Graphic Cards these days such as the high-end those based on the ATI HD3870X2 requires power from 2x PCI-E power source. As if that wasn’t difficult enough, ATI made it in such a way that one of the power connector has to be an PCI-E connector has to be an 8-pin version in order to enable their Catalyst Control Center’s OVERDRIVE feature for temperature monitoring and overclocking.

To make things worse, quite many power supply units (PSU) don’t come with 8-pin (some call it 6+2 pin) PCI-E connector. So, are you going to have to change your power supply unit to one that has an 8-pin PCI-E just to get that feature?

The good news is - YOU DON’T HAVE TO! Hence the purpose of this article…….

Continue reading » 6pin PCI-E to 8pin PCI-E Modification

Sorry, this is not an article about how plastic bottles affect the environment.It’s about “bottleneck” issue when it comes to pairing of processor and graphic card.

Is it really THAT bad to pair the lowest end processor with a high-end graphic card? Many claim that it doesn’t make sense to pair the lowest-end processor with any of the high-range graphic card, I am one of them but I decided to find out the truth of the matter for myself.

In this article, we’ll have a closer look on the bottleneck issue.

Continue reading » Bottlenecks - How Bad Could It Be?

In this article, I will be pitting nVidia’s GeForce 8600GT vs ATI’s Radeon HD 2600XT. This article covers strictly gaming performance on Windows XP, tested on various games of 2007 and a few other benchmarks from a year or 2 ago.

The cards I’m using for this comparison are

• Galaxy Geforce 8600GT OC Edition 256MB DDR3, down-clocked to 540mhz for Core and 700mhz for Memory (1400Mhz DDR speed)
• XpertVision HD2600XT Sonic 256MB DDR3, 800mhz for Core and 800mhz for Memory (1600Mhz DDR speed)

Continue reading » nVidia GeForce 8600GT vs ATI Radeon HD2600XT

Ahh, the age old question - AMD or Intel? While PC Enthusiasts often argue over which one being better, people who are not familiar with them often are just plain confused over which brand being better. While I was never once confused on which processor I should get, it’s not uncommon to come by people who are confused over the same matter.

Continue reading » AMD or Intel - Clearing The Confusion