I’m looking to get a new SSD for my laptop when Windows 7 comes out, and I just read a review on Newegg warning about a drive not supporting Win7’s TRIM feature. A Google search gave me the basics on TRIM, but how important is it, really? I’m having trouble finding which drives support it and am wondering if I should wait before pulling the trigger.

I use my laptop for home and work, so I’d really like to do a clean install on a new drive (for restoration purposes when I really screw something up) and it seems like a perfect time to make the switch. I’m also moving from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 7, so—as I understand it—I need to wipe regardless.

Read our answer for Steve after the jump.

Google's Chrome OS press conference gave us plenty to discuss on this week's No BS Podcast. We give you a recap of what juicy nuggets were revealed, and explain why Windows won't be replaced by Chrome any time soon. We also talk about benchmarking a dual-Radeon 5970 system, comparing it to a tri-SLI GTX 285 machine that we reviewed a few months ago. Finally, we answer some listener questions and Gordon breaks not one, but four NDAs to tell us about a super secret product. 

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

I recently reformatted my computer after a failure with an old Seagate 7200.11 1TB. Lately, though, I have been noticing problems with my USB ports. Whenever I connect my iPhone 3G, it is very hard for iTunes to recognize it and the popup tells me that the iPhone isn’t plugged in to a high-speed port, even though all my USB ports should be 2.0. This has raised even bigger concerns about my other devices connected via USB.

My motherboard is an Asus P5Q-E. The CPU is an Intel Q6600. My initial thought is that an upgrade to my mobo’s BIOS or other utilities might fix the problem, but I’m wary of undertaking such a feat without knowing for sure what the problem is, because I’ve heard updating the BIOS can be dangerous. If a BIOS update is necessary, what sorts of precautions should I take?

—Taylor Sabbag

The 21st century has seen a resurgence in the popularity of stereography, or 3D imagery, and thanks to the availability of inexpensive digital cameras and photo-processing software, do-it-yourself 3D imagery is now possible.

The simplest method for taking a 3D photo requires just a single camera, and a stationary subject. Place your feet firmly on the ground, with your weight on your left foot, and take a picture. Shift your weight to your right foot and take a second picture. You now have a stereo pair of images, one for the left eye and one for the right eye, which can be viewed in 3D. Obviously, this technique, called “sidestep” or “cha-cha” 3D, only works for subjects that are not in motion.

To take stereographs of dynamic subjects, we will need to take two photos at exactly the same time. Japanese camera manufacturer Fuji recently released the first digital camera equipped with two lenses for 3D. Of course, for the technologically savvy, you can make your own 3D camera rig using common building materials and two digital cameras.

You can forgive AMD for stealing a line from Nvidia’s playbook. From the name and marketing materials, it’s not obvious that this card is a dual GPU card. One AMD chart even refers to the card as the “ATI Radeon HD 5970 GPU,” much like Nvidia’s 295 GTX is a dual GPU card that’s sold as if it were a normal graphics card.

We first take a quick look at the speeds and feeds of the new card, and then discuss additional features. We’ll compare them to the Radeon HD 5870 single GPU card; there are differences in core and memory clock speeds. Then, we jump into the benchmarks, comparing the Radeon HD 5970 to four other videocards in high-resolution gaming. 

And if those numbers don't impress you, wait until you see how this beast performs in Crossfire for a total of four GPUs. 

So you've read our Complete Beginner's Guide to Linux and have decided to adopt an open-source operating system--congratulations! But diving right into a new OS is daunting, even if it is as polished and stable as Ubuntu. That's OK though, because we're here to help. We've compiled a list of the 20 most important skills that every Ubuntu user should have. These tips, ranging from basic GUI manipulation to advanced system recovery, are essential to your Windows-free computing experience. Whether you've just installed Ubuntu for the first time or have been a Linux acolyte for years, you'll want to read our refresher. And if you have any tips you can't live without, we'd love to hear about them in the comments section!

Read on to get started!

In the past year, AMD seems to have been taking a sort of “strategy du jour” approach. We ship low cost processors! We do low power CPUs! Our parts are great for overclockers! We love home theater PCs!

Those messages weren’t really different from anything Intel, the 900 pound velociraptor in the CPU  business, would offer up, but there was always a tinge of desperation. This became more noticeable as Intel slowly and methodically stripped away whatever technology edge AMD had. Intel’s Nehalem was really the last straw: AMD couldn’t even claim “true quad core” any longer.

AMD’s recent release of its RV870 GPU line makes the company the undisputed graphics performance leader. The Radeon HD 5870 is the fastest single-GPU graphics card on the market currently. But at roughly $380, it’s not inexpensive, so AMD has also rolled out the Radeon HD 5850, 5770, and 5750 cards. All are DirectX 11–capable, at lower price points than the flagship HD 5870.

The HD 5850 uses the same RV870 GPU as the 5870, but with a couple of functional units disabled. Priced at around $260, the 5850 occupies the lower tier of the high-end cards. The recently released 5770/5750 cards use a different chip. Based on the same DirectX 11 architecture as their big brothers, the 5770/5750 are built with 1.04 billion transistors—just slightly more than the 956 million used in the previous-generation Radeon HD 4870/4890 products. Contrast these numbers with the 2.15 billion transistors in the Radeon HD 5870. Current prices for 5770s are roughly the same as older 4870s, around $150–$160. So the 5770 is firmly positioned as a midrange graphics card.

We put eight cards to the test, from six companies: three Radeon HD 5870s, three HD 5850s, one HD 5770, and a factory-overclocked Nvidia GTX 260 from Gigabyte, our token Nvidia card in the mix. Read on to see which one is the best for your budget!

Starting your holiday shopping? Stuff your stockings with some Maximum PC goodness! We're pleased to announce the launch of Future US techmart, a online store for Maximum PC and Mac|Life related products. Here, you'll find copies of our newest special issues -- handbooks and guides to building and optimizing your PC. Check it out!

In this episode, the gang discusses the implications of Intel's $1.25 billion anti-trust settlement with AMD, the release of the Motorola Droid, and the Modern Warfare 2's record-breaking launch. We also answer a few doctor questions, and Gordon fumes about replacable laptop batteries, headshots, and games that play themselves in his most hilarious rant of the week yet. 

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

AMD has wasted no time bringing its DirectX 11 GPU architecture to a more affordable, mainstream-class GPU in the HD 5770. HIS is one of the first manufacturers to bring the HD 5770 to market.

At around $160, the card is priced similarly to existing Radeon HD 4870 cards. It’s the lowest-cost card in the roundup, and given the 180mm2 die size (that’s incredibly tiny for a GPU), prices are likely to eventually come down even further.

Read on for the full review!

It’s easy to be seduced by the latest and greatest graphics cards, but you can sometimes find excellent deals in older-generation cards that can still keep up with today’s shader-heavy PC games. Gigabyte’s 260 GTX SuperOC is a good example.

To make the cards, Gigabyte starts with cherry-picked 260 GTX chips from the factory. Then it clocks the GPUs at 680MHz, more than 100MHz faster than the standard 576MHz. Similarly, the SuperOC pushes the shader clock to 1,466MHz, instead of the stock 1,350MHz. Rounding off the performance push is 896MB of GDDR3 running at 1.25GHz instead of 1GHz. Gigabyte delivers these rarefied clock rates at slightly less than $200.

Read on for the full review!

As with Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5870, the company’s HD 5850 card ships with coupons for two games: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Sapphire’s HD 5850 delivers a stock Radeon HD 5850, with its 1,440 stream processors, 72 texture units, and DirectX 11 support.

In our power-usage testing, Sapphire’s power draw was about average for an HD 5850. Our system power averaged 140W at idle, while pushing 260W at full throttle. Fan noise was fairly loud at full bore, but that was generally true of all the cards. At idle, overall noise levels were low enough to blend into the background of CPU, power supply, and case cooling.

Read on for the full review!

We admit to mixed feelings about Diamond’s Radeon HD 5850. On one hand, it offers the same strong performance as other Radeon HD 5850 cards—second only to their big-brother HD 5870 cards. But unlike other manufacturers, you don’t get a coupon for Dirt 2 in the box. Instead, you need to register the card at Diamond’s website to get the perk. You also won’t get the two-year warranty unless you register the card.

Read on for the full review!

All of the Radeon cards tested in our review round-up are based on AMD’s reference design, including this Asus card. However, Asus includes Smart Doctor software, which allows you to easily overclock its card.

You can use the app to auto-tune the clock speeds, though this typically gives you a conservative up-clock that results in a relatively modest performance gain. When we used the auto-overclock feature, we saw gains of 8 percent in 3DMark Vantage, and a couple of frames per second in STALKER and Far Cry 2. If you have the patience, you can tweak voltage settings, core clocks, and memory clocks manually, which could boost performance more substantially.

Read on for the full review and benchmarks!

As with all Radeon HD 5870s, Sapphire’s version offers superlative performance, making it one of the fastest single-GPU cards available today. At its core is AMD’s 2.15 billion transistor Cypress chip, coupled with 1GB of 1,200MHz GDDR5 memory. Two DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort connection allow for flexible monitor attachment.

Sapphire is bundling two games with this card: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Dirt 2 is one of the first titles to support Microsoft’s DirectX 11 graphics API, so it should show off the visual chops of the new GPU. As with all HD 5870 cards, the Sapphire HD 5870 is just over 10.5 inches long, so be sure the card will fit in your case before buying.

Read on for the full review and benchmarks!

HIS is based in Hong Kong, but its cards are readily available in U.S. outlets. They often cost slightly less than the competition, but that’s not the case with the company’s Radeon HD 5870, which is priced the same as its competitors. When we first unpacked the card, we thought it was the lesser HD 5850 model, due to its relatively compact packaging.

In our benchmarks, the HIS HD 5870 turned out excellent scores across the board, easily beating the fastest previous single-GPU champ, the EVGA 285 GTX SSC. It also pumped out the highest score in the 3DMark Vantage Performance test, although, again, margins were small.

Read on for the full review!

All of the Radeon HD 5870s reviewed here are essentially identical—they’re the fastest single-GPU graphics cards you can buy currently. Out of the box, you get a typical one-year limited warranty. But if you register XFX’s product online within 30 days of purchase, the warranty lasts for “the duration of your life.” Not a bad deal, assuming the company is around that long.

It’s nice having a great warranty, but you want great performance for your $390. You’ll get that in spades. The XFX card burned through our performance tests, posting the highest scores in the 3DMark Vantage Extreme and Crysis benchmarks. The differences were minimal, though, and other 5870s won in other benchmarks.

 Read on for the full review!

We’ve been saying it for years: The moment they stop messing around with rushed, under-funded movie tie-ins and make a real Batman game, we’ll have a huge hit on our hands. With Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady has proved us right—this game finally does justice to the Dark Knight by recreating the monstrous foes, the dark, gritty atmosphere, and Batman’s legendary fighting skills to near perfection.

Arch nemesis Joker, in particular, is a masterpiece. Voiced by Mark Hamill (reprising the role from Batman: The Animated Series) and modeled and animated with some astonishing detail and lighting, he’s genuinely convincing as the deranged, murderous clown who turns the tables on Batman by seizing control of Arkham, Gotham’s supervillain lock-up.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

Alan Turing should have been knighted. He should have been Sir Alan Turing. Instead he was prosecuted for being homosexual and committed suicide in despair. The British government conveniently forgot that Turing was the genius behind the Allies’ code-breaking efforts during WWII. The “Ultra Secret” is generally credited as the single most important advantage the Allied Forces had against the Axis powers, to the point that Eisenhower was sometimes reading Hitler’s mail even before Hitler.

Fifty-five years after Turing’s death, in response to an Internet campaign, the British government finally got around to acknowledging Alan Turing’s contributions and apologizing for its failure to honor him appropriately.

Sorry, guys, but an apology does not erase an egregious wrong.