Computer Power User Volume 9 Issue 1

75.6 MB·English

by  Sandhills Publishing

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January 2009 (cid:127) Vol 9 Issue 01
Frontside
8 What’s Happening
15 Digital Economy
18 The Saint
Spore2K
The Experts
Alex St. John
The Saint
Page 18
Alex “Sharky” Ross
The Shark Tank
Page 38
Anand Lal Shimpi
Anand’s Corner
Spotlight Page 37
56 The Tech We Respect
Barry Brenesal
Our Choices Of 2008’s Best & Beyond
The Cutting Edge
Page 94
58 Components Rob “CmdrTaco”
This Year’s System Cornerstones Malda
Mike Magee The Department
63 Peripherals SThhaev Rinugms oFuror mM ill OPafg Set u8f4f
Extraordinary Inputs & Outputs Page 100
67 Software
2008’s Head-Of-The-Class Code
72 The Best Of What’s Next
Our Early Bets For 2009’s Top Picks
Rahul Sood
Wagging The Dog
Copyright 2009 by Sandhills Publishing Company. Computer Power User is a trademark of Sandhills Publishing
Page 102
Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material appearing in Computer Power Useris strictly prohibited
without written permission. Printed in the U.S.A. GST # 123482788RT0001 (ISSN 1536-7568) CPU Computer
Peter Loshin
Power UserUSPS 020-801 is published monthly for $29 per year by Sandhills Publishing Company, 131 West Chris Pirillo
Open Sauce
Grand Drive, P.O. Box 82667, Lincoln, NE 68501. Subscriber Services: [phone]. Periodicals postage paid at Dialogue Box Page 83
Lincoln, NE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Computer Power User, P.O. Box 82667, Lincoln, NE 68501. Page 82
Did you find the hidden CPUlogo on our cover? Turn the page for the answer.
Page 23
Heavy Gear
20 Dream Hardware
22 The Power Struggle
Six PSUs Jump In The Ring
Brothers In Arms:
Hell’s Highway
26 Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Page 90
Hard Hat Area
27 Intel DX58SO
PC Modder
28 MSI R4870X2-T2D2G-OC 40 Tips & Tutorials
PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 41 Unbridled 3D Performance
GeForce GTX 280 & Radeon HD
29 MSI GX720 4870 X2 Overclocking
ATI Radeon HD 4550 44 Mad Reader Mod
CinematographHD Tips & Tricks
30 ATI Radeon HD 4670
46 Advanced Q&A Corner
Gigabyte GA-EP45T-Extreme 95 Software Tips & Projects
50 White Paper
Quick & Easy Surrealism
Chevy Volt: Best Of Both Worlds?
32 BFG 9600 GT OCX 98 Warm Up To Penguins
SteelSeries 7G Keyboard Loading Zone Managing Disks With Linux, Part I
What’s Cooking
33 Sony BWU-300S
75 The Bleeding Edge Of Software
Corsair Flash Voyager 64GB
Inside The World Of Betas
100 Shavings From The Rumour Mill
76 Up To Speed
Goodbye Panasonic, Goodbye
34 Cooler Master V8
Upgrades That’ll Keep
To Sony Vista
HTC Touch Diamond
You Humming Along
102 Wagging The Dog
78 Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended
Finding A Good Job In
36 Smooth Creations Pyro
Make Interactive, Media-Rich
A Tough Economy
PDF Presentations
103 Technically Speaking
37 Anand’s Corner
82 Dialogue Box
An Interview With Vinny Lingham,
The New MacBook & MacBook Pro
The Best Creative Software Doesn’t
CEO Of SynthaSite
Need To Be Installed
106 Under Development
38 The Shark Tank
83 Open Sauce
A Peek At What’s Brewing
Inside Nvidia’s GeForce 9x00
The Mobile Revolution According
In The Laboratory
To Android
Back Door
Caught In The Web
110 Q&A With Ian Drew
84 The Department Of Stuff
ARM Marketing VP On Tiny Chips,
deeplink.txt
Atom & Windows
Digital Living
Infinite
85 Road Warrior Loops
Electronics Go Waterproof, Opera
Mobile 9.5 Beta, New HP Tablet & More Strange stats and other
88 At Your Leisure
oddball items from
Games, Gear, Movies & Music
Page 34 computing’s periphery
94 The Cutting Edge
Thanks For The Memory 96, 99
E D I T O R ’ S N O T E
A s one year draws to a close and yet another begins, we
often take time out to reflect upon various aspects of our
lives, either for the sake of idle rumination or in order to
help us chart a course for change in the months to come.
Customer Service
Here at CPU, we go through a process each year that’s roughly (For questions about your subscription or to place an
the same except that we consider how the PC landscape changed order or change an address.)
[email protected]
over the year and what hardware and software played the biggest Toll Free: [phone]
role in affecting that change. The Fax: [phone]
Computer Power User
results of our annual
P.O. Box 82667
good stuff inventory Lincoln, NE 68501-2667
are presented within
Hours
these pages, broken Mon. - Fri.: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. (CST)
Sat.: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. (CST)
into easy-to-digest
Online Customer Service & Subscription Center
sections that boldly www.cpumag.com
declare our favorite
Web Services
components, peripher- (For questions about our Web site.)
[email protected]
als, and software from
[phone]
2008. We also offer up
Authorization For Reprints
our take as to
Toll Free: [phone]
what items and Fax: [phone]
technologies
Editorial Staff
you should [email protected]
Fax: [phone]
keep your eyes
131 W. Grand Drive
on in the com- Lincoln, NE 68521
ing year,
Subscription Renewals
because plan- [phone]
Fax: [phone]
ning your next
www.cpumag.com
build (or your
Advertising Staff
brother’s, or your
Toll Free: [phone]
boss’, etc.) will be Fax: [phone]
that much easier if 131 W. Grand Drive
Lincoln, NE 68521
you know in
advance which way to
turn for the best PC
technology the industry
has to offer.
All of that, and no silly
resolutions that are sure to
be broken in less than 48
hours, anyway.
Elsewhere in the issue, be sure
and check out our look at Intel’s new
Core i7 965 Extreme, see how Marco fared in Gotcha.
overclocking the latest graphics card titans, and get an inside look Here it is.
at what makes the Chevy Volt tick.
Enjoy, and if you are so moved, drop us a line and let us know
where we hit and where we missed in 2008. We can’t answer all
your emails/posts/letters, but we will take them all to heart as we
dive into 2009.
Chris Trumble, Publication Editor, CPU

W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g (cid:127) H a r d w a r e
Compiled by Blaine Flamig
Graphics Market Moves Full Steam Ahead
Not all news from the tech sector is dark these days. According to John Peddie Research, the
graphics market is blazing hot. GPU shipments in Q3 2008 increased
by 22.5% (111 million-plus total) from Q3 2007 (91 million
units). Further, Q3 2008 shipments were up from 94 mil-
lion over Q2 2008. The big winners in all this? In year-
to-year growth, that would be AMD (22.8%) and
Intel (81.4%). Nvidia’s YTY growth sank 6.4%,
while VIA/S3’s nose-dived 84.6%, accord-
ing to JPR. Among Q3 desktop GPUs,
Intel had a 49.3% market
share to Nvidia’s
32.6% and AMD’s
20.3%. Notebook
GPU shipments,
Aleratec’s
meanwhile, skyrocket-
ed 40% (49.4 million RoboRacer
units) during Q3, carving out
44% of the GPU market. ▲ Does It All
Hardcore Computer Submerges A PC Throw 100 discs into
Aleratec’s new DVD/
CD RoboRacer LS
“Introducing Reactor, the world’s first patented total liquid-submersion personal computer.” That
Duplex, walk away, and
from Hardcore Computer’s lips to your ears. Daren Klum and Chad Attlesey, two obviously intel-
this baby automatically
ligent gamers, founded Hardcore Computer after heat-related system issues had them fed up.
copies data to each disc,
From the misery, the pair believes they’ve solved every enthusiast’s worst nightmare by submerg-
flips it over, and prints a
ing “all of the heat-producing components—the CPU, motherboard, video card, memory, and
LightScribe label on the
power supplies—in a custom dielectric fluid [Core Coolant].” Pricing for a submerged rig starts at
opposite side—all with-
$4,549. In exchange, HC says you’re buying longer component life and “no instability, no over-
out adult supervision.
heating, no drama.” Want proof? HC’s Web site states liquid submersion “cools up to three
(Aleratec’s Disc Pub-
Nvidia graphics cards down to unprecedented low temperatures, even at maximum load, letting
lishing Suite is included.)
you smash traditional performance limits.” Straight to your ears. ▲
Aleratec’s CEO, Perry
Solomon, stated in a
release that rather than
manually flipping each
disc, the RoboRacer
“completes the disc load-
ing, unloading, and
flipping process auto-
matically with only six
moving parts.” Not bad.
For $1,049, you get two
Aleratec-designed 20X
DVD-RW drives with
20X DVD/48X CD
write speeds. ▲
8 January2009 /www.computerpoweruser.com
What’s Happening (cid:127) Hardware
Super Talent Offers 64GB Of Super USB
October was a big month for Super Talent, the California maker of flash-based goods. First, the company
released the customized mini PCI-E SSD card, which boosts the Asus Eee PC’s wee bit of storage by sizes
ranging from 8 to 64GB ($53 to $149). For those who covet style, the Luxio (up to 64GB for $149) is a
sleek looker with a UV-coated case that comes in a black, silver, or wood finish to match the included
leather case. The Luxio works at 300MBps speeds
and has AES-256 encryption. Finally, when only
the best will do, set your eyes on the custom-made
18-karat gold 8GB Pico_C. As Super Talent puts it, this beauty “makes an
eloquent corporate gift.” That will be $599, please. ▲
H A R D W A R E M O L E
Intel & Asus Seek To
Guaranteed
Innovate; Your Help Is
Buyback=
Requested
Fair Trade-In
Asus and Intel are now partnering on
the recently released WEPC.com. Part Value
techy, part social network, the site
encourages users to toss around ideas
Hard on your electronics?
about the ultimate PC. Toss something
Tend to buy on impulse?
particularly good, and Asus might work
Regret it months later?
it into an actual design. Asus Chairman
Concerned about the envi-
Jonney Shih, meanwhile, evidently
ronment? If you answered
thinks enough of current designs to
yes to any of those ques-
have recently stated that Asus is focused
tions, check out TechFor-
on ballooning its notebook output by 77% in 2009 (up to 20
ward’s Guaranteed Buyback.
million units shipped). That would put Asus among the world’s
In a nutshell, for a fee, the
top four laptop makers. Asus President Jerry Shen, meanwhile,
service locks you in on fair
was later quoted as saying that figure was for internal use. Still,
trade-in value for, say, a new
with a $200 Eee PC set for 2009 in America, Asus might have a
desktop PC at the point of
fighter’s chance. ▲
purchase. Trade-ins are good
for up to two years. Send
that PC back to TechFor-
Acoustic Energy Brings British
ward within six months, for
Bluetooth Noise example, and you’ll get 50%
on the purchase price back.
Just hearing “Acoustic Energy” is heaven to some audiophiles’ The return depreciates incre-
ears. Still, Acoustic Energy’s presence stateside has been stag- mentally based on time and
nant of late. That’s apparently changing, though. In November, the device’s condition. Guar-
the esteemed British speaker builder released a three-piece AE- anteed Buyback is now at
29 ($219) Bluetooth-based system. If you stow MP3s away on CompUSA, TigerDirect,
your mobile phone, the 20-watt system’s audio quality shouldn’t Amazon.com, and other
disappoint. Down the road, Acoustic Energy reportedly is also locations starting at around
seeking to work more closely with North American specialty $30 for a digicam plan up to
dealers and custom installers, with the goal ultimately being to about $300 for flat-screen
market audio gear to both audiophiles and first-time buyers TVs over $2,000. ▲
who want top-shelf stuff. As our esteemed colleague put it,
“British high-end sound, dude.” ▲
CPU/January2009 9
W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g (cid:127) C h i p W a t c h
Compiled by Dean Takahashi
Samplify Systems Launches Data Converters
With Compression On A Shoestring Budget
It takes a lot of money to get a chip company off the ground. But Samplify Systems
has managed to launch a new chip with just 16 employees and $11 million in capi-
tal. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has made a mixed-signal data converter
chip. Lots of people can do that. But Samplify has integrated digital data compres-
sion technology onto the same chip as the analog converter. Normally, it’s hard to
get such technologies working together on the same chip without having signal
interference. But by doing this, Samplify can knock a lot of cost out of a system
and reduce the amount of bandwidth needed by more efficiently compressing ana-
log data and sending it in digital form to other parts of a system. Look for it next
year in CAT-scan, ultrasound, and wireless infrastructure equipment. ▲
Intel Shows Off Its Moorestown Platform
For Mobile Internet Devices
MIDs (mobile Internet devices) are just getting off the ground, but Intel plans to introduce a
second-generation technology next year so that the devices can make a big leap forward in
power and performance. Dubbed Moorestown, the new platform will include an Ericsson
3G mobile HSPA data solution, a range of I/O ports for storage and wireless connectivity,
and a new version of the Atom microprocessor. The Moorestown platform promises to be
much more power-friendly for low-power devices compared to the Menlow platform, which
uses the first version of the Atom, previously code-named Silverthorne. ▲
Nvidia Seeks To
Knock Intel Out Of
Watching The Chips Fall *Retail price
** Manufacturer's price per 1,000 units
Low-End Chipsets
Other current prices, if indicated, are lowest OEM prices
Here is pricing information for AMD and Intel CPUs.
available through Pricegrabber.com
CPU Released Original Last month’s Current Nvidia is going after Intel in the
price price price low-end chipset market by raising
AMD Phenom X3 Triple-Core 8750 2.4GHz 3/27/2008 $195** $154 $149
AMD Phenom X3 Triple-Core 8650 2.3GHz 3/27/2008 $165** $119 $119 the bar on integrated graphics per-
AMD Phenom X3 Triple-Core 8450 2.1GHz 3/27/2008 $145** $106 $102 formance. Nvidia’s new GeForce 9
AMD Phenom 9500 11/19/2007 $251** $163 $163
Series motherboard GPUs promise
AMD Phenom 9550 3/27/2008 $195** $144 $144
AMD Phenom 9600 11/19/2007 $283** $119 $119 to run circles around Intel’s G45
AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition 12/23/2007 $251** $179 $179
integrated graphics chipsets.
AMD Phenom 9750 3/27/2008 $215** $164 $164
AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition 3/27/2008 $235** $182 $179 Nvidia says its graphics perfor-
AMD Phenom 9950 Black Edition 7/3/2008 $235** $196 $159 mance is five times better and that
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 7/16/2007 $183** $197 $159
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 7/16/2007 $266** $210 $183 Nvidia can play all of the top 30
Intel Core 2 Duo E8190 45nm 1/7/2008 $163** $219 $163** PC games on its chipset while Intel
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 45nm 1/7/2008 $163** $181 $159
can only play 14 of them. The new
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 45nm 1/7/2008 $183** $164 $169
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 45nm 1/7/2008 $266** $185 $205 chipsets can shine in a $500 com-
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 45nm 8/10/2008 $266** $269 $269
puter and include features such as
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 1/8/2007 $851** $189 $189
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 7/16/2007 $530** $296 $267 high-definition video playback,
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 45nm 1/7/2008 $266** $259 $259 Blu-ray video playback, and sup-
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 45nm 8/10/2008 $266** $269 $269
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 45nm 1/7/2008 $316** $362 $342 port for Nvidia’s CUDA program-
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 45nm 1/7/2008 $530** $346 $327 ming language. Apple liked the
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 45nm 8/10/2008 $530** $560 $542
technology enough to put the
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 7/16/2007 $999** $1,005 $1,048
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3GHz 8MB cache 1,333MHz FSB 65nm 7/16/2007 $999** $699 $849 Nvidia chipsets into its line of
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9650 3GHz 12MB cache 1,333MHz FSB 45nm 11/12/2007 $999** $1,040 $1,052 MacBook laptops. ▲
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9770 3.2GHz 12MB cache 1,600MHz FSB 45nm 2/19/2008 $1,399** $1,404 $1,450
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9775 3.2GHz 12MB cache 1,600MHz FSB 45nm 2/19/2008 $1,499** $1,637 $1,549
10 January2009 /www.computerpoweruser.com