Windows 8 Is Not Catching On

Windows 8 is  having a hard time exciting the masses .many people shopping for a new PC just want the familiarity of Windows 7.
Pay a visit to Best Buy, and you'll find that if you hope to stick with Windows 7, you may be in for a rude awakening. "We don't carry Windows 7 anymore. It was phased out last year," a blue-shirted salesperson told us at a Dedham, Massachusetts, store.
That may be true at the Best Buy we visited, but when it comes to the availability of Windows 7 PCs, you still have options. You just need to know where to look.

Windows 7: Alive but fading

It's true that new Windows 7 PC options are vanishing to make room for Windows 8 machines. Net Applications reports that in January, for the first time since Windows 7 went on sale, the operating system lost market share. But there's no need to panic quite yet if you want a new PC that runs the older OS. Microsoft claims that its plans for ending the sale of PCs preinstalled with Windows 7 are "to be determined." However, the company does say that it will end mainstream support for Windows 7 in January 2015.

Way back in 2010, Microsoft shed light on what its commitment to support past Windows operating systems was going to be. "We are confirming our current policy of allowing retailers to sell the boxed version of the previous OS for up to one year after release of a new OS, and that OEMs can sell PCs with the previous OS pre-loaded for up to 2 years after the launch date of the new OS," wrote Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc on a company blog.

If this policy first stated in 2010 holds true, it means that retailers can sell boxed copies of Windows 7 until October 26, 2013, and that Dell, HP, and Lenovo can sell Windows 7 PCs until October 2014.tom spring

AMD has decided to drop the ATi brand name after long consideration. The “AMD” and “Radeon” brands will remain, but the ATi part will be removed from future Radeon cards. Part of the decision was influenced by AMD’s move to integrate AMD CPU and graphics technology onto the same chip, similar to Intel’s Core i3 processors. According to thetechreport.com, the AMD Ontario will combine two Bobcat cores with Radeon graphics and the more powerful Llano will bring a quad-core Phenom II with a GPU that also does it justice.

AMD acquired ATi in 2006 after it operated for over 20 years as an independant and renowned graphics card manufacturer. You can read more ATi and the upcoming 6000-series of Radeon graphics.by ben biggs

GeForce GTX 660 Graphics Cards

Performance

3DMark 2011

Metro 2033: The Last Refuge

The resource-consuming Metro 2033 shows no difference between the pre-overclocked GeForce GTX 660s and the reference sample from Nvidia. The more expensive GeForce GTX 660 Ti isn’t much different, either. But the two GeForce GTX 660s in SLI mode sport a 90% performance growth and enjoy a 40% advantage over the GeForce GTX 680.

Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Fall of the Samurai

The four GeForce GTX 660s deliver similar performance in Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Fall of the Samurai. As opposed to Metro 2033, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti enjoys a larger advantage whereas the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 are the fastest single-GPU cards in this test. The SLI tandem built out of two GeForce GTX 660s is impressive again, beating the single such card by 85 to 90% and the GeForce GTX 680 by 27% in either graphics quality mode.

Crysis 2

The three original GeForce GTX 660s and the ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti have a low bottom frame rate although the reference Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 is better in this respect. The GTX 660 tandem improves the average frame rate by 83 to 84%, but its bottom speed remains as low as that of the single card. Same-class GeForce and Radeon products are comparable to each other in this test.

Battlefield 3

This game shows the same picture as the previous tests.

Sniper Elite V2 Benchmark

The AMD-based solutions are preferable in this test whereas the four GeForce GTX 660s don’t differ at all. The GeForce GTX 660 tandem is good in terms of average frame rate (90% higher compared to the single card) but fails in terms of bottom speed. Indeed, this benchmark was jerky, especially in the high-quality graphics mode with antialiasing.

Sleeping Dogs

The four GeForce GTX 660s are also close to each other in Sleeping Dogs. And they are all inferior to the Radeon HD 7870. The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is 13 to 19% ahead of the GTX 660s, depending on the graphics quality settings, and there’s the same gap between it and the faster GeForce GTX 680. It is the GeForce GTX 660 tandem that’s the fastest solution again. Its bottom speed is okay, unlike in the previous test.

F1 2012

F1 2012 is the only game in this test session where the 2-way GeForce GTX 660 SLI doesn’t work very well. With antialiasing turned off, its performance growth is so small that the two GTX 660s cannot beat the single GeForce GTX 680 although they easily did that before. With 8x MSAA enabled, the SLI mode cannot be activated at all, making the SLI tandem somewhat slower in comparison with the single such card.

Hitman: Absolution

 

Conclusion

The GeForce GTX 660s from EVGA, Gigabyte and MSI have turned out to be very much alike to each other. We can’t name a clear winner or loser among them. Being pre-overclocked, they all deliver similar performance, beating the reference GeForce GTX 660 by 4 to 5%. The MSI GeForce GTX 660 Twin Frozr III is close to the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ultra Durable in terms of GPU temperature while the original. of the hotter EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 copes well, too, especially as the EVGA has the highest GPU clock rate. When their fans are regulated automatically, they produce about the same amount of noise, even subjectively. Added to this are reference PCBs with some exclusive features, the same amount and clock rate of onboard graphics memory, identical overclocking potential, and scanty accessories.Moreover, they all cost the same amount of money, so we can’t really choose the best card of the three - EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ultra Durable and MSI GeForce GTX 660 Twin Frozr III.xbit.com sergey lepilov

 

GeForce Titan Might Outperform GTX 690

GeForce Titan might actually exceed the performance of the GTX 690.
Nvidia's GeForce Titan will be based on the GK110 GPU, a GPU previously only found on Nvidia's Tesla cards, the K20 and K20X.

The rumors haven't been verified since PCOnline has not named their source, but claim that it is a reliable source. Their source says that the GeForce Titan scores X7107 points in 3DMark11, in extreme mode, a massive jump above the GTX 690. The GTX 690 alone already scores just shy from X6000 points with the same benchmark under the same conditions. The most staggering part though is that the Titan, a single GPU part, outperforms the GTX 690, a dual-GPU part.

reports suggest that the upcoming GeForce Titan will also not be called the GeForce GTX 780, nor will it take a GTX 600 series name. It will simply be called the GeForce Titan, likely inspired by the by the Cray Titan supercomputer, which houses nearly 19 thousand Nvidia Tesla K20X cards.
Availability is rumored to be around the end of February with a hefty MSRP of $899.toms hardware

AMD Radeon HD 8950 Listed in Catalyst 13.1

ATIR300=”WDDM (R300)”
AMD68B8.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series”
AMD6898.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series”
AMD6798.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series”
AMD6818.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8800 Series (OEM)”
AMD679A.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8900 Series (OEM)”
AMD68F9.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 6350″
AMD683D.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8760″
AMD68F9.2 = “ATI Radeon HD 5450″
AMD68F9.3 = “AMD Radeon HD 6350″
AMD683D.2 = “AMD Radeon HD 8760″
AMD689C.1 = “ASUS ARES”
…
AMD6778.1 = “AMD Radeon HD 8470″
AMD679A.2 = “AMD Radeon HD 8950″

But wait, there’s more, which is surely an indicator — AMD Radeon HD 8950. The puzzling part is that we are not sure yet, whether this is a reference to a rebranded Radeon HD 7950 for OEMs or something special. Charlie at SemiAccurate made a post where he claims to have a ‘picture of HD 8950′.Some say it’s just a screen grab of Catalyst Control Center with some basic information about HD 8950. Most probably it’s just nothing worth 50 bucks.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding  the Radeon HD 8000 story, which started this year. As I said in my previous post, there’s are two very important questions. The first one: how will the new Radeon flagships be called? And the second one: when are we going to see these cards? This new ‘addition’ to the drivers might give some clarity and hope for the latter question. As for the first one, you can clearly see that the filenames of the official datasheets of recently announced OEM cards like HD 8950 are missing an OEM part. Like there is no chance of preparing the same files for OEM market, since it would require overwriting. So is there a Radeon HD 8960 coming along with HD 8980? videocardz.com

HIS HD 7970 IceQ X2 HD 7950 IceQ X2 Review

GPU architectures age gracefully, board partners have gone through the process of releasing many overclocked, custom cooled cards with upgraded components which enhance their appeal for overclockers and gamers alike. Amongst all of these new and improved versions of current graphics technology, a few stood out to us. Among them was HIS’s new IceQ X² series which updates the original IceQ heatsink design with additional thermal capacity and a completely revised fan design.

 

 

Battlefield 3 (DX11)

we used a sequence from the Rock and Hard Place mission. The results may seem lower than normal and this is due to the fact that after playing through the game multiple times, this one are was found to be the most demanding on the GPU. As with all of the tests, we try to find a worst case scenario in order to ensure a given card can properly play through the whole game instead of just a “typical” section.

1920 x 1200

2560 x 1600

5760 x 1080

 

 

Crysis 2 (DX11)

Crysis 2 with the DX11 and Texture Package installed not only looks great but it is a strain on any GPU. For this benchmark, we used a classic runthrough which includes far views, explosions, combat and close-in knifing; basically every hallmark of gameplay.

1920 x 1200

2560 x 1600

5760 x 1080

 

Metro 2033 (DX11)

For this test we use a walkthrough and combat scene from The Bridge level which starts at the beginning of the level and lasts for about 3 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.

1920 x 1200

2560 x 1600

5760 x 1080

 uniqueness usually garners a great amount of interest but it rarely sells graphics cards. The reason behind this is quite simple: gamers may love looking at the newest Matrix, Classified, Lightning or Super Overclock card but they can rarely afford such an expensive upgrade. So while there may be very little to differentiate the HIS HD 7970 IceQ X² and HD 7970 IceQ X² from their immediate competition due to a true lack of game changing features, there’s still plenty to like.

Without taking any risks or building additional cost into their IceQ X², HIS was still able to release a pair of highly appealing products. They accomplished this by combining a top notch heatsink and great overclocking abilities with decent software by way of the new iTurbo application. The result is a pair of cards which overclock extremely well without a substantial increase in fan noise or heat.

While we actually achieved some reasonably high clock speeds sans voltage changes, HIS’ iTurbo application was more than willing to take things to the next level. With slight modifications to the core and memory voltages, the HD 7970 IceQ X² and HD 7970 IceQ X² were really able to fly.by skymtl harware canucks

 

Netgear R6300 router review

R6300 looks very different from Netgear's other routers, including the previous top-shelf WNDR-4500. The R6300 has a broad face that reclines back on its base, whereas the routers in Netgear's WNDR line stand straight up and present a narrow profile to the user. Both have internal antennas, and neither can be wall-mounted. The glossy black plastic enclosure is a fingerprint magnet, so you'll want to avoid handling it once you've set it up. The R6300 is a concurrent dual-band 802.11n/802.11ac model, delivering three spatial streams on the 2.4GHz frequency band with maximum theoretical throughput of 450 megabits per second, and another three spatial streams with maximum theoretical throughput of 1.3 gigabits per second on the 5GHz frequency band.
Netgear isn't manufacturing a media bridge; instead, the company recommends that consumers obtain two R6300 routers and configure one as a wireless bridge. That's what I did for this review. The R6300 comes with two USB 2.0 ports to support sharing a network-attached USB storage device and a USB printer simultaneously. I didn't test printer sharing, but the router turned in a solid performance on the storage front.
The R6300 doesn't offer quite as many features as Asus's 802.11ac router. It comes with a DLNA-certified media server, built-in Samba and ftp servers, and parental controls via OpenDNS (much like the D-Link DIR-865L); but it lacks an iTunes server or VPN pass-through. Like the RT-AC66U, the R6300 does provide guest networks on both bands (Buffalo's WZR-D1800H doesn't provide a guest network at all).

Benchmarking 5GHz 802.11ac performance

I used an AVADirect laptop equipped with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-3210M CPU, 4GB of memory, and an integrated Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Wi-Fi adapter to run my benchmark tests. The Ultimate-N 6300 can send and receive three simultaneous 150-mbps spatial streams (450 mbps in total); most adapters are limited to handling two (300 mbps in total). This was all the streaming I needed to evaluate the Netgear's 802.11n performance (on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands). To measure the router's 802.11ac performance on the 5GHz frequency band, I configured a second R6300 as a wireless bridge and connected it to the AVADirect's ethernet port.
To test the router, I positioned the client successively at five spots inside and outside a 2800-square-foot, ranch-style home (distances from the router are noted in each chart below). I used the open-source IPERF benchmark (and the JPERF Java graphical front end designed for it). To measure the router's downlink TCP throughput, I set up the laptop as a server and used a desktop PC hard-wired to the router as the client.
The R6300 finished in first or second place in most of my test locations, and it delivered impressive wireless TCP throughput of 473 mbps in the bedroom, where the client is in the same room, just 9 feet from the router.

The Netgear router's performance dropped slightly, to 432 mbps, when I moved the client and bridge to the kitchen, which is 20 feet from the router and separated by one wall. The Asus RT-AC66U performed better in this location than it did in the bedroom, and captured first place on this measure.

The next two benchmark runs took place inside my home theater. This is a room-within-a-room design, with four walls of 2-by-4 framing and drywall inside four walls of 2-by-6 framing and drywall, with about 6 inches of dead air and fiberglass insulation separating them. My intent was to optimize the room's acoustics, not to build a Faraday cage, but many lesser routers and other wireless devices have had trouble penetrating it. However, none of the 802.11ac routers I tested had any difficulty reaching the client in this room. The R6300 managed to perform just a wee bit better than the Asus RT-N66U and the D-Link DIR-685L to earn a first-place finish here.

Since many people will want to connect the gear in their home entertainment system to an 802.11ac network, I decided to measure TCP throughput with the wireless bridge inside the built-in equipment cabinet in my home theater (the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall cabinet is constructed from cabinet-grade plywood, including the back). The R6300 took a much bigger hit in TCP throughput performance at this location than did the other two routers I just mentioned, with wireless TCP throughput dropping down to 129 mbps. I suspect that the orientation of the wireless bridge is responsible for this. When it was sitting on the coffee table in this room, it obliquely faced the router. When it was in the cabinet, it was perpendicular to the router. Still, the R6300 delivered enough bandwidth to allow me to wirelessly mount and stream a Blu-ray ISO image of the movie Spiderman 3 from a Windows Home Server 2011 machine in my home office to a home-theater PC in that entertainment center, including the movie's high-definition multichannel soundtrack.

The R6300's performance bounced back when I moved the client and the media bridge to the first of my two outdoor test locations, an exterior patio enclosed by three walls and one half wall with glass windows. The signal from the router travels a more direct path to this location, even though it must pass through two insulated walls. In the real world, I doubt that anyone would try to set up a media bridge outdoors because dragging the bridge and finding an outlet (and likely an extension cord) are too inconvenient. The R6300 performed slightly better here than it did in the kitchen, delivering wireless throughput of 435 mbps for a first-place finish at this location.

TCP throughput dropped to 122 mbps when I moved the client and bridge to my second outdoor test location, a picnic table 75 feet from the router with four insulated walls in between. That data transfer rate was only good enough for a third-place finish on this measure, but achieving such high throughput that at so distant a range is pretty amazing. Most 802.11n routers operating on the 5GHz frequency band can't reach the client at all here

Benchmarking 2.4GHz 802.11n performance

The R6300 delivered a middle-of-the-road performance on the 2.4GHz frequency band, but it was twice as fast as D-Link's DIR-685L when I moved the client to the farthest test distance from the router. Both devices can deliver perfectly acceptable performance for Web browsing here, but the Netgear is much quicker when transferring files across the network.
Netgear's R6300 lagged slightly behind the rest of the field with the client hardwired to its four-port gigabit switch, but the difference was negligible.

To evaluate the R6300's performance as a network-attached storage device, I connected a 500GB Western Digital My Passport USB drive to one of the router's USB ports. I used a stopwatch to time how long it took the unit to copy a few files from a PC to the drive over the network (a write test), and then I copied a few files from the USB drive to the networked PC over the network (a read test). The PC was hardwired to the network.
I created a large-file test by ripping a DVD (Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk to Dawn) to the PC's hard drive. Copying this 4.29GB file from the PC to the portable hard drive required slightly more than 6 minutes, while reading it from the drive required a little less than 7 minutes. These scores put the R6300 in the middle of the pack on this benchmark. I couldn't test the Buffalo WZR-D1800H on this measure, because that router recognizes only drives formatted in FAT32 or XFS.

Unless you rip a lot of movies from DVD or Blu-ray discs, you'll rarely move a single large file to a hard drive attached to your router. A more common task is to move batches of small files back and forth across your network. To evaluate each router's performance in this scenario, I created a single folder containing 595MB of small files (subfolders containing music, graphics, photos, documents, spreadsheets, and so on).
The Netgear R6300 was very quick at writing this batch of small files to and reading them back from the attached USB disk drive, performing each tasking in about 1 minute, as the charts below indicate.

Bottom line

In the competition for the title of best 802.11ac router on the market today, Netgear's R6300 finishes a very close second to the Asus RT-AC66U. It's not quite as fast as the Asus in most benchmarks, and it doesn't offer as many features as the Asus does. The performance gaps, however, are not huge.
The one area where Netgear has a leg up on Asus is in apps. Install Netgear's Genie app on your smartphone, and you can use it to monitor and manage your network. Asus was getting ready to launch their AiCloud service as I was wrapping up these reviews, however, so Netgear's advantage may be short-lived. And Netgear will never be able to overcome the RT-AC66U's removable, upgradable antennas.by michael brown pc world