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Eye-Fi Pro

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:58 -0600

Latest version caters with advanced features

We’ve long loved Eye-Fi’s series of Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards that allow you to instantly upload pics from your camera to a website, but it has lacked two key features: the ability to select which photos you want to upload and the ability to perform peer-to-peer transfers from the camera to a computer or laptop. This new card addresses those needs.

An ad-hoc mode in the latest Eye-Fi lets you upload directly to your laptop.

The card continues to support all the good stuff we’ve seen before in Eye-Fi cards: the ability to connect to open access points to upload your photos to a photo service, Wi-Fi-based geo-tagging, and video sharing. But we’re more excited by the improvements in the Eye-Fi Pro. Now, instead of uploading every image on the card, you select which photos you want to upload by checking the write-protect on the files and the card dutifully uploads them. JPEG, video, and even RAW files are now supported, too. And in case you’re wondering whether RAW is too large to transfer via Wi-Fi, we moved an 18MB RAW file from a Canon EOS Rebel T1i to a laptop in about two minutes using the Eye-Fi Pro’s Ad-hoc mode. Not bad.

While the new Ad-hoc mode is one of the improvements we appreciate about the Pro card, it’s also one of our complaints—the long-sought-after ability to upload without the need for an access point is great to have but not exactly easy to set up. You have to dig through the site’s FAQ for a PDF on how to do it, and even then, you still have to fuss with it. Our other complaint is the size. With 16GB SD cards in the $30 range, a 4GB card, especially one aimed at “pros,” with RAW support is just too small. Still, that doesn’t take away from how cool and useful the Eye-Fi Pro is.

Velocity Micro Raptor Signature Edition

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:45:16 -0600

First Windows 7 rig makes a smashingly fast, and pricey, debut

It is, perhaps, fitting that Velocity Micro’s new rig is called a Raptor.

That’s because anyone who has ever seen the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor in person and on afterburner knows just how overkill the F-22 is.

The same can be said of Velocity Micro’s Raptor Signature Edition. With people overjoyed just to have a $99 Athlon II X4 620, Velocity Micro decided to go shock-and-awe on the spec lists—and the wallet.

First up is Intel’s stellar Core i7-975 Extreme Edition. With a stock speed of 3.33GHz, Velocity Micro uses a custom CoolIt Domino ALC to get the processor to a very stable 4.2GHz. To “balance” this $1,000 CPU, Velocity Micro throws in probably $1,500 in GPUs in the form of three EVGA GeForce GTX 285s. Still not impressed? How about four SLC-based Intel X25-E Extreme 64GB SSD drives in RAID 0?

Mind you, these are not the pedestrian X25-M consumer drives; they’re enterprise-class drives that offer more than twice the write performance of the X-25M version and peg the read speeds at the SATA 3Gb/s limit. If you’re afraid of a four-drive RAID 0, you might feel better that the X25-E’s are designed for server use and should have 10 times the life of a consumer drive.

Quad-core, quad SSDs, and tri-SLI make the Raptor SE one fast--and expensive--machine.

Storage is handled by a single 1.5TB Seagate and two optical drives, one a Blu-ray burner. The entire rig is based on EVGA’s X58 SLI Classified motherboard. RAM is left to 6GB of Kingston DDR3/1600 modules. And, of course, there’s Windows 7 Ultimate in 64-bit mode, to boot. We’ve been taking a drubbing from the Mac fanatics for some time over Vista, but Win7 fixes all that and may even plant a Windows logo’d boot up OSX’s rear.

As much love as we have for Win7, it made comparisons with other systems difficult—up to now all the desktops we’ve reviewed have used Vista. On the other hand, the comparisons are valid as a PC purchased four months ago is likely still running Vista. If you buy into that line of reasoning, we can tell you that the Raptor SE is now the benchmark king in five of our six benchmarks. For a more direct comparison, we looked at the numbers from our September Dream Machines, which ran Windows 7, and as expected, those three boxes couldn’t touch the Raptor SE. For example, our midrange Core i7 Dream Machine (our new desktop zero point) puts out 37fps in Crysis at 1920x1200—the Velocity Micro pushes 70fps. The Raptor SE turns in no less than double-digit percentage gains in every test.

So, what’s the problem? Just like the F-22, which just got its ticket punched by a penny-pinching Pentagon and Congress—the price. At $9000, this is one of the most expensive rigs we’ve ever tested. With the 64GB X25-E drives each costing $800, a $1,000 CPU, and $1,500 in GPUs, the stratospheric price of the Raptor SE is enough to make even a DoD procurement clerk with use of the never-ending government Visa card cringe.

Still, we understand the need to be on top of the benchmarks, and respect that. We just wish it didn’t have to cost as much as a small nation’s GDP.

Logitech Speaker System Z520

Michael Brown — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:30:39 -0600

Damn-good cheap speakers

We haven’t auditioned many cheap speaker systems lately. Why? Well, let’s just say we don’t enjoy subjecting our ears to the sonic equivalent of waterboarding. But Logitech has a knack for packing big sound into inexpensive boxes, so we agreed to review its new two-channel Z520 system.

You’ll have to decide for yourself if the Z520 system’s $130 price tag really puts it in the “cheap” category, and we imagine the folks at Logitech will cringe to hear us describe them as such; but you can cut only so many corners before we begin to ask, “Why bother?” Judging by these speakers’ performance, Logitech’s engineers know just how low they can go.

When we see small speakers, we usually pigeon-hole them as near-field monitors: short-throw speakers that produce a small stereo soundstage that collapses as soon as you move more than three feet away from the cabinets. There’s nothing inherently wrong with near-fields, especially in a PC environment, but they have their limitations. So we were surprised to hear Logitech boast that the Z520 could provide a “great listening experience throughout the room.” We decided to put that claim to the test as soon as we took the speakers out of the box.

An auxilary input on the side of the right cabinet can accommodate an MP3 player; there's a headphone output there, too.

We connected the set to Asus’s kick-ass two-channel soundcard, the Xonar Essence STX, which meant we had to find an adapter to convert the speakers’ six-foot hardwired cable. The cable ends in a 1/8-inch stereo plug, but the soundcard’s jacks are stereo RCA. The six-foot cable connecting the left speaker cabinet to the right, which houses the amp, is hardwired to the left cabinet. We realize that renders setup fairly idiot-proof, but it also limits where you can put the speakers.

We played a number of tracks that we’d ripped from CD and encoded in FLAC, starting with an old favorite: Joe Jackson’s “Rant and Rave” from his Blaze of Glory release. We expected the speakers to be bright, since there’s no subwoofer (and no way to add one), but we were pleasantly surprised with their range and definition. Listen to a song like this on most inexpensive speaker systems and the acoustic piano, horns, and vocals will peel your ear drums. The Z520 produced the congas, acoustic piano, trumpet, and vocal as thoroughly distinct elements. The system even delivered respectable bass response from its three-inch woofers, without having to resort to devices such as reflex ports and passive radiators. The cabinets are fabricated from thick plastic and flare out with a wide bottom that renders them very stable. There’s not enough bass here to satisfy hardcore gamers or movie buffs; but for the price, we think most music listeners will be satisfied.

The Z520’s integrated amp produces just 26 watts per channel, so don’t expect it to fill a large room with sound, especially if you’re throwing a party. With the volume control knob turned about three-quarters full, however, it did manage to fill our 14x8-foot home office. But the speaker’s ability to present a stereo image almost anywhere in the room is what really impressed us; in fact, the soundstage didn’t begin to decay until we were standing at a nearly 90-degree angle to the speakers. Remarkable.

Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim

Michael Brown — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:00:00 -0600

A very necessary evil

There’s no good reason for the existence of Asus’s Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim soundcard, and yet it’s a godsend for those of us who want to hear the high-definition soundtracks on so many of the Hollywood movies released on Blu-ray disc. Blame Microsoft for the contradiction: No one would need a product like this if Vista provided a protected audio path.

After all, this card doesn’t decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks, nor does it enhance the audio or the video; it just passes the signals through to your A/V receiver. Using the included HDMI cable, the card takes the output from your videocard, re-encrypts the soundtrack so that no one can intercept the bit stream to make a bit-perfect copy, and outputs the encrypted audio and video to a second HDMI port. For those without HDMI, Asus also includes a DVI-to-HDMI cable.

The protected audio path requires a software component, too, so Asus bundles a copy of ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre with the Xonar. Not your favorite media player? Too bad, it’s the only one that’s compatible. For what it’s worth, we don’t have any complaints about the program. There’s nothing objectionable about its user interface; it can handle all the major codecs; and it supports BD-Live, so you can access whatever online content is linked to the movie you’re watching.

Your home-theater PC will downsample Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks unless it provides a protected audio path such as Asus's Xonar HDAV 1.3 cards do.

Asus actually has three cards in its Xonar line that are capable of pulling off this trick. The HDAV 1.3 Slim, however, is the only low-profile card in the lineup, and it’s available only in a PCI formfactor. That’s unfortunate considering that our current favorite home-theater PC platform, AMD’s Live Home Cinema, ditched that aging standard.

So we dragged our desktop rig, which is currently outfitted with an HIS Radeon HD 4770, into our home theater for this evaluation. We connected it to a Yamaha RX-V665 A/V receiver, which is in turn connected to a 42-inch ViewSonic N4285P LCD television. We used Klipsch Reference Series RF-35 loudspeakers. In terms of image quality, the PC clobbered the Samsung BD-P1600 stand-alone Blu-ray player we used for comparison. But the Xonar card doesn’t perform any video processing, so we can’t give it credit for that; more importantly, the PC didn’t sound any better than the Blu-ray player. Then again, the PC would be forced to down-sample the soundtrack without the Xonar card in the loop.

To get lossless Blu-ray audio out of your PC, you'll need to also play the movie using the included ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre player.

The HDAV 1.3 Slim has a front-panel output header that you can connect to your enclosure’s headphone jack, and a four-pin auxiliary input header you can connect to your TV tuner’s analog audio output. The mounting bracket has an S/PDIF output that can accommodate both coaxial and optical connectors (with an adapter), along with the aforementioned HDMI input and output. The card is compatible with the HDMI 1.3a specification and supports all three of its optional features: Deep Color (up to 48 bits per pixel, compared to HDMI 1.0’s 24-bit color), the xvYCC color space (which means the card uses the full range of values in an 8-bit space), and both lossless audio codecs.

Nonetheless, there’s really only one reason to buy an HDAV 1.3 Slim: So you can enjoy the splendor of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks while taking full advantage of your home-theater PC’s video capabilities.

iBuypower M865TU

Katherine Stevenson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:15:39 -0600

A 15-inch gaming notebook that holds its own in bigger company

From the looks of it, you probably wouldn’t figure iBuypower’s M865TU for a gaming notebook. Its aesthetic is much more subdued than typical representatives of that class. The chassis is covered in a subtly textured black plastic, with tasteful silver trim around the edges and the touch pad. Unlike other gaming notebooks, backlighting is limited to the power button and an unobtrusive iBuypower logo on the notebook’s lid. Furthermore, the 15-inch M865TU is smaller than many gaming rigs and has a more streamlined formfactor.

But despite its smaller stature and no-nonsense appearance, the M865TU’s got game. That’s courtesy of the Nvidia GTX 260M GPU under its hood. Based on a reworked G92 chip, which uses a smaller, faster process (55nm vs. 65nm) and features slightly higher clocks, the GTX 260M proves more capable than previous-generation G92 mobile parts. For example, the M865TU performed almost 30 percent better in Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4 than the 9800M GTX-equipped Qosmio X305 we reviewed in June, with scores of 31.3fps and 58.3fps, respectively, at the notebook’s 1680x1050 native res and the highest quality settings. (This month, we jettisoned the games we have previously used for notebooks reviews in favor of FC2 and CoD4, which are far more indicative of a GPU’s prowess—expect to see these titles integrated into our benchmark chart going forward.)

If not for the tell-tale glossy screen, you might mistake the staid M865TU for a business notebook.

In the applications department, the M865TU is also competent. The rig’s 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo Mobile helped it handily whoop our zero-point notebook in the benchmarks by 30-60 percent. Granted, the story changes when you compare the M865TU to quad-core machines. The Core 2 Quad Mobile part in the Qosmio X305, while clocked at just 2GHz, beat the M865TU by 13-18 percent in the benchmarks that scale with cores (Premiere, Photoshop, MainConcept), although lost to the M865TU in Photoshop by four percent. Naturally, the Core i7 AVADirect D900F (reviewed in September) was even more punishing, winning the multicore-optimized apps by upwards of 60 percent and even Photoshop by 38 percent. Of course, the D900F is a mammoth desktop-replacement rig that costs twice as much as the M865TU—it should dominate.

What we like about the M865TU is that it provides decent application performance, a marked improvement in single-card notebook gaming, and a more portable size and weight—it’s lighter by two or more pounds than other gaming notebooks we’ve tested recently. Sadly, its battery life isn’t much better than the pack’s, lasting just one hour and 40 minutes when playing a movie in power-saving mode. Oh, and the speakers suck.

Thermaltake ISGC-300

Nathan Edwards — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:30:00 -0500

Kind to the ears, deadly to heat

Everyone and their CPU-cooler-manufacturing mother are jumping aboard the skyscraper-formfactor bandwagon, hoping to match the performance of Thermalright’s Ultra-120 eXtreme and Noctua’s NH-U12P air coolers. Last month we tested Zalman’s attempt, and this month we have Thermaltake’s answer, the ISGC-300, one of a series of four ISGC-branded air coolers recently released into the wild. Thermaltake’s creative relationship with the English language is responsible for the ISGC moniker, which stands for “Inspiration of Silent Gaming Cooling.”

The ISGC-300 consists of a copper heat exchanger with four heat pipes running into a tower of 33 saw-toothed fins. At 6.24 inches high by five inches wide by 2.8 inches deep, it’s slightly shorter and narrower than Thermalright’s Ultra-120, but about a quarter-inch deeper. A 12cm white Thermaltake hydrodynamic-bearing fan is held onto the front using metal clips in a manner reminiscent of the Noctua NH-U12P. The nine-bladed fan is quiet and includes a variable-speed switch in lieu of a four-pin PVM connector. At its quietest, it’s nearly silent; at its loudest, it’s still damned quiet.

The now-familiar formfactor of Thermaltake's ISGC-300 brings the cooling prowess we've come to expect.

Unlike most of the coolers we’ve reviewed recently, with their backplates, finicky spring screws, and wobbly mounting brackets, the ISGC is pretty painless to install. You screw the mounting brackets onto the bottom of the cooler, then secure them to the motherboard with nuts and washers—no backplate or long-handled screwdriver required, although if your motherboard tray doesn’t have a cutout for the CPU, you’ll have to remove your motherboard for the install. The lack of a backplate, which provides stability, could be an issue if you plan to ship the box a long distance. But frankly, we’ve had no problems with far larger heatsinks that lack backplates. Like most coolers of this style and size, you may have to mount the heatsink so it’s parallel with your RAM, as mounting the other way may bump into RAM cooling fins.

At its highest fan speed, the ISGC cool to within a few degrees of our champion air cooler, Thermalright’s U120-eXtreme. The ISGC-300 cooled an idling CPU to within a half-degree Celsius of the Thermalright, and at full burn the ISGC’s temps were less than two degrees Celsius higher than the Thermalright’s. Thermaltake has taken a step in the right direction with the ISGC-300, with its relatively easy install, competitive price, near-silent operation, and performance that comes close to the category leader.

Lenovo IdeaPad S12

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:30:00 -0500

How big can a netbook get before it stops being a netbook?

The guts of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 are virtually identical to the IdeaPad S10 that we reviewed back in 2008—1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 160GB HDD, and integrated Intel GMA950 graphics. The difference is the body. At 11.4 inches wide, this is one of the largest “netbooks” we’ve ever tested. The S12 has a 12.1-inch WXGA screen with a 1280x800 native resolution—far superior to the netbook-standard 1024x600, and much more usable. The glossy screen is impressively bright even at low LED-backlight levels.

The S12’s keyboard features large, comfortable keys and is a joy to type on, although as usual, Lenovo has mixed up where the Ctrl and Fn keys should be. The glossy black patterned lid and matte-black ABS frame make the S12 one of the best-looking and best-constructed netbooks we’ve ever tested, although the battery is a little wobbly and the lid is a fingerprint magnet. Both RAM and hard drive are easily accessible and upgradeable.

You'd be amazed how much difference a screen with decent resolution makes.

While some S12s ship with VIA’s Nano platform and an Ion-based version is in the works, ours came with a standard N270, and its performance reflected that. The S12 took 708 seconds to complete our Photoshop benchmark—about the same as the Lenovo S10 and Samsung NC10, two other N270-based netbooks. In Quake III, the S12 grabbed a respectable 60.9fps, slower than the 63.8fps the record-holding MSI Wind U123 managed with the same settings. The six-cell battery lasted a respectable four hours, 15 minutes in our rundown test.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is not the fastest netbook we’ve ever tested, nor the smallest—but that isn’t the point. It’s a competent netbook in a much more usable formfactor. The higher screen resolution makes everything better—from browsing the web to editing photos and watching movies. And at a three pound, 6.5 ounce lap weight, it’s only a few ounces heavier than the Asus Eee 1000HE or MSI Wind U123—still light enough to throw in a bag and bring to the coffee shop.

Some might argue that a netbook with a 12-inch screen isn’t even a netbook anymore. We think they’re wrong. It’s still cheap (on the low end of $500) and portable, has great battery life, and the combination of a great screen and excellent keyboard means that folks who dismiss netbooks as too small to be usable have another thing coming.

Intel X-25M 160GB MLC SSD

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:30:00 -0500

Intel's killer solid state drive gets a capacity increase, but is it still the best?

Last fall, Intel slapped the solid state drive market on the back of the head with the release of the 80GB X25-M MLC drive. That drive absolutely trounced the competition with its 200MB/s read speeds, incredibly low random-access times, and best of all, no random-write stuttering or cache overflows. The first X25-M garnered a Kick Ass Award and defeated all comers in our last SSD roundup (November 2008), but the market has come a long way since then. With powerful competition from drives sporting Indilinx and Samsung controllers, can the 160GB X25-M maintain Intel’s crown?

The 160GB X25-M ships in a silvery chassis, unlike its predecessor’s black, and is 7mm tall—an included spacer accommodates 9.5mm drive bays. Intel’s kicked the flash manufacturing process down from 50nm to 34nm, and retained native SATA and Native Command Queuing from its previous iteration.

The new X25-M ships with a spacer so it can fit in 9.5mm as well as 7mm 2.5-inch drive bays.

First, the good news. The 160GB X25-M is even faster than the 80GB, offering 209MB/s sustained reads and 79.5MB/s sustained writes in our h2benchw benchmark, compared to the 80GB version’s 206MB/s and 64MB/s, respectively. Random-access reads and writes are within .01ms of the 80GB version, and Premiere Pro times are five percent faster. Oddly, though, its PCMark Vantage score is only 23,288—faster than nearly every drive but its predecessor, which amassed a cool 30K.

Unfortunately, the X25-M just isn’t the coolest kid on the block anymore. Not since we’ve seen other drives come along and smash the 100MB/s sustained-write barrier, or which feature either a Samsung or Indilinx drive controller with cache that eliminates the random-write stuttering that plagued early JM602-based drives. Both Samsung’s 256GB drive (reviewed August 2009, retailing as the Corsair P256) and Patriot’s Torqx (September 2009) nearly match X25-M’s read speeds and obliterate its sequential writes, with the Torqx and its fellow Indilinx Barefoot MLC drives (OCZ Vertex, G.Skill Falcon) offering write speeds close to 175MB/s.

The X25-M still reigns supreme in random-write times, though, with a latency of just .08ms compared to the Torqx’s .31ms. And it does so without the Indilinx controller’s 64MB of DRAM cache.

The X25-M remains a rock-solid choice for SSDs, and its read speeds and random-write response times are second to none. But in sustained-write speeds, it’s no match for the Patriot Torqx and its peers. But hey, the 160GB X25-M is $.10/GB cheaper than the Torqx, and 160GB is enough room for your OS and a dozen of your favorite games.