We played with NZXT's Avatar

Review: The avatar among rodents

NZXT is a company that people usually associate with high quality computer cases or power supply units, but as of recently NZXT has launched its first mouse, the Avatar. We must admit that we were a bit skeptical about the whole thing but then again NZXT has some great and high quality computer cases and other products



The Avatar looks sharp once you take it out of the box, and despite our belief that it is a small mouse when you placed it next to, for example, OCZ Dominatrix, which is quite large, you notice that it Avatar is in fact just slim or if you want narrow, but definitely not small. Unlike most of rodents on the market which are built for right-handed people, the Avatar has an ambidextrous design, which means that left-handed users will have no trouble with this one



The NZXT Avatar measures at 36.8 x 69.1 x 128mm (HxWxD) and has seven programmable buttons. It features a 2600 DPI optical sensor with four sensitivity settings , 5.8 Mega Pixels/second at a max rate of 6469 and a hardware DPI switch option

Now that we got the specs out of the way, we can get back to the actual design. It's comfortable, a show off, and a solid performer, and that's what gaming mice are all about. The Avatar comes packed in a neat looking box, that houses the mice, safely protected on one side, and a manual with a driver CD on the other side neatly tucked inside a "cover"



The mouse itself has a rubbery feel all over it and two first things that you notice are two silver buttons on both sides and a DPI LED indicator with three LEDs. Since it has an ambidextrous design, both sides of the mouse have a rubber-coated thumb rest



You can also notice two glossy underlines near the two main buttons but we will get to that a bit later. Of course, between the main buttons, there's a scroll wheel, and behind it, two DPI switch buttons. The bottom side is reserved for three large Teflon feet which ensure a smooth glide over almost any surface


The overall feel of the mouse is comfortable and the only thing that we had to adjust to, is a bit strange feeling on the fingers that are gripping the outer edge, as we accidentally pressed the "back" button a few times, but again it's something that you can get used to. The DPI switch buttons that are located behind the scroll wheel are also a bit hard to reach



The fun starts when you plug the mouse in, as its lights up in a soft shade of blue. Those two glossy underlines located along both top edges of the Avatar, as well as the LED DPI indicator glow in a kind of cool blue which gives it a great look in low lighting conditions




The software installation is as easy as it can be, few clicks on the "next" button and you are up and running. The software places a small icon on the taskbar for quick access to the button configuration panel, and various sensitivity settings. Avatar's software allows up to five different profiles, three different pooling rate settings and as mentioned before four different DPI settings



The sensitivity tab of software offers settings for master X and Y axis sensitivity, as well as sensitivity settings for the Windows pointer speed. The last, advance settings tab, has scroll speed settings and sensitivity, double click speed settings and a test area



We used the Avatar for some casual gaming and normal office work and it performs admirably. We had a slight doubt concerning this mouse, as it is the first one made by NZXT, but it certainly surprised us. It works well in games, both FPS and RTS as you can set the DPI depending on your need. It is comfortable and slides easy over any mouse pad that we have tried


Conclusion

The Avatar is a NZXT's attempt to enter the gaming peripheral market, and as far as we are concerned it's a rather good product. With its sleek, elegant look, precise 2600 DPI sensor and that soft blue LED backlight, the Avatar is one of the coolest looking mice that has ever entered our lab

Some people might not like the slim and light design of the Avatar but as with all gaming peripherals but this is purely a question of personal preference and taste. The only thing that we had to get used to is the location and sensitivity of the side buttons, as it is a bit annoying when you hit the back button in the browser when you don’t want to, and in games it can maybe cost you a kill or two, depending on the command that you assigned to this button

It has an ambidextrous design so left-handed users will feel like at home with this mouse. Due to its "Gaming mouse" label some might object the lack of weight system which is now a must when you are talking about gaming rodents, but we didn't have any objections to Avatar's weight as it is heavy enough for you to feel it and light enough not to snail over the mouse pad



The mouse currently sells at Newegg.com for US $69.99. The Europeans can find it listed at Geizhals.at for as low as €38,86, which is yet again not as expensive as some "high-end" gaming rodents

With the elegant and sleek looks, decent price, and top notch performance, we can easily recommend the Avatar

Microsoft works on Direct X11

All for Windows 7

Software giant Microsoft is trying to improve the visuals in Windows 7 by working with hardware makers on Direct X11

Windows 7 supports DirectX 11 that Microsoft says enables better gaming through more realistic graphics and faster playback of multimedia files.Microsoft has teams working with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to make sure these features end up on graphics cards. The new DirectX 11 graphics drivers help Windows 7 effectively break up tasks over multiple cores to boost application and graphics performance

It means that Windows 7 will process video faster by unloading the task from the CPU to graphics processor cores. So far Nvidia has used DirectX compute capabilities in Windows 7 to accelerate tasks like manipulating images or playing DVDs via its graphics processing unit. An Nvidia spokesman said that Microsoft did a number of things within the operating system that allowed it to take the computing horsepower developed for visual computing and apply it to a range of tasks that have never been seen before

AMD said DirectX 11 harnesses the massive parallel processing capabilities of GPUs to improve gaming on PCs. It is hoping that Windows 7 will push gaming at a whole new level of realism that you've never been able to experience before because it just hasn't been possible. An AMD spokesman said that Windows 7 could speed up conversion of video for playback on portable devices. Users will be able to drag and drop video from PCs to portable devices, with DirectX 11 enabling video conversion on the fly

While Microsoft has built native DirectX 11 support in Windows 7, it means that users will have to buy more hardware. AMD in June showed off a prototype DirectX 11 graphics processing unit, but is yet to formally announce a product. AMD's Robin Maffeo, a Microsoft alliance manager has said that there are plans to make native DirectX 11 hardware from AMD in its ATI Radeon GPUs available when Windows 7 is ready

Annoyingly this means that people who want the new graphics will have to buy a new card after Windows 7 has shipped and will not be able to get a new machine in October. Looks like I will have to put off buying a new PC until next year  

iBUYPOWER launches the Chimera Killer X58 and AM3

Beautiful chassis, average price points

Recently, iBUYPOWER in Los Angeles launched two new high-end systems based on the Intel X58 chipset and the AMD socket AM3 platform. The systems are obviously designed for gaming and will be known as Chimera Killer Special Edition PCs, featuring the company’s signature “Inferno” case design



We have to admit, the quality of the paint job is very aesthetically pleasing, as there isn’t too much of any single color and the LED lighting is subtle yet helpful in accentuating detail. On the Intel hardware side of things, the X58 version features an ASUS P6T motherboardsupporting x16/x16/x4 SLI and CrossFire, six USB 2.0 ports, Firewire and eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet, and 7.1-channel audio with optical and coax S/PDIF outputs. It comes equipped with a Core i7 920 2.66GHz (not sure if it’s C0 or D0 stepping) cooled by an Asetek Liquid CPU Cooling kit, two Geforce GTX 275 896MB cards in SLI, 6GB of DDR3 1333MHz, a 750GB SATA II drive, and the Killer Xeno Pro Gaming NIC



On the AMD side of things, the Chimera Killer AM3 features an ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX board supporting one PCI-E x16 card or two in x8/x8 CrossFire, six USB 2.0 ports, Firewire and eSATA, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, and 7.1-channel audio with an optical port. It comes equipped with an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition, two Radeon HD 4770 512MB cards in CrossFire, 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz, and the Killer Xeno Pro Gaming NIC



The Chimera Killer Special Edition X58 is available now starting at $1899, while the Chimera Killer Special Edition AM3 is available starting at $1499 directly from iBUYPOWER

DirectX 10.1 is not important

Jensen believes

When asked what he thinks about DirectX 10.1 support in Nvidia hardware, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that incremental updates of DirectX are not important

DirectX 10.1 and any similar incremental DirectX updates are not important and that is why Nvidia is not really excited about them. However, Nvidia is excited about DirectX 11 and they believe that these are the important updates that they need to follow 

Jensen believes that game developers are not even using all the possibilities of DirectX 10, and DirectX 10.1 obviously brings some improvements, but not enough to really be excited about it

DirectX 11 games will take probably at least year to show up, probably even more as we still have to see the real DirectX 10 games that can use all available features

Nvidia believes in small chips

Ultra low power

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes in two strategies for his company. One is that central processing is going to transform into co-processing, something that we’ve just mentioned here, and the second part of the strategy is that Nvidia wants to compete with ultra-low power chips that it plans to put inside of many multimedia internet devices and mobile phones

Jensen describes Tegra-like devices as extremely small and low-power computing devices and this is the part of the strategy that his company wants to pursue in the years to come. Naturally, graphics and GPU remains an important part of the computing in the future and Nvidia’s strategy and Nvidia will continue to fight for the GPU performance crown

We’ve seen what Tegra can do and we know that Microsoft is using it for its upcoming Zune HD multimedia player. Even Jensen didn’t talk about that, as he is not in a position to comment such a deal, until Microsoft confirms it

We are simply going to see more products based on Tegra and Tegra 2 processors, and we expect to see many design wins in 2010 and beyond. Tegra 2 is almost close to being finished and naturally you can expect new chips will be even more power efficient and bring more functionality. Tegra is going to find its place in netbooks / multimedia internet devices as well as in mobile devices 

 

Dell phases out the Inspiron Mini 12

Swan song for big Atom-based netbooks

Dell has dropped the Inspiron Mini 12, the world's first 12-inch Atom-based netbook. A couple of months ago Dell phased out the 8.9-inch Mini 9, and it's planning to stick with 10-inch netbooks in the future

Introduced last November, the Mini 12 was the first netbook to use Z-series Atoms and it was also the first design to offer a 12-inch panel. Although Intel never sanctioned the use of bigger panels on netbooks, several other vendors followed suit, including Acer, Asus and MSI

However, the time of big netbooks is slowly passing by, as vendors are updating their designs to accommodate Intel's CULV processors. Acer and MSI will soon drop their big Atom-based products, such as the Aspire One 751 and X-Slim X320

They probably won't be missed, as their CULV successors feature the same sleek ultraportable design and good battery life, but also offer a bit more horsepower under the bonnet with a small premium 

WD readies 7200rpm 2TB drive

Fast and pricey

Western Digital is about to launch a new 2TB drive, and it's only the second 2TB on the market to run at 7200rpm

A month ago we wrote about Hitachi's 7200rpm 2TB drive, which is now officially launched and making its way to retail. WD doesn't like being second, so the RE3 should start shipping soon

The RE3 is a RAID edition SATA II drive with 32MB of cache and an 8.7ms seek time. In case you want to google it and find it in a shop near you, its official designation is WD2002FBYS
 

Politicians call for Yahoo - Microsoft deal investigation

Google has powerful friends

Proof that Google has friends in high places has emerged after some leading democrats called for an investigation into the Yahoo-Microsoft deal

Google currently attracts some 65 per cent of search traffic, compared with less than 30% for Microsoft and Yahoo combined. Yet mysteriously some top politicians don't want Google to be matched by a glorious Microsoft-Yahoo alliance Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat who chairs the Senate subcommittee on antitrust, said that the deal “warrants our careful scrutiny

Why would this be? Surely such politicians would be interested in killing off an overly dominant No. 1 player, why block the creation of a stronger No. 2? In public Google has said that it welcomes the competition and has not made any formal anti-trust complaints

However it does have a strong presence in Washington with the Obama administration and has a big influence on the White House's thinking on technology. It is fair to say that word on the street is that it is letting these links do the talking

Why appear evil when you can make the other side looking like they are playing monopoly

Topower Tiger Series 1200W modular PSU reviewed

Six +12V rails, EMI shielding, Quad-SLI ready

Topower is a power supply unit manufacturing company with some of the most industrial strength products the computer hardware industry of today has ever felt a demand of needing. Its reputation is built around one solid standard – to provide top quality products for national distributors, ODM clients, and the classic hardcore PC enthusiast daring enough to stress hardware components to their unthinkable yet skillfully achievable limits

The company originally began as Topower Computer Industrial Co., Ltd. in Taiwan in 1986 under the vision of Mr. Kent Chou. However, the company soon realized the rapid need to expand to the Western hemisphere and European markets to better suit the need for fast-paced globalization of the computer hardware industry. Topower headed its operations to the booming industrial sector of west coast United States, where it has a branch located in the City of Industry in the Los Angeles county of Southern California

Recently, our friends Rick Lee, Product Manager and Mario Gastelum, Sales Director of Topower sent us a review sample of the company’s latest high-end and enthusiast-oriented power supply unit, the Tiger Series 1200W

EP-1200W-P10-T2



This is Topower’s flagship model, and it comes with a reasonable price tag of just under200$Upon reading the specifications, it looks to be a serious piece of equipment for the most demanding applications. It features an 80 Plus certification to promote electrical efficiency, meaning that it’s been tested to run at 80 percent efficiency across all rated input loads. It features a maximum load of up to 1200W across the entire unit, and up to 1008W alone at 84A across its six +12v rails





As with any enthusiast power supply designed to meet robust high-end requirements, it comes with Quad-SLI certification right out of the box for multi-GPU configurations. According to the company, “It was designed to handle Nvidia GeForce GTX 295s in a Quad-SLI configuration and AMD’s most powerful graphics cards.” Not surprisingly, we have to agree. When asked, Product Manager Rick Lee told us that the unit has a control card with dials to combine and split +12V rails soldered to the PCB. This design allows the possibility for the PSU to support either the Intel ATX 12v spec or a greater +12v power demand from power-hungry GPUs



Upon first inspection of the packaging, the box weighed in at an average proportion of what we would expect from an enthusiast power supply. In perspective, were just happy that an originally Taiwan-based company didn’t follow in the footsteps of ASUS and Gigabyte with the colorful unneeded flare that puts American infomercials to shame



The packaging included the power supply unit itself in bubble wrap and an accessory box with all of the included modular cables and the manual. After unpacking, not a dent, scratch, or smudge was to be seen – just a very shiny PSU and some rather tough looking modular cables equipped with black EMF shielding cylinders. The company put a large emphasis on the protection that the device provides from electromagnetic interference. We take this vital precaution seriously due to the indefinite nature and effects of EMF on the lifetime of system components



“The beauty of this power supply is that it performs way beyond that specified standard and has a rating that out powers most power supplies in its class,” said Mario Gastelum, Product Marketing. “We designed and utilized REMI technology to effectively maximize the electrical output to effectively harness the complete power of 1200 Watts. In addition, we developed PNT (Plug-N-Twist) Technology to deliver an easy to manage cable system that won't clutter your PC's interior

Installation and test system specifications

Installation could not have been any simpler. The physical flexibility of the modular cabling is very similar to what you get with a professional high-end Monster Cable. It is very easy to connect and route around components because the cabling itself does not mold to any shape but maintains its strength while being flexed



The unit comes with two PCI-Express 6-pin cables, two PCI-Express 6+2 pin cables, eight SATA power connectors, one ATX 24-pin, one ATX 8-pin, one ATX 4+4 pin, six 4-pin Molex connectors, and five multi-colored, reusable twisty-ties

The ends of the cables came in two different shapes – one shape is associated with the four  PCI-Express connections at the top of the PSU, and the other are associated with the rest of the connectors. Everything plugged in just fine, but the biggest letdown was the fact that a third  PCI-Express 6+2 pin could not be ran from the unit because it does not have an extra connector for it. We were trying to install three GTX 295s to test the PSU in a full Folding@home environment but it simply could not be done





On another note, the core hardware of our test configuration consisted of an EVGA X58 SLI Classified E759 (nForce 200) motherboard, an Intel Core i7 Extreme 965 at 3.74GHz and 1.34v, 6GB of Mushkin XP Series DDR3 1600MHz 7-8-7-20 in triple-channel mode, and two EVGA Geforce GTX 295 Plus Edition dual-PCB cards in Quad-SLI overclocked to 680/1483/1055MHz

Our peripheral hardware consisted of a Thermalright TRUE Copper with dual Noctua NF-12P fans in push-pull configuration, two Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB RAID Edition drives running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTM, and a Sony BDP-S560 Blu-ray ROM drive. All in all, our system was definitely ready to face the Topower Tiger Series 1200W

Testing the power supply – idle desktop and full-power gaming

On the Windows 7 desktop, our review unit did quite well at handling idle system performance. As expected, all six +12v rails maintained solid input load balance within +0.4v of operation, while the +3.3v rail measured in at a stable +3.31v and the +5v at +4.96v. Everything was running in great shape, and to be honest there was a noticeable difference in the heat output of our GTX 295s compared to the previous power configuration we had been using. It had been a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750w coupled with an FSP Group X5 450W booster (for the PCI-E 6+2 pin inputs). Our graphics cards were emitting 3C less heat than they had previously been, and we were very pleased with this so we decided to investigate a little further

We decided to go ahead and measure the electromagnetic interference levels coming from all four PCI-E power cables, as the company does specify that the cables are coated with REMI shielding for maximum component protection. We grabbed our F.W. Bell 4100 Series Gauss Meter and found the results to be fairly average, however not exceptional. Where any number below 2mG of radiation constitutes an “acceptable” level for a human living environment, the PCI-E cables themselves averaged between 4.2mG and 13.3mG depending on GPU load. In comparison, our testing room atmosphere away from our system measured in between 0.3mG and 0.5mG depending on our location in the room. We then decided to measure the top of the PSU unit itself just for fun, directly above the fan, and it measured in between 116mG and 121mG during idle system load. These were the numbers that were actually impressive compared to other power supply units we have seen

When it came down to our real-world application testing, Far Cry 2, Mirror’s Edge, and Crysis Warhead were our games of choice for measuring system load on the Topower Tiger 1200W. We did some pre-analysis and determined that Mirror’s Edge would make good use of GPU PhysX, but wouldn’t entirely max out our input load. Far Cry 2 would be a middle comparison solution, and Crysis Warhead would be the great system stressor due to its ridiculous dependency on raw GPU acceleration  as well as its heavy strain on the SLI link running through the integrated memory controller on our Nehalem-based motherboard

The Mirror’s Edge in-game stress test ran as expected, with an average draw of around 571W on maximum settings with PhysX enabled at 1920x1080 resolution, 16x AF, High Quality texture filtering and Ambient Occlusion enabled



The Far Cry 2 in-game stress test added both more CPU and GPU load to the total system draw, with an average of 684w on maximum settings in DirectX 10 mode at 2048x1152 resolution, 4x AA, 16x AF, High Quality texture filtering and Ambient Occlusion enabled



Finally, our ultra in-game stress test with Crysis Warhead taxed the PSU unit the hardest, with an average power draw of 814w on completely maxed out settings in DX9 mode (for optimal performance and quality) at 2048x1152 resolution, 16x AF, High Quality texture filtering and Ambient Occlusion enabled. With each live in-game test running for about twenty five minutes each, the Topower Tiger 1200w took our system stress load quite well, and we are pleased with the stability of the unit

Thermals and audible noise impressions

The EP-1200W-P10-T2 is equipped with a powerful yet energy-efficient 120mm fan with automatically adjustable speed according to the unit temperature, which we were very pleased with listening to during normal operation. Upon system startup, the power supply unit was almost completely inaudible, minus a very subtle “zap” noise that can be heard as power is drawn from the unit within the first few milliseconds of operation. During our loading to the desktop of Windows 7, we isolated the rest of our active system noise with some egg crates as best we could. The result was very promising, as the 120mm fan on the EP-1200W-P10-T2 gave roughly 16dBa to 19dBa of audible output depending on the listening distance. For normal operation in a case, however, we suspect that this unit will be virtually silent



As typical with almost any power supply unit, the effect of running Crysis and initiating full system load did result in an audible noise level increase. However, the Advanced Auto Thermal Fan Design specification of this unit really proved itself worthy of the title. With a power draw between 815 and 935 watts, the unit was able to stay well under a (subjective) 35dBa on our test bed with very minimal vibration

Heat dissipation was also exceptional during idle and full load usage. The unit was completely touchable by hand during stress testing and the exhaust emitted from the back was roughly 10F above room temperature. The heatsinks proved to be optimal for our environment of 75F (thanks to our space heating GTX 295 cards) and should not be an issue with even the most demanding of hardware configurations

Final thoughts and conclusion

Topower has shown itself to be an intelligent manufacturer when it comes to the equipment design and planning needed to make industrial-strength power supply units. The Tiger Series 1200W (EP-1200W-P10-T2) features six incredibly stable +12v rails for highly intensive multi-GPU environments where overclocking, overvolting and stability are the three central focus points of the hardcore enthusiast user. The electromagnetic interference shielding on the cables proved to be a worthy contender of the “REMI shielded” marketing strategy, and although they are not the best we have seen, they effectively eliminate a reasonable amount of radiation from critical system components. Finally, the proprietary Advanced Auto Thermal Fan design effectively eliminates any and all audible noise from within a closed case environment. Even though we tested this unit in an open space, our subjective analysis of the low decibel levels provided an added bonus to the overall value of the product, and we are impressed with the results. While this isn’t the first PSU release we’ve been excited about, it definitely features some solid design wins that demonstrate it worthy enough for our enthusiast recommended list

Sony blocks virtual XP mode

Vaio can't do it

Sony Vaio laptops can't run Window's 7's much vaunted Windows XP virtual mode The Vaio's are shipping with a BIOS which makes virtualisation impossible. Sony has not said that it will enable the feature in the future.

According to Sony Insider the company claims that it has received very little if any requests to enable VT technology. Its engineers and QA people were very concerned that enabling VT would expose our systems to malicious code that could go very in the Operating System structure of the PC and completely disable it, he said.

A few people are rumbling on bulletin boards about class actions and refunds as it is not clear in Sony's advertising that the Vaio machines are unable to work with a core feature of the Core 2 Duo chips they ship with.

Apparently the feature can be re-enabled by booting from a DOS disk and manually modifying the BIOS. This is considered advanced and technical task which Sony claims could cause security problems.