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Nat J.

Nat J.

Joined on 02/07/03

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 20
Most Favorable Review

Good bang for the buck.

ADATA S596 Turbo AS596TB-64GM-C 2.5" 64GB USB 2.0 & SATAII Internal / External Solid State Drive (SSD)
ADATA S596 Turbo AS596TB-64GM-C 2.5" 64GB USB 2.0 & SATAII Internal / External Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: This was the cheapest, non-rebate 64GB SSD I could find for a recent build. Performance has been as expected - snappy, instant application launches, swift boot up, TRIM enabled in 7 without any effort on my part.

Cons: As indicated by Microsoft, certain SSD drives don't perform well enough across the board to get a 6+ rating on drive performance. This is one of those drives. It is likely because of the JMicron controller being subpar on random/read write latency versus other SSD drives. This leaves prefetching and superfetch enabled to mask any performance deficit that might be manifested. Frankly, that doesn't bother me at all. No stutters or other performance issues have been noticed so far.

Overall Review: Cheap enough and without the firmware issues that seem to plague the SANDFORCE controllers. For better or worse, JMicron has been doing this for a while.

12/18/2010
Most Critical Review

G620 Speed Problems

GIGABYTE GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I am using this board for WHS 2011 and having raid and easy to access SATA ports (they are flat, not right angle) is a big plus. WHS 2011 installed just fine, the RAID array was discovered without using a driver disc or anything fancy.

Cons: The G620 only runs @ 1.6Ghz (versus the 2.6Ghz it should run at.) The F2 --> F8 bios flash meant my RAID1 sets had to rebuild after being reconfigured in the BIOS, I just walked away for the night.

Overall Review: Running the latest F8 bios, the G620 is only running @ 1.6ghz. This is reported in Windows and in CPUz even which with Windows configured for max performance running 100% loaded with Prime95. I have emailed Gigabyte support about the issue, we'll see if they ever get back to me.

3/18/09

GIGABYTE GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card GV-N96GMC-512H
GIGABYTE GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card GV-N96GMC-512H

Pros: The rebate is now at worldwide rebates, I just looked.

Cons: Still on the slow camel that is the UPS three day service.

Overall Review: Looking forward to putting this in my HTPC to decode Blu-Ray and play some games too.

Wife's PC - works great

GIGABYTE GA-MA770-S3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-MA770-S3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Works great - no issues at all. A stable system is a must have for my wife, and this board has done it's job while providing good performance and excellent future scalability with regards to memory and CPU compatibility.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: 5400+ X2, Enermax 485W, X1900XT 512, 4 gigs of APACER DDR2800 2x2GB. Flawless. Vista32 for now, soon to be Vista64 with the release of PP1 for WHS.

Works great for In-Law PC

GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2 AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 740G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2 AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 740G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Works as advertised, solid, no issues with drivers in XP. Pretty fast too, onboard graphics are decent enough. You can't get a board like this for an Intel chip for anything close to the same price.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: I am going to buy another one of these for a little media PC I am putting together. AM2 processors are just so darn cheap!

Very nice for the price

Intel Pentium D 805 - Pentium D Smithfield Dual-Core 2.66 GHz LGA 775 95W Processor - BX80551PE2666FN
Intel Pentium D 805 - Pentium D Smithfield Dual-Core 2.66 GHz LGA 775 95W Processor - BX80551PE2666FN

Pros: Very quick, almost as fast as an 820 at most things that are clock speed related. 64 bit ready for those looking forward to Vista. Very perky performance for the price.

Cons: Not the newest PD core out there. 65nm would have been really nice along with 2x1MB cache it would have offered.

Overall Review: I use a 4400+ X2 regularly at work and built a PD 930 machine a few weeks back, and while this processor does have the raw power of either of them for applications like gaming, I don't think there could possibly be a better bang-for-your-buck desktop processor out there. Paired with a nice 945P board it is quite nice.