3/28/2013

Club3D Radeon HD 7790 13Series CrossFire Review


Following our recent review on the 7790 from Sapphire, we also have a couple of cards from Club3D but as a change to the normal routine of looking at a single card first then looking at how two of their cards perform together, I’ve decided to see how far the 7790 will go when taken to the max, which in this case is a two way configuration.
To re-cover a couple of points about the 7790, its placement in the market is a gap that as emerged between the 7770 and the 7850, which as some may know is where NVIDIA’s GTX 650Ti came in both on performance and also the price point as well. Because of this, AMD released the 7790 in order to fill the gap in from their side, but to also take on the 650Ti, which as I showed in the Sapphire review, its didn’t just beat, it blew its rival out of the window.
As we know though, single card performance is one thing, but how do things fair when we add additional cards in to the mix? If a single 7790 can perform just below its bigger brother the 7850, then where in comparison will two cards lie? As we know, AMD’s cards tend to scale up to 2x when put into a two way configuration so given this known scale, lets get locked and loaded and see what damage two of these mighty little cards can do.


3/21/2013

MadCatz Cyborg F.R.E.Q.7 Headset Review



MadCatz, Tritton, Saitek and Cyborg, you may know some of or all of these brand name, but one thing you may not know is that they're all divisions of the same company. MadCatz have been making quite a name for them selves recently and while they do have a strong history and some great products that span many years and several gaming generations, its their latest brands and products that have been taking the gaming world by storm.
Over the last year we've seen a few entries to the F.R.E.Q headset range, first up we had the F.R.E.Q.5 headset, the F.R.E.Q.5 Red and now the F.R.E.Q.7 which have come under the various brands such as Saitek, but are all fundamentally MadCatz F.R.E.Q. Headsets. the F.R.E.Q.5 has long been my number 1 personal headset of choice, ever since I wrote the original review for the product it literally hasn't gone a day without being used for my daily gaming, music and skype activities.
I was ecstatic to find out I would have the opportunity to review this headset, and there was only one question in my mind when I saw it "do I finally have a contender that could temp me away from the F.R.E.Q.5?" Well that is what I hope to find out today, but given the performance of the previous model, the F.R.E.Q.7 certainly has its work cut out.
MadCatz have a very clear cut product naming strategy, one that is well demonstrated by their R.A.T. mouse range, the R.A.T3, R.A.T.5, .RA.T.7 and R.A.T9 rank in order of low to high in terms of features, performance and price. Starting with the 3, the most budget friendly and the 9 being the most feature-laden premium product. The same principle is applied to the F.R.E.Q.7 and while it looks almost exactly like the previous model it does have some upgraded hardware which we'll be taking a closer look at in just a moment.

3/20/2013

Kingston DataTraveller Ultimate 3.0 G3 64GB USB3.0 Flash Drive Review


Kingston's line of flash drives have been around for a number of years and through that time we've seen some fantastic looking and performing drives which range from small capacity, compact units ideal for attaching to your keys right through to the top end HyperX drives that push the speed factor to the next level. The DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 is one of the latest drives to roll off the production line and coincides with the unveiling of the worlds first 1TB USB flash drive, which we saw earlier in the year at CES 2013.
Flash drives are one of those accessories that the vast majority of users have these days due to their compact size and the convenience factor. Due to this, the capacity that is sought for is getting greater and greater and it is common practice to see 16GB and above flash drives on the market. Naturally as the capacity greatly increases, the physical size of the drive also has to grow a little to house the flash storage that lies within. Thankfully this doesn't have to mean that it is a case of one step forward in capacity but two steps back in design. Kingston have been busy working away to get the best of both worlds and this leads us onto the DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 that we are going to take a look at today.

Amy Jackson - FHM Upgrade Girlfriend Photoshoot


MSI Z77 MPower (Z77) Motherboard Review





Every manufacturer of computer components has a particular line of products that stand out above the rest for one reason or another. On the consumer level this is either because of their feature enriched boards that are designed to meet the demands of the everyday user, but more commonly we find boards that are geared towards the high end user such as the power hungry gamer or the overclockers. Overclockers as we know don't care about how many USB ports a board has or how many different accessories come with the board. What they care about is how well the board clocks and what the manufacturer has done to make it stand out for this reason alone.
MSI have had a number of overclocking boards featured in the past and the Z77 MPower is one of the latest to come off the end of the production line. In essence it is dubbed to be the little brother of the XPower-II line of  boards and because of this we see a few traits trickle down to also indicate that its being suited to be paired with their Lightning line of graphics cards.

3/18/2013

Roccat ISKU FX Gaming Keyboard Review


Roccat are one of the finest gaming brands on the market at the moment, and some of their product ranges have proven themselves time and time again, not only in reviews but with consumers, gamers and computer enthusiasts around the world. Roccat have a strong history of gaming products, and it was only a couple of month ago that I personally awarded the Roccat Kone XTD Gaming Mouse our Editors Choice Award, which I highly regard as the best gaming mouse I've used, which is why I'm still using it even today.
A quick look at the feature set of the ISKU FX turns up almost countless features and functions and just as we saw with the Kone XTD Mouse, it seems the ISKU FX is set to take the gaming keyboard world by storm. Priced at around £80.00 here in the UK it's not terribly expensive for a gaming keyboard, it is however a little expensive for a keyboard that isn't mechanical. So it will be interesting to see what the ISKU FX can offer us in terms of performance and features to justify its retail price.