Today we review the new VTX3D R9 270X X Edition, the second 270X we have reviewed since the launch in November. Should you be shortlisting this card for a new system build early in the New Year?

The card we are reviewing today is a new dual fan version of VTX3D’s previous single fan 270X X-Edition with red cooler. To confuse the issue, VTX3D have not changed the name at all, or the box artwork. If you are going to buy this card online, we do recommend you check the version you are getting.

The VTX3D R9 270X X Edition isn’t as highly overclocked as the Sapphire R9 270X Toxic Edition OC that we reviewed several weeks ago. The VTX3D R9 270X X Edition has the core clocked at 1080mhz, the Sapphire Toxic version is 1,150mhz. Memory on the VTX3D R9 270X X Edition is clocked at 1,400mhz (5.6gbps effective). The Sapphire Toxic Edition was overclocked higher to 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective).

If you are working with a budget of £180 or less there has never been a better time to buy a graphics card. The Gigabyte R9 270X Windforce OC that we are looking at today for instance is supplied in a preoverclocked state, with a custom cooler and has a retail price of only £164.99 inc vat. Is this the graphics card you need for a new cost effective system build in 2014?

AMD’s R9 270X has proven popular so far, targeting the mass enthusiast audience who want a new graphics card to handle the latest Direct X 11 games at 1080p. What does the Gigabyte R9 270X Windforce OC bring to the table?

The Gigabyte card introduces the companies exclusive ‘Triangle Cool’ Technology. This patent pending technology combines fin with clip module in a special triangle shape. This is meant to reduce turbulence between fans, lowering noise and increasing cooling efficiency.

The Gigabyte R9 270X Windforce OC ships in an overclocked state, with the core at 1,100mhz and the 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1,400mhz (5.6Gbps effective). Regular readers will be aware that this isn’t as quick as the Sapphire R9 270X Toxic Edition OC which we reviewed some weeks ago – clocked to 1,150mhz core and 1,500mhz memory (6Gbps effective).

Specification:-
- PCI-E 3.0 Ready: Delivers double the bandwidth per lane of PCIe GEN2 for faster GPU- CPU
- Hugely overclockable
- Core Clock Speed: 1000MHz
- Boost Clock Speed: 1050MHz
- Shader Architecture: GCN
- Stream Processors: 1280
- Frame Buffer / Memory: 2GB GDDR5
- Memory Width / Speed: 256 bit / 5600MHz
- Power Connectors: 6-pin + 6-pin
- Display Outputs: 2x DVI + 1x DP + 1x HDMI
- Power: 180W TDP
- 3yr Warranty

Every year, KitGuru considers hundreds of products and puts the best into the KitGuru Labs for testing. While you may tend to see things in terms of conclusions and awards, we actually have a pretty sophisticated scoring system on the backend, that allow us to rank everything we have seen. Now it’s time for the best of the best to be recognised in the KitGuru Annual Awards 2013!

Well, another year has passed and what a year it has been!

2013 will go down as the year when:-

• America’s spy secrets were laid bare by Snowden – including its desire to eavesdrop on the phone calls of friendly prime ministers.
• BitCoin‘s totally made up currency boomed from just over $13 to around $1,000 (despite China saying that it is not interested).
• Facebook overcame the huge slump in share price that followed its IPO, by monitising just about everything and sending the (newly IPO-ed) Twittersphere into apoplexy because advertising and promoting products now cost money on the Zuckerberg platform.
• As Apple stretched the legacy of Steve Jobs to the iPhone 5c and 5s, Samsung finalised work on its ’5′ series – with the possible inclusion of a Quad HD screen – while Blackberry withered and died like old fruit on a vine.
• 4K is becoming a reality – just as the newly updated gaming consoles arrived to do battle for the next 6 years – leaving many to question whether Sony and Microsoft had packed enough power into their new boxes.
• Microsoft was forced to back-track on the Start button for its Windows 8 OS – which has been largely shunned by the PC community.

Specifically in the arena that KitGuru pits gladiator against gladiator, we saw graphics power increase substantially, while desktop processors maintained a kind of ‘year on year balance’ that you don’t often see in the world of the PC.

Checking any of the high street electronic stores, you will notice that the rest of the world has finally caught up with KitGuru’s readers – and Solid State Drives are now (almost) standard on around half the laptops and desktop systems you will see.

An interesting year, tempered by flat sales news from IDC and Gartner – yet buoyed by news from Job Peddie Research that gaming is due for a 3-year boost in sales.

All very interesting, but let’s have a quick look at KitGuru’s numbers for 2013:-

• With social networking integrated tightly into everything we do, it was good to see KitGuru become the first of the UK’s independent technology sites to pass the 100,000 mark on Facebook – and we’re now past 150,000 – so a big thank you for liking our page.
• In the ~4 years since KitGuru first put electronic pen to paper, our team of writers has produced 9,500 articles.
• Overall, KitGuru’s servers have managed to issue 80 million pages – all thanks to the excellent technical team down at Multiplay.
• One story in particular caused a spike so large, that we initially thought we were under DoS attack – but Multiplay’s backbone happily dealt with just under 500,000 visitors in a 24-hour period.

That’s the year … and KitGuru’s achievements – but we know that’s not why you are here.

You want to know which products have emerged as the ‘Best of the Best’.

We’ll make you wait no longer, it’s time to slip the clutch and race onto the winners!

AMD fans may have had to wait several months for custom cooled R9 290/x cards to hit the channel, but today we follow up on our December review of the Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC with a look at the latest Gigabyte R9 290X OC solution, featuring their excellent triple fan WindForce cooler.

Today we supplement our tests by analysing performance at 3840×2160 (4k HD) on the Asus PQ321QE. We recently acquired one of these screens for high end graphics card reviews. Sure, the £2999.99 asking price will mean very few can afford the upgrade right now, but in the next year we expect the cost to drop.

Setting up this monitor is simple with both AMD and Nvidia hardware (via DisplayPort cable) and we didn’t experience any issues. To achieve a refresh rate of 60hz after the Forceware or Catalyst drivers were installed we enable the Multi Stream Transport mode within a submenu of the Asus PQ321QE.

On paper there is no doubt that the R9 290X is a monster, clocked at 1GHZ. The Gigabyte R9 290X OC is clocked higher, to 1,040mhz out of the box, although the memory speeds are set at reference – 1,250mhz (5.2Gbps effective).

The Hawaii GPU is built on the 28nm process and the card comprises 6.2 billion transistors. The R9 290X has 64 ROP’s, 176 TMU’s and 2,816 unifed shaders. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective) and is connected via an ultra wide 512 bit memory interface. We have tested the reference card when it launched and while we were impressed – the cooling solution was woefully inadequate.

The R9 290X, along with the R7 260X features a programmable audio pipeline. The R9 270X and R9 280X don’t. This new TrueAudio technology is designed for game audio artists and engineers, so they can ‘bring their artistic vision beyond sound production into the realm of sound processing’. This technology is intended to transform game audio as programmable shaders transformed graphics in the following ways:

• Programmable audio pipeline grants artistic freedom to game audio engineers for sound processing.
• Easy to access through popular audio libraries used by top game developers.
• Fundamentally redefines the nature of a modern PC graphics card.
• Spatialization, reverb, mastering limiters and simultaneous voices are only the beginning.

The first waves of AMD partner 290 cards are being released this month, and today we follow up on our Gigabyte and Sapphire reviews taking a look at the latest card from ASUS, the R9 290X Direct CU II OC. This card ships with a proprietary cooler and the fastest ‘out of the box’ speeds yet. Is it worth the £499.99 inc vat asking price?

Today we supplement our tests by analysing performance at 3840×2160 (4k HD) on the Asus PQ321QE. We recently acquired one of these screens for high end graphics card reviews. Sure, the £2999.99 asking price will mean very few can afford the upgrade right now, but in the next year we expect the cost to drop.

Setting up this monitor is simple with both AMD and Nvidia hardware (via DisplayPort cable) and we didn’t experience any issues. To achieve a refresh rate of 60hz after the Forceware or Catalyst drivers were installed we enable the Multi Stream Transport mode within a submenu of the Asus PQ321QE.

On paper there is no doubt that the R9 290X is a monster, clocked at 1GHZ. The Asus R9 290X Direct CU II OC is the highest clocked 290X we have reviewed to date. The core is overclocked to 1,050mhz, and the GDDR5 memory is overclocked to 1,350mhz (5.4Gbps effective).

The Hawaii GPU is built on the 28nm process and the card comprises 6.2 billion transistors. The R9 290X has 64 ROP’s, 176 TMU’s and 2,816 unifed shaders. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective) and is connected via an ultra wide 512 bit memory interface. We have tested the reference card when it launched and while we were impressed – the cooling solution was woefully inadequate.

The R9 290X, along with the R7 260X features a programmable audio pipeline. The R9 270X and R9 280X don’t. This new TrueAudio technology is designed for game audio artists and engineers, so they can ‘bring their artistic vision beyond sound production into the realm of sound processing’. This technology is intended to transform game audio as programmable shaders transformed graphics in the following ways:

• Programmable audio pipeline grants artistic freedom to game audio engineers for sound processing.
• Easy to access through popular audio libraries used by top game developers.
• Fundamentally redefines the nature of a modern PC graphics card.
• Spatialization, reverb, mastering limiters and simultaneous voices are only the beginning.

Solid State Technology has been dropping in price steadily for the last year and today we look at the latest product from Plextor – the M6e, a PCI express solid state design. This product is designed for the enthusiast audience who demand the fastest speeds possible. The M6E incorporates the latest generation Marvell 88SS9183 flash controller with multiple cores for ultimate performance when dealing with intense tasks. Unlike similar solutions which we have reviewed in the past, the M6e is automatically recognised as an AHCI device, requiring no additional drivers. Is this the high performance solution you should be shortlisting this year?

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were analysing the first batch of mainstream Solid State Drives, hitting peaks of 280 MB/s via the SATA 3 GB/s interface. To accommodate faster drives we subsequently moved to the SATA 6 Gb/s interface, doubling speeds to a theoretical maximum of 600 MB/s. Obviously there are some bandwidth overheads involved across the interface so the fastest solid state drives have been limited to around 560 MB/s.

If you don’t want to utilize several 2.5 inch Solid State drives in a Raid 0 configuration then buying a PCI Express Solid State product may be the quickest way to achieve performance higher than the SATA 6 GB/s interface will allow.

The new Plextor M6e uses advanced 19nm Toggle NAND flash memory chips from Toshiba. It will be available in three sizes – 128GB, 256GB and 512GB.

Plextor rate the 512GB unit which we are reviewing today at maximum speeds of 770 MB/s read and 625 MB/s write.

Plextor have said that the 512GB M6e delivers maximum random IOPS performance of 105,000 read and 100,000 write. Random IOPS performance is rated at 94,000 read and 80,000 write.

Pricing looks to be competitive, and while the M6e is not yet available in the United Kingdom, the company informed us that three versions will be available between now and March. Prices range from £1.03 per gigabyte to 82 pence per gigabyte. Plextor are able to drop the cost per GB if you opt for the 256GB or 512GB versions.

Launch prices:
128GB – £132 (£1.03 GBP/GB)
256GB – £215 (£0.84 GBP/GB)
512GB – £419 (£0.82 GBP/GB)

Last year ASUS enjoyed both public and critical success with their Xonar U7 USB sound card. For the enthusiast user demanding higher grade sound quality, adding an external DAC can be a good investment. Driving an expensive audiophile grade pair of headphones from the basic sound chip on a motherboard can also lead to less than optimal results. Asus have addressed this as the Xonar U7 incorporates a dedicated headphone amplifier. Priced at only £80, it won’t break the bank either.

Today we are analysing the new Asus Xonar U7 Echelon Edition which is encased in a compact chassis. The main visual difference between the original Xonar U7 and the new Echelon Edition is the new ‘digital camouflage pattern’.

On a hardware level, the Echelon Edition hasn’t changed. It is powered by the C-Media 6632A Sound Processor, offering a signal to noise ratio of 114dB with full support for 7.1 channel audio up to 24 bit/192 Khz. Asus have however replaced the Xonar AudioCenter with the new SonicStudio Pro suite. There are also a new series of audio enhancements available, including Perfect Voice Noise Reduction technology.

The new ‘Sonic Radar’ technology has been included, to give gamers an ‘extra edge’. This is a unique Asus sound visualisation technology to enhance in game audio, specifically with first person shooters. Sonic Radar displays a radar style heads up display overlay to indicate audio directions. We will look at this in more detail later in the review.

Product overview:

• See the precise locations of in-game sounds and enhance critical sounds to pinpoint the enemy instantly with Sonic Radar.
• Gain complete control over loads of sound technologies with NEW Sonic Studio Pro technology.
• Fast adjustments in the heat of gaming action with independent mic and audio volume controls.
• True 7.1-channel HD (192kHz/24-bit) surround sound from a compact USB-powered device.
• Hear the smallest sound details clearly thanks to the powerful integrated headphone amplifier.
• Enjoy one-click surround-sound brilliance with Dolby® Home Theater V4.

Today we are taking a look at the latest power supply from Seasonic, the S12G 450W. This is an 80 Plus Gold Design and utilises high grade Japanese components throughout. We have already reviewed the excellent high end S12G 750W in November 2013 and it walked away with our highest award. The S12G power supplies are designed to target the mass market enthusiast audience and Seasonic back up the units with a substantial 5 year warranty. It may only cost £55, but how does the 450W version perform?

Seasonic told us that ‘The S12G Series is the newest addition to Seasonic’s families of retail products. The S12G Series is designed to support Intel’s Haswell processors, features standard all in one cabling with more SATA cables and is an affordable solution for a wide range of applications.  It meets the demands of users who are looking for reliable 80 PLUS Gold performance for gaming and overall usage.”

Special features

If you want a new small form factor system then today’s review will be of particular interest. We are taking a look at the latest MESH Elite Mini Gamer Plus system, built inside the tiny Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Case. It may be small, but this is not a system of compromise, as it ships with an overclocked Core i7 4770k, 240GB SSD, 16GB of DDR3 memory and a high end AMD R9 290 graphics card. Is it worth the £1,199.00 asking price?

There is no doubt that the Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX case is beautifully designed. We reviewed it way back in January 2013 and my colleague Henry Butt was impressed with the design, adding that it was quiet and exceptionally well built. Initially the price was high, but later in the year, the company managed to reduce this to a more reasonable £70 inc vat. Shopping online today, the price has dropped even further, to £65 inc vat.

When we initially received the MESH Elite Mini Gamer Plus System specification list we were intrigued. MESH decided to go the ‘full monty’ by including a staggering list of high end components. I am very interested to analyse how the diminutive Fractal Design Node 304 will cope with this inherently hot running hardware.

Full Specification:

• Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX Case – White USB 3.0.
• 750W Cooler Master GX RS-750, 85% Eff’, 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire.
• MSI Z87I WIFI – Mini-ITX Motherboard Socket 1150.
• New 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4770K Quad Core Processor (3.5GHz, 8MB Cache) @ 4.2ghz.
• 16GB DDR3 1866MHz Memory (2x8GB) Kit.
• 4GB AMD Radeon™ R9 290 – 4GD5 Gaming Series Graphics.
• 240GB SSD – Solid State Drive.
• 2TB SATA III 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms Hard Drive.
• Integrated 7.1 High Definition 8-channel Audio.
• Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, Intel® Wireless Display, Dual band up to 300 Mbps Wireless LAN (onboard).
• Microsoft Windows® 8.1 – 64 bit inc. DVD & Licence.
• FREE 60 Day Trial of Microsoft Office 2013.
• BullGuard Internet Security ver. 13 – 90 Day Trial (pre-installed OS required).
• Free 3 Years Gold Warranty – (2 Years Parts, 3 Years Labour, 3 Months Free Collect & Return).

Today we take a look at something special, the world’s first dual material fan from Aerocool. The new DS ‘Dead Silence’ Fluid Dynamic bearing fans are particularly interesting due to dual layered blades, comprised of plastic and rubber. Aerocool claim this helps to absorb the noise of moving air. The fan frame has been designed with four noise absorption chambers and anti vibration rubber on each of the mounting holes. Aerocool rate the life span at over 100,000 hours. Are these the ultimate low noise enthusiast fans?

Aerocool have made a positive impact in the last year. Their Dead Silence Gaming Cube was one of the greatest computer cases to grace our labs in 2013.

While they do often focus on budget oriented products they clearly have a research and development team capable of producing some stunning products.

It is no longer good enough that a company sells fans with plain black colour schemes. System builders today spend a lot of time colour coordinating their rigs, and with this in mind, the new Aerocool DS Dead Silence fans are available in four flavours – Black, White, Red and Blue.

We received a 120mm fan in white, and a 140mm fan in red for our review today.

Aerocool DS Dead Silence Fan overview:

• One of world’s most quiet fans with breakthrough technology and innovation.
• Beautifully finished ‘Dual Colour and Dual Material Fan’ with four colour combinations and LED’s.
• The world’s first dual layered fan blades – combination of plastic and rubber fan blades to absorb ‘Wind’ noise.
• ‘Fish-Eye’ surface design on the back rubber side of the fan blades to minimize air turbulence.
• Optimised fan blade angle design for a perfect balance of airflow and noise.
• Noise and shock reduction fan frame incorporating four noise absorption chambers and anti vibration rubber on each mounting hole.
• Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) delivers longer life span, higher precision rotation and anti shock function.
• Low starting voltage of 3V.
• Four Anti Vibration screws are included for easier installation.
• Power cables are ‘black’ sleeved with both 3 pin and Molex 4 pin connectors.
• Extra low speed 7V 3 pin adapter for ultra low fan speed.

Thunderbolt, and lightning, very very frightening me! Tacky ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ quotes aside, it is great to see that the Thunderbolt interface is finally seeing some traction in the PC marketplace, having already experienced great success with Apple’s hardware. The major motherboard manufacturers are adopting Thunderbolt on a handful of their latest products, although licensing costs are still prohibitive. With this is mind, we thought we would revisit the LaCie 5Big Thunderbolt RAID device, in a stonking 20TB capacity. What can a Thunderbolt equipped storage device do for you?

LaCie are a well known company, producing quality enclosures for as long as I can remember. The LaCie 5big 20TB Thunderbolt RAID DAS we are reviewing today is equipped with five (hence the name ’5Big’) 4TB enterprise class mechanical hard drives. They do sell the 5Big in other capacities (5x2TB=10TB, and 5x5TB=25TB), with the less expensive 10TB unit being the biggest seller.

The LaCie 5Big Thunderbolt is shipped preconfigured for RAID 0, giving the fastest speeds possible. Not ideal if you want the most secure backup however, as there is a higher risk of data loss. Raid 1 is also an option, but you lose half the capacity and much of the performance potential. We will look at this in more detail, later in the review.

LaCie 5big Thunderbolt RAID overview:

• Shocking speeds up to 785MB/s
• RAID 0, 1, and JBOD support with hot swap
• Dual Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining
• Whisper-quiet dual cooling

January has seen many custom R9 290 and R9 290X solutions hit retail. Following on from our Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X OC review, today we look at the latest Gigabyte R9 290 Windforce OC, which ships pre overclocked and equipped with a custom cooler. If you have a budget around £370 should this solution be making your final shortlist?

The Gigabyte R9 290 WindForce OC features a custom 3 fan cooler, versions of which we have reviewed on other Gigabyte cards in the past. The R9 270X Windforce OC which we reviewed in December 2013 for instance, was an extremely impressive video card.

Gigabyte have overclocked their R9 290 Windforce from reference speeds of 947mhz to 1,040mhz although they have left the GDDR5 memory speeds at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective). Let us take a look at the card, before putting it through our tests.

Today we look at the latest card from Asus – the R9 290 Direct CU II, which ships with a custom cooler and out of the box clock enhancements. Can this card compete with solutions from Sapphire and Gigabyte which we have reviewed in the last month?

The Asus R9 290 features a version of their Direct CU II dual fan cooler, versions of which we have reviewed on other Asus cards in the past.

Asus have overclocked their R9 Direct CU II OC from reference speeds of 947mhz to 1,000mhz and they have also given their GDDR5 memory a little tweak, from 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective) to 1,260mhz (5.04Gbps effective).

Specification:-

• GPU: Hawaii Pro
• Litecoin Hash Rate: 800-950
• Stream Processors: 2560
• ROPS: 64
• Core Speed: 1000MHz
• Memory Speed: 5040Mhz
• Memory interface: 512-Bit
• Memory capacity: 4096MB GDDR5
• PCI-Express X16 lane required
• 600W or greater PSU required
• Power Connectors: 8-pin + 6-pin required
• Display Outputs: 2x Dual Link DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
• Warranty: 3yr

Today we target the readers who want a new low cost system to handle basic duties, such as high definition media playback, casual gaming and office work. The new ‘Dead Silence Kaveri Gaming Battlerig’ from UK system builder Falcon Computers looks set to fit the bill. This system features the latest AMD A10 7850K APU, built inside the diminutive, award winning Aerocool Dead Silence chassis.

Falcon computers are currently selling three different specified Kaveri systems which you can see over here. We received the most expensive KV3 version, which is priced at £599.99 inc vat. Falcon Computer have a £50 price cut running as we go to publication, so you can pick it up for £549.99 inc vat.

Dead Silence Kaveri Gaming BattleRig Specification:

Case: Aerocool Dead Silence Cube Black/White
Processor: AMD 7850K Quad 3.7Ghz R7 GFX
Cooler: STD CPU Cooler (Supplied)
Mainboard: ASUS A88XMPLUS FM2+ Chipset
Memory: 8GB ADATA XPG 2133Mhz
Video: AMD Radeon HD R7 APU 3D GFX
HDD: 1TB Seagate 7200RPM – 64Mb
PSU: 500w Cooler Master B500 Power Supply
Optical: 24X Samsung DVD-RW Drive
OS: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64Bit
Warranty: 2 YEAR BattleRig Extended Warranty!

Today AMD release their new R7 265 graphics card which they claim is an outstanding performer at 1080p resolution. The R7 265 is set to supplement the more expensive R9 270 which was designed to replace the last generation HD7870. The R7 265 looks set to replace the HD7850, which has proven so successful that it is still being sold – 2 years after release. Rather than focus on a reference board for our review we look at a custom Sapphire R7 265 with Dual X cooling system.

The AMD R7 265 features 2GB of GDDR5 memory which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. It has 1,024 stream processors with the engine clock set to run at up to 925mhz.

The reference card features a single fan cooling system, but fortunately the version we review today has received some special treatment from Sapphire, featuring two large fans and thick copper heatpipes.

Last week AMD released their new R7 265 graphics card, and KitGuru was on hand to review the custom cooled Sapphire version. AMD tweaked their old HD7850 design and dropped the price to £100 in an attempt to dominate the market. Today we are looking at Nvidia’s new budget grade enthusiast gaming card, the GTX 750 Ti.

In this review we will be focusing on the MSI GTX 750 Ti OC Twin Frozr. This card has received the full ‘MSI treatment’ – enhancing the reference design significantly with a two fan cooling system and improved heatsink. The MSI ‘OC’ version is unsurprisingly clocked higher than the reference Nvidia design and we will discuss the changes shortly.

We did also receive a reference GTX 750 ti from Nvidia and while it isn’t as exciting as the MSI version we will be including results from both cards in our tests today. Both solutions take all the power they need direct from the PCIe slot. If you have a really good memory, you will recall that the previous generation GTX650 Ti required power from an additional single 6 pin PCI E connector.

The GTX750 Ti is based around the Maxwell architecture which has been designed to enhance performance while optimising power efficiency per watt. The first Maxwell based GPU is codenamed GM107 and is designed for use in power limited environments such as notebooks and small form factor systems. Nvidia claim that the improvements in architecture mean that the GTX750 Ti will match the performance of their GTX480 flagship card from four years ago but with a TDP of only 60W. In real world terms, you get the same performance for only 25% of the power drain.

While the talking point of the Maxwell based GTX750 ti is primarily power efficiency, Nvidia do plan on releasing higher performance graphics cards using similar architecture at a later date.


The GM107 GPU has a single GPC, five Maxwell Streaming Multiprocessors (SMM) and two 64 bit memory controllers (128 bit). The reference card is clocked at 1020mhz although MSI have overclocked their Twin Frozr version to 1,085mhz, with a boost speed of 1,163mhz. Both cards have 16 ROP’s, 53 TMU’s and 640 CUDA cores.

The Nvidia reference card is using 2GB of Hynix GDDR5 memory, but MSI have opted for Samsung branded GDDR5 – as we will see on the next page of the article today.

The Maxwell SM architecture delivers improved efficiency and 35% more performance per CUDA core on shader limited workloads. Nvidia have changed the architecture with the SM scheduler architecture and algorithms having been rewritten to avoid stalling and further reducing the energy per instruction required for scheduling. Maxwell SM architecture enabled Nvidia to increase the number of SM’s to five in GM107, compared to two in GK107 – and all with only a 25% increase in die area.

Nvidia have explained that the organisation of the SM has been changed. Each SM has been partitioned into four separate processing blocks, each with their own instruction buffer, scheduler and 32 CUDA cores. GK107 Kepler could have a non power of two number of CUDA cores, with some shared. The new partitioning simplifies the design and scheduling logic which reduces computation latency and saves area and power demand.

Pairs of processing blocks share four texture filtering units and a texture cache. The L1 compute cache function is now combined with the texture cache function and shared memory is a separate unit, shared across all four blocks. Each Maxwell SM is smaller than a Kepler SM but delivers around 90% of the performance. The smaller area means that Nvidia can incorporate many more SM’s per GPU. The GM107 (v GK107) has 25 percent more texture performance, 1.7 times more CUDA cores and 2.3 greater shader performance.

Nvidia have improved Video capabilities with the latest hardware. Maxwell incorporates an improved NVENC block to deliver faster encode performance over Kepler – 6-8 times real time compared against 4 times. Nvidia report a 8-10 times faster decode rate too. Maxwell also has a new GC5 power state designed to drop the GPU power demand under light workload situations – such as when playing back video.

Today we take a look at one of the most cost effective 1000W Platinum power supplies currently available – the creamy white Super Flower Leadex. The Leadex Platinum is currently available from Overclockers UK for £169.99 inc vat, on offer this week at only £149.99 inc vat.

As well as achieving Platinum efficiency, the unit is fully modular and is equipped with six 6+2 SATA cables to power demanding Crossfire and SLi configurations. Is it worth the asking price?

Features

• 100% Full Modular Cabling Design For Easy Cable Management
• 80 PLUS ® Platinum Certified, 91.12% 92.53% 91.11% Efficiency At 20% 50% 100% Rated Load
• Full Range Auto Voltage Detection Design 100V~240V (Active PFC)
• Comply With ATX 12V. V2.2, EPS 12V. V2.91 & SSI EPS 12V. V2.92 Specification
• Comply With Energy Star Standard & EuP (Energy Using Products) Regulation
• Over Voltage Protection / Over Current Protection / Over Power Protection / Short Circuit Protection / Under Voltage Protection
• Support All Intel/AMD Multi-Core CPU & ATX/BTX Compatible Motherboards
• Support NVIDIA® SLI™ & ATI CrossFireX™ High Performance Graphic Card
• Patented Easy To Use & Install Crystal Clear Cube Connectors with LED
• More than 2,000 times On/Off test
• Unleaded Green Materials with RoHS/WEEE Compliance
• Perfect For Professional & High Performance Gaming System

Earlier this month Nvidia released their new Maxwell based GTX 750 Ti graphics card, and we were on hand to review the excellent MSI Twin Frozr solution on launch day. Today we take a look at another Nvidia partner card, the Palit GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual, featuring a substantial core and memory clock increase and custom dual fan cooler. Is it worthy of a shortlist?

The new Palit GTX 750 Ti is a modified design featuring dual fans and an extended plastic shroud.


Palit have decided to overclock their solution extensively, increasing the core clock speed from 1,020mhz to 1,202mhz. The GDDR5 memory also receives a large clock bump, increased from the reference card speeds of 1,250mhz to 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective). This should give a noticeable speed increase over both the Nvidia reference solution, and the MSI Twin Frozr card, which was clocked at a more modest 1,085mhz.

The Nvidia reference card is using 2GB of Hynix GDDR5 memory, but like MSI, Palit have opted for Samsung branded GDDR5.

The Maxwell SM architecture delivers improved efficiency and 35% more performance per CUDA core on shader limited workloads. Nvidia have changed the architecture with the SM scheduler architecture and algorithms having been rewritten to avoid stalling and further reducing the energy per instruction required for scheduling. Maxwell SM architecture enabled Nvidia to increase the number of SM’s to five in GM107, compared to two in GK107 – and all with only a 25% increase in die area.

Nvidia have explained that the organisation of the SM has been changed. Each SM has been partitioned into four separate processing blocks, each with their own instruction buffer, scheduler and 32 CUDA cores. GK107 Kepler could have a non power of two number of CUDA cores, with some shared. The new partitioning simplifies the design and scheduling logic which reduces computation latency and saves area and power demand.

Pairs of processing blocks share four texture filtering units and a texture cache. The L1 compute cache function is now combined with the texture cache function and shared memory is a separate unit, shared across all four blocks. Each Maxwell SM is smaller than a Kepler SM but delivers around 90% of the performance. The smaller area means that Nvidia can incorporate many more SM’s per GPU. The GM107 (v GK107) has 25 percent more texture performance, 1.7 times more CUDA cores and 2.3 greater shader performance.

Nvidia have improved Video capabilities with the latest hardware. Maxwell incorporates an improved NVENC block to deliver faster encode performance over Kepler – 6-8 times real time compared against 4 times. Nvidia report a 8-10 times faster decode rate too. Maxwell also has a new GC5 power state designed to drop the GPU power demand under light workload situations – such as when playing back video.

AMD’s R9 290 and R9 290X have been well received by the gaming community over the last couple of months, especially those partner cards featuring enhanced coolers and clock speeds. Today we look at a solution that has received special treatment courtesy of MSI … their R9 290 Gaming Edition. How does it stack up?

Today we supplement our tests by analysing performance at 3840×2160 (4k HD) on the Asus PQ321QE. We acquired one of these screens for high end graphics card reviews. Last year this monitor cost £2,999.99, but (as we predicted) the prices are already dropping in 2014 … down to £2399.99 this month. Sure it is still a lot of money, but prices will continue to decrease, opening up the joys of 4K gaming to a wider audience.

Setting up this monitor is simple with both AMD and Nvidia hardware (via DisplayPort cable) and we didn’t experience any issues. To achieve a refresh rate of 60hz after the Forceware or Catalyst drivers were installed we enable the Multi Stream Transport mode within a submenu of the Asus PQ321QE.

MSI have overclocked their R9 290X from reference speeds of 947mhz to 977mhz although the memory is running at default clock speeds of 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective). The Hawaii core is built on the 28nm process and features 2560 shaders, 64 ROPS and 160 Texture Units. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 512 Bit interface.

Today we are taking a look at the OCZ Vertex 460 240GB Solid State Drive, the first product we have reviewed since the Toshiba acquisition. The Vertex 460 240GB is currently on offer from Amazon for £147.82 inc vat so we will find out if it is a good purchase for an upcoming system build.

It has been difficult in recent months to miss the OCZ bankruptcy news, however the Toshiba acquisition does bode well for the future. With Toshiba able to supply high grade NAND it should make the process of future product development as quick and painless as possible.

That said, OCZ are going to continue to operate as a separate entity under the Toshiba umbrella, so we will continue calling them OCZ.


OCZ are selling three versions of this drive, in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities. IOPS performance on all drives is rated highly, with the 240GB and 480GB models claiming a marginal edge over the smaller 120GB version. Additionally, maximum rated write performance is higher on the larger drives, up from 420 MB/s to 525 MB/s.

The Vertex 460 warranty is rated at 3 years, which works out at 20GB writes a day.