Daily Reviews Summary 06/21/12

AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series is out in full force now and even with the NVIDIA 600 series launching, it's still getting a lot of attention. As is typical with video card releases, manufacturers like to make their own designs and subtle changes and release various different cards based off of the same GPU. Here at Benchmark Reviews, we've received the MSI Radeon HD R7870 Hawk video card and we are prepared to put it to the test. With an unlocked BIOS and a digital PWM, the MSI R7870 Hawk begs to be overclocked. Let's find out just how fast it can go.

The EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard is compatible with the latest 28nm Ivy Bridge processors and is designed with overclockers in mind. The EVGA Z77 FTW has been packed with features in a slightly slimmer than EATX form factor at 10.3" wide. Onboard buttons, dual CMOS reset buttons, triple BIOS support, DEBUG LED, and extra CPU as well as PCI-E power connectors are just some of the conveniences available for performance tuners. Five PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots are available for some Quad-SLI action, utilizing a PLX PEX8747 bridge to circumvent the PCI-E graphics 16-lane limit of Ivy Bridge processors. A pair of extra SATA3 6Gbps ports via a Marvell 9182 controller as well as a pair of USB 3.0 ports via an ASMedia ASM1042 controller is available onboard for additional high-speed storage options.

Fusing together the looks and charm of the original the FT03-Mini has been reduced in size by a whopping 50%. The feature-set of the FT03-Mini has been rationalised to be accommodated by the reduced size of the chassis, with the aim of catering condensed, Mini-ITX systems. Can this smaller variant to the classic Fortress series impress us again? Let's find out!