Review : 1Malaysia Netbook

The government has started a scheme offering netbooks to families with incomes of below RM3000. It is purposed to help recipients study smarter. Wonder how these netbooks are of help since it comes with no educational software whatsoever. The only productivity softwares found pre-installed on these netbooks are Microsoft Word and Excel. Other than the two mentioned, you're practically looking at an empty copy of Windows.

Recipient must also subscribe to broadband or have a pre-existing broadband connection. The minimum required is a Streamyx Zone ID, which will cost RM25/month. The broadband package offered is RM60 per month, with free WiFi modem as well. Hey, thought this scheme was for families with low income and they are expecting us to fork out extra money? Considering that it has nothing inside that is of help to studies except Word and Excel, at least with an internet connection, the students can stay on WikiPedia and read up or of course reroute to Facebook at times.

Okay let's get on to the review after the break.

Samsung Galaxy S II review

If you don't already know all about the Samsung Galaxy S II, where have you been the past two months? The successor to one of the most popular Android handsets to date carries a burden of expectation almost as sizable as its 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen. It promises to be thinner, lighter, and faster than the Galaxy S that preceded it, while garnishing Android 2.3.3 with a set of TouchWiz customizations that might actually enhance, rather than hinder, the user experience. As such, the Galaxy S II earns Samsung full marks for ambition, but does this slinky new smartphone live up to its interstellar hype? Continue your read here. 

SOURCE  Engadget

Gigabyte G1.Sniper X58 review

In a previous review I already mentioned that the Intel X58 chipset is a gift that keeps on giving, like a Duracell battery that keeps on going. Well, it's not so much the chipset rather then the stuff designed around it that keeps it going.

Two and a half years after its release new products still flood the market based on this chipset and as it seems, it's getting more and more high-end with each motherboard release we receive and test.

I mean you guys read the ASUS rampage III Black edition review not to long ago, and now it's time to go to Gigabyte. They decided to spice up and refresh their X58 series motherboards as well, armed with a snazzy marketing theme they wanted to build something for the true gamer and not so much the uber hardcore overclock -- and that might just work out really well for them.

And with much success, the Killer series was born, with good looks, excellent performance, great overclockability and then in addition to it all extra's, adding a SATA 6G controller, USB 3.0, but also the BigFoot KillerNIC has been integrated into this motherboard, and... Realtek audio? Heck it's been kicked out. There's actually a fully fetched Creative Labs X-Fi (20K2) DSP mounted into the motherboard to bring better audio capability into your PC. All in all it's a very impressive motherboard not only features wise, yet also in terms of sheer design. The motherboard as tested today actually brings back memories of the early X58 motherboards from eVGA styling wise with the black PCB and the green colored PCie slots. And considering these are good memories, heck have a look yourself, meet the Gigabyte G1 Sniper gaming edition motherboard as the design is a sheer class on its own.

Crysis 2 Review

One of the most awaited games of 2011, Crysis 2 pits the player against aliens (Cephs) and human soldiers (CELL). Players will play as a one man army with a super suit named Nanosuit 2 in a devastated New York. I have personally played the game and it really looks nice! However many complained of the "watered down graphics" and the lack of DX11 support out from the box. Personally, it is one of the prettiest games I have seen. I can't alt+tab out of the game so I am sorry for the lack of screenshots proving the prettiness of this game. It might be one of the prettiest FPS you can play out there. Even my GTX460 1GB is stressed out even though it supports only DX9. I will take screenshots tomorrow when I play it again.

AMD Radeon HD6790 Review : GTX550 Ti Killer?

The HD 6790 is set to beat the GTX550 Ti, which is quite a failure by nVidia, performing even worse than the previous generation's GTX460. It is based on AMD's 40 nm "Barts" GPU which is the very same graphics processor used in the Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870. Next to that this product comes with a full 256-bit wide memory bus giving it very nice memory bandwidth and really, aside from slicing some shader processor clusters and ROPs away, this is a R6800 series card.

Armed with plenty of power for a products in the 125 EUR (RM544) range this product could be just what the doctor ordered for gamers on a budget, have a quick peek at the actual reference sample and then let's head on over into the review.

AMD Radeon HD6990 vs nVidia GTX590

A short history lesson on dual GPU cards.

Most consumers don't even need dual GPUs with single GPUs more than enough for gaming purposes. However, some people like to be extreme, and dual GPU cards are the most extreme cards one can buy in the market. Right now we are looking at dual GF110 and dual "Caymans", essentially giving you two slowed down GTX580 or two HD6970 respectively.

SPECIFICATIONS

	GeForce GTX 590	GeForce GTX 580	Radeon HD 6990	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturing Process	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC
Die Size	2 x 520 mm²	520 mm²	2 x 389 mm²	389 mm²	389 mm²
Transistors	2 x 3 billion	3 billion	2 x 2.64 billion	2.64 billion	2.64 billion
Engine Clock	607 MHz	772 MHz	830 MHz	880 MHz	800 MHz
Stream Processors / CUDA Cores	1024	512	3072	1536	1408
Compute Performance	2.49 TFLOPS	1.58 TFLOPS	5.1 TFLOPS	2.7 TFLOPS	2.25 TFLOPS
Texture Units	128	64	192	96	88
Texture Fillrate	77.7 Gtex/s	49.4 Gtex/s	159.4 Gtex/s	84.5 Gtex/s	70.4 Gtex/s
ROPs	96	48	64	32	32
Pixel Fillrate	58.3 Gpix/s	37.1 Gpix/s	53.1 Gpix/s	28.2 Gpix/s	25.6 Gpix/s
Frame Buffer	2 x 1.5 GB GDDR5	1.5 GB GDDR5	2 x 2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5
Memory Clock	853 MHz	1002 MHz	1250 MHz	1375 MHz	1250 MHz
Memory Bandwidth	2 x 163.9 GB/s (384-bit)	192 GB/s (384-bit)	2 x 160 GB/s (256-bit)	176 GB/s (256-bit)	160 GB/s (256-bit)
Maximum Board Power	365 W	244 W	375 W	250 W	200 W

With the current top single GPUs  being so powerful, things will only get better when doubled, right? Read more on the GTX590 and how well it performs in SLI vs the HD6990 in Crossfire here.

For the AMD HD6990 review, please click here now.


SOURCE: Tom's Hardware, Guru3d, Guru3d