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Archive for the ‘amd’ tag

Where are all the AMD AM3 motherboard reviews?

Posted on 7th Apr 2009 at 10:22 by Richard Swinburne with 17 comments

Richard Swinburne
We know a lot of our readers want to see AM3 motherboard reviews and we have been trying to accommodate this request since February - honest! Fanboys have been crying bias and that couldn't be any farther from the truth - here's why.

We have been working on no less than three 'new' AMD motherboards since we completed our Socket AM3 processor review at the start of February, but the problems have been continual, and no manufacturer has been left unmarked by the spattering of not quite there yet.

Normally we'd just go ahead with a review since the products are all ready on sale, but with each one we want to get to the bottom of their wierdness before we post a review. Also, we'd usually keep the inevitable debugging process sort of thing between ourselves and the parties involved but as it stands we don't know when we'll be able to get you a full review so we thought at least we'd keep you updated on our already delayed progress.

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Where are the decent Socket AM2+ motherboards?

Posted on 22nd Feb 2009 at 12:44 by James Gorbold with 7 comments

James Gorbold
Now that AMD has finally managed to release a Phenom-branded processor worth buying, the Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition, albeit a fairly basic triple-core model, another fundamental problem has been revealed – the lack of killer Socket AM2+ motherboards.

Despite the efforts of the combined bit-tech and Custom PC reviews writers (we’ve looked at 20 plus Socket AM2+ motherboards in the last six months) none have really stood out – at least not for the right reasons. Although there have been a few ‘better than average’ designs, such as the Asus M3A79-T Deluxe, most of the motherboards have offered a poor combination of sluggish performance, limited overclocking and restrictive BIOSes.

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2009: The year of the rebrand

Posted on 17th Feb 2009 at 18:42 by Richard Swinburne with 1 comments

Richard Swinburne
I'm going to forgo the continually depressing reiteration of "economic downturn" or whatever you want to call it. But since quite a few large companies are posting massive demand drops and insolvency is the latest craze these days, there's no doubt we're seeing an unfortunate trend of re-branding take an ever present role in "new" product lines.

Of the companies that we spend the majority of our time covering, Intel, Nvidia and AMD are getting in on the act.

Despite the billions of dollars of investment Intel is ploughing into its 32nm facilities, the chip giant still feels the need to rename its ICH7 southbridge (first released in 2005) to something different for the next release of its popular Atom product: Pineview. Inside the "new" southbridge, there's still the same set of features but, on the outside, there's a fresh coat of paint as it'll now be known as Tigerpoint.

Rawr!

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RIP: DFI motherboards don't like photography

Posted on 27th Jan 2009 at 17:38 by Richard Swinburne with 5 comments

Urgh, another day, another hardware failure. I was aiming to have a review of DFI's LANParty 790FX-B M2RSH done this week - it's all tested (albeit slower in every-single-benchmark compared to the MSI DK 790GX Platinum), and I literally only unplugged everything for some photography, before putting it back on the test bench again for some more stress testing.

RIP: DFI motherboards don't like photography Hardware Death #1: DFI motherboards don't like photography

Sadly, the LED readout says only 88 and the fans spin up to their full flow without a hint of relent. Changing every piece of hardware later has no impact - something static must have hit it, which is surprising considering I passed on wearing nylon underwear today.

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Episode 13 - Spider, 3D screens and Crysis

Posted on 23rd Nov 2007 at 20:14 by Podcast

Podcast
Our 13th episode sees AMD trying to fight back with its Spider platform - new Radeon graphics cards, new chipsets and finally, Phenom. But are some of the legs wonky? The team discusses this along with our recent experience of 3D monitors from Zalman. The games chart features Crysis and we debate whether it’s the game of the year.

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Episode 11 - CPC is 50 and Intel vs AMD heats up

Posted on 25th Sep 2007 at 10:55 by Podcast

Podcast
We’re back! In our eleventh podcast the panel look back over four years and fifty issues of Custom PC. The big news this time round centres on Intel and AMD. Intel has bought Havok and AMD has announced triple-core CPUs; we mull that over and Ben reports live from IDF. The top 10 games chart and the competition return as well.

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Episode 8 - Mid-range Radeon HDs, GTA IV and trouble for the music industry

Posted on 9th Jul 2007 at 17:20 by Podcast

Podcast
The CPC panel is back, and in this episode, we turn our attention to ATi’s new mid-range Radeon HD 2600XT, which is unfortunately a little underwhelming. We also mull over our first glimpse of Grand Theft Auto IV, discuss the continued troubles of the music industry and try and come up with some ideas to help AMD out.

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Episode 3 - STALKER, 3GHz Athlon 64 X2s, and bargain PCs

Posted on 21st Mar 2007 at 17:53 by Podcast

Podcast
James and Alex join CPC editor Gareth for more PC discussion, including debate about STALKER, a game six years in the making. The team also get to grips with the first 3GHz Athlon 64 chip, discuss the upcoming build a perfect PC feature, and, as usual round up the games charts.

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Tags amd, stalker
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