The Pavilion Elite HPE-180 stands at the pinnacle of the HP’s home PC line-up and sports spec to match. It has a 2.80GHz Intel Core i7-860 processor, 8GB of DDR 3 memory, a Blu-ray combo drive and, to make use of all that memory, 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.
HP’s Pavilion Elite HPE-180: merlot trim? More vin de table than premier cru
There’s a question mark hanging over the unbranded “special edition” Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics card as it only supports DirectX 10. That’s something of a shame as AMD has a range of DirectX 11 cards. So from the start, the HPE-180 isn’t quite as elite as its branding – and more importantly, its price – might suggest.
You won’t be able to tell from the photos but the front of the case is well endowed with ports and connectors as they are covered by flaps and stealth doors. Read the rest of this entry »
The Xbox 360 has trumped the PlayStation 3 again, following Microsoft’s announcement that its console will be the first to secure a downloadable update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Microsoft – speaking on Major Nelson blog – stated that “the first Modern Warfare 2 content packs will be available exclusively first on Xbox Live” this Spring.
Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist at Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 2’s developer, announced in November that a downloadable content update was in development for the must-have game, though Microsoft’s reference to “packs” suggests that at least two updates could be delivered to the Xbox 360.
Or are we just reading too much into it?
This isn’t the first time that PS3 owners have been short-changed. Two downloadable updates have already been released for Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360, while PS3 users haven’t received any fresh content for the game.
Review Cast your eye over our news piece on AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5970 and our review of the HD 5870 and you’ll have the essential information at your fingertips. AMD has, for some unknown reason, changed its naming convention, so this two-chip HD 5870-based graphics card has been named HD 5970 instead of the more predictable HD 5870 X2.
Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5970: overclocked, slightly
What we have here is a very long graphics card with two HD 5870 GPUs that are linked by a PCI Express 2.1 bridge chip along with two groups of GDDR 5 memory that total 2GB. A single HD 5870 chip packs 1600 Stream processors into one 40nm core, so the HD 5970 has a startling total of 3200 shaders.
The key features have been carried over from the HD 5870, including support for DirectX 11, triple monitor support with ATI Eyefinity and some nifty power-saving technology. That said, although AMD has worked wonders to reduce the power draw of the HD 5000 series at idle, the fact remains that the two chips draw plenty of power when they are under load. Read the rest of this entry »
Review One of the problems with being a newcomer to any multiplayer combat gaming platform is that, up against experienced sharp shooters, you probably won’t survive for long. You really do get to learn the hard way. Although technically outlawed – offending the gaming community’s sense of fair play – a modified controller with rapid-fire functionality may well save the day for those whose profile is, literally, in terminal decline.
A CoD5 life enhancer? Consoles and Gadgets’ Rapid Fire Xbox 360 controller
One such device is the Consoles and Gadgets Rapid Fire Xbox 360 wireless controller. It boasts seven modes to accommodate various Xbox LIVE titles and different game genres. These include modes for Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and two general-purpose burst fire options. Designed with CoD5, World at War gamers in mind, this title gets special treatment with three modes for different rates of fire. Although the modes are labelled specifically for each game, most games will receive some level of compatibility with the modded features. Gears of War 2 fans, you are denied! Read it and weep. Read the rest of this entry »
Review AMD’s Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 are the mid-range members of the new HD 5000 DirectX 11 graphics chip family. They’re fabbed using a 40nm process, just like their bigger brothers.
Sapphire’s HD 5770: reference Radeon HD 5770 design
But the number of transistors in these mid-range chips – codenamed ‘Juniper’ – has been reduced by just over a half, from the 2.15bn in the 58×0 design, codenamed ‘Cypress’, to 1.04bn. The area of the chip has also been quartered, from 334mm² to 166mm².
Armed with that information, you won’t be surprised to learn that the number of unified shaders in 5770 has been halved too. Which is to say that the 5870 has 1600 shaders and the 5770 has 800. The 5750 has 720.
When it comes to clock speeds, the 5770 has the same 850MHz core speed as 5870 while the 5750 runs at 700MHz, which is slightly slower than the 5850’s 725MHz frequency. The specification of the memory breaks with tradition as the junior 5750 and 5770 use 1GB of GDDR 5 just like the grown-up 5850 and 5870. In the past, we’ve been accustomed to mid-range chips that use slower memory than their high-end siblings do. The high-end chips use a 256-bit memory controller while the new mid-rangers settle for a 128-bit controller. Read the rest of this entry »
