October 16th, 2009

Best 'bang for the buck' graphics cards

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 6:41 am

Categories: AMD/ATI, Components, Cutting Edge, Gaming, Graphics, Hardware, NVIDIA, Performance

Tags: Card, Video Card, Graphics, Radeon, Video Cards, Hardware, Components, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

It seems that gamers are no longer willing to blow $500 on a graphics card. More and more of you wan to know what’s the best graphics card you can buy on a limited budget.

In this post I will look at the best graphics card you can buy in four different price brackets.

Sub $100

You can pick up some truly excellent graphics cards for under $100. In fact, if you buy the right bit of kit, you can pretty much get all the graphics card you’ll need for under $100.

There are two cards in particular worth looking at:

• SAPPHIRE 100265HDMI Radeon HD 4830 512MB (around $95)
• PowerColor AX4850 512MD3-PH Radeon HD 4850 512MB (around $99)

Given the choice I’d go for the PowerColor card because it offers a little more performance. Other than that, both have dual-monitor support, support for HDMI and offer a great gaming experience.

Sub $200

OK, with an increased budget you are looking at graphics cards that can deliver amazing gaming experience at high resolutions. Graphics cards in this price category are aimed at hardcore enthusiasts and in order to get the  best from them the rest of your hardware has to be of high-spec too. There’s no point adding an expensive graphics card to a low-end PC!

In the sub $200 price category you want to be looking at cards such as the following:

• XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 1GB (around $175)
• EVGA 896-P3-1257-AR GeForce GTX 260 (around $199)

Here I’d go for the Radeon HD 5770 because it’s a newer card , based on newer technology, more powerful and cheaper than the NVIDIA card.

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September 16th, 2009

Is browser speed now an irrelevant metric? No!

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 3:18 am

Categories: On the test bench, Performance, Software

Tags: Web Browser, IE8, Web Browsers, Internet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Now that Chrome 3 is out, and Google claims that the JavaScript engine is some 25% faster than Chrome 2, it’s time to consider whether speed has got to the point where more speed is irrelevant.

So, rather than crack out the synthetic benchmarks, I took the latest versions of Internet Explorer 8, Opera 10, Safari 4, Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 3 for a quick spin around the internet to see if I could feel a difference in performance between them. The results were quite an eye-opener.

Note: All browsers are clean installs with no favorites of add-ins installed.

• Firefox 3.5 had a noticeably slower load time. IE8, Opera 10, Chrome 3 and Safari 4 all felt pretty much the same to me.
• For general browsing of sites which are largely text and images (not JavaScript intensive) all five browsers felt about the same. On really large pages IE8 seemed to be the slowest at rendering the page but I think that this is more of a visual thing than anything else because it doesn’t look as smooth.
• On sites that are both large and have use JavaScript (and example is loading all the comments to a popular post on Slashdot), then IE8 quickly begins to feel slow and sluggish and the browser seem to find the page hard work. Chrome 3 on the other hand is fast and super-snappy. Firefox 3.5, Opera 10 and Safari 4 all feel about the same, being much faster and smoother than IE8, but noticeably slower than Chrome 3.
• Flash heavy websites feel best in Chrome. Not only that, but the browser also feels the most responsive when under heavy Flash load. IE8 once again seems to be under the greatest strain, and the rest of the pack all feel the same.
• When it comes to the actual performance of the browser itself, in terms of flipping through tabs and so on, Chrome 3 is way ahead of the pack, IE8 is trailing way behind, and nothing separates the rest.

To be honest, despite having all five browsers installed side-by-side on several test machines, I’ve never actually taken all of them on a test like this before. Given my experience of the browsers under synthetic benchmark tests, I’d expected Chrome 3 to be the fastest and IE8 to be the slowest, but I honestly didn’t think that those milliseconds difference in synthetic benchmarks results would translate into anything noticeable in the real-world. The fact that there is a noticeable difference means that we have all benefited from this latest round of browser wars because we’re all enjoying faster browsers.

This side-by-side comparison also puts it into perspective how shockingly bad some older browsers (such and IE7 and IE6) must have been given that we’ve seen huge performance gains from all fronts over the past year or so (largely thanks to Google Chrome). If you’re still using an old, outdated browser, whichever one it is, update it and enjoy the performance boost.

Bottom line is that a few milliseconds do make a big difference!

[UPDATE: Here are a few links to previous synthetic benchmarks:

• Benchmarking Firefox 3.5
• Safari 4 - "The world's fastest browser" ... NOT!
• Google Chrome 2.0 Beta - Fast. Fast! FAST!!!
• First look - Internet Explorer 8 RC1
• Is Firefox faster than Chrome?

Enjoy!]

September 3rd, 2009

Is lower power consumption Windows 7's killer feature?

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 6:49 am

Categories: Hardware, Industry, Intel, Performance, Software, Windows 7

Tags: Power Consumption, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

It’s no secret that I’ve been left struggling to come up with a Windows 7 killer feature. I think I might have found it, and it comes in the form of lower power consumption.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Windows 7, a lot. I find it a huge step up from Vista in terms of performance, reliability and usability, but I’ve been struggling to find that killer Windows 7 feature. But could the lower power consumption that Windows 7 combined with Intel’s upcoming Westmere CPUs offers be the killer feature.

Lower power consumption isn’t a sexy feature, and if you’re on a desktop system hooked up to a continuous supply of juice it’s not something you’re likely to worry about. However, if you spend any time Read the rest of this entry »

July 9th, 2009

Mozilla playing catch-up with Microsoft and Google

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 5:54 am

Categories: In the news, Performance, Software

Tags: Google Inc., Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Corp., Mozilla Corp., Web Browsers, Internet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

The news that Firefox is to get multiprocess support is a perfect example of how we all benefit from strong competition in market segments.

The project, called Electrolysis, will see Firefox use separate processes for different aspects of the browser such as the UI, the pages loaded into tabs, and plugins. There are huge benefits to taking this approach. It improves performance, especially on multi-core systems, the UI should be more responsive, and switching to multiprocesses should mean improved stability. Mozilla is also eyeing the potential for running web content in protected or isolated mode, thus protecting the system from malware.

Currently Mozilla are working to get the basic code working right and handling plugins, after which comes the fixes. And there will be a lot of these needed - anyone who thinks it’s easy to update legacy code in this way hasn’t ever had to do it!

This switch to multiprocess makes a lot of sense, given that dual-core processors are now the norm and that quad-core is growing in popularity daily. Add to that that Intel’s Core i7 can run two threads per core and it’s easy to see how multiprocess is the future for all but the simplest of apps. Why spend money on all those cores if you aren’t getting the benefit?

Note: At this point I’m assuming that Mozilla will implement multiprocess as an option and allow users to enable/disable the feature. This would prevent millions of Firefox users crying out in terror as their add-ons stop working! 

But what’s interesting about this move is that Mozilla is playing catch-up on the multiprocess front. Both Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 both have multiprocess support. Mozilla has considered doing this in the past but the idea didn’t catch on. Pressure from other browsers is a good thing. Chrome in particular has been a good incentive for Mozilla to first improve the JavaScript engine, and now to make use of multiprocess.

Side thought: I’m pretty sure that the reason Firefox is getting multiprocess support is because IE8 has it!

Competition is a good thing!

April 29th, 2009

$99 - The new "high end" for GPUs

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 4:18 am

Categories: AMD/ATI, Components, Gaming, Graphics, Hardware, Performance

Tags: Video Card, Console, NVidia Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Graphics, GPU, Price Point, HD 4770, Video Cards, Games

AMD’s launch off the Radeon HD 4770 redefines the graphics card market, and has the potential to make $99 the new “high end” for GPUs.

The last couple of years have been great for PC gaming enthusiasts looking for more power and more frames per second. Not only have we seen some fantastic high end GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA (the Radeon HD 4870 and the GeForce GTX 295 are both excellent cards), but we’ve also seen prices drop to the point where you can pick up the HD 4870 for only $270.

AMD’s new Radeon HD 4770 is built around the RV740 GPU and is priced to dominate the $99 to $109 market. The price point is important since AMD believes that this is a sweet spot for GPUs.

Not only does the 4770 deliver the goods when it comes to price and performance, but it is also the first GPU based on the 40nm manufacturing process from either AMD or NVIDIA. Not only does this smaller manufacturing process deliver a faster GPU, it also means that Read the rest of this entry »

April 25th, 2009

Windows 7 RC 32-bit vs. Vista SP1 32-bit - Gaming shootout

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 5:22 am

Categories: Gaming, On the test bench, Performance, Windows 7

Tags: 32-bit, Microsoft Windows 7, Performance, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows Vista SP1, Games, Performance Management, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Microsoft Windows, Personal Technology

Is it worth upgrading your Vista gaming rig to Windows 7? Will you see any performance benefits? Let’s find out!

Let’s look at what kind of frames per second (FPS) performance we get from the two operating systems using four different graphics cards.

Note: The Windows 7 RC EULA prohibits me from disclosing actual numbers, but I’ll give you enough information to get a good idea as to which OS is best for gaming.

 Loading ...

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March 12th, 2009

IE8 faster than Firefox and Chrome? Hmmm ...

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 7:20 am

Categories: Microsoft, Performance

Tags: Mozilla Firefox, Site, Web Browser, Google Chrome, Web Browsers, Wiki, Internet, Online Communications, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Microsoft has published a document (video here) which examines the issues involved in carrying out benchmarking and performance analysis on browsers. Contained in this document is a chart which suggests that IE8 is faster at rendering many of the Internet’s top 25 website (as measured by comScore) than either either Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s Chrome.

Here’s the chart:

Out of the 25 sites listed, IE8 was the fastest at rendering twelve of the site, while Chrome won on nine while Firefox 3.0.5 was first across the finish line for only Read the rest of this entry »

February 24th, 2009

Hardware 2.0 'Very Best Kit List' for Mar/Apr 09

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 7:51 am

Categories: Components, Gaming, Graphics, Hardware, Performance, Peripherals, Storage

Tags: Card, Performance, Antec, Board, Nvidia GeForce, NVidia Corp., Overclocking, CPU, Intel Corp., Price

Welcome to the updated and revamped Hardware 2.0 “Very Best Kit List” for Mar/Apr 09. Here I’ve put together a list of the best high-end and mid-range and budget components currently available. So if you’re thinking of buying, building or even upgrading a PC, this list is a must-read for you!

This new kit list has been expanded significantly from the last time I published a kit list.

These components are on this list because I firmly believe them to be the best either in terms of performance or price - although I’m ready to admit, as always, that there’s room for debate and some choices “go with the gut” more than others.

NOTE: Each time I come out with a list of kit I always end up fielding a few emails and comments from people wondering if companies have “bought” space on the list. Let me tell you now that the only way for a product to get on this list is to be the best - period. Manufacturers, vendors and PR companies have zero influence over this or any other recommendation that I make.

Also note: I’m looking to expand this list by adding more categories and components. If you’d like to see anything added, let me know!

Final note: All prices are approximate … shop around for the best deals!

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December 5th, 2008

'Tis the season for getting ready for gaming - Top gaming utilities

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 10:58 am

Categories: Apple, Gaming, Graphics, Hardware, On the test bench, Performance, Torture Test

Tags: Web Site, RAM, Graphics, Tool, GPU, RivaTuner, Productivity, Web Site Development, Games, Internet

For me, the holidays is a time of year when I get a lot of gaming done, both alone and over the network with others. This means that systems normally used for work need to be readied for gaming - it’s a good excuse to clear up the year’s worth of detritus that the systems have picked up!

To help me accomplish this task quickly and easily (a task which sometimes means reinstalling the OS) I use a number of tools to test and clean up the OS. Here are some of the top tools that I use to get the system into peak condition and ready for gaming:

Fraps

When trying to make your PC run faster, it’s a good idea to have a baseline figure for that it’s like in the current state. This way you can find out whether your “tweaks” are actually achieving the desired goal.

I like Fraps because it’s one of those tools that carried out several different functions. Not only is Fraps a great benchmarking tool because it can give you an accurate frames per second count for DirectX or OpenGL graphics, but it’s also a fantastic screen capture tool and video capture tool. I love it.

Fraps website

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November 19th, 2008

Holiday Gift Guide 2008: High-end hardware

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 2:22 pm

Categories: Hardware, Holiday Gift Guide, Industry, Performance

Tags: Kit, Hardware, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ASUS, Card, Board, Bay, Motherboard, CPU, Creative Labs Inc.

Lists … if there’s one thing that people seem to what at this time of year it’s lists. Over the next few weeks I’ve planned on posting several kit lists for the Holiday season covering a wide variety of different kit.

To kick off the lists, I thought I’d start by getting the big numbers out of the way first and look at high-end hardware! The top-end, sky’s the limit stuff that, if nothing else, is cool to look at and fantasize about (and in a few months be able to pick up for a middle-of-the-road price!).

NOTE: Each time I come out with a list of kit I always end up fielding a few emails and comments from people wondering if companies have “bought” space on the list. Let me tell you now that the only way for a product to get on this list is to be the best - period. Manufacturers, vendors and PR companies have zero influence over this or any other recommendation that I make.

Quick menu

• CPU
• Motherboard - Socket LGA 1366
• Motherboard - Socket LGA 775
• Motherboard - Socket AM2/AM2+
• Graphics cards
• Hard drives
• RAM
• Sound card
• Speakers
• PSU
• Case

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