Daily Reviews Summary 04/24/11

Today we have two of the new value orientated Radeons on our test bench, the Sapphire 6570 and 6670. These cards are more than just rebranded reference designs thanks to their Arctic Cooling coolers and redesigned PCB's so let's take a look at how they perform in some of the most popular games around, as well as GPU computing and media related tasks.

For all of those silent computing enthusiasts, we had Noctua send over their latest fan, the NF-S12B FLX. It features beveled blade tips, for increased airflow, the SCD 2, a smooth drive system, and highly advanced bearings. Let's see if this fan really warrants the steep price tag and if it can manage to "blow away" a traditional case fan.

USB 3.0 is the future and it’s here now, there’s no doubt it’s fast but there isn’t much yet in the way of pre-built hard drives on the market just yet that can take advantage of its speed. The solution of course is to get an aftermarket enclosure like the one I have today from Hornettek called the Viper. This enclosure is small and well made; I put it up against another USB 3.0 enclosure and found that it actually performs a bit better.

Apple's iTunes is the default media player and organizer for the multitudes of iPod, iPhone, and iPad-toting trendsters, but Apple hasn't rested on its laurels, continuing instead to add features and improve the software. Version 10 added Apple TV integration, TV show rentals, better app management, and a few cosmetic changes, but the real new meat was Ping, a Facebook-like music-oriented social network that lives inside the media player software.