Reviews 52663 Published by Philipp Esselbach 0

ASUS Xonar Essence ST sneak preview
The Guru of 3D posted a preview on the ASUS Xonar Essence ST

You read it right, ST .. not to confuse with STX.

The PC audio market has been churning out some great new high fidelity soundcards lately. A good example here is the recent release of the new Essence STX headphone card, which stirred up the audio community and caught the attention of people who usually look for external headphone amplifiers. Some of you may know there were rumors of ASUS expanding the Essence Line-up with possibly a PCI model.

Guru3D has the prototype the engineering sample of the Essence ST in our audio lab today, and will bring you a sneak preview on it to show you what ASUS is working on inside that chocolate factory of theirs.
ASUS Xonar Essence ST sneak preview

LinkSys Cisco Media Hub 405 Review
Driverheaven takes a look at the LinkSys Cisco Media Hub 405

At first glance the Cisco media hub appears to be just another NAS device like so many on the market, however as the name suggests this is aimed mainly at the media market with the focus on delivering music or video based files to other devices.
LinkSys Cisco Media Hub 405 Review

Reviews 52663 Published by Philipp Esselbach 0

XFX Geforce 9800 GTX+ Black Edition Video Card w/ Far Cry 2 Review
Tweaknews posted a review on the XFX Geforce 9800 GTX+ Black Edition Video Card w/ Far Cry 2

Overall, to say I am impressed with XFX's tweaked version of the 9800GTX+ would be an understatement. It handles all the recent games with relative ease all while under very tough image quality and resolution settings and all for a price of around US$189. Couple in the fact that you get one or even two quality recent games with the package and you have a purchase that will perform right out of the box.
XFX Geforce 9800 GTX+ Black Edition Video Card w/ Far Cry 2 Review

AMD Phenom II DDR2 vs. DDR3 Performance
TweakTown posted a review on the memory performance of AMD Phenom II

AM3 based processors from AMD are designed with two integrated memory controllers; a 128bit wide DDR2 memory controller and a 128bit wide DDR3 memory controller. This is made possible thanks to DDR2 and DDR3 having the same mount of pins as DDR2 modules, just differently spaced. AMD has designed AM3 processors to be able to slot into AM2+ boards to run with their DDR2 memory controllers. However, you can also place the CPU into an AM3 based board to take full advantage of the DDR3 memory controller.

Now, this is a time of transition. AMD wants to get the AM3 based Phenom II’s out there and current AM2+ boards have already been given support for it. But what about users who don’t want to spend a fortune? - Jetway has come to the party with its AM2/AM3 combo board supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 memory slots onboard. Today we will see just how much difference there is in performance between using DDR2 and DDR3 memory thanks to this very board.
AMD Phenom II DDR2 vs. DDR3 Performance