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Chen L.

Chen L.

Joined on 08/01/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 8
Most Favorable Review

Powerful and Efficient

XFX Radeon HD 5850 1GB DDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card HD-585X-ZNFC
XFX Radeon HD 5850 1GB DDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card HD-585X-ZNFC

Pros: Very high performance, runs every application at > 60FPS on highest settings; could not have dreamed of this kind of performance 12 months ago. Very cool at idle, and uses much less power than the GF 8800GT that it replaced; the efficiency of Cypress core is unparallelled. Things like UVD2 work right out of the box. Linux compatible with various distributions as well; runs Lucid as well as it runs under Windows.

Cons: The fan gets slightly noisy under load at times, a bit noisier than either the 8800GT or the 4850 that I have previously/in other systems. It seems that the lower price means less acoustically optimal cooling solution than a reference card.

Overall Review: Highly efficient VLIW encapsulating SPMD architecture; high throughput to instruction stream size ratio. Would be bandwidth limited in certain situations, such as during GPGPU situations with ATI Stream, but texture and constant cache usually obviates this problem for graphics workload. Good implementation of D3D11 features such as tessellation implemented largely in fixed function units. Fixed func units here are optimal for equilat trig tessellation, but less than optimal in semi-regular (mixed) polygon tessellation, which nVidia's implementation does better. Tess should take less of a hit in 5800s on the stream processors than that done in GF100, but the ceiling for tess performance is also lower. So when running both tess heavy and pixel shader heavy workloads, ATI solution should come ahead, where only tess heavy workloads would favor nVidia; so take your pick on D3D11 workloads. 5800s are by far more power efficient though. As a computer engineer, this is a marvel.

Great, Intuitive Tablet

SAMSUNG Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablet - Metallic Gray NVIDIA Tegra 2 1.00GHz 10.1" Wide XGA 1GB Memory 16GB Storage  NVIDIA ULP GeForce
SAMSUNG Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablet - Metallic Gray NVIDIA Tegra 2 1.00GHz 10.1" Wide XGA 1GB Memory 16GB Storage NVIDIA ULP GeForce

Pros: Got this for my sister, who's a graphic artist. This tablet is very intuitive to use, very easy to set up. The performance is very good, and the response latency is better than both the iPad2 and the Xoom. The screen is probably the best I have seen on any non-PC device, very crisp and good gamut, and has better resolution that most tablets out there. She loves the fact that this works very well with a sketching app in the android market that works perfectly. She often goes to museums and art galleries to take pictures, and to sketch some of the sculptures and oil paintings, which this tablet is perfect for. Afterwards, she can conveniently modify her sketch and send it to her colleagues, etc. Also very good for another finger painting app that she also bought in the market, where she can create out doors (provided it's not a bright sunny day), and work in certain art classes.

Cons: She doesn't like the fact that the on-screen keyboard doesn't have a numbers row, the external keyboard that I have bought for her is also slightly finicky, having occasional issues after repeated disconnecting and reconnecting with the tablet. She also complains that the front-facing camera is kind of low resolution (not as high as her laptop's), although it seems to be sufficient for me.

Overall Review: Bought this for my sister as grad present. I own an iPad2, but this tablet has more flexibility in usage model. She is also happy that many of her favorite games, like fruit ninja, play very well on this tablet. She also plans to use it as her GPS direction finder; as this device acquires GPS signal very easily and even deep in buildings. She likes the fact that the weight is very light, and lighter than my iPad2, which works out very well for her toting it around all day and every day. The slim profile fits her day bag very well, and doesn't add much extra bulk (when she doesn't need the keyboard). She also enjoys some of the desktop widgets, such as the youtube 3D-flip widget, very much. And the google voice search (for youtube) also worked flawlessly, which adds a very nice convenience. Overall, aside from a few minor complaints, she's extremely happy with the tablet. I would recommend for any artist or creative type for daily use.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 keyboard

SAMSUNG Full Size Key Keyboard Dock for Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1-Inch ECR-K14AWEGXAR
SAMSUNG Full Size Key Keyboard Dock for Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1-Inch ECR-K14AWEGXAR

Pros: Great keyboard, the physical construction is one of the best I have ever used, even among desktop keyboards. The travel and tactile feel is great for touch typing, and feels very crisp and fluid.

Cons: Sometimes after plugging and unplugging from the tablet many times without reboot, the driver has problems recognizing the keyboard. The firmware will need work in the future. Although that's kind of expected with brand new accessory with a brand new tablet.

Overall Review: Generally a very positive experience. I would liked to have more connectivity options such as eSATA (we have an eSATA external disk that we would like to use).

Radeon 4670

HIS Hightech H467QT512P Radeon HD 4670 IceQ Turbo 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
HIS Hightech H467QT512P Radeon HD 4670 IceQ Turbo 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

Pros: very high performance for the amount of power consumption. It's hard to beat 320 stream processing elements and nearly a half teraflops in such a afforable package with only the PCIe slot powering it. The cooling assembly works very well, and noise is almost inaudible; I really appreciate the fact that it exhausts the hot air to the outside of the case, given the small HTPC case that I put it in. Runs pretty much every game I have at 1920X1200 with at least medium setting.

Cons: None so far; perhaps the fact that it's a little physicallly longer than I expected.

Overall Review: Great card for a small compact system with limited power supply, as was in my case (250W); runs perfectly with that small PSU, along with a 65W CPU, ATI theatre card, two HDDs, a Blu-ray ROM, and a DVD burner; could not be happier.

Radeon 2400 PCI edition: probably best of PCI cards available

PowerColor Radeon HD 2400PRO 256MB DDR2 PCI Graphics Card 24PRO256M PCI
PowerColor Radeon HD 2400PRO 256MB DDR2 PCI Graphics Card 24PRO256M PCI

Pros: Works very well with an older system that had a faulty AGP slot. The configuration was an Athlon Xp 3200+, old enough that would exclude most of the highend/midrange cards in recent memory. The PSU is also weak, 300W from a no-name company. The 2400 is a PCI card that does its job extremely well; barely registers on the power consumption part; and works with the OS interface, any slightly older games, and other graphical applications well. It does most of these tasks with ease, and saves us from having to go to a entirely new system. And the HD decoding hardware will also come in handy, since the plan is to eventually convert this to an HTPC with a Blu-ray drive.

Cons: Not much, not much at all.

Overall Review: This is a compact card that would fit into a small case very well; our case was the smallest you can have for a microATX board, and still has room left over. No heat from the card to speak of, the case temp is still the same as before (with onboard IGP). Great card for this purpose.

Phenom X4 9750

AMD Phenom 9750 2.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor
AMD Phenom 9750 2.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor

Pros: The B3 silicon has a number of improvements over the pervious iteration, especially in eliminating the possibility of the TLB race condition. Other improvements include the implementation of a 2-level successor correlating prefetch algorithm, which better prefetch less predictable memory access pattern than those of stride prefetcher and such. More improvements in decision process burst write buffer to DRAM are made. The register renaming lgoic AL/AG schedulers have been further optimized to take into account of potential phys R.F. access conflicts. Other improvements at the logic block layout level are also there.

Cons: Not as fast as some of the Intel high-end stuff, especially the 45nm parts; but for the price, it's pretty good value.

Overall Review: Overall good processor for mainstream computer; should perform more than adequately for almost any consumer/client application; may not be ideal for top-end workstation loads. Bought from etailer before available on newegg; may buy another one later on on newegg; newegg always the best service.