TheOverclocker Issue 22

THE WORLD’S BEST OVERCLOCKING ONLINE MAGAZINE. YEAH!

Issue 22 2012rev 2.1

K|NGP|N’S GUIDE: LIQUID NITROGEN

PREP FOR 4-WAY SLI

Feature

AMD Extreme OC Show

Feature

GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H

Reviewed

INTEL Core i7 3970X

Reviewed

Issue 22 | 2012 The OverClocker 3

As much as I dislike Apple, I respect Apple. An odd way to open an Editor’s note for sure but then again; writing

500 odd words about Black Belt Jones or some such 80s action hero is probably as strange if not more so.

So then, let me tell you why I respect Apple. I do so because Apple knows how to communicate. Apple communicates with such proficiency and consistency that it’s pretty hard to not understand anything the outfit says. Be it in their products or their ecosystem, Apple doesn’t mince its words and therefor its products have a clear, concise and consistent message.

There are other companies which are notable, but they above all stand out to me. Communicate what is truly relevant, not what you think is important. The internal dialogue that the company has with itself is probably one of the reasons why it does so well. If we think about it, there isn’t a single product that the outfit sells that’s exclusive. Apple however, outsells its competitors while managing to charge a premium for their products. This company, doesn’t sell cheap or affordability. In fact, I doubt if I’ve ever read anything from or heard anyone representing the company speak about cheap, value, or affordability. Their products are aspirational. Customers desire them for reasons beyond rationality, after all – humans are not rational creatures and most certainly do not form rational relationships with products.

This is evidently very poorly understood by component manufacturers. Vendors talk to you about distributors and very rarely talk about their end users. It’s as if the purpose of distributors is forgotten even though it’s right there in the name. Their sole purpose is to distribute goods to shops and eventually to end users. That means communication between the vendors and the end users is key. Since information usually flows in one direction, essentially downwards, vendors must head important information that manages to make its way up to them. Let us not forget the most important part of this relationship and dialogue. “Customers are always right!”

They always have the option of going

somewhere else. It really is that simple. If a potential customer has $500 for a

graphics card for example. They could go any which way and with any vendor for that graphics card. Some vendors spend their time speaking poorly about their competitors, however the entire buying experience and interaction with that vendor becomes negative. Imagine you have 10 seconds to make an impression. You could either bad mouth a competitor or you can promote your product on its merits, imagined or tangible. More times than not, if the entire interaction is negative - even about a competing brand - the chances of making a sale are diminished significantly.

In all markets, business or any enterprise, there is a hierarchy. There exists a number one and everyone else who is fighting to be number one. The only way to get to that top spot is to be better. That means better in every possible way or simply where there’s an opportunity to be better. One such way is to emulate their winning ways, but more importantly improve where they may fall short. It is in these cracks where the opportunity to be a leader lies. These opportunities however only reveal themselves through honest and clear headed dialogue within the company. Anything else will prove futile and a waste of time..

[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]

Motives and thoughts

“There are other companies which are notable, but they above all stand out to me. Communicate what is truly relevant, not what you think is important.”

Also, Merr y

Christ mas to

our readers that

celebrate, here’s a

Santa for you.

45

Okay since it’s

Christ mas here’s

another one. But

that’s it !

4 The OverClocker Issue 21 | 2012

The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc).

EditorNeo [email protected]: +8869 8874 0949

Art DirectorChris Savides

Contributors Dane RemendesK|NGP|NMassman

Online contributorJonathan Horne

For advertising sales and marketing please contact:

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REGULARS3 - Editor’s note

FEATURES6 – Q + A with Kenny “K404”Clapham

34 – AMD Extreme OC Show

REVIEWS10 – GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H

12 – MSI N680GTX Lightning

14 – G.Skill F3 Trident 2,666MHz CL11 Kit

16 – OCZ Vector 256GB SSD

22 – AVEXIR Core Series 16GB PC22400 CL12 Kit

24 – INTEL Core i7 3970X

26 – AMD FX-8350 (The comeback kid)

30 – ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z

32 – GIGABYTE GV-R797TO-3GD (GHz Edition)

K|NGP|N’S GUIDE:18 – Liquid Nitrogen prep for your GPU with the Tek9

LIFESTYLE40 – Game Review – Call of Duty: Black Ops II

44 – GELID GX-7 CPU Cooler

45 – ANTEC A.M.P dBS earphones

46 – CORSAIR Carbide 200R


Q AKenny “K404” Clapham

Country Name and City: I live in a small town called Wishaw, about half an hour outside Glasgow.....in Scotland. What language(s) do you speak? Just English, though some people would question even that! I really got to slow things down for Campus Party in Spain, or I get confused looks. Glaswegian isn't like the English most non-English speakers are used to hearing!

Your Avatar has long been a sock or puppet, how did that come about. While you’re at it, how did you come to K404 as a nik? They were both kind of thrown together when I needed a nik and an avatar. The sock monkey was the brand mascot for one of the first digital TV providers in the UK. When that company disappeared, he became the mascot for a brand of tea I don't even drink! He has zero connections to computers. Popular mascots = merchandise and my best mate bought me a big version of the toy one Christmas and I liked the facial expression. I'm slowly working on a new sock puppet so there's no brand crossover or advertising. I'm making it myself; I'm not buying it off a shelf full of identical toys. It might take a while; sewing isn’t soldering that's for sure! As for the name, the 404 is April 2004. I signed up to a new phone contract then and used the date as my login so I'd always know how long I’d had it. I discovered overclocking and forums at about the same time. 404 being too short for most forum registrations, I added the K. A completely crap reason for the name! To make it even worse, there's also an old mobile (cell) phone and a pair of headphones called K404.

On which forums do you spend most of your time on?HWBot, Xtremesystems and OCX forums. I'm not spending as much time on forums as I used to, but there are a lot of people I want to stay in contact. I've made more friends in the world of overclocking than I ever thought I would!

Do you have any thoughts on NVIDIA’s policy regarding overclocking? Ha! Everyone has thoughts on this! Bottom line is: a company can put whatever limits they want on the products they make. Regarding the voltage contro; the problem there is the timing. Kepler was released, PR about overclocking was circulated by AIBs then NVIDIA pulled the plug. It's in "bait-and-switch" territory in some ways, but most of us don't know the finer points of the NVIDIA supply agreements and warranty conditions. If the decision was made before launch day, no-one would care. As for the frequency caps for some cards in the new drivers, we’ll use another driver version. If NVIDIA make themselves uncompetitive for extreme overclocking, we'll buy AMD cards for global 3D and the playing field levels out again once the community has adjusted. The community has been spoiled in recent years with overvolting software. If we have to use “hard-mods” more often, that's fine. No-one complained when that was the only way. A lot of people want to keep their hands clean these days.....and their warranties intact, no doubt. What are you currently overclocking (at the time of writing) and how goes it? It feels like "everything!" I have piles of NVIDIA GPUs here and a couple of AMD cards that interest me. I have a

list of NVIDIA GPUs I want to bench and it's a long list. I've been enjoying a mini break from G80 and G92. It's nice to bench some low-end stuff where CPU is quite irrelevant, I can focus 100% on GPU.... the way I think a 3D bench should be! Overall, it's going pretty well though, not too many spanners in the works. Of course, there'll be a big submission day at some point. I prefer to submit work in batches. So many people submit so many results to HWB each day, you can build up a profile of hundreds of results and no-one notices. I'm not much of an attention seeker, but I figure 3-4 days of obvious attention-seeking per year can be forgiven.

What is the hardware scene like in the UK? Is hardware easily accessible and how is the pricing? Availability is overall, pretty good. Galaxy and ECS are impossible to find in shops though, which is a shame. I'd like to see more of the smaller companies get some distribution here, like AFox and Colorful. Variety is good! Complaining about pricing is always contentious. I


think we pay too much, but I know other countries have higher tax rates and/or worse availability. Overall I guess we're lucky.

How long has it been since you started overclocking and what was it that got you started? I started overclocking in the Athlon-XP days and started to take it somewhat more seriously and competitively in the s939 days, just as nForce4 and SLI hit the market at the end of 2004. Earlier that year, I'd spent a lot of money on a computer upgrade to get better FPS in the AVP2 computer game, but it didn't help, so I started learning about computers and hardware so I didn't waste more money. I bought CustomPC magazine and I found their "Beat the office" benchmark & leaderboard. Guys like Dazboots, MarkGee and Maverick_SG1 had Vapochills or Machs and it looked like the most amazing thing in the world. I realised the CPU I’d bought was running about 60% of its factory speed, so my "first OC" took the CPU up to its stock speed! It all spiralled from there.

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement? Hitting 8GHz for the first time was pretty sweet......changing my thermal paste and getting 8.2GHz was a GOOD day! None of this AMD stuff, I did it “the man’s” way, on Netburst! Taking global top five in 3DMark11 twice and 3DMark Vantage again twice this summer was satisfying too! When I started out, I never thought I'd get high global results. No way! I was ranked 3rd in the non-Pro league on HWBot. Again, never thought I'd rank that highly. When you think about how many people are doing this and they're all over the world. To be so close to the top of the pile is humbling, even if it's just for a few days. I took a screenshot, so I have a memento.

Which is your favourite benchmark if any and what is your least favourite and why?Ha! My favourite benchmark is the one that gives me fewest problems! Favourite, despite my poor CPUs, may be 3DMark06 because it scales with everything! Because of my

normal hardware choices, 3DMark03, Vantage and Unigine are too GPU focussed, 3DMark01 and AM3 are too CPU bound, even with 6-year old cards. 3DMark05 usually does my head in. Crash, crash, and crash with speedsthat are stable in all other benchmarks. Until HWBot fix the wrapper, maybe AM3 is my least favourite. The benchmark is broken. It's that simple. I have a lot of respect for SPi32M and the people who bench it well. wPrime is great because it's using all the threads of a CPU. We need more benches like that, not single-threaded, but it's pointless coding a benchmark that takes less time to finish as components get more powerful.

How often do you have overclocking sessions in a month? It's been a while since I had a big session because my concentration is pretty shot at the moment. I'll bench at least once a week, even if it's just testing some MHz or knocking out one or two results. The bomb I dropped last April took around 9 months to put together because I can't bench all the


time. Yup, I sat on results for up to 9 months without submitting them. I've beaten that. I have results from an overclocking meet last December that I've still not submitted.

Who are the people you overclock with the most when you have group sessions?I've only been to a few meets because they're still quite a new thing in the UK scene. It's good to have familiar faces at them- Dualist, Scooter.Jay, El Gappo, Hivizman, Blindfitter, Borandi and Drifting. Even Predator and DaCoSa from Spain are on the list of overclockers I see most. They're all great company, great company.

Who is your closest competition in your country or in the world actually? The person that you feel challenges you the most with similar hardware to your own.In the UK, boy am I glad Hivizman has moved to the Pro League! The amount of work he does on OS prep is - terrifying. He makes me feel very lazy, which I suppose is a good thing. He knows that the settings that work best on air during pre-testing will change under LN2.... and he has the LN2 supply to pre-test under LN2. I can't, I have to wing it. Globally, with similar hardware, 12 and Sam are the main consistent competitors. I guess it would be no fun if there was no competition!

You recently attended an OC meeting in the UK a few weeks ago, how did that go? It was brilliant! Start to finish it was great. Everyone's really chilled out and was there for the laughs and the chat. The benching is kind of a bonus! Scooter Jay should go on tour. He's hilarious. I can't explain it as you have to experience the phenomenon for yourself! A couple of the guys had some hardware problems, which is always harsh at any meet or live event, but on the flipside, there were some great scores from others. Topdog is the most laid-back overclocker I've ever seen. He loaded up his pot, set wPrime to run then went outside for a smoke! I had my first shot at benching 4 pots. It went really well, went smoother than most of the single-card benching I've done recently! Meets are a good opportunity to try something new. Some things are much easier with a second pair of hands available

to refill flasks or pour and having someone to bounce ideas off during a session is priceless.

In your opinion, is overclocking growing, dying or staying about the same for the most part? I think it's still growing, but in some weird directions as well as the expected ones. I think it's separating itself off as a sport though. What the extreme guys need in a product is pretty much unmarketable to any other demographic. It would be interesting to see if we draw more parallels to the F.1 world in the future instead of Rally. I mean motherboards and cards that are definitely track-only, instead of essentially road cars with the necessary mods. People don't really need to overclock for daily tasks any more unless they have a crazy monitor setup. How feasible is it for you to get access to LN2 where you live and how much is it? LN2 is easy to get, but my supplier has a ridiculous ordering system. Each time I phone up, I hear "it'll be with you by this time next week" and I never get a call on the morning of delivery or when the tanker is 10 minutes away. If I miss a delivery because I dared to leave the house, they have the cheek to sound

annoyed. I pay £1.75/L which is much cheaper than some, but still 2-3x as much as it would be if I could take more at a time.

What are your thoughts about the seemingly growing desire to fabricate scores by members of the overclocking community? Is this something brought on by the current award or point system?It's disappointing how many people have been caught cheating this year. It's something I’ll never understand. You risk your reputation for a couple of rankings that won't matter in 6 months? Pathetic. A moral compass isn't something that can be taught I don't think. HWBot have put some work into this recently. A clear list of rules and punishments for breaking them was definitely overdue. Personally, I think any score or MHz manipulation should have the member permanently banned if they are caught. To do that is a conscious decision and it takes some time to do. It shows a complete disrespect for your competitors, HWBot and yourself. Once the first manipulation is done, the barrier is down and the offence will most likely happen again. If someone is greedy and doesn't get caught, they do it again. Best to remove them completely once they're found out. Bugged runs can happen


by accident, score sharing *can* happen by accident because CPUs can be shared for 3D benchmarks. Manipulation - only deliberate. Points and rankings are motivators for cheating without a doubt, but it's a positive motivator for the vast majority so I don't want to see it changed too much because of the actions of a few. I love that HWBot has leader boards for everything. Maybe some people are cheating so they get noticed by a company. I hope companies see that as a really poor "audition" and refuse to support them. The sad thing is that so much can't be enforced at HWBot level. There are a lot of results out there that look a bit questionable, especially in terms of sharing, but without a smoking gun, HWBot can't do anything. I get a bit of flak occasionally for wanting more rules, more enforcement and more ethics, but I believe in those things.

Any thoughts on live overclocking competitions, be it past or future ones? They're important for sure; the overclockers who do well at MOA, GOOC, etc are a special breed. Let's not ignore the events in the Far East that we don't hear so much about - Galaxy events and such. They aren't

my cup of tea however; it's not how I bench. I want competitions like that to expand. It would be great if these events crossed media borders and were covered or at least mentioned in wider computing circles or even in non-computing circles. I declined an invite to MOA this year. I'd rather not have all that nice hardware and the scores that go with it, than go to a competition I’ve not earned any right to be at, then come in last place and paint a bad picture of UK overclocking. I don't think someone can be given a higher honour than being asked to represent their country at an event of ANY kind, computer-related or not.

Is there anything you would like to extend to the community and other readers?Go to an OC meet, it will give you a whole new perspective on overclocking. You might have to travel a long way for it, but it will be worth it. If there aren't OC meets near you, try setting one up. Overclock.net has a guide on things such as venues and what you will need. Have fun; respect your rivals, even if you don't know who they are. Thank you to everyone who's contributed to all the good things that the extreme overclocking scene has built up over the last 7 years!

Outside of overclocking, what else are you as passionate about and spent an equal amount of time if not more doing? Well, I’m a care-giver because my Mom’s health is pretty poor. That takes up a lot of my time. I don't think "passionate" is the right word, but I think it's the right thing to do. My social life has taken a hit because of it, so...I sleep, I bench and I care. That's probably 95% of my life at the moment. (Sorry to hear that Kenny, best wishes – Ed!)

Do you have any advice for overclockers just starting out? Read everything you can find that’s connected to the hardware or process you're starting out with. Don't expect every guide or piece of advice to match up. Test one variable at a time. Test as many settings as you can. Be gentle with voltage. Take notes on everything. Take your time. If it stops being fun, take a step back for a few days. If you take an unexpected gold medal with 20%, 30% lower MHz than the other top scores on the leader board, it's a bugged score, don't submit it.

[ The OverClocker ]

EDITOR’S CHOICEAWARD


How do you improve on an already impressive motherboard, but not

price it much higher than the previous iteration? A question I suspect came up a few times at GIGABYTE in whatever dialogues that may have taken place before the production of this board.

See, essentially what the UD4H is, is a refreshed

GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4HRRP: TBA | Website: www.gigabyte.com

Test Machine

Intel Core i7 3770K

MSI NGTX680 Lightning (310.64)

Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB

CoolerMaster Silent Pro M2 1500W

Windows 7 64-bit SP1 /XP SP3

UD3H. Some may even find it unnecessary because in essence the boards are identical. Component wise, very little has changed like the audio controller which has been switched back to the Realtek ALC892 (replacing the VIA VT2021) and the Realtek Gigabit LAN chip instead of the Atheros chip. Short of that it’s hard to tell the boards apart when reading the specifications.

That doesn’t though mean the boards are the same in performance or overclocking headroom. For instance, the inconsistency of the UD3H is largely done away with. On rare occasions, two UD3H boards would offer remarkable differences in overclocking headroom. This was true as well for the UD5H if not more so. This time all of that is a thing of

the past and the UD4H will give you predictable results every time, all the time. This should bring a bit of a relief for those looking at a budget overclocking board and were considering going the GIGABYTE direction.

During our time spent with the board, we discovered that despite it being designated as a budget board, we genuinely like the UD4H above all other Z77X motherboards from GIGABYTE. This is especially because it’s such a great memory overclocker, something you could hardly say about the UD3H. Whatever magic GIGABYTE worked on the UD4H has turned an already great motherboard into one of the most efficient and complete Z77 products on the market.

Just to highlight this new found overclocking capacity.


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

9/10

The Z77X-UD4H isn’t much different from what the UD3H offered. In fact it’s damn near identical, which is good. What makes it worth the extra spend is the vastly improved memory overclocking, which in our books makes an already efficient board even better.

Most definitely, it’s the UD3H improved.

We tried the notoriously hard to overclock AVEXIR Core series 2800 memory on the board. It worked first time around at 2,800MHz with all four sticks. Do not be fooled into thinking that is an easy feat as it’s not. Not every CPU has a 2800MHz IMC and not every board can operate the memory at that speed with two sticks let alone four. The UD4H didn’t’ skip a beat and it was a simple matter of loading the XMP profile and rebooting the system.

With other sets of memory, the UD4H proved to be just as capable as any of the dedicated overclocking boards on the market. One such example was when we compared the UD4H against the ASRock Z77 OC-Formula. The UD4H was not only capable of matching it in frequency, but as you can see from the results, matched it in performance as well, coming out ahead ever so

slightly in some benchmarks. So for the overclockers

out there looking for an even more cost effective board, this is the one to get. If you consider memory overclocking capabilities and the efficiency of this board, you’ll find that it offers even better value than the UD3H, perhaps even the OC-Formula in some instances.

In the end the only negative aspect of this board is that it may have come a little too late in the life cycle of the Z77 chipset, but other than that it’s a solid board that could in fact be the gem of the entire Z77 series from GIGABYTE. We aren’t sure if there’ll be any kind of “Rap” competition concerning this board as we saw with the UD3H, but if ever there was a board to deserve it, it would be this one. The Z77X-UD4H has become an instant favourite of ours.

[ TheOverclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4800MHz s on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit and Windows XP SP3. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Motherboard

3DMark2001se 3DMark03 3DMark11 Super Pi 8M Aida 64 Copy Aida 64 Latency

ASRock Z77 OC-Formula

109,127 123,756 10,501 1.24.297 30377 29.1

GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H

109,133 123,720 11,140 1.24.219 29612 29.1

“... Essentially what the UD4H is, is a

refreshed UD3H.”


We’ll say it and keep saying it until we are collectively blue in

the face. The measure of any brand or vendor’s products isn’t in the one offs they make, but the consistency of their products at retail level. This is in line, with the Lightning range of graphics cards from MSI. For years, we have had MSI produce the best in class of any one graphics card; especially the NVIDIA GPU based ones. This time with the GTX680 it’s no different. You may be

MSI N680GTX LightningRRP: $499.99 | Website: www.msi.com

Test Machine

Intel Core i7 3770K

ASRock Z77 OC-Formula (Bios 1.60)

Corsair Dominator Platinum 2,666MHz CL10

CoolerMaster 1.5KW PSU

Windows7 64-Bit/ XP

thinking that it’s very late to be reviewing this graphics card and you’d be right. However, consider the landscape that we now have when it comes to the GTX680. We won’t go into the overclocking governing policies as we’ve exhausted that conversation. It hasn’t changed and is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. With that said, your best chances of overclocking the GTX 680 using LN2 still remain with the Lightning.

MSI may not have the GTX680 world records, but that’s academic at this point. The truth is for any one person looking to overclock their GTX680 using LN2 or even dry ice, this is your best bet. MSI has not cut corners in their design and what we liked about previous generation Lightning cards has been brought forward with refinement in the NGTX680 Lightning.

In case some of you missed it by some miracle, you’re looking at a fully custom PCB that allows up to 200% power draw

over the standard model. Solid capacitors all around, copper MOS, voltage check points, complete software control over vGPU, PLL, Auxiliary and DRAM voltage. If you need it for overclocking it’s there. MSI as always, making it as easy or rather as simple as possible to get into extreme overclocking as possible.

You’ll get the dual BIOS switch as well as you’d expect, but we would recommend you track down one of the older BIOS versions which remained unlocked and would allow you to overclock this graphics card as it was meant to be. With the card we received, it had one of the new BIOS revisions which had some controls in place which effectively rendered the card unusable for extreme overclocking. Alas, it was nothing a BIOS flash couldn’t fix.

For those who are not as adventurous, you’ll still find heaps of performance with air cooling with the GTX680 Lightning; mind you though

EDITOR’S CHOICEAWARD


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

9.5/10

As stated in the main body, the NGTX680 Lightning is the quintessential GTX680. No other vendor can claim to have produced such a prolific card for this particular GPU from NVIDIA. It’s not the first time MSI makes such a product and it won’t be the last, until then though, this one is a must have.

Yes. It isn’t much more than the reference card in price, but it’s easily the best GTX680 you can actually buy and overclock with.

the appeal of the card is dramatically reduced as it won’t necessarily be better than any other GTX680 out there. That isn’t a bad thing though as the retail price of the NGTX680 is actually in line with reference cards and as such you may as well pick this one up as it will not only run quieter, cooler and potentially overclock better, it just doesn’t cost much more.

Worth mentioning is that what we recorded in our testing is that NVIDIA drivers since the 680 card came out have improved dramatically. This is no doubt in part to do with the amazing work AMD has been doing on the 7000 series. For instance, from when we first tested our first GTX680 here to now, the performance has increased quite dramatically, with overclocked models at release offering less performance than reference models of today. If you look at the 3DMark11 results you’ll notice that the Lightning card offers almost 500

points more than the GTX680 Super Overclock. This isn’t because the card is faster; in fact it’s a clocked lower. The performance gain has been purely from the optimizations NVIDIA has been implementing in the drivers and as it stands right about now would be the best time to bench the GTX680 at least as far as drivers are concerned.

Game compatibility and features as well have been improved which have helped keep the GTX680 relevant despite all the overclocking and software shenanigans. To that end we suspect we’ll see some more improvements by the time the GTX790 shows up. Until then however this is the best you can get from NVIDIA and it’s very impressive when presented as the NGTX680 Lightning.

There’s not much more to say. This is the GTX680 to define the GPU and while other offerings may be close, they just can’t quite put together the package MSI has with this one.

[ TheOverclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4.8GHz on a normal install of Windows 7 64-bit and WinXP. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

GPU Clocks 3DMark03 3DMark Vantage

3DMark11 Unigine Heaven Xtreme

Sniper Elite Max Detail

MSI N680GTX Lightning

1.11GHz/6GHz 124401 37912 11147 2106.579 76.8

GPU Score: 39202

Graphics: 11243

MSI N680GTX Lightning OC

1.3GHz/7.2GHz 135193 40185 12011 2378.193 86

GPU Score: 42643

Graphics: 12236


Going into this review we had very high hopes for the memory. After all

it had been previously shown to reach speeds in excess of 3,300MHz when cooled with LN2. Upon closer inspection and inquiry though, it turns out that the set used for this extreme overclocking feat was the CL10 set of the same frequency. As you can imagine, such a kit is specially binned and not as easy to

G.SKILL Trident X F3-2666C11D 8GB KIT RRP: $149.99 | Website: www.gskill.com

Test Machine

ASRock Z77 OC-Formula (1.60)




purchase as this one. We thought to see just how

different these kits could be from each other and how telling the price difference between the two was.If you glance over at the results you’ll notice that the default XMP profile performance isn’t impressive at all. This however we suspect could be because of a board anomaly pertaining to this memory in particular. We improved performance by tuning down the memory performance level to “6” at which point the RAM performed as expected. It may be of concern to those using other motherboards which many not necessarily have this option available to them. In such a case you’re likely stuck with that kind of performance which is anything but stellar.

As we scaled the frequency we noticed the issue repeat

itself and even though we were always able to remedy it, it’s important that you are aware of this so as to not create unrealistic expectations from the RAM.

Since this was high speed RAM we started from 2400MHz right up to 2800MHz which was stable at a little over the default voltage. Of peculiar behaviour from this RAM was the inability to scale with voltage, in fact at 1.7V the RAM showed numerous errors and the best setting to use was between 1.65 and 1.68V.With such a low voltage the included fan was unnecessary and given that this is a value alternative, maybe should not have been included at all.

In contrast to the C10 kit, we would probably lean towards that set even though $30 may seem like a lot of money especially when considering


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

8.5/10

G.Skill has once again produced a competent kit. It’s not new for the outfit and certainly not unexpected. This set functions as advertised and does have some measure of overclocking headroom. However the price difference between this and the significantly better C10 kit does cast some doubt upon the real value of this set in the long run. Overall a fairly standard 2,666MHz set if there is such a thing. If your budget is fixed at $150 do give this set some consideration.

Possibly we’d say. At $150 you could do a lot worse.

with DRAM prices. Consider as well that this is a set for overclocking and thus you’re unlikely to be running this memory at the default speeds of reference timings. For instance in the previous issue we looked at the CORSAIR PLATINUM C10 kit of the same frequency. At no point was it necessary for us to run the default timings as they were always slower apart for the 2800MHz result. We had similar expectations here, but the RAM fell short. For $150 we can’t be too harsh on the memory, and the fact that it will run 2800 MHz reliably at close to or default voltage is enough for us to give this set the nod.

For our spend and effort though, once you commit to this kind of money for memory when it can be had for as little as $49, we tend to not be too concerned about the price ultimately. That’s

because for a gaming system having 2133MHz memory or 2,666Mhz memory will make absolutely no difference and the only benefit and forte of these kits is for competitive or at least semi competitive overclocking. Let’s also not forget that as much as all recent 3770K CPUs have good IMCs, that doesn’t hold for all of them especially the ones with very high clock speeds which seem to have rather poor IMCs. In that context you’re likely looking for tight timing memory. Even if you’re not able to get PSC memory any more you’ll want slightly better timings than this RAM is capable of, so we’d urge you to give serious consideration to the G.Skill F3 2,666C10D set instead. Save $30 more and reward yourself with some of the best RAM around.

[ TheOverclocker ]


G.Skill Trident X F3-2666C11D 8GB Kit

24909 24921 28773 29.9 1.24.922 2400 9-12-12-31-1N

25921 25170 29841 29.2 1.24.656 2600 10-13-13-31-1N

26021 23951 25645 29.5 1.25.046 2666 11-13-13-35-1N

26696 25364 29853 28.8 1.24.625 2800 11-14-14-35-1N


So then let’s get right into it. SandForce based SSD’s; especially of the

2K series are yesterday. We’ve seen some gems using this controller like the Kingston HyperX 3K and the INTEL 520. For the most part we’ve likely seen the best of that generation we are likely to see. Also the uncompressible data performance issue hasn’t been resolved and as such this has left some room for other players in the controller market to capitalize.

OCZ has had a couple of

OCZ Vector 256GB SSDRRP: $289.99 | Website: www.ocz.com

Test Machine

Intel Core i7 3770K

GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H (F2f)



Windows 7 64-bit SP1

Barefoot controllers in their drives, first when INDILINX was an independent outfit and recently when they had been brought in-house. The Barefoot 3 controller is thus far the best showing of this union and we have to say it’s very impressive, easily the most impressive SSD from OCZ to date. The Vector is likely the fastest drive on the market or at the very least in the top three fastest consumer SSDs.

With so much competition, OCZ has taken to building their SSD around reliability, endurance and sustainable performance. No doubt all these are important, but for our purposes we are concerned with speed and the warranty the drive will come with. As far as that’s concerned OCZ is offering an impressive 5 year warranty which is in line with what INTEL offers on their drives. Pretty impressive to say the least, but more so is the performance.

Last issue we covered the Neutron drives from CORSAIR and found them unmatched by anything on the market. Just two months later we are looking at a drive that is for the most part, even faster than the GTX. Not only does this make the Vector SSD the fastest drive we’ve ever tested, we are simply blown away by the performance its offering over and above already impressive products. For this performance we have to thank the new controller, 25nm IMFT NAND Flash and some great firmware. When looking at the performance you should keep in mind that with future iterations of the firmware the drive may get even faster, but it’s unlikely to get slower.

The new controller combines an unnamed ARM Cortex Processor with OCZ’s Aragon Co-CPU. Again we know next to nothing about these two processors, but together with a flash and DRAM controller combine to make the BAREFOOT3. With

Hardware Award


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

9/10

OCZ has produced the fastest drive we’ve ever tested. It’s vindication that their acquisition of INDILINX was not ill thought out and has positioned the vendor as a market leader. The Vector drive has become the SSD to beat. The OCZ Vector is simply the best SSD we’ve ever tested.

For sure, the vector drive is incredible fast, once again setting the bar for performance.

all this comes performance that is bordering on the limits of what the SATA 6Gbps standard is capable of. You may be seeing results lower than the 600MB/s theoretical limit of the standard, but you should keep in mind that we are showing an average result here and not the peak results, so there were times when the sequential read and write performance were above the 550MB/s mark. More than the sequential performance though, we were moved by the 4K results which simply annihilated what the CORSAIR drives delivered a few short months ago. We had never seen results like this and we are eagerly looking forward to the drive that will not only claim better numbers than these, but actually go on to produce them.

Read IOPS performance was the one place where the Vector drive failed to outshine the NEUTRON drives. The IOPS performance was almost 10K lower than what both

the Neutron and Neutron could deliver. An odd result considering the Write IOPS performance was significantly better delivering over 90K IOPS, once again the highest we’ve ever recorded in our test suite.

OCZ sweetens the deal by providing you with drive cloning software but it doesn’t matter as far as we’re concerned. The decision to buy the drive will be made purely on performance, the warranty and pricing. As for the pricing, it may be a little step for some as it retails for $50 more than the Neutron GTX. It does offer noticeably faster performance in benchmarks, but we do feel $50 just may be a little bit much to ask for given that in real day to day situations there will hardly be any difference between these drives.

If money isn’t an issue though and you are after sheer speed above all, you’ll have little to think about as this is the drive to buy without question.

[ TheOverclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz s on a normal install of Windows 7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Drive Average Read Average Write 4K Read(QD32)

4K Write (QD32)

Read IOPS Write IOPS Maximum IO response time (ms)

OCZ Vector 256GB

524 524.7 394.3 367.9 66937.34 91065.67 7.9844

Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB

473.6 496 294.3 316.2 76753.7 83326.26 8.3643

Corsair Neutron 240GB

457.3 370.9 284.9 307.9 76642.4 82769.19 11.2734


LIQUID NITROGEN prep for 4-WAY SLI

K|NGP|N’s GUIDE:

Competing in 3D benchmarks with a single GPU using liquid nitrogen has always been one of my favorite challenges from early on in my overclocking career. When the very first SLI and cross fire multi GPU setups arrived on the overclocking scene, I was instantly hooked. It was not long before two GPUs became three, and three became four. Cards with dual GPUs and 4 separate PCBs on one motherboard. High end multi GPU overclocking became the ultimate challenge for an extreme overclocker. It takes a tremendous amount of focus and serious system/container management skills to successfully run a five to seven container liquid nitrogen

overclocking rig in 3D benchmarks. Aside from the endless hours of pretesting hardware components, a major key to getting the best results possible and not destroying any gear, once again is preparation. In this issue of TheOverclocker, I will show you how to prep and get your four-way system ready for battle.

The usual list of items needed are petroleum jelly(Vaseline is good), foam insulation tape, paper towels(“shop towels” are best as they are really absorbent and wick up water nicely), a small brush for applying grease, a hair dryer or heat gun, some scissors to cut out all your socket gaskets, foam tape and some rubber bands. [PICTURE 2]


2

STEP ONEStart off by giving the cards the usual grease treatment front and back, then install temp probes and insulate the containers using the foam tape. Be sure to trail the probe wire out of the bottom of the unit to prevent it from getting damaged by torching. When overclocking quad, you will use the torch a lot so this is a key thing to do. Pre-cut the foam pieces to fit nicely on the pots and do two layers thick around the whole unit. I will use my TEK-9 slim pots for this guide, but I think most slim sized pots can fit with same method of two layers of tape and some towel. Be sure to leave space for the bracket

to fit, these pots in particular are designed to fit 4 way perfectly and still adequately cool the GPUs but there can't be any foam in the way, or you will risk the contact. [See Previous Single GPU Prep Guide Here for procedure]

STEP TWOOnce the unit is fully insulated and all the grease is applied to the front and back of the cards, mount them to the containers turning two corner screws diagonally at a time in equal amounts of turns till tight. Create the foam tape gaskets for the insulation on the

back of the card now. Spread the grease to the sticky side of the tape strips and stick them to the card as pictured. This will keep the air out where water can form. [PICTURES 3 AND 4]

STEP THREETake the paper towel and cut pieces for a wrap around the top of the pot and rear. This helps so much in catching water before it reaches the slot area/board where it can become a problem. Keeping the system frozen can prevent this too, but the reality is you will use torches and may need to warm up


one or all of the cards at one point before you are done overclocking. Rinse and repeat the process identically for the other three cards and you’re ready to move on to the motherboard. Note the location of the blue probe line and where it leaves the pot on each unit, out of the way of any pouring or torching action. [PICTURES 5 AND 6]

STEP FOURTake the board and grease the hell out of it in all the green areas highlighted. I lightly grease the PCIe slots on the top. I do not recommend loading them up with grease as this almost always leads to detection issues later and it’s not necessary.[PICTURES 7 AND 8]

STEP FIVENow flip the board over and cut some strips of foam tape for the underside of the slot area. This whole area will suffer condensation even when just pre-testing four GPUs mildly overclocked around -50c or so. If you don't believe me try it without the tape then you will see what you need to do :). Grease the sticky side of the tape and stick it on the same way as was done on the rear of the cards. As long as the slots are all covered, you’re good. With the board right side up, Pack the paper towels in nice and tight and make sure that the condensation doesn’t come anywhere in contact with the

motherboard. [PICTURE 9 AND 10]

STEP SIXThis next part is pretty important for solid detection of the cards once everything is frozen and being stressed. It's of utmost importance that you force the cards down as straight as possible into the board, because a leaning card or cards can cause detection issues easily while overclocking. This leaning can also pop out the pins in the PCIe slots. I always make some simple container shims of different thicknesses for each unit in the system to keep them all nice and straight. Place one under each container as it’s placed on the board, checking to

4 5

9 10 11

3


make sure it’s the right thickness to keep the card straight. This is a much bigger issue in four-way SLI overclocking with those soft bridges than when using the fixed bridge. It should be done in both cases regardless. [PICTURE 11 AND 12]

STEP SEVENOnce all the cards are “shimmed” and installed into the system, grease the SLI bridge contacts and install them. As a final note, I will recommend that you use a hair dryer or heat gun on that whole bridge area/side of the card while overclocking as there is no heat generated in that area, and it will freeze. Circulation of

air is important around the CPU when overclocking using liquid nitrogen. Keep the falling nitrogen from freezing up everything around the CPU container like the PWM heat sinks and DIMM slots throughout long sessions. GPUs are not too different; much more nitrogen is being used more frequently so the air flow around them is more critical. Use a nice large high CFM fan for air circulation on the PWM side of the card. Of course when running really high voltages, the PWM can get very hot even if GPUs are really cold so you can cool the PWM like this as well. [PICTURE 13]

FINAL STEPKeep your HW running strong and give it the chance to give you the best results possible by preparing correctly. Four way graphics overclocking is in my opinion the pinnacle of extreme overclocking and I have always had the greatest respect as an overclocker for those that can do it successfully. I'm not talking about cards cooled only by air or mildly pushed in some outdated CPU bound benchmark. I mean the highest clocks possible the cards are capable of in four-way using the latest benchmarks that push the most modern GPUs to their limits. This is where it’s at. [PICTURE 14]Good luck and most importantly have fun!

[ K|NGP|N ]

6 7 8

12 13 14


Performance memory has always been a tough business. We are talking

here proper performance memory and not 2133MHz which some vendors have the audacity to call overclocking RAM. As it is on with the Z77 landscape, overclocking memory can only be classified at 2,400MHz and above.

After all, just about every set of 2133MHz memory can make 2,400MHz with some very relaxed timings and tweaking. So what does $459 earn you from AVEXIR? Well, it gives

AVEXIR Core Series 16GB PC22, 400 CL12 KIT RRP: $459.99 | Website: www.avexir.com

Test Machine

Intel Core i7 3770K

ASRock Z77 OC-Formula (1.60)




you the cheapest 16GB Quad Channel 2800MHz memory kit we are aware of. Every other competing kit is at least $599 and that $140 odd savings is a lot given that you can with that buy a 2,666MHz C10 kit from AVEXIR.

Oddly enough that fact right there is one that made this kit much harder to endorse than ordinarily. Reason why that is the case is because this was easily the most difficult kit to overclock we had ever come across. We did manage to run the memory at the retail speeds but it took hours on end to get it right and some back and forth between motherboard vendors and us, sometimes for days on end. When we did eventually manage to stabilize the memory, we discovered that the XMP profile could not be used at all, and hand tuning of each setting was required. Disappointing given that, the whole purpose of such memory is to negate the

need for such hand tuning at such high speeds.

To put this into perspective, we had another AVEXIR 2,666MHz CL11 set with us and that set was very easy to clock to 2,800MHz. Simple adjustments of the primary settings were all that was needed and we were able to POST the system and run benchmarks for hours on end with no instability at 1.67V. That it proved more difficult to do this with a set rated at 2800MHz made us suspect perhaps AVEXIR had handed us the one kit in their inventory that just couldn’t pass the grade.

Since overclocking wasn’t going to get us anywhere, we tried to tighten the timings and aim for better efficiency at lower speeds. Again the RAM left us wanting, as we weren’t really able to tighten the timings much to make this RAM a must have set as the 2,666MHz kit once again managed to not only match this kit but exceed it as well.


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

7.5/10

AVEXIR has easily the cheapest 2,800MHz 16 GB Quad Channel kit on the market. This set is almost exclusively for the ASUS Maximus V boards as with any other board you may battle to reach the stipulated 2,800MHz frequency. When you do though, the RAM will provide great performance for sure.

Not really, we’d rather the cheaper but equally capable AVEXIR Core Series 2,666MHz CL11 kit instead.

That kit retailing for less than half the price.

The one good thing about this RAM though was that once we did manage to get it stable it operated reliably with no hiccups or any random BSODs. So obviously the problem is with the XMP profile and not necessarily the RAM, something that can be easily remedied. This is good because it speaks to a solid hardware design that’s only been let down at the last mile by perhaps, a not too stringent process when it comes to testing various board compatibility.

Either way, we aren’t entirely convinced that this set is better than the 2,666MHz kit. We’d wager that you’re actually better off with that kit than this one in both overclocking headroom, timings and most certainly in the pricing. If the Aesthetics matter to you, rest assured these kits look identical, soy you’ll not be sacrificing anything in that regard.

The best way to describe this kit, for those who remember would be to draw parallels between it and the old OCZ Platinum Elite PC-5000 set for the DFI NF4 SLI-DR motherboard. The kit was sold as 625MHz, but there was hardly anybody who could manage to reach those speeds even though they had been shown to be possible. We all appreciated the engineering effort and the nod to overclockers, but only wished the memory actually worked as advertised. The situation with this AVEXIR kit isn’t identical, because you can get the set to operate at 2,800MHz. The issue is just how difficult it is sometimes.

If you’re using any of the ASUS MAXIMUS V boards, you’ll have virtually no problems with this set and it will work first, all the time, but for everyone else, consider the slightly cheaper but equally capable 2,666MHz CL11 kit. You’ll not be disappointed.

[ TheOverclocker ]


Memory AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

AIDA 64 Latency

SuperPi 8M Frequency Timings

AVEXIR Core Series PC22400 2800 CL12

24222 24897 28274 30.9 1.25.893 2400 10-12-12-28-1N

25146 25154 29488 30.1 1.25.629 2600 11-13-12-31-1N

25535 25226 29597 30 1.24.500 2666 11-13-13-35-1N

26294 25358 29321 29 1.25.255 2800 12-14-14-35-1N


By today’s standards SNB-E CPUs are slow. If you look at HWBOT

all you see is Ivy-Bridge CPUs dominating pretty much every single benchmark there is. No surprise there as there’s no beating the IPC of that family of CPUs. Despite being limited to eight threads at most, the performance advantage over last generation Core CPUs is enough to make up for that in many of the benchmarks.

There are some benchmarks however where this is not

INTEL Core i7 3970XRRP: $999.99 | Website: www.intel.com

Test Machine

Intel DX79SR

Corsair Dominator Platinum 2,666MHz C10

MSI NGTX680 Lightning

Cooler Master M2 Silent Pro 1500W PSU

Windows 7 64-Bit SP1

possible and this is where the 3970X comes in. The X79 platform in fact exists for us enthusiast s and overclockers for the sole purpose of pursuing even higher benchmark results and multi-GPU 3D benchmark records.

For the gamers, there’s little incentive to buy into the platform over what Z77 offers, as this CPU would actually be a step backwards in performance. Fortunately, though, if you do more with your system than play games and use heavily threaded programs, this CPU is worth its high price tag. $1,000 is a lot of money to ask for what isn’t the fastest CPU on the block at everything, but for that you do get the maximum amount of threads available in a single desktop CPU, quad channel memory support, the most amount of PCI Express lanes and in general enough horsepower to drive quad GPU systems properly.

Quad SLI on Z77 if you’re not aware doesn’t work as well as it should, despite several

board vendors resorting to a 3rd party PCI-Express “switch” to maximize PCIe lanes. The performance just isn’t there to power for instance a four way GTX680 configuration. If the ultimate gaming experience if what you want across several displays, you may want to consider the X79 platform as. You’ll most certainly spend more (once you commit to a $1,000 CPU pricing shouldn’t be at the top of your priorities list –Ed), but you’ll also get better performance from it.

As you may already know, there’s not much to this CPU over the 3960X other than a 200MHz frequency boost and with that a similarly higher TDP at a whooping 150W. That may seem excessive, but we found that you can pretty much expect the same overclocking headroom when using air cooling. With liquid nitrogen or dry ice, the CPU clocks higher than the previous 3960X we had and better than all the 3930K CPUs we’ve ever had. It’s not by a large margin as it’s just

Hardware Award


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

9/10

INTEL hasn’t done much with the 3970X as it’s the same CPU we’ve had before, but with a higher TDP and a 200MHz clock boost. It remains the highest performing 12 thread desktop CPU you can buy and certainly clocks better than most 3960X CPUs.

For those multi-threaded benchmarks and massive scores, yes you have little choice but to buy this CPU.

100MHz, but given the types of benchmarks one runs with these CPUs; a 100MHz is all you need. We’ll take the 5.5GHz over the 5.4GHz any day.

As far as memory overclocking is concerned, we couldn’t entirely be sure if the 3970X has a better IMC than the outgoing 3960X. Reason being, that on the board we tested on, 2133MHz seemed to be the limit regardless of timings or frequency and as such we’ll have to hold of judgement regarding memory overclocking until we test this on a more refined motherboard such as the Rampage IV Extreme. Once again, with the benchmarks that one runs with such a CPU, memory overclocking is important, but not as important as just sheer clock frequency. We’d even argue that finding the one CPU that can operate memory reliably (all channels) at 2,666MHz but is limited to 5.4GHz, is going to show lower performance all around when compared to the

5.5GHz CPU that has its IMC limited to 2,133MHz.

So what we have here essentially is a speed boost and what appears to be slight refinement in silicon. We can’t confirm that as we have a sample of one, however it looks good considering that this is the highest clocking X79 CPU we’ve ever gotten our hands on. Either way, if you were going to buy the 3960X, you may as well make it the 3970X. It’s not going to necessarily cost you more, but the odds are it will overclock better and its most certainly going to be faster at its reference clock speeds. The only concern that we may have with this CPU is that it still doesn’t offer enough of a performance boost over the 3930K which is almost half the price. With the more recent CPUs, clock speeds seem to be on average higher than they were several months ago. That may diminish the value of this CPU a little, but then again, that same argument could have been levelled at the 3960X.

[ TheOverclocker ]

We ran our tests at default and 4.6GHz on an un-optimized Windows 7 64-Bit system. These results are just a guide line for a similarly configured system. Your results may vary depending on your system components and testing conditions.

CPU Cinebench 11.5

Super Pi 8M 3DMark11 Heaven Xtreme Preset

Hard Reset DX9

Just Cause 2 DX10

Wprime 1024

AMD FX 8350 6.95 4.36.885 9809 2041.885 80 142.54 260.832

Core i7 3970X Default

10.22 1.59.143 10820 2070.292 100 159.21 147.779

Physics: 12171

Core i7 3970X @ 4.6GHz

13.42 1.31.697 11130 2080.915 104.7 168.73 112.351

Physics: 15295


AMD seems to be garnering a reputation for recovering well

from mistakes. One need only look at Barcelona, Llano, and

AMD FX 8350RRP: $229.99 | Website: www.amd.com

Test Machine

ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z

G.Skill F3 Trident 2,666MHz CL11

MSI NGTX680 Lightning

Cooler Master M2 Silent Pro 1500W PSU

Windows XP SP3/Windows 7 64-Bit SP1

Bulldozer to see that each of those have been promptly succeeded by better versions after their dubious first showing. In some ways, a one step back and two steps forward rhythm.

With the FX 8350 we find ourselves at a familiar place then. Looking at a product line that was initially disappointing but has, with a few changes, managed to salvage the brand and in particular the FX brand. There’s truly no point in going back, further dissecting the performance of the FX 8150 or rather the lack there off. That boat sailed and before us we find, for lack of a better word – a “charming” CPU. We say

so because it isn’t the fastest at anything we care about, but it’s decent enough at most things we are concerned with that it makes for a worthwhile purchase. It’s not a perfect CPU by any measure, but had AMD released this instead of Zambezi, we can’t help but think things would have been a different right now for the company, even a little.

Right then on to the performance. The 8350 as you know comes in at a blistering 4GHz. Once again a milestone for AMD, claiming the highest clocked retail x86 CPU in history for the second time. We’d generally not care about such, especially with

Value Award


Would you buy it?

The Score

8.5/10

Yes, as its worthwhile upgrade from an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T, and even more so from the lamentable 8150.

an unlocked multiplier CPU, but this clock speed is partly responsible for the gain in performance. For power users and gamers, this is important because AMD has finally produced a CPU that is faster in all titles and applications than the Phenom II X6 1100T. Be it single threaded applications or otherwise; where the CPU may fall short in IPC it makes up for in frequency and that combined with the relatively low TDP makes this a winner.

The clock speed boost along with the optimizations at silicon level has yielded a 7% to 10% speed boost. It doesn’t sound like much but in reality translates very well. You’re not going to be attempting global records for Super Pi or anything for that matter with this CPU (you may though try Unigine Heaven Xtreme) but it makes for a worthwhile upgrade from any and all Phenom II CPUs.

Add support for much higher memory frequencies (2,400MHz is how we tested) and you have a fairly competent part.

AMD positions, in their slides, the FX 8350 against INTEL’s Core i5 3570K in the usual fashion. However, we’re here to tell you that

this comparison indeed plausible is to miss the point entirely of this product. For overclockers, this CPU is about those very high validations (8GHz+) and as stated earlier, for gamers it’s about a worthwhile upgrade from the Phenom II.

Within AMD’s own product catalogue and history, the vindication or rather the appeal of the FX 8350 can be found without comparisons to INTEL. It is for this reason that we omitted any Core i5 3570K results from our benchmarks. There’s not much to be discovered there and factoring in overclocking would only skew the results, definitely not in AMD’s favour. What you see in our results is the effect of overclocking this particular CPU to 5GHz, just 1GHz above the reference speed.

There are some real gains to be had from this and even though many may not bother with it, we think it’s most certainly worth a shot. You will gain performance right across the board and in some games (not shown here) where the frame rates were in the low 40s, the 5GHz clock speed allows the system to render upwards of 50fps, a marked improvement in game fluidity and immersion.

Overall we’re fairly impressed with the FX 8350, much like we were with the Phenom II after the debacle that was Phenom X4. With the 8350, we had expected very little and got a little more. Such products are not a threat to INTEL’s dominance but they do keep AMD in the running. For those invested in the platform, there is no reason not to buy this CPU. It’s the most natural upgrade path if not the only one available. With boards like the ASUS Crosshair Formula-Z (reviewed in this issue as well) there’s some good fun to be had with this CPU.

[ TheOverclocker ]

We ran our tests at 4 and 5GHz on an un-optimized Windows 7 64-Bit system. These results are just a guide line for a similarly configured system. Your results may vary depending on your system components and testing conditions.

Cinebench 11.5


Hard Reset DX9

Just Cause 2 DX10

Wprime 1024

5GHz/2600NB/2400 Memory

8.64 3m45.249 10334 2059.06 92.2 157.5 209.945

AMD FX 8350 Default 6.95 4m36.885 9809 2041.885 80 142.54 260.832

Hardware Award


AMD’s 990FX chipset is old. It’s in need of a refresh and there’s

no two ways about. It’s astounding that motherboard vendors have managed to still sell boards with this chipset given just how dated it’s become.

As much as we wish AMD would bring out a new chipset, it is boards such as this one that stay that wish and in many ways, make it ok for AMD to not bring out a new chipset. The original Crosshair V board was available when Zambezi

ASUS Crosshair V Formula-ZRRP: $229.99 | Website: www.asus.com

Test Machine

AMD FX 8350

MSI NGTX680 Lightning (310.64)




launched some time ago, but it’s been updated (hence the Z version) to offer even more features than before. In fact right now, the Crosshair V Formula-Z takes over from the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 as the best AM3+ motherboard around.

Sure it may ‘’only” be a three-way Crossfire and SLI board, instead of four-way but that’s understandable as its highly unlikely anyone on an AMD platform is investing in four 7970 graphics cards. Especially given that the platform is still tied to the PCI-Express 2.0 standard with no 3.0 support as yet.

However multi-GPU support is easy, so we are not moved solely by that, but it’s everything else on the board that makes it easily the most compelling motherboard for the AM3+ platform right now.

The features we are most concerned with are the voltage measuring points; an 8+2+2 Phase PWM (more than enough to maximize clock speeds on the FX CPU)

and most interestingly the DirectKey button. Simply put, once you hit that button you will always boot up into the BIOS without having to time your “Del” key press. Sounds like a lame feature when you first read about it, but with those long overclocking sessions and tweaking it may actually come in very handy.

ASUS also claim 2,400MHz memory support, even though in the BIOS you can select even higher dividers allowing for 2,600MHz. Needless to say, this 2,400MHz memory support isn’t unique to the ASUS board, but as it’s been the tradition with ROG boards. It’s easiest to get 2,400MHz working on the Crosshair V Formula-Z. Other boards don’t allow the simple selection of an X.M.P profile, but that’s all we had to do with the Formula-Z and we were up and running.

On the subject of memory, we found it interesting that ASUS has introduced what they term T-Topology.


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

9/10

ASUS has once again produced a class leading board in the Crosshair V Formula. If you own the original board there may not be much for you to find here, but if you’re looking for the ultimate AMD AM3+ board, you simply have no choice but to buy this one. It’s a fantastic board.

Most certainly, it’s the best one around.

It’s not anything obscure, but it essentially has the memory trace lengths on the board of equal size. So latency is improved and thus performance as well. In our testing we didn’t see it make much of a difference in read or write performance, but we must say that the AIDA 64 latency results proved favourable by a couple of nanoseconds. We are sceptical in accrediting this advantage to the technology as ASUS boards regularly offer better latency than many competing boards. Be that as it may, you’ll not suffer any performance penalty because of this design and if anything will gain in efficiency.

Other than these few features and a comprehensive BIOS (easily the best around) the only limitation you will come across when using this board will be due to the CPU, memory or just user error but certainly not any short coming of the board.

For the gamers, well you should already be aware of what this board offers where your gaming is concerned. INTEL Gigabit LAN, Supreme FX III (Expected more but certainly better than most on-board audio solutions) and the best looking AM3+ motherboard around. We won’t kid you and tell you that you’ll somehow improve your gaming prowess with this board over another one, but the truth is that for the ultimate AMD gaming machine, this has to be the board of choice.

It costs almost exactly the same as the FX 8350, which is to say affordable, but with that you get plenty of features and a seemingly unparalleled board when it comes to performance, overclocking features and just about anything anyone would ever expect out of a motherboard.

We here have no complaints about the Crosshair V Formula-Z and would definitely recommend it for

All results were obtained at 4600MHz s on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Cinebench 11.5


Hard Reset DX9

Just Cause 2 DX10

Wprime 1024

ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z Overclocked

8.64 3m45.249 10334 2059.06 92.2 157.5 209.945

ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z

6.95 4m36.885 9809 2041.885 80 142.54 260.832

those interested in the platform. There just isn’t a better high end board to pair with the FX 8350 than this one.

[ TheOverclocker ]


If you gazed at the performance results, you’ll have noticed that we have

no overclocked results. The reason for that is twofold. First, we had an issue with the particular sample of the graphics card, where it would not overclock much past the reference 1.1GHz clock (isolated to this particular sample only!). Secondly, there would be no point at this juncture. What we’ve noticed is that a lot of the gains to be had with the HD7970 actually stem from the driver releases and

GIGABYTE R797TO-3GDRRP: $449.99 | Website: www.gigabyte.com

Test Machine

Intel Core i7 3770K

Corsair Dominator Platinum 2666C10

Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H (F1)

CoolerMaster 1.5KW PSU

Windows7 64-Bit

not overclocking. With the GHz edition cards,

what AMD was announcing was essentially a driver update and a BIOS. Well aware of this we took it upon ourselves to see just how much has changed with the latest (at the time) Catalyst 12.11 beta 11 drivers in comparison to the release driver.

Before we delve into the performance differences, it’s worth noting that the release driver for the HD7970 was very unstable. We had constant crashes at random intervals and the situation was so dire at some point we considered later drivers. However we managed to get through all the benchmarks in the end. So not only did AMD improve on performance, but we’d wager that most users will appreciate the stability in the long run rather than the higher fps.

We would also like to highlight to you that with the older Catalyst 11.12 driver our maximum CPU overclock was a whole 200MHz lower than

it was with the Catalyst 12.11 driver. The benchmarks would crash at random times, yet finish at other times (hence the results you see) and we only had total stability at 4600MHz as opposed to 4800MHz. Something to ponder about if you have had an overclocking session with the early drivers that proved to be very frustrating on a CPU you were confident about.

On to the performance then as the HD7970 is presented today. This is essentially what the entire point of this review and editorial piece is about. AMD has been optimizing in general but more importantly specific titles and benchmarks. You should note that we did not use any of the CAP updates but simply used the driver package as is. 3DMark03 sees no changes at all, which is expected as neither NVIDIA nor AMD are concerned with a legacy benchmark. Where we do see sizeable changes are in the benchmarks with tessellation more specifically

Hardware Award


Summary

Would you buy it?

The Score

9/10

It’s $449 for what is arguably the fastest graphics card on the market. Sure enough the GTX680 contests that heavily, but with the latest graphics card drivers, the GHZ edition Radeon 7970 takes the edge and with the additional overclock from GIGABYTE it cements that lead.

Sure, you’re unlikely to find a faster card for less than what the GIGABYTE card retails for.

in 3DMark11. AMD obviously concerned with the dominance of NVIDIA graphics cards in tessellation heavy tests performed miracles here and for the most part managed to close the gap significantly.

The same can’t be said for Unigine’s Heaven benchmark, but we figure that this benchmark is not as heavily contested as Futuremark’s 3DMark11 and that’s why the gains there are minimal.

For the games, AMD made some massive strides in game performance, Sniper Elite gaining over 12fps, moving from 81.5 to almost 95fps. Impressive margins for sure, enough to allow one to turn up the eye candy even more where possible. These are but a few benchmarks and titles we tested and represented here. Some of the other games had visual anomalies with the early driver so a direct comparison was not possible. Suffice to say in games like Hard Reset and our favourite Just Cause 2, the performance gains

were noticeable, but since the numbers were well above the 140fps mark they just aren’t worth the bother.

It’s astounding that AMD has managed to breathe new life into a graphics card which would have, without these enhancements, become obsolete and irrelevant for most users. AMD has not only managed to improve performance, but in some places image quality and compatibility. We’re aware of the 3DMark11 tessellation issue on HWBOT, but for overclockers this has made this benchmark interesting once again, as not everyone could find a useful GTX680 to use.

Ultimately the 7970GHz edition and more over the GIGABYTE version represents some of the best value we’ve ever seen in a high end graphics card. If you were set on an HD7970, you may as well pick this one up as you’re unlikely to find them any cheaper or faster.

[ TheOverclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4.8GHz on a normal install of Windows 7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

GPU Clocks 3DMark03 3DMark Vantage

3DMark11 Unigine Heaven Xtreme

Sniper Elite Max Detail

GIGABYTE HD7970 GHz Cat 12.11 b11

1.1GHz/6GHz 145294 39974 10919 2258.969 94.9

GPU Score: 42226

Graphics: 10674

GIGABYTE HD7970 GHZ Cat 11.12

1.1GHz/6GHz 145203 39168 9367 2161.014 81.5

GPU Score: 41657

Graphics: 9022


AMD On November 20th, AMD Taiwan hosted the Vishera

media launch at the Taiwan Beer Factory. Four of the

eight invited AMD mainboard partners showed up with one or two extreme overclocking

systems to demo the overclocking capabilities of

the Piledriver FX-8350 and Trinity A10-5800K CPU. The extreme overclocking line-up included ASRock, BIOSTAR, GIGABYTE and MSI. As this was a media event, the day

kicked off with a couple of slideshow presentations and

as always in these parts, a performance with dancers.

Being the geek that I am, it goes without saying the

overclocking bit of the event was the most interesting part.


Extreme OC ShowAMD’s original plan was to hold

an overclocking competition between mainboard manufacturers. As the competition date drew nearer, vendors began to worry

about their competitors. None of them Ire really eager to compete in a public environment as the stakes were too high. No one wants to look bad in public. The only way to look good is to make sure you’re better than all the others and as there can only be one winner, the odds are stacked against you.

In the end, AMD changed the event structure. The task for each team was to hit 6.5GHz with Trinity and 7.5GHz with Piledriver. This was much easier said than done, but it did result in reduced pressure for all involved. AMD provided a total of six CPUs to each of the teams to use during the event, but everyone was allowed to use any Piledriver or Trinity – including the ones they pretested internally. Having seen some of the test results, it seemed that the none of the CPUs AMD provided was any good so using a pretested sample was the right choice for the vendors as they attempted new records.

8GHZ FOR EVERYONE!ASRock was represented by their in-house God of Overclocking, “Nick Shih”. Alongside Nick I found Kevin Chen, one of Nick’s close friends and the person who was present when ASRock had their first Liquid Helium session a couple of months ago. According to Nick, the team did not prepare that well for the event. Not really a surprise as Nick has been and continues to be very much focused his brainchild, the Z77 OC Formula as well as Intel’s upcoming Haswell platform. Moreover as there is no overclocking centric AMD motherboard from ASRock, Nick is not focused on AMD overclocking.

Unlike the other teams ASRock had not yet put out any Piledriver overclocking figures, so this public demo was pretty much the first time someone used an ASRock mainboard

to overclock a Piledriver CPU on LN2. The final frequency of 8.06GHz the team reached can therefore be qualified as an achievement. I don’t know if Nick will do further in-house testing, but I am definitely looking forward to future ASRock overclocking results!

The least known overclocking team was Biostar’s Boundless OCers. According to AMD’s press release, the team consisted of a couple of BIOS, hardware and software engineers, so the team consisted of Biostar employees. No familiar faces, so it was a challenge figuring out how much knowledge and skill the team really had. Interesting side-note to the Biostar story is that K|ngp|n dropped of one of his cooling pots at the Biostar office the day before the event – the same pot that was used in the event. In any case, Biostar attempted to hit the required targets of 6.5G and 7.5G and that’s

exactly what they did.Of all the teams, GIGABYTE took

the event the most serious. The team modified both FM2 and AM3 mainboards by adding an LN2 mode switch (set CPU to hold P-state), a vivid display of preparation and dedication to the event. Alongside the inevitable Hicookie I found first-time live event overclocker SDougal – Stew from Gigabyte for the friends – and John Lam from HKEPC, a close friend of Hicookie. During the event, the team managed to improve the Trinity frequency record by almost 200MHz as well as reach an impressive 8.4GHz with the FX-8350. Cool!

If you want to try the LN2 modification at home, check out the HWBOT forum thread for more information (including a how-to picture): “LN2 mode for GIGABYTE A85X-UP4 and 990FXA-UD3 (for high Trinity/Piledriver validations)” !

Having made quite a lot of noise


regarding both the Trinity and Piledriver overclocking capability of their motherboards, everyone was expecting quite a lot from MSI. Previously, MSI had submitted an 8.3GHz FX-8350 result as well as a 7.48GHz A10-5800K, but they didn’t quite get there during the live event. The reason is quite simple: MSI used the CPUs provided by AMD for this event rather than bringing along their golden ones. Those samples definitely are not record samples. For MSI the event was just to reach the targets of 6.5GHz and 7.5GHz and nothing more and that’s exactly what they did. Perhaps a little disappointing – as I was hoping to see a battle between GIGABYTE and MSI – but definitely understandable taking into account the risks you take when bringing a golden sample to a public event.

WHY THE ABSENCE OF ASUS?For the industry, this type of launch event is more about patting AMD on the back and showing them support for future products than it is about setting records or being competitive. The event structure gives manufacturers that openly support extreme overclocking a great opportunity to show the general public they are very confident about their products. After all, anything can go wrong during live demonstrations. By attending – and overclocking - ASRock, Biostar, GIGABYTE and MSI did just that. ECS, Jetway and Hong Kong based Sapphire backing out of the public OC demonstration is not really a surprise. Neither of them have anyone in-house capable of extreme overclocking and without the experience, it’s not easy to do a public overclocking demo.

Amongst all mainboard vendors ASUS (ROG) – the Number one mainboard vendor – stood out by their complete absence from this event. Not only did I, but others as well, wonder why the vendor didn’t bother to show up. As previously stated - this event was a perfect opportunity to show off the quality of the AMD products to the public. Especially given that on the same day, the ROG team published an internally achieved FX 8350 overclocking record, the decision not to show up is strange to say the least. It begs the question, why?

Is it because they have no confidence in their products? Of course not. Everyone knows ASUS (ROG) builds high-quality and all-around solid products that are more than capable

of withstanding extreme temperatures and overclocking. No one questions that. Is it perhaps they are afraid of the competition? I can only imagine how much pressure it must be to be competing as the market leader. Especially in a public environment because, you are open to attacks from everyone. No competitor will hesitate to make you look bad in front of an audience. However, this wasn’t a competition, it was a demonstration. Add to which, AMD had prohibited any vendor from making a press release comparing the overclocking achievements of the various attending vendors. Had it been a competition, ASUS (ROG) should have been present as Andre Yang, ROG’s in-house overclocker, posted an 8.67GHz FX-8350 validation. That is much higher than the previous Piledriver record and higher than anything shown at the public event. Had it been a competition, they would have walked away winners.

So the question remains: why not show up and as the ROG-overclocker Andre Yang likes to phrase it, “prove it”? Why not just join the event, annihilate all your competitors, get the easy press and go home knowing you bested everyone’s efforts? In my

opinion it’s an opportunity lost to show you truly are number one.

I can only speculate it’s related to an inter-departmental competitive environment where one mainboard team will not promote the other mainboard team’s products. I hope – but do not expect – to see a public statement of ASUS or their ROG department regarding the absence. (Don’t quite follow this –Ed!)

IN CLOSINGAMD is currently facing a particularly difficult situation because of their financial troubles. A product line-up that isn’t competitive across the board has seen to this to a degree. However, I do still like the company primarily because AMD continues to promote overclocking. Their products are actually quite a lot of fun to play with: Trinity APUs in 3D benchmarks and Piledriver that seems ready for 9GHz (just imagine all the “It’s over 9000 -jokes)!

I’m genuinely impressed by the four attending teams. Openly endorsing overclocking is, from a management point of view, quite a big step. Coming out in public to show of your product in the same room as your competitors is


necessarily out of many vendors’ comfort zones, even more so while under media scrutiny. Everyone who has ever attended a live overclocking event, be it MOA, GOOC or even just a LAN party, knows that a lot can go wrong during live overclocking and there is a certain pressure to perform when allocated a small timeframe to deliver a result. The overclockers representing ASRock, Biostar, GIGABYTE as well as MSI not only had to face all the pressures of a live event, but bosses and management watching over their shoulders. They effectively represent an entire company! Thumbs up to those who had the balls to do it.”

From the conversations I had, it seems that AMD is very eager to organize more of these types of extreme overclocking events and as such I’m looking forward to that should it materialize. In the meantime, enjoy overclocking your own AMD processor and perhaps get a little competitive in the process. It doesn’t matter if you’re just using your FX 8350 CPU or A10 5800K on an ECS, MSI or GIGABYTE mainboard … in the end, it’s just a game!

[ Massman ]


Call of Duty: Black Ops II

RRP: $59.99 (PC) | Website: http://callofduty.com/blackops2

xxx

It’s that time of year again, when a new Call of Duty struts into the room with disturbing confidence

and sends all other AAA games diving for cover, cowering in fear of its overwhelming commercial success. Whether it makes you cheer in delight or groan in disgust, it is undoubtedly impressive that this mega-franchise manages to stir up such a whirlwind of annual excitement. For Black Ops II, that marketing whirlwind whipped up the perfect combination of assured innovation and progression for the series, satisfying the curiosity and overcoming the scepticism of gamers who believe the series is stagnant and fails to move forward. Put another way: we’ve been successfully baited and hooked. For all its near-future shenanigans, branching storylines and tweaked multiplayer customisation, Black


Ops II is still just Call of Duty. And that sentence alone will be enough for you to decide if you’ll be impulsively throwing money at or steering well clear of its recognisable antics.

Its single-player campaign is split between two time frames: one set in the later years of the ‘80s, just before the end of the Cold War, the other taking place in the year 2025. The former sees us cast as Alex Mason, who you may remember as the protagonist of the original Black Ops. The latter, meanwhile, puts us in the manly combat boots of Alex’s son David. These two generations of Mason find themselves embroiled in a globe-threatening conspiracy manufactured by Nicaraguan super-terrorist, Raul Menendez. Menendez has fashioned himself a massive, loyal following eager to support his goals of worldwide

economic equality, and his superior capabilities as an anarchist and grand manipulator make him a terrifying threat. To refrain from potential spoilers, all I’ll say is that Black Ops II’s biggest single-player failing is its inability to harness the potential of its globetrotting tale in any meaningful way. It’s obvious throughout that this could’ve been a truly riveting narrative experience, but because it’s told in such a haphazard, disjointed way, it’s a chore to follow and therefore it’s nigh impossible to attach any real significance to it.

Putting aside its story-related wobbles, Black Ops II’s campaign proves yet again why Call of Dutyis such a tough act to follow for other shooters of this nature. It is easily the best in its class, an explosive mix of Hollywood-style presentation, powerful set pieces

and meticulous scripting. And yes, it’s still far too comfortable with yanking control away from the player to dole out its scripted intensity. In a year where we’ve had gems of player choice and environmental freedom like Dishonored and XCOM, Black Ops II’s painfully linear corridors and excessive hand-holding feel all the more groan-worthy. Thankfully, the campaign’s Strike Force missions are attempts at making the experience less forcibly guided than previous COD outings – but the results are mixed. These missions are optional, time-limited side missions that see you aiming to complete objectives like defending key locations, assassinating high-value targets or rescuing captured allies. You’re given control of squads of various unit types, from SEAL operatives to agile, machine

“Putting aside its story-related wobbles, Black Ops II’s campaign proves yet again why Call of Duty is such a tough act to follow for other shooters of this nature.”


boast overwhelming numbers, they simply steamroll through your mentally-challenged chums, quickly making your task an infuriating one, especially on the higher difficulties. It means that what could’ve been a unique, linearity-lessening novelty devolves into a truly frustrating grind. Successes or failure to complete Strike Force missions, along with a number of other factors within regular missions, decides the course of the game’s branching storyline and eventual conclusion. The branching narrative is a welcome addition, and the design of the game’s environments, levels and the incidental details within often shows excellent imagination and creativity. Otherwise, Black Ops II’s campaign is exactly what you’d expect from a COD game.

The multiplayer front is similarly familiar, with a number of refinements and enhancements made to class customisation and

gun-toting quad rotor helicopter drones. You’re able to give your squads orders via a very basic real-time strategy-like interface, either while controlling one of these units directly, or from a floating perspective above the battlefield. You’ve only got a limited number of Strike Force teams at your disposal throughout the campaign, and when you fail a mission, you lose one. While it’s a great idea on paper, unfortunately it hits a snag when the action begins. Call of Duty’s ally and enemy AI has long been a commonly heard complaint, with common occurrences of stuff like friends and foes simply standing right next to each other but not firing at one another, or there’s the familiar sight of AI-controlled soldiers simply standing out in the open waiting to die. This trend continues in Strike Force missions, which means that, while they’re just as idiotic as your allies, because your enemies often

“The multiplayer front is similarly familiar, with a number of refinements and enhancements made

to class customisation and other features.”


Would you buy it?

The Score

8.5/10

Yes. And chances are, you already have too.

other features. Scorestreaks are a welcome change from killstreaks, encouraging objective completion and teamwork. The new Pick 10 class system is also a welcome change from being forced into a particular template for your classes – although you’re still required to reach certain player ranks be accruing XP before unlocking new equipment, perks and weapons. You’re able to change up your combinations though: if you feel like you’ve no need for any of the perks in tier one for the class you’re creating, you’re free to drop it and add in a wildcard ability that lets you choose an extra perk from the second tier. Or, if you feel that you don’t need perks at all, you can sacrifice them for extra weapon attachments and additional lethal grenades. You’re limited in how much you’re able to change by only having ten slots to fill with items, but the added options, while not the overhaul we expected, are a welcome optimisation of the formula. Beyond that, maps are well designed and cater to various play styles, and the futuristic gadgets and tech are fun toys to employ in besting the enemy team.

Finally, there’s the zombie

mode, which has become a staple in Treyarch’s COD outings since World at War. It’s arguably the most improved of Black Ops II’s three tiers of gameplay, offering the obligatory assortment of new weapons and perks, but also offering entirely new ways to tweak and tailor the experience to suit you within its various maps and modes. It’s still playable solo or cooperatively for up to four people. There’s now also an 8-player competitive zombies offering called Grief (or 4z4, as it’s been nicknamed), in which two teams of four players battle the zombie horde to see who can survive the longest. You’re able to hinder enemy players by snatching their hard-earned power-ups or by shooting them to briefly slow them down. You’ll also find all-new power-ups themed around grieving the enemy team. Survival mode returns as an option, in which you defend a single map of your choice and can alter various parameters as you see fit: stuff like your starting round, or if you’d like only headshots to be capable of hurting zombies. Finally, there’s Tranzit, which is the main attraction in this undead circus. It’s a mobile zombie level, in which you’re able to

hop on an upgradeable bus (which cannot be directly controlled) as it travels from area to area, each boasting different features, buildable objects and defensible locations. The zombies mode is as fun as it’s always been, and all the extra options it brings are much appreciated.

While Black Ops II isn’t the departure from the Call of Duty norm that we expected, it still delivers solid shooter action. The range of refinements and enhancements it brings, however minor, are enough to make it stand out within its own franchise.

[ Dane Remendes ]


The Score

8/10

GELID GX-7 CPU CoolerRRP: $64.99 | Website: www.gelidsolutions.com

Before we go any further, I’d like to let you know that I’m well aware of how old this

CPU cooler is. In fact it’s over a year old. Keep in mind though; this isn’t a motherboard or some such component. It’s a CPU cooler and as such it tends to last a few generations and platforms. Since TDPs generally decrease the performance of a CPU cooler stays the same for any given system or improves with newer and cooler CPUs.

Why again is this in the lifestyle section? Well, it’s simply because coolers are very hard to differentiate, especially for my purposes. Most of the time, I’m not concerned with noise or a CPU cooler that is one or even five degrees cooler than another one. What I am very much interested in is how each CPU cooler holds a specific load. By that I mean, I’m well aware of the fact (and so should you by the way) that CPU coolers by and large don’t allow higher clock speeds between each other. Your 3770K that is at most a 4.9GHz CPU when using air cooling (NOCTUA NH-D14 for instance) is not going to miraculously change into a 5.1GHz CPU when you use an H100i or even a custom water loop.

All that’s going to happen is that you’ll get lower temperatures from the same clock speed and CPU voltage.

With the GX-7 then, depending on how you look at it. It can be as good as the NOCTUA NH-D14 or be just as bad as the vast amount of no name knock off 3rd party coolers. It’ll obviously perform better than all of them, but that once again is entirely dependent on your chosen platform. For my Z77 test machine, I found the GELID GX-7 to be typical of what you expect of a performance CPU cooler. That is there’s no cooler on sale today that will have the CPU operate 10’C lower under load than what this one can. It’s just not going to happen and as such I’m wondering if paying an additional $15 for the NOCTUA for example is worth it. At least from a performance point of view, there isn’t much of a difference. The NH-D14 for example held the CPU to a wonderful 68’C at 4.6GHz with all 8 threads enabled. The GELID GX-7 managed 71’C. Indeed it’s always better to see temperatures under 70’C, but like I said previously, there was no clock speed to be gained from the NH-D14.

As far as noise is concerned, well the GX-7 is actually loud if you use two fans on it. In single fan configuration it isn’t quiet, but it’s tolerable. Add another fan and it starts to get concerning especially for those who may want a quiet system. I guess this is where the $15 premium for the NH-D14 comes into play. That CPU cooler is still the quietest unit I’ve ever tested over and above being the best of the air coolers. It may be unfair for me or anyone to compare the two, but the fact that I can concerning performance speaks well for the GX-7.

There’s nothing wrong with the GX-7, it performs well, looks good and is keenly priced. You want a CPU cooler that can hang with the best of them, give the GX-7 a look.

[ The OverClocker ]

Value Award


ANTEC AMP dBS earphonesRRP: $24.99 | Website: www.antecmobileproducts.com

ANTEC is better known to us for their PSUs and cases. Like most vendors in that industry,

the time has come for diversification in their product portfolio. Naturally one would think the most obvious choice for ANTEC would be gaming peripherals, but as you may already know, ANTEC has gone a different direction. Fortunately, ANTEC is more than aware of the massive saturation there is in the peripheral market. It may indeed be true that the margins with such peripherals are better than they are in their traditional business but that doesn’t mean much if you can’t sell anything.

So, in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the multitudes of gaming peripheral companies, ANTEC has stayed away from all gaming items instead choosing to introduce their A.M.P (Antec Multimedia Products) label and range. As with the dBS ear phones I spent some time with, A.M.P is primarily concerned with audio products, at least for now they are.

The dBS earphones are one of the first products introduced to market and for a $25 these earphones aren’t

bad at all. They are not going to transform your listening experience but then again they never claimed to be revolutionary and for $25 you shouldn’t expect such. The set is better than what APPLE packages with their products and in fact the dBS earphones are likely better than all the earphones included with high end smartphones.

Even then, the dBS earphones are a little better than the price may suggest. Not only do they have a nice warm tone, the bass reproduction is notable, without being overpowering. You can easily listen to this set for hours on end, and not suffer any strain even with excitable source material. My initial listening experience with an iPod didn’t disappoint me, but I wasn’t moved in any way. However when I plugged the set into a portable CD player (yes these still do exist), the listening experience was much better. For $25 you’d be hard pressed to complain as they delivered better audio than some other earphones I had which cost twice as much.

I can’t be sure if A.M.P will prove

to be a worthy and premium brand, but with the dBS they are off to a fairly competent start. You’ll not find ear phones that look as good or sound much better for this price. Even if you’re not a fan, should you be presented with an opportunity to listen to this set, don’t be put off by the pricing. They may be in the value segment but that doesn’t mean the listening experience is cheapened in anyway.

I’m pretty impressed by the dBS and while I still believe one should invest in a proper set of earphones. For those on a budget, give the dBS some serious consideration, you’re unlikely to be disappointed.

[ The OverClocker ]

The Score

8.5/10


CORSAIR Carbide 200RRRP: $59.99 | Website: www.corsair.com

This here is a budget case. Yes, the CORSAIR Carbide 200R could possibly be the lowest priced

case from CORSAIR ever. At $60 it costs less than the Bit-Fenix Mini-ITX case we reviewed last issue. For $60 you’re going to have to make a lot of sacrifices and the most obvious one is in the aesthetics department. That is the first thing you’ll notice when you look at this this case. It’s very simple in design and essentially a rectangular box with a somewhat nice finish that makes it look classy. I’ve no complaints about this as many cases especially the cheaper ones tend to overdo the design in a feeble attempt at appealing to the unfortunate individual swayed by the cheap plastic dragon front (feel free

to insert any “Arrow to the knee joke” here –Ed) door. You’ll find no such foolishness here, instead you’ll find here a basic case that is lacking many of the luxury features, but does execute what it does have very well. The case is fairly wide, so cable management is made easier than it otherwise would be. The chassis features plenty of room for long graphics cards and if you try hard enough you may be able to fit an H100i in there although it’ll be a tight squeeze. I would recommend a single radiator unit instead as that will be a far more comfortable fit at the rear of the case.

There really isn’t much to this case other than its good finishes, very low price and ease to work

with. Above all else it seems CORSAIR was making a budget case, without falling victim to the innumerable design flaws of other vendors who regularly dabble in cases at this price point. For the asking price I found it hard to attach a score to it and thus it received the value award as it deserves it thoroughly, even if it’s only because CORSAIR has essentially built what is the benchmark for cases of this size and price point.

1 As pointed out. You could try and fit a 240mm radiator here but

the spacing is just not optimal and you’d be better served with a 120mm radiator at the rear of the case

Value Award

3

4

5

7

6


The Score

8/10

2 Two USB 3.0 Ports is what you get which can also be used

for your USB 2.0 devices naturally. Alongside are the usual headphone, microphone, power and reset buttons.

3 Corsair highlights that this case negates the need for a

screwdriver for the most part and it’s true because thumbscrews are used virtually everywhere. The drive cages have a latching system making setting up a system in this case child’s play.

4 Standard Micro-ATX/ATX layout.

5 There are no rubber guards or grommets anywhere in or around

this case. Such things we assume cost

money and given the price point of the 200R I wasn’t expecting them.

6 CORSAIR provides two 120mm fans with the case, not bad. I’d

add more extractor fans to the top as the system temperature within this case can be quite high. Consider mounting one or two 120mm fans at to extract the hot air, it makes a sizeable difference to both CPU and graphics card temperatures.

7 Removable dust filter at the base of the case, unexpected, but

appreciated.

This is a simple and straightforward case. There isn’t much to get excited about, but at the same time there’s

nothing to fault with it given the pricing. I suspect many of you will be looking to the higher end models instead of this one. For a media center PC or a backup machine though, this would be a great case.

[ The OverClocker ]

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