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Hardware 8 - Many CPUs, Dream PCs and mobile gaming

Posted at 18:17 by Podcast with 6 comments

We're back with another Hardware Podcast - so good it's spelled in capitals. Rich, Harry and Clive get together to talk about all the hot (and just power-efficient) hardware of the last fortnight. Tune in to hear what we think of Intel's Atom (clue - it's not very good, is it?) VIA's new Nano processor and news on what Intel's up to.

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Written on 5th November 2009
Tags 965, alienware, amd, c3 stepping, cpus, dream pcs, hardware, i7 930, i9, intel, m17x, podcast, processors, six-core, via nano, windows 7

Free Games I Like: Small Worlds

Posted at 11:51 by Joe Martin with 6 comments

This blog post will be, like the game it’s about, small. I don’t really have a huge amount to say about Small Worlds, which was developed for a recent Casual Games Competition with the theme 'Explore', other than that it’s a remarkably elegant and effective piece of pixel-art brilliance.

A game which only ever alludes to having a deeper plot, Small Worlds opens with a single line before jumping to the gameplay – “There is too much noise”.

The gameplay itself is simple. At the start of each of the five levels the viewpoint is zoomed in on you – a small red line with a pale face and zero animation. The aim of each level is then to find the exit, which returns you to a hub level before you move on to the next world. There’s no fighting, no skill trees and no enemies. It’s just a gentle and rather lovely paced matter of exploration.

Written on 5th November 2009
Tags art, free games, games, games i like, games i own, gaming, independant, indie, jayisgames, pixel, small worlds

Gigabyte TweaKING OC Event: European Final

Posted at 14:55 by Richard Swinburne with 1 comments

Gigabyte TweaKING OC Event

European Final

Manufacturer: Gigabyte

Gigabyte are well known for its overclocking events: the Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship (GO OC) ran earlier this year and encouraged competitors to overclock their Core i7 CPUs using any means possible, and ran Super Pi 8M and 3DMark 06 for the best scores.

18 Teams competed from all around Europe. Click to enlarge

The TweaKING event in Paris is the European leg of this new style of OC tournament. Less emphasis is placed on the quality of CPU and more is placed on the ability of the teams to tweak the memory and motherboard. How? The CPU frequency is capped at 4GHz, meaning the teams had to crank the memory and baseclock on their Lynnfield i5-750 CPUs up as high as possible to achieve the best result.

Much time was spent in the BIOS tweaking settings. Click to enlarge

This still puts an emphasis on CPU quality to some degree, but its also brings the motherboard back into play more, which is an angle Gigabyte obviously wants to push. There was no limitation on the OS tweaks allowed too; so WinXP hacks a plenty were rolled out: services were neutered, registry was copiously tweaked and anything deemed excess was cut off.

However, every team had a standard set of hardware to use: nothing extra was allowed, not even an additional fan. Even screwdrivers were provided!

Written on 3rd November 2009
Tags competiton, gigabyte, overclocking, tweaking

Asus Xtreme Global Summit – highlights from the first round of blogs

Posted at 18:11 by Ben Hardwidge with 8 comments

Following several weeks of prodding, tweaking and possibly lovingly caressing your fancy new Asus kit from the AX:GS event, it’s now time to reveal your first impressions of the hardware you were awarded.

Yes, the first round of AX:GS blogs is now up in lights, and last week’s posts have been successfully digested by the bit-tech judges. Before we share the highlights with you, though, we would like to thank you for your patience while we’ve been ironing out the gremlins with our, ahem, gremlin iron. Thankfully, most of the problems have now been sorted out, and most of you have access to the blogging area on the Asus Republic of Gamers website, but please drop us a line if you encounter any other issues so that we can get them sorted out.

Written on 2nd November 2009
Tags asus, axgs, competition, prize, readers, taiwan, xtreme global summit

What we're reading

Posted at 17:13 by Alex Watson with 7 comments

Probably the laziest way to start any article is to take a pertinent word and tell readers how many times it shows up in Google.

'Did you know that death by jam is a real danger? Well it is! There are over 44 million pages on Google talking about it!'

We get it. There's a lot of stuff on the internet. But what's good? What's worth reading? How can you avoid being killed by jam?

Well, now we can answer the first two questions with our brand new 'What we're reading' section.

Written on 29th October 2009
Tags bit-tech, links, publish2, site news

Gaming Podcast 6 - IWNet, Windows 7 and Yak Meat

Posted at 11:27 by Joe Martin with 11 comments

With Alex and Tim both available for a podcast this week, we sit down to discuss all the latest gaming news and controversies - from Activision's unveiling of IWNet for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to games compatibility in Windows 7.

That's not all we've got going on though - we also sit down for a quick snack of Chinese Yak meat live on tape and hand out the first of a new set of prizes in our Guess The Screenshot competition. Fun times!

On top of all that we've also got the usual Reader Mail and we finally talk about how good games packaging used to be when everything came in a huge cardboard box.

In the next podcast we'll be discussing how to get into the games industry and whether it's more important to have a recognised qualification or some experience in the real world. We'd love to hear your thoughts on all this, so drop your opinions in the forums or send them to the usual email address - Podcast@CustomPC.co.uk. Please be sure to mark your emails as 'Gaming Podcast'.

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Written on 29th October 2009
Tags call of duty, cod, dedicated servers, games podcast, gaming podcast, iwnet, modern warfare 2, podcast, windows 7, yak meat

Reader Advised HTPC Buyers Blog, Oct 09 #1

Posted at 11:28 by Richard Swinburne with 36 comments

Yep, you read that right, I want your help in designing a Home Theatre PC reference guide to go on the site and in the mag.

I get constantly asked for one, but we simply don't test enough HTPC hardware to be as widely knowledgeable as I'd like in order to recommend a setup with 100 percent confidence.

The difficulty is that HTPCs vary by country; in the UK we don't have analogue HDTV (cable) access like the US, not to mention other issues, like varied internet TV services and user need - does it need terrabytes of storage or is gaming compatibility a priority, for example?

With that in mind we want your advice; what have you seen that works? What would you recommend to others that fits the spec below?

Written on 27th October 2009
Tags blu-ray, buyers guide, hd, home theatre, htpc, silent

Download The CustomPC Media Benchmarks Here

Posted at 11:30 by Clive Webster with 15 comments

A couple years ago, CustomPC made its own suite of benchmarks to test motherboards, PCs, laptops and so on. We wanted to create a set of tests which aped how people use their PCs and would show the benefits (or not) of faster hardware and overclocking in a way that was relevant to real-world use.

One of the most important elements, apart from the obvious stuff above, was that the benchmark suite must be distributable and completely self-contained. We've therefore used Open Source applications, all of which install into a standard folder (with no entries into the Registry, or links to any OS services or applications). This means that you can download the benchmarks, install them and run them without any outside influences from OS updates and so forth.

Written on 26th October 2009
Tags custompc, download, media benchmarks, test

Hardware Podcast 7 - this time it's loud!

Posted at 17:37 by Clive Webster with 11 comments

First off, apologies for not getting this up yesterday, and for it being so quiet the first time - the podcast fairy has been pretty slack this week. This is the seventh hardware podcast, and Rich, Harry and Tim are joined by Asus bod Iain Bristow. If any other manufacturers would like to join us for pod, please let us know and we'll try to organise it. Up for discussion are:

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Written on 23rd October 2009
Tags amd, athlon ii x4 620, competition, directcompute, directx 11, dx11, good old games, hd tv, kingston, prize, western digital, win, windows 7, xtreamer, zeno clash, zune hd

Own an Intel SSD? Tell how worn out it is!

Posted at 10:45 by Richard Swinburne with 27 comments

Kingston dropped an interesting titbit that we thought we'd pass on to all Intel SSD owners - of which there's soon to be a lot more once the latest value X25-X drives arrive.

Basically, the biggest unknown factor in NAND Flash technology is wear and tear. The cells have a limited amount of data writes, so don't last forever, even though intelligent wear algorithms mean an MLC drive will last 10 years having written a few hundred GB a day to it - far more than any normal user will do.

One question that will get more important as time goes on is the second hand market: How can you account for wear if you're buying it off someone else?

Written on 23rd October 2009
Tags crystalmark, info, intel, ssd, storage, wear, worn

Hardware 8 - Many CPUs, Dream PCs and mobile gaming

Free Games I Like: Small Worlds

Gigabyte TweaKING OC Event: European Final

Gigabyte TweaKING OC Event

European Final

Asus Xtreme Global Summit – highlights from the first round of blogs

What we're reading

Gaming Podcast 6 - IWNet, Windows 7 and Yak Meat

Reader Advised HTPC Buyers Blog, Oct 09 #1

Download The CustomPC Media Benchmarks Here

Hardware Podcast 7 - this time it's loud!

Own an Intel SSD? Tell how worn out it is!

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Gigabyte TweaKING OC Event

European Final

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