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LG GBW-H20L

Katherine Stevenson — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:00:00 -0500

When we reviewed LG’s GGW-H20L Blu-ray burner in December 2007 we applauded its superior BD-R write speeds and ability to also read HD DVD media. Now that the latter feature is irrelevant, we welcome LG’s new GBW-H20L. It boasts all the same DVD and BD read and write specs as its predecessor, sans the HD DVD reader—and comes with a healthy price cut.

LG makes next-gen optical seem like a viable option.

LG remains the only manufacturer offering 6x write speeds for BD-R media, and it’s a notable distinction. Even when burning to 2x media, LG’s drives are far speedier than the 4x competition at filling a BD-R disc with 22.5GB of data—taking just over 20 minutes (the 4x Lite On drive we reviewed last month took 48 minutes to complete that task!).

LG’s BD burner offers a 16x DVD+R write rating. While it’s shy of the 20x rating you’ll find on top-end dedicated DVD drives, we’re satisfied with the real-world results. When writing 4.38GB of data to a singled-layer DVD+R disc, LG’s GBW-H20L took 5:43 (min:sec), compared with the Lab record time of 5:00 set by Samsung’s SH-S203 DVD drive. Most Blu-ray burners we’ve reviewed have capped DVD+R speeds at 8x or 12x, including the Lite On drive reviewed last month, which took 7:09 to fill a single-layer DVD.

While LG’s previous GGW-H20L wins the majority of our benchmarks, the GBW-H20L comes well within spitting distance of that drive. And at $280, the GBW-H20L is almost $200 less than its predecessor. We like that.

Asus Striker II Extreme

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:49:55 -0500

If the EVGA nForce 790i board is a Shelby Cobra—a bristling big-block V8 with drum brakes and leaf springs—Asus’s Striker II Extreme is a high-tech, twin-turbo, all-wheel-steering Nissan Skyline GT-R R35. In other words, the Striker II Extreme is a spectacle of bells, whistles, and doohickeys. So much so that you actually won’t mind shelling out $450 for it. Heck, it’s plumbed for optional chipset water cooling, a riser board for the audio codecs, an externally mounted BIOS POST display that explains what the board is doing in plain English, and even a smattering of LED arrays—one, for example, lets you know if your overclocking efforts are “Normal,” “High,” or “Crazy.”

Overclocking was clearly a factor in the Striker II Extreme’s design. Of the four boards here, it produced the most impressive results, taking a 2.5GHz Q9300 up to 3.7GHz under stress with a 2GHz FSB. We were also able to push the EVGA’s front-side bus to 2GHz, but we had to lower the multiplier a notch to get it to run reliably. We think we could have teased out similar performance from both boards given time, but with the Striker II, overclocking was nearly effortless.

What else does $450 buy you? A backlit I/O shield, a toggle switch to reset the CMOS, and a full copy of Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. In benchmark performance, the Striker traded top spots with the EVGA board in most tests, but oddly, it had the poorest scores of all the boards here in Quake 4 and FEAR. Still, given its higher overclocking scores and its plethora of value adds, the Striker II is worth the crazy money Asus wants for it, especially for hardcore PC tweakers.

EVGA eForce 790i Ultra

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:19:07 -0500

We weren’t impressed with Nvidia’s follow up to the popular 680i chipset. The 780i felt like a retread of the original and lacked support for Intel’s top proc: the 1,600MHz FSB Core 2 Extreme QX9770. Plus, PCI Express 2.0 was simply tacked on as an extra chip and DDR3 support was glaringly absent.

Nvidia heard our complaints and created the 790i chipset, represented here by EVGA’s Ultra SLI board. It has native PCI-E 2.0, 1,600MHz FSB support, and DDR3. This board even addresses another shortcoming of the 680i and 780i reference boards: lack of eSATA.

The board’s physical layout is well thought out, and all the SATA ports are accessible, even with two honking dual-GPU cards installed. We’re not thrilled, however, with one feature of this board (and, by extension, all Nvidia reference-design boards): The massive heatsinks are held in place with screws that protrude too far through the bottom of the board. So, if you put the board down on a table and apply pressure while installing the CPU heatsink, the screws can push forward, unseating the chipset heatsinks. That’s just sloppy design. For our build, we propped the board up on Dixie cups to keep from pushing out the screws.

In performance, the board redeemed itself. It was neck-and-neck with the pricier Asus Striker Extreme II in the majority of our benchmarks, a close second to that board in memory tests, and superior in real-world gaming tests.

Heatsink screws aside, there’s not much to complain about. Sure, there are boards with more luxury items, but if you want solid, bare-knuckle performance—with SLI support to boot—the EVGA 790i Ultra SLI has it.

Samsung HD103UJ Terabyte Drive

David Murphy — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:51:45 -0500

Performance scores are one thing, but we’re equally impressed by Samsung’s technical accomplishment in achieving the highest areal density to date on its new series of Spinpoint F1 drives. And at the top of the heap sits the HD103UJ, the company’s long-awaited drive that reaches an areal density of an astonishing 334GB per platter.

That’s right. The HD103UJ sports a three-platter array, much to the likely embarrassment of its competitors in the high-capacity storage arena. Hitachi’s first-to-the-market 7K1000 drive has five platters, while terabyte offerings from Western Digital and Seagate split the difference at four. What’s the benefit of this increased areal density? In a word: speed.

Samsung’s drive destroys all other terabyte models in many of the mission-critical benchmarks we run, including tests for average reads, writes, and real-world performance. HD Tach’s synthetic tests show the drive achieving read speeds of nearly 100MB/s, with write speeds swimming along at 84.4MB/s. On the real-world side, Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K1000 cruised to victory in three of our five PCMark05 tests: an XP startup simulation, application loading, and general use, but the HD103UJ’s excellent write capabilities—it’s 14MB/s faster than the Deskstar, as reported by HD Tach—helped it overtake the Deskstar by almost 300 points on the overall score.

The HD103UJ produced the slowest random access times of the three compared drives, but the effects of this and the drive’s slower burst speeds were never apparent during our real-world tests. Hands-down, this is the fastest terabyte drive we have tested.

EVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC Edition

Michael Brown — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:06:23 -0500

There’s never been a better time to be in the market for a new videocard. Nvidia’s GeForce 9600 GT, represented here by EVGA’s overclocked SSC Edition, is one reason this is true.

We awarded AMD’s Radeon 3870 a Kick Ass award in our January 2008 issue when it was selling for $260. When the 9600 GT hit the market, the average street price for cards based on the 3870 plunged to $206. EVGA’s implementation of the 9600 GT was selling for $215 when we benchmarked it, but the average price for cards based on that part was just $182.

The 9600 GT is based on Nvidia’s G94 GPU, a cut-down derivative of the G92 that forms the more powerful 8800 GT and the even faster 8800 GTS (the version with 512MB of memory, not the ones with 640MB and 320MB frame buffers). By “cut down,” we mean all three chips share the same basic architecture, but the 9600 GT has 64 stream processors compared to 112 procs in the 8800 GT and 128 in the 8800 GTS.

EVGA upped the core clock to 740MHz (from a stock 650MHz) and the 512MB of memory to 975MHz (from a stock 900MHz). Nvidia’s ace in the hole is its ability to run the stream processors at a higher clock rate than the core, which helps explain how the 64 processors in the 9600 GT can outrun the 320 stream processors in AMD’s Radeon HD 3870. EVGA bumped them from a stock 1.625GHz to 1.835GHz.

If your interests lie more in film than gaming, you’ll be pleased to know that the 9600 GT has the PureVideo HD circuitry that allows it to offload from the host CPU all the decoding work needed to play high-definition movies on Blu-ray and soon-to-be-obscure HD DVD discs.

Linksys WRT600N Dual-Band Wi-Fi Router

Michael Brown — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:58:43 -0600

The Linksys WRT600N is the first 802.11n draft 2.0 router we’ve tested that can operate on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands simultaneously. It’s also the most expensive Wi-Fi router we’ve ever tested.

We tested the router at its default settings: The 5GHz radio operating in 802.11n-only mode and the 2.4GHz radio operating in mixed 802.11b/g/n mode. (Both radios have access to the same integrated four-port gigabit switch.) We used the latter for data and the former for streaming media to Linksys’s DMA2200 (reviewed below). The router delivered impressive results, especially while simultaneously transferring data and streaming HD video.

In fact, the WRT600N bested our previous favorite (D-Link’s DIR-655) by a whopping 43 percent at close range (see chart). The chasm widened to a staggering 170 percent when the client was placed at its furthest point from the router inside the home, but the gap narrowed to just 5 percent when we compared performance inside the well-insulated media room at Maximum PC Lab North. D-Link’s product beat Linksys’s when the client was outside the house.

The dual-band feature really came to the fore when we streamed 1080p video clips over the wireless network: The DIR-655’s data throughput dropped by nearly half in some situations; the WRT600N’s was unaffected.

Not everyone needs a router that can handle conventional traffic, VoIP, and high-definition media all at the same time. If you do, or if your neighborhood is simply jam-packed with competing access points, Linksys’s WRT600N should be at the top of your router shopping list.

HIS Radeon HD 3870

Michael Brown — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:04:13 -0600

This is the second Radeon HD 3870 we’ve reviewed, and we like it just as much as the first. It doesn’t outrun Nvidia’s G92-based 8800 GTS 512 (reviewed above), but it’s a great value among midrange videocards.

This model is based strictly on AMD’s reference design, so it doesn’t feature HIS’s IceQ 3 cooling technology. But the fan on the double-slot cooler is plenty quiet for any application, save deployment in a home-theater environment. This is made possible by the die shrink and 55nm manufacturing process AMD uses to build the Radeon HD 3870, which consumes much less power and generates considerably less heat than its predecessors.

The Radeon HD 3870 supports PCI Express 2.0, but it also boasts several features that Nvidia can’t match at any of its price points. One of the most interesting of these is an HDMI adapter that plugs into the card’s DVI output. The GPU can send the 16-bit PCM stereo or 5.1-channel digital audio stream from a DVD, HD DVD, or Blu-ray disc right alongside the digital video from the same source.

If your display is equipped with good-quality speakers and HDMI inputs (or if you’re using an A/V receiver with HDMI inputs and outputs), this adapter can eliminate a few cables from your configuration. As innovative as this feature might be, we think few people will actually take advantage of it. Most of these cards will be used in gaming PCs—which generally include monitors with DVI inputs and speakers with analog-audio inputs. The 3870’s support for Direct3D 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 is equally esoteric in light of game developers’ widespread reluctance to embrace even DirectX 10.0.

The benchmark charts reveal that the Radeon HD 3870 can’t outrun Nvidia’s G92-based GeForce 8800 GTS, but since it’s $85 cheaper, it doesn’t need to.

Maximum PC's Fifth Annual Softy Awards

Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:12:25 -0500

It’s true that amid all our oohing and aahing over cutting-edge hardware and benchmark results, software often gets short shrift. But that’s not to say the ones and zeros don’t excite us. An email program that anticipates our needs, an app that uses the Internet to build a personal VPN, a utility that gives Windows the white-glove treatment—that kind of stuff makes us giddy. That’s what the Softy Awards are all about. Our annual bacchanal gives us a chance to salute the programs and utilities that have truly improved our lives.

Whittling down dozens of hopefuls into a standout handful is no easy task, and this year our task was even more difficult. We expanded our rigorous selection criteria to include applications that extend the power of mobile devices and web browsers. In the end, the software we present here was unanimously chosen by the uber-finicky Maximum PC staff—and all of it is free.

So, without further ado, let’s get on with the ceremony!

CCleaner

It's like a high colonic for Windows XP

You’re probably feeling a little like Harcourt Fenton Mudd, the way we constantly nag you to empty your Recycle Bin, clear out old chkdsk file fragments, and zap old prefetch data. Well, good news: CCleaner, aka Crap Cleaner, does the dirty work for you. With the push of a button it dumps Windows XP’s useless detritus and clears out those log files that, umm, you don’t want anyone to know about. Best of all, this handy app comes at the right price—it’s free. Run it once a month to shut old Stella up.

Skype 3.0

Go ahead and throw out your phone

Skype allows you to make crystal-clear, absolutely free, encrypted calls to anyone who also has a Skype account—no matter where they are—and calling to a land line or cell phone can cost as little as 2.1 cents a minute. Conferences, video calls, file transfers, and instant messaging are just a few of the other features we love that are included in this program. And with the service installed on your smartphone, you can make low-cost or free international calls from anywhere you can get a Wi-Fi connection.

PortableApps Suite 1.0

You CAN take it with you

Forget about U3 and Ceedo, we’ve got a better portable application package! PortableApps delivers a free bundle of computing goodies that can be loaded onto any device—thumb drive, hard drive, iPod, whatever! Plug your drive into any computer and you’ll be rocking a fully customized PC experience—from your personal Firefox bookmarks, to your Thunderbird email, to IM contacts, to OpenOffice documents; plus, you get portable antivirus and backup programs. All apps run from within the secure and anonymous confines of your PortableApps environment—unplug the drive and remove any trace of your activities.

LogMeIn Hamachi

VPN for noobs

How do we love thee, Hamachi? Let us count the ways, even though there’s really just one. But, boy, are we smitten. Hamachi makes it possible to effortlessly (and we mean effortlessly) set up a VPN connection between any computers jacked into the Net.

Once you’ve connected your rigs, you get secure access to any network function imaginable—fire up your iTunes shared music; rock an old-school, network-based game (IPX, anyone?); spin up your favorite remote desktop application; you name it. And did we mention that the process is effortless?

Torpark

The secret-agent web browser

We take the Vegas approach to web surfing: What happens on the web stays on the web. Or so we hope. The Torpark browser, though, helps provide peace of mind. Designed to fit on a USB thumb drive, Torpark keeps the sites you visit from knowing who you are by running page requests through the Tor network, allowing you to enjoy an anonymous web experience. The network can be slow, but you have the option of “flushing” the circuit you are on for a faster connection, and should you decide to come out in the open, you can seamlessly jump off the Tor network for speedier web browsing.

WinAudit 2.1

A journey through your PC’s every nook and cranny

Really get to know your system with this PC audit and inventory software. The self-contained program, which requires no installation or configuration, runs a thorough scan of all the hardware and software on your PC and presents the information in a comprehensive, categorized, browser-friendly format. You’ll see your system in a whole new light: Learn which extensions, instructions, and technologies are enabled in your processor; peruse a log of all your application errors; learn whether any of your hard disks are at risk of failure; and even discover which motherboard is in your Aunt Edna’s PC. It works with all flavors of Windows from 95 through Vista.

Last.fm

Finally, intelligent internet radio

Other Internet radio stations have promised to intuitively create a mix of music we’d love, but their limited song libraries and imperfect track selections have failed to impress us. Last.fm, however, has us dancing in our seats. In addition to selecting artists or styles of music, with Last.fm you can tag songs as well as create custom stations based on tags, so it’s easier to refine your listening experience and find the music you want. With its great range of artists, expansive search functions, and spot-on recommendations, Last.fm is where we go to discover new music.

Other Web Apps Worth Checking Out

Writely: Google’s web-based word-processing app offers Word functionality and lets you store and share your documents online.

Backpack: It sounds goofy, but sharing your to-do list and notes online is eminently useful.

Spotback: Get personalized news and customize a front page of all your RSS feeds, complete with updated lists and mouse-over summaries of the latest stories.

Gaim

Taking over the IM world, one emoticon at a time

While Trillian users enter their third year without a major update, Gaim aficionados (we call them Gaimers) are on the cusp of an instant-messaging revolution. Even in beta form, Gaim 2.0 has brought the open-source instant messenger to the pinnacle of Softyness. By eschewing unnecessary features and focusing on rock-solid core functionality, the crazy kids behind Gaim have stolen our hearts, in 300 characters or less.

Thunderbird 2.0

Tag, you’re it!

Thunderbird 2.0 has finally brought Gmail-style tags to your desktop email client. Instead of sorting your messages caveman-style by placing them in static folders—where they’ll rot for all eternity—Thunderbird lets you apply as many tags as you like to any message. This allows you to build dynamic search folders based on your tags (or subject, sender, or date received, for that matter). Thunderbird kicks ass!

Google Maps Mobile

Never get lost again

How many maps are in your car? What about on your laptop? Do you own city, region, and state maps, just in case you need to make a quick run for the border? We didn’t think so.

Google Maps Mobile works on most any cell phone and does exactly what its name implies—provides Google Maps on the go. Just think: You never have to be lost again. The app will work on virtually any phone with a data plan that runs Java apps. You can pan, zoom, generate directions, or even look at satellite photos.

Other Mobile Apps Worth Checking Out

Opera Mini: In many ways, this free Java-based browser is better than its $24 brother, Opera Mobile. Think crazy-useful Start screen, for one.

Cell Profile Switcher: Automatically change the profile on your Windows Mobile phone according to the cell tower you’re connected to. Genius!