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Dennis N.

Dennis N.

Joined on 08/23/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 9
Most Favorable Review
HIS Radeon X1550 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Graphics Card H155F256EN-R
HIS Radeon X1550 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Graphics Card H155F256EN-R

Pros: I'm pleasantly surprised by this card. It maintains perfect functionality with all of my motherboards performance tweaks. Even with the performance tweaks on, I was able to push my PCI-e frequency to 110 (a 10% overclock) without upping the voltage. Card has no problems at this speed, and shows noticable performance gains. Oh, the fan is essentially silent as well.

Cons: Probably not good enough for a hardcore gamer, since the whiny punks only like the best. For you OSX86ers... Leopard does not natively support hardware acceleration for this card

Overall Review: I doubt I am at this cards max speed (I haven't even tried faster than 110, at any voltage). I think I can still push it harder if needed, but it's fast enough for me already.

Most Critical Review

Running two in RAID0... not impressed

OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 55GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G
OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 55GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G

Pros: They are still ok and will be faster than a HDD, but they perform nowhere near what is advertised

Cons: I switched my build away from another, cheaper sandforce SSD (Adata's) when the Vertex II's rebate popped up. I though I was getting the "best" drive at a price close to that of the the runner up... I was wrong. My drives are benchmarking 30-40% slower than what others have seen from the older design (just like everyone else has been posting recently).

Overall Review: It turns out I paid the highest price for what is at most the second best product. Misrepresenting the specs on a product is very unexpected from OCZ. I used to be a huge fan too. OCZ has lost the trust of quite a few system builders on this one. Bad review after bad review, I'm surprised they aren't even trying to make this right. Oh well, at least I don't need to worry about the rebate anymore. I'll stick with Adata from now on.

Limited in feature and layout but functional

BIOSTAR B75MU3B LGA 1155 Intel B75 USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
BIOSTAR B75MU3B LGA 1155 Intel B75 USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Cheap and it works.

Cons: Lot of minor issues. As others have mentioned, the PCIe 3.0 port does cover the SATA3 port when a decent sized card is used. I used a 90-degree sata cable to sneak into the sata3 port under the video card, but that cable now covers one of the 3 sata2 ports. so I can only use 3 sata deveices, not 4. Slightly annoying. A major issue I had is when I tried one of my standard tricks... I bought DDR3 1866 with the intention of running at 1600 as you can usually tighten up the latencies a bit when you run RAM clocked below its spec. This board was just not having it. DDR3 1866 just threw a fatal memory error (endless short beeps, no pattern or code). I bought a $20 2GB stick of DDR3 1600 from a local shop and it booted and even installed windows just fine (I'm using it now actually). I tried locking in the RAM frequency and timings and then swapping the 1866 back in, but again it just beeped. When I put the 1600 back in, the frequency multiplier had set itself back to auto. Appraently "locking in" the frequency multiplier is just not possible. Looks like I have to eat a restocking fee on the RAM. Admittedly the RAM was out of spec for the board, but it is supposed to be backwards compatible. Kind of a bummer.

Overall Review: Aside from the one little hiccup, I haven't had any issues at all. Machine has been running non-stop for several days now and is rock solid. This board definitely has a few quirks which the reviews doucument well. Overall though, not a bad board for the money. Just trust me and stick with DDR3 1600.

BSODs

HIS Radeon HD 4670 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card H467QR1GH
HIS Radeon HD 4670 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card H467QR1GH

Pros: Card is powerful, more than capable of keeping up with any games I would ever play. Quite silent as well. Potential to be a great car for the price.

Cons: Playing MP3's in media player (not exactly a huge load on any part of the system) causes intermittent BSODs (typically after ~30minutes) with stop code 0x00000116 referencing atikmpag.sys. (Also shows up in windows problem reports as "video hardware error) Apparently this card often fails to recover from timouts. After researching, it turns out that this issue has been present in many card generations, and promises have been made that the next driver update would fix the problem.... for version 10.0, then 10.1, then 10.2, then 10.3... etc. I'm on version 11.2 and the problem remains.

Overall Review: Many other uses have seen this BSOD triggered by Adobe's flash player, and numerous other applications. Allegedly disabling hardware acceleration fixes the issue, but why pay for awesome hardware if you can't take full advantage of it? Not all users see this issue, and the presence of the ICH7R/ICH10R RAID controller is common among those who do. There aren't any other other options for LGA775 boards with native RAID support. If comes down to my RAID-0 of OCZ vertex II's or my ATI card, guess which one I'm gonna pick?

Just buy it!

BYTECC HMD-10 10 ft. Black HDMI Male to DVI-D Male HDMI High Speed Male to DVI-D Male Single Link Cable Male to Male
BYTECC HMD-10 10 ft. Black HDMI Male to DVI-D Male HDMI High Speed Male to DVI-D Male Single Link Cable Male to Male

Pros: Cheap, long, and works as advertised

Cons: None

Overall Review: I apparently used this cable in reverse from the other reviewers. I connected the HDMI output from my Dish Network DVR to the DVI input on my rear-projection TV. I had zero issues and fantastic picture immediately.

Would be great if it worked.

Acer 22" Active Matrix, TFT LCD WSXGA LCD Monitor with HDCP Support 5 ms D-Sub, DVI AL2223Wd
Acer 22" Active Matrix, TFT LCD WSXGA LCD Monitor with HDCP Support 5 ms D-Sub, DVI AL2223Wd

Pros: The picture quality is absolutely fantastic for the price. Picture is very sharp. No dead pixles. The contrast is great and the black levels are decent

Cons: Mine started to fail after the 40 days or so (just outside Newegss's return policy). My colors flicker like crazy. Basically, my color temp changes from cooler to warmer (or vise verse) at random, sometimes flickering back and forth for several minutes. I guess a 3 year warranty is good, but having to use it isn't. Also, there is a significant color change with respect to verticle viewing angle - the colors appear much more red from higher up, and green from lower down. This makes things like working with digital photos very difficult.

Overall Review: The size is great. I went from dual-17's to this 22 widescreen alone and don't feel like I lost any significant amount of space.