navigation. But I also
HANDLE THE
PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Michael Hollister found Microsoft’s handwriting recognition to be laughably inad-


TRUTH?
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Dan Mallory equate, and couldn’t reach a happy medium between using the
PRINT ORDER COORDINATOR Jennifer Lim
stylus to tap on the micro-size virtual keyboard and attaching
CONSUMER MARKETING
DIRECTOR CONSUMER MARKETING Rich McCarthy the physical keyboard to the tablet, effectively turning the de-
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Crystal Hudson
vice into a very expensive netbook. Nvidia’s Fermi GPU
NEWSSTAND DIRECTOR Bill Shewey
CONSUMER MARKETING OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Lisa Radler In reference to the physical keyboard, I wrote in that col- page 36
RENEWAL AND BILLING MANAGER Mike Hill
BUSINESS MANAGER Elliot Kiger umn, “When you’re reclining on your couch, your hands aren’t
SR. ONLINE CONSUMER MARKETING DIRECTOR Jennifer Trinker
in any position to comfortably type.” And this still holds true SSD Showdown
CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Mike Frassica
for today’s omnipresent netbooks.
page 50
The iPad fixes everything in the data entry department. Its
FUTURE US, INC
4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080 Soda-Spillage
virtual keyboard is large, responsive, and extremely easy to use. I
www.futureus-inc.com Recovery Plan
still hit my 65 words per minute, and I have fun doing it. I’ve heard
Tel 650.872.1642
page 64
PRESIDENT John Marcom complaints from touch typists that the virtual keyboard is inadequate
VP / CFO John Sutton
VP / INTERNET DEVELOPMENT Tyson Daugherty
for their highfalutin, high-maintenance ways, but for my search-and-
VP / PUBLISHING DIRECTOR MUSIC Anthony Danzi destroy method it works just fine.
VP / PUBLISHING DIRECTOR TECH AND LIVING Kate Byrne
VP / SALES AND MARKETING Rachelle Considine Fanboys and reasonable adults alike are dissing the iPad for some very legiti-
GENERAL COUNSEL Charlotte Falla
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR TECH AND LIVING Jon Phillips
mate issues, the most serious of which (in my opinion) is the OS’s inability to multitask.
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR GAMES GROUP Stephen Pierce We’ll dig deeper into the iPad’s strengths and weaknesses next month. For now, I just
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR MUSIC Brad Tolinski
DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES Nancy Durlester DuBois want to share that the tablet computer has in fact arrived, and its success is rooted in
touch-screen technology, which decisively solves the data-entry problem. So even if
Future US, Inc. is part of Future plc. you have no interest in the iPad, make sure you check out upcoming Windows-based
Future produces carefully targeted
special-interest magazines, websites tablets like the HP Slate. This is a hardware category I’m really excited about, and I think
and events for people who share a
passion. We aim to satisfy that pas-
all tech enthusiasts should be, too.
sion by creating titles offering value On a different note, I’m sad/happy to announce that this is my last editor’s column
for money, reliable information,
smart buying advice and which are for Maximum PC. I’ve found a permanent editor-in-chief, so I’m returning to my big-
a pleasure to read or visit. Today we
publish more than 150 magazines, 65 websites and a growing num- picture, less-hands-on advisory role as editorial director. Next month, George Jones—
ber of events in the US, UK, France and Italy. Over 100 international
editions of our magazines are also published in 30 other countries
the Maximum PC EIC in 2004 and 2005—is returning to lead tactical operations, com-
across the world. pleting our dream team of hardcore enthusiasts.
Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange But that doesn’t mean you can’t write me. Just tap it on a touch-screen, or use a
(symbol: FUTR).
keyboard if you must.
FUTURE plc
30 Monmouth St., Bath, Avon, BA1 2BW, England –JON PHILLIPS @JonPhillipsSF
www.futureplc.com
Tel +44 1225 442244

NON-EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN Roger Parry

CHIEF EXECUTIVE Stevie Spring
GROUP FINANCE DIRECTOR John Bowman
LETTERS POLICY Please send comments, questions, and Pocky to
Tel +44 1225 442244
www.futureplc.com will@maximumpc.com. Include your full name, city of residence,
and phone number with your correspondence. Unfortunately, Will is
REPRINTS For reprints, contact Marshall Boomer,
unable to respond personally to all queries.
Reprint Operations Specialist, 717.399.1900 ext. 123
or email: marshall.boomer@theygsgroup.com

SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES Tel 800.274.3421

www.maximumpc.com/customerservice www.maximumpc.com | JUN 2010 | MAXIM
MAXIMU
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Maximum PC ISSN: 1522-4279
 QUICKSTART THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL

THE NEWS
HTML5 Heats Up
Will new and emerging web standards render proprietary media tools, like
Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, obsolete? —PAUL LILLY

I
n 2004, a group of developers called WHATWG
(Web Hypertext Application Technology
Working Group) set out to evolve the online
landscape by working on a new specification of
HTML, the core markup language of the World
Wide Web. Called HTML5, this latest revision to
HTML won’t be fully developed and ready for
candidate recommendation until at least 2012,
while the final ratification of the standard isn’t
expected until 2022 (that 10 years will be spent
addressing developer-community comments,
error handling, and rules for features). So why
are we talking about it now?
Because web developers can already
implement several features of the new spec,
and browser makers are on board, too.
The latest version of Firefox, for example,
lets users drag and drop elements to and from
the browser, which is just one of the many
tricks up HTML5’s sleeve. Every successive
browser release will include more HTML5 tags
for developers to play with, so even though
the next-gen markup language won’t be fully
baked for another 12 years, you’ll be able to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview includes several HTML5 demos to give you a
glimpse of what this next-gen markup language has to offer.
dine on certain parts of it well before then.
One of the biggest questions looming is
what will happen to rich Internet applica-
tion (RIA) plugins like Adobe Flash, Microsoft display of HTML5 across browsers,” Adobe codec isn’t cheap. For this reason, Mozilla and
Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX? HTML5’s advanced CEO Shantanu Narayen said during a quarterly other open-source champions are pushing for
capabilities could render these plugins moot. financial call. “And when you think about the Ogg Theora, an alternative video format that’s
Ian Hickson, coeditor of the HTML5 specifica- rollout plans that are currently being talked free to use.
tion and current Google employee, has made about, they feel like it might be a decade before This tug-of-war over video standards has
it clear that one of HTML5’s goals is to steer HTML5 sees standardization across the number taken its toll on WHATWG, so much so, that
the web clear of proprietary technologies and of browsers that are going to be out there.” in a public mailing list for the group, Hickson
embrace open standards. But is Narayen ignoring the writing on the laments that, “after an inordinate amount of
“It would be a terrible step backward if wall? Apple’s iPad underscores that vendors discussion, both in public and privately,” the
humanity’s major development platform [the don’t necessarily need to support Flash in group removed any reference to video codecs
web] was controlled by a single vendor the way order to have a successful product launch, and in the HTML spec, “and [has] instead left the
that previous platforms such as Windows have HTML5 could make this scenario even more matter undefined.”
been,” Hickson says. commonplace. Even Microsoft, which has a In other words, it will be up to each
Because of this, the term “Flash Killer” vested interest in keeping Silverlight alive, has individual browser maker to decide how
is often thrown around when talking about embraced HTML5 video tags in its Internet Ex- to proceed, and getting back to Adobe, this
HTML5. But as far as Adobe is concerned, such plorer 9 Preview, though Redmond is trying to tussle might support Narayen’s notion that
talk is premature. force-feed H.264 as the video codec of choice. “the fragmentation of browsers makes
“I think the challenge for HTML5 will Video streaming sites like YouTube and Vimeo Flash even more important rather than
continue to be how do you get a consistent support H.264, but obtaining licenses to use the less important.”

08 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 2010 | www.maximumpc.com

 FAST FORWARD

Six Cores and Turbo from AMD

The Phenom II X6 could be the first affordable TOM HALFHILL

hexa-core processor
Acknowledging the expected to be released Three Times Is the
Charm for 3D
limits to today’s multi- this spring and AMD
threaded applications, officials say it will debut
AMD said its upcoming at speeds in excess of

E
Phenom II X6 will adopt 3GHz, with several veryone is hopping on the 3D bandwagon. Holly-
a Turbo Core technology lower SKUs, as well. wood is releasing a steady stream of 3D movies.
that clocks up three of Officials would not Game developers and graphics-chip vendors
the cores when all six discuss pricing but are showing new 3D-display technologies for PCs.
cores aren’t needed. numerous rumor sites Nintendo is readying a handheld videogame system that
Unlike Intel’s more have reported that the displays 3D graphics without special eyeglasses. Cable
granular Turbo Boost top 3GHz+ part will run and satellite TV providers are experimenting with 3D
feature, which achieves in the $300 range. That’s programming, including live sports. 3D digital cameras
the biggest performance well south of the $1,000 are appearing.
gain in single-core usage, AMD’s upcoming hexa-core
Intel is asking for its It’s like everyone suddenly discovered we have two
then dual-core, then tri- will support older AM2+ hexa-core 3.33GHz Core eyes capable of stereoscopic vision. What next? A two-
core, etc.—each getting motherboards. i7-980X chip. AMD has handed mouse?
an incrementally smaller also backed off plans to Of course, 3D isn’t really new. The first wave hit in
boost—AMD’s Turbo Core Both AMD and Intel drop DDR2 support in the mid-1800s. The invention of photography made it
will ratchet up the speed have introduced their the Phenom II X6. The possible for a dual-lens camera to simultaneously cap-
of three of the Phenom respective Turbo features new X6 chips will be ture two different views of the same scene. When the
II X6’s cores 500MHz in reaction to the large drop-in compatible with photos were printed side-by-side on a card and viewed
during light loads. The number of applications AM3 boards and many through a binocular-like device, an eye-popping 3D im-
feature is built into the and games that aren’t opti- AM2+ boards that can age of the scene emerged. This technology enjoyed wide
X6 series and is indepen- mized for multicore CPUs. support performance popularity until the 1920s.
dent of software. Phenom II X6 is processors. – GU The second wave hit in the 1950s. A new generation
of stereo cameras made dual images on transparency
film. These stereo slides could be viewed with a hand-
held device or projected. Using another technology,
LUXURY SOUND
Hollywood produced several 3D movies, like House of
Wax and Creature from the Black Lagoon. But audiences
PC Audio Alive and Well spurned the uncomfortable cardboard eyeglasses.
What’s different this time? The latest 3D glasses
What? People no longer care about computer audio? Bowers & promise no eyestrain, though some people remain
Wilkins begs to differ. The Brits have just introduced two new sensitive. Another technology is autostereoscopy, which
audiophile-class products: Its 2.0-channel MM-1 makes glasses unnecessary. (Nintendo’s DS-3D player
powered USB speakers feature three-inch will be autostereoscopic; so is FujiFilm’s FinePix Real-
glass-fiber woofers and one-inch tube- 3D digicam.) However, autostereoscopic screens have
loaded aluminum tweeters and cost narrow viewing angles that are less suitable for large
$500. B&W’s luxurious new P5 TVs and theaters.
portable headphones (pic- I think 3D will succeed in electronic games, block-
tured here) boast 40mm buster movies, and special-event TV programs. Gamers
Mylar diaphragms and have eagerly embraced novel controllers and other
sheepskin ear pads and experience-enhancing gizmos, so 3D glasses aren’t too
headband and cost nerdy for them. Blockbusters need three dimensions to
$300. –MB generate excitement and hide their thin plots. Some TV
programming, such as sports, can truly benefit from 3D.
(Maybe we’ll finally be able to follow the puck.)
However, I think 3D will be less successful in
everyday photography, most TV shows, and nonaction
movies. But I could be wrong. Skeptics were equally
wary of talkies and color film.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor

for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for
Microprocessor Report.

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 GAME THEORY
QUICKSTART THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL

MS Ditches Itanium
Citing the power of today’s x86 server
THOMAS MCDONALD
chips, Microsoft will phase out its OS
support for Intel’s Itanium processor to
focus on Xeon and Opteron instead. Battlefield Brings
the Rain
MS officials said Windows Server 2008
R2 will be the last for Itanium because x86

R
is up to the job. The decision is unlikely
eaders are welcome to use the following
to immediately hurt Itanium as most servers based on it run UNIX variants, but
sentence to judge the credibility of what
analysts say it doesn’t help the CPU long derisively called the “Itanic.” –GU follows. To wit: The Battlefield series has
always been better than the Call of Duty series.
If reviews and sales are any indication, that’s
certainly a minority position. While Electronic
Arts napped, Activision took over the military
shooter genre, thanks to the Call of Duty fran-
Cisco Intros New chise. EA finally woke up, rummaged around

Consumer Routers
under the bed, and pulled out Battlefield (one
of the smartest and most entertaining military
shooters ever created) and Medal of Honor (the
First new Linksys products granddaddy of WW2 shooters). It made a decision
in nearly three years to take on Activision by returning to fields it had
left fallow far too long.
EA will fail, of course: not at making great
Cisco ended a nearly three-year-long dry Cisco’s new Linksys E-Series line games, but at knocking CoD from the top spot.
spell by announcing an entirely new line includes a model that runs on Linux and Activision played a long and consistent game
has removable antennas. with CoD: steadily building a franchise, maintain-
of Linksys routers. The company also
unveiled a new line of routers aimed at ing a stream of fresh content, ratcheting up
less tech-savvy consumers. Marketed limited to Fast Ethernet (10/100Mbps). the hype, and never falling off the pace of new
under the Valet brand name, users can This strikes us as an odd limitation for a releases. The games are also very good. Modern
set up their entire Wi-Fi network using product that’s supposedly designed for Warfare 2 is a strong piece of game design, albeit
nothing more than the provided USB key. hardcore users and costs $120. one with several notable flaws.
Three of the new Linksys E-Series The Linksys E2000 costs the same but Activision will win because CoD has become
routers are housed in the familiar flying- provides a Gigabit Ethernet switch and the the Doom of modern military shooters: fast-
saucer formfactor and use internal option of operating your wireless network paced run-‘n’-gun action with snap targeting and
antennas. A fourth model—the Linksys on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz band. The not a lot of subtlety. It offers grand, dramatic set
E2100L—uses the Linux operating top-of-the-line Linksys E3000 ($180) has pieces and an increasingly visceral audio-visual
system and features removable external a gigabit switch and the ability to operate experience. It simply appeals to more gamers.
antennas; unfortunately, the integrated wireless networks on both the 2.4GHz and Battlefield, on the other hand, has always
Ethernet switch on this model will be 5GHz bands simultaneously. –MB offered something quite different: an all-aspect
warfare element favoring precision and methodi-
cal pacing rather than the frenetic action that fi-
nally tipped into overkill with Modern Warfare 2.

SERVERS GET MORE CORES

The battlefield of Bad Company 2 is a
remarkable place, filled with smart enemies,
complex goals, cover that can be shattered in
an instant, and a dazzling suite of weapons, ve-
AMD, Intel introduce multicore workhorses hicles, and aircraft. It offers a far broader array

J
of roles and challenges, but extracts payment
oe Consumer may not understand why he needs a six-core CPU, but
with a steeper learning curve that appeals to a
Joe IT certainly does. And AMD and Intel are out to please. AMD fired
smaller demographic.
first with its 12-core Opteron 6000 series of chips. Intel then hit back
No, Bad Company 2 will not make MW2
a day later with the release of its Xeon 7500 series that features up to eight levels of money, but EA shouldn’t count that as a
cores and Hyper-Threading, to boot. Intel says you could replace a cluster failing: It’s made a vastly superior game.
of 20 older single-core Xeons with a single Xeon 7500 server chip. In the
process, you would save enough in energy costs to pay for the new machine
in one year. AMD, meanwhile, says its Opterons are drop-in compatible with Thomas L. McDonald has been covering games
for 20 years. He is an editor at large for Games
its previous platform, and shops could easily increase their compute power
magazine.
without having to replace the entire server. –GU

10 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 2010 | www.maximumpc.com

 XXXX XXX
QUICKSTART THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL

Cleveland’s
Poor Get QUINN NORTON

1Gbps
When the FCC rolled How It All Began:
Acer’s H5360 will be
compatible with 3D Blu-ray
out its National Broad-
band Plan in March, it Anne Turns 300
players—when they come explicitly cited the need

T
to market, that is. here’s not been much good news for
for research and develop-
ment in the U.S.’s efforts copyright watchers lately. Mass lawsuits,

3D on the Big Screen to expand high-speed

Internet access. Google’s
bad laws, secret treaties, a war on re-
mixers, and the list goes on. In short, it’s a good

T
plan to test a 1Gbps time for heavy denial and wallowing in past
here are 24-inch 3D monitors for the desktop, 55-inch
fiber-to-home network is glory. It’s also the 300th anniversary of the very
3D HDTVs for the living room, and now Acer is offering first and one of the best copyright laws. Perfect
one example of this, but
a video projector capable of casting 3D images onto a 300- even more ambitious is a timing! I’m referring to the Statute of Anne—
inch screen for the home theater. new study announced by the British act of 1710 (named for Queen Anne)
Cleveland’s Case Western that spawned the whole of copyright law as we
You’ll need to connect the Acer H5360 to a PC equipped
Reserve University. The know it. Given what I say about copyright laws
with a 3D Vision–compatible Nvidia videocard and provide in general it might be a surprise that I’m a fan
school is funding a
your own 3D Vision kit and projection screen (unless you research-driven project to of the progenitor, but Anne was extraordinary,
have a really white wall). The projector is an entry-level outfit the community sur- radically democratic for its time.
rounding the University Before Anne, copyrights were granted
home-theater model based on TI’s DLP technology, with
with 1Gbps fiber optic piecemeal on different works for different
native resolution of 1280x720 and a list price of $700. –MB
cable. The households in terms, including some perpetual copyrights,
question, possibly total- and pretty much always as court favors. There
ing 25,000, are primarily was no concept of the public domain, and

Droid Hits 1M Faster poor—72 percent of the

homes around the campus
the whole of printing was constrained (and
censored) by the government registration

than iPhone currently have no Inter-

net whatsoever. The proj-
of printing presses. Authors had no explicit
rights. And the public, like you? You weren’t

Nexus One’s numbers lag far behind ect seeks to discover how supposed to be reading, anyway. You had
high-speed Internet ac- wattle to daub.

S
ales of the Motorola Droid during its first 74 days cess can transform a com- Then along came Anne. In the spirit of
were better than those of the first iPhone over munity. Access to a fast, the Age of Enlightenment, the first part of the
the same period, surpassing 1 million, according robust network could, for statute’s full name was “An Act for the En-
to mobile analytics group Flurry. By contrast, Google’s example, greatly improve couragement of Learning....” It even included
flagship Android handset, the Nexus One, sold around neighborhood security cost-control measures to make sure people
130,000 in its first 74 days. But considering that those 130K (with remote video moni- had access to knowledge. The masses were
were sold directly by Google toring), health care (via going to get some learnin’. And for the first
without the benefit of carrier video conferencing and time, authors were to get paid just for being
support (and ad campaigns), home health monitoring), authors. Anne also set up copyright deposit
those numbers aren’t bad. and energy efficiency libraries and term limits. Knowledge was not
And Google says it’s (high-tech thermostats). to be locked up.
pleased with the Nexus The school is encourag- But most importantly, Anne was a real-
One’s sales numbers. A ing community institu- istic statute for a world of printing presses.
spokesman told us, “Our tions to develop apps for Because it was generic, it dealt with how
partners are shipping the network, which will copying really worked in the technology of the
more than 60,000 Android follow an open-access time. And it did so aggressively, throwing out
handsets each day, model. The results of the the way things had been done for hundreds
compared with 30,000 just study could be instru- of years because it just didn’t work anymore
three months ago.” By mental in shaping the in the age of the cheapening press. That’s the
the end of 2010, Google’s country’s communications big lesson in all the bad news—that if copy-
operating system will be policy. The network build right and expression are to thrive, we need a
running on dozens of phone is already underway, and new Statute of Anne.
models. No wonder Nexus data from the study is
The Nexus One isn’t the Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired
One’s first 74 days don’t expected by 2011. –KS News and other news outlets. Her work has
fastest-selling, but Google’s
bother them. –NE taking the long view. ranged from legal journalism to the inner life
of pirate organizations.

12 | MAXIM
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 QUICKSTART THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL

THE
Can YouLIST
ID Our Buried Treasure?
For the first time in five years, we cleaned out the Maximum PC Lab, unearthing a
treasure trove of artifacts. If you’re a true Maximum PC super-fan and aficionado of
ancient hardware, you’ll answer these nine questions with ease. Consider it practice
for this year’s Geek Quiz!

1
Name this processor:

2This Asus
doohicky
is a:

3 THIS IS A BOX OF:

4This
ridiculous
and infamously
unreliable ATI
cable was
used to:

14 | MAXIM
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 5
This ECS A95 card lets
you run a ________
in a _______
motherboard.

6 7
Which dual-processor
Dream Machine was this
Pentium III used in, and what
was its clock speed?

This is not
an early
webcam.
It’s a:

9
8
THIS IS A
COOLER
Maximum PC’s
patron saint of
benchmarks is:

FOR WHAT
FORMFACTOR?
8: Intel’s defunct BTX 4: Run two ATI Radeons in
2000, 1GHz bezels collected by Gordon
7: Dream Machine 3: 10 years’ worth of
flight sims converter
6: Head tracker for to Socket 478 (Pentium 4)
“Handy Andy” Sanchez 5: Socket 939, Socket 775 2: Socket 479 (Pentium M)
9: Editor Emeritus Andrew CrossFire mode 1: Slot A Athlon
ANSWERS

www.maximumpc.com XXX 2010 | MAXIM

| JUN MAXIMU M PPCC | 15
XIMUUM xx
 DOCTOR IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT A TIME

This month the Doctor tackles...

Virtualization
Virtualization Without CPU Support
Secure
Secure
IE8’s Win7 Amnesia
Delete
Radiator Fans: tioned fine. Whenever you build a new may have bent pins on your
Removable? My problem is that my system and you run into motherboard’s CPU socket.
I’m debating switching to new rig doesn’t work. I a no-POST situation, you This would be very, very bad
water-cooling. I was initially power on, but no boot. No should first double-check news, as bent pins in the CPU
worried about maintenance POST, nothing on the screen, your power connectors. Did socket mean the board is
or the unit leaking, but those no beeps. The MEM_OK LED you plug in the ATX12V con- dead. When you remove your
issues seem to be a thing is on and it is red. The manu- nector located near the CPU? CPU to reseat it, take a close
of the past. What happens, al says that means the RAM This is a very common over- look at those tiny fingers in
however, if the fan stops is not properly installed. sight. You should also reseat the socket and look for any
working on the radiator? Is  So, I check to see if your videocards, RAM, and signs of damage.
the fan difficult to replace? they are all in the correct finally (if those did not fix
Would you have to replace slots, and they are. I pull it), the CPU. The Doc knows Delete EVERYTHING!
the entire unit? Anytime them all out and put them you tried the RAM in many I’d like a program that can
I see reviews or ads, they in, one at a time, and none different slots, but one thing safely and effectively clean
never specify whether the of them work. I took a stick to remember with Core i7 sys- my hard drive so that no
fan is replaceable or perma- from a working computer tems is that the RAM should deleted files can be recov-
nently attached to the radia- and it doesn’t work. I try it be paired up in the slots away ered. Can you recommend
tor unit. on every slot, same. I take from the CPU, not closest to something? I see a bunch
 —Joe C. my Corsair RAM and try it the CPU as it has been with of stuff out there but it’s for
in the working computer, Core 2 and Phenom/Athlon permanently deleting files,
Joe, many water-cooling and it all works. I power on systems. Failure to do this not for already-deleted files.
radiators are sold without the system with no RAM will cause a failure to boot. And I don’t know which
fans, and even the ones that installed, and same thing; Since this is a new system, it’s programs are clean—free
include fans typically let no boot, no POST, nothing
you replace them with your on screen.
own. Popular fans for water- After all that, I put the THE CHANCES OF REPLACING
cooling radiators include
Scythe Gentle Typhoon,
Corsair RAM in and took out
the videocards. I then put
A BAD HARD DRIVE WITH
Sharkoon Silent Eagle, and a 9800 GT from a working ANOTHER BAD DRIVE ARE
Noctua NF-12P. We can’t think computer in and the prob- INFINITESIMAL—3,720 TO 1
of a single water-cooling lem is the same.
radiator on which you’re  So, any thoughts?
unable to replace the fan. Aside from assuming that also possible that you may of malware or other crap. It
the board is defective, I have shorted the board on a must be good enough that I
New Machine don’t know what else to motherboard standoff. You can feel safe about giving an
Won’t Boot try troubleshooting. I have should dismount the board. old PC to someone else and
Doc, I just built a new heard that Asus has had Then, with it out, count the not worry about identity
system with a 2.66GHz some problems recently number of standoffs in the theft. Also: What would you
Core i7-920, Asus P6X58D with RAM slots not working. case enclosure, remount the recommend to minimize
Premium, 3GB of Corsair I may have fallen victim to board and screw it in place. any data being stolen from
DDR3/1600, two GeForce that. Maybe a jumper I don’t If the number of screws you a hard drive if your PC
8800 GTs in SLI, two 250GB know about? As far as I can put in the board doesn’t was stolen? I am presently
Barracudas, and an 850W see, the only jumpers on the match the number of stand- using Splash ID to store my
Corsair PSU in an Antec board are related to OC’ing, offs, you have a standoff passwords and sensitive
1200 case. It’s all stock- and I didn’t change any of poking the motherboard in data but would feel better
clocked and the GPUs, them. Let me know what its backside, which could if the entire hard drive
HDDs, and PSU were from you think. cause the problem. The final was protected.
an older machine and func- —K. Diaz thing to consider is that you —Norm Shaver

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 default Internet browser in
Windows 7). While it’s not
clear why IE8 on Windows
7 doesn’t offer this function-
ality when IE8 in XP does,
Microsoft has indicated that
this is not a high-priority
problem for them. You
could try a different web
browser, like Firefox or
Chrome, which do remember
the specific folder, or you
could use a program like
Belvedere. Belvedere (http://
bit.ly/1SFrlo) is a little com-
plex to set up, but basically it
allows you to watch a folder
Among its many other features, TrueCrypt lets you encrypt an and automatically move files
existing system drive—while you’re running it! to it based on certain criteria.
For example, if you want
One thing at a time, Norm: Partition / Drive and fol- every .jpg file you save to be
First, there are several pro- low the instructions. You put in the ABC folder, you
grams that will irrevocably can find documentation at can set up Belvedere in your
write over your drive—each http://bit.ly/x72Ec. Once Libraries\Picture Library and
hard drive manufacturer your drive is encrypted, make a filter so that every
has its own. We like using you’ll have to enter a mas- .jpg you save to the default
Darik’s Boot and Nuke ter password before any folder gets moved to the
(www.dban.org) from a boot of your data is decrypted, ABC folder.
disk—it offers Department so if someone steals your
of Defense–level overwriting computer, they’re not getting New Drive Failing
security. Of course, this will your data. So I just recently diagnosed
completely and irrevocably my hard drive as having bad
delete everything on the Windows 7 Fails sectors and replaced it with
drive, so if you’re giving that Where XP Succeeds? a 750GB WD Caviar Black
old PC away, you’ll need I have Windows 7 Home a few days ago. However,
to do a clean install after- Edition 64-bit. When I occasionally, as with my
ward—which you should do download pictures from old hard drive, my system
anyway, of course. the Internet, I want to save will lock up. When I reboot
Eraser (http://eraser. them to a specific folder— I get the following error:
heidi.ie) lets you securely let’s call it ABC. I right-click “Disk boot failure, please
erase individual files, if you the picture and select Save insert system disc and press
were looking for that, and Picture As. Then Windows enter.” Sometimes after a
doesn’t include malware or the Explorer sends me to restart I will receive the
aforementioned other crap. Libraries\Picture Library. I same error, other times the
The best way to protect then navigate to ABC folder hard drive will boot but
your data in the event of and click it, then click Save. my keyboard receives no
your PC being stolen is to I right-click the second power. I haven’t figured out
use full-disk encryption. picture, but I’m sent back why, but everything seems
There are several options for to the pictures library! The to sort itself out eventually.
full-disk encryption; one of save dialog in Windows XP One note: I have an old
our favorites is TrueCrypt would open right at the last IDE drive that I was using
(www.truecrypt.org). True- directory I saved photos to, once my old SATA drive
Crypt can even encrypt so I didn’t have to click back became completely unus-
your boot drive while you’re to the ABC folder every able. This hard drive never
using it, so you don’t need time. Why won’t Windows 7 crashes or gives errors, and
to do a clean install on an do the same? the keyboard never loses
encrypted disk. All you —Glenn power.
have to do is download and I’m puzzled, and am
install TrueCrypt, then select The doctor assumes you’re running out of time to RMA
System > Encrypt System using Internet Explorer 8 (the this hard drive if I happened

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 DOCTOR IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT A TIME

to get a bad one. Please help! you’re getting hard drive errors
—Jesse Dresselhaus doesn’t mean it’s entirely a hard
drive issue. A failing board or
It’s unlikely to be a drive problem other component in the system,
(although if it is, note that your such as RAM, or the classic “bad
RMA period will likely be longer cap” problem can sometimes
with Western Digital than the induce similar errors.
retailer). The chances of replacing
a bad hard drive with another bad Upgrading
drive are infinitesimal—some- Frankenstein’s Monster
thing like 3,720 to 1. Your prob- Right now, I’m trying to upgrade
lems are likely related to a bad to Vista Ultimate (so when I
SATA port on the motherboard, can get Windows 7, I can keep
a bad SATA cable, or a power or everything) from XP Pro SP3.
data cable not firmly plugged At the end of the installation, a
in on the board. There’s also one blue screen pops up for a second
other issue that could be causing and restarts the entire machine,
the booting problem. Many older ruining a five-hour install. I
motherboards, oddly, change the tried installing new RAM (the
boot order if a USB drive is con- old DIMMs were faulty) but it
nected to a USB port. Your booting failed to work. I can’t build a
VirtualBox runs just fine, even if your CPU doesn’t support virtualization.
issue could be related to this spo- new rig as I don’t have the cash
radic problem that only happens to make a proper one, and I don’t
on occasion when you have a USB want to do a clean install as my
thumb drive installed. PC has a nasty habit of being AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE CPU of Microsoft operating systems
On the other hand, the terribly unstable without cer- (which amazingly, has survived are tied to the motherboard. If the
keyboard power issue could be tain patches (due to something a full motherboard short-out), a board dies, Microsoft can techni-
indicative of problems with the CPU-related). My computer is an GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card, cally deny letting you activate it
motherboard itself. Just because M3A78-EM motherboard with an and two 2GB DDR2 RAM sticks. on a new motherboard.
Both of the operating systems
are 32-bit. Is this problem soft- Is Hardware
ware- or hardware-related? Virtualization Necessary?
—Brandon Hurley I am running 32-bit Windows 7
SECOND OPINION
and I have a CPU that does not
Brandon, it’s pretty hard to diag- support hardware virtualization.
Resetting BIOS with Boot Disk nose your case. Upgrading from I need virtualization software
Windows XP to Vista to Windows that does not require Intel VT,
I love your column and Maximum PC, but there is much 7 on a system that has had a full and was wondering if you had
better advice for resetting a BIOS password on a laptop “motherboard short-out” and not any recommendations. I have
(March 2010). Clearly, you’ve never had to do it. Basically, one, but two bad RAM modules heard of VirtualBox but I’m not
and is unstable without “certain sure if you need VT support.
you boot into DOS and use DEBUG to corrupt the BIOS.
patches” tells me that you prob- Does VMWare have any prod-
On reboot, the BIOS realizes there is an error and resets ably have some pretty serious ucts that don’t require hardware
everything to factory defaults, thus eliminating the problems with your hardware. virtualization?
password. I won’t waste your time explaining the specifics You should consider putting off —Josh Morgan
your plans for Windows 7 until
here but a simple Google search for “debug bios reset”
you have the ducats to properly VirtualBox (www.virtualbox.org)
will provide all the necessary info. I’ve used this technique replace the hardware. The Doctor works fine without hardware virtu-
many times on out-of-date work laptops in order to get past doubts it would be a good idea to alization support, although it works
the BIOS password. Frankly, the hardest part is making the burn an activation on a board that even better with Intel VT. VMWare
may very well give up the ghost Server doesn’t require hardware
boot disk. –ANDREW W.
at any minute. Remember, OEM virtualization, either, but again,
copies (assuming you bought one) you’ll get better results with it.


SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire
extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor
at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

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 Nix the Friction
FROM
YOUR WIN7
SYSTEM!
Your OS drives your whole PC experience, so it’s your
job as an enthusiast to keep it in a high state of tune
BY NORMAN CHAN, MARK SOPER & JON PHILLIPS

After installing a new OS, most people just jump right in their upgrades. For those who’ve made that jump, we
and start driving it through all their favorite applications present a bottle of our favorite Windows 7 tips, each
and games. Makes sense, right? The operating system, designed to help you extract the very last bits of conve-
after all, should be a background player in the computing nience and GUI-navigating performance from your own
experience—a means to an end, with the end being web personal dream machine. And if you haven’t yet upgrad-
surfing, content editing, and wanton destruction in the ed to Win7, we trust you will after reading this article, as
first-person shooter of one’s choice. its core features—let alone its actual Lab-benchmarked
The problem, however, is that most people, even a performance—kicks Vista and XP ass.
lot of self-described power users, never take the time to We close out our tuning session with a tip designed
really tune the new OS, exploring its menus and setting to supercharge the process of installing the OS. By load-
up the interface for the fastest, most convenient operation ing Windows 7 onto a USB key, and making that key a
based on personal preferences. And as operating sys- bootable drive, you can do an end-run around slow
tems offer more and more user controls, it’s the curious, optical-drive technology and install your OS in (pardon
performance-minded enthusiast who has the most to the pun) a flash.
gain from tuning an OS to his or her liking. It’s time to get started. Park your computer, but don’t
It’s been about six months since Windows 7 hit the shut down. This is one PC tune-up that can only be done
market, so we figure most of our readers have made with your engine running.

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 Twist cap carefully.
Only pour into
Maximum PC–approved
computer tanks.

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 WINDOWS 7 TIPS

Keyboard Shortcuts for Committed

Mouse Abolitionists
Let’s kick off this power-user party with keyboard shortcuts—tricks every enthusiast should memorize when
mastering a new OS. We’re confident the following time-saving keystrokes will save you precious neural
processing cycles, and make your mouse jealous with neglect.

■ Alt + P In Windows Explorer, this shortcut activates a preview pane of your

selected file, be it an image, sound, or video document. This panel is great for
previewing images in your photos directory, obviating the need for fancier third-
party software.

■ Windows + Up and Windows + Down If a window isn’t maximized, pressing the

Windows + Up arrow key will make it fill your entire screen. Windows + Down ar-
row will minimize that active window.

■ Windows + Shift + Up and Windows + Shift + Down Hitting these three keys will
vertically stretch an active window to the maximum desktop height (the width of
the window, however, will stay the same). Pressing Windows + Shift+ Down will
restore the window to its previous dimensions.

■ Windows + + and Windows + -

Pressing the Windows button with either the plus or minus key activates the
Magnifier, letting you zoom in on the entire desktop or open a rectangular magni-
fying lens to zoom in on (and out of) parts of your screen. You can also customize
the Magnifier to follow your mouse pointer or keyboard cursor.

■ Windows + Left and Windows + Right These two shortcuts will make your active
window fill up exactly one half of your screen—depending on which arrow key you
use. And once a window is fixed to one side of the screen, you can repeat the short-
cut with the same arrow key to flip it to the other side.

■ Windows + Home This shortcut minimizes every open window on your desktop
except the active window. Pressing this shortcut again restores all the minimized
windows.

■ Windows + T Like Alt + Tab (still our all-time-favorite Windows shortcut),

Windows + T cycles through thumbnails of your open programs via the Taskbar’s
peek menu.

■ Windows + E Automatically opens up a new Explorer window to show your

Libraries folder.

■ Windows + P Manage your multiple-monitor setup more efficiently with this

handy shortcut. Windows + P opens a small overlay that lets you configure a
second display or projector. You can switch from a single monitor to dual-display
in either mirror or extend-desktop mode.

■ Windows + Shift + Left and Windows + Shift + Right If you’re using two or more
displays—and you are, aren’t you?—memorize this shortcut to easily move a win-
dow from one screen to the other. The window retains its size and relative position
on the new screen, which is useful when working with multiple documents.

■ Windows + [Number] Programs (and new instances) pinned to your Taskbar

can be launched by hitting Windows and the appropriate number key. Windows +
1, for example, launches the first application in the taskbar, while Windows + 4 will
launch the fourth.

■ Windows + Space This combo performs the same function as moving your
mouse to the bottom right of the Taskbar: It makes every active window transpar-
ent (save faint outlines) so you can view the desktop underneath.

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 Track Your Actions with Problem Step Recorder
To aid their development of Windows 7 beta versions, the Microsoft steps, to which you can add comments and annotations. This tool
engineers built in a diagnostic tool called Problem Steps Recorder is insanely useful if you need to create a tutorial for a computer-
that combines screen captures with mouse tracking to record your illiterate relative. Hi Mom, hi Dad!
actions. You can launch this program from the Start Menu by typ-
ing psr.exe in the search field. Hit the Record button and the applet
tracks your mouse and keyboard input while taking screenshots
that correspond with each new action. When you stop record-
ing, your session is saved to an HTML slide show recreating your

Master Your New Font Manager

Font management is much improved in Windows 7. The Add Fonts dialog
is history, and in its place is new functionality within the Fonts folder
itself. First, the folder now shows font previews via each font file’s icon
(visible with Large or Extra Large icon views). Second, fonts from a single
set will no longer show up as different fonts; they’re now combined as a
single family, which can be expanded by double-clicking the icon. Third,
you can now toggle fonts on and off by right-clicking a font icon and
selecting the Hide option. This prevents applications from loading the font
(thus saving memory), but still keeps the file retained in the Font folder.
Finally, Windows 7 includes a new fancy, free-flowing font called Gabriola
that shows off the advanced antialiasing, text rendering, and “stylistic
alternate” font flourishes afforded by DirectWrite (Microsoft’s API for 2D
text rendering) and OpenType.

Launch Games BURN A

with Keystrokes SPITTIN’
One of our biggest annoyances with Windows
Vista was the Games Folder, aka the Gam-
ing Grotto, aka the Gaming Ghetto. In Vista,
IMAGE
You can quit messing around with ostensibly
Games for Windows titles and other game free, malware-infected burning software,
shortcuts automatically install to this directory, because Windows 7 comes loaded with a
which you can only access with a Start Menu DVD and CD ISO burning application. Just
shortcut. This scheme prevents you from double-click your image file and Windows
starting a game from the Start Menu search bar will start a tiny program window to help
(aka the power user, keyboard- burn your disc. It’s a bare-bones app, but
only method). Indeed, while you can launch it works!
any other application by mashing the
Windows key, and typing its name in the
Start Menu field, this isn’t the case for games
installed to Vista’s Games Folder. Well, this
oversight is fixed in Windows 7, and the uni-
verse is now home to slightly less evil.

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 WINDOWS 7 TIPS

Become More Worldly with Hidden Wallpapers

Besides its default desktop wallpaper, Win7
includes desktop backgrounds catered to your
region (which is identified when you first install
the OS). We Americans, for example, get six
1900x1200 images showing off National Parks
and beaches. However, if your tastes run more
international—don’t worry, we won’t hold that
against you—you can grab wallpapers for other
regions from a hidden folder. Type globalization
in a search of your C: drive. The only result should
be a folder located in the main Windows directory,
and you should only be able to see ELS and Sorting
folders nested here. Now search for MCT in the
top-right search bar. This will display five new
unindexed folders, each corresponding to a differ-
ent global region. Browse these folders for some
extra themes and wallpapers specific to Australia,
United Kingdom, South Africa, and Canada.

Take Control of UAC

Despite good intentions, User Account Control pop-ups were one of the most
annoying aspects of Vista, and thus UAC became a feature that most of us
immediately disabled after a clean install. UAC in Windows 7 displays fewer
warnings, but you can also fine-tune its notification habits by launching the
UAC Settings dialog from the Start Menu. Just type UAC in the Start Menu search
field and click the result. We find that setting the bar to just one tick above
“Never notify” provides a comfortable balance between mindful security and
incessant, Alice Kramden–caliber nagging

CALCULATE YOUR
MORTGAGE AND
OTHER MATH TRICKS
The reliable Calculator applet has been beefed up to do more than just basic
arithmetic. You can now toggle between Standard, Scientific, Programmer, and
even Statistics modes. In addition, the Options menu lets you pull out many
new automated conversation tools, such as Unit Conversion (e.g., Angles,
Temperature, Velocity, and Volume) and Date Calculation (e.g., calculate the
difference between two dates). More templates give you the ability to crunch
gas mileage, lease tipping points, and even mortgage estimates (yeah, right!)
based on any variables you input.

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 Control AutoPlay
REVEAL ALL OF Settings Like a
YOUR DRIVES Megalomaniacal
If you use built-in memory-card read-
ers in a 3.5-inch drive bay or on your Tyrant
desktop display, empty memory card
slots will not show up as drives in My Windows 7’s version of AutoPlay, like its pre-
Computer. But that doesn’t mean they’re decessors’, lets you specify what to do with
not still there. To reveal hidden memory media types when you connect an external
card slots, open My Computer. Press drive or insert a disc. Sure, you may have
Alt to show the toolbar at the top of the hated AutoPlay in Windows XP, but Win7
screen, and go to Folder Options under provides you with reasons to take a fresh
Tools. Hit the View tab and uncheck the look. As in Vista, Win7 lets you configure
“Hide empty drives in the Computer AutoPlay settings by media type, but you
folder” option. should poke around for more tweaking op-
tions. Open Control Panel, select Hardware
and Sound, and then select AutoPlay. By
default, Win7 uses AutoPlay for all media
and devices; this can be unchecked, and from

Use Devices and Printers to Quickly Dig

there you can personalize AutoPlay actions
like a madman. Note that each type of media—
into Hardware music CDs, DVDs, software and games, media
files, blank media, and video discs—offers
Tired of switching between Device Manager, you choices based on Windows utilities as
Properties menus for your devices, and the well as third-party programs. Choose your
Start Menu to manage and use printers, favorite app as an AutoPlay default, or to
digital cameras, mice, and other peripherals? keep the traditional pop-up AutoPlay menu,
Windows 7 comes to your rescue with its select Ask Me Every Time.
Devices and Printers dialog. Open Control
Panel and select View Devices and Printers
from the Hardware and Sound category.
Right-click a device icon in Devices and
Printers to configure the hardware, create
shortcuts, troubleshoot, view properties, and
run programs. Devices and Printers can save
you a lot of effort. For example, when you
use it to manage your computer, you have
one-touch access to 12 different Control
Panel and Explorer interfaces. And when you
use a Windows 7–specific driver that sup-
ports Device Stage, Devices and Printers uses
thumbnail art of the actual device, as shown.

Calibrate Your Notebook’s Text and Color

After doing a clean install of Windows 7 on a notebook, the first thing you
should do is tune and calibrate ClearType text and Display Color. Windows 7
includes two built-in wizards that run you through the entire process, pain-
free. Launch ClearType Text Tuning by typing cttune in the Start Menu search
field and opening the search result. You’ll go through a brief series of steps that
ask you to identify the best-looking text-rendering method. For Display Color
Calibration—useful if you’re using Windows 7 with a projector or large-screen
LCD—search and launch dccw from the Start Menu. It’ll run you through a series
of pages where you can adjust the gamma, brightness, contrast, and color of the
screen to make images look their best.

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 WINDOWS 7 TIPS

Solve External Hard Drive Hassles with Convert.exe

Windows 7 prefers hard disk drives that use the NTFS file system: convert x: /fs:ntfs (replace x with the actual drive letter
Its integrated backup program cannot back up files from or to of your external hard disk). Convert.exe will check your external
drives that use the older FAT32 file system. So, if you select a drive hard disk for errors, verify there’s enough space for conversion,
that uses FAT32 as the backup location, Windows 7 displays an er- and then convert with abandon. While this theoretically will not
ror message. FAT32, a leftover from the days of Windows 98, works destroy your data, we recommend you back up your files first.
with both MacOS and Windows (which is why most external hard
disks use this file system by default), but it lacks the features need-
ed to fully support Windows 7 backup. Use Convert.exe to solve
this problem. Open a command-prompt session and use the fol-
lowing command to change your external hard disk’s file system:

CONVERT WMC RECORDINGS FOR USE WITH VISTA AND XP

Windows Media Center (WMC) improved in the jump
from Vista to Windows 7—you’ll find better integra-
tion of cable, broadcast, and Internet TV in the program
guide, better support for widescreen displays, and a
refined user interface, among other changes. But if
you want to share your recordings with Windows XP
or Vista users, or use the dozens of recording and file-
conversion utilities made for those versions of WMC,
you’re sort of screwed, as Windows 7 no longer uses the
DVR-MS file format for recording. Instead, it uses WTV
(Windows TV), and WTV files can’t be used by older ver-
sions of WMC or Windows Media Player.
You can, however, convert a TV recording from
WTV to DVR-MS by using the conversion utility pro-
vided in Win7.
TV recordings are stored by default in the Public
Recorded TV library. Open the library, right-click the
recording, and select Convert to DVR-MS Format. At the end of the conversion process, the Recorded
TV library contains both your original .wtv file as well the .dvr-ms conversion. The .dvr-ms file can be
used with programs designed for Windows XP and Windows Vista Windows Media Center, and can be
played on Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

COMMAND WINDOWS 7 TO
GENERATE AN ENERGY REPORT
As a power user, you may be concerned with power consumption, making
the command-line utility powercfg.exe a must-see. To create a report on your
PC’s energy appetite, press the Windows key and type cmd in the search box.
Right-click cmd and select Run as Administrator. Now, select the box and type
powercfg –energy at the command-line prompt, and hit Enter. Powercfg
will run for about 60 seconds, then generate a report called energy-report.html
in C:\Windows\system32. This report will notify you of anything in your com-
puter that is keeping the CPU cycling, thus burning power and sucking note-
book batteries dry. After you run the report, you’ll likely find that USB devices
never entered Suspend state. While you might think the power consumption
of a USB key is pretty insignificant, if it prevents the CPU from cycling off, that
device can really hit where it hurts—in your battery’s nards.

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 WINDOWS 7 TIPS

CLING (DESPERATELY) TO VISTA’S

TASKBAR
Let’s start with the bad news: Windows 7 eliminates the option to use the
classic grey Windows 2000–style Taskbar. You’re also committed to the
modern version of the Start Menu. But the good news is that you can still
tweak the Taskbar to make it run like it did in Windows Vista, replac-
ing the program icons with the names of each open app. Right-click the
Taskbar and hit Properties. Check the “Use small icons” box and select
“Combine when Taskbar is full” from the drop-down menu under Taskbar
buttons. You still get the peek-view thumbnail feature of the Taskbar, and
inactive programs remain as single icons, but open programs will display
their full names.

Organize Your Taskbar

EXILE PROGRAMS TO THE and System Tray
SYSTEM TRAY
The programs that you pin to your Taskbar
can be moved around to any order you
want, whether they’re just shortcut icons or
All active programs show up as icons on the Taskbar, whether you want them to or not. While currently active applications. The Taskbar,
this is useful for web browsing or word processing, your taskbar can get cluttered with icons you if unlocked, can also be dragged to latch to
would normally expect to be hidden away, like those for Steam or a chat client. You can, how- the left, right, or even top of your desktop.
ever, keep active instances of these programs hidden away in the System Tray/Notification Area As shown below, Windows 7 improves side-
by right-clicking their shortcuts, navigating to the Compatibility tab, and selecting Windows docked Taskbar support with better gradi-
Vista under the Compatibility Mode drop-down menu. Just be aware that this only works for ent rendering and shortcut support. It really
programs that would previously hide away from the Taskbar in Vista. works well if you’re using a widescreen
monitor. Just as the Taskbar icons can be
rearranged at will, the icons in the System
Tray (actually called the Notification Area)
can be dragged and set to any order, as well.
Hidden Icons can be dragged back into

Manage Your Jump Lists view, and you can hide icons by dragging
them over the white triangle, and dropping
them into the Hidden Icon well—much
The Jump List, a list of shortcuts to files or tasks for a particular Start Menu or Taskbar item, is one
easier than working through the Notifica-
of the most significant improvements in Windows 7. Each time you open a file or website, or run
tion Area Customization menu.
a task with a program that supports Jump Lists, Windows 7 stores the shortcut to the file, website,
or task for reuse. Unlike Windows XP, however, Windows 7 doesn’t group these shortcuts into a
single location. Instead, it stores shortcuts for each
program’s files, websites, or tasks in a separate
shortcut list—aka the Jump List. To see the Jump
List for a program in the Start Menu, simply click
the right-arrow icon. To see the Jump List for a
program icon on the Taskbar, right-click the icon.
Windows eventually removes items from the
Jump List when it runs out of space, but you can
override this. To make any Jump List item a per-
manent entry, highlight it and click the pushpin
icon (reverse this process to unpin it). And if the
idea of leaving an icon trail of all your recent
history disturbs you, you can disable Jump Lists
entirely: Right-click the Start Menu, choose Prop-
erties, and uncheck the two boxes under Privacy.

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 Accelerate Your Start Menu
The Start Menu hasn’t changed much from Vista, but
there are some notable improvements. The behavior of
the power button has been changed to Shut Down, as
opposed to Hibernate, which was the asinine default in
Vista. But you can also change the button default to do
other actions. Right-click the Start Menu, and choose
Properties. From the Power Button Action drop-down,
you can choose a new default button behavior. If you
hit the Customize button, you’ll enter a world of op-
portunities that help you control what the Start Menu
displays. Most options are turned off, but you may
want some on, like the option to display recorded TV
files, a feature that’s new in Windows 7. Also be aware
that Start Menu items should be set to “Display as a
link” if you want them to open up Jump Lists.

Arrange Files by Type, Month,

Artist, and Other Options
Windows Vista introduced the concept of using the Details folder view to group files by criteria such as name,
date modified, type, size, and other options. These choices are still available in any folder by right-clicking
inside the folder and selecting them from the options menu. But Window 7 does Vista one better with its new
Libraries scheme, which enables you to view the contents of multiple file locations in a single logical folder. And
as you’d expect, each Library comes correct with contextual file-arrangement options that vary according to
what’s being viewed. For example, in the Pictures library, you can choose from Day, Rating, Tag, and Month. For
videos, maybe arranging by Length, as in our screenshot, is most relevant. You get the point.

PIN FOLDERS TO FAVORITES AND

START MENU
Explorer’s Jump List shows your seven most
frequently visited folders, but you can manually
bookmark some favorites to the top of the list
by pinning folder locations. Just right-click any
folder—either on your desktop or from an open
instance of Explorer—and drag that folder icon
to the Explorer shortcut on the Taskbar. You’ll see
a message that reads “Pin to Windows Explorer”
before you release the mouse button. The folder
will appear under a Pinned section of the Jump
List, and you can remove it by clicking the
“Unpin from this list” icon on the right side of the
panel. You can also right-click and drag a folder directly to the Start button to
pin that folder to the general Start list.

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 WINDOWS 7 TIPS

Put an OS in Your Pocket

How to load Windows 7 onto a bootable USB key
To complete your Windows 7 power-user experience, you may consider
dropping the whole darn OS onto a USB drive. Whether you carry it around
in your pocket or toss it in a desk drawer, it’s a perfect boot disk for
emergency installs—including those times when you’re working with a
netbook or some other computer that lacks an optical drive. Even better,
your install times will be significantly reduced, thanks to your key’s flash
memory—we shaved off minutes from our total install time.
Here’s how to create a schmancy-fancy boot key for either Windows 7
or Vista—but not for other OSes, so please don’t try! We’ve run a trun-
cated version of this article in the magazine before, but because it was so
incredibly popular—and so germane to this feature story—we’ve decided
to share it again, this time with more detail and screens.

1
Format Your USB Key
Plug in your USB key and back up any exist-
ing data stored on it. You’ll need to format the
key (thus erasing existing data) before you
can make it a bootable device. We used an
8GB key, but a 4GB key will also work.

The Maximum PC crew can’t get enough of Google’s savvy in finding food menus.

2
Partition that Key in CMD
Open up a command You should now be under C:\Windows\system32 (assuming your
prompt as an Adminis- Windows partition is the C drive). Type diskpart in the command
trator. You can do this line to enter the Disk Partition command-line tool, which lets you
by searching for cmd. format and create partitions on active disks. Now type list disk
exe in your Windows/ to reveal a list of all your active disks, each of which is associated
System32 folder, right- with a number. Make a note of which one is your USB key, based on
clicking the execut- the capacity. In this
able, and selecting screenshot, our USB
“Run as administra- drive is Disk 2.
tor.” Alternatively,
type CMD in the Start
Menu search field and
activate the command
prompt using Ctrl +
Shift + Enter.

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3 4
Format Away (Command-Prompt
Style) Copy Windows
It’s now time to enter a load of commands to properly partition the key, and DVD to a
format for the NTFS (did you know this stands for “New Technology File Sys-
tem”?). In succession, enter the following—and type carefully, Jimbo!
Desktop Folder
Select Disk # (where # is the number of your USB disk. We typed Insert the Windows 7 installation
Select Disk 2 for this job) DVD into your drive, and view the
files that it contains. Copy all of the
Clean (this removes any existing partitions from the USB disk, including
files to a folder on your Desktop.
any hidden sectors) We put the disc contents in a folder
Create Partition Primary (creates a new primary partition with named Windows 7.
default parameters)

Select Partition 1 (focuses operation on the newly created partition)

Active (sets the partition to active, informing the disk firmware that this is a
valid system partition)

Format FS=NTFS (formats the partition with the NTFS file system. This may
take several minutes to complete, depending on the size of your USB key)

6
Assign (this gives the USB drive a Windows volume and next available
drive letter, which you should write down. In our case, drive “L” was
assigned)

Exit (quits the DiskPart tool)

Load the USB

5
Key with Your
Install Files
Turn Your Key into a Bootable Device Copy all of the extracted ISO files into
Now, go back to your command prompt, running it as an Administrator. Using the the USB drive. You don’t need to do
CD command, navigate your way to the folder where you placed the Windows this from the command prompt. Just
disk ISO files. Your command line path should look something like C:\Users\ drag and drop the files from the Win-
USERNAMEHERE\Desktop\Windows 7\ if you followed our lead on dows 7 folder into the USB drive using
folder placement. Now type the following commands: Windows Explorer. We also recom-
mend copying your hardware drivers
onto the same key so the installation
CD Boot (this gets you into the boot directory)
wizard can find them.
Bootsect.exe /nt60 L: (this assumes L is the drive letter assigned to Your USB key is now all ready to
your USB key from the previous step) go! Plug it into your target system and
make sure you enter the BIOS (typical-
In case you’re wondering, Bootsect infuses boot manager–compatible code
ly by hitting F2 or F12) to temporarily
into your USB key to make it a bootable device. Also be aware that if you’re
change the boot order to allow booting
currently running 32-bit Windows Vista or 7, Bootsect will only work if you
from the USB key before your primary
use the files from the 32-bit Windows 7 install disc. The Bootsect executable
hard drive or optical drive. Now, when
from the 64-bit version will not run in 32-bit Vista. Don’t forget it!
you plug the key into a machine, your
system should automatically begin
speedily downloading setup files off of
the USB key and entering Windows 7
installation.

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NVIDIA PLAYS ITS

Nuclear
Option
At long last, Nvidia’s Fermi
GPU is available for consumers
in the form of the GTX 480.
Is this 3-billion-transistor
monster that eats power
supplies for lunch everything
gamers have been waiting for? Enrico Fermi gained fame as a key player in the Man-
BY LOYD CASE hattan Project, which gave the world nuclear fission
and the first atomic bomb. Nvidia’s Fermi GPU archi-
tecture—now seeing the light of day as the GeForce
GTX 480—seeks to create its own chain reaction
among PC gamers looking for the latest and greatest
graphics card.
Originally code-named GF100, the GTX 480 has
had a long and controversial gestation that’s seen
numerous delays, but Nvidia’s new graphics card has
finally arrived. Sporting 1.5GB of fast DDR5 memory,
an exotic heat pipe–based cooling system, and a stag-
gering 3 billion transistors, the GPU still manages to
fit onto a card just 10.5 inches long.
Can Nvidia’s long-awaited GTX 480 capture the
graphics performance crown? And if it can, is the
price of glory worth it?

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 G T X 4 8 0

The GTX 480 Dissected

Deep inside Nvidia’s new monster GPU
Nvidia designed the GTX 480 from the
ground up as a new architecture, with the
goal of combining best-of-class graphics
performance with a robust component for
GPU compute applications. The archi-
tecture is modular, consisting of groups
of ALUs (“CUDA cores”) assembled into
blocks of 32, along with texture cache,
memory, a large register file, scheduler, and
what Nvidia calls the Polymorph Engine.
Each of these blocks is known as an SM, or
streaming multiprocessor.
The warp scheduler ensures that
threads are assigned to the compute cores.
The Polymorph Engine takes care of vertex
fetch, contains the tessellation engine,
and handles viewport transformation and
stream output.
Each CUDA core inside the SMs is
scalar, processing only one data item at a
With hardware tessellation, character heads look properly curved, as do object like pipes.
time, but there are many of them. The SMs
are built with a pipelined, integer ALU and
a floating-point unit (FPU), which is fully and 48KB of shared memory. IT’S ABOUT GEOMETRY
IEEE 754-2008 compliant. The FPU can The SMs belong to blocks of four graph- PERFORMANCE
handle both single- and double-precision ics processing clusters (GPCs) connected to Prior generations of GPUs built on DirectX
floating-point operations. Each SM has a the raster output engines. The GPCs share 10 and its predecessors radically improved
64KB memory pool. When used for graph- 768MB of L2 cache. Six memory controllers texturing and filtering performance over
ics, the 64KB is split into 16KB of L1 cache manage access to the GDDR5 memory pool. time. Better image quality came through

BEHIND THE SCENES

The Role of Drivers in GPU Performance

Drivers—those magical software packages that actually enable massive performance gains from driver updates.
our cool GPUs to work—are a critical part of the performance Both Nvidia and AMD have extensive engineering staffs
equation. And driver updates enable a GPU’s performance to dedicated to writing and debugging drivers. AMD has com-
improve over time. Take AMD’s just-released Catalyst 10.3 mitted to a monthly driver release, but is willing to release
drivers, for example, which offer big performance improve- hotfix drivers to improve performance on new, popular
ments in a number of popular games. AMD has had a good game releases. Nvidia’s schedule is somewhat irregular,
nine months to tune and tweak its DX11 drivers, and the tim- but the company has stepped up the frequency of its driver
ing of their release couldn’t be more fitting. In fact, both AMD releases in the past year, as DirectX 11 and Windows 7 have
and Nvidia have historically released performance-enhanced become major forces.
drivers just as the competitor was about to ship a new card. Developing drivers for a brand-new architecture is a
In time, we expect to see the GTX 480 perform better tricky process, and engineers never exploit the full poten-
in some of the gaming tests where it doesn’t currently tial of a new GPU at launch. As we’ve seen with Catalyst
shine, although some games that have a stronger CPU 10.3, an optimum driver update can make an existing card
element, such as real-time strategy games, may not see seem new all over again.

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 G T X 4 8 0

SPECIFICATIONS
GTX 470 GTX 480 RADEON HD 5870
Transistors 3.0 billion 3.0 billion 2.15 billion
Compute Cores 448 480 1,600*
Texture Units 56 60 80
ROPs 40 48 32
effects like bump mapping to create the illu- Core Clock 607MHz 700MHz 850MHz
sion of greater detail with flat textures. ALU Clocks 1,215MHz 1,401MHz N/A
DirectX 11 supports hardware tessellation. Memory Clock 837MHz 924MHz 1,200MHz
Hardware tessellation works with a base set of GDDR5 VRAM 1,280MB 1,536MB 1,024MB
geometry with predefined patches. The DX11 Memory Interface 320-bit 384-bit 256-bit
Process 40nm 40nm 40nm
tessellation engine takes that patch data and
Thermal Power 215W 250W 188W
procedurally generates triangles, increasing
* Compute cores aren’t directly comparable.
the geometric complexity of the final object.
This means that heads become rounder, gun
barrels aren’t octagons, and other geometric As with prior Nvidia GPUs, the company at full load, making it one of the most power-
details appear more realistic. is talking up performance in GPU compute. hungry graphics cards ever made.
The hardware tessellator that’s built into This translates directly into more robust Note that the “480” in GTX 480 doesn’t
the Polymorph Engine is fully compliant with image-quality effects, including physics refer to the 480 CUDA cores. Nvidia is also
DX11 hardware tessellation. Given that both and post-processing enhancements such as launching the GeForce GTX 470, which ships
major GPU suppliers are now shipping DirectX better water effects, improved depth of field, with 448 active computational cores. (The
11–capable parts, we may finally see the end and specialized effects like photographic chart above shows how these two cards com-
of blocky, angular heads. background bokeh. (For more details, check pare to each other in speeds and feeds, as well
out our original story on the GF100 at as to the Radeon HD 5870.) What’s notable,
IMAGE QUALITY Maximumpc.com http://bit.ly/4yQZyj) beyond the sheer number of transistors in
ENHANCEMENTS Nvidia’s cards, is the number of ROPs—both
The GTX 480 increases the number of tex- THEN AND NOW cards’ exceed what’s available in the Radeon
ture and ROP units, as well as scales up raw When Nvidia rolled out the GF100 (Fermi) HD 5870. It’s also worth noting the maximum
computational horsepower in the SMs. This graphics architecture in January, it talked thermal design power. In the GTX 480, it’s rated
allows the card to take effects like full-scene about a chip with 512 CUDA cores. As it turns at 250W, or 62W more than the Radeon HD
antialiasing to the next step. Nvidia suggests out, the GTX 480 is shipping with just 480 5870. In practice, we found the differences to
that 8x antialiasing is possible in most games cores enabled—one full SM is disabled. It’s be higher (see the benchmarking analysis on
with only a slight performance penalty over uncertain whether this is because of yield page 43 for power consumption numbers.)
4x AA. The new GPU will also enable further problems. Even using a 40nm process, the
AA capabilities, such as 32x CSAA (coverage GTX 480 chip is massive. Alternatively, Nvidia POWER AND CONNECTIVITY
sample antialiasing) and improved AA with may have disabled an SM because of power Since the new cards are so power-hungry,
transparent objects. issues—as it is, the GTX 480 consumes 250W Nvidia engineers designed a sophisticated,

THE FPS EFFECT

Average vs. Minimum Frame Rate

A few years ago, Intel commissioned a study to find out of processors and GPUs, it’s impossible to completely
what the threshold of frustration was when it came to play- eliminate the possibility of low frame rates or sudden
ing games. At what point does a lower frame rate affect a drops in performance. The goal is to keep those adverse
player’s experience? The research uncovered two inter- events to a minimum.
esting points. First, if a game could maintain a frame rate One older benchmark we no longer run, but which is
above 45fps, then users would tend to remain immersed in worth checking out for these effects, is the RTS World in
the gaming experience. That is, unless the second factor Conflict. The built-in benchmark has a real-time bar that
comes into play: wide, sudden variations in frame rate. changes on the fly as the test is run. Watching the bar drop
If you’re humming along at 100fps and the game sud- into the red (very low frame rates) during massive explo-
denly drops to 48fps, you notice, even though you’re still sions and flying debris is illuminating.
above that magical 45fps threshold. While we’re generally happy to see very high average
Modern game designers spend a ton of time tweak- frame rates—a game that will run at a 100fps average will
ing every scene to avoid those sudden frame-rate jud- more likely stay above that 45fps barrier—it’s no guarantee
ders. Given the nature of PC gaming, with its wide array that you won’t still see frame rate drops in certain scenes.

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 G T X 4 8 0

heat pipe–based cooler to keep the GPU and

memory within the maximum-rated 105 C
operating temperature. When running full
bore, the cooling fan spins up and gets pretty
loud, but it’s no worse than AMD’s dual-GPU
Radeon HD 5970. It is noticeably louder than
the single-chip Radeon HD 5870, however.
The cooling-system design helped Nvidia
build a board that’s just 10.5 inches long, a tad
shorter than the Radeon HD 5870 and much
shorter than the foot-long Radeon HD 5970.
Given the thermal output, however, buyers
will want to ensure that their cases offer You can use tessellation to generate large amounts of debris, and GPU compute to create realistic
physics effects, as seen in this screen from Nvidia’s Rocket Sled demo.
ample airflow. Nvidia suggests a minimum
550W PSU for the GTX 470 and a 600W-rated
power supply for the GTX 480. The GTX 480 displays running in full stereoscopic mode. and that’s with 32 compute units disabled. So
we tested used a pair of PCI Express power What’s the price of all this technological even at 250 watts or more, we’re not seeing
connectors—one 8-pin and one 6-pin. goodness? Nvidia is targeting a $500 price the full potential of the chip.
Unlike AMD, Nvidia is sticking with a point for the GTX 480 and $350 for the GTX In the end, the GTX 480 offers superla-
maximum of two displays with a single card. 470. Actual prices will vary, depending on tive single-GPU performance at a suggested
All the cards currently shipping will offer supply and overall demand. price point that seems about right relative to
two dual-link DVI ports and one mini-HDMI The burning question, of course: When the competition. It does lack AMD’s Eyefinity
connector. Any two connectors can be used can you get one? Rumors have been flying capability and its hunger for watts is unparal-
in dual-panel operation. Current cards do not around about yields and manufacturing leled. Is the increased performance enough
offer a DisplayPort connector. issues with the Fermi chip. Nvidia’s Drew to bring gamers back to the Nvidia fold?
Nvidia is also beefing up its 3D Vision ste- Henry stated categorically that “tens of thou- The performance of the Radeon HD 5870 is
reoscopic technology. Widescreen LCD moni- sands” would be available on launch day. certainly still in the “good enough” category,
tors are now available with 120Hz refresh We’ll just have to wait to see what that means and that card is $100 cheaper and consumes
support in full 1920x1080 (1080p) resolution. for long-term pricing and availability. substantially less power. If raw performance
One card will drive a single 1080p 3D panel. If It’s possible we’re seeing the end of the is what counts, the GTX 480 will win con-
your wallet is healthy enough to afford a pair brute-force approach to building GPUs. The verts. Only the time, availability, and user
of GTX 400–series cards, 3D Vision is being GTX 480 pushes the edge of the envelope in desires will show us which approach wins
updated so that you can have up to three both performance and power consumption— out over the long haul.

DIRECTX 11

Games for the New Generation

PC game developers seem to be taking up DirectX 11 more
quickly than past versions of DirectX. There are some solid  Battlefield: Bad Company 2 While it’s had a few multiplayer
reasons for that. Even if you don’t have a DX11 card, installing teething problems, BC2 has consumed vast numbers of hours
DX11 will improve performance, since the libraries themselves of online time, plus has a surprisingly good single-player story.
are now multithreaded.
Here are a few of our favorite DX11 titles:  STALKER: Call of Pripyat This is the actual sequel to GSC’s
original STALKER title. It seems like a substantial improvement
 Metro 2033 This Russian-made FPS is one of the more creep- over the Clear Sky prequel. The tessellation certainly helps im-
ily atmospheric titles we’ve fired up recently. The graphics are mersion as you fight alongside or against other stalkers.
richly detailed, and the lighting effects eerie and effective.
 Aliens vs. Predator The new release of the venerable
 Dirt 2 The game offers colorful and detailed graphics and title from Rebellion and SEGA makes use of hardware
good racing challenges, although the big deal made about the tessellation—the Aliens look even more frightening and
water effects was overblown. all too realistic.

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Putting the GTX 480 to the Test
In both DX10 and DX11, Fermi scores best overall single-GPU performance

W
e tested six different graph- benchmarks and essentially tied in the rest. In the end, the GTX 480, given the
ics cards, including a standard Where it does win, it generally wins big. current state of drivers, is priced about
Radeon HD 5870 and the factory- The GTX 480 “won” in another test, right—assuming you can actually buy one
overclocked XFX Radeon HD 5870 XXX too—power consumption—but not in a for $500. It’s about $100 cheaper than the
edition. We also included results from good way. The system idled at 165W with Radeon HD 5970, and users won’t have
older Nvidia cards, including the aggres- the GTX 480, exceeded only by the dual- to worry about dual-GPU issues. At $100
sively overclocked EVGA 285 GTX SSC and GPU HD 5970’s 169W. And at full load, the more than a Radeon HD 5870, it’s the fast-
a reference 295 GTX. And for good mea- GTX 480 gulped down 399W—35W more est single-GPU card we’ve tested. If raw
sure, we tossed in an HIS Radeon HD 5970, than the 5970 and fully 130W more than performance is what you want, then the
built with two Radeon HD 5870 GPUs. the Radeon HD 5870 at standard speeds. GTX 480 delivers, particularly at high AA
For the most part, the Radeon HD 5970 We also pushed all the cards to a and detail settings.
dominated the benchmarks. Interestingly, punishing 8x MSAA setting at 1920x1200. The real kicker, however, is power
we observed that in the recently released Every card took a performance hit moving consumption. Performance counts, but
Unigine 2.0 DX11 test, when we scaled to 8x MSAA, but the drop in frame rate efficiency is important, too. The GeForce
up tessellation to “extreme,” the GTX 480 on the GTX 480 was pretty small. That’s GTX 480 kicks out high frame rates, but
edged out the dual-GPU AMD solution. an impressive achievement. (To see our the cost in terms of watts per FPS may be
Compared to the single-GPU Radeon expanded benchmark chart, go to http:// too high for some.
HD 5870, the GTX 480 won about half the bit.ly/c7vELo.)

BENCHMARKS
HIS Radeon XFX Radeon HD Stock Radeon EVGA GTX
GTX 480 HD 5970 HD 5870 XXX HD 5870 285 SSC GTX 295

3DMark Vantage Performance 18,231 23,530 19,282 18,862 13,964 19,065

3DMark Vantage Extreme 9,223 13,678 9,473 9,058 6,238 9,090

DIRECTX 11

Unigine Heaven 2.0 (fps) 30 28 18 17 N/A N/A

Battle Forge (fps) 61 73 49 47 N/A N/A

STALKER: Call of Pripyat (fps) 39 54 38 36 N/A N/A

Dirt 2 (fps) 87 92 73 72 N/A N/A

DIRECTX 10

Far Cry 2 / Long (fps) 102 114 78 76 56 78

Far Cry 2 / Action (fps) 75 75 65 63 48 60

Tom Clancy’s HAWX (fps) 105 128 92 88 59 91

Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising (fps) 71 74 78 74 69 71

Crysis (fps) 31 44 33 32 21 30

System Idle Power (W) 165 169 142 134 N/A N/A

System Full Load Power (W) 399 364 290 268 N/A N/A

Best scores are bolded. All tests were run at 1920x1200 at 4x AA. Our test system consisted of a Core i7 975 at 3.3GHz, with 6GB of DDR3/1333 memory, running on an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard, with a
Seagate 7200.12 1TB drive, an LG Blu-ray ROM drive, a Corsair TX850w 850W PSU, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

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 Does Intel’s Core i3 top the AMD Athlon II
in our budget battle, as well?

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BUDGET IS IN THE EYE
OF THE
BY GORDON MAH UNG
BEHOLDER
Low-cost processors from Intel and AMD prove
their relative worth in a toe-to-toe contest of
performance, platforms, and features

Ain’t technology grand?

In 1998, Intel was proud to hawk its budget alternative to the high-end Pentium II
CPU: the strippo Celeron for “basic PC” computing.
That single-core, 266MHz Celeron ran on a 66MHz front-side bus, had no ex-
ternal cache, and even lacked the fancy plastic cover found on the Slot 1 PIIs, yet it
still cost $155. Today, for $99, you can get a quad-core CPU running at 10 times the
frequency of the original Celeron. Shoot, for $113 you can buy into Intel’s new 32nm
process (the first Celeron was built on a 250nm process) and get a CPU that features a
graphics core capable of outstripping the most powerful discrete videocards of yore—
even in SLI.
Baby, we’ve come a hell of a long way.
That doesn’t mean all things budget are good, though. To identify the absolute
best budget CPU at (or near) the $100 mark, we locked AMD’s Athlon II X4 630 in a
cage with Intel’s Core i3-530 for a benchmark battle to the death!

BUDGET PROCS COMPARED

INTEL CORE I3-530 AMD ATHLON II X4 630

Clock Speed 2.93GHz 2.8GHz
Cores / Threads 2/4 4/4
L2 Cache 1MB 2MB
L3 Cache 4MB N/A
Package LGA1156 Socket AM3
Graphics Core Speed 733MHz N/A
TDP 73 watts 95 watts
Process 32nm 45nm
CPU Die Size 81mm2 169mm2
GPU Die Size 114mm2 N/A
CPU Transistor Count 383 million 300 million
GPU Transistor Count 177 million N/A
Price $113 $100

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 E T
D G U S
B U C P

Athlon II vs. Core i3: Fight!

Can a dual-core beat a quad-core? Let’s find out
At the high altitudes where the Core i7- was introduced alongside the original $99 that cheaper boards for both CPUs are
980X soars, there is no competition. But quad-core, the 2.6GHz Athlon II X4 620, but available, with some dipping to $80.
let’s face it, there are few consumers who recent price cuts have helped push the 630
can pony up the $1,000 for that CPU’s six- to the point where it’s just $1 more than the UPGRADES
core air superiority. The real war between 620 version. And for $1 more, we’ll take Most system builders usually try to get one
Intel and AMD is being fought in the $100 the extra 200MHz. The Athlon II X4 630 is or two upgrades out of a platform over its
range. And there it’s unrelenting, hand- essentially a Phenom II X4 but without the lifetime. In this department, AMD also wins
to-hand, jungle warfare. Despite AMD’s extra 6MB of L3 cache attached. It’s an AM3 out, theoretically. If you were to build a
inability to sortie anything remotely close part but is backward compatible with most budget box using a Core i3-530 and a bud-
to the Core i7-980X, the company knows AM2+ and some AM2 motherboards. get LGA1156 motherboard, you could swap
how to fight a guerilla war against its much out to a quad-core Core i5 or Core i7 CPU in
larger enemy—it’s done that for practically INFRASTRUCTURE a year when you have the funds and when
its whole existence. CPUs don’t exist in a vacuum, though. You the prices have dipped. Today, the kick-ass
But Intel isn’t content to cede victory also need a good budget motherboard to Core i7-870 is $562, but in two years, it
here, either. Having decommissioned its ob- go with your budget CPU. While AMD has could be $250. Sound good? Yes, but if you
solete Core 2 Quads, Intel is counting on a traditionally had a budget advantage with built an AM3-based system with the Athlon
newcomer—the dual-core Core i3-530—to motherboards, we found boards for both II X4 630, you could eventually move up
take out AMD’s insurgency force. The Core CPUs to be on par in pricing. For example, to a Phenom II X6 hexa-core processor.
i3-530 is the company’s cheapest “Core i” the two boards we used for our integrated To move to a six-core Core i7-980X, you’d
CPU. Clocking in at 2.93GHz, it features an graphics showdown (see sidebar), an MSI have to dump your current LGA1156 board
integrated graphics core, as well as on-die 890GXM-G65 and an Asus P7H55D-M and buy an LGA1366 board. The sticky
(in the GPU) PCI-E and memory control- EVO, were each selling for $125. However, question, however, is whether a hexa-core
ler. On the compute side, it has dual 32nm in specsmanship, the MSI board aces the Phenom II X6 will actually be faster than a
cores. Being a budget chip, there’s no Turbo H55-chipset-based board. Both boards quad-core Core i7-870. We won’t know that
Boost feature, but at least Hyper-Threading feature USB 3.0, but the MSI board also until we actually get a Phenom II X6 chip.
is enabled. features native SATA 6 support, thanks to What we do know is that the Athlon II’s
Its primary competitor in the AMD the AMD 890GX chipset, and a secondary Socket AM3 seems the more flexible of the
camp is the 2.8GHz Athlon II X4 630. It x16 physical PCI-E slot. It should be noted two platforms today.

INTEGRATED GRAPHICS

Whose IGP Sucks Less?

An integrated graphics “battle” is a misnomer. It’s more of both older 3DMark titles and World in Conflict in DX9 mode,
a watch-the-paint-dry contest. Still, we did want to know but the Intel part surprised us by achieving higher perfor-
whose IGP was better. So we installed the Core i3-530 in mance in DX10 mode with Resident Evil 5.
an Asus P7H55D-M EVO board, where the proc’s integrated In other words, there’s no change: Integrated graph-
graphics core would do the work, and set the AMD system to ics still stink and bragging about one being faster is, well,
use the IGP in the MSI 890GXM-G65 board’s chipset. like saying your kid is only in jail for assault with a deadly
Our conclusion? The AMD part turned in higher scores in weapon, not armed robbery.

BENCHMARKS
Core i3-530 Athlon II X4 630
3DMark 2003 1,744 2,133
3DMark 2005 3,430 4,617
Resident Evil 5 DX10 12x10 (fps) 9.6 6.6
World in Conflict 10x7 Low (fps) 38 49
Best scores are bolded.

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The Performance Story
In a battle of the benchmarks, the budget CPUs trade strengths
For our benchmark battle, we built two systems using identical parts: II 630 quad-core. The latter processor was faster than the Core i3-530 by
For the AMD part, we used an MSI 890GXM-G65 with 4GB of Corsair double digits in most of our benchmarks. There were a few surprising upsets,
DDR3/1333, a Western Digital Raptor 150, and an EVGA GeForce though. ProShow Producer 4 and Bibble 5.0 both favored the Intel chip by
GTX 280 card on Windows 7 Professional. The Intel system used the 8 percent to 9 percent. Both are multithreaded apps, so we were surprised
same RAM, hard drive, and graphics card, but for the motherboard, we to see the Core i3 take it here. The Core i3 also did surprisingly well in our
used an Asus Maximus III Formula board on the Intel P55 chipset. We multithreaded Sony Vegas Pro 9 benchmark. Despite its two-core advantage,
originally intended to use an Intel DH55TC board, but our H55-based the Athlon II 630 beat the dual-core Core i3 by just 3 percent. That should give
board was DOA. AMD fans a bit of a worry.
We ran the same benchmarks we used for our Core i7-980X review Of course, when you see the Athlon II 630 with a 30 percent advantage
in the May issue. The workloads ran the gamut from video editing to in our HandBrake benchmark and a 29 percent advantage in Cinebench
encoding to gaming to 3D rendering and synthetic memory tests. (As a 11.5, you’re reminded that those virtual cores still can’t compare to the
reality check, we included the benchmark scores for the quad-core Core real deal. The Athlon II also had significantly better bandwidth and better
i7-870 in the chart below. That chip is way out of the league of these memory latency.
budget CPUs, but the scores help illustrate what you get for the money.) The upshot is that the Athlon II 630 is the better budget chip for most
The results were not surprising. The dual-core Core i3-530 proved to multithreaded workloads and most applications. The Core i3, however, is
be the better of the two in gaming, thanks to its slightly higher clocks and generally better for gaming and surprisingly fast in some newer applica-
the wider Nehalem microarchitecture. tions. We know people like a clear winner/loser assessment, but the truth is
But when we got to the multithreaded applications, the Core i3’s combina- that you should pick the chip based on how you use your PC. In either case,
tion of two real cores and two virtual cores couldn’t compete with the Athlon we can safely say that budget buyers have it pretty good these days.

BENCHMARKS

2.93GHz Core i3-530 2.8GHz Athlon II 630 2.93GHz Core i7-870

Price $113 $100 $562
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) 967 855 539
Sony Vegas Pro 9.0c (sec) 7,310 7,083 3,531
Cinebench 10 64-bit 9,261 10,301 19,197
Cinebench 11.5 64-bit 2.46 3.17 5.54
POV Ray 3.7 1,902 2,719 4,496
HandBrake 0.9.4 DVD to iPhone (sec) 2,804 2,144 1,247
Main Concept 1.6 (sec) 4,663 3,952 2,486
Photoshop CS3 (sec) 142 157 100
Adobe Lightroom 2.6 (sec) 535 512 422
ProShow Producer 4 (sec) 2,112 2,309 1,290
Bibble 5.02 (sec) 261 284 122
PCMark Vantage 64-bit Overall 7,098 6,990 9,120
Everest Ultimate 5.30.1900 Mem Copy (MB/s) 8,187 9,741 14,693
Everest Ultimate 5.30.1900 Mem Latency (ns) 85.3 52.6 52.5
Fritz Chess Benchmark (KiloNodes/s) 5,344 6,682 11,995
Valve Map Compilation (sec) 176 154 106
Sisoft Sandra RAM Bandwidth (GB/s) 11.1 12 17.1
3DMark Vantage Overall 14,590 14,168 14,795
3DMark Vantage GPU 12,215 11,782 12,164
Valve Particle Test (fps) 94 74 159
Resident Evil 5 low-res (fps) 76.5 70.8 126.6
World in Conflict low-res (fps) 180 124 253
Dirt 2 low-res (fps) 147.3 151.6 153.3
Far Cry 2 low-res (fps) 94.6 79.5 153.3
Best scores are bolded.

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 SOLID STATE
OF
THE UNION
We take stock of today’s SSDs—what they have to offer, how they’ve
progressed, and which should have dominion in your PC BY NATHAN EDWARDS

At the end of our November 2008 solid-state-drive roundup, we than $100, but a 256GB SSD can cost close to $800. Nevertheless,
concluded that those NAND-flash-based drives just weren’t ready today’s SSDs have significantly dropped in price, and combined with
for prime time, thanks to astronomically high prices, small capaci- the technological advances, are a much improved value. Is that
ties, and flaky first-gen controllers. enough to get your purchasing dollars? We were compelled to find
Flash forward to mid-2010. Not only have newer drive con- out, Maximum PC–style.
trollers thoroughly washed the bad taste of the first-gen SSDs out We gathered five newly released SSDs to see how far the field
of our mouths, but performance has shot through the roof. And the has come since late 2008. We ran each through a gamut of tests:
slowdowns that early SSDs experienced when writing to memory HDTune 4.01 for sustained read and write speeds as well as ran-
blocks where data had been deleted have been vanquished by dom-access times and 4KB random reads and writes (historically
the TRIM command. Implemented in moderns SSDs as well as in the Achilles’ Heel of SSDs); PCMark Vantage x64 to simulate per-
Windows 7 and Linux, TRIM’s garbage-collection functionality has formance during common Windows tasks; and Adobe Premiere Pro
helped SSDs overcome one of their remaining hurdles. CS3 to measure sequential writes by writing an uncompressed AVI
Of course, there’s still the matter of price. While solid state to the disk. We’ll tell you how they compare to our current Best of
drives have several advantages over their mechanical hard drive the Best pick, the 128GB Patriot Torqx (the cumulative benchmark
brethren—durability, reliability, and speed among them—they still results can be found on page 56), and even explore a budget-SSD
cost a lot more. A one-terabyte mechanical hard drive costs less option. So let’s see how the state of the SSD union fares.

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 SOLIDSTATEDRIVES

WD SiliconEdge Blue 256GB

WD’s first consumer SSD is a mixed blessing

Western Digital has finally dipped its toe not shabby by any metric, and close to
into the SSD pond, a move we’ve been the 220MB/s of the Torqx. Writes are a
expecting since last year’s acquisition of little erratic, though. The SiliconEdge isn’t
SiliconSystems. The first consumer SSD to entirely immune to the strange stuttering
be born of this acquisition is the SiliconEdge that plagued first-gen SSDs—while sus-
Blue. Can one of the biggest names in tained write speeds topped out at 171MB/s
mechanical hard drives compete in the solid in our testing, they sometimes dropped as
state world? low as 1.1MB/s, resulting in an average of
Western Digital seems to be banking just 109MB/s. And random-access write
on two things with the SiliconEdge Blue: times averaged 3.3ms, another telltale sign
first, that seeing Western Digital’s name on of stuttering.
an SSD will draw consumers, and second, With an MSRP of $1,000 (although its
that the strength of its custom firmware and street price hovers around $800), and obvi-
rigorous performance testing will enable it ous jitter, it’s hard to recommend the Sili-
to compete with drives running the high- conEdge Blue. Given its “Blue” designation,
performing SandForce and Barefoot Indilinx a speedier SiliconEdge Black is doubtless on
controllers. WD won’t say whose control- the way. Whatever controller WD uses for
ler the SiliconEdge Blue uses, but it’s not that one, we just hope it doesn’t stutter.
developed in-house and it isn’t SandForce
or Barefoot.

6
Whatever’s powering the drive, it’s VERDICT

Western Digital added a bit of style to its TRIM-compatible, has speedy DDR2 cache, WD SILICONEDGE BLUE
SSD by foregoing a commodity chassis. and its read speeds top out at 213MB/s— $1,000, www.wdc.com

Plextor PX-128M1S 128GB

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single misstep

We’re not mad. We’re just disappointed. When a copy of Acronis True Image to facilitate up-
Plextor announced in February that it, too, grades, but that hardly makes it unique, and the
was entering the SSD market, we were cau- drive just can’t compete with modern SSDs.
tiously optimistic. After all, more competition Given that the 128GB PX-128M1S doesn’t
is always a good thing, and Plextor wouldn’t offer top-tier performance, we were surprised
put out a subpar product just to try to capital- by Plextor’s decision to charge $400 for it. The
ize on a trend—would it? price dropped to $335 within a few weeks,
The Plextor PX-128M1S is the first drive which makes it slightly more reasonable, but
we’ve tested that is built on the Marvell not enough so. You can get the 128GB Torqx
88SS8014-BHP2 “Da Vinci” controller—and if for just $30 more, and get much better perfor-
its performance is indicative of the platform as mance and TRIM support, to boot.
a whole, we hope it’s the last.

5
Although read speeds were respect-
VERDICT
able for a last-gen drive at 135MB/s average
sustained reads, average sustained writes PLEXTOR PX-12M1S
$335, www.plextoramericas.com
were a sub-mediocre 50MB/s. And though the
controller has its own garbage-collection and
wear-leveling algorithms, it doesn’t support
the TRIM command. The PX-128M1S feels like a 2008-era
We like that the Plextor drive ships with SSD that fell through a time warp.

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 OWC Mercury Extreme Enterprise 100GB
Marketed for Macs, but this bad boy supports TRIM anyway
The SSD market is a meritocracy. Controller Torqx, but 191MB/s average, with bursts of
companies live and die on the strength of their more than 200MB/s, is certainly nothing to
products. Who had heard of Barefoot before its sneeze at. And the Mercury really excels at
Indilinx controller pushed SSD speeds to new writes, with average sustained writes of more
heights? SandForce is another promising young than 220MB/s—the best we’ve seen. 4KB
company whose controllers have started appear- random reads and writes are reasonable, at
ing in drives, including this month’s OCZ Vertex around 5,000 IOPS (input/output operations per
LE and the OWC Mercury Extreme Enterprise. second), and it Premiere Pro and PCMark Van-
OWC markets mainly to Mac users, but tage HDD sub scores are competitive. And the
don’t hold that against its SSD. It’s a mod- OWC Mercury does this all without cache—the
ern, SandForce SF-1500-powered drive that SandForce controller doesn’t need it.
supports TRIM. And given that OS X doesn’t So why get the Mercury over, say, the OCZ
support TRIM, well, we don’t even think that Vertex LE? Well, OWC doesn’t seem to be limit-
platform deserves performance this good. ing the number of Mercury drives produced. And
The Mercury’s average sustained read it’s a prettier color. Other than that, it’s your call.
speeds don’t quite hit the level of Indilinx-

9
powered drives like our Best of the Best Patriot VERDICT

OWC MERCURY EXTREME

OWC overuses the Mercury designation, but $400, www.macsales.com
this SandForce-powered drive does it proud.

MOVING ON UP

6Gb/s SATA: Does It Make a Difference?

Say you’re one of the increasing number of users with 6Gb/s significantly so. The Vertex drive showed higher average and
SATA ports on your fancy new motherboard. But what you maximum sustained read speeds on a 6Gb/s port, but average
don’t have—yet—is a drive with a 6Gb/s SATA controller. sustained writes fell, as did 4KB random writes. The Plextor
Can you put those onboard ports to use anyway? Some drive drive showed slight improvement in 4KB random reads and
vendors claim that even SATA 3Gb/s drives benefit from the writes. Premiere Pro and PCMark Vantage HDD test scores for
improved native command queuing and greater bandwidth both drives were higher on the 6Gb/s controller. Most other
of 6Gb/s SATA. To put this claim to the test, we took two scores were nearly identical on either controller.
drives from our roundup—the SandForce-toting OCZ Vertex We’ll soon start seeing SSDs with native SATA 6Gb/s
LE and the Marvell-controlled Plextor PX-128M1S—and controllers, and those will likely see marked improvements in
retested them on a mobo with both SATA 3Gb/s and SATA SATA 6Gb/s mode compared to 3Gb/s. Until then, the only rea-
6Gb/s ports onboard. son to run in SATA 6Gb/s mode (other than very minor gains
Our tests showed that some benchmark scores for both in some areas) is if you need to use your 3Gb/s ports in IDE or
drives were better on the 6Gb/s SATA controller, but not RAID mode and want an AHCI-enabled SATA port for your SSD.

BENCHMARKS
VERTEX LE (SATA 3G
3Gb/s)
/ ) VERTEX LE (SATA 6G
6Gb/s)
/ ) PLEXTOR PLEXTOR
(SATA 3Gb//s)) (SATA 6Gb/s)
HDTUNE 4.01
Avg Read (MB/s) 191.5 196 135.5 137.6
Random Access Read (ms) 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2
Burst Read (MB/s) 202.6 214.4 126.9 132.2
Avg Write (MB/s} 216.8 204.4 46.8 45.4
Random Access Write (ms) 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.2
Burst Write (Mb/s) 201.5 215.1 136.8 138.7
4KB Read (IOPS) 5,296 5,392 4190 4,359
4KB Write (IOPS) 5,431 5,378 1069 1,190
PREMIERE PRO (SEC) 277 260 495 476
PCMARK VANTAGE HDD 31,880 34,790 21,093 23,107

Best scores are bolded. All tests performed on an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with a Core i7-X980 CPU @3.33GHz with 6GB DDR3/1600 running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. SATA 3Gb/s tests performed on
onboard Intel chipset; SATA 6Gb/s tests performed using onboard Marvell 9123 chipset.

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 SOLIDSTATEDRIVES

OCZ Vertex LE 100GB

Limited Edition? I’ll take eight!

OCZ clearly hopes the perceived rarity of its dipped to a still-excellent 135MB/s mini-
Limited Edition Vertex drive will increase mum sustained read, while the Vertex’
desire for the product. A limited run of 5,000 slowest sustained reads were more than
is one way to do that. But if you’ve got a drive 170MB/s. These speeds would have been
with performance this good, wouldn’t you unheard of a little more than a year ago—
want everyone to buy one? we’re pleased as punch at how far SSDs
Like the OWC Mercury Extreme have come.
Enterprise, the OCZ Vertex Limited Edition We’re not going to tell you to run out
is a 100GB drive built on the SandForce SF- and grab a Vertex Limited Edition as fast
1500 controller. It’s the same architecture as as you can, just because they’re awesome
OCZ’s cancelled Vertex 2 Pro, and when the and fast and have TRIM and availability is
5,000 Limited Edition drives run out, there limited. But you certainly won’t regret get-
will doubtless be a successor waiting. ting one. And at street prices already under
The Vertex LE offers performance $400, if you can find one, snatch it up. Or
near-identical to the OWC Mercury: wait until OCZ’s next SandForce-toting drive
197.5MB/s average sustained reads, with comes out. It’ll likely be just as awesome.
write speeds over 220MB/s, and 4KB

9
random read and write IOPS in the 5,000 VERDICT
range. Its minimum read speeds were OCZ VERTEX LE The Vertex LE is another great SandForce
slightly higher in our tests; the Mercury $430, www.ocztechnology.com SSD, but it ain’t much to look at.

Corsair Nova V128 128GB

‘Nova,’ as in ‘new,’ might be a misnomer—but the old ways are good, too
With all the fancy new controllers out there— reads of the drives in this roundup, averaging
the SandForces, Toshibas, Da Vincis, and what 210MB/s on our test bed (the Torqx’ read speeds
have you—we were a little concerned that are slightly higher). And the V128’s average
vendors would forget the little controller that writes of 163MB/s are right up there with the
made it all possible: the Indilinx Barefoot 128GB Torqx.
controller. Yep, the one that powers our current Though the Indilinx controller’s 4KB
Best of the Best Patriot Torqx, as well as every random-read IOPS averages 7,000 (as does
other top-performing SSD of the past year. In Marvell’s Da Vinci), its 4KB random writes get
this land of the new, can Corsair’s Nova V128, just 2,800 IOPS, lower than the Torqx and about
which sports the classic Barefoot controller, still half the speed of the SandForce-based drives.
push bits with the best of ‘em? And nothing competes in IOPS with Intel SSDs,
Yep. Though the SandForce-based drives which regularly achieve random-write IOPS
in the roundup push the best sustained write over 15,000.
speeds yet, the Nova V128’s Indilinx control- While the SandForce-based drives in our
ler with 64MB of cache still sustains the fastest roundup have the edge in write speeds, an
Indilinx-based drive like the Corsair Nova

8
VERDICT V128—especially now that TRIM support is
standard—remains a compelling (and slightly
CORSAIR NOVA V128
$370, www.corsair.com cheaper) option. And really, when your choice
is between stupid-fast and ridiculous-fast, there
Aging Indilinx platform aside, the Nova are no bad choices.
V128 is still a good buy.

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 SOLIDSTATEDRIVES

Crunching the Numbers

Talk is cheap—it’s the benchmarks that matter
We poked, prodded, and pummeled and sustained read speeds of just under are worse than your average mechanical
these drives with our benchmarks—we 200MB/s. They didn’t have the fastest ran- hard drive—yet it’s barely cheaper than
even discarded a whole week’s worth of dom reads, but in random writes, only the the Corsair drive. You’re better off with a
testing when we discovered a mysterious Intel X-25M is superior. If you want fast Western Digital VelociRaptor.
bug with our original test bed—all in our random writes (and who doesn’t), you’ll Speaking of Western Digital: We can’t
tireless effort to determine which SSD is pay a slight premium over Barefoot- currently recommend the SiliconEdge Blue.
best for you. In the process, we learned a controller drives like the Corsair V128 or Whether it’s the fault of the controller or
lot about the state of the SSD market, and our current champion Patriot Torqx—the the firmware, the drive stutters during ex-
even a little bit about ourselves. OWC Mercury and OCZ Vertex LE are tended writes. That’s unacceptable in 2010.
OK, we didn’t actually learn anything both around $400 on the street, while the At $4 per GB, SSDs are still a lot pric-
about ourselves. But we did learn that Corsair Nova and the Torqx are closer to ier than their mechanical counterparts.
if you have the cash, a solid state drive $370 for 128GB. And for their part, the But capacity is going up, performance has
is a lot more compelling than this time Barefoot drives have faster reads. never been better, and given Windows
last year, thanks mainly to advances in Beyond the SandForce and Barefoot 7’s TRIM support and easy-to-configure
controller technology. Of the five drives drives, however, lie dragons. Plextor’s PX- Libraries, an SSD boot drive with enough
in our roundup, the highest all-around 128M1S, which uses Marvell’s 88SS8014- capacity to hold your favorite games and
scores went to the two with SandForce BHP2 controller, is just a bad drive. apps is more feasible than ever. My fellow
SF-1500 controllers, with sustained Whether it’s the firmware or the controller, Maximum PC power users, the state of the
write speeds averaging around 225MB/s its read speeds are last-gen and its writes union is solid.

BENCHMARKS

WD SILICONEDGE PLEXTOR OWC OCZ CORSAIR PATRIOT WD

BLUE PX-128M1S MERCURY VERTEX LE NOVA TORQX VELOCIRAPTOR

CAPACITY 256GB 128MB 100GB 100GB 128GB 128GB 300GB

CONTROLLER Unknown Marvell SandForce SandForce Indilinx Indilinx WD

Da Vinci SF-1500 SF-1500

HDTune 4.01

Avg Read (MB/s) 204.3 136.7 191.4 197.5 210.8 220 101.6

Random Access Read (ms) 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 7.1

Burst Read (MB/s) 143 138.3 205.2 207 222.8 220 221

Avg Write (MB/s) 109.6 51.7 227.1 223.5 163.9 162.3 109

Random Access Write (ms) 3.3 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.2 7.1

Burst Write (MB/s) 142.9 136.6 209.6 191.8 223 221.7 223.4

4KB Read (IOPS) 4,508 7,392 5,245 5,050 7,439 7,084 153

4KB Write (IOPS) 1,330 1,144 5,319 5,271 2,829 3,435 302

PREMIERE PRO (SEC) 452 530 383 381 361 364 387

PCMARK VANTAGE HDD 24,037 22,057 32,140 35,655 24,796 23,674 6,188

Best scores bolded. All drives tested on our hard drive test bench: a stock-clocked Intel i7-920 CPU on a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R with 6GB DDR3, running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. All tests performed using Intel south-bridge
SATA chipset with Windows 7 default AHCI drivers unless specified.

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Fiscal
Conservatism
How do two budget SSDs compare
to a single high-performance model?
In the midst of our SSD test-stravaganza, a letter arrived from Intel
with an intriguing idea. Why buy one expensive SSD, it asked, when
you can buy two 40GB X-25Vs and run them in RAID 0? You’ll get
better performance, the argument went, and for a lower cost. Well,
let’s consider that. One 40GB X-25V (the V is for Value) costs $125,
so $250 nabs you 80GB of storage, versus about $330 for a 128GB
Patriot Torqx. So is it worth it to buy two of the value drives?
Since the whole point of running two value SSDs in RAID 0 is to
save money, we decided against using an add-in RAID card—
instead, we built RAID 0 arrays using the Intel south-bridge on our
test bed and the Gigabyte-branded Marvell-manufactured onboard
RAID controller, and tested them under the same conditions as the Intel’s X-25V value SSDs, like the
other drives in our roundup. rest of the X-25 line, prioritize
While a single Intel X-25V drive got 161MB/s average read random writes over sequential.
speeds and 40MB/s average sustained writes—acceptable for a
value drive—a two-disk RAID 0 on the Intel SATA controller did won’t be doing too many sustained writes to an 80GB drive, now
nearly twice as well. Sustained average reads were pushed to over will you? Your SATA chipset will play an important role as well—the
240MB/s, while writes approached 75MB/s. But random writes are Intel SATA chipset on our test bed gave us the best numbers, while
where Intel drives have always excelled, and the X-25V, despite its sustained writes on a RAID built on the Gigabyte-branded RAID
“value” moniker, is no exception. Both a single drive and a RAID 0 controller were half as fast.
array produced 4KB random writes of more than 15,000 IOPS— There’s another catch, too: By using a RAID array, you’re giving
three times the speed of any other drive in the roundup, as well as up OS-level TRIM support, as TRIM commands aren’t passed through
the Patriot. Sustained writes, especially in our Premiere Pro encod- the RAID controller. You can manually optimize your drives with
ing test, were less impressive. Intel’s tools, but until TRIM commands can be passed to RAIDed
So is a RAID 0 array of value Intel SSDs actually a value? It SSDs, Windows 7 users should consider a single-drive solution. A
depends. Read speeds and random writes are fantastic, of course, 64GB Indilinx-based drive with TRIM support can be had for as little
while sustained writes will likely leave you frustrated. But you as $200. If 64GB is enough for you, we think that’s the better deal.

BENCHMARKS
SINGLE INTEL X-25V TWO X-25VS (RAID 0) TWO X-25VS (RAID 0) PATRIOT TORQX

CAPACITY 40GB 80GB 80GB 128GB

CONTROLLER Intel Intel chipset Marvell chipset Indilinx

HDTUNE 4.01
Avg Read (MB/s) 161.5 242.1 125.3 220

Random Access Read (ms) 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1

Burst Read (MB/s) 123.4 115.3 70.5 220

Avg Write (MB/s) 40.6 73.5 78 162.3

Random Access Write (ms) 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.2

Burst Write (Mb/s) 115.9 111 27.8 221.7

4KB Read (IOPS) 6,112 6,634 5,211 7,084

4KB Write (IOPS) 16,115 15,238 11,037 3,435

PREMIERE PRO (SEC) 635 450 470 364

PCMARK VANTAGE HDD 10,135 27,928 15,970 23,674

Best scores bolded. All drives tested on our hard drive test bench: A stock-clocked Intel i7-920 CPU on a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R with 6GB DDR3, running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. All tests performed using Intel south bridge SATA
chipset with Windows 7 default AHCI drivers, unless specified. For the Intel RAID array, updated Intel RAID drivers were used. For the Gigabyte RAID array, the drives were controlled by an onboard Marvell SATA controller in RAID mode.

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WHITE PAPER
Advanced Format Drive
Technology
How hard drive makers are taking the next step toward more reliable and
higher-capacity hard drives—and why you should care –PAUL LILLY

S
olid state drives (SSDs) might very well sector is made up of three parts: a Sync/ approximately 7 to 11 percent more disk ca-
be the future of storage, but mechani- DAM block header responsible for data ad- pacity, though don’t expect to suddenly gain
cal hard drives aren’t going the way of dressing, error correction code (ECC) tasked additional space by installing an Advanced
the dodo anytime soon. In fact, there’s a major with maintaining the integrity of the data Format drive. As WD explains it, “the in-
shift taking place in the underlying architec- within the sector, and a tiny inter-sector gap crease in disk space is not realized or gained
ture of HDDs, one that will result in greater between each block. Spread out over a 2TB in the drives today, but is the next move to
reliability and, eventually, higher capacities. hard drive, this arrangement breaks down larger capacity drives.”
Essentially a new formatting standard pro- into almost 4 billion sectors. That’s a lot of Put another way, hard drives are quickly
posed by the International Disk Drive Equip- overhead to contend with, and by expand- reaching the threshold where it doesn’t
ment and Materials Association (IDEMA), this ing the sector size to 4KB—equivalent to an make sense to add more capacity. That’s
long overdue change represents the biggest eightfold increase—hard drive makers are because the bigger the hard drive, the more
format shift in three decades, according to able to remove a large number of Sync/DAM important ECC becomes to ensure your data
hard drive makers. Every hard drive maker blocks, inter-sector gaps, and ECC blocks. stays error-free. Larger hard drives require
has committed to making the transition by Think of it as trimming the fat. a lot more space for ECC, and any small
early 2011, and Western Digital has already So, what’s the big deal? Larger hard gains in capacity at this point end up going
embraced the standard, which the company drives, for one. Western Digital tells us almost entirely to ECC, leaving very little
is calling Advanced Format. But what exactly that switching to 4K sectors translates into additional space for user data. But by reduc-
does this format shift entail?
Put simply, Advanced Format technology
changes how data is stored. Most of today’s HOW IT WORKS
hard drives store information in 512-byte
chunks called sectors, a scheme that made
sense when HDDs were measured in mega-
Legacy vs. Advanced Format Structure
bytes. But as capacities have ballooned in size,
Sector Gap
so too has the need for much larger sectors.
The next generation of hard drives will ad- Legacy
dress this issue by significantly increasing the 512 512 512 512 512 512 512 512
size of the sectors on the media to store 4,096 Bytes
bytes (4K) of data, and as you might have
heard, that could be a problem for Windows
Sync/DAM ECC
XP users (we’ll tell you why in a moment).

WHY THE NEED FOR CHANGE? Advanced Format

One reason why hard drive makers origi-
nally decided to format hard drives into 4096 Bytes (4K) Data
blocks of 512 bytes is because that was the
standard sector size of floppy disks. But now
Sync/DAM ECC
that HDDs are orders of magnitude more
capacious and have entered the terabyte
era, Advanced Format technology paves the Switching to 4K sectors solves two fundamental problems intrinsic to legacy 512-byte sec-
way for much better efficiency. tors. First, it allows hard drive makers to drastically reduce the number of Sync/DAM and
inter-sector gaps, resulting in much less wasted space. And second, it allows for longer ECC
To understand why, we need to look at blocks, better equipped to catch and eradicate data errors.
how sectors are composed. Each 512-byte

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 AUTOPSY

Sonos ZonePlayer S5
The Sonos Digital Music System is one of the best and least-expensive
ing the number of blocks, less overhead multi-room systems on the market today. We dismantled the ZonePlayer
is needed to maintain data integrity. To S5—the company’s first product to combine a network client, amplifier,
give you an idea of what we’re talking
and speakers in one box—too see what makes it tick.
about, it takes about 100 bytes of ECC
data for a 4K sector compared to 320
bytes for eight 512B sectors. That’s a
pretty significant savings when you’re
talking about multiple terabytes.
It should also be noted that larger
sectors makes it possible to develop
more efficient ECC schemes with longer
algorithms. Most errors have a tendency
to come clumped together in “bursts,”
and according to Western Digital, one of
the biggest benefits of Advanced Format
is that burst error correction is improved
50 percent through the use of larger ECC
code blocks.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS 3/4-inch Silk-dome

Tweeters
If you’re looking for a caveat, here it is. Users
of older operating systems—primarily
Windows XP—can expect a somewhat
4-inch
bumpy transition to Advanced Format. You Polypropylene
shouldn’t have any problem running an Woofer
Advanced Format drive on Windows Vista,
3-inch Aluminum-cone
Windows 7, any flavor of Mac OS X from Midranges
Tiger on up, and all Linux kernels released
after September 2009. Windows XP, on the
other hand, was developed before hard
drive makers decided on using 4K sectors.
To ensure backward compatibility,
Western Digital has implemented an emu- ETHERNET
PHY LAYER
lation scheme that maps eight 512B logical ZonePlayers
sectors into a single 4K physical sector. can operate
This is how all OSes will see the drive, on both wired
and wireless
and while WD claims the benefits remain, networks.
XP users will see a performance hit by as
much as 10 percent. That’s because before
Vista, Microsoft set the default partition to CPU AND DAC
start at sector 63, a number that isn’t divis- The S5’s core
ible by 8. Using eight-sector clusters in XP components include
a PowerPC 400 CPU
tends to result in misaligned partitions, and a Cirrus Logic
causing data to overlap across two 4K sec- CS5341 digital-to-
tors instead of one. analog converter.
Western Digital thought of this, too,
and has made available a software utility
designed to correct alignment issues. In
some cases, such as a clean install, you
may need to apply a jumper across certain CLASS D AMPLIFIER This ANTENNAS Sonos’s WI-FI ADAPTER Sonos’s
circuit board hosts a five- engineers put the S5’s wireless mesh network
pins, and if you’re using a cloning utility, channel Class D amp and three MIMO antennas is based on a proprietary
you’ll need to run WD’s alignment app the unit’s power supply down here so the metal flavor of 802.11n and is
even in Vista and Windows 7. If this all (eliminating the need for speaker grill wouldn’t powered by an Atheros
an external power brick). block the wireless signal. wireless chipset.
sounds overwhelming, don’t fret—West-
ern Digital has put together a handy chart
(http://bit.ly/7JGX22) detailing what you SUBMIT YOUR IDEA Ever wonder what the inside of a power supply looks like?
need to do for different configurations. Don’t take a chance on destroying your own rig; instead, let us do the dirty
work. Tell us what we should crack open for a future autopsy by writing to
comments@maximumpc.com.

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 R&D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE

HOW TOGuides to
Step-by-Step
Improving Your PC
THIS MONTH WINDOWS TIP OF THE MONTH

64 RECOVER FROM A SODA-SPILL

DISASTER
65 MANAGE YOUR MUSIC COLLECTION
WITH FOOBAR

CONTEXT-MENU CLUTTER

H
ey, Microsoft,
why is it that
we users have
such little control
over the contents of
the Windows context
menu? This menu,
which pops up when-
ever you right-click ALEX CASTLE
something, is one of ASSOICATE ONLINE
EDITOR
the most frequently
used menus in the whole operating system.
Software we install puts whatever items it

Windows 7 Service Pack One

wants in the list, and the only easy way to get
rid of them is to uninstall what might other-
wise be a very useful program.
Do you know what you have to do to
manually remove a useless item from the Microsoft has finally announced plans for the
context menu? First, you have to open the
registry editor by typing regedit into the Run
dialogue field. Next, you’ve got to navigate
first service pack for Windows 7, with a pos-
to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\
ContextMenuHandlers. Finally, you have sible release in Q4 2010. Don’t get your hopes
to delete the registry folder containing the
unwanted context item, which can be
nerve-wracking. up for Vista-level improvements from this pack,
So please, Microsoft, give us a better tool
for managing our context menu items. We’ll
use it responsibly—we promise.
though—according to Microsoft, it will bring

“only minor updates, among which are previ-

SUBMIT YOUR IDEA Have a great ous updates that are already delivered through

 idea for a How To project? Tell us

about it by writing to comments@
maximumpc.com. Windows Update.”
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 R&D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE

Recover from a Soda-Spill Disaster

There are few moments in life quite as the location and quantity of the spill. If
sickening as realizing that you’ve spilled it’s just a few drops on a keyboard, you
a beverage on one of your gadgets. The might be able to get away with prying
feeling can range from mild infuriation off the surrounding keys (image A) and
(spilling a Bud Light on your PlayStation wiping down the affected area. For this, we
controller) to near-coronary levels (knock- recommend alcohol swabs, which break
ing over a Mountain Dew: Code Red onto up stains and dry very quickly. You can get
your brand-new laptop). Either way, it’s enough to last for years for about $4 in the
never something you want to go through. first-aid section of a drug store, so get some
Because of that, we’ve put together a now, before you need them.
simple disaster plan for dealing with If it’s just a matter of washing down
beverage-soiled electronics. We hope you some keys, remember to wipe off both the
never have to use it, but if you do, you’ll keyboard and the keys that you’ve pried
be glad you read it. –ALEX CASTLE off. Your keyboard might be safe from
electrical harm, but if you don’t thoroughly

1
clean off every contaminated surface, your
ACT FAST keys will start to stick as the mess dries.
Yeah, we know. You’re pissed. If the spill doesn’t appear to be limited
You just splashed merlot on your to the surface of your device, then scrub
expensive gaming laptop. And while we up—it’s time for surgery.
do feel your pain, there’s no time to sit

3
around and pout. Every second you waste
is another second that whatever you’ve TAKE IT APART
spilled gets to dry into a sticky, short- You can’t clean a bespoiled device
circuiting, corrosive mess. So act fast. without first taking it apart. If the
Start by unplugging your gadget from thought of opening up your expensive toys B
the wall, if it’s plugged in. If it’s a laptop, scares you, that’s understandable, but just
remove the battery. If it’s a keyboard, remember that any chance is better than no force to pull apart than it should, check
disconnect it from the PC. Liquid will create chance at all, which is what you’ve got if again for hidden screws.
short-circuits inside your electronics, so you let that spill just sit there. Of course, if
getting it unplugged quickly will improve you don’t know which end of a screwdriver  Be careful to save all your screws as you go.
the chance of recovering your gadget intact. goes where, it might be worth calling a Don’t just throw them all into a coffee mug,
more electronically handy friend to help either, because most gadgets have several

2
you out. different-size screws in them, and you’ll need
ASSESS THE DAMAGE Using your tiny screwdriver (you do to remember which goes where when you put
Now that you’ve unplugged your have a tiny screwdriver, don’t you?) open up everything back together.
device, take a second to assess the device (image B). Obviously there’s no
one-size-fits-all  If something is particularly complicated,
and you’re afraid you won’t be able to put
A guide for taking
apart gadgets, it back when you’re done, grab a digital
but here are a camera and snap some photos before you
few guidelines start taking stuff apart.
to follow:
 Your ultimate goal is to expose any
 You may circuit boards or other electronics that
need to use might have gotten spilled on. If you’re
some force taking apart a laptop, this means you’ll
to pry apart need to isolate the motherboard and
your device, any daughterboards.
but be careful,

4
especially with
circuit boards. WASH IT OFF
If something Once you’ve exposed the circuitry
seems to be in your device, you’ll have to clean
taking more off the stain. If you can see that the stain

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 D

a little longer. The next step is to make sure

every part that you washed is completely
dry. It’s best to air dry it, since cloth or paper
towels can leave behind lint, although you
can speed up the process by packing the wet
C parts in a desiccant, such as silica gel or plain
old white rice. You can also speed the drying
process by using a fan or even a hair dryer,
is contained in a certain part of the board, you’ve got to fight fire with fire, so wash although if you do, be sure to do so from a
you can use alcohol swabs, as described that sucker off. Don’t scrub, just gently distance and using the low-heat setting, as
above, to clean it off (images C and D). wipe, and let the soapy water do its thing. you don’t want to warp the circuit board.
If an entire circuit board is soiled, you’ll When you’ve removed the stain, rinse Finally, once all the components are
need to resort to more drastic measures: off the soapy water. For the best chance of clean and dry, it’s time to put everything
completely disconnect it from the rest of success, you’ll want to rinse with distilled back together. Refer to your photographs if
the gadget and run it under soapy water. or deionized water, which can be bought you took them, and make sure that every-
Yes, that’s right, run it under water. at most supermarkets. Tap water will leave thing fits back together securely. We can’t
We’re all conditioned to want to keep our deposits on your circuit board when it dries. guarantee that your device will be working
electronics away from liquids, and that’s You’ll want to see whether your device again, but at least you’ll know you did
generally a good policy, but sometimes will work right away, but you’ll have to wait everything you could.

Manage Your Music with Foobar

1
Apple has done everything in its power MOVE YOUR SONGS AND be asked to select a UI configuration (image
to convince the public that when it comes A). Selecting Simple Playlist + Tabs from
ALBUMS FROM ITUNES
to music hardware and software, there’s the Main Layout box will set you up with a
only a single choice: the iPod and iTunes, First, you’ll need to download blank white screen, with the upper left-hand
respectively. And while we do admit that Foobar (www.foobar2000.org) and install it. corner tabbed “Default.” This is your starting
the iPod is an excellent MP3 player, we’re Since you’ve probably already got a huge point, and will eventually contain a list of
not so enamored with iTunes. That’s why collection of music stored on your PC, in music files to play. Right-clicking the Default
we’re going to show you how to use Foo- long-forgotten folders and playlists, you’re tab will allow you to create new tabs, which
bar, a popular open-source program with going to want to start by moving that music can be named anything you’d like.
a powerful, modular design, to manage into Foobar. There are a couple of ways to go The simplest way to play songs from
your music files, rip CDs, and even man- about doing this. iTunes is as follows: Open iTunes, and drag a
age your iPod. –ALAN FACKLER The first time you open Foobar, you’ll song or album to your desktop. Once there,

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 R&D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE

press OK, Foobar will You’ll now be asked which iTunes playlists
load all your music from you’d like to export (image C). By default, it
your music folder and will export all playlists.
you can browse through Finally, you’ll be asked to select an out-
it using either the Search put directory for the playlists. Choose one,
or Album List options that leave the rest of the settings untouched, and
have become available in hit Finish to save your playlists in
the Library menu. .m3u format.
Now that you’ve exported your playlists,

2
it’s time to load them into Foobar. In Foobar,
MOVE YOUR go to File and hit Load Playlist. Now, simply
PLAYLISTS find the playlists you exported with iTunes
A FROM ITUNES Export. Select whichever .m3u files you
If you want to transfer all want to import, and click Open. Foobar will
of your playlists to Foobar, automatically create new tabs for each one
just grab the files, and drag them into Foo- you’ll have to use a handy little program of your preset playlists.
bar’s interface. If you don’t want the song to called iTunes Export,
appear under the Default tab, simply create which you can download
a new tab. This drag and drop system will at http://bit.ly/ddNG02.
allow you to play any of your iPod songs in The program works
Foobar easily. You can create different tabs in three simple steps:
for different playlists, and populate those First, you select the
tabs with any songs you want to. iTunes library you want
But wait a minute. We know what you’re to export from. You do
thinking: “I have a 5,000-song library and 20 this by selecting the
playlists, I don’t want to sit around all day iTunes library.xml file,
dragging and dropping individual songs or which acts as a sort of
even albums!” Luckily, you won’t have to. To index for all of your
show Foobar where all your music is, click music files. Ours, for
Library > Configure from the main screen. In example, was located
the preferences window that pops up, you’ll at C:\My Documents\
see a field for Music Folders (image B); click My Music\iTunes\
the Add button, and select your root music iTunesMusicLibrary.xml.
folder. Now, check the Enabled button under Once you’ve found
Library Viewer Selection Playlist. When you your library, click Next.
C

3
CUSTOMIZE FOOBAR
One of Foobar’s greatest strengths
is its modularity, which allows you
to add whatever functionality you want to
the program, without bloat. Every person’s
ideal Foobar setup is different, but we’ll
show you how to get started modifying
yours, by highlighting some add-on
modules that will give it more of the look
and feel of iTunes.
The first thing we’ll install is a module
called Columns UI, which can be found at
http://yuo.be/columns.php. This user-
interface module includes customizable
columns that alter the look of Foobar,
adding iTunes-esque genre, artist, and
album navigation (image D). Like other
downloadable add-ons for Foobar, Columns
UI will download as a compressed file. We
B recommend using 7-Zip to unzip the file.

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 Program Files\foobar2000\components.
Now that you’ve installed the add-on,
re-open Foobar. A new user-interface selection
dialog will appear, which will give you the op-
tion to select Columns UI. Browse through the
different interfaces until you find a look that
works for you. Already, Foobar’s UI is looking a
lot less bland.
Note that there are many options for
enhancing the look of Foobar that go beyond
adding interface elements. At the highest level,
skins can be added to dramatically alter the
look and feel of Foobar. However, skinning
your player is a bit more complicated than
D adding a simple module. Creating an awe-
some-looking player is a topic of discussion
in countless online communities, and those
experienced with Foobar’s scripting language
have come away with some amazing results
(images E and F).
Skins are available all over the web, but
many of them require various prerequisite
modules for proper use. Below are some
plugins that are commonly required before
installing skins: 

 foo_ui_columns.dll – Used in this tutorial.

 foo_ui_panels.dll – Gives Foobar floating
windows rather than columns. A must-have
for new skins.

 foo_cwb_hooks.dll – Allows global title

formatting.

 foo_uie_powerpanels.dll – Creates a sepa-

rate Seek panel and Volume panel.

 foo_uie_quicksearch.dll – Allows you to

E search for a playlist of your choice.

 foo_uie_lyrics – Panel used to show down-

loaded lyrics.

If you want to see more, visit http:// cus-

tomize.org/foobar and check out tons of great
interfaces, each with links to download the
base skin and a list of modules used. Pay atten-
tion to the prerequisites, though; the majority
of these skins won’t work without them!

4
RIP MUSIC FROM CDS
USING FOOBAR
Next, we’ll walk you through the
process of ripping MP3s from a CD using
Foobar. First, pop your CD into your
F optical drive. In Foobar, scroll over to

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 R&D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE

which songs you would you to do the same thing, without having
like to rip from your to subject yourself to Apple-authored
album. All of the songs software. Foobar is a great example of this,
will be checked by although you’ll need go through a few
default, so deselect any steps before you can sync it to your iPod.
songs you don’t want to First, you’ll need to download an
save. You can also edit iPod-manager plugin known as Foo_Dop,
the artist name and al- which allows you to not only transfer your
bum title, as well as fill music, but also organize your playlists and
in any other relevant albums and synch them to your iPod with
information, including little effort.
disc number, genre, You can download the plugin at
and date. When you’re http://yuo.be/wiki/dop:start. Once again,
done, hit Rip.  installation is as simple as extracting the
Next, you’ll see the foo_dop.dll file to your Foobar components
Converter Setup tab directory, and then restarting Foobar. Plug
(image H). There are your iPod into the computer.
a couple of interest- If you’re using either an iPhone or iPod
ing and customizable touch, you will need to open the iPod Man-
options listed in this ager setting in the Properties window, and
tab, but most of them check the box that reads Enable Mobile
can remain untouched. Devices Support.
The Output Format With Foo_Dop installed, you can
tab will allow you to simply click File > iPod > Load Library
choose what type of (image I), and voilà! The entire contents of
G media file you would your iPod is now displayed right there on
like to export the the screen. Now, the changes you make
songs as. Foobar will to your library, whether you’re deleting
default to .wav files, but you can songs or creating new playlists, will be
choose from a wide variety of transferred over to your iPod. This makes
options. Assuming you’d like to it extremely easy to manage and organize
rip to .mp3, you’ll have to have your tracks and playlists.
the LAME encoder installed on
your machine. You can learn
more about LAME at http://lame.
sourceforge.net.
A second important field in
the Converter Setup window is
labeled Output Path. This allows
you to select the location on your
computer where the finished files
will be saved. When you’re done,
hit OK.
When Foobar is done ripping
your album, a Converter Output
screen will pop up, which will
allow you to access your ripped
files directly.
H

5
MANAGE YOUR IPOD
File and select Open Audio CD. A pop-up USING FOOBAR
menu will appear asking you to select a We all know how easy it I
drive. Make your selection and hit Rip. is to synch an iPod (Apple product) with
This will bring you to the Rip Audio iTunes (Apple software). But there are
CD tab (image G), where you can choose plenty of open-source programs that allow

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 REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
IN THE LAB

REVIEWS
Tested. Reviewed.
Verdictized.
INSIDE

72 MAINGEAR SHIFT PC

74 XFX RADEON HD 5830

76 AVADIRECT X1800 LAPTOP

78 DELL INSPIRION ZINO HD 400

80 ASUS EEE 1201N NETBOOK

82 COOLIT ECO A.L.C.

84 LENOVO IDEACENTRE
D400 HOME SERVER

86 SAMSUNG P2770HD MONITOR

87 NZXT PANZERBOX

88 ROCKETFISH WIRELESSHD
ADAPTER

90 CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER WOW

WIRELESS HEADSET
91 ASSASSIN’S CREED II

ONLINE

 EVEN MORE REVIEWS!

 BEST OF THE BEST

 BREAKING TECH NEWS

 NO BS PODCAST

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 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Maingear Shift
Tri-SLI Fermi and Gulftown will
make any boy smile

I
t’s no secret that Nvidia’s GeForce only SATA 3Gb/s.
GTX 480 cards are the hottest piece of Since there’s no room
technology people want to gawk at right for an add-in card, no
now. Hell, we were barely able to obtain one SATA 6Gb/s for you!
of these coveted babies for our feature on The GTX 480
Fermi this month. cards are the high-
So we were pretty impressed to crack light here, though.
open Maingear’s new Shift system and find Although ATI’s
three GTX 480 boards running in tri-SLI. That Radeon HD 5970 is
the company could rate such bounty is testa- still the fastest card,
ment to its street cred among power users. the GTX 480 is the
The Shift isn’t just about the Fermi cards, current fastest single-
though. Maingear also managed to get that GPU card. The GTX
other big star of the PC world in for the ride: 480 especially shines
Intel’s Core i7-980X, which, with help from the in DX11 titles at high
Acetek water cooler, Maingear pushes from resolution with an-
the stock 3.33GHz to 4.2GHz. tialiasing turned on.
Also in the box is 6GB of Kingston Even though our vid-
Hyper-X DDR3/1333, a massive 1,500-watt eocard benchmarks
Silverstone PSU, and an EVGA Classified X58 have shown the GTX
SLI motherboard. For storage, there’s Crucial’s 480 to be a cut above the Radeon HD 5870 Maingear’s slick new custom enclosure inverts
new C300 drive coupled with a 2TB Western cards, the gaming scores from the Shift were the three GPUs to aid in cooling.
Digital Caviar Black drive. The C300 is roughly even with those of the Digital Storm
noteworthy because it’s one of the first SSDs HailStorm rig we reviewed in May, which howl from the GTX 480s lets you know your
to support SATA 6Gb/s data rates. And that’s featured a three-way CrossFireX config. videocards are working. The hot exhaust
where we ran into one of the first faux pas Like the HailStorm, the Shift made a mock- from cards also makes the rear top of the
in the system. This iteration of the Classified ery of our zero-point’s gaming scores, with case uncomfortably warm. We saw 120 F
X58 SLI doesn’t support SATA 6Gb/s speeds, performance leads of more than 60 percent. temperatures during tests
In our apps tests, the Shift’s scores were What Maingear gives you over the Digital
close to the HailStorm’s scores, but still slightly Storm is a pretty good price break. While the
SPECIFICATIONS behind. That’s likely due to the HailStorm’s HailStorm pushed the $7,800 mark, the Shift
Processor Intel 3.33GHz Core i7-980X slightly higher 4.4GHz overclock. That 5 per- eases in below $6,900. That’s quite a savings.
(overclocked to 4.2GHz)
cent clock difference amounted to scores that Of course, for many folks that’s like getting
Mobo EVGA Classified X58 SLI
were roughly 1 percent to 2 percent slower. a $10 million price break on a $60 million
RAM 6GB DDR3/1600 in tri-channel mode
What are the Shift’s major flaws? Heat Gulfstream G550 jet—you still can’t afford it.
Videocard Three GeForce GTX 480 in tri-SLI and noise. With the Digital Storm HailStorm, But for those folks who can, the Maingear Shift
Soundcard Onboard Realtek a double (but ungainly) radiator system is a pretty sweet deal. –GORDON MAH UNG
Storage 256MB Crucial C300 SSD, cooled the CPU and three Radeon HD 5870
2TB Western Digital Black
cards to make for near-silent computing. The
Optical LG Blu-ray combo drive
Shift is equally quiet running CPU-heavy
Case/PSU Custom / Silverstone 1,500W PSU
apps. But once you crank up a game, the

9
BENCHMARKS
ZERO POINT VERDICT
Vegas Pro 9 (sec) 3,049 2,136
Lightroom 2.6 (sec) 356 290 MAINGEAR SHIFT
ProShow 4 (sec) 1,112 886
Reference 1.6 (sec) 2,113 1,480 + MAIN STREET - WALL STREET
STALKER: CoP (fps) 42.0 78.9 Tri-SLI Fermi and Loud in gaming; puts
4GHz Gulftown out enough heat to
Far Cry 2 (fps) 114.4 187.8 equals pure joy. cook bacon.
0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked to 1,750MHz, on a $6,885, www.maingear.com
Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate.

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 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

XFX Radeon HD 5830

A polished, if pricey, take on AMD’s oddball GPU

Y
ou have to give AMD credit for try- XFX’s HD 5830 perform? We dropped the
ing to make lemonade out of lemons. card into our graphics test system to find
The Radeon HD 5830 is the odd out, comparing it to the Radeon HD 5850
duck of AMD’s 5000-series GPUs. The card and HD 5770. All our tests were run at
itself is as long as the high-end HD 5870, 1920x1200 with 4xAA.
and consumes more power at idle than the The card performed pretty much as
Radeon HD 5850. But that’s what you’d you’d expect—somewhat faster than the
expect of a card built on a “salvaged” chip. HD 5770, but noticeably slower than the
Salvaged chips are produced by HD 5850. It’s also $100 more than a 5770,
taking chips that fail to pass muster as and just about $50 less than the Radeon
the highest-end part and selling them as HD 5850. The performance was closer to
lower-end parts. This can be seen in the an HD 5770 across the board. More nota-
Radeon HD 5830, which has 1,120 stream bly, the HD 5830 consumed about 15W
processors active, as opposed to 1,440 for more at idle than the HD 5850.
the HD 5850 or 1,600 for the 5870. Ultimately, it looks like the HD 5830
Unlike AMD’s lower-end HD 5770, is a pared-to-the-bone salvage HD 5870
which uses the Juniper GPU, with 1.05 that AMD decided to offer at a gap-filling
billion transistors and 800 stream proces- price point. The performance is about right
sors, the 5830 sports the same 2.15-billion- for the specs—certainly better than an HD
transistor GPU as the 5870/5850, with more 5770—but the price really needs to come
functional units disabled. down at least $20–$30 before we’d recom-
The potential performance bottleneck mend it. And don’t forget: You’ll actually
of the 5830 isn’t fewer computational need a larger case than you would with a
units. The HD 5830 has only 56 texture HD 5850. –LOYD CASE
units and 16 ROPs, as compared to the 72
texture units and 32
ROPs of the Radeon BENCHMARKS
HD 5850. This ulti- XFX Radeon XFX Radeon XFX Radeon
mately is what may HD 5830 HD 5870 HD 5770
3DMark Vantage Extreme 6,229 6,579 4,661
limit throughput.
3DMark Vantage Performance 14,425 14,416 10,963
To sum up: The
Unigine Heaven (fps) 19 23 17
Radeon HD 5830 is
Battle Forge / AA on (fps) 30 39 24
very much a cut-
FC2 / Action AA on (fps) 42 53 38
down Radeon HD
FC2 / Ranch Long, AA on (fps) 47 61 42
5870 on a large board
HAWX / AA on (fps) 50 58 42
with higher idle pow-
STALKER: CoP / AA, tess on (fps) 53 68 47
er than the slightly
Crysis / AA on (fps) 21 25 17
more expensive HD
5850—and with per- Best scores are bolded. All of our tests were run at 1920x1200, with 4x AA where noted. Our test bed has
a 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition on an Asus P6X58D Premium with 6GB of DDR3/1333 and 64-bit
formance that’s likely Windows 7 Ultimate.
to be much lower.
XFX’s take on the HD 5830 adds some

6
flair to this unlikely and still overpriced
graphics card. The cooler on the GPU and VERDICT
memory is shorter than in AMD’s refer- XFX RADEON HD 5830
ence design. So while the actual board
is as long as an HD 5870 (10.6 inches), + LOST - LOST IN SPACE
the shorter cooler does make for a less Good performance; Priced too high for the
bulky product. XFX delivers its HD 5830 XFX warranty; inter- performance; needs
esting cooler design. more space than a 5850.
at stock clock speeds: 800MHz core and
1,000MHz memory clocks.
$260, www.xfxforce.com
Given these limitations, how does

74 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 2010 | www.maximumpc.com

 It’s just like a Radeon
HD 5870 but with a ton
of transistors turned off.

www.maximumpc.com | JUN 2010 | MAXIMUMPC | 75

 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

AVADirect X1800
Big size, big performance, big price

I
n September 2009, we saw AVADirect
push the boundaries of portable comput-
ing with its honkin’ Core i7-975 Extreme
Edition–equipped D900F desktop replacement.
That behemoth was both a back breaker (at 15
pounds) and a benchmark buster (at least in our
applications tests).
This month, we’re presented with AVA-
Direct’s X1800F—a rig that’s similarly monstrous
but boasts a completely different character. The
X1800F features a Core i7-820QM, a true mobile
quad-core part. Intel’s Clarksfield chips have
obvious advantages in a mobile platform, includ-
ing a lower price and a much lower TDP (thermal
design point)—45W max vs. 130W—than the The X1800’s keyboard is
desktop Nehalems. There’s also more emphasis bordered by a row of touch-
sensitive buttons across the
on Turbo Boost. So, although the i7-820QM has a top and eight programmable
base clock of 1.73GHz, it can theoretically reach buttons for gaming macros
3.06GHz in single-threaded apps. Photoshop along the side.
is our only mostly single-threaded application
benchmark, and you can see from the numbers 79 percent and 87 percent in Far Cry Duty 2 and evident in its other appointments. Whereas
that the X1800F performed 20 percent better in Call of Duty 4, respectively. Naturally, our zero- the D900F had more of a workstation vibe, the
that test than our 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo zero-point point’s GTX 260M was even less of a competitor. X1800 has some aesthetic flash. The mammoth
rig did. But in the multithreaded tests, where the Even at the X1800’s native res of 1920x1080, 17.25x12x2.5-inch chassis has a mirror-black
X1800F didn’t have the full advantage of Turbo with performance set to very high and overall finish inside and out and is accented with LED-
Boost, the applications scores were even more quality set to ultra high, we saw an average lights that cycle through different colors when
punishing—with the X1800F achieving leads in 55.4fps in Far Cry 2. Impressive for a notebook. the “light show” is initiated. The chiclet keyboard
excess of 50 percent—such is the power of those The X1800’s emphasis on gaming is is flanked on the left by eight programmable
two extra cores, plus HyperThreading, plus a gaming buttons. An HDMI-in port lets you run
superior microarchitecture. SPECIFICATIONS your game console on the notebook’s glossy
Of course, when compared to the 3.33GHz CPU 1.73GHz Core i7-820QM 18.5-inch HD screen. Or use the HDMI-out for
Core i7-975 in AVADirect’s D900F, the X1800F RAM 8GB DDR3/1066MHz playing games or even Blu-ray movies on an
gets soundly beat in the apps, by 28 percent (in Chipset Intel PM55 external display.
Photoshop) to 39 percent (in MainConcept). Flip- Drives Crucial 256GB SSD, WD 640GB Sadly, the X1800 could barely hold its charge
Scorpio (5,400rpm)
ping from apps to games though, the X1800F has for an hour when playing a standard-def DVD
Optical LG Blu-ray combo drive
the upper hand, thanks to its two GeForce GTX (HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW)
in power-saving mode. And this sucker is heavy,
285M videocards in SLI. While this config offsets topping 15 pounds with its power brick. But if
GPU Two Nvidia GeForce GTX 285M in SLI
any power savings achieved by the mobile you like to LAN party, this is far better solution
Ports VGA, HDMI, HDMI in, Ethernet, three
CPU—this would be a perfect place for Nvidia’s USB, one USB/eSATA, FireWire, than lugging around both a PC and a screen,
Optimus technology, if you ask us—the config headphone, mic, line-in, 7-in-1 media not to mention peripherals—and it gives you
reader, Express Card/34 slot
pays off handsomely in games, turning the tables performance commensurate to
Lap/Carry 12 lb, 10.8 oz / 15 lb, 3.6 oz
on the D900F’s single GTX 280M with wins of its girth. –KATHERINE STEVENSON

BENCHMARKS

9
ZERO POINT

Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) 1,320 780 VERDICT

Photoshop CS3 (sec) 153 127
Proshow Producer (sec) 1,524 878 AVADIRECT X1800
MainConcept (sec) 2,695 1,751
Far Cry 2 (fps) 32.7 61.9 + THE BIG LEBOWSKI - BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE
Call of Duty 4 (fps) 58.2 129.4 (+122.3%) Mobile quad-core rocks; Size and weight aren’t
Battery Life 100.0 61 (-39%) best gaming performance all that portable; poor
from a portable; fully battery life; costs more
0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% equipped for any chore. than some desktops.

Our zero point notebook is an iBuypower M865TU with a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo T9900, 4GB DDR3/1066 RAM, a 500GB Seagate hard drive, a GeForce GTX 260M, $3,950, www.avadirect.com
and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Far Cry 2 tested at 1680x1050 with 4x AA; Call of Duty 4 tested at 1680x1050 with 4x AA and anisotropic filtering.

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 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Dell Inspiron Zino HD 400

Can this mini PC handle fat, bloated Adobe
and Apple code?

W
e’ve come to realize that there is Blu-ray, and streaming of any high-def con-
no single ideal build for a home- tent was terribly choppy. We had high hopes
theater PC. Some folks want an that the dual-core Athlon X2 would do
HD tuner, while others want Blu-ray. Some better, but it didn’t. While the Zino HD could
even expect their HTPC to function as a play Blu-ray flawlessly, the unit annoyingly
full-tilt boogie gaming rig. Then there are dropped frames when playing HD streamed
the users who want nothing more than the from websites—even when fully buffered.
ability to browse the web on their glorious What’s the deal? Blame bad, unopti-
60-inch TV set and dive into the vast sea of mized code in Adobe’s Flash. Even Adobe’s
streaming content. GPU-accelerated Flash beta didn’t help
For these latter folks, Dell’s Inspiron Zino out the Zino HD (it didn’t help the Polywell
HD seems like a perfect fit. Like a chubby Giada, either.) As part of our evaluation,
Mac Mini, the Zino HD is quiet, small, and we set up the Giada, the Zino HD, and a
easy to tuck away in the AV rack. It’s outfitted Gateway Core i3-based SX2840 PC with
with a dual-core 1.5GHz Athlon X2 3250e, integrated graphics side by side. With all
2GB of DDR2/667, and AMD’s 780G chipset three playing the same content on the same
with integrated Radeon HD 3200 graph- network segment, only the Gateway’s Core
ics. Instead of relying on a diminutive (and i3 ran without a hitch. The Zino HD and
performance-sapping) 2.5-inch drive, the Giada both choked on 1080p. Even playing
Inspiron Zino HD can fit a full-size 3.5-inch a local QuickTime movie trailer in 1080p
desktop drive. Our review model featured tripped up both the Zino HD and Giada.
a 250GB drive, but options up to 1TB are of- Here, the blame lies with the craptastic
fered, and we see no reason why a 2TB drive QuickTime player, which has no GPU accel-
could not be used. eration and pegged both cores at 70 percent
The unit has Gigabit Ethernet, two eSATA during playback. With the GPU-accelerated
ports, VGA, HDMI, analog audio–out, and mic Windows Media Player 11, we were able to
in on its behind. In front, the Zino has two play the file just fine.
USB ports, a headphone jack, and a multi- You could blame Adobe and Apple, but
format card reader. Unfortunately, there’s no the harsh reality is that the Zino HD doesn’t
Wi-Fi as standard but 802.11g can be added have the CPU horsepower to get the job
for $25, and 802.11n for $45. done with today’s apps. That may change
Although the Zino HD can be used as a in the next 12 months, but it’s a pretty big
mini desktop PC anywhere, the inclusion negative against what would otherwise be
of HDMI instead of DVI makes it pretty a pretty sweet HTPC.
clear that the unit is meant to be connected For folks with 720p, the Zino HD would
to an HDTV. But why use a PC when so be fine, but how many people are sticking
many excellent streamers like the Roku with that tired-old standard? –GORDON MAH UNG
and WD Live! are already available for a lot
less? The HTPC’s strength is that it has 100

6
percent fidelity with everything on the net.
Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo, and, umm, those VERDICT
unmentionable websites can all be viewed
DELL INSPIRON ZINO HD 400
from an HTPC. You can’t do that with any
streaming box today. + LOST IN SPACE - LOST
That’s how it should work—in theory,
Small and quiet enough Low-clocked Athlon
anyway. One problem we ran into with the for easy living-room X2 doesn’t have the
sexy Polywell Giada Ion-100 (reviewed deployment; low price. juice to run unopti-
mized code well.
March 2010) involved its lackluster dual-
core Atom 330. The Giada could barely play $325, www.dell.com

78 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 2010 | www.maximumpc.com

BENCHMARKS SPECIFICATIONS
Dell Inspiron Zino Polywell Giada Ion-100 Processor AMD 1.5GHz Athlon X2
Ports Four USB 2.0, two eSATA, Gigabit, VGA,
Photoshop CS3 (sec) 449 552
HDMI, mic in, stereo out, headphone
Main Concept (sec) 7,080 8,858 out, card reader
3DMark 2003 2,540 3,371 RAM 2GB DDR2/667 in two SO-DIMM slots
Quake III (fps) 192 118
Graphics Integrated Radeon HD 3200
Quake 4 (fps) 28.6 29
Storage 250GB Western Digital 7,200rpm 3.5-
inch hard drive
Optical HL-DT-ST GTION

Case/PSU Proprietary / external power brick

The Zino HD 400 is dead silent,

and at about 8x8x3.5 inches is
easy to hide just about anywhere
you want to put it.

www.maximumpc.com | JUN 2010 | MAXIMUMPC | 79

 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Asus Eee 1201N

Proof positive that not all
netbooks are created equal

W
hat differentiates one netbook model
from any other of the same size?
There are only a few flavors, after all:
last-gen netbooks, with Atom N270 or N280 pro-
cessors and Windows XP; current-gen netbooks,
with Pine Trail Atom processors and Windows
7; and Ion-based netbooks, with Nvidia mobile
graphics and middlin’ battery life. Well, you
could wait for second-gen Ion netbooks, which
promise excellent gaming power and 10-hour
battery life. Or you could go for the Asus Eee
1201N, which offers first-gen Ion performance Yes, Virginia,
and—get this—a friggin’ dual-core processor. there is a dual-
The 12-inch 1201N is the first netbook we’ve core netbook
with (relatively)
tested with an honest-to-goodness dual-core decent gaming
processor inside—Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom N330, performance.
which you may remember from bare-bones
Ion boards and nettops. Paired with the N330
is Nvidia’s first-gen Ion platform, which turns a
12-inch netbook into something approaching a
gaming platform (if 7-year-old titles fit your idea and DDR3 memory. The 1201N even outperformed At $500, the 1201N hits the upper end of the
of games). The last Ion device we reviewed, the the Toshiba Satellite T115 ultraportable (reviewed netbook range. But that buys you Ion graphics,
HP Mini 311 (February 2010), used a single-core March 2010) in everything but Photoshop. Put that dual-core processing power, 2GB of RAM, a real
N280, while upcoming second-gen Ion netbooks in your calabash and smoke it, netbook haters. version of Windows 7, and a screen that can
will use single-core Atom N450s. So is there a Unfortunately, that processing power comes display 720p video. Next-gen Ion systems will
niche for a dual-core Atom netbook with Ion? at a price. The 1201N’s six-cell Li-ion battery have better battery life, but will they be dual-
We’re gonna say yes. The Eee 1201N seems withstood our full-screen DVD-quality video- core? We’ve gotta give Asus credit for releasing
like the electronic offspring of a notebook/net- playback test for just three hours, 11 minutes. a 12-inch netbook with moxie and proving that
book union. With a 12.1-inch LED-backlit screen In an age of Pine Trail netbooks, which get more Atom isn’t dead yet. –NATHAN EDWARDS
at 1366x768, 2GB of RAM (finally!), a 250GB than seven and a half hours from a six-cell,
HDD, and Windows 7 Home Premium, it trends that’s a major bummer. Still, until second-gen SPECIFICATIONS
more toward the usability end of the netbook Ion netbooks (with their Optimus battery-saving Processor Intel Atom N330 Dual Core @1.6GHz
spectrum than the portability end—although at a tech) are available, that’s still ample time for a bit Chipset Nvidia Ion LE
lap weight of three pounds, 3.5 ounces, it’s hardly of fun on the plane. Graphics Nvidia Ion LE
a backbreaker. The 1201N’s chassis is everything we’d Display 12.1-inch LED-backlit WXGA LCD
The dual-core Atom really shined in our expect from an Asus seashell-type netbook: @1366x768
Photoshop and MainConcept tests, besting our thin, decent chiclet keyboard, responsive touch RAM 2GB DDR2/533
zero-point system by 28 percent and 66 percent, pad, and smudge-prone glossy-black finish. It’s Storage 250GB 5,400rpm HDD
respectively, and setting netbook performance re- attractive, though not particularly innovative. It’s Ports Three USB 2.0, HDMI-out, VGA-out,
SD reader, audio
cords. The Ion-powered graphics performance was also nice that Asus didn’t gimp the 1201N with a
Wireless 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
slightly lower than that of the HP Mini 311, most Starter version of Windows 7, and both SO-DIMM
Lap/Carry 3 lb, 3.5 oz / 3 lb, 11.5 oz
likely due to the Mini 311’s faster front-side bus slots are easily accessible for RAM upgrades.

9
BENCHMARKS
ZERO POINT
VERDICT
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) 708 550
Main Concept (min) 251 151 ASUS EEE 1201N
3DMARK03 710 4,070 (+473.2%)
Quake 3 (fps) 60.9 121.4
+ MOXIE - BOXY
Quake 4 (fps) 3.6 33(+816.7%)
(+816.7%) Dual-core performance; Middlin’ battery
thin profile; comfortable life; hard drive not
Battery Life (mins) 255 191 (-25.1%) keyboard; Ion graphics; easily upgradable;
0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 2GB RAM. smudge-prone.
Our zero point netbook is a Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB of DDR2/667 RAM, a 160GB hard drive, Intel GMA950 integrated graphics $500, www.asus.com
chipset, and Windows XP Home SP3.

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 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

CoolIt Eco A.L.C.

Eco ekes out a win, but is air better?

B
ack in the prehistoric times terribly complicated. The fan and
(April 2009), we reviewed the radiator mount with four screws in
Domino A.L.C, an all-in-one place of your rear exhaust fan. The
liquid CPU-cooling system with three heat exchanger’s mounting screws
different speeds and an LCD screen. slide to three different positions to
It worked well and was easy to install, accommodate Sockets 775/1156/1366
but the screen (and attendant fan (with a separate mounting bracket
control) was, in our opinion, poorly for AMD CPUs), and the box includes
thought-out. To see the apparatus, backplates for each socket. One note:
your case needed a side window, and Although the manual we received
to use it, you’d need to remove your says to hand-tighten each screw, we
side panel entirely—in which case, only got good results when we bot-
why not just use air? But the Domino tomed out all four mount screws, a
performed well, so we let it slide. process that puts a fair bit of strain on
Those features are gone in CoolIT’s the motherboard. CoolIT told us it’s
new Eco A.L.C. In fact, the Eco bears updating the manual to reflect this.
a strong resemblance to Corsair’s We tested the Eco against the Cor-
H50 all-in-one that we reviewed in sair H50 (its logical competitor), our
September 2009. champion air cooler (the Cooler Mas-
Like the Corsair H50, the Eco con- ter Hyper 212+), and the stock Intel
sists of a heat exchanger and pump cooler. And the Eco performed well.
that mount directly to the CPU socket, Idle temperatures were 3 C lower than
a radiator connected to the pump by with the stock cooler, while at 100
a closed cooling loop, and a 12cm percent burn, temps were more than
fan that connects to the radiator. The 16 C lower. But the Corsair H50’s idle
radiator and fan replace the rear 12cm temps were 2 C lower than the Eco’s,
or 14cm exhaust fan that’s standard in and its burn temps averaged just a
most ATX cases. The pump is powered quarter of a degree higher—within the
by a 3-pin connector attached to any margin of error. Both all-in-one water
motherboard fan header, while the coolers, though, (to our surprise) were
exhaust fan has a 4-pin PWM con- pantsed by the Hyper 212+.
nector and attaches to the CPU_FAN It’s worth noting that the Eco we
header—just like with the H50. derived these results from was the
Unlike the fan on the H50, which second one we tested. The first had
Corsair recommends be mounted some sort of mechanical defect and
as an intake, CoolIT advises you didn’t perform well. Regardless,
to mount the Eco A.L.C.’s fan as an we were surprised by the ultimate
exhaust fan, just like the one it’s results. We’re pleased that the $75
replacing in your case. This has the Eco performs almost identically to
added benefit of not screwing up your the $80 Corsair H50, but surprised
case’s existing airflow. The fan is pre- that both are spanked by a $30 air
attached to the radiator with screws, cooler. However, the liquid coolers are
but is easily removable if you prefer potentially quieter. We like the Eco,
your own fan or just want to flip it to but the amount of force needed to fully
an intake fan. The radiator also comes tighten the heat exchanger, as well as
with mounting holes on the opposite the noisy stock fan, keep this all-in-one
side, so you can add a second fan. from a Kick Ass award.
The Eco’s install process isn’t –NATHAN EDWARDS

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 9
BENCHMARKS
CoolIt Eco Corsair H50 CM Hyper212+ Stock
VERDICT
Idle (C) 31.75 29.5 27.75 35
COOLIT ECO A.L.C.
100% Burn (C) 45.75 46 44.5 62.25
Best scores are bolded. Idle temperatures were measured after an hour of inactivity; load temperatures were
measured after an hour’s worth of CPU Burn-In (four instances). Test system consists of a stock-clock Q6700 + ECCO THE DOLPHIN - ECOTERRORISM
processor on an EVGA 680i motherboard inside a Corsair 800D case with stock fans.
Compares well to its Can’t beat Best of Best
competitors; relativelly air cooler in perfor-
simple install. mance or price; noisy
stock fan.

$75, www.coolitsystems.com

The Eco A.L.C. eschews

the mostly useless LCD
display of the Domino,
its predecessor.

www.maximumpc.com | JUN 2010 | MAXIMUMPC | 83

 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Lenovo IdeaCentre D400 Home Server

Been there, done that

O
ne sure sign that Windows Home
Server has gone mainstream: You
can buy Lenovo’s IdeaCentre D400
at Walmart. The D400 is remarkably similar in
looks and features to Acer’s Aspire easyStore,
which you’ll also find on the big-box retailer’s
website (yes, HP’s MediaSmart Server LX195 is
there, too).
Intel’s Atom 230 processor appears to be
the CPU of choice among mainstream home-
server builders, since Acer, HP, and Lenovo
have all tapped the 1.6GHz chip. Lenovo
pairs it with 1GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory
(the motherboard is capable of addressing
2GB of memory, but there’s only one slot). The
D400 ships with either one or two 1TB drives;
the machine we reviewed was outfitted with
two (thereby enabling Microsoft’s Drive Ex-
tender Technology to automatically duplicate
shared folders across multiple drives). That
leaves two internal, hot-swappable, 3.5-inch
bays for future expansion.
Fill those bays and you can add even
more storage using the eSATA port and the
four external USB 2.0 ports in back (there’s a
Gigabit Ethernet port there, too). Plug a drive
into the fifth USB port (in front) and push a
button and the server will inhale its contents
and automatically sort the files for storage
in the appropriate locations (JPEGs in the
shared Photos folder, MPEGs in the shared
Videos folder, and so on). Acer’s easyStore
servers boast a very similar feature. A low-power, single-core CPU and a paucity of memory will hold back Lenovo’s home server
Performance-wise, Lenovo’s box proved when it comes to multitasking.
to be just a little faster than our home-brew
machine in our real-world tests, where
we use a stopwatch to time both read and works SMCGS24 gigabit switch. cess client utility, too, because it simplifies
write operations. The home-brew rig is a The WHS add-in universe has grown tre- the mapping of server shares. But unlike the
Lab cast-off consisting of an Asus A8R32 mendously since the OS was first shipped, offerings from Acer and HP, Lenovo doesn’t
motherboard, a 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 but that doesn’t lessen our disappointment provide a DLNA-certified media server; and
FX-60 CPU, and 2GB of DDR-400 memory. in Lenovo’s slim collection of bundled unlike HP’s MediaSmart home servers, you
We connected both machines to a Gigabit apps. Of the apps it offers, we like the nifty can’t schedule Mac backups—at least not
Ethernet home network utilizing a Netgear utility that augments the Windows Home right out of the box. –MICHAEL BROWN
WNDR3700 router and a 24-port SMC Net- Server console, reporting stats such as CPU

7
utilization, memory and stor-
age consumption, CPU and VERDICT
BENCHMARKS motherboard temps, voltages,
Lenovo IdeaCentre Home-brew Windows
D400 Home Server Home Server and fan speed. You’ll also find LENOVO IDEACENTRE D400 HOME SERVER
Small Files Upload (min:sec) 0:29 0:36 the ubiquitous iTunes server
Large Files Upload (min:sec) 0:57 1:03 and the freeware power-man- + MULTI-CORE - SINGLE-CORE
Small Files Download (min:sec) 0:15 0:21 agement add-in LightsOut Hot-swappable drive Single-core Atom;
Large Files Download (min:sec) 0:50 1:01 (which will put the server bays; one-touch USB only 1GB RAM; lacks
backup; handy mapping a DLNA-certified
into hibernation when it’s software for client PCs. media server.
Best scores are bolded. Home-brew server based on an Asus A8R-32 motherboard, 2.6GHz AMD
Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU, and 2GB of DDR-400 memory. We used the contents of Maximum PC’s not in use) pre-installed. We
November 2007 CD for the small-file testing and a single 2.79GB file for the large-file testing. All $530, www.lenovo.com
scores are averages of three transfer trials. appreciate Lenovo’s EasyAc-

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 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Samsung P2770HD
Strong on features, weak on performance

W
e had high hopes for Samsung’s
P2770HD. After all, its 23-inch
little brother rose to the top of a
sea of crappy TN displays in our December
2009 roundup. With its street price of $400,
the P2770HD looked like a strong value for
folks with non-critical applications.
We stand by our opinion that twisted-
nematic (TN) technology is inferior to
in-plane switching (IPS), as well as our
recommendation that you shouldn’t rely on
a TN-panel monitor for critical applications
such as photo and video editing (especially
if your livelihood depends on it). On the
other hand, TN panels like this one do de-
liver unarguably faster pixel response rates,
which is great for gaming, and lately, they’ve
become insanely cheap.
This Samsung model also includes an in-
tegrated HDTV tuner, built-in stereo speak-
ers, a Dolby Digital decoder, and nearly
all the A/V inputs you could want, albeit
only one each of HDMI, DVI, and S/PDIF on
the digital side, and VGA, composite, and
component on the analog side. As we found
with the P2370HD, each of the P2770HD’s
ports are set at right angles to the rear panel, The Samsung P2770HD is a 6-bit TN panel, but Samsung maintains that its proprietary Hi-FRC
which makes for easy connections—we’re frame-rate control enables it to display 16.7 million colors just like an 8-bit IPS model.
really tired of turning monitors upside down
to plug in cables. Unfortunately, the panel is
mounted atop an egregiously flimsy stand DisplayMate’s 256-step grayscale screens there are few occasions in those scenarios
that’s not up to the task of holding it at a (despite the name, this test also displays red, where one color remains static across broad
90-degree angle without flopping forward. blue, green, cyan, and yellow scales, not just stretches of the display’s borders. It could be
Samsung doesn’t show any love for Dis- gray). No matter which scale we were view- a serious problem, however, if you’re trying
playPort, and the bezel—while attractive—is ing and no matter which direction the scales to match colors while painstakingly editing
too wide to consider using in a side-by-side progressed (right to left, top to bottom, etc.), a photograph. And while we’ve yet to find
multi-display configuration. There’s no inte- the same arc of darkness bowed out from any TN panel that we could recommend for
grated USB hub or media-card reader, either. the edge toward the center of the screen. We that type of work, this monitor’s 23-inch
But since this is a TV as well as a monitor, also encountered problems at the high end cousin performed far better. –MICHAEL BROWN
the P2270HD comes with an infrared remote of the grayscale, where very light shades of
control, which makes adjusting its bright- gray blew out to white.
ness, contrast, and other controls supremely We didn’t notice this shortcoming while
easy—this is a far superior solution to mash- playing games or watching movies, because

6
ing buttons on the bezel.
As is our wont, we used DisplayMate SPECIFICATIONS VERDICT
Multimedia with Test Photos (www.displaymate. Viewable Area 27 inches
com) to evaluate the display, and the first Native Resolution 1920x1080 SAMSUNG P2770HD
flaw we detected was an inability to render Panel Type TN
colors uniformly over the entire moni- Color Gamut 80 percent of NTSC + WEEBLES - WEEVILS
tor. While displaying low-saturated colors Color Depth 6-bit with Hi-FRC Integrated HDTV Mediocre color uni-
(bright shades of gray and very light cyan, tuner; plethora of digi- formity; poor gray-
Gray-to-Gray 2ms tal and analog inputs; scale performance;
for instance) an arc of darkness drooped Response Time remote control. feeble stand.
from the top edge of the panel. We encoun- Video Inputs DVI, HDMI, VGA, composite,
component $400, www.samsung.com
tered a similar problem while rendering

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NZXT Panzerbox
Tiny enclosure holds a whole lotta stuff

N
ZXT’s Panzerbox is akin to a Mini bows slightly. Worse, once the PSU is installed,
Cooper. It might look diminutive, but it effectively blocks access to the videocards
it has a surprising amount of space and everything south of them. In order to swap
and is feature-packed, to boot. The Panzer- out a videocard, you’ll have to either remove
box is smaller than a mid-tower yet it has a enough power, SATA, and front-panel connec-
slide-out motherboard tray, is made entirely tors to pull out the motherboard tray, or—more
of aluminum, and includes support for 12.2- likely—remove the PSU entirely.
inch videocards and even water cooling. At If you choose to install everything possible
NZXT’s Panzerbox is understated and elegant;
$120, it’s even affordable. On paper, the NZXT into the Panzerbox (dual 5970s, anyone?) don’t
two adjectives not always associated with
Panzerbox seems like the perfect case to house be surprised if you have a very cramped case NZXT cases.
your LAN gaming rig. But is there a catch? on your hands. There’s hardly anywhere to
At 9.6 inches wide by 17.9 inches deep and route cables or tie them down. Anyone who’s
17.9 inches high, the Panzerbox’s all-aluminum swapping out parts frequently will mourn the luggable—there’s no handle, for example.
chassis is one of the most compact modern ATX PSU placement and the lack of toolless hard Still, the Panzerbox is one of the least expen-
cases we’ve seen in years. And as mentioned drive and optical bays. sive, most expansive small aluminum chassis
above, that tiny chassis holds a lot of stuff, and The Panzerbox tries to be all things to all we’ve seen. Build quality is high, stock air-cooling
still manages to offer decent airflow. people. It’s a lightweight, low-profile aluminum is workable (especially if you don’t use the lower
The Panzerbox ships with three fans: a 19cm chassis that can hold a whole lot of rig, but you’ll HDD chassis), and the motherboard tray is a use-
front intake fan, a 19cm top exhaust fan, and a hardly be toting it to LAN parties with a dual- ful feature. This is a great case if you’re looking
12cm rear exhaust fan—a pretty standard con- GPU water-cooled system inside. And if you for a smallish chassis you can cram a burly rig
figuration. It has four 3.5-inch hard drive bays have more than one optical slot full, well, hello into, but there are roomier options for a stay-
and three 5.25-inch bays. The lower two-bay external coolant reservoir, goodbye portability. at-home rig, and more portable options for the
hard drive cage is removable, and we recom- For such a small case, the Panzerbox isn’t all that dedicated LAN gamer. –NATHAN EDWARDS
mend using it only if you’ve already filled the top
two: The bottom drives sit on their sides, perpen-
dicular to the motherboard, blocking airflow to
your second GPU (if you’re running one).
With the use of two included adapters, the
19cm top fan can be replaced with a dual-fan
radiator (you’ll have to buy the fans separate-
ly)—but with only three optical drive bays, there
isn’t much room for an internal reservoir.
To achieve the Panzerbox’s miniscule foot-
print, NZXT had to make compromises, most
notably in the power supply mount. The power
supply mounts on its side, flush with the case’s
left side panel; there’s a mesh exhaust hole in
the panel to accommodate this, and a riser to
support the PSU’s weight. But for most power
supplies we tested, the riser was a few millime-
ters too short to actually hold the PSU’s weight
when the mounting screws were fastened; the
case’s rear panel ends up taking the brunt and

NZXT PANZERBOX

+ PANZER DRAGOON -
VERDICT

8
PANZERBJORN
Water-cooling support; Inconvenient PSU
fits giant GPUs; good placement; toolless
stock cooling; small HDD/ODD bays would
and lightweight. be nice.

$120, www.nzxt.com
It’s a little cramped, but the Panzerbox will fit today’s longest GPUs.

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 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Rocketfish WirelessHD Adapter

Fish or cut bait?

H 7
ouse brands are a common sight at the on the horizon: WHDI (Wireless Home Digital
grocery store: Shop Safeway (a large Interface) promises to deliver a wireless HD VERDICT
chain on the west coast) and you can media network with a range of 100 feet that
buy name-brand yogurt, or buy Lucerne and can operate all around the home. But WHDI ROCKETFISH WIRELESSHD ADAPTER
save a few pennies. Best Buy has been doing products aren’t expected to hit retail channels
the same thing with consumer electronics prod- until the third quarter of this year. + UP IN SMOKE - THE CORSICAN BROS.
ucts with its Insignia and Rocketfish brands. Now that you have the lay of the land, let’s Delivers wireless Signal can’t penetrate
Best Buy is now expanding beyond com- discuss performance. Like Gefen’s solution, HD-video streaming physical obstacles;
today; comparatively can’t stream Dolby
modity products such as A/V cables to offer Best Buy’s consists of a transmitter with an inexpensive. TrueHD or DTS-HD MA.
highly specialized components. The $600 HDMI input, and a receiver with an HDMI out-
$600, www.rocketfishproducts.com
Rocketfish WirelessHD Adapter (model RF- put. Both company’s boxes are actively cooled
WHD100), for example, can stream an HDMI by muffin fans (Best Buy’s emits a pronounced
signal (with surround sound and 1080p video) whine, although the fan on our video projector routed the receiver’s HDMI output to the
across a room without wires. It’s comparable was considerably louder). RF-WHD100 transmitter. The RF-WHD100
to the $1,000 Gefen Wireless for HDMI UWB In addition to HD video, the RF-WHD100 receiver, in turn, was plugged into a ceiling-
(you can read our full review of that device has enough bandwidth to stream up to eight mounted Epson PowerLite Cinema 500 video
here: http://bit.ly/ZP4mz). channels of LPCM audio with 24-bit resolution projector. The system worked as advertised
In fairness to Gefen, Best Buy’s RF- and a sampling rate of 192kHz. It can’t stream as long as we left our entertainment center’s
WHD100 doesn’t offer as many features and Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio, but wooden cabinet door open, but we experi-
isn’t as well constructed. Nonetheless, both that won’t matter if you have an A/V receiver enced drop-outs when we closed the door
products are strictly point-to-point devices in the same cabinet as your HTPC or stand- (we like our gear to be experienced more
capable of streaming media a maximum of 33 alone Blu-ray player. than seen).
feet inside a single room—their signals can’t Best Buy recommends that the transmit- If you must have a wireless HDMI solution
penetrate walls. The Rocketfish is based on the ter and receiver be placed facing each other today and you can live with the limitations of
WirelessHD standard and the Gefen product at the same level in open spaces (not inside current technology, Best Buy has a solid and
uses proprietary technology (although Gefen cabinets). In our tests, we took the HDMI comparatively inexpensive solution. If you
offers a different wireless HDMI device that is output from a home-theater PC (and a stand- can wait, WHDI sounds like a much better
also based on the WirelessHD standard). You alone Blu-ray player after that) and input it to solution: Yes, it’s currently vaporware, but it
should also be aware of a competing standard a Sherwood RD-7503 A/V receiver; we then smells awfully good. –MICHAEL BROWN

The WirelessHD
chipset at the heart
of Best Buy’s Rock-
etfish WirelessHD
Adapter operates on
the 60GHz frequency
band—and that’s
no typo.

88 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 2010 | www.maximumpc.com

 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Sound Blaster WoW Wireless Headset

Sound like an orc with the best World of Warcraft headset money can buy

N 8
ormally, designing a headset for one the same plastic plate-mail aesthetic as the
specific game would limit you to a SteelSeries WoW MMO Gaming Mouse (an ear- VERDICT
relatively small segment of the gaming lier Blizzard collaboration), the WoW headset
community. But we’re talking World of War- also sports giant, swappable, backlit Alliance- SOUND BLASTER WOW HEADSET
craft here—a game whose massive popularity or Horde-themed lenses on each ear. Even the
makes a game-specific headset seem viable. downloadable control panel looks like it’s been + WoW - OW
Enter the Sound Blaster World of Warcraft ripped straight out of World of Warcraft, bor- Large, comfortable Gaudy aesthetics;
Wireless Headset from Creative Labs. The rowing the game’s iconic fonts and interface cans; clear sound; pricier than com-
good wireless signal. parable (non-WoW)
headset uses a small USB dongle that broad- elements. The control panel allows you to headsets.
casts in the 2.4GHz range. We found the re- change the color and intensity of the head-
$120, www.creative.com
ception to be fairly good, allowing us to walk phones’ jewels, apply THX effects, and even
into a different room during use without static. morph your voice using included voice effects
The headset itself feels solid and fits with names like “female blood elf” and “male with the set’s construction, comfort, or sound
snugly on the head. Thick, squishy padding orc.” There are 17 voice morphers—more than quality, and the styling and feature set could
on the headband and around each of the enough to drive even your most level-headed well seal the deal. On the other hand, if you
cans keep things comfy throughout even the raid buddies insane. don’t know the difference
longest gaming sessions—Creative obviously In other words, you probably al- between a murloc and a
knows its target demographic. The headset ready know if the Creative World makrura, you might
is rechargeable and runs about nine hours of Warcraft headset is for you. as well save some
between charges and can be used while If you’re a big fan of the dough and look
recharging, as well. game, and looking to drop elsewhere.
The cans themselves are larger than more than a Benjamin on –ALEX CASTLE
average, which combined with the deluxe a pair of headphones,
padding, provide excellent sound isolation. then sure, go for it—you
The 40mm neodymium drivers deliver clear, won’t be disappointed
powerful surround sound—some of the best
we’ve heard from a gaming headset.
But, at $120, you’re buying more
than just a pair of headphones—
you’re buying branding, which is
apparent the second you hold the
WoW headset in your hands.
First, the headset’s design is far
from subdued. Adorned with

Horde or Alliance?
Interchangeable
lenses advertise
your allegiance.

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 IN THE LAB REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Assassin’s Creed II
Even restrictive DRM doesn’t stop this game from soaring

A
ssassin’s Creed II, like its predecessor,
is an ambitious third-person action
adventure game with a clever con-
ceit: You’re a modern-day bartender reliving
your assassin ancestors’ adventures. But
where the first game fell short—in repeti-
tive, sometimes-monotonous gameplay—
the sequel soars. It’s not revolutionary by
any means, but it’s one hell of a fun ride.
This time around, you primarily play
as goofy-charmer-turned-hooded-murder-
machine Ezio Auditore. He’s got personality
in spades, but that has its drawbacks—the
first few hours of the game devoted to Ezio’s
character development come at the expense
of any truly exciting or pulse-pounding
moments. Folks who want to leap straight
into the face-stabbing will have to stow their
bloodlust for a bit.
Once you make it past the slow start, Leonardo Da Vinci: The Q to Ezio’s Bond.
though, the game really hits its stride. As
with the first game, Assassin’s Creed II
takes place across multiple meticulously missions are both fun and relevant to, you piece of software, however, Assassin’s Creed
constructed cities (although this game is set know, assassination. Indeed, this time II’s worth is debatable. Why? Three letters:
in Renaissance Italy). In the first game, the around, a larger portion of your missions DRM. Assassin’s Creed II requires an Inter-
problem was that the cities were nice to look actually involve killing people. Which is not net connection at all times during gameplay
at, but they essentially lacked substance. As- to say the game lacks variety. Sometimes as part of its copy protection. Fortunately,
sassin’s Creed II, meanwhile, fills its locales you’ll be tasked with silently offing key if you lose your connection mid-game, it
with so many side missions, collectables, figures, while other assassinations turn into resumes right where you left off once you
and other nooks and crannies for you to colossal multi-man melees, with you and reconnect. And even on a pretty shaky wire-
sniff out that it’s nearly overwhelming. Hell, your quarry duking it out mano-a-mano on less connection, we were only interrupted a
some of these “optional” portions of the a rooftop while the battle rages below. Other couple of times. Still, if you’re a fan of gam-
game are its most enjoyable. missions might task you with tailing people ing on-the-go, this could be a deal-breaker.
But what about the main story mis- and eavesdropping on their conversations, On top of that, recent downtime-laden
sions—which were, without a doubt, the while hiring prostitutes and thieves to “server attacks” have called into question
original game’s biggest failing? Well, unless distract guards for you. And you’ll run into the stability of Ubisoft’s setup.
you actually liked grinding your teeth while a number of historical figures, chief among But even DRM woes were not enough
collecting flags for the 20th time, you’ll be them Leonardo Da Vinci. to keep us from having an absolute blast
happy to hear that Assassin’s Creed II’s We suppose you could criticize the game playing Assassin’s Creed II. It’s an excel-
for featuring lent game, and it’s a damn shame Ubisoft is
essentially the forcing PC gamers to jump through so many
same combat hoops in order to experience it.
system as the –NATHAN GRAYSON
first game, but
even that’s been

9
tweaked and
polished— VERDICT
especially with
the addition of ASSASSIN’S CREED II
upgradeable
weapons and + PARTY IN THE FRONT - KNIFE IN THE BACK
armor. Tons of things to collect; Ubisoft’s infamous
As a game, gigantic, lovingly crafted DRM—while not quite
cities to explore. as awful as feared—is
Assassin’s Creed still a pain in the neck.
II is absolutely
$57, assassinscreed.com, ESRB: M
Ezio and his best friend reenact The Sword in the Stone. fantastic. As a

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 IN THE LAB HANDS ON WITH THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

LAB NOTES
Why the New SSD Test Rig?
Hunting down a mysterious error

Y
ou might have noticed that we didn’t
use our new hard drive test rig for this
month’s SSD roundup. That’s because in
the course of benchmarking the drives, we no-
ticed that both the Intel P55 PCH and Marvell
controller on our test bed’s Asus P6P55D Pre-
mium board were giving much lower results in
our drive benchmarks than we’d experienced
in other test rigs. After a few days of reinstall- NATHAN EDWARDS
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
ing Windows and drivers and using different EDITOR
ports and cables, we still experiencing the
same baffling problems, so we had no choice but to turn to Plan B. We
wound up using a stable X58 board for all of our SSD tests (which you
can read about in the feature on page 50). Meanwhile, we will continue
to try and diagnose the faulty test bed. We’re still not sure whether it’s a
problem with the P55’s south bridge, the Asus P6P55D Premium board,
or just our board in particular. Regardless, we’ll be using the X58 board Read speeds on our P55 board were nearly 25MB/s slower than
until further notice, as it produces far more consistent results. on the X58 board.

MICHAEL BROWN ALEX CASTLE GORDON MAH UNG KATHERINE STEVENSON JON PHILLIPS
REVIEWS EDITOR ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR SENIOR EDITOR DEPUTY EDITOR EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Music explorers: Check The iPad is finally After playing with This month, I got a It doesn’t multitask,
out B&W’s Society of here, and although two incredibly fast demo of the new Nero and it won’t run
Sound (http://bowers- I’m not normally an gaming machines in 10 multimedia suite. the PC-only data-
wilkins.com). A $60 Apple fan, I splurged a row now—Digital The most dramatic acquisition software
annual fee buys two and bought the 32GB Storm’s HailStorm and change in this latest that I use at the race
new album downloads model. Even my Maingear’s Shift—I’m iteration is that Nero track, but my new iPad
per month from Peter credit card company thinking of replacing has consolidated the still solves a world of
Gabriel’s Real World thought the pur- or supplementing suite into three main problems. Touch-
Studios and the London chase was unchar- our system gaming products—Burning driven data entry is
Symphony Orchestra, acteristic: They put a benchmarks with ROM, BackItUp&Burn, perfect for computing
plus access to a rich back hold on my account something that will and Vision Xtra (for whilst on the couch,
catalog. Everything is until I called and drag these wickedly video editing)—which and the device’s form-
encoded in FLAC and convinced them that fast PCs back down makes for a much less factor is imminently
Apple Lossless; some— I really had spent to Earth. Within two cluttered package. And portable. My iPad
including Gabriel’s 600 of my PC-loving months of releasing for the first time ever, review appears next
brand-new Scratch My dollars at the our new benchmarks, Nero is also selling month, and I have al-
Back—are available in Apple store. we’re already seeing these apps separately. ready asked HP for an
studio-master quality 200fps at 2560x1600! early look at its Atom-
(24-bit, 48KHz FLAC). based Slate tablet.

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 COMMENTS YOU WRITE, WE RESPOND

We tackle tough reader questions on...

Squirt ES4
PC
PC Stress Testing
Cooling with Water
24 Hours Is Too Long lower ranking because it conditions and emergencies. operations. He’s clearly
I have a problem with how failed on the 18th hour. —Jason E. Dorfler, ITT working in a brutal testing
you guys test systems for —Byron Todd Systems/Commo, FOB environment, and we concur
stability. I understand you Orgun-E that the Wave is a kick-ass
use Prime95. If the system Senior Editor Gordon Mah multi-tool—which is exactly
crashes within a 24-hour Ung Responds: Byron, I’m Editorial Director Jon why it appeared in last
(or however long you run it) not sure where you’re getting Phillips Responds: For month’s The List section as an
test then you factor this into the impression that we only those who don’t read mili- essential tool on all our Lab
your decision when you give flunk a system if it blows up tary acronyms, James works benches. The Squirt is in no
the system a verdict. My at 18 hours. The vast majority at a Forward Operating way a replacement for the
issue is that a system from of overclocked PCs that Base, basically a fortified, Wave, but it’s a lot smaller
company A is just as likely have failed usually blow up semi-permanent encamp- and lighter—light enough
to crash on the third 24-hour within a few minutes to a few ment that supports tactical for carrying in one’s pocket.
run of Prime95 as in the first hours. In fact, I can’t think
24-hour run. of a recent machine that we
There is no way to know had that could make it past
if the system is 100 per- a few hours that would not NOW ONLINE!
cent stable or not. So when withstand multiple overnight
Maximum PC sets out to run or 48-hour runs. Are they
a test for 24 hours, and the
test crashes on the 18th hour,
100 percent stable? No, but
they’re pretty rock-solid.
The 40 Most Important
this should not influence the
score you give the system. Battle-Tested and Phones in History
Any amount of time past a Approved We live in a connected world, and today’s
one-hour run is just a roll of As you can tell by my sig-
smartphones define what it means to be a
the dice. Manufacturer B may nature, I’m one of those
power user. But for as much as we rely on our
send you a system that does geeks who gets down and
iPhone, Nexus One, or BlackBerry, it wasn’t
not fail, that doesn’t mean dirty with technology here
that long ago when you wouldn’t think of
that if you ran it again for 24 in Afghanistan. Your April
trying to cram a mobile phone in your pocket.
hours it wouldn’t fail. You can review of the Leatherman
Remember when pagers were all the rage?
run the test for two weeks Squirt ES4 (Quick Start) is
Like computers, communication devices
and if it crashes on the 12th a good joke around here.
continue to evolve at a rapid pace.
day, does this mean the sys- My whole shop carries
It’s been a wild ride
tem is not stable? The manu- Leatherman Waves thanks
getting to where
facturer has no way of telling to them being way more
we are today, and
if it will fail when they sell robust. The Wave is a lot
to pay homage to
the system. If a system passes better than the Leatherman
that journey, we
a one- or two-hour test, than Squirt series for real hard-
take a look back at
99 percent of the time, it will core emergency comm and
40 of the most
not be any less stable than a IT repairs. Sure, the Squirt
important phone
system that passes 24 hours. has some good wire strip-
models of all time:
I have been overclock- pers, but by using your fin-
bit.ly/dvqKSS.
ing for years now and am ger as a buffer, you can do
an experienced user cooling the exact same thing with
my system with everything the Wave. If you want, our
from cascades to LN2. It shop can send in articles for
makes me kind of mad every products that are really Geek
time I see a system get a Tested in the most extreme of

94 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 2010 | www.maximumpc.com

 NEXT MONTH

COMING IN

In fact, it’s an option for ants, contains an anti- Editorial Director Jon
MAXIMUMPC’s
guys whose wives and girl-
friends won’t let them wear
corrosive agent. Coolants
are also available in dif-
Phillips Responds: All
fair questions. Here are ALTERNATE
TIMELINE, FLASH
belt sheaths for knives and ferent colors, and in ultra- some responses. First, PDF
cell phones. violet-reactive varieties. issues typically don’t go

JULY
They’re generally pretty online any sooner than two
Don’t Drink the
Water
I was just reading the
inexpensive (especially
compared to the overall
price of a water-cooling
months after an issue has
been pulled from news-
stands. If timeliness is a
SIDEWAYS
water-cooling how-to setup), and available concern, you can’t rely on
in your April 2010 issue everywhere liquid-cooling the PDF archives, which are
(page 66). I would like to supplies are found. meant to function as a pure
add a tip you seem to have De-ionized water does archiving service for folks
forgotten, but which is work, if you’re in a pinch, who want to recycle old
print copies.
YOUR APRIL REVIEW OF THE Second, many parts
ISSUE
LEATHERMAN SQUIRT ES4 IS of the magazine never
make it to our website.
A GOOD JOKE AROUND HERE Reviews, features, how-
tos, and white papers all
one of the most important
things any water-cooling
and is far preferable to
using tap water, which can
appear online, but they’re
dribbled out over an
Real-World Upgrades
newcomer can do: Use de- corrode, short-circuit, or extended period. Some It’s fun to ogle the latest cutting-
ionized water. You buy it gunk up your system. content is posted as soon edge hardware, but few of us
down at the supermarket. as the magazine hits sub- can afford the cost of admission.
It comes in five-gallon Convince Me scribers and newsstands, Fortunately, there’s an upgrader
jugs. Tap water in various to Subscribe. but other stories get posted sweet spot, where you can get
parts of the nation can I Dare You! many weeks later. Again, near-top-notch performance for a
vary wildly in mineral I went to your website if timeliness is an impor- reasonable price. You won’t want to
content (calcium, iron, with intent to subscribe to tant factor, you’d do well miss our parts recommendations.
hydrogen sulfide, algae, the magazine. Once there, to subscribe.
random goldfish tank I saw articles, back issues, Third, the print maga-
sludge, etc.), and you don’t and other things I associ- zine offers an entirely
want to have to disas-
semble your system and
ate with paid subscrip-
tions—but all for free.
unique Maximum PC expe-
rience. It’s imminently
The Power of Six
We’ll have AMD’s
flush it out with vinegar I’d be glad to pay for a portable. It depends on
Phenom II X6 hexa-core
every month if your town subscription, but it almost reflected (not projected)
proc in our hot little hands.
has crappy tap water. looks like you don’t care light, making it easy on
Can it possibly topple Intel’s
—Ben Hadley either way since it’s all the eyes. Its content is
available for free. Would presented linearly, making
mighty Core i7-980X?
Online Managing Editor subscribing benefit me in for a more orchestrated,
Alex Castle responds: any way, or get me more editorialized user experi-
Looks like you missed the
paragraph in the materials
than I would already get
for free? I’d prefer a PDF
ence (similar to a movie or
story with different acts).
Monitor Myths
section where we mention
that our cooling system
subscription rather than
print, but you have made
And it presents features and
reviews in big, bold, visual
Smashed
Forget everything you thought
used a coolant instead of back issues freely avail- packages, with only the real
water. Specifically, we used able in PDF already. art direction that a print
you knew about your digital
Feser One cooling fluid, —Troy King magazine can provide. display. We’re going to expose
which, like most PC cool- and explain a surprising
number of commonly held
monitor misconceptions.
LETTERS POLICY Please send your questions and comments to comments@ comments@maxi-

 maximumpc.com.
mumpc.com.

mail we of
amount
Include
correspondence.
with
receive,
mail we
Include
your your
your correspondence.
wereceive,
full name,
Letters may
are unable
full name,
Letters
be edited
we are
city ofcity
may for
to respond
residence,
be edited
unable to
of residence,
space and
and phone
for space
personally
and phone
clarity.and
respond personally
Due
number
clarity.
number
to theDue
to all queries.
with your
amount
to theof
to all queries.

www.maximumpc.com | JUN 2010 | MAXIMUMPC | 95

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