Thursday, October 30, 2008

Review: Asus My Cinema-PHC3-100/NAQ/FM/AV/RC TV Tuner

Link to article (Overclockersclub.com)

Television has been around for a long time, much longer than computers. However, it turns out that TV and computers complement each other very nicely. Who hasn't wanted to record a TV show on their computer so they could watch it later, or rewind a program to hear the punch line of a joke or see an instant replay of your favorite football team? Other people just don't have a lot of room available to them and would like to watch TV on their computer. While most computers don't come with the ability to do this, you can get an add-on card to allow you to connect a cable signal or antenna signal to your computer and tune in to any channels you have access to.

One such TV Tuner is the Asus My Cinema-PHC3-100/NAQ/FM/AV/RC (which from now on I'll simply refer to as the Asus My Cinema, even though this refers to an entire product line) which is a PCI card that can tune in FM radio as well as digital and analog TV signals. This is truly an all-in-one package, as it comes with a remote, as well as some software to make your experience complete. The software will let you tune in channels, record television, and watch TV on your Windows Vista sidebar. A final benefit that I will mention here is that the card also serves as a hardware MPEG2 encoder, releasing some of the stress off your CPU and onto the card.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Review: MSI N9800GT

Link to article (Overclockersclub.com)

It used to be that if you needed a new video card there were only a few choices to choose from. There would be the ultra high end card, the mid range card, and the card for people who want to save money. While these same categories exist today, there are many more cards that fit into each category. This is great for the consumer because now we can weigh what features we want and have a smooth gradient of options to choose from, anywhere from the inexpensive cards to the 600 dollar cards that double as a room heater.

The MSI N9800GT is one card that fits into the mid range category, even though it has a high end name. The N9800GT has all the features of a 9000 series card and is based on the G92b chipset which is made on a 55nm fab. This card will support DirectX 10, however it is not entirely DirectX 10.1 compliant. With a core clock speed of 600MHz and a memory clock speed of 900MHz, this card is already pretty fast. It has 754million transistors which eat up 105watts of power, enough to run a normal house lightbulb. The question that this review will answer is whether or not that 105watts of power is worth it or if it is better spent on other hardware.