Maximum PC - From the Magazine

Sony Vaio Tap 20 Review

Michael Brown — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:51:21 +0000

Meet the laptablet

Sony markets its Vaio Tap 20 as a mobile desktop, but you could say that about any portable computer. We think “laptablet” is closer to the mark. With its 20-inch display, the Tap 20 is both a big laptop and a gargantuan tablet. And it wouldn’t make any sense at all without Windows 8.

Sony gives you a wireless mouse and keyboard, but who needs them?

Yes, Windows 8 is the operating system PC enthusiasts love to hate, but this machine is proof that Microsoft’s strategy of melding the desktop and mobile experiences can work. The Tap 20 isn’t perfect by a long shot, but it’s pretty darn cool. We challenge you to spend a few minutes with it and not find yourself grinning like a fool in love. And if you pass that test, fire up one of the free pinball games Sony throws in, orient the device in portrait mode, and stroke the screen to pull back the plunger.

The model we tested was outfitted with a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U mobile processor, but only 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory. Considering the price of memory, and this machine’s occasionally sluggish performance, we think Sony should have doubled it. If you decide to buy one, we’d recommend spending the extra $200 to buy the next model up, which does just that. That model also has a 1.9GHz Intel Core i7 proc and a larger hard drive (1TB versus the 750GB in the model sent for this review; both drives are 5,400rpm spinners).

The Tap 20 features a 20-inch LED-backlit IPS display—with 10 touch points, natch—which is essential when you consider all the angles at which you might end up using it. The 1600x900 touchscreen is very responsive, as we discovered when playing the aforementioned pinball games. And while the integrated graphics aren’t strong enough for playing A-level games, they did a fine job with the more casual variety. We were particularly impressed with the speed at which we were able to operate the flippers. We were thinking it would be even more fun if the games’ physics responded to tilting, but that might have resulted in a little too much reality: It would require holding the device stock still and perfectly level.

You can use the folding stand on the back of the display to position it at an infinite number of angles for reading, or you can fold it completely flat and use the tablet horizontally. The stand does double-duty as a handle when you want to take the device into another room (did we mention it can run on battery power? It lasted three hours in our test). But we wish the handle was a wee bit thicker, had more-rounded edges, or was padded, because we could feel every ounce of the Tap 20’s 11.46-pounds digging into the backs of our fingers as we lugged it around. It’s also a little awkward to set up, because natural movement would have you lay it down flat on its screen—and if you have kids, you know they’re going to do just that. It takes two hands to flip it around and stand it up on its easel.

The speakers mounted on the back of the display are borderline terrible, but that’s typical of even all-in-one desktop PCs. Do yourself a favor and plug in headphones. Speaking of all-in-ones, the Tap 20 could fill that role, too. Its biggest shortcoming is the lack of an HDMI input—although that’s really more of a missed opportunity than a deal-breaker.

There’s nothing else remotely like the Vaio Tap 20, and we applaud Sony’s audacity for bringing it to market. Priced at a cool grand, this machine is hardly an impulse buy; but it reminds us why we love computers so much.

$1,000, www.sony.com

Asus DirectCU II Top Reviews: GeForce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7970

Josh Norem — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:11:14 +0000

Two overclocked flagship video cards go head to head one last time

Over the past year, the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 have served as the respective flagship GPUs for each of their camps, and even though both cards seem a bit like well-aged cheese by now, they are still fast. There have also been quite a few driver updates since these cards were released, so we've decided to pit two of the overclocked versions against one another in a battle royale to settle this feud once and for all. Fighters, touch circuit boards and come out of your PCI Express corners. It's time to get it on!

Asus GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP

There are many flavors of GeForce GTX 680 out in the wild, from cards that have only modified the reference design with pretty stickers to this heavily mutated bad boy from Asus. For those not familiar with Asus nomenclature, this is the DirectCU II version of the GTX 680, meaning it features a heat pipe and fan-based cooler approximately the size of mainland China. The cooler utilizes five copper heat pipes that make direct contact with the GK104 Kepler GPU. The heat pipes fan out above the GPU and to the edge of the card, sending the heat they've collected into two separate heatsinks. Twin 100mm fans then blow into the heatsinks, exhausting the warm air outside of the chassis. It's a superb design that we've lavished praise on before because, even though it's a bit large, it works extremely well, and keeps the GPU just the way we like it—cool and quiet. Asus claims a noise reduction of 14dB compared to the reference design prepared by Nvidia, and we believe it even though we don’t specifically measure sound output. All this cooling takes up a bit of space, though, and this card's triple-slot design makes it the biggest GTX 680 ever to grace our test bench.

The Asus GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP’s name is almost as long as the 11-inch card.

Some of you might be asking, "But wait, the GTX 680 already runs cool and quiet, so why is a cooler the size of Gordon Mah Ung’s anger management therapy bill required in this situation?" That's a good question, and the answer is in the second part of our nomenclature lesson, which is the word TOP in the card's name, which means it's overclocked like a son-of-a-gun to the tune of 112MHz over stock speeds at 1,137MHz. Its Boost Clock gets a gentle massage all the way up to 1,201MHz, as well. Memory is not overclocked, however. The card also comes with Asus's GPU Tweak software that lets you not only monitor the card's temps, fan speeds, voltages, and clock speeds, but also manually adjust all those values. The card even supports an Asus-exclusive feature called VGA Hotwire that’s also supported on several Asus motherboards (it has to be supported on both to work). It lets you adjust the GPU's voltage once you've soldered several wires that run from the motherboard to the video card's PCB. This allows for control at a hardware level instead of using software, and is designed for extreme overclocking enthusiasts, to put it mildly.

During testing, the overclocked Asus GTX 680 held a crystal-clear advantage over the overclocked Radeon HD 7970, which might not be too surprising to you, but it was a surprise to us. When we tested these same video cards (not these exact cards, but reference models at stock clock speeds) just a few months ago using the latest beta drivers from each manufacturer, it was a photo finish in practically every test, with AMD holding a very slight advantage. This was a distinct coup for AMD, which had always trailed Nvidia in these comparisons previously, and it all came down to drivers, essentially. AMD had released its beta 12.11 drivers, claiming they made a significant impact on performance, and they were right.

Perhaps it's fitting then, that this time around it is most likely drivers that have put Nvidia ahead, as we tested this card with the 310.70 version of the drivers, which were released about a month after the 12.10 drivers we used to test the Radeon card. As we were going to press, Nvidia released another version of its drivers numbered 310.90, claiming even further improvements, but they arrived too close to deadline for us to test them. However, the advantage Nvidia holds is clear, both in the benchmark numbers and frequency of driver updates. Drivers are clearly a weak point for AMD, and in this face-off it most likely made all the difference.

We should point out that the Asus card was totally silent at all times during testing, a remarkable feat given its overclocked status and its superb performance. It beat the AMD card in every test except Metro, where it lost by one frame per second, so not much of a loss, really. The numbers don't lie, though, and as we close the book on this era of GPUs, the crown goes to the green camp, and we'll award a crown to Asus too, for making the fastest, and most silent, GTX 680 we've ever tested.

Asus GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP

Fast; totally silent at all times; GPU Tweak software.

Massively huge and heavy, skimpy bundle.

$540, www.asus.com

Asus Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II TOP

In the game of high-stakes poker known as the GPU industry, once a manufacturer reveals its hand, it then waits for the competition to do the same. If the competing manufacturer reveals a more powerful or desirable alternative, due to a combination of price, performance, noise, or all three, the other manufacturer will oftentimes update its lineup with a new Extreme Titanium Platinum FTW Balls-to-the-Wall Edition, which is usually mildly overclocked. We've seen both Nvidia and AMD do this in the past, but in this particular round it's been AMD pulling this maneuver with its GHz edition of the HD 7970. The original HD 7970 shipped with a 925MHz core clock speed, and in order to gain a bit of an edge on the suddenly dominant GeForce GTX 680, or at least attempt to match its performance, AMD overclocked its flagship board to 1GHz and released the Radeon-based Kraken. It achieved its goal, too, as the GHz edition of the card was, for the most part, as fast as the GTX 680, or at least the two were close enough to move the argument away from performance to price and other considerations. Unfortunately for AMD, once people began to consider other factors, such as noise and heat, Nvidia still held the edge with its power-sipping Kepler architecture. While third-party manufacturers can't do much about the card's power output, they could certainly change its noise profile, and that's exactly what Asus has done by adding its sizable DirectCU II cooler to this card.

The Asus HD 7970 DirectCU II TOP’s triple-slot design is an amazing thing to not hear at all.

Like the GTX 680, this card is also overclocked a bit and runs at 1,000MHz, which is 75MHz over its stock speeds. Its memory also has a teeny, tiny overclock up to 1,400MHz from 1,375MHz. The card includes four Display Port connectors along with one single-link DVI port and one dual-link DVI port, giving it a distinct advantage in the multiple-displays department, and allowing you to run all six displays using AMD’s Eyefinity setup for multi-monitor gaming.

During testing, the Asus card showed a mild advantage over the reference design, pulling a few frames per second out of its red-and-black hat in each test. In two games in particular, though—Dirt 3 and Far Cry 2— we saw the most improvement, though in Metro we’re still stuck in the sub-20fps region, which is simply ridiculous but not the fault of the cards, obviously. Given its overclocked nature, it's not too surprising that it's faster than the reference design, but what's most impressive is how utterly silent the card is at all times; a marked improvement over the reference design, and all other HD 7970s we've ever tested. Sadly, the Radeon card still gets its lunch eaten by the GTX 680 in almost every benchmark, and not just by one or two frames but by enough to make it clear which card is faster. As we stated in the GTX review, it could be down to drivers, as we used the 12.10 drivers for these tests, which are the latest "official" drivers. The 12.11 drivers have been in beta for a while now and might have turned the tide had they been released, but we don't test with beta drivers, so for now the crown goes to the green camp. To be clear, this is the best version of the HD 7970 we've tested in this generation of cards, but given its performance deficit to the GTX 680, we're forced to withhold a Kick Ass award for now. Let's hope the company can reclaim one very soon with its HD 8000 series GPUs.

Asus Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II TOP

Whisper quiet; as fast as GHz edition; GPU Tweak software; runs six displays.

Expensive; not as fast as the GTX 680 in our tests.

$490, www.asus.com

Specifications

	Asus GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP	Asus Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II TOP	Reference Radeon HD 7970	Reference GTX 680
3DMark 2011 Performance	10,886	8,700	8,337	9,555
Unigine Heaven 2.5 (fps)	33.1	28.9	28.7	31.2
Shogun 2 (fps)	37.8	29.6	25.7	29.8
Far Cry 2 / Long (fps)	118.6	97.4	91.6	107.3
Dirt 3 (fps)	79.3	75.2	70.5	72.9
Metro 2033 (fps)	17	18.6	18.6	16.3
STALKER: CoP SunShade (fps)	41.5	40.2	38.7	34.3
Just Cause 2 (fps)	57.71	53.1	51	54.7
Batman: Arkham City (fps)	66	62	60	58
Catzilla	5,690	4,427	4,218	4,880
Base Clock	1,137MHz	1,000MHz	925MHz	925MHz
Boost Clock	1,201MHz	N/A	N/A	1,000MHz
Memory Clock	6,008MHz	5,600MHz	5,500MHz	6,000MHz

Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus P9X79 motherboard with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and a Thermaltake ToughPower 1,050w PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 2560x1600 with 4xAA except for the 3DMark tests.

Omerta: City of Gangsters Review

David Murphy — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:25:38 +0000

Fails to execute as a simulation or strategic shooter

When we see a gangster game come out—especially one that blends our love of building a true, bootleggy, 1930s-style criminal empire with our zest for shooting thugs with poorly executed Italian accents—we get a little anxious. It’s true. Give us a game that looks like a cross between Theme Park and Mafia and we’ll be set for quite a long while, cackling with glee as we outrun the cops in old-timey cars while trying to deliver our bootlegged booze to our various speakeasies.

Omerta’s black-market system is fairly easy to exploit, given the seemingly ludicrous offers you receive.

Omerta: City of Gangsters tries to recreate our lovely gangster fantasies and succeeds admirably to a small extent. However, it’s a bit tough to call this game a “game” in the traditional sense, as its main storyline feels more like a giant sandbox that you can exploit to maximum advantage before actually doing anything that requires effort in this half-simulation, half-Fallout hybrid.

The gist of Omerta is simple. You, a fledgling crime lord, are tasked with running through various individual missions within the larger world of Atlantic City. The game follows all the standard archetypes of the genre: Each mission, you’re given a set area to play within (which all look generally similar), and said area is filled with various buildings that you can rent, shoot up, bribe, or perform assorted other actions on depending on what the particular building actually is. You (rather quickly) unlock a ton of different buildings and actions that basically allow you to generate and spend resources.

For example, if you’re big into beer, you can build yourself an (illegal) brewery or two. While your sim-gangster-wannabes get to bootleggin’, you can take the booze they’re storing up and either sell it to a speakeasy yourself, sell it on the game’s version of an ever-present worldwide black market, or sit back and watch it automatically funnel on over to any speakeasies (or other beer-selling buildings) that you happen to own. Get rich, get paid; wash, rinse, repeat.

The game’s buildings can get a bit more complicated. For example, you can throw down Boxing Arenas or Pawn Shops that automatically generate cash depending on the positivity (fame) or negativity (fear) your in-game actions generate. Running charity events and building soup kitchens is going to make your boxers shine, whereas being a jerk to all of your local businesses (and fellow Mafiosos) is going to make you the next Pawn Star/Don Corleone mashup.

While it’s definitely fun to build your little mob city and level up your (creatively named) gangsters, one of the core issues surrounding Omerta is that it’s just too easy, simulation-wise. You can literally take all the time in the world to craft a super-cash-generating, top-of-the-line criminal empire without having much to fear from, well, anything.

The game’s only real motivator is a little element it calls “heat,” which is analogous to the star ratings you receive in your favorite Grand Theft Auto title whenever you perform naughty actions. Stir up too much negativity and the cops will come a-running, and you’ll have to bribe them or use another clever trick (like giving up one of your own hirable henchmen) to avoid losing the game. But, again, given just how easy it is to construct a fairly lucrative criminal empire without interference, it’s not that hard to get the cops off your trail—especially when you can frequently use the aforementioned, ever-present “black market” jobs board to reduce these heat levels before they become a problem.

The game’s characters do have some RPG elements, and period-appropriate names.

Would we pay half of the game’s asking price ($40) for the sim parts? Eh. They’re certainly fun—a good way to spend a solid afternoon. But, devoid of real urgency, the simulation element of the game devolves as a real attention-getter faster than we expected it to at first.

As for the game’s other half, the Fallout bits, we’re referring to the turn-based tactical shooter that the game turns into whenever your business-friendly gangsters need to go, uh, take care of a little business (if you catch our drift). The comparisons to the recently released XCOM Enemy Unknown are easy to make, with a few caveats: The game can be a bit frustrating early on, until you start unlocking “Mobsters with Medkits,” as we call them, because your small gang of fighters is going to go up against a decent number of other criminals without much of a reprieve.

Zoom in and you’ll actually be able to watch your mobsters carry out your assigned missions, including drive-bys.

On the plus side, you can’t die in the game. Your knocked-out gangsters suffer quasi-permanent injuries when they get riddled full of holes, which will impair their ability to be awesome for a bit of time in the future. You’ll likely suffer some injuries yourself, as the gamer, when you’re pounding your fist against the desk at the AI’s idiotic, charge-on-in strategy that seems to leave your gangsters hurtin’ no matter how much cover you think you’ve stuck them behind.

While we do like the variety of abilities—and weapon modes—your gangsters bring to the table, it’s safe to say that XCOM, this game ain’t. The tactical battles aren’t so much frustrating as they are uninteresting; we’d rather make our in-game cash and achieve our objectives by sitting back and letting our breweries churn than bothering with a more shoot-’em-up bank heist. Same reward, fewer annoyances (and less time spent).

It’s puzzling that developer Haemimont Games didn’t decide to add in AI for the game’s high-level business strategy. Going toe-to-toe against an AI that’s also renting buildings, setting up rackets, and doing other sorts of nefarious activity would have made this one a lot more interesting. Instead of bribing the police to keep yourself alive, you could have sent the cops against your hapless fellow mob bosses—sounds like fun to us!

Since the only thing keeping gamers interested in the criminal underworld of Atlantic City is the storyline—which reads more like an extended tutorial than Goodfellas—there’s just not that much compelling about Omerta to keep fledgling gangsters addicted to their screens. Shoot, even the game’s multiplayer is just its tactical shooter bit. Insert one Don Corleone–size yawn here. Omerta, like any upstart mob boss, arrived on the scene with so much potential, but this title feels like someone took a bat to its knees.

$40, www.cityofgangsters.com, ESRB: T

NZXT Kraken X40 Review

Jimmy Thang — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:01:51 +0000

A crackin' cool-and-quiet cooler

The Kraken X40 breaks the current trend of closed-loop water coolers rocking 12cm fans by upping its fan size to 14cm fan, which NZXT promises delivers more heat dissipation and better cooling without subjecting users to deafening fan noise. It’s a lofty promise, but having tested it, we can tell you that this Kraken's bite lives up to its bark.

The X40 offers unrivaled cooling performance on quiet mode.

The X40 is based on Asetek's fourth-generation all-in-one closed-loop design, which features a copper cold plate that has been improved with denser micro-fins and a new center channel to increase coolant flow. A single NZXT FX-140 PWM fan is included, and the cooler supports an optional second fan for a push-pull config. It's compatible with all modern CPU sockets, with the exception of LGA775, but faces a larger compatibility obstacle in that it requires a case with a 14cm fan, such as NZXT's own Phantom 410. The X40 also sports extra-long 16-inch rubber tubing compared to most other closed-loop systems that use tubes measuring around 12 inches. Accompanying the larger fan is a wider radiator that offers 36 percent more surface area than smaller 12cm rads.

Like Corsair's H80i that we reviewed last month, the X40 has an LED on top of the pump that you customize to either remain a solid color or to change color depending on temperature, which is slick. We also appreciate that the software to control it comes bundled on disc, whereas Corsair's software requires a download. The software is easy to use and allows you to adjust fan speeds, but not pump speeds like Corsair's equivalent. While it features only two presets, “silent” (1,000rpm) and "extreme" (1,700rpm), as opposed to the half-dozen with Corsair's software, you can still manually set the fans to run at fixed RPMs and save custom profiles.Installing the X40 was relatively easy. With our LGA2011 backplate preinstalled, we began by inserting four screws through the retention ring that allows the water block to be mounted to the CPU socket. The X40 features a similar retention ring to Thermaltake's Water2.0 Pro, which snaps onto the water block with a retention clip. This mounting process isn't as straightforward as the H80i’s simple magnetic mounting bracket, but the X40’s manual features excellent illustrations that simplify the installation process. Mounting the radiator and fan to the chassis just required tightening four screws through the back of the case. The last step was to connect the CPU fan and USB cables to the mobo headers, and unlike the H80i, all the cables come pre-attached to the water block, and the pump doesn't require additional power (Molex or SATA), making the installation less of a hassle.

In testing, the Kraken X40 was impressive, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the preset silent mode not only lived up to its name, but cooled extremely well, hitting just 67 C under load. This was enough to whoop our Hyper 212 zero-point air cooler in performance mode by 7 C, and it also bested the 12cm Seidon 120M water cooler running on full blast by 1 C. With the X40’s fan cranked to maximum, it gave Corsair’s H80i a run for its money even though we had it running in push-pull mode with two fans, which was quite impressive. While the X40’s fan can be mistaken for a small leaf blower at full speed, it fortunately doesn't need to operate at its highest speed to cool well.

While the X40 isn't cheap at 100 bones, it’s no costlier than its peers and it outperforms them, making this cooler easy to recommend. If you have a case that supports a 14cm fan, you should definitely release the Kraken!

$100, www.nzxt.com

Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt 500GB Review

Josh Norem — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:50:39 +0000

Designed for Mac users and priced accordingly

PC users have been in a bit of a quandary about the new Thunderbolt interface from Intel. On the one hand, we’re all about maximum performance, so given its sizable speed advantage over USB 3.0, at least on paper, we’re eager to adopt it. On the other hand, there are three issues that have prevented us from jumping on the Thunderbolt bandwagon with both feet. The first is the fact that it debuted on the Apple platform. Granted, we’re a bit sensitive, but this just rubbed us the wrong way. Second, Thunderbolt doesn’t exist on LGA2011 due to a requirement for integrated graphics. And finally, we already have USB 3.0, so do we really need Thunderbolt? Sure, it’s twice as fast on paper (10Gb/s versus 5Gb/s), but will we see that benefit in the real world, and is it worth the cost? To help us answer all these nagging questions we snagged a very special hard drive, the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt, which has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports, allowing us to test both interfaces back-to-back and make an apples-to-apples comparison.

The MiniStation has a belly-mounted white LED that “breathes” when there’s drive activity; we dig it.

Upon first glance, it’s apparent this is a Mac-oriented drive, both in its Thunderbolt support as well as its aluminum exterior and rounded edges. It doesn’t help that the documentation for the drive states that it comes preformatted for Macs, but don’t prejudge the drive just yet—that’s our job. In addition to shipping with both T-bolt and USB 3.0 interfaces, the drive also includes both cables, which is amazing since a Thunderbolt cable costs $50 alone. Inside the enclosure lies a 5,400rpm Samsung hard drive with 8MB of cache. The drive includes a 3-year warranty, is also offered in 1TB capacity, and includes no software whatsoever.

To test the drive, we performed real-world and synthetic tests, and came to a somewhat unsurprising conclusion—in this iteration, with a 5,400rpm hard drive inside of it, this device is hamstrung by the drive itself, not the interface. In every test we ran, the drive performed exactly the same regardless of the interface we used, making the benefit of Thunderbolt in this instance primarily one of convenience rather than performance. For example, it would be useful if you are a person who owns both a Mac with Thunderbolt and a PC with USB 3.0, or an older MacBook with just USB 2.0 ports. Or you could be a PC user who wants the flexibility of using Thunderbolt and USB for file-sharing with buddies. Either way, the drive isn’t any faster on either interface in its current form. Not only did it score the exact same write times down to the second when we copied 30GB of data, but it scored the same read and write speeds in HD Tune and ATTO, as well. For example, HD Tune clocked the drive at 80.7MB/s read speeds via Thunderbolt, and when using USB 3.0 it ran at 80.8MB/s.

Now for the bad news: This drive costs $200 for 500GB, which is wildly expensive since you can get a Toshiba Canvio 1.5TB drive that is just as fast as the MiniStation for just $110. Thunderbolt could one day be the bitchin’ interface we’re all using, but for now it’s too exotic and overpriced compared to USB 3.0.

$200, www.buffalotech.com

Eurocom Scorpius Review

Jimmy Thang — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:52:27 +0000

3D notebook offers hefty power for a hefty cost

The Eurocom Scorpius lives a dual life. On one hand, it’s a dull-looking workstation; on the other, this highly configurable laptop can also be outfitted with a 3D monitor and killer gaming specs. We opted for the latter.

The Scorpius has a backlit keyboard that can change to seven different colors.

Along with a 120Hz refresh rate, the 17.3-inch monitor features a built-in 3D emitter that syncs up to a pair of bundled Nvidia 3D Vision 2 glasses. To test the 3D experience, we played the 3D Vision Ready–title Batman: Arkham City and sampled some 3D movie trailers from 3DVisionLive.com. Nvidia’s stereoscopic technology rivals the best that movie theaters have to offer in terms of depth, and never bothered our eyes, but the experience wasn’t perfect. Even though Nvidia purports to have solved the dimming issue with its Vision 2 glasses, you’re still essentially wearing sunglasses, so the experience is going to be darker than viewing content in 2D without glasses. We also feel that wearing glasses in and of itself is cumbersome.

The most vexing problem is that when 3D is enabled, performance suffers greatly. Our frame rate dropped by half, from 50s to mid-20s, when playing Batman in 3D as opposed to 2D. In our opinion, these various issues detract too much from the experience; we’d rather play in 2D mode. As for the TN panel in 2D mode, while some sing the praises of 120Hz’s ability to improve even 2D image quality, we didn’t see any noticeable improvement over 60Hz performance when surfing the web, watching videos, or playing games.

We had little complaint with our system’s internal specs, however, which included a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-3840QM CPU, 16GB of RAM, and not one, but two GeForce GTX 680Ms in SLI. In our more CPU-intensive tests, the Scorpius scored modest wins of 6–13 percent. However, when it came to the more GPU-intensive applications, our zero-point’s comparatively humble Fermi-based GeForce GTX 670M GPU got severely stung by the Scorpius’s two Kepler beasts. In our STALKER: CoP benchmark, the Scorpius performed an amazing 112.5 percent better than the ZP; the performance gap only widened in our 3DMark 11 test, where it performed an astonishing 248.1 percent better. Because these benchmark stats were so amazing, we loaded up Far Cry 3 to give it a real workout. While the Scorpius wasn’t able to run the super-graphically intensive game on “Ultra” (the game’s highest settings), it ran at “Very High” with frame rates in the mid-40s to low-50s range, and often outperformed a 2.8GHz AMD quad-core gaming desktop armed with a GTX 590. It seems unfair to bring up the fact that the far less expensive ($1,500) GT60 zero-point laptop wasn’t even able to muster a solid 30fps on FC3’s “High” settings. The only performance test where the GT60 bested the Scorpius was in battery life, where Eurocom’s laptop lasted a poor 103 minutes. Something’s got to give when you’re powering two 680Ms.

In terms of storage, the laptop comes with two drives: a 128GB mSATA Micron and 512GB SSD. While the two speedy drives are appreciated, the lack of a hefty HDD really limits the overall package. Luckily, the laptop takes up to three 2.5-inch storage drives and installing an additional HDD requires the removal of just one screw from the bottom of the laptop. Users can also access the motherboard from underneath and swap out the RAM. Eurocom has made the main compartment easily removable, with only four screws holding it in place.

While the laptop certainly performs well, it still has issues. Its trackpad is unresponsive and can be an exercise in frustration to use. Perhaps a bigger problem is that this thing is heavy. With a carry weight of more than 13 pounds, the Scorpius is in backbreaker territory. Finally, at almost $4,000, it’s very expensive.

Fortunately, most of these issues can be mitigated. You can save money by skipping out on the 3D monitor and second SSD. And you can overlook its battery, weight, and trackpad issues by understanding that the Scorpius is best used as a desktop replacement. Its performance is simply off the charts, and complaining about its other problems is like complaining about how a Ferrari is expensive, bad with fuel economy, and doesn’t have enough cup holders. If those issues are enough to bother you, you’re looking at the wrong machine. This laptop is all about performance and here the Scorpius is a stinger.

$3,915, www.eurocom.com

Vizio CA24T-A4 All-in-One PC Review

Michael Brown — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:55:53 +0000

Bringing the sexy back—minus a few key components

Smart TVs are basically dumb PCs, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Vizio—one of the world’s most successful HDTV manufacturers—plans to grow by jumping into the all-in-one PC market. The Vizio CA24T-A4 is a surprisingly good rookie effort, but there is room for improvement.

The tiny keyboard delivers surprisingly good tactile feedback.

The 24-inch, 10-point touchscreen display is crisp, clear, and very thin (about .75 inches). It’s an MVA (multi-domain vertical alignment) model, with an LED backlight. Resolution is 1920x1080 pixels, which is typical of this class of machine (Vizio also offers higher-end models with 27-inch displays at the same resolution).

The display is mounted to a thin stalk rising from the pizza-box base that houses the machine’s guts. The display can tilt from minus-5 degrees to plus-20 degrees, which is fine for using the PC from a seated position, but it doesn’t tilt back far enough to use the machine while standing. Unlike the displays on the Asus ET2300 and Lenovo A720, it can’t be folded flat. It also doesn’t pivot or swivel left to right.

The CA24T-A4’s base is incredibly small—at just 1-inch high, it’s even thinner than the svelte Lenovo A720—but Vizio removed two important components to achieve that profile: The computer has neither a discrete GPU nor an optical drive. You won’t mind integrated graphics unless you’re a hardcore gamer, and the absence of an optical drive won’t matter if you acquire your movies, music, games, and other software online. But Intel’s dual-core 2.5GHz Core i5-3210M CPU and its HD4000 graphics is a 98-pound weakling when it comes to modern gaming with eye candy turned up, and we were grateful to have a USB DVD drive on hand to install some of our benchmarks. Gaming performance on the box could have been helped with higher-clocked RAM, but alas, Vizio went with DDR3/1333.

Vizio outfitted the CA24T-A4 with four USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI inputs (so you can connect both a satellite/cable set-top box and a gaming console or Blu-ray drive), and an eSATA port (which we’d happily trade for Thunderbolt for forward-looking compatibility). Everything except one USB port is in the back of the machine, so you won’t have ugly cables sticking out of its side; and unlike many AiOs we’ve tested, Vizio doesn’t hijack any of its USB ports to host a wireless dongle for keyboard and mouse. Actually, Vizio doesn’t put a mouse in the box—it provides a wireless multitouch trackpad, instead. Vizio tells us that this is to take advantage of Windows 8 gestures, but we can’t say we’re enthused about it: Trackpads are necessary on laptops, but they don’t deliver a lot of benefit paired with a desktop rig (unless you’re using the PC from the couch, and that’s an unlikely scenario with just a 24-inch display).

Vizio’s all-in-one delivers much better sound than we’ve heard from most computers, thanks in part to the presence of a subwoofer cleverly integrated into the computer’s detached power supply (Asus offers a sub for its all-in-ones, but at additional cost with most models). There’s a volume control and an HDMI toggle switch conveniently integrated into both the keyboard and the remote control. That’s a much better solution than integrating these features into the display, as Asus and Lenovo do. You can also use the HDMI display without needing to power up the computer (the keyboard controls don’t function in this situation, but the remote does).

The Vizio CA24T-A4 delivered very weak benchmark numbers. If you care about performance, the similarly priced Asus E2300 crushes it, thanks to its higher base clock, larger cache, and dedicated GPU. But if you anticipate using the Vizio’s HDMI display capabilities as much as its computing power, it’s the better buy.

$1,250, www.vizio.com

Ask the Doctor

The Maximum PC Staff — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:30:09 +0000

The doctor tackles Post-Upgrade Blues, Drive Order, Upgrading an XPS 700 , and more

Post-Upgrade Blues

I upgraded to Windows 8 on my laptop. Can you tell me how to reinstall Windows 7? I tried restoring the system from Windows 8 but did not have any luck. Is there a way to use my recovery discs or will I need to purchase a copy of Windows 7?

- Michael De Matteis

The Doctor Responds:

If the recovery discs are the ones that came with your laptop, you should be able to use them to reinstall Windows 7 (provided that’s what your laptop shipped with). Your product key should still be on the sticker on the bottom of your laptop. If not, you can download the Window 7 ISO that corresponds with your license here and use that to burn a new install disc. If that doesn’t work, due to OEM licensing constraints, contact your laptop manufacturer; they may be able to get you (or sell you) a new recovery disc. Some laptops also have a recovery partition that you can boot into to reinstall Windows—when you boot, keep an eye out for any options to press keys to access a recovery feature.

Classic Shell restores the Start button and menu, and even gives you a choice whether to completely eliminate the Start screen or not, so you can ease into it.

If you want to downgrade because of program incompatibilities, go ahead and downgrade. But if you just miss the Start menu and hate the Metro interface, there’s a way to keep the performance improvements of Windows 8 and get the classic Start menu back. Several ways, actually, but we like Start8 ($5) or Classic Shell (free). Install it and you can add a Start button back to your taskbar, and even disable Metro entirely. And later, when Metro gets more useful or you feel like experimenting, you can get Metro back without having to downgrade now and upgrade again later.

SSD Program Sorting

I recently upgraded my old computer with (among other things) an SSD. I don't want to fill it up with unnecessary stuff. I have installed Windows 7 and MS Office on it, but have directed downloads, documents, pictures, videos, etc. to default to a secondary hard drive. I'm wondering about programs. If they aren't frequently used, or maybe just a trial program, is it OK, performance-wise, to put a program on the HDD rather than on the SSD? Would this have any effect on the overall system performance?

- Jack Orkin

The Doctor Responds:

In the future we will all have enough SSD space to install every program we want, but right now few of us can afford an SSD that big, so some programs invariably have to be installed on mechanical drives. This is perfectly fine. Putting your OS and your most frequently used programs on the SSD is the best way to take advantage of your SSD’s access speeds, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with installing less frequently used or trial programs on the HDD. Your instinct is right on the money. They won’t load as fast, of course, but who cares? If you wind up using them all the time, make room on the SSD. Otherwise, they’re fine where they are.

Put the Jumper Down

A long time ago, there was an article in your magazine dealing with optimal communication/connection arrangements for hard drives and CD-ROMs via E-IDE primary masters/slaves and E-IDE secondary master/slaves.

I am building a new rig that has SATA components: two SATA HDDs and two DVD drives. They are plugged into the mobo SATA ports: 0 and 1 for the hard drives, 2 and 3 are empty, and ports 4 and 5 go to the DVD drives. Is there a better way to connect these components to reduce communication bottlenecks?

- Sunnie

The Doctor Responds:

The good news, Sunnie, is that the day of having to manually jumper your hard drives and optical drives are long over (although the Doctor will note that cable select worked pretty well at the end).

SATA is point-to-point and does not feature a master and slave relationship like Parallel ATA had, so don’t worry about that aspect. The only thing to really be mindful of when hooking up multiple SATA devices is which controller they go to. Modern boards usually have multiple SATA controller chips. Some go to the board’s south bridge/peripheral controller hub, and others go to discrete controllers put on the board as a value add. Generally the chipset controller is preferred over discrete components. One other thing to consider is whether the port is SATA 6Gb/s. On AMD chipsets, all of the SATA ports are SATA 6Gb/s. On Intel, only two of the six from the chipset proper are SATA 6Gb/s. If you eventually buy an SSD that runs at SATA 6Gb/s you will get the best performance running it on a SATA 6Gb/s port. Since your hard drives and optical drives don’t benefit from this (very much anyway), the Doctor recommends cracking open your motherboard manual and finding out which of the ports are SATA 6Gb/s. Plug your other drives into the SATA 3Gb/s ports and leave the 6Gb/s ports open for the day when you install an SSD.

Mobo Five for XPS 700

I have a Dell XPS 700 that I purchased in December 2006. I purchased it with a four-year warranty. During that time, the motherboard had to be replaced four times. I ended up buying a new Dell after the warranty period expired and the fifth motherboard failed.

XPS 700: To fix or to toss? That is the question.

I would like to use the XPS 700 as my spare computer, but for that I need a new motherboard. I called Dell to see about a motherboard. They said they could order one for me, but they want $440 for it. I don’t want to buy another motherboard from them knowing it’ll fail after a year. I don’t know enough about motherboards to buy one that’s compatible with my computer but more reliable, and I don’t know if $440 is too much.

Is there a replacement board for this machine I can swap out without being too much of a geek, or should I just bag it?

- Clair Bolton

The Doctor Responds:

$440 is an awful lot to pay to replace a 6-year-old motherboard model. It’s even a lot to pay for a brand-new top-of-the-line motherboard. They don't make motherboards using the nForce chipset any more, or even in that form factor (BTX) any more

For that amount of money you could nearly replace the entire XPS 700 with a faster computer—we’ve come a long way in six years. It's possible to get a modern ATX motherboard to work in that great-looking XPS 700 chassis, but it's rather more work than you'd probably like to do (See here). You'd still be stuck with an outdated system unless you replaced the CPU, RAM, and videocard, as well. In which case, as we mentioned, you'd probably just be better off with a new computer—unless you really love that XPS 700 case and own a Dremel that you don’t mind using.

DDR with No Bloody 2 or 3

I have an old desktop that was given to me a few years ago. It features an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ in a Socket 939 ASRock 939 board with 2GB of DDR, two hard drives, a GeForce 8800 GTS, and 300W PSU. It was running an early build of Windows 7, and one day it would power on but not get through POST. I finally got it running earlier this year after essentially unseating every part in the case and reinstalling it. The last part I reinstalled was the RAM, which seemed to do the trick. I used the rig this entire year until my IDE DVD drive started to act up, and when I powered off my system and replaced it with another IDE drive it wouldn't get to POST or the screen where it shows the BIOS checking your RAM and HDDs. After a bit of work, I was able to get my graphics card to display an image, but it only shows the motherboard checking the RAM then freezing.

I personally think that my DIMMs may have gone bad, but after switching the configurations from 2GB (4x 512MB), to 1GB, and then to just one stick, I am beginning to believe it may be something else. I would just get more RAM, but seeing that I'm limited to using DDR (not DDR2, just plain DDR RAM) finding replacement parts has been hard. I cannot afford to build a new rig, which I would rather do than dealing with this crap. What should I do, and what exactly is my problem?

- Wayne Strickland

The Doctor Responds:

The Doc knows that it sounds like a broken record but the two most common failure points in an elderly system (other than HDD) are RAM and power supply. Since you don’t have a spare bucket of parts, you should first try to diagnose with what you have. First, to ensure that your hard drive isn’t going bad and hanging during POST, disconnect both hard drives’ cables from the motherboard. It’s unlikely to be the issue, but disconnect them just to be sure.

You have pulled RAM, but how do you know the last stick of RAM in the machine isn’t the one that’s bad? Swap the last stick of RAM with one of the other sticks and try them in different slots. Remember: Power down your system completely and switch off or unplug your PSU for at least 10 seconds before removing RAM or PCIe devices.

If that doesn’t work, try resetting the BIOS. If that doesn’t work, manually set the RAM timing in the BIOS to the timings supported by the RAM. With the box running, make sure the fan on the CPU is running and not blocked by cat hair, dust, or a mouse house.

If you’re still stuck, the next step will probably take additional parts to troubleshoot. Frankly, the Doctor believes the problem may lie with your PSU. The GeForce 8800 GTS came in numerous configurations, with some consuming more power than others. All of them are probably just a wee bit over-the-top for a 300-watt PSU, especially if it’s a no-name PSU. And even if it has worked fine for many years, a PSU running at 95 percent of peak through long hot summers is likely to have a shorter lifespan than one running at 50 percent its whole life. So, the PSU should be one of your first suspects to replace if you can swing it. Usually when power supplies give up the ghost, they just stop working, but that’s not always the case. It’s possible the PSU has enough juice to POST and get to the RAM check before it gets overloaded and shuts down.

Logitech Z323 Review

Michael Brown — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:20:24 +0000

2.1-Channel Speaker System offer cheap thrills

Logitech has built more computer speakers over the years than just about any manufacturer, and it’s learned a thing or two about building decent low-cost models. Take the 2.1-channel Logitech Z323 system: We could name any number of speaker systems that sound better, but few that are priced better.

The satellites tilt up to project sound at your ears.

You can literally see some of the ways that Logitech hit that low price point: The satellite cabinets are made from cheap ABS plastic with permanently attached cables that plug into the subwoofer. Each satellite has dual, 2-inch, concave-dome drivers (one is mounted in the front of the cabinet and the other in the back, to deliver what Logitech describes as “360-degree sound”). So the system performs best if there’s a wall behind the satellites for the sound waves to bounce off. Each satellite also has a front-facing port. There’s a volume control and power switch on the right-hand cabinet, plus one 1/8-inch headphone output and one 1/8-inch stereo input, to support a digital media player.

The compact subwoofer cabinet (it measures 8.7x5.9x7.2 inches) is fabricated from the typical medium-density fiberboard. It houses a small amp and a tiny (for a sub) 4-inch down-firing dome woofer. The amp delivers six watts (RMS) to each of the satellites and 18 watts (RMS) to the subwoofer. The sub has its own volume control, along with a pair of RCA jacks that serve as a second auxiliary input for a gaming console, DVD player, or what have you (handy features in a speaker system priced this low).

The Z323’s favorable price/performance ratio, however, applies to games much more than music. Playing games such as Borderlands 2, we were pleased with the Z323’s ability to render the sound of gunshots and explosions, and the conversations with friendly characters and the taunts of enemies alike were rendered crisp and clear (well, with the exception of those babbling psychos).

When we listened to music, on the other hand, the vocals sounded weirdly detached from the rest of the band—and it didn’t matter whether the singer was male or female or even what style of music was being played. We tried several singer/songwriters, including “Crossing Muddy Waters,” from the John Hiatt album of the same name, Marc Cohn’s “She’s Becoming Gold,” from The Rainy Season, and Nanci Griffith’s cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Techumseh Valley,” from her record Other Voices, Other Rooms (in all three cases, the tracks were ripped from CD and encoded as 16-bit, 44.1kHz FLAC files).

This sonic detachment wasn’t as much of a problem with instrumental selections, but that’s not to say the Z323 system delivered a stellar performance. When we played Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, which the composer recently remastered for Bowers & Wilkins’s Society of Sound label, the album (available in both Apple Lossless and 24-bit FLAC formats), sounded somewhat lifeless and flat compared to what we heard on more expensive speakers (including Corsair’s stellar SP2500 system). But you could almost buy four Z323 setups for the cost of one SP2500, so that’s to be expected.

f you’re working with a tight budget and need speakers primarily for gaming, Logitech has a good set in the Z323. If listening to music is your core interest, on the other hand, you should keep looking.

$70, www.logitech.com

Velocity Micro Raptor MultiPlex XL Review

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:30:48 +0000

Is there still room for big a HTPC?

It’s hard to talk about the Velocity Micro MultiPlex machine without thinking back more than 15 years ago, to the earliest days of “PC-TVs” and “PC Theaters.”

Back in the late 1990s, vendors such as Compaq and Gateway were pushing Pentium II–based PCs capable of watching DVDs, displaying electronic programming guides, and browsing the Internet, along with other futuristic capabilities, on gigantic 36-inch CRT televisions (we say that both literally and sarcastically).

The MultiPlex is a traditional HTPC, but fully capable of playing Big Picture Steam games, too.

In comparison to those early pioneers of living room PCs, the Velocity Micro MultiPlex is like a starship dropping out of warp speed while you look on from a covered wagon trying to get over Donner Pass without having to eat your fellow travelers.

The MultiPlex chassis harkens back to those early PC-TVs, but rather than sporting a 266MHz Pentium II, a whopping 2GB hard drive, 32MB of RAM, and an analog TV tuner, the MultiPlex is pretty much state-of-the-art: liquid-cooled Core i7-3770K clocked up to 4.3GHz, 16GB of DDR3/2000, a GeForce GTX 680, 240GB SSD, and 3.6TB of RAID 5 storage. Besides Gigabit and 802.11n, and the Blu-ray drive, Velocity Micro opted for a Ceton quad-channel CableCARD tuner to help fill that massive RAID 5 array.

That RAID array, for the record, is made up of three 2TB WD Caviar Black drives. If one drive fails, you won’t lose it all—we’re just not so sure we’d care if we lost it, though. Since the MultiPlex is intended to quietly sit in the living room sucking up television through the Ceton card, a drive failure wiping out, say, every episode of Glee or The Walking Dead, wouldn’t be as bad as losing 2TB of your family videos and pics. Frankly, we think that a straight 6TB JBOD array would be just fine on a PVR box, but if you do intend to store your memories on the machine, the RAID 5 is warranted.

Performance of the box was in line with our expectations. Obviously, up against our zero-point system’s hexa-core and dual-GPU setup, it’s no contest. But against HTPC/gaming boxes like Digital Storm’s Bolt and Falcon Northwest’s Tiki, it’s pretty much a tie, as all three feature overclocked 3770K parts and GeForce GTX 680 cards. Of course, you might wonder if it’s fair to compare the MultiPlex against those much smaller HTPC machines. That’s a good question. Both the Tiki and Bolt are more likely to be used as simple SFF gaming boxes in your office, or in your living room as “Steam Boxes” running Big Picture mode. Recording terabytes of TV isn’t likely to be high on the list of their usage scenarios.

That’s actually where the MultiPlex comes in. It’s far more traditional-HTPC shaped and sized for the PVR chores, yet has plenty of firepower to run games at 1080p resolutions. Our one complaint might be that it’s a tad loud for pure PVR duties. If you’re watching, say, a Michael Bay flick, you’d never hear the fan and drive noise, but if you’re trying to catch the nuanced acting in, um, Jane Eyre on Blu-ray, you could find those sounds distracting. This won’t be an issue in gaming, of course, but it’s worth noting.

Pricing for the rig is fair. At $3,200 it’s a full grand cheaper than the Falcon Tiki we reviewed last September. The Tiki did, however, pack a pair of 512GB SSDs, which adds up, but then the MultiPlex has three drives plus a CableCARD tuner.

Overall, the MultiPlex brings a lot to the table if you’re still living in a cable world—we’re just not sure how many of us there are in today’s post-cable environment.

$3,200, www.velocitymicro.com