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Filed under: Storage

Western Digital’s hasty VelociRaptor already got reviewed by its lonesome, but for those thinking of getting a RAID system into their rig, HotHardware has taken a trio of ‘em, setup a RAID 5 array and put the drives through their collaborative paces. The configuration was made possible thanks to an Areca PCIe X8 hardware RAID card, and the results were rather impressive — to no one’s surprise, might we add. Across the entire volume, performance was generally linear save for a few small valleys along the way, burst speed was 598MB/sec and average read speed was 209.4MB/sec, which pretty much blew the doors off of everything that came before it. Number lovers, there’s more where this came from in the read link below.

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Desktops

If you’ll recall, we already witnessed a pre-production Wolfdale CPU outpace its competition back in August of last year, but the real deal has finally arrived. Over at Hot Hardware, the folks were able to crack open a retail Core 2 Duo E8500 processor, which comes in at 3.16GHz and features 6MB of L2 cache, a 1,333MHz FSB speed and is built on 45-nanometer technology. When put to the test, reviewers found this luscious piece of silicon to be quite the performer, noting that it was probably a better choice for gamers than a low-end quad-core chip. Still, with an expected price of just under three bills, it wasn’t exactly seen as the greatest of values, but if you’ve got the coin and happen to fit the market, the “Recommended” badge tells you everything you need to know.

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Forget that shrinking nonsense Intel keeps talking about — squeezing battery-sipping processors inside minuscule form factors — it’s totally played. We got here some numbers on Intel’s new Skulltrail gaming platform, featuring dual quad-core QX9775 processors and other ridiculous specifications designed for besting the likes of AMD and that pesky Crysis frame rate. If you want to get into all the tech nitty gritty, the read links have all the bullet points to satisfy, but here’s the long and the short of it: those eight Xeon cores and various other server-inspired innards blow away every sort of competition in multi-threaded applications, and other single-threaded CPU-heavy tests put the QX9775 near or at the front. Unfortunately, the board is held back by its use of DDR2 800 FB-DIMMs, which landed it a bit behind the QX9770 and QX9650 Core 2 Extreme in Crysis benchmarks — one of the few benchmarks that Skulltrail even felt any competition from the rest of the pack. It seems like the board mainly shines when it has multiple graphics cards to back it up, and it’s also clear that the Crysis Everest won’t be bested by CPU juice alone. There aren’t any specifics on price or release date yet, but expect to pay $600 or more per CPU.

Read - Hot Hardware
Read - PC Perspective
Read - Techgage
Read - Custom PC

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Source: Paul Miller

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No one should be surprised, but if you were looking for a speed freak of a laptop, you’re going to want to glaze those lustful eyes over the MacBook Air. While the new hotness has a speedy memory bus, overall its performance is dramatically smushed by its integrated graphics, anemic 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor, and 1.8-inch hard drive. Yes, you can officially call the MacBook Air the slowest machine Apple makes — but you already figured as much, right? No one buys an ultraportable for its real ultimate power.Continue reading First benchmarks: MacBook Air is the slowest Apple machine on the block

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Source: Ryan Block

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Filed under: Tablet PCs

Just over a fortnight after the TabletKiosk’s Sahara i440D Slate PC began shipping out to interested buyers, the niche machine has now been reviewed and benchmarked for those still mulling a purchase. The folks over at TabletPCReview noted that this machine was a breeze to tote around, had a solid feel, sported a satisfactory (though not awe-inspiring) display, and performed sufficiently enough for those not looking to actually replace their (likely more robust) laptop. Additionally, the pen functionality was highly praised as was the respectable array of ports, but the amount of noise and heat that this bad boy emitted was a slight turn-off. Still, the Sahara i440D benchmarked well against similar alternatives, and while we wouldn’t recommend 3D gaming or motion picture rendering on it, it seems like a solid choice for those in the market. Check out a videoed extension of the review after the jump.Continue reading TabletKiosk’s Sahara i440D Slate PC reviewed, benchmarked

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Desktops

Although we certainly noticed that Apple’s latest iMac felt snappy enough, the folks over at Primate Labs have cranked out a few numbers for the data freaks in the crowd to chew on. Granted, these benchmarks do not include the Core 2 Extreme iMac nor are they the most complete set of tests we’ve ever seen, but they do seem to give those on the fence a decent look at what level of performance increases they’ll be dealing with. Put simply, the new 2.4GHz 24-inch iMac posted “modest gains” across the board compared to the previous iterations that clocked in at 2.33GHz / 2.16GHz, and while the results don’t seem earth-shattering, those who rely on “memory-intensive applications (like Aperture or Photoshop)” would likely benefit most from the improved “integer, floating point. and memory / stream performance.” As you’d expect, the full skinny on the test results await you in the read link.

[Via AppleInsider]

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Source: Darren Murph

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