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Scythe Mugen 2

Nathan Edwards — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:30:24 -0600

Bulky, but it gets the job done

They just keep getting bigger and bigger. Now that CPU air-cooling manufacturers have seemingly settled on the skyscraper school of heatsink design, there seems to be a competition over who can cram the most cooling fins into the largest area. Scythe’s Mugen 2 air cooler, the follow-up to its popular Mugen series, is one of the largest coolers of this type that we’ve ever tested. But can it match the cooling power of its slightly smaller cousins, such as Thermalright’s U-120 eXtreme?

The Mugen 2 is a hefty hunk of a cooler, at 5.1 inches wide, 5 inches deep (with the included 12cm fan), and 6.2 inches high; it weighs nearly two pounds. It’s not the heaviest cooler we’ve ever tested, nor the most unwieldy, but its girth could certainly prevent you from installing it in all orientations on all motherboards. We had trouble fitting it in some orientations on our EVGA 680i SLI board—our usual preference being to install the cooler fan parallel with the rear exhaust fan. On our board, though, there wasn’t room; we resorted to attaching the cooler fan perpendicular to the rear exhaust fan. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to impact performance, as the Mugen 2 performed slightly better in our tests than the Thermalright U120-eXtreme—about 2.25 C cooler at both idle and full CPU burn.

The Mugen 2 pushes the upper limit on air-cooler size, but we'll allow it. This time.

The Mugen 2 ships with mounting brackets for LGA1366, 775, and AMD boards; the first two use the same bracket and backplate but different screw holes. Support for the new LGA1156 socket wasn’t available at the time of this review, but the company states it is in the works. Installation requires motherboard removal or a motherboard tray with a backplane cutout. Each of its five copper heat pipes rises into its own separate stack of cooling fins, allowing airflow between the stacks.

If you opt to use the included 12cm fan, you might have to tweak your motherboard fan control settings due to its four-pin PWM connector. We manually set the fan control to 100 percent for testing, after the motherboard’s fan control resulted in significantly higher temperatures.

You can attach up to four 12cm fans to the Mugen 2—one to each face of the fin array—using the familiar thin wire clips found on similar coolers. Whether this actually helps, of course, is up for debate. We didn’t see any performance gains when we experimented with multiple fans on the Noctua NH-U12P and Thermalright U-120 eXtreme.

For laudable performance, a relatively easy install compared to its peers, and a lower price point, we’re awarding the Scythe Mugen 2 our Kick Ass Award. However, this is clearly the upper limit of how big a cooler can be and still earn a high recommendation. Hear that, vendors? Scale ‘em down a bit.

GammaTech Durabook D14RM

Katherine Stevenson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:30:00 -0600

Takes a lickin’...

GammaTech’s Durabook D14RM is the antidote for folks who are really rough on their hardware. The notebook’s gray and black magnesium-alloy case, complete with black rubberized corners, not only makes the rig look burly, but also serves to protect it from aggressive manhandling.

GammaTech says the notebook complies with MIL-STD-810F guidelines for ruggedness, so we put those claims to the test. We “accidentally” knocked the D14RM off a desk when the machine was open and running a program, dropped it from a standing position onto a concrete floor (a few times, because it gave us such a thrill), and spilled a full 16-ounce cup of liquid across its keyboard. The D14RM withstood all that abuse without any apparent damage to its structure or functionality. And mind you, the D14RM uses a mechanical hard drive. Yes, an SSD seems like a more obvious choice for a notebook that’s meant to be tossed about, but then it wouldn’t be nearly so affordable.

The D14RM is a business-class notebook, with components that are suitable to that role—a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of DDR2/800, a 320GB 5,400rpm hard drive, integrated graphics, and Windows Vista Business 64-bit (Windows 7 Home Premium, Pro, and Ultimate are also options). But in our initial benchmark runs, we were surprised to see scores that trailed our 2.53GHz zero-point machine by more than 30 percent in some cases. Further investigation revealed a serious power-management flaw. Even with the power plan set to High Performance, the D14RM’s two cores dropped to half-speed when the notebook was plugged into an outlet; when the notebook was unplugged and running on battery, the CPU performed at full speed. Weird, huh?

It seemed like a BIOS issue to us, and, indeed, GammaTech delivered us a BIOS fix within a few days of our discovery, which resolved the matter. But it does make us question how the company could miss a flaw this massive.

With the updated BIOS, the D14RM performed as expected. It bested our zero-point business notebook by very healthy margins in almost every benchmark. The only exception was in Photoshop, where our zero-point held a minor 2.3 percent lead, likely the result of that notebook’s SSD. We also compared the D14RM’s scores to the iBuypower M865TU that we reviewed in November, since both notebooks use the exact same 3.06GHz T9900 processor. Each notebook won two of our four content creation benchmarks, neither by more than seven percent, so we’ll call it a draw.

In terms of amenities, the D14RM offers a good selection of ports, including HDMI—all of which are protected with attached rubber caps to prevent dirt and dust from mucking with the works. But it’s strange that GammaTech makes these allowances for outdoor use yet outfits the D14RM with a glossy 1280x800 screen. Such a highly reflective surface is totally unsuitable for use in bright natural light. Back in the plus column, our model came equipped with the Bluetooth, built-in 3G GSM modem, and webcam options, to make the sturdy D14RM an accommodating overall package—and for about half the price of a comparably sized Panasonic Toughbook.

Falcon Northwest Talon

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0600

When Falcon Northwest submitted its Talon PC to us instead of its top-gun Mach V, we didn’t think the machine stood a chance of taking down the spate of ripping-fast 4GHz Core i7 rigs we’ve seen in the last few months.

And we were right. But the point Falcon was trying to make with its Talon was that its machine could deliver 90 percent of the performance of those big LGA1366-based Core i7 rigs at half the cost, half the noise, and half the energy consumption. Impossible? We thought so.

But that was before we’d ever heard of ATI’s new Radeon HD 5970 card. Code-named Hemlock, this new card features not one, but two of the GPUs that power the Kick Ass Radeon HD 5870.

Falcon uses two of these cards in the Talon, for quad-GPU action, and pairs them with an LGA1156 Core i7-870 overclocked from its stock 2.93GHz to very stable 3.83GHz. We stress-tested the Falcon for more than 48 hours without a single crash.

For storage, Falcon tapped a pair of Intel’s 34nm X25-M 80GB SSDs. Bulk storage is left to a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint drive.

The 64-bit Windows 7 Pro–based Talon’s benchmark scores didn’t disappoint—but they didn’t send us swooning, either. The Talon beat our zero point, a Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.66GHz. We saw predictable results, with the Falcon faster in Premiere Pro CS3 and Photoshop CS3. Photoshop CS3 actually saw a performance delta of 19 percent, thanks to the SSDs in the Talon and the higher Turbo mode clocks. However, in ProShow and MainConcept, the Talon’s scores were closer to the zero point’s, but still faster. In gaming, pitting two dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 cards against a single Radeon HD 4870 X2 turned out as expected: with almost an 80 percent difference in frame rates. Even better, the CrossFire (or should we say QuadFire?) Radeon HD 5970s let you tick on 16x AA in Crysis with nary a drop in performance. Frankly, for folks with a single, 24-inch panel, these two cards are overkill (but feel free to experiment with three or more panels in the cards’ Eyefinity mode).

Now, what about those claims of taking on those 4GHz-plus Core i7 boxes? Falcon hit its target. It couldn’t beat the $9,000 Velocity Micro Raptor SE that we reviewed in December, but it was just 10 percent slower. The Raptor SE’s tri-SLI also held a 5 percent edge in Crysis, but we suspect that with this class of machine, Crysis is quickly being limited by the CPU. Amazingly, the Talon managed to surpass the Windows Vista–based AVADirect machine we reviewed in our Holiday issue, even though the latter’s Core i7 was clocked up to 4.4GHz.

Even more amazing, the Talon could hold its own against machines that are almost twice as pricey, while being incredibly quiet. Not HTPC quiet, but you’d be unlikely to identify this machine as an all-out gaming rig judging by the sound output. In power consumption, the Falcon peaked at about 500 watts—half as much as the AVADirect machine.

The Talon is not the most powerful machine we’ve ever tested, but it still gets our approval for being fast, freakishly quiet, and even energy efficient. Heck, it’ll even save you a few thousand bucks, to boot.

Asus G51Vx-RX05

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0600

This budget notebook will make gamers smile

If there’s one thing that might take your mind off your financial woes, it’s some good old-fashioned fragging. And Asus is happy to oblige by offering the most affordable full-fledged gaming notebook that we’ve ever tested. The G51Vx-RX05, sold exclusively through Best Buy, costs less than a grand—OK, at $999, that’s a technicality, but still, this 15-inch notebook is cheap. It’s half the cost of the 15-inch iBuypower M865TU gaming rig we reviewed in November.

Of course, Asus had to cut some corners to get there. The notebook’s Core 2 Duo P7350 CPU, for example, boasts a mere 2GHz clock speed—that’s 33 percent slower than the iBuypower’s proc. And true to form, the G51Vx-RX05 performed about 30 percent slower than the iBuypower (our new zero-point rig) in our Premiere, Photoshop, ProShow, and MainConcept benchmarks.

A Power Control Panel option in the G51Vx-RX05 lets you overclock the CPU by up to 150MHz. That’s a 7.5 percent boost, which amounted to around five percent of additional performance in our CPU-centric benchmarks: Using the so-called “Extreme turbo” mode, we shaved 11 seconds off our original Photoshop time and a minute off of Premiere Pro. That doesn’t do much to bridge the gap between the G51Vx-RX05 and its higher-clocked competition, but it does add some value to the package.

If you're not crazy about the G51Vx-RX05's blue-backlit keyboard, a function button lets you dim or disable the lights.

Where you’ll find the most value, however, is in the notebook’s GPU. The G51Vx-RX05 sports the same GTX 260M graphics part as iBuypower’s machine. As we noted in our review of the iBuypower rig, this GPU performs head and shoulders above any previous-generation mobile part, serving up playable frame rates in today’s more graphically demanding games. Although iBuypower’s much-faster CPU gives that machine a slight edge in games (and effectively knocks Asus’s rig off our benchmark chart), the G51Vx-RX05’s game performance is still laudable. Compared to Toshiba’s 9800M-equipped Qosmio X305 (reviewed in June 2009), the G51Vx-RX05 was more than 20 percent faster in Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4. In Crysis even, Asus’s rig hit 30.48fps with the settings at High—that’s 30 percent faster than the Qosmio performed.

Physically, the G51Vx-RX05 seems solid. Its glossy white cover, glossy black trim, and blue-backlit keyboard give it an unmistakable gaming aesthetic that’s not too outlandish. Its rubberized palm rest adds a nice, comfy touch. And while its 15.6-inch reflective screen sports a relatively low 1366x768 native res, that can actually be a boon in games.

Does the G51Vx-RX05 make compromises? Yes. But in doing so, it delivers on its mission to provide top-notch gaming at an unbeatable price. And for that, this notebook deserves high marks.

Toshiba NB205

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:18 -0600

Getting it right the first time

Toshiba waited a long time to enter the netbook market, but as the NB205 proves, taking some time to learn from your competitors can be a good thing. The NB205 offers everything we expect from a netbook, as well as some unexpected bonus features, and does so for less than $400. We liked the NB205 when we used it in our netbook upgrading feature (October); here we give it a full review.

The NB205 has a matte-silver plastic chassis and a textured matte lid, available in blue, pink, black, white, or brown. We appreciate that Toshiba has bucked the glossy fingerprint-magnet trend here. The netbook is solidly constructed, with a color-matched glossy bezel and hinge. The included six-cell battery protrudes about a half an inch beyond the back of the netbook, and is slightly wobbly to the touch, but given the 6:45 (hr:min) battery life, a little wobble doesn’t bother us.

As we discovered in our netbook upgrading feature, both RAM and hard drive are easily accessible, although the hard drive panel uses TORX-6 fasteners rather than the more common Phillips head screws found on the RAM compartment. Still, if you’re ponying up for an SSD or larger hard drive for your netbook, you can probably spare a few bucks for a TORX-6 driver, too.

The NB205 looks good and runs well. But why is the tilde key down between the Alt key and the space bar?

The NB205 sports the standard array of ports: three USB 2.0, VGA, audio jacks, 10/100 Ethernet, and an SD card reader. Remember the bonus features we talked about? One of the USB ports is a Sleep-and-Charge port, so you can charge your phone or other USB-powered gadget even when the computer is off. It’s an addition so obvious we wish more netbook makers included it. We also appreciate the hard drive movement sensor.

The chiclet keyboard is easy to type on—the keys are more widely spaced than most, so you’re less likely to hit the wrong key. It’s not perfect, though—some keys are in strange places (for example, the tilde key is between Alt and the space bar), and pushing too hard on a center key causes the whole keyboard to flex slightly. The touchpad is textured, and as wide as the space bar, while the buttons are responsive and clicky, albeit identical in texture to the chassis.

Because the NB205 has the same guts as every other non-Ion Atom N280 netbook out there, we expected it to perform at least as well as our favorite 10-incher, the Asus Eee 1000HE, and slightly faster than our N270-bound zero-point system, the 12-inch Lenovo S12 (reviewed last month). And it did perform between three and five percent better than the zero point in our Photoshop, MainConcept, and Quake III tests. It’s a nice (if small) boost; the equivalent of winning a 100-meter dash by a hundredth of a second—the netbook world has yet to find its Usain Bolt.

With a lap weight of two pounds, 15 ounces, the NB205 is firmly in the middle of the netbook weight class. Its price, battery life, aesthetics, and performance put it near the top of the current generation, and we appreciate perks like Sleep-and-Charge. It’s one of the best netbooks on the market today. But TORX screws on the hard drive compartment? Toshiba, you were so close.

ATI Mangles the Competition: 8 Hot New Video Cards Reviewed

Loyd Case — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:30:00 -0600

We burn up kilowatts testing eight hot new videocards to see why the Radeon reigns supreme

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

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

Current prices for 5770s are roughly the same as older 4870s, around $150–$160. So the 5770 is firmly positioned as a midrange graphics card.

We put eight cards to the test, from six companies: three Radeon HD 5870s, three HD 5850s, one HD 5770, and a factory-overclocked Nvidia GTX 260 from Gigabyte, our token Nvidia card in the mix. We compared each card against the fastest previous single-GPU champ, the EVGA 285 GTX SSC. Our test bed consisted of a 3.3GHz Intel Core i7-975 on an Asus Rampage Extreme II X58 motherboard, 6GB Corsair DDR3/1600 at 1,333MHz, a Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard drive, a Lite-On DVD+/-RW optical drive, a Corsair 850W PSU, and the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

At the start of any new GPU’s cycle, board vendors adhere to the reference design, making performance virtually identical among competing cards. This changes as OEMs tweak their designs. Still, as you’ll see from our reviews, differences exist in terms of warranty, software bundle, availability, and price.

At a Glance: ATI's New Line of GPUs

ATI Radeon GPUs

Model	HD 4870	HD 5770	HD 5750	HD 5850	HD 5870
Stream Processors	800	800	720	1440	1600
Core Clock	750MHz	850MHz	700MHz	725MHz	850MHz
Memory Clock	900MHz	1.2GHz	700MHz	1GHz	1.2GHz
Memory Width	256	128	128	256	256
Max Power Use	150W	108W	86W	151W	188W
Price	$150	$160	$130	$260	$380

All these have 1GB of memory; there’s also a 512MB version of the 5750 available, at around $110.

The Reviews (Click the picture or headline for the full review and benchmarks, and verdict)

XFX Radeon HD 5870

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

HIS Radeon HD 5870

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

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870

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

More reviews on the next page!

Asus EAH5850

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

Diamond Radeon HD 5850

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

Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

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

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC

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

To make the cards, Gigabyte starts with cherry-picked 260 GTX chips from the factory.

HIS Radeon HD 5770

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

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

Next: Tools to Boost Your Graphics Card Performance

Tools to Boost Your Graphics Card Performance

The Asus EAH5850 might be the only card here to ship with the Smart Doctor software tool for overclocking, but the fact is, you can overclock any of the graphics cards in this roundup.

AMD’s own Catalyst software suite that’s installed with the Radeon drivers has a built-in overclocking control panel known as Overdrive.

While you can’t tweak the voltage—something that’s fairly dangerous, anyway—you can set GPU and memory clocks, manually control your fans, and use Overdrive’s auto-tune feature to try to automatically set higher clock speeds. Our experience with auto-tune is that it’s fairly conservative; we were able to boost core clocks from 850MHz to 890MHz, and memory clocks from 1,200MHz to a scant 1,230MHz. When you click auto-tune, expect to wait about 15–20 minutes for the process to complete.

Nvidia also lets you overclock cards based on its GPUs, but you have to work at it a little. First, you need to download the Nvidia System Tools software from here. Look for the link “Nvidia System Tools with ESA support.”

Download and install System Tools. You can do this even if you don’t have an Nvidia-based motherboard. An additional panel is installed in the Nvidia graphics control panel, allowing you to manage clock speeds.

As with AMD’s Overdrive, Nvidia’s tool has an auto-tune feature.

Third-party apps also exist for overclocking graphics cards. Probably the most popular graphics overclocking tool is RivaTuner, which works with both ATI- and Nvidia-based cards. You can find RivaTuner at Guru3D. Currently, RivaTuner hasn’t been updated to work with the 5800 series. Also, you may have issues with 64-bit Vista and Windows 7, due to its use of an unsigned driver.

Making the Most of Multiple Monitors

Eyefinity is AMD’s moniker for the Radeon HD 5000 series’ ability to connect to multiple displays. Even the lowest-cost Radeon HD 5750 offers four display connections; you can use any three of them simultaneously. Note that if you use more than two displays, one must be DisplayPort capable—but you can use an active DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter to connect a third display via that monitor’s DVI port.

Of course, the HD 5000 cards support standard Windows multiple-display capability, so you can clone or extend a display if you have more than one attached. But Eyefinity takes this a step further, by enabling you to create monitor groups. If all the displays in a monitor group are the same resolution, then you can configure the driver to see all of them as one large surface.

Three 1680x1050-pixel panels can therefore be configured as a single 5040x1050 panel in a three-wide configuration. Or, you could configure them as a single 1680x3150 stacked display. When you do this, games and apps see the group as a single display. Not all games will necessarily look correct—you’ll probably need to manually tweak the field of view, for example. Note that the panels don’t have to be the same physical size, but they do need to have identical resolutions.

If you don’t have three monitors of the same resolution, you can still use Eyefinity groups—you just can’t configure the group to be a single surface. We used three displays—a 2560x1600 monitor with DisplayPort and two DVI-equipped 1920x1200 24-inch panels. The two 24-inchers were set up in portrait (tall) mode, so they were seen as 1200x1920 displays. The 30-inch Dell 3008WFP was set up in landscape (wide).

While you can use Eyefinity with two displays, it’s a far better gaming experience with three, particularly in games with a targeting reticule or similar feature. With two displays, the reticule is split over the center bezels. That makes aiming a little chancy in fast-paced shooters.

Left 4 Dead 2

Will Smith — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:30:00 -0600

Does the world really need a Left 4 Dead sequel already?

We love killing zombies. When Left 4 Dead came out, we feared that eventually we’d tire of returning the walking dead back to the hell from which they spawned, but it turns out we didn’t. However, we did quickly tire of the lame “optimal” ways that hardcore gamers developed to beat Left 4 Dead campaigns in the most efficient—yet boring—manner possible.

Enter Left 4 Dead 2. The biggest change to the established formula is the redesigned finales and crescendos—those mid-level events that attract unending hordes of zombies. Instead of simply finding a good closet and holing up for 15 minutes, popping out only to kill the occasional tank, the crescendos now require you to keep moving—either to reach a goal or collect and deliver items. The zombie closet is no more, and we don’t miss it at all.

Additionally, the five campaigns are more connected—one picks up where the last left off—and more dynamic, with multiple paths through key bottlenecks in the levels. The available paths—as well as rain, fog, and other dynamic weather effects—are controlled by the improved AI Director. As before, the Director monitors the overall status of your party—health, weapons, ammo, and progress through the level—and automatically adjusts the challenge to maintain tension while not overwhelming your party. The Director does this by sending zombie hordes, limiting ammo and weapons, and spawning the special infected.

This lovable uncommon is ready to entertain the young ’uns by juggling, riding unicycles, and eating your brains!

And the special infected are back—with friends. In addition to the classic hunter, smoker, boomer, witch, and tank, Left 4 Dead 2 adds three new specials: the charger, the spitter, and the jockey—all designed to force players to keep moving and make it easier for infected to split up even good human players, which is important for both single-player and versus. Additionally, each campaign has a unique type of uncommon common zombie. These undead are not much stronger than garden-variety zombies, but each has a unique power, making the uncommon common more difficult to kill.

In Left 4 Dead 2, the zombie models are much more dynamic—taking damage, losing limbs, and acting much more ragdoll-y.

Naturally, there’s a host of new assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, and pistols; but L4D 2 also adds special ammo types, grenade launchers, and melee weapons. Whether you’re talking about the katana, machete, cricket bat, or chainsaw, we love the melee weapons. While you give up your pistol slot to carry a melee weapon, it’s dead useful for one or two members of your party to go melee to serve as the frontline against big hordes.

With a stomach full of deadly, deadly acid, the Spitter’s job is to put a stop to your forward progress.

Last but not least, there are a couple of new game modes. For aficionados of versus mode, which pits a team of human-controlled humans against a team of human-controlled zombies, there’s Scavenge mode. Scavenge puts the combatants on small maps with tight time limits. Human players must collect fuel and return it to a generator, while the zombies try to prevent that. Because the action is condensed in a relatively small area, it’s much more intense than more traditional versus battles we’re accustomed to. We also really dig the new Realism mode. Realism requires players to headshot zombies, while removing the auras that make it easy to identify friendly players, weapons, ammo caches, and other items from afar. Because you can enable Realism at any difficulty level, it helps bridge the jump from Advanced mode to Expert, although we don’t recommend turning on Realism if you’re not playing with your regular group.

Each campaign has a unique uncommon common zombie, which you’ll find mixed in with the rest of the horde.

Our only real complaint with Left 4 Dead 2 is that the Source engine is beginning to show its age, especially in areas where there’s any kind of ground cover, uneven ground, or foliage. While the new character animation system and ragdolls are amazing, it can’t hide the fact that this engine is approaching its 10th birthday. Despite some graphical shortcomings, the game is a blast to play, and delivers an experience whose only real rival is its predecessor.

The bad news is that finales in Left 4 Dead 2 force you into the open. The good news? Pyrotechnics!

HIS Radeon HD 5770

Loyd Case — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:14:21 -0600

Near–HD 4870 performance at a budget price

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

While the HIS HD 5770’s benchmark scores were the lowest in the roundup, this needs to be put into context. The card is practically miserly with power. Our system’s idle power of 142W was on a par with other HD 5000 series cards, but power at full bore was a scant 251W—about 10W lower than the HD 5850. The card requires just a single PCI Express power connector.

For the low price, you have to give up some graphical amenities, like antialiasing. It’s worth noting, however, that the HD 5770 still delivers 38fps in the Far Cry 2 action scene and 51fps in Ubisoft’s HAWX flight sim with AA and AF enabled. And like all the HD 5000 series, you can connect up to three displays to a single card.

So if you’re on a tight budget, and are still looking for a solid gaming experience and efficient power usage, check out the HIS HD 5770.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870 HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850 Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC HIS Radeon HD 5770

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