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JOHN I.

JOHN I.

Joined on 10/24/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 2
Most Critical Review

CHOPPY HDMI AUDIO

MSI Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC
MSI Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC

Pros: Excellent performance vs power consumption. Great cooling system that is quite (at least compared to the noise from the other 5 fans in my case).

Cons: HDMI audio cycles on and off resulting in choppy audio if using the HDMI output.

Overall Review: The AMD HD 7000 series is known to have an issue with HDMI audio that cycles on and off resulting in choppy audio if you are using the HDMI output. Just do a search on "PP_SclkDeepSleepDisable" which indicates a work around. However, since this involves editing the registry you will most likey have to do this every time you uninstall an old driver in order to install a new AMD Graphics driver. It seems to be a hit or miss defect as I have another MSI HD7950 Twin Frozr that I bought 6 months previously to the defective card running on another PC that was built using the same hardware components using the same AMD Graphics Driver that works fine without having to set the PP_SclkDeepSleepDisable registry variable. Since this problem exists for other brands using other 7xxx series GPUs, it appears to be an AMD hardware issue. Obviously, if you don't plan to use the HDMI audio, it will not be problem. Otherwise, the MSI 7950 Twin Frozer is fine card.

Poor Performance

TRENDnet TPL-420E2K Powerline  AV2 AV1200 Adapter Kit, Up to 1.2Gbps
TRENDnet TPL-420E2K Powerline AV2 AV1200 Adapter Kit, Up to 1.2Gbps

Pros: Easy to use powerline connectivity

Cons: Using three TPL-420E2K adapters connecting across two different non-GFI and non-filtered (1990 built 2000 sqft two story house) circuits between upstairs office gigabit capable wi-fi router and gigabit connected NAS box to downstairs PCs in den and family rooms. Pretty much symmetric download/upload from NAS to PC in each room results: 46 Mbps and 56 Mbps respectively. Far short of 1Gbps and worse than existing 5 MHz N bridge's 70Mbps and MoCA adapter's 195 Mbps performance.

Overall Review: Some years ago, I had some TrendNet homeplug turbo adapters which eventually got donated to Goodwill, I seem to recall that they had about 50 Mbps performance on my house power circuits. So for me, the MIMO Homeplug AV2 technology did not yield any improvement under actual real-world usage.