When the new Haswell K-series processors were still under NDA, there was a rumor that Intel was going to be moving back to soldering the CPU die to the heat transfer plate instead of using a TIM (thermal interface material). This rumor has been pretty well busted since we now know that these CPUs use what Intel is calling NGPTIM, or Next-Generation Polymer Thermal Interface Material.
Star Citizen Benchmark: Arena Commander v0.8
The long-awaited dogfighting module for Star Citizen, dubbed Arena Commander, has been released to backers of the game in its pre-beta form. It only has a few ships, a pair of maps, and a handful of game modes at this point… but is it the first part of the Star Citizen game to really be playable. It is also the first chance we have to fly ships, seeing how the physics handle and how they look in their natural environment. A lot of people have been waiting many months for this, and many will be looking at performance of this module as a gauge to see whether their computers can handle Star Citizen.
ECC and REG ECC Memory Performance
Recently, a workstation PC was reviewed on a well-known review site that included a Quadro video card, but no ECC memory. In the comment section of that review, a heated discussion occurred with some readers stating that ECC was bad for workstations since it is slower than standard RAM. In this article, we will be running a series of benchmarks on different types of RAM to see if ECC RAM is indeed slower than standard RAM.
Z97 vs H97 – What is the Difference?
The Z97 and H97 chipset have recently been added to Intel’s line of chipsets, replacing the previous Z87 and H87 chipsets. In this article we will take a look at the specifications for the Z97 and H97 chipsets to see what differences there are between them.
What is new in Z97 and H97
The Z97 and H97 chipset have recently been added to Intel’s line of chipsets, replacing the previous Z87 and H87 chipsets. These new chipsets are really more of an incremental update, but still add a little bit in terms of new features.
Video Card Failure Rates by Generation
Recently, a question came up in one of our department meetings: are video cards getting more or less reliable? There are times when it feels like video cards are failing left and right and we start to pine for the “good old days”. Then, we remember how hot Fermi cards used to run. To get a more accurate answer this question, we decided to examine our GPU failure logs and break down the numbers by generation.
Introduction to Self-Encrypting Drives (SED)
A SED (or Self-Encrypting Drive) is a type of hard drive that automatically and continuously encrypts the data on the drive without any user interaction. In fact, many drives currently on the market are SEDs, although the majority of users do not know the benefits of a SED, let alone how to take advantage of those benefits.
Qualification: LSI 9341-8i & 9361-8i RAID Controllers
At Puget Systems, we’ve been using LSI RAID cards for a number of years now and have always been very happy with the quality of both the controllers and the MegaRAID software. The new 9361-8i and 9341-8i RAID controllers from LSI continue in their predecessor’s footsteps but add PCI-E 3.0 support and the new mini-SAS HD SFF8643 12GB/s connector.
Windows XP End of Support: What does it mean for you?
The End Of Support deadline for Windows XP quickly approaching, and many users do not have a very good understanding of what exactly this means. In this Q&A article, we want to answer what “end of support” actually means for all the computers out there that are still running Windows XP.
AMD A10-7850K Performance Review
While new computer hardware is almost always faster than the models they are replacing, it is often hard to get through all the marketing talk to find out exactly how much better they are. For that reason, we are going to be comparing the performance of the A10-7850K to multiple CPUs and video cards. In addition, since the ability to use high frequency RAM is often cited as an important feature of the A-Series APUs, we will also be looking how much performance gain you actually will see by using high frequency RAM.