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No BS Podcast #91: The All Rant Edition

The Maximum PC Staff — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:00:00 -0600

We checked our Maximum PC zodiac chart, and realized that 2008 was the Year of the Rant. Gordon's capacity for rage never ceases to amaze, so this week, we present to you 3 hours and 40 minutes of non-stop ranting. Culled from this past year's podcasts, this all-rant episode includes anger toward interoffice spam emails, indignant hippies shopping for organic food, and shirts sticking out of sweaters. A certain Cuppertino-based tech company doesn't get off easy, either.

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.

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No BS Podcast #48: The Nothing but Rants Edition

Tom Edwards — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:22:43 -0600

That's right! We've compiled the most bilious, noxious rants fan-favorite Gordon Mah Ung has ever produced into one great show. Listen on as Gordo tells you why pandas shouldn't exist, why Steve Jobs is the devil, and why you should never, ever, ever use the Maximum PC restrooms.

Sit back, relax, and let Gordon's patented rants wash over you.

To learn more about Intel-sponsored LAN parties, mosey on over here.

Do you have a tech question? A comment? Just have something you want to get off your chest? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337. Also, get your game on with the editors of Maximum PC by joining our Steam group or Facebook Page.

Modders and modding aficionados, check out Mod Shop: submit and vote on the coolest mods around—and win prizes!

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Overdrive PC Core2.SLI

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:44:05 -0500

One thing we respect about Overdrive PC is that it’s never predictable. These guys seem to always take the path of most resistance.

In this case, Overdrive PC has constructed a rig whose sole purpose seems to be smashing our benchmarks. The company’s theory: Why go with a quad-core setup when you can push a dual core to higher speeds and guarantee stability? Since the overwhelming majority of applications aren’t multithreaded for quad core, why not push the hell out of a dual core?

That’s the course OPC took with the Core 2.SLI. The company overclocks Intel’s newly minted 3GHz Core 2 Duo E6850 to 3.8GHz by cranking the chip’s stock 1,333MHz front-side bus to 1,900MHz. Forgoing the quad cores also simplifies cooling needs—it’s all air here, baby! There’s no need for exotic (and perhaps leaky) water cooling and it’s pretty darn quiet to boot. The rig’s Patriot DDR2/1066 RAM gets a workout as well with a bump up to 1,250MHz. OPC also snagged a pair of GeForce 8800 Ultras, the fastest GPUs on earth. Of course, true to form, OPC also takes the cards’ GPU and RAM speeds up. That in itself tells you about OPC’s technical prowess. While civvies aren’t allowed to overclock the stream processor on the 8800s, those laws apparently don’t apply to OPC. But we’d expect nothing less from a system vendor that goes as far as tweaking the BIOS on the EVGA 680i SLI board with its own settings and profiles.

So how does OPC’s gamble pay off? Can a dual core really compete in the quad-core era? First, the good news: In our GPU-limited FEAR gaming test, the Core2.SLI vaults over the previous record by a massive 15 percent. Unfortunately, not all games are graphics bound. In the multithreaded Quake 4 test, both the CPU and GPU count, and the Falcon Northwest Mach V we reviewed in June continues to hold the record at 226fps versus the 210fps of the Overdrive.

The Core2.SLI tied for the top score in our Premiere Pro 2.0 HDV test (held by the 3.73GHz quad-core Mach V we reviewed in June) and also our Photoshop CS2 test (held by the 3.46GHz quad-core Digital Storm Twister Ultra 4 we tested in July). So, are those two other cores really just freeloading bastards after all? Well, maybe not. In our Nero Recode 2.0 test, in which we encode an MPEG2 file to H.264 for the iPod, the dual core can’t hang. The Twister Ultra 4 holds the record at 1,249 seconds, while the Mach V takes a close second at 1,315 seconds. The Core2.SLI, while fast at 1,505 seconds, is out of contention. As a comparison, the stock 2.66GHz Polywell quad core we reviewed in March was slightly slower at 1,653 seconds. The story would be the same in any multithreaded encoding test, which makes us wonder if dual core is the right way to go.

That, ultimately, is the prickly problem that will haunt the Overdrive configuration. As more apps and games adopt multithreading, will you wonder if you should have bought a quad core? In Overdrive’s favor, however, is the fact that it is a smokingly fast gaming machine. In 90 percent of today’s games, we can easily say that the Core 2.SLI will kick ass over all other comers. However, as that 10 percent grows, so might your regrets.

Digital Storm Twister Ultra 4

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:38:33 -0500

Maximum PC’s mandate has always been that performance rules all else. But recently we’ve been harping about nothing but stability. It’s not that we previously ignored this area, but lately we’ve been inundated with rigs that have been overclocked so aggressively they make our standard benchmarks blow up within minutes. Because of this, our new message has been stability, stability, stability.

Apparently, Digital Storm got our memo. The company shipped us its current speed king: Intel’s 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core QX6800 clocked up to a mere 3.46GHz running a pair of 8800 GTX cards and 2GB of Corsair Dominator RAM cranked up to 1,066MHz, all on an EVGA 680i SLI board. From a hardware perspective, this is nothing new; this setup is similar to what we’ve been seeing since January.

Normally, this would make for one big yawner of a story, but the Twister hits the right notes for us. First up: performance. Although it doesn’t rip the speed crown from the wickedly fast Falcon Northwest Mach V that we reviewed in June, it does manage to top the higher-clocked Falcon in a few runs. Surprisingly, in Adobe Photoshop CS2, the Twister just squeezes by the Mach V with a score of 142 seconds versus 149. The difference is negligible due to the margin of error, but the Falcon Mach V has a 267MHz clock advantage, so count this as a win for the Twister. We’re also marking the Nero H.264 encode test as a win for the Twister. Although its score in this test is about a minute slower than the Mach V’s, the Twister is running a slower CPU and is 100 percent stable.

The Twister is top gun in our FEAR test, with a score that’s just a tad faster than that of the similarly equipped ABS PC that we reviewed in February. So, in performance the Twister holds three Lab records and really doesn’t have to apologize for performance elsewhere.

In build quality, we were interested to see if the company paid attention to items the techs missed last time, such as whether all the front USB ports were connected and operating. Fortunately, there were no such bone-headed errors. We do have to point out, however, that connecting two DVD burners to the same PATA port will kill your performance if you try to burn to multiple drives at once.

But is the Twister stable? Yes. We flew through all of our normal benchmarks with no issues—well, except for SYSmark2004 SE, which refused to run. We can’t blame the Twister for this though, since SYSmark2004 SE hasn’t worked in months. We did run the new SYSmark2007 Preview with no problems, and the Twister achieved an overall score of 219. We also subjected the Twister to our new quad-core torture test, Prime 95, with only one issue. On one of several overnight runs, the app reported a data anomaly, but it didn’t crash or lock up. On the Mach V, the Prime 95 test caused a spontaneous reboot within minutes. Our other multithreading tests also went without a hitch. So we have more faith in this rig’s long-term stability than in the stability of any machine we’ve tested since the Polywell Poly I680SLI-QX (March 2007), which sported a stock-clocked quad core.

That leaves the Twister in a great spot. It holds three Lab records and is much cheaper than the Mach V—and it’s stable.

CyberLink PowerDirector 6

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 19:31:38 -0500

PowerDirector 6’s powerful features are handcuffed by a mildly frustrating interface. Unfortunately, the app just won’t let you easily tweak things, which is strange because the product seems aimed at pleasing the button-mashers.

CyberLink embedded a simple process that allows users to upload rendered videos straight to YouTube, so you can tell who the company is marketing this product to. We easily uploaded a slide show we created using a wizard, though we did encounter some problems with this featurette.

In addition to one-click (well, three) uploads of your YouTube feature, PowerDirector 6 includes a host of pleasing video effects, but again, the clumsy interface forces you to hunt around for the proper controls. If you apply an effect directly to a video in the timeline, you can’t simply right-click on the track to remove it. You have to select the track, hit the Effect button, and uncheck all of the effects you don’t want to see.
It’s a minor quibble, but we struggled with the interface more than we expected to with a product that should be user-friendly. The updated slide-show wizard, in particular, annoyed us. If you autocreate a slide show but don’t like the result (for example, everyone’s head is cropped off), you can’t easily modify the slide show to fix the problem. The only thing you can do is keep applying different templates to see how they look—and that’s a multistep process. It’s almost as though CyberLink gets paid by the click.

But enough about the bad stuff. The software does include some pretty neat features, such as the PiP effect, which lets you easily move a still image or video across the screen. There’s no key-frame ability, but the method CyberLink uses to move, rotate, and resize objects in a video is probably easier for newbies to understand. And honestly, do you really need to key-frame the thought bubble over someone’s head in your Blind Date spoof video? It’s also worth noting that the subtitle engine can import .SRT subtitle files.

Unfortunately, subtitles can’t simply be turned on or off; they’re rendered directly into the video.
HDV editing is now included as well. We captured video from a Canon HV10 HDV camcorder in PowerDirector 6 with no hitches. Although one of the primary scene-detection methods did not work for us, post-capture scene detection effectively diced up our video for us. That’s certainly better than Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0, which doesn’t preview HDV video capture or have any post-capture scene detection. Likewise, Pinnacle’s Studio 10.7 requires that you activate scene detection. It doesn’t cost anything, but we shouldn’t be subjected to the hassle. One of PowerDirector 6’s weaknesses is how it exports HDV video. You can create an AVI file at high res or output it back to tape, but that’s it. There’s no Blu-ray or HD DVD disc support nor a way to master the disc so that it will play on an HD DVD deck using a standard single- or dual-layer DVD encoded at a higher resolution.

PowerDirector 6 does excel in VOB editing of commercial discs. While Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 is unreliable in its handling of commercial VOB files and Pinnacle Studio 10.7 has issues, PowerDirector 6 easily imported a VOB file ripped from a commercial disc. That’s of great value if you want to recut The Godfather: Part III to remove all of Sophia Coppola’s scenes.

Whether PowerDirector 6 is for you depends on how far you want to go. If you want a quick-hit editor, it has more than enough to keep you happy. If you expect to get a little more medieval with your edits, you’d be better served by Pinnacle Studio 10.6.

Abit IN9 32X-MAX

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:09:10 -0500

If you’ve seen one Nvidia 680i reference board, you’ve seen them all. Not so with Abit’s IN9 32X-MAX board, which thumbs its nose at the me-too crowd. The IN9 32X-MAX features Nvidia’s top 680i chipset, which gets you two x16 PCI-E slots for SLI, a third full-length x8 PCI-E slot for graphics, and support for unannounced, unofficial 1,333MHz FSB processors.

We’ve nagged Abit about funky slot configurations before, but the IN9 makes no such mistakes. With dual 8800s installed, you have access to one PCI, one x8 PCI-E, and one x1 PCI-E slot. The layout of the IN9 is nearly flawless; our only complaint is that our unit didn’t come with an auxiliary fan to cool the voltage regulators. It’s supposed to be included, but ours was apparently lost.

To make the board worthy of the “MAX” moniker, Abit bundles in Wi-Fi, surface-mounted buttons, an HDMI header for audio, and a rear-mounted CMOS reset switch, should your overclocking project go sideways.

Overclocking is one area in which the IN9 has a big advantage over the MSI board (reviewed next). We ran the IN9 with a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo E6300 with the FSB pushed up to 1,333MHz and even did a few runs at over 1,400MHz with no issues.
With performance a nonissue, we think the choice comes down to features. The enthusiast-oriented features of the IN9 push it beyond the budget MSI board. Still this isn’t the best 680i board we’ve seen. That honor goes to Asus’s awesome Striker Extreme.

Corsair 16GB Flash Voyager

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:02:07 -0500

Ain’t technology wonderful? Just a few years ago our mouths were agape at 1GB USB thumb drives that cost $500. Yet here we have Corsair pushing the 16GB mark for $140—a mere $8.75 per GB.

The Flash Voyager looks the same as previous models, except for its color. The standard-speed device is blue, while the faster GT model is red. Although the rubberized case gives the unit a fairly rugged feel, we have torn through the rubber key-ring loop on older units. Oddly, no driver or encryption software was included with our device. Corsair normally bundles the open-source TrueCrypt software with its products, which is passable though inconvenient.

In performance, the fat Flash Voyager is an interesting story. Of the seven keys we’ve tested recently, the 16GB Flash Voyager is the second fastest in small-file writes, taking about eight minutes to write 10,315 files. The stupendously fast Kingston 4GB Secure Traveler took three minutes, while the rest of the pack clocked in with scores of 20 minutes or more.

The Flash Voyager’s biggest weakness is in writing medium and large files. The key took 4:10 (min:sec) to write about 2GB of large files, which was almost a minute slower than even the hard-disk-based Verbatim Store ’n’ Go we reviewed last month.

The 16GB Flash Voyager also trailed the Verbatim in writing medium-size JPG files. Not pretty. Payback came in read speeds, as the Flash Voyager aced the small-, medium-, and large-file reads, achieving speeds equal to those of the fastest keys we’ve benchmarked.

So what you have is a key that reads files very quickly and is pretty good at writing small files but could take a minute longer than a hard-disk unit and almost four times longer than the Flash Voyager GT to write large files, which is odd because a 16GB key seems as though it were made to write huge ISO and image files, not read gigabytes of text files. We don’t think the medium- and large-file write performance is terminal, but it certainly doesn’t reach the yee-haw speeds of its red-cased brethren.

Falcon Northwest Mach V

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:19:32 -0500

It’s no secret that we’ve had nothing but headaches with overclocked quad-core Intel systems this year. The cause of the problems—be it heat, over-overclocking, or other—doesn’t really matter. Frankly, we don’t care. These systems are being sold to consumers who don’t want to know the shape of the piston heads in their engines—they just want to be slapped back into the seat when they step on the gas.

Which is what the Falcon Northwest Mach V does so well. But then, what else would you expect from a quad-core CPU running at an amazing 3.73GHz? With four cores, you’ve got roughly 15,000MHz under the hood. This unbelievable overclock isn’t all Falcon’s doing, the Mach V sports Intel’s new limited-edition quad Core 2 Extreme QX6800, which ups the ante to 2.93GHz.

Would the Mach V explode like so many other systems we’ve seen recently? When we fired up our benchmarks to find out, we had just one issue. In our Nero Recode 2.0 test, the machine hard-locked during the import process. This could have been a result of shipping issues. The rig was jostled enough in transport that we had to jiggle the SATA cables to get it to initially boot. We wondered if the hard landing was responsible for the hard-lock since the machine completed the test flawlessly on subsequent runs. We discovered no further stability problems with the rest of our standard benchmarks.

As you might expect, performance was quite amazing with a quad-core ticking along at 3.73GHz. When we pulled up our benchmark spreadsheet and entered the Mach V’s numbers, we discovered the Mach V set new records in Premiere Pro, Photoshop CS2, Recode 2, and Quake 4. And the rigs the Mach V beat aren’t a sad-sack collection of Pentium 4s and Athlon 64s, mind you—this system bested a collection of quad-core Core 2s equipped with dual GeForce 8800 GTX cards. The only benchmarks it didn’t clean house in were FEAR (the ABS 3.47GHz quad holds that record) and SYSmark2004 SE, which didn’t even run. Normally, we’d blame the overclocking, but this old benchmark has become so flaky with modern hardware that we can’t hold PC vendors to blame for its foibles.

What is impressive is that the Mach V’s hardware assortment is mostly the same as the other systems’. It uses an EVGA nForce 680i board, two 150GB WD Raptors, a 750GB Seagate Barracuda drive, a pair of GeForce 8800 GTX cards in SLI, and an X-Fi Fatal1ty card. It doesn’t use all the same parts though. Falcon upped the RAM to a curious 4GB and sidesteps the thorny “Vista drivers suck” issue by dual-booting XP Pro and Vista Ultimate. Of course, we’ve already noted that the Falcon has the new 2.93GHz quad core, which is so rare now that buying it from a PC vendor may be the only way to get it for a while.

Normally, with four record-setting benchmark scores, this would be the end of a happy story, but the stability issues with recent OC’d quads have us worried enough that we’re running additional tests on all overclocked quad machines. The first is a real-world encoding test using ProShow Gold 3.0, which pegs all four cores during an encode. On one of the flakier quad cores we’ve seen, the encoder crashed the machine within minutes, yet the Mach V made it through the test with no issues.

Our second test is a bit more controversial. Another PC vendor approached us with general concerns about overclocking their quad-core rigs and provided us with a script they developed internally to test their systems. The script launches four instances of the Prime95 burn-in test, which maxes out a CPU core by searching for Mersenne prime numbers. We’re normally reticent to run vendor-created tests on machines we review, but our curiosity about quad-core stability trumped our other concerns. With four sessions of Prime95 going, the Mach V was rebooting spontaneously within 10 minutes.

That put us in a tough position. The Mach V aced all of our normal benchmarks, plus our multithreaded ProShow test—almost all of which use real-world workloads. Prime95 uses real math, but is the workload realistic for normal users? Probably not. All our standard tests show that the Mach V is a stable machine under normal operating loads but can be brought down under certain circumstances. This is better than the other quad cores we tested, which crashed running our normal benchmarks. Still, it’s not ideal.

And then there’s the price. At $9,900, the Mach V is one of the most expensive machines we’ve ever reviewed—it’s more expensive than some of our Dream Machines. However, it outperforms all of the overclocked quad-core boxes we’ve reviewed to date in most benchmarks, and it’s more stable. We are concerned that system vendors are pushing clock speeds too far. And, as fast as this rig is, its price makes it a difficult pill to swallow for all but the wealthiest enthusiast.