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Penny Wise, Performance Foolish? Six Budget Videocards Reviewed

Michael Brown — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:30:00 -0500

We grab six low-cost videocards from the bargain shelf to see whether enthusiast-class gaming performance can be had on a miser's budget

We’re constantly on the hunt for top-shelf PC performance—you’re not reading Bottom-Feeder PC, after all. When rendering our review verdicts, we do factor in price, but recommending a subpar product just because it’s cheap is sacrilege to us. Pricing can be relevant, but when it comes to videocards, we typically anchor our opinions on the toughest criteria we know of: 3D performance in the most demanding games on the market, at resolutions of 1920x1200 and higher and with all eye candy enabled.

While our editorial mantra might best be expressed as “better, faster, stronger” (hey, we should do a cover story on that!), there’s no escaping the fact that the videocard market boasts a broad spectrum of inexpensive—and intriguing—alternatives. In fact, as AMD and Nvidia have been battling for supremacy at the top of the market, we’ve watched the entry points for penultimate-performance videocards gradually but consistently come down to earth. Sure, playing Crysis on a 30-inch panel might be out of the question if you’re running one of the lower-priced cards, but we still wanted to discover the 3D tipping point—the point at which you’re better off giving up PC gaming altogether because the card you’re running is horribly, utterly lacking in horsepower.

To hack our way through the 3D puzzle, we assembled a field of six videocards, ranging in price from less than $100 to a maximum of $250. We asked AMD and Nvidia to pick three of their best third-party representatives within this spectrum, but it must be noted that we’re not pitting the two companies against one another. This article is not an AMD versus Nvidia cage match. In a nutshell, we wanted to know how little you could spend before your 3D firepower became woefully incapable, and for this reason we’ll be presenting our six reviews in street-price order, from lowest to highest.

In our book, an acceptable gaming card must be capable of running Far Cry 2 and Crysis at 60 frames per second with a resolution of 1680x1050. Anything short of this performance metric falls below our basic expectations (though for these two games we are willing to sacrifice antialiasing and some other high-end features). Similarly, an acceptable card must be able to play Call of Duty 4 at 60fps at that same 1680x1050 resolution with 4x antialiasing.

Nonetheless, all “frame rate is king” posturing aside, we’re also of the opinion that you don’t necessarily have to be a hardcore gamer to be a PC enthusiast, so we also examined each budget card’s feature set to evaluate its home-theater capabilities. And after taking price, performance, and feature set into consideration, we awarded a pass-or-fail rating to each card—this in addition to our usual numeric verdict. Bottom line: If a card receives a fail mark, it’s not worth your money, no matter how cheap it sells for.

So, PC enthusiasts don’t have to be gamers, but can they be skinflints? Let’s find out.

The Reviews

PowerColor Radeon HD 4830

PowerColor Radeon HD 4850

EVGA GeForce 9800 GT

EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216

HIS IceQ 4+ Radeon HD 4870

EVGA GeForce GTX 275

Separation of Powers

AMD vs. Nvidia: Competing Features

AMD and Nvidia both trumpet extra “features” that are exclusive to their respective platforms. Nvidia’s unique technologies are CUDA, PhysX, and GeForce 3D Vision, while AMD has ATI Stream, an integrated digital audio engine capable of sending audio over HDMI without any internal cabling, and support for DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1. Of these features, the only one that’s of any significant value to someone buying a cheap videocard is AMD’s solution for routing audio through HDMI. The RV770 has an integrated Realtek 7.1-channel audio device, so it can output surround sound directly to DVI or HDMI. All Nvidia solutions require an internal S/PDIF cable.

CUDA and ATI Stream are the two competitors’ respective GPGPU technologies. GPGPU stands for “general purpose graphics processing unit,” and enables a GPU to run applications that are typically handled by a CPU. Despite the hype, neither company’s approach has gained significant traction in the marketplace, and by the time they do (if they ever do), you’ll be ready for another videocard.

PhysX is an API for accelerating physics processing in games. Nvidia likes to advertise it as a “free” benefit, but it’s not free in terms of computational power. To wit: If a card based on the GeForce 9800 GT can’t run Crysis at 60fps, it doesn’t have any reserve horsepower for physics processing. The same goes for GeForce 3D Vision, Nvidia’s stereoscopic vision product.

AMD’s support for DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 is largely irrelevant, since so few games take advantage of this interim release.

Frame Rate Booster

Sacrificing Eye Candy for Speed

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want to boost your game’s frame rate on an inexpensive videocard, you’ll need to sacrifice some of the game’s visual features. It’s best to do this on a game-by-game basis, either by setting up individual profiles using the videocard’s control panel, or by accessing the game’s graphics options menu. This way, you can utilize antialiasing on a game like Call of Duty 4, but turn it off when you play a more computationally intense title like Crysis.

Alternatively, you can make your tweaks using the global settings in the videocard’s control panel, which will affect every game. Here are our suggestions, in order of their impact on frame rate (from highest impact to least).

Lower the resolution. While it’s true that any game will look better running at the display’s native resolution, playing a slide show is no fun at all.

Turn off or reduce the level of advanced visual features such as DirectX 10 features, soft shadows, shadow filtering, soft smoke edges, water reflections, and so on.

Reduce the game’s antialiasing level or turn it off entirely. This will result in jagged edges, but it will take a big load off the GPU.

Reduce the level of anisotropic filtering. This will reduce the quality of textures viewed at an oblique angle, such as those applied to objects on the horizon.

If the game supports it, try switching from high dynamic range lighting to bloom lighting.

And the Final Analysis...

Start collecting those pennies for your next budget PC building project—inexpensive videocards aren’t always crap

Considering there’s only a $90 price gap separating the least-expensive GeForce GTX 275 card (arguably the best budget solution) from the most-expensive GeForce GTX 285 card (arguably the best high-end choice, if you exclude dual-GPU cards), should enthusiasts give any budget videocard a second thought?

In our view, the price/performance ratio of the high-end cards more than justifies their steeper price tags. But $90 is $90, and if you’re a gamer and $250 is the absolute most you can spend on a videocard, you have a plethora of choices to consider. In this roundup, HIS’s $220 Radeon HD 4870 card delivered the best bang for the buck. EVGA’s GeForce GTX 275, meanwhile, didn’t deliver a significant jump in gaming performance—certainly not enough to justify a $30 price bump. On the other hand, PhysX does lend visual flair to the few games that take advantage of it, and PhysX is available only on Nvidia GPUs.

If you’re looking for other forms of computer entertainment—movies, for instance—you won’t gain anything by moving up to a more expensive class of videocard. In fact, these cheaper cards will serve your needs better because they require less cooling and therefore produce less noise. If you’re looking for a videocard to drop into your home-theater PC, PowerColor’s Radeon HD 4850 is the best choice among the cards we tested, thanks to the Radeon’s integrated HD audio and the presence of an HDMI port on the card’s mounting bracket.

Nvidia’s solution—using an internal S/PDIF cable—is something of a kludge, and it won’t work at all if your motherboard doesn’t have a S/PDIF header. Then again, DRM restrictions prevent any PC from transporting HD audio from a Blu-ray disc (we’re talking Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) to an A/V receiver.

Bottom line: There’s never been a better time to be in the market for a new videocard. And you don’t have to drain what’s left of your massacred 401(k) to pay for it.

Benchmarks

	PowerColor Radeon HD 4830	PowerColor Radeon 4850 HD	EVGA GeForce 9800 GT	EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216	HIS IceQ 4+ Radeon HD 4870	EVGA GeForce GTX 275
Driver Version	9.4	9.4	182.5	182.5	9.4	182.5
Far Cry 2 (fps)	52.7	56.9	55.0	58.7	68.3	68.8
Call of Duty 4 (fps)	64.2	74.6	66.7	103.2	93.9	113.8
Crysis (fps)	53.5	56.2	55.1	64.9	68.0	69.0
3DMark Vantage Game 1 (fps)	12.3	15.6	12.3	23.9	26.8	27.6
3DMark Vantage Game 2 (fps)	13.3	15.8	13.3	21.8	27.5	24.8

Best scores are bolded. Benchmarks run on an Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 with 4GB of DDR3 memory in an Asus P5Q3 Deluxe motherboard running Windows Vista (64-bit Home Premium). All games tested at 1680x1050 resolution. 3DVantage games tested using Performance preset, Crysis and Far Cry 2 tested without AA, Call of Duty 4 tested with 4x AA.

Build the Ultimate USB Thumb Drive Toolbox

Alex Castle — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:00:00 -0600

If you like this story, help other people find it by giving it a digg. Thanks!

What’s a USB key good for? Carrying files from one computer to another? If you think that’s all, then you’re missing out. USB thumb drives can be used in almost all the ways a regular hard drive can, including storing all sorts of useful apps. We think that this presents a great opportunity for savvy PC users to keep their favorite programs at hand, no matter what computer they end up using.

In this article we’re going to show you a number of different loadouts for USB “tools.” With these on hand you’ll be able to do everything from checking your email to recovering data off a damaged hard drive on any computer you find yourself sitting in front of. We'll also show you a couple of cool tricks, like how to run a virtual, encrypted drive from a thumb drive, so gather up some of those spare USB keys you have lying around and read on.

Tool #1: The Portable Office

There’s a big push for portability these days—witness the meteoric rise in netbook sales, for one, as well as the enormous popularity of smartphones like the iPhone—and there’s nothing as portable as a USB key. Now, we’re not going to pretend that a thumb drive can take the place of a dedicated mobile computer, but we will show you how you can load it up with enough cool apps to make any strange computer a digital home away from home. (Or office away from the office, as the case may be).

However, before we start setting up our portable office, there’s something that must be discussed…

Security

Here's the problem: Using an unsecured USB key as a portable office represents a major security risk. After all, if you managed to lose your drive and some unscrupulous type was to find it, he’d have access to all your sensitive data, like your emails and saved passwords. Fortunately, there’s a way to secure our drive against this kind of threat: Encryption.

We’ll use TrueCrypt, an extremely powerful piece of free encryption software, to encrypt the data on our USB drive. TrueCrypt’s encryption is top-notch, meaning that as long as you choose a strong passphrase, your data will be safe even if your key falls into the hands of the world’s greatest hacker-slash-pickpocket. To get yourself secured, just follow these steps:

1. Download TrueCrypt

It can be found here.

2. Install TrueCrypt

Run the executable to begin installation. When you are given the option, choose Extract rather than Install. This is what will allow us to run TrueCrypt on a USB drive. Choose to extract to some location on your thumb drive.

3. Create a Volume

Start up TrueCrypt by running the executable from the directory you extracted to, and click on the Create Volume button. This will allow you to create a Truecrypt volume, an encrypted file which will contain all of your data. Once the TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard pops up, choose Create an encrypted file container and click next.

At the next screen, choose Standard TrueCrypt volume. You could pick Hidden TrueCrypt volume, which allows you to create a sort of decoy encrypted drive in case someone tortures you for your password or something, but since we’re more worried about petty thieves than the KGB, we should be alright with a normal volume.

On the screen marked “Volume Location,” click Select File… You’re then prompted to pick a file name and location for your volume. If you’re feeling especially sneaky you can disguise the file as something else, but (again) the encryption will almost certainly be enough security, so we just called our file “Portable Office.”

You’ll then be treated to a screen of encryption options. You don’t need to understand this stuff, the default settings will work just fine. After that, you get to select the volume size. This must be large enough to accommodate all the apps we’re going to put on this disk. We recommend making it at least one or two gigabytes.

Finally, you’ll be given the opportunity to enter your password. Follow the usual guidelines for strong passwords, of course (make it long, don’t use names or birthdays, include a mix of letters of both cases, numbers and symbols) though exactly how long you make your password is up to you, based on how sensitive the data you plan to store on the drive is. Once you’ve chosen your password, click next, wiggle your mouse in the window for a little while (for security and a good time) then click Format.

4. Mount the Volume

Now all you have to do is wait for the encryption to complete, then mount the encrypted drive. To do that, go back to the main TrueCrypt screen and click Select File… and choose the volume you just created. If you uncheck Never save history it will allow you to skip having to load the volume every time you want to access your USB key. Next, click on the letter you want to assign to the virtual drive you’re about to mount and click Mount.

If you go back to your My Computer screen, you’ll now see a new drive. This is our virtual, encrypted drive. We can use it exactly like a normal drive, and when we’re done we just unmount it (or exit TrueCrypt) and anything in that drive is completely inaccessible to anyone until we mount it again by inputting the passphrase. Now that’s security.

Setting Up Your Portable Office

Installing the PortableApps Platform

Now it’s time to download the PortableApps platform. At the PortableApps download page, there are three options, which allow you to download just the platform, the platform and basic apps, or the platform, the basic apps, and OpenOffice.org Portable. You’re free to pick up whichever suite you want, though in the following section we’re going to showcase a bunch of the apps we like best, complete with download links, so you’re also safe just picking up the platform and then individually installing whichever apps you think you’ll use.

Once you've picked your package and finished downloading, simply run the PortableApps executable and choose to install it on the root of your virtual drive.

Installing Additional Apps

There are two ways to get PortableApps to play nicely with new applications. The first, which only works on officially supported Apps, is to download the .paf.exe application file. Then run PortableApps, click on Options -> Add a New App -> Install and then select the file you just downloaded. PortableApps will automatically install the program.

Even if the app you want to use isn’t on the official list, you can still get PortableApps to recognize it. All you have to do is install the application to a folder on the virtual drive at the same hierarchical level as the PortablAppsMenu folder. If you did a standard install, the path to your new app should look like this:

[virtual drive letter]:\ PortableApps\[New App Name]\[New App].exe

Once the app is in the right place, click Options -> Refresh Apps Icons in PortableApps and it should find your new program.

The Applications

When choosing apps for our portable office USB key, we should keep in mind the two main advantages that the portable office is meant to provide. The first advantage is that it allows us to make sure that we always have the apps we want on hand, even if we’re on a strange computer. Based on this, we want to include any apps that we find useful that might not be on any given machine.

The second advantage to a portable office USB key is that it allows us to keep all our settings intact, no matter what computer we use. Because of this, it’s wise to include apps like Portable Firefox. Even though almost any computer you use will have a web browser, bringing your own version of Firefox with you means that you can always have access to things like your bookmarks, plugins and saved passwords.

That said, which apps you should include on your thumb drive is a matter of personal preference. We’ll include a list of some that we consider essential and leave the rest up to you.

Read on to find out what apps we recommend!

OpenOffice.org Portable

If you’re much of computer user at all, you’ve surely heard of OpenOffice.org, the open source alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite. It may lack a little bit of the polish of the MS suite, but at zero dollars it’s a hell of a deal, and it’s preconfigured as a Portable App. OpenOffice.org is included in the full PortableApps package, or you can download it here if you got one of the smaller packages.

Mobile Mozilla

Here we’re grouping up the three portable offerings from Mozilla: Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird. Firefox is, of course, the browser you know and love. As we discussed earlier, the main advantage to having Firefox on your drive is that you have options to all your personal settings anywhere you go. Thunderbird and Sunbird combined give you Outlook-style email and schedule management. If you’re a webmail user, you can go ahead and leave these two off the drive.

Pidgin

Anyone who does much instant messaging knows that being on a computer with no IM client feels like being cut off from your lifeline. Fortunately, Pidgin—the popular multi-service messaging client—is available in portable form. At the PortableApps Pidgin page (where you can download the .paf.exe) there are also links to encryption plugins, allowing you to keep your correspondence secure, no matter where you are.

uTorrent

Torrents are great; they’re fast, stable and plentiful. The only problem? You have to have a BitTorrent client to download them, and most non-power users don’t. But that’s not really a problem when you can bring your own client with you, and although it doesn’t come preconfigured as a Portable App, our favorite client uTorrent works just fine installed on a thumb drive.

And speaking of torrents, it's time for our second USB tool: the media stick. Read on to find out more about how to play any media anywhere.

Tool #2: The Media Tool

If you’re like us, one of the most indispensible uses of your computer is as a media HQ. We use ours to view, edit and organize pictures, videos, and audio. Unfortunately, not every computer has the set of sophisticated media-manipulation apps that ours has, which means that when we’re away from our home machine we’re sometimes left high and dry. There are solutions to this, of course—we could download and install what we need, as we need it, but this requires an internet connections and patience, and we’re not guaranteed to have either of those things.

So, instead let’s discuss how we can put together another USB tool for our toolbox—this time a media tool, which will allow us to fulfill our usual media needs on any system. Because of the size restraints of a USB thumb drive we can hardly schlep around every single media program we use, so we’ll have to make some smart picks to maximize our functionality while minimizing our storage requirements.

To organize our apps, we’ll use the PortableApps.com platform again. Of course, we're only grouping these seperately for the sake of having specific tools with specific purposes, there's abolutely nothing keeping you from installing these apps on the same USB thumb drive as the last section.

Now, we’ll start filling out the drive with apps.

VLC

Normally we prefer the deliciously minimalistic Media Player Classic over VLC, but for our purposes here VLC’s ability to open nearly any file without having to install any codecs makes it a better fit. Beyond that, there’s not much to say about VLC. If you want to play a video or audio file in just about any format, VLC’s got you covered. That means that if you’ve got a (legitimately, of course) downloaded HD H.264 mkv file you want to show your buddy, you can just pop it onto one of your myriad thumb drives and take it to his house, without having to worry that his computer doesn’t have the necessary software to open it.

There’s a PortableApps version of VLC available here.

Picasa

Google’s Picasa is our weapon of choice when it comes to organizing, viewing and touching up photos. By including it on our thumb drive media tool, we’re insuring that it’ll be a snap to retrieve family photos off of mom’s old machine.

There’s no PortableApps version of Picasa. Instead, download the installer from the Picasa website and install it following the instructions for adding new apps.

GIMP

Speaking of pictures, we want some way to edit photos and images for our less technologically-forward friends and relatives. Sure, Photoshop’s nice, but it’s expensive and at about 300MB is an absolute heifer when compared to GIMP’s svelte profile.

GIMP is available as a PortableApp right here.

Next, we'll put together a tool to keep PCs in top condition.

Tool #3: System Tuner

A lot of times, being the computer nerd of the family means being the de facto computer technician. When it comes to time to play repairman, there are a couple of simple apps that can help to clear up the vast majority of normal users’ computer problems. By combining these apps onto one convenient USB thumb drive, you can fix your loved ones' maltreated computers without even breaking a sweat (or connecting to the internet).

Spybot - Search & Destroy

Spybot - Search & Destroy is one of the best malware-removal tools available right now. The program has an excellent set of features, is upgraded very frequently, and, of course, is totally free. If someone you know has a computer that’s gotten slow, The first (and sometimes only) step in your repair efforts should be to install Spybot on their system –to both clear off existing malware and help steer them clear of it in the future. With programs like this, it's best just to keep the installer on the USB thumb drive, rather than actually installing to it.

Revo Uninstaller

You’d be amazed at the crap some people will install on their machine. If you’re trying to clear up space or get someone’s machine to run faster, the Revo Uninstaller does a better job and is easier to use than the traditional Windows Add/Remove Software tool. One of its handiest features is a so-called “Hunter Mode,” which hides Revo Uninstaller and makes it so that a contextual opens for over any program window you click on, giving you the option to uninstall or stop the program from running at startup. In short, this allows you to uninstall applications without having to know a single thing about them.

DiskCheckup

PassMark DiskCheckup is a hard disk diagnostics application. Once installed, it monitors the SMART (Self Monitoring Analysis & Reporting Technology) data reported by your hard disks. It can show you statistics about the drive and tell you what they mean in terms of overall disk help. Also, DiskCheckup can be set to automatically email you if any of the SMART attributes fall below a certain threshold.

Defraggler

Although the built-in disk defragmenters in Windows XP and Vista do a fine job of getting your hard drives in order (as discussed), they’re a bit bare-bones. With Defraggler, a free program from Piriform, you get a powerful defragmenter, as well as a nicely informative GUI, which shows you a graphical representation of your drive’s contents. Plus, Defraggler allows you to defrag individual files, a feature lacking in many similar products. Also, like the other Piriform apps included in our toolkit, Defraggler a single, compact executable, which means you can just drop it onto your thumb drive and run it from anywhere, without any installation.

TweakUI

TweakUI is a PowerToy (read: app) from Microsoft which allows you to customize a whole host of settings in Windows XP that would otherwise require changes to the system registry. You won’t be making any really dramatic changes with TweakUI, but there are a lot of little things (several of which are discussed in this feature) that you can do with the programs to help get a system running just like you want it to.

Glary Utilities

Glary Utilities is an all-in-one tweaking and optimization tool package. Many of its functions (such as its disk cleaner and defragmenter) are already covered by other apps on this list which we like a little better, but it’s worth installing Glary Utilities for the many other handy utilities that it comes with. For instance, it can permanently delete files, find duplicates files, manage shell extensions and more. For a full list of features, check out the Gary’s Utilities website, where you can also download the package.

ZoneAlarm

ZoneAlarm is the best-known and best-performing free software firewall currently available. Whatever your personal feelings about the necessity of firewalls for secure web-surfing are, it’s something that any computer novice should have on their system. By installing both Zone Alarm and Spybot S&D, you’ll ensure that even your dopiest friend won’t break his computer again as soon as you leave.

We haven't even adressed one of the scarist computer problems: Hard drive failure. Read on to check out our Hard Drive Repair Kit tool, which will include apps to diagnose, maintain and repair hard drives.

Tool #4: Hard Drive Repair Kit

We've already covered some minor hard drive-related tasks (such as defragging) on the system tuner tool, but we think there's enough high-quality hard disk apps to warrant grouping them into their own tool. On this stick, we’ll install several programs for analyzing and performing maintenance on your disks, as well as a sophisticated, bootable data recovery suite.

Of course, when it comes to hard drive troubleshooting, the be all and end all of advice is this: Backup! If you back your files up frequently and thoroughly, you’ve got nothing to fear from hard drive failure. However, not everyone is as clever as you are, so having this tool around might just make you a hero in the eyes of one of your less data-prudent friends.

This tool is a little unique in that it includes a bootable, Unix-based operating system called Knoppix, which is especially good for data recovery. To do this, we’ll be installing the Syslinux boot loader on the drive, so make sure you have that downloaded as well.

There’s an in-depth guide to this process available here, as part of our guide to installing Ubuntu on a netbook. If you have trouble following the brief instructions we’ll provide here, reference that guide for a more thorough description.

Making a Bootable Thumb Drive

1) Format your thumb drive

No, it’s not always necessary, but it’s quick and it might help you avoid later problems. Right click your USB drive in the My Computer window, select the FAT32 file structure if it’s not already selected, and hit Format.

2) Install Syslinux on the drive

First, open the Syslinux archive you downloaded and extract the contents to a file on your desktop. Then, open a command prompt and navigate to the win32 folder inside the directory containing the files you just extracted. Then enter this command: syslinux –ma E: substituting the drive letter of your thumb drive, if it’s not E:

3) Copy the Knoppix files over

Using a program like 7-Zip, open the Knoppix ISO you downloaded. Copy all files it contains over to the root of the USB thumb drive. Next, copy the contents of the folder called Isolinux to the root of the thumb drive as well. Finally, rename the files isolinux.bin and isolinux.cfg to syslinux.bin and syslinux.cfg, respectively.

Congratulations, your thumb drive is now bootable. But before we get into how to use Knoppix, we’ll load up a couple of additional Windows apps onto the thumb drive to make our hard drive tool more versatile.

Create a folder on the USB drive called Apps. This will contain the following software:

Disk Space

CCleaner

The first step to cleaning up an unruly hard drive is to clear off the useless data that accumulates like dust on a heatsink. CCleaner is a free app that goes through and automatically clears out all sorts of temp and cache files on your computer. It’ll also clean up your registry, and includes an uninstaller (though we’re going to put a better one on the drive) and a tool for choosing which programs launch on startup.

WinDirStat

WinDirStat, short for Windows Directory Statistics is a hard drive space analysis tool. It provides you with a graphical breakdown of how the space on a hard drive is being used, and allows you to delete up files you don’t want. WinDirStat (or other, similar visualizers) is an excellent tool for identifying space-hogging programs. Then if you can live without these programs, it’s time for…

Recovery

Recuva

Recuva is a compact, simple undelete tool. It’s small, and doesn’t require installation, so we can just drop the executable on our thumb drive and run it from there. When run, it can scan your system for all deleted files, or only those which match certain search terms.

We should note that recovery tools like these are far from guaranteed to find your deleted files, so don’t go promising your friend that you’ll be able to get back anything they’ve ever deleted. Still, it’s worth a shot.

PC Inspector File Recovery

Now it’s time for the big guns. If one of the drives on your system goes down, but your Windows drive is intact you can use File Recovery to attempt to salvage the data. File Recovery must be installed on a disk other than the target disk, and runs in windows. It provides a simple to use but powerful GUI for recovering damaged or deleted data.

Knoppix

What about the worst-case scenario, though? What if the drive containing Windows goes down and you can’t get past the boot screen? That’s where Knoppix comes in. Using your new USB tool, you can boot directly to Knoppix, a Unix distro that we’ll use for data recovery. This is generally accomplished by pressing f12 as your system boots and selecting the USB drive, but this varies by BIOS.

Once you’re in Knoppix, minimize any windows that opened automatically and check out the desktop. You should see icons representing all the partitions in your system. Click on the icons to explore them one at a time until you figure out which one represents your Windows partition. Hopefully, Knoppix will be able to explore and retrieve data from your corrupted drive. If it cannot, your best bet is to send it to a data recovery specialist.

Kepp reading, because we've got one more tool for you to try out!

Tool #5: Windows Installer

We’ve already showed you how to install an OS on a USB key, but what about installing one from a USB key. Fortunately, it’s actually a relatively simple matter to transfer the Vista installation disc onto a thumb drive. Doing this poses a number of advantages: First and foremost, the faster USB 2.0 transfer speeds allow for a noticeably faster Windows install. Also, having a Windows installation USB key means easy installation on the growing population of optical drive-less PCs like netbooks. Finally, USB drives are less fragile and more portable than CDs, which is not a huge deal for OS installation, but it’s still nice to help someone set up a new computer and be able to bring all your tools with you in one pocket.

Using Vista, the process is much simpler than the Knoppix install we performed for the hard drive repair key. First, we’ll format the USB drive. This will require a series of command line commands, but we’ll walk you through them step by step. (Also note that these steps are the same as those used to install the Windows 7 beta from a USB drive, as in Norm’s guide right here.)

Ready the Thumb Drive

Enter the bolded commands, in this order:

List disk

This will show you a list of disks connected to the PC. Determine which disk is the thumb drive you want to install from, based on its size. Remember its disk number.

Select Disk # (Use the number from the previous step)

Clean

Create Partition Primary

Select Partition 1

Active

Format FS=NTFS

Assign (Write down the letter assigned to the key)

Exit

Make the Drive Bootable

Next, we’ll need to make the USB key a bootable device. To do this, we’ll use code contained in the Windows Vista install CD. Insert the CD and explore it, navigating to the boot directory. Hold shift and right-click in this directory, selecting Open Command Window Here from the menu that pops up.

In the command window, enter the following:

Bootsect.exe /nt60 L: (But replace the “L:” with the letter assigned to your USB key.)

This will put code on the USB drive needed to boot from it. Note that bootsect will NOT work if you attempt to run it off of the Vista 64 bit install CD on a 32 bit Vista system or vice versa.

Copy Over the Install Files

All that’s left to do is to copy over the install files from the Vista install CD. Simply drag all the files from the root of the Vista CD into the root of the USB drive. And that’s it. All that’s left to do is boot from the USB drive. Assuming you’re on a computer that’s capable of booting from a USB drive, all you have to do is get to the boot menu (usually achieved by pressing f12 or f2 during startup), and select the USB key.

Youtube Inaugurates Downloading Feature on Obama's Channel

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:03:04 -0600

There are numerous websites that allow you to download Youtube videos – and videos hosted on other sites – directly to your desktop. All of them have capitalized on the lack of a downloading feature on Youtube. However, they might just have to conceive a superb contingency plan as Youtube has jeopardized their very existence by inaugurating an indigenous download feature.

The feature is currently only available on President Obama’s Youtube channel as Google appears to be testing waters. You can check it out at this link.

Data Recovery Software Roundup -- Don Your Detective Cap and Find Your Missing Data!

Paul Lilly — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:00:00 -0600

Some would argue that 'Data loss' is the biggest of the three Ds ('Death' and 'Divorce' being the other two). But no matter how you rank them, few things in life are capable of inducing that same gut wrenching feeling you get from realizing you just deleted a group of files you weren't supposed to, or nuked the wrong partition. Oops!

Lucky for you, several companies have stepped up to the plate with programs that promise to recover your data when you can no longer do so on your own. How can that be? Well, whether you deleted a file or hosed an entire partition, your data isn't actually destroyed, Windows just no longer knows where to look for it. Your files remain until their location is overwritten with new data. For this reason, you'll want to install a data recovery app on a separate drive than the one you're trying to recover data from.

We put eight different data recovery apps to the test -- six of them free, and two that will set you back half a C-note -- and we'll tell you which ones are worth your time and, if applicable, your money.

SoftPerfect File Recovery

Getting hands on with SoftPerfect's File Recovery left us feeling as though we had just engaged in a one night stand. We've heard this rap before - support for FAT12/16/32, NTFS, NTFS5, USB flash drives, and CF and SD cards, among other storage media - but in the end, the program finished doing its thing almost as quickly as it started, leaving us completely unsatisfied. So that's what it feels like being on the other side.

Usually we'd spend some time talking about the options, but there really aren't any, save for the ability to limit searches by manually inputting file names or types (*.jpg, for example). Just don't try to list more than one search query at a time, because that causes File Recovery to roll over and fall asleep. You're probably better off not narrowing searches anyway, as File Recovery found 100 files on our 200GB test partition (on par with every other program's quick scan setting), but lacks an option for a more in-depth scan, which can potentially uncover hundreds more missing files.

On the plus side, File Recovery doesn't require an installation and only takes up 268KB, so it doesn't hurt to carry it around on your thumb drive when you're out and about and in need of a quickie.

Verdict: 4
Free, http://www.softperfect.com/products/filerecovery/

eDATA Unerase

Get used to starting at the screenshot above, because you'll be seeing that popup any time you try to enable what little advanced options eDATA has to offer (at one point, the popup entered into an endless loop, forcing us to resort to the three-fingered CTRL-ALT-DEL salute). We don't think it's asking too much to be able and scan for photos, but OctaneSoft disables the functionality in its free version of eDATA, probably realizing the loss of digital pictures is a major reason why consumers seek data recovery programs in the first place. That's either genius or bunk, and so is preventing end-users from performing a 'Full Scan' without first shelling out $32 for eDATA Professional.

The 'Quick Scan' option (the only one available in the free version) uncovered 101 files instantly, and found just 25 files on our USB key (File Scavenger and Handy Recovery found 901 and 876, respectively).

You can sort found files by size, folder, type, or name, but good luck on the latter if you've recently deleted a file on a non-OS partition. The program struggled to correctly label files it found, even if we had just deleted them. That's a deal breaker if you're looking for a specific file among many, unless by some cryptic voodoo you manage to recognize $RYN3BQB.MP3 as an Eazy-E track (welcome to mid-life if you know who that is).

Between the sparse interface, gimped options, sub-par USB scanning, and having to sort through potentially hundreds of files to find what you're looking for, you're better off just looking elsewhere in the first place.

Verdict: 2
Free, http://www.octanesoft.com/data_recovery_free_edition.html

PC Inspector File Recovery

It becomes apparent right away that this isn't just another cookie cutter freebie utility. When you first load PC Inspector (PCI) and pick a language, you're presented with three different options: Recover deleted files, find lost data, or find a lost drive. We appreciate PCI's straightforward approach, which lists what options are available in each category.

PCI continued to impress us with a bit of advanced functionality typically reserved for paid programs. Instead of being limited to scanning partitions, you can also sweep through an entire hard drive. Not only that, but PCI will also attempt to find lost partitions or hard drives, which can come in handy if you've since formatted the drive or are having problems getting Windows to detect it.

An instant scan found all of our recently deleted files (a more in depth scan, in which you can designate a beginning and end cluster, took just over an hour long), but like almost every other software we tested, it had trouble coming up with non-cryptic file names when searching on a non-OS partition for deleted entries. And while we dig the tree view format, you can't automate the task of restoring files to their original folder structure on your hard drive.

Verdict: 6
Free, http://www.pcinspector.de/

Piriform Recuva

Sometimes you just need someone to tell you everything will be okay, and that's what Recuva attempts to do. From start to finish, Recuva holds your hand through the process of getting your data back with a user-friendly Wizard. The first prompt asks what type of files you're looking for (pictures, music, documents, video, or all files), followed by where you want Recuva to look. If you don't know, select 'I'm not sure' and Recuva will rummage through your entire computer. Alternately, you can limit searches to the Recycle Bin, My Documents, a media card, or any other specific location you specify.

Using the Wizard, Recuva did a serviceable job finding 102 files right off the bat, but power users will want to switch to the Advanced mode to unlock the program's full potential. Inside you'll find additional scanning options (after enabling these, Recuva uncovered 397 files), a handy preview pane, and a setting to restore a file's folder structure during recovery. On the other end of the file recovery spectrum, Recuva offers to permanently delete files using a secure deletion method of your choice, ranging from a simple overwrite (1 pass) to the Gutmann method (35 passes). This ensures those incriminating photos you thought you got rid of will not come back to haunt you.

Considering Piriform packs a powerful scanner wrapped up in a user friendly interface with a few useful advanced features sprinkled in, we have no trouble recommending Recuva as our favorite free file recovery app.

Verdict: 7
Free, http://www.recuva.com/

Undelete PLUS

Holy time travel, Batman! We haven't seen an interface this retro since Win 3.1. This program's GUI looks like it was designed during kindergarten art class. If we were rolling with an old school 16-color EGA monitor, Undelete PLUS would look exactly the same. You get the point.

But what you don't get are very many options, and the lack of a deep scan limits the program's usefulness. You can use a filter to narrow searches down by name, date, or size, but that's it. On the same partition we used throughout all testing, Undelete PLUS unearthed 102 files.

There's just not enough here to recommend using Undelete PLUS.

Verdict: 5
Free, http://undelete-plus.com/

Avira UnErase Personal

Avira makes one of the best free antivirus programs around, scoring an 8 verdict in our recent AV roundup, so we had high hopes the company would be equally successful with its file recovery app. But instead of again leading the freebie pack, Avira's UnErase Personal offers the least expansive program of the bunch (to be fair, Avira has discontinued this program).

Don't bother looking for any options, because there aren't any. You select a partition to scan and that's it. You can't limit searches to specific files, there's no deep scan option, and you won't find a preview pane. Instead, UnErase Personal takes a quick peek at your drive, including removable media, and finds about the same amount of files as every other program without the aid of an extended scan. But unlike the rest, Avira doesn't tell you where the files were located, nor does it offer a tree view or any other amenities.

With nothing but the bare essentials, we're left wondering why UnErase Personal even requires an installation routine. Save yourself the trouble and look elsewhere.

Verdict: 3
Free, http://www.free-av.com/en/products/10/avira_unerase_personal.html

Quetek File Scavenger 3.2

It appears Quetek put a lot of work into streamlining File Scavenger's interface and the end result is a program that's easy to navigate, even for beginners. You start off by making a selection in two pull-down menus. In the 'Search for' menu, you can opt to have File Scavenger scour your hard drive for all deleted files, or narrow the search to specific file types. What's most impressive is the amount of different file extensions you can choose from, each clearly labeled, which includes popular file types like JPEGs, MP3s, and ZIP files, to more obscure entries like Acronis Archives (.tlb) and Supreme Commander save game files.

Once you've narrowed your list down to one or more specific extenstions, you then select where File Scavenger should look. Single partitions show up in the 'Look in' pull-down menu, as do entire HDDs or removable storage, such as a USB key. With the 'what' and 'where' out of the way, the last thing you need to decide is 'how.' Performing a Quick search returned results instaneously, 56 files in all, almost all of which were recently deleted. This is less than the quick scan option the other apps turned up, but unlike the others, File Scavenger had no trouble remembering the original file names. Using the approriately titled Long Scan, which took 1hr and 6min to sift through our 200GB partition, File Scavenger returned 471 files.

File Scavenger updates the list of files it finds in real time, but don't bother trying to organize them until its finished. You can then sort the files by type, name, last modification date, location, or other criteria. Even better is the Tree View (similar to Windows Explorer), which presents the files and folder structure as they existed on the drive.

What separates File Scavenger from free alternatives is the ability to reconstruct a broken RAID array or spanned volume. While we didn't have a busted RAID array on hand to test this out, we appreciate that there's at least some hope should disaster strike.

If you're willing to pay for file recovery, this is your program.

Verdict: 9
$49, http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

Handy Recovery 4.0

Handy Recovery started off as freeware and it didn't take long for the developers to discover they could cash in on panicked users looking to get their data back. SoftLogica still offers the original program as a free download, but now in version 4.0, Handy Recovery will set you back $50. What you get in return is another user friendly interface with a few goofy quirks.

When you fire up Handy Recovery, it immediately lists all of the available partitions and removable drives, but unlike File Scavenger, it didn't give us the option of scanning an entire HDD, partitions be damned. Selecting a partition to 'analyze' returned instantaneous results, unless we chose our USB key, which took around 5 minutes. If you want to dig deeper, Handy Recovery offers an 'Extended Analysis' option, which took 58 minutes to scan our test drive, making it faster than File Scavenger for deep scans. Results are listed in an easily navigable tree view, but how many files were found we don't know. The only time Handy Recovery specifically told how us how many files it uncovered was when it poked around our USB key, which showed exactly 25 files less than File Scavenger managed to scrape up.

But while Handy Recovery usually kept the number of files it found hidden, it had no problem playing show and tell when it came to a file's contents. Rather than being forced to recover a file to find out if it's the one you're looking for, Handy Recovery includes a preview pane allowing you see the contents, be it a picture of dearly deceased Aunt Sally or an old love letter. It will even play media files. That's just groovy.

Other tricks up Handy Recovery's sleeve include being able to filter search results by keyword, date created, and minimum or maximum file size, find a file by keyword, or look for lost partitions on a disk that has since been formatted. You can also create an image of a drive or partition allowing you to open it later and recover files.

Verdict: 8
$49, http://www.handyrecovery.com/

Our Final Word

Every program in our roundup had no problem running in Vista 64-bit, which if you own 4GB of memory or more (and why wouldn't you, with today's memory prices?) is the only way to roll. Not only that, every program also proved capable of recovering data from removable storage. But that doesn't mean there weren't a few standouts.

On the freebie side of the fence, we were most impressed with Piriform's Recuva. The easy-to-follow prompts ensure panicked and inexperienced users will never feel overwhelmed, and the advanced options, including file previews, separate Recuva from the competition.

Looking at the paid programs, we give the slight edge to Quetek's File Scavenger. Both File Scavenger and Handy Recovery take data restoration to new heights with better scanning and by adding some options not found in any of the freebie apps, but File Scavenger's ability to reconstruct RAID arrays gives it added value. File Scavenger was also the only program in our roundup to correctly identify a file's original name and location after it had been deleted from a non-OS partition, rather than by the cryptic file name the Recycle Bin applies to deleted files. This has the potential to save you a ton of time if you're searching for a specific file.

AMD Strikes Back with Phenom II -- Full Analysis and First Benchmarks!

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:00:00 -0600

The production of a sequel typically implies that the original creation is worth revisiting. However, considering that the original Phenom was the hardware version of Ishtar, many enthusiasts didn’t think Phenom deserved to be revisited.

AMD certainly thinks it does—and it hopes Phenom II is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn to Phenom’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And why shouldn’t AMD be able to pull off a reversal of fortune? Phenom II isn’t just Phenom joined by a Roman numeral—it’s a die shrink with a boatload of additional cache and an improved core. In short, AMD hopes to erase memories of the original Phenom and put smiles on the faces of disappointed overclockers with its reimagined Phenom II chip.

Come with us as we review, critique, and dissect Phenom II and find out how it stacks up against a stack of Intel CPUs.

Phenom Reimagined

AMD’s trip back to the drawing board

The Phenom launch certainly didn’t go as AMD had planned. Rather than christening a new line that would change the company’s fortunes, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz broke a bottle of champagne over the bow of a ship that promptly sank under the waves—but only after smashing into a nearby pier with a bait shop and a busload of tourists on it: Phenom was a year late and had a performance-crippling TLB bug, yield issues, and a performance gap with Intel’s older generation of CPUs.

Fast-forward a year and the picture looks far different for the underdog chipmaker. Phenom II is actually ahead of schedule. And doubts about overclocking were quashed months ago when the company invited elite overclockers to its headquarters to get medieval on the new chip with liquid nitrogen and other exotic toys. The result? Overclocking feats beyond 5GHz.

Not to belabor the sequel talk, but it’s clear that AMD doesn’t intend for its pair of new Phenom II chips to be cheesy follow-up. These CPUs are intended to erase all doubts that the original chip created and help quell uneasiness about the company’s ability to make good parts.

The Dynamic Duo

The Phenom II family consists of two CPUs: the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920 and the 3GHz Phenom X4 940 Black Edition. Both use the company’s new 45nm process and can be paired with the majority of Socket AM2+ boards (and even some AM2 boards.) Both CPUs are native quad-core designs with all four execution cores residing on a monolithic die. AMD will continue its practice of repackaging defective quad-core dies as tri-cores (denoted with X3 rather than X4).

New under the Hood

For the most part, Phenom II isn’t a radical departure from Phenom. It has the same basic core and still features an integrated memory controller and HyperTransport connections for chip-to-chip connections. The update does include a few substantial changes, however. The biggest is the move to a 45nm process, which significantly shrinks the size of the chip and results in better yields; additionally, the 45nm-based Phenom II has 758 million transistors but is only 258mm2. The original 65nm Phenom has 450 million transistors and measures 285mm2.

By shrinking the die, AMD is able to use some of the freed up real estate for more cache. While the L1 and L2 remain unchanged, the L3 goes from 2MB in Phenom to 6MB in Phenom II. This larger cache is also slightly faster than the 65nm Phenom’s.

In other good news for enthusiasts, the new chip includes both a DDR2 and a DDR3 integrated memory controller. The bad news is that the first two Phenom II chips will support only DDR2; both DDR2 and DDR3 will be supported with its AM3 revision of Phenom II, which will be released in the next few months.

So why release a version of Phenom II that is limited to DDR2? AMD didn’t want to wait the additional months it would have taken to validate the CPUs for both newer DDR3 boards and DDR2 boards. The company felt that to have a Phenom II that runs at decent clock speeds, overclocks like crazy, and drops into existing boards is just a better way to prove its back on track.

More importantly, AMD doesn’t think people are that hot for DDR3 right now due to its premium price. To some extent, AMD is right: Two 2GB modules of DDR2/800 will set you back just $28, while a pair of 2GB DDR3/1333 modules costs about $100. However, true sticker shock sets in at the highest speeds: 4GB of DDR3/1600 costs about $300 and 4GB of DDR3/2000 will set you back about $400.

We would have preferred it if AMD had introduced one CPU that would work with both types of memory, but we understand that due to its position in the market, it simply doesn’t have the luxury of waiting three months to get Phenom II to work with both new DDR3 boards and the older DDR2 infrastructure.

But all you really want to know is whether Phenom II will work with your board, right? Minus the missteps with the original Socket 940 and Socket 754 nonsense (well, and QuadFX), AMD has worked hard to ensure that CPU swapouts won’t cause havoc. Phenom II will work in almost every board that supports the original Phenom CPU, with the only caveat being boards not designed to handle CPUs hotter than 95 watts. Since both Phenom II CPUs are 125 TDP chips, they likely will not work with those boards.

Cooler than Ever

While new manufacturing doesn’t always lead to more efficient parts, this die shrink certainly seems to have helped AMD with thermals. For example, the 65nm-based 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9950 BE had a thermal design power rating of 140 watts, while the 45nm-based 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 has a TDP of 125 watts.

AMD also seems to have finally shed the “cold bug” that frustrated extreme overclockers. The original Phenom would overclock to a certain level on air, but when extreme cooling techniques were applied, it wouldn’t overclock any further. While cold temperatures aren’t a cure-all, most CPUs offer additional headroom at -150 F. But the original Phenom simply hit a wall and no amount of cooling would allow for additional overclocking. AMD set out to prove it fixed this issue in Phenom II by hosting private demos for a group of extremes overclockers. Apparently, no one left the demo unhappy.

Platform Shmatform

Every PC is essentially a CPU, a chipset, a GPU, and storage, so you may be confused when you hear the word “platform” thrown around like it’s some new type of technology. It’s not. It’s an artificial way Intel and AMD brand a set of components. For Intel, Centrino is simply the combination of the CPU, chipset, and a Wi-Fi chip. Laptops sold without those three key Intel ingredients are not allowed to use the Centrino sticker. Since Intel advertises the hell out of Centrino, not Core 2 Duo Mobile, most OEMs feel compelled to buy all three parts from Intel.

AMD is not being as Machiavellian with its platform (at least not today), but it is doing some branding around a Dragon theme. Dragon is a combination of the Phenom II, an ATI 790GX or ATI 790FX chipset, and a 4000-series Radeon HD GPU. Does this mean that you can’t use a GeForce GTX 295 with Phenom II? No. Everything is as it was before—you can probably even use the Phenom II 940 in some older AM2 boards with the original Nvidia 590 SLI chipset.

So why bother to push all this platform hooey? Today, it’s just a marketing gimmick, but tomorrow it may be far more meaningful. With the functionality of the chipset, CPU, and GPU morphing together, this collection of hardware may indeed be a platform that you buy in a few years. That’s one thing AMD likes to toot its horn about: Intel has CPUs and chipsets and Nvidia has GPUs and chipsets, but only AMD has all three ingredients.

Price Matters

CPU companies like to use mysterious model numbers that don’t tell you a damn thing about how their chips actually perform. One quick and dirty way to see what the company thinks of a particular chip is to look at its price. AMD’s pricing of Phenom II reveals where the company thinks the CPU will compete. For example, the current king of the hill, the Core i7-965 Extreme Edition, is priced at $999. AMD has priced the Phenom II X4 940 at $275, so you can see where the company expects the CPU to fall—it’s clearly not intended to take on Intel at the high end. AMD, however, thinks there’s plenty of room to compete in the midrange against Intel’s large stable of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad parts.

We put the top-end Phenom II X4 940 against Intel’s top-end Core i7 part, the still-shipping top-end Core 2 Extreme Edition part, as well as a lineup of budget Intel and AMD CPUs. The upshot is that AMD fans can take Phenom II as a sign that the company has some magic left. While Phenom was Detroit Lions bad, Phenom II is maybe Oakland Raiders or Green Bay Packers bad. Yeah, it was an ugly season, but you can tell the team is on the right track.

Our Testing Method

For our Phenom II showdown, we used a 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 BE on an MSI DKA790GX board. AMD partisans pitched a fit when we conducted our Core i7 tests with the AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE using “just” DDR2/800 RAM—they believed it was a travesty that we didn’t run DDR2/1066. Truth is, the performance difference between DDR2/800 to DDR2/1066 is minimal. In fact, after we published our Core i7 tests we spoke with AMD representatives, who agreed that the small difference in memory bandwidth had virtually no impact on the beatdown Core i7 gave Phenom.

To keep the peanut gallery happy, we tested the Phenom II X4 940 BE with 4GB of DDR2/1066. For comparison, we used a 3.2GHz Core i7-965 Extreme Edition and a 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme Edition QX9770. We downclocked these parts to simulate the performance of a 2.66GHz Core i7-920 and a 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550, respectively. We also included the 2.6GHz Phenom 9950 X4 BE in our tests.

For all the test runs, we used the same GeForce 8800 GTX card and Western Digital Raptor 150 hard drive. The Core 2, Phenom and Phenom II rigs featured 4GB of RAM, while the Core i7 machines had just 3GB of RAM. All tests were conducted using the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium.

Our benchmarks reflect various levels of multithread rendering, video editing, encoding, and 3D rendering. Nvidia likes to say that quad-core CPUs are unimportant, but we’re finding a very strong and fast move by application vendors to support quad core where it’s needed. We didn’t feature any dual cores in our tests because they simply can’t compete against these opponents. However, the majority of today’s games exploit two cores at best, so to eliminate graphics as a bottleneck, we ran all of the games at very low resolutions, with all the eye candy turned off. We also ran a set of synthetic memory and scientific and application workload tests to get a balanced picture of how well these quad-cores perform.

Analysis

If you’re an AMD fanboy expecting Phenom II to put its bootprint on the hind end of Core i7—any Core i7—prepare to be disappointed. The slowest 2.66GHz Core i7 920 beat the Phenom II by double digits in most of our tests. We saw differences from 11 percent to 27 percent in encoding, and in our WinRar test, the Core i7-920 was 35 percent faster. It wasn’t all bad news for Phenom II though. The chip won the ScienceMark 2.0, Quake 4, and PC Mark Vantage tests and eked out a win in the Valve map compilation test. However, we’re still calling this competition for the i7 920. Of course, the 920’s big brother, the 965 Extreme Edition, completely walked away from the Phenom II. AMD, however, isn’t concerned that its $275 chip can’t beat a $999 one—the company isn’t competing at the top end of the market. And even though the 920 is about $300, the price of a new i7 motherboard ($250) and three pieces of required DDR3 ($150) nullifies any performance benefit the i7 has, AMD claims.

AMD is far more interested in how Phenom II does against a Core 2 Quad. The Phenom II actually outscored the Core 2 Quad in our MainConcept encoding test, our ProShow Producer slideshow creation test, and Quake 4, and it just about broke even in our WinRar file compression test. The Core 2 Quad hit back in both 3DMark tests, Premiere Pro CS3, Photoshop CS3, and both of our Valve multithreading tests. Although the Phenom has a 167MHz advantage, we’d have to call this one a tie.

This again comes down to perspective. Intel fanboys can say, “Been there, done that” since AMD’s best CPU just barely pulls even with a chip family Intel introduced more than a year ago. But from AMD’s perspective, the Phenom II is a big deal. With a down economy, the company believes that people will be looking for performance on a budget, and if Phenom II supplies that without the need for a pricey new motherboard, it’s won half the battle.

Benchmarks
Model	3GHz Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition	2.6GHzPhenom X4 9950 Black Edition	2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550	2.67GHz Core i7-920	2.93GHz Core i7-940	3.2GHz Core i7-965 Extreme	3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9770
MainConcept (min:sec)	1,569	1,867	1,660	1,300	1,190	958	1,489
MainConcept Pro (min:sec)	942	1124	988	741	679	608	889
ProShow Producer 3.1 (min:sec)	802	1210	918	670	616	619	772
Premiere Pro CS3 (min:sec)	841	987	771	759	701	617	686
Photoshop CS3 (min:sec)	142	168	124	125	123	110	115
Cinebench 10 32-bit	99,791	8,179	10,837	12,632	13,793	15,398	12,175
Cinebench 10 64-bit	12,049	10,431	12,288	15,217	16,651	18,963	13,849
Valve Map Compilation (min:sec)	143	167	130	152	141	125	116
ScienceMark Overall	1,903	1609	1,,716	1,710	1,885	2,091	1,920
ScienceMark Membench	9,198	7,279	7,105	12,737	13,028	13,312	8,560
PCMark Vantage x64 Overall	6,447	5,724	5,945	6,616	6,767	7,510	6,423
PCMark Vantage Overall	6,085	5,299	5,460	5,347	6,043	6,705	5,961
Sisoft Sandra RAM Bandwidth (GB/s)	11.69	9.73	6.9	18.07	18.09	18.15	7.4
Sisoft Sandra RAM Latency (ns)	97	95	81	79	78	77	79
Everest Ultimate MEM Read (MB)	7,716	6,701	8,006	14,449	14,841	15,167	8,252
Everest Ultimate MEM Write (MB)	6,085	4,856	7,075	11,627	14,788	12,041	8,490
Everest Ultimate MEM Copy (MB)	9,734	7,760	7,334	15,039	15,011	15,583	8,426
Everest Ultimate MEM Latency (ns)	59	65	66	39	37	39	67
WinRAR 3.80 (min:sec) *	882	1091	888	652	645	584	837
POV-Ray 3.7 (min:sec)	570	712	548	498	462	408	488
3DMark06 overall	12,018	11,639	12,583	12,407	12,559	12,859	12,906
3DMark06 CPU	4,116	3,532	4,276	4,620	5,035	5,638	4,717
3DMark Vantage	6,928	7,301	7,459	7,450	7,453	7,516	7,588
3DMark Vantage CPU	20,207	26,709	30,615	34,909	35,548	39,725	32,446
3DMark Vantage GPU	5,524	5,877	6,034	5,902	5,868	5,917	6,044
Quake 4 (FPS)	190	152	180	145	156	228	207
Valve Particle Test (FPS)	85	69	100	131	143	161	111
Crysis 1.2 10x7 very low CPU1(FPS)	140	112	153	151	155	164	153
Crysis 1.2 10x7 very low CPU2 (FPS)	85	70	95	113	115	106	113
World In Conflict 1.09 10x7 Very Low Graphics	170	136	188	223	232	250	220

Bold denotes winner.

AMD, Intel CPUs Compared
Model	AMD Phenom II X4 940	AMD Phenom II X4 920	AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition	AMD Phenom X3 8750	Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550	Intel Core 2 QX9770 Extreme Edition	Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition	Intel Core i7-920
Clock Speed	3GHz	2.8GHz	2.6GHz	2.4GHz	2.83GHz	3.2GHz	3.2GHz	2.66GHz
L1 Cache (total)	512KB	512KB	512KB	284KB	256KB	256KB	256KB	256KB
L2 Cache (total)	2MB	2MB	2MB	1.5MB	12MB	12MB	1MB	1MB
L3 Cache (total)	6MB	6MB	2MB	2MB	N/A	N/A	8MB	8MB
Front-Side Bus / Interconnect Speed	3.6GHz	3.6GHz	3.6GHz	3.6GHz	1,333MHz	1,600MHz	6.4GT	4.8GT
Execution Cores	4	4	4	3	4	4	8*1	8*1
Process Technology	45nm	45nm	65nm	65nm	45nm	45nm	45nm	45nm
Transistors	758	758	450	450	820	820	731	731
Die Size	258	258	285	285	214	214	263	263
Wholesale Price	$275	$235	$174	$124	$316	$1,399	$999	$284
Interface	AM2+	AM2+	AM2+/Am2	AM2+/AM2	LGA775	LGA775	LGA1366	LGA1366
TDP*2	125	125	140	140	95	136	130	130
Memory Support	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*3	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*3	Dual- Channel DDR2	Dual- Channel DDR2	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*4	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*4	Tri- Channel DDR3	Tri- Channel DDR3

*1 CPU features Hyper-Threading virtual cores.
*2 AMD and Intel TDP ratings do not directly correspond
*3 DDR3 supported in core but not in any shipping motherboards presently
*4 Dependent on chipset

How the Mobos and CPUs Match up

Anyone who has tried to use a Nikon teleconverter and lens from 30 years ago with a brand-new digital SLR will tell you that compatibility doesn’t always mean easy to understand. That is, trying to figure out which 30-year-old lens works with which camera is enough to make you want to buy a modern lens.

The same can be said of AMD’s AM2, AM2+, and upcoming AM3 sockets. Physically, the various CPUs will fit in the sockets but electrically they won’t all work. For example, the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920 has a DDR3 and DDR2 controller in it. However, plug the CPU into an AM3 board in a few months and it won’t work. For that, you’ll need a new AM3 CPU. That new AM3 CPU, by the way, will actually work in most DDR2-based AM2+.

Thoroughly confused yet? We are. As grateful as we are that AMD isn’t forcing its customers to buy new boards, the AM2, AM2+, and AM3 thing has thrown for a loop. Here’s how it breaks down:

AMD, Intel CPUs Compared
	AM2 MOBO	AM2+ MOBO	AM3 MOBO
AM2 CPU	Yes	Yes	No
AM2+ CPU	Maybe	Yes	No
AM3 CPU	Maybe	Yes	Yes

Intel Hopes You’re Ready for Eight Cores

AMD may be gaining ground, but that’s not holding back Intel, which will waste no time this year with a new octo-core CPU, a true budget series CPU, and major changes to the world of chipsets and graphics.

Multithread enthusiasts should be pleased with Intel’s plans for Nehalem. Although nothing is set in stone, the company is reportedly bringing out a desktop CPU with eight cores. With Hyper-Threading, 16 cores would be available to applications. This thread-monster would be confined to the LGA1366 platform though and aimed at the highest end of enthusiasts.

Later this year, Intel will also introduce its budget LGA1156 processors. Previously known as LGA1160, the chip will feature four fewer pins and one big addition. While in today’s computers the PCI Express lanes are controlled by the chipset, Intel’s budget quad-core Lynnfield and dual-core Havendale will have PCI Express built directly into the CPU package. A simple Direct Media Interface link will plumb out of the CPU to connect to the lowly SATA, audio, and other low-bandwidth I/O. Both Lynnfield and Havendale will feature dual-channel DDR3 controllers in the die, but Havendale may have the most impact. Havendale should be Intel’s first attempt at integrating graphics within the CPU package on a shipping processor. With a GPU talking to the CPU at QPI speeds and with direct access to an on-die memory controller, the impact of Havendale may have far more repercussions on the PC world than an eight-core Nehalem. We’ll be happy if it just means that Intel graphics won’t suck.

How to Tell the Difference Between the Top Procs

Intel’s quad-core Penryn Core 2 Quad is the only chip here that doesn’t use a monolithic design. Instead, these are two separate dual-core CPUs connected via the front-side bus. Note the massive chunks of L2 cache at the bottom of the chip. This L2 cache has helped lessen the advantage that AMD’s previous CPUs had in memory performance.

Intel’s Core i7 is actually lower in total transistor count than the Core 2 Quad and Phenom II but is second only to the honking-big Phenom in die size. Intel’s first monolithic quad-core has been criticized for having meager L2 cache, but it hasn’t hurt the CPU from being the fastest gun in the west.

The original Phenom’s 65nm-process made it a huge chip with just 450 million transistors occupying a full 285mm2 of die space. AMD now admits that it was a mistake to push for a monolithic quad-core design using a 65nm process as this chip ran hot and had terrible yields.

Since it’s mostly a die shrink, Phenom II is actually very similar to the Phenom die. Overlay the Phenom’s die shot with the Phenom, and you’ll see a lot of familiar structures between the two with the major difference being the size of Phenom II and the additional fields of L3 cache near the bottom of the die.

Small Packages, Big Promises -- Netbook Review Roundup

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:00:00 -0600

A few years ago, SUVs were riding high, with throngs of the massive gas-guzzlers clogging the highways. Compact cars were considered wimpy and passé. Fast-forward to the present day and suddenly small is back in style. It’s not the size that matters, as the saying goes, it’s what you do with it. Since the advent of Asus’s Eee PC, manufacturers have been racing to bring tiny, low-powered laptops, also known as netbooks, to the market. You probably won’t use a netbook as your primary computer: limited storage space, integrated graphics, and the lack of an optical drive make them unsuitable for any really intensive tasks. But as small, eminently portable word-processing and Internet-browsing devices, netbooks hit the price/performance sweet spot for many people. By the end of 2008, more than 8 million netbooks will have been shipped.

In just the past several months, the netbook market has gone from nonexistent to immense, with dozens of models out already, most of them built around Intel’s low-voltage Atom processor, but some on VIA’s C7-M.

For this roundup, we chose three Atom-based netbooks running XP from three different vendors at three different price points to determine what this new category of portable PCs is capable of and how much price figures into performance. Ultimately, we aim to answer whether this new breed of portable PC is something we should even care about.

Putting Netbooks to the Test

Unique devices deserve unique benchmarks

Simply put, our standard benchmark suite won’t run on these netbooks—installing Photoshop alone took more than an hour, and the results were noteworthy only for their excruciating slowness. So we asked ourselves, “What would we use a netbook for?” Web browsing—clearly they’ll all do that. Word processing? More than capable. Playing movies? Granted, there’s no optical drive but that can be worked around. Gaming? We’d never expect one of these machines to run a graphics powerhouse like Crysis, but we’d like to believe there’s some level of gaming to be played.

Here’s how we went about testing the wee machines.

Photoshop CS3

We kept our standard benchmark suite’s Photoshop script as an easy point of comparison between the netbooks we’re testing here and the beefier processing power of our more usual fare.

DVD Battery Rundown

As we do with all notebooks, we tested the battery life of these netbooks by playing a video continuously until each machine ran out of juice. Since each netbook shipped with a different DVD media player (and no optical drive), we leveled the playing field by installing a player that none of them shipped with: CyberLink Power DVD 8. Normally, we’d use a 7.17GB DVD rip of Magnolia for this purpose. Trouble was, the Asus Eee 901’s 12GB of storage, which is divided between a 4GB and 8GB drive, didn’t supply sufficient space for the file. So we grabbed an episode of The Rockford Files (a 1GB, 46-minute-long variable-rate VOB file) and played it on repeat on each machine, at 50 percent screen brightness and 50 percent volume, until the batteries gave out. And now we hate that episode.

Note: We reviewed all netbooks as shipped. This means the MSI Wind and Acer Aspire One shipped with three-cell batteries, as is standard, while the Eee shipped with a six-cell battery.

Quake Live

So as not to set the gaming bar too high, we turned to Quake Live, a still-in-beta, free web-based version of Quake III, which came out nine years ago.

H.264 playback

H.264 is a popular video codec, but it requires a decent bit of power to render. We used a 1.92GB MPEG-4 of Return of the King, played from the desktop, and looked for any sort of stuttering, skipping, or hesitations.

For NetBook reviews, click these links.

Asus EEE PC 901

MSI Wind U100

Acer Aspire One

Is Windows Necessary?

All the netbooks we tested run Windows XP, but they all have siblings that run Linux. The first netbooks shipped with Linux only, but as the category grew in popularity, so too did demand for a more familiar operating system. Vista is too resource-intensive (although some netbooks, like the MSI Wind, offer it as an option), but XP is stable and was built to run on this caliber of hardware.

But is XP the best operating system for a netbook? Most common netbook tasks—browsing, document editing, playing media, even using VoIP—aren’t Windows-exclusive. There are Linux apps that do all of these things, and netbook manufacturers include them with the customized Linux distros loaded onto their machines. We rely on Windows to run certain applications that don’t necessarily have Linux equivalents: games, media-creation software like Adobe Creative Suite 3, and so forth. But will you really be using these types of apps on a netbook?

Netbook manufacturers have taken pains to make using Linux more intuitive—Acer and Asus have custom Linux front-ends with easy access to OpenOffice, Firefox, the Evolution mail client, Pidgin, and telephony and media-player applications.

We can’t think of anything we use a netbook for that we couldn’t do with Linux. And if it shaves 50 or 100 bucks off the price of the machine, why not go with the open-source OS? It might just be your first step into the larger world of Linux.

To Netbook or Not?

A great second computer, a pathetic first one

In the end, we were impressed by all three contestants in this roundup; all felt zippier and more capable than we initially expected, though our expectations were pretty low. We didn’t expect these machines to be able to run Photoshop at any speed, for example, and several editors were surprised to see them play H.264 video seamlessly. We were a little disheartened that none of the netbooks would play Quake Live, but there is still gaming to be had—you can load up old 800x600-resolution 2D games like Starcraft and Fallout 2 to take on the road, given an external optical drive for the initial installation.

The title bout in this roundup is between the Acer Aspire One and the MSI Wind U100. Sorry, Eee, we loved your battery life, but between your miniscule storage, cramped keyboard, absurdly slow Photoshop score, and the fact that you’re $600, you’re not winning this match. So that choice is relatively easy.

What’s harder, though, is choosing between two very good netbooks for the top prize. Both machines have near-identical specs and benchmark scores, which is nice but makes the choice between the two more difficult.

We really liked the MSI Wind—it was the most comfortable machine to use, and we appreciated its slightly larger screen size and its matte LCD finish. We preferred its touchpad to the Acer Aspire One’s, which has its buttons on either side, not at the bottom like God intended. But the fact remains that its hard drive is only 80GB, compared to the Aspire’s 120GB, and the Aspire slightly outperforms the MSI in every benchmark. Oh, and the Aspire’s $150 cheaper. We’re just not sure that that slight additional level of comfort is worth the extra cash. Even if it is, USB mice are cheap; you can bypass the Aspire’s touchpad entirely and still have enough money to augment the machine with a six-cell battery or two.

So we’re torn. You’re probably not going to use a netbook as your primary heavy-lifting machine—the sparse screen real estate, integrated graphics, lack of an optical drive, and limited processor and RAM speeds ensure that. But if you need a small, easy-to-use, and decently fast machine to take on the road, a netbook is a good bet—a mainstream notebook at the same cost will get you better performance, but at the price of portability.

Regardless of which you prefer—the Aspire One or the MSI Wind—you’ll want to throw down for a six-cell battery. Otherwise, with just two hours of battery life, what’s the point?

Comic-Con 08: Four Days, Four Hundred Cosplay Photos. Welcome to the Ultimate Geek Gallery.

Norman Chan — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 09:02:01 -0600

It was a herculean task. Team Maximum PC at this year’s Comic-Con International consisted of only two people, and there was no way we could attend every packed panel at the event. So instead of bringing you movie and television panel reports you’ve probably already read on SlashFilm or AintitCoolNews, we wanted to be your eyes on the show floor. And that meant showing you what stood out most in the 500,000sq ft space of the main exhibit hall: the cosplayers. Our quest to document as many unabashed costumed geeks as we could find yielding 400 photographs of comic-book, anime, fantasy, science fiction, and film characters. We saw dozens of jokers and batmen, numerous video game-inspired outfits, and even steampunk-era Ghostbusters. The impressive level of creativity and enthusiasm that we saw in these cosplayers was an awesome reminder of why we love geek culture. We hope you can appreciate it as well.

Bonus challenge: Can you name all of the characters?

Originally posted: 2008-07-28 09:00:00

20 Must-Have Geek Ringtones and Text Message Alerts (And 10 to Avoid!)

Norman Chan — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 22:00:21 -0600

Forget the lessons of Tyler Durden. The things you own define who you are. And nothing makes a bigger statement than your cell phone ringtone. Your ringtone gives valuable insight for everyone within earshot about your preferences and personality -- information with which they'll use to judge you (and yes, you're always being judged). You don't want to be the guy sitting in a quiet lecture hall when your phone suddenly starts blasting the latest Fallout Boy single. That tells neighbors that you have poor taste and probably cry yourself to sleep at night. No, you want to be the guy who has Europe's The Final Countdown chime in at opportune moments, letting that cute hipster girl nearby know that yes, you too are a fan of Arrested Development.

For geeks and techies who want to attract like-minded compatriots, we've compiled a list of the top 10 must-have ringtones to own. Any respectable tech/gadget/sci-fi aficionado should have these tones stored on their phones at all times, alternating the chimes in a daily rotation to prevent them from getting stale. We've also included a definitive list of the 10 coolest text-message alert sounds, as well as the most clichéd and obnoxious ringtones and alerts that must be avoided at all cost.

10. Dial-Up Modem Sequence

Retro is in, and there's nothing more old school than the familiar sequence of a dial-up modem. All technies born before 1990 have it memorized by heart, and can duplicate the entire string of beeps and buzzes with their vocal chords. "What's that sound? Oh, it's just the internet calling me."

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?2zebltdcelz

9. Futurama Theme

Cancelled before it had an opportunity to jump the shark, Futurama is three parts space drama and five parts pure genius. The catchy theme was inspired by a 1967 song called Psyche Rock, and contrary to popular belief, was not written by Danny Elfman. But you knew that, of course.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?z0hsjxjrvj4

8. Hiphopopotomas (Flight of the Conchords)

Flight of the Conchords are the epitome of geek cool, and nothing says "I like both offbeat humor and mad beats" like the second verse of Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?bmvjzg9wtln

7. Windows 95 Startup Tone

All PC users should recognize this classic arpeggio, which greeted you at the Windows 95 splash screen. This six-second chime ushered in the modern PC computing era, and was appropriately composed by ambient music master Brian Eno.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?mymydyuydym

6. R2D2

Before Wall-E strolled into the hearts of moviegoers, R2D2 was the little robot charged with charming a generation of science fiction buffs. As your ringtone, R2D2 becomes your personal co-pilot and starship mechanic. Just don’t tell his life partner, C-3PO.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?tzejxwmtxkx

5. TIE Fighter Theme

Who needs shields or life support? TIE fighters are agile and speedy starfighters, powered by large solar panels and armed with rebel-toasting lasers. Use their theme as a ringtone to let Jedi-fanboys know that your loyalty lies with the empire.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?2mcgtljvzwe

4. Kill Bill Theme

Sure, Tarantino’s two-part revenge epic would’ve worked better as one long movie (we’re partial to part one), but Kill Bill is packed with enough memorable scenes to fuel its own subset of popular culture. One of our favorites? The tense showdown between Uma Thurman’s Bride and Lucy Liu’s O-Ren Ishii, set this awesome music clip.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?b1jfi9xbxzw

3. Ralph WIggum

"I bent my wookie." "My cat's breath smells like cat food." "Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me!" Classic.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?jjbny1elyts

2.Code Monkey (Jonathan Coulton)

This nerd anthem by impresario Jonathan Coulton quickly captured the souls of legions of hard-working, warm-hearted code monkeys everywhere. Coulton, the quintessential geek singer-songwriter, releases his music under the Creative Commons license, and has inspired fan videos, dances, remixes, and even machinima. Show ‘em you’ve got excellent taste and hidden depths!

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sffuyphrltm

1. CTU Phone Ring

The distinctive chime that rings on all CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) telephones is serious business – calls made to CTU are a matter of life and death. Nothing gets between us and Jack Bauer power hour (except maybe ridiculous plot twists).

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?90dcjinb2mu

Read on for the top 10 text message alerts for geeks!

10. Post Beep

System builders are all-too familiar with this sound. It’s a stress-relieving chime that lets you know your computer has successfully booted. We’re simple folk, and that’s all the reassurance we need in our lives.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?t1x4a7yffye

9. Price is Right (Fail Horn)

Always funny when it happens to someone else (we've long given up on our attempts to make it on the show), the fail horn alerts contestants that they've failed a price-guessing game on The Price is Right. No jet ski’s or washing machine for you, mr. college student/generic retiree/suited-up serviceman!

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?qijjhf6nhc2

8. Murloc Gurgle

Love it or hate it, few sounds are more recognizeable to the 12 million players of World of Warcraft than the eerie gurgle of the Murloc. Short, fishy, full of teeth, and with the propensity to swarm unlucky adventurers, Murlocs inhabit the coasts of Azeroth's rivers, ponds, and oceans. Their trademark burbling yell spells doom to nooblings and easy fodder for experienced adventurers, and are sure to get a reaction. It's the ultimate geeky ringtone - obscure enough to confuse the average human, yet familiar enough to be an automatic 'in' with many gamers.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?s9gxrlm2nfh

7. Wookie Growl

Every time Chewbacca growls in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, he's actually saying "Hey guys, why didn't I get a medal for blowing up the Death Star?"

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?gyy2zwyzyhh

6. Zelda Chest Opening Chime

Like the classic Skinner machine, 8-bit videogame classics rewarded you every time your on-screen avatar succeeded. Unlike the Skinner machine, Zelda rewarded you with a money shot of the loot (held aloft by a triumphant Link) and this timeless, uber-hooky 3 second mini-masterpiece. Put this on your phone and you'll get that "I won!" rush, every single time you get a text.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?8sm54s7rsde

5. KITT

Forget the Hoff and that snooty English dude. Remember the sweet, supercomputer-powered Trans-Am, with it's signature "whoom... whoom" scanning noise. True, that 1984 Trans-Am isn't as lustworthy today, and we don't have a sentient supercomputer buddy in my trunk, but everyone around me knows that we know what the Knight Rider score is, every time we get a text message.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?bdnsnwzmafj

4. Lightsaber Swoosh

Force, Schwartz, midichlorians, mojo, or whatever you want to call it -- setting your text message alert to a light saber swoosh lets the world know that you're packing.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?1ni2wmxxvdl

3. Battlestar Galactica Cylon

The hypnotic humming of a Cylon's red eye is both soothing and ominous -- these robots are out to kill you, you know. And even if modern cylons look like supermodels, we're still fans of the old centurion model that didn’t waste time with sleeper agents or psychological warfare. They just wanted to pulverize some meat bags.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?mgn3mh3xtln

2. Metal Gear Solid Codec Alert

"Snake...snakeeee!" Metal Gear Solid's codec lets you pretend that Otacon is paging you to give you some crucial recon data on the building you're infiltrating. Just make sure you're locked into the 141.12 frequency. Use this text message alert in Akihabara and otaku will nod their heads with approval.

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?8jftnbnsbvd

1. Star Trek Communicator

You may think your cellphone is more technologically advanced than a classic Star Trek communicator, but can your iPhone broadcast on subspace channels or break through atmospheric interference to contact orbiting starships? We didn't think so. Pay homage to the grandaddy of all cellphones and get this chime installed right away!

Download the ringtone here: http://www.mediafire.com/?deiviwymtcb

Continue to find out what ringtones must be avoided at all costs!

Ringtones You Absolutely Must Avoid!

Ringtones

5. The Halo Theme

Overplayed and overrated. Let the fratboys and jocks claim Master Chief's worn-out anthem.

4. “Is anyone there?” from Portal

We adored the innocently-voiced sentry drones in last year's surprise hit, but Portal in-jokes got old the 100th time we heard someone call the cake a lie.

3. That noise Will made when he fell off the Showdown bull

Will still has nightmares. He was never quite the same after the incident.

2. Star Trek Theme

Grade-A lady repellent. However, it's the perfect bait to lure unsuspecting Star Wars fans into Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer debates. Everyone loses.

1. Tay Zonday

What does Chocolate Rain even mean!?

Text Message Alerts

5. Wilhelm Scream

Think about it. It's someone screaming to their death every time you get a text message. We'd rather jump off a cliff.

4. Lumbergh's “Yeaaaaah” from Office Space

Please, don't be "that guy".

3. Timmmmay!

Honestly, we're bigger fans of Jimmy. His jokes are hilarious!

2. Leroy Jenkins

Only acceptable if you're planning a large raid on Blackrock Spire.

1. Apple startup chime

Can't you read? We're Maximum PC.

Originally posted: 2008-07-11 09:04:23