LanOC Gaming News 2/15/2012

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XFX R7750 Black Edition DD Not everyone is looking to spend $500 on their video card, in some cases that is the total budget for a build. When you are up against a wall trying to pack the best performance you can get into a budget build you still want to get the most performance you can out of your video card. That’s where cards like the XFX R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation come into play. XFX has taken the styling and cooling from their high end cards and combined it with the price of budget cards like the HD 7750. Today we are going to take a look at how those two things do combined in XFX’s R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation.

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Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X Earlier this year when AMD introduced the HD 7770 we took a look at cards from both Sapphire and XFX. Although we were impressed with the cards performance it was a little ill-timed due to AMD still clearing out discounted back stock. Three months later we are able to revisit the situation with today’s release of Sapphires new HD 7770 Vapor-X. With Sapphires Vapor chamber cooling technology along with a nice overclock over the reference design, the Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X could be a great option for a gamer on a limited budget. Let’s take a look.

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Motherboard Sizing When we got in a few oddly sized dual CPU motherboards from EVGA and Asus I posted up a few pictures on our forums and on Facebook. The problem was that even though they looked large there wasn’t any prospective. So we tossed in a couple other boards to give everyone a little perspective. This lead us to digging out even more motherboards to put together all of the standard motherboard sizes all together for everyone to be able to see the differences. Along with the picture we also have a breakdown on the dimensions of each size standard; I hope this helps everyone as some point. Sometimes it can be hard to understand all of the different motherboard sizes and how they all relate.

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Android to the Maxx, DROID Razr Maxx The list of different Android based phones available at any time is both overwhelming and frustrating. It’s almost impossible to get good feedback from friends who have the same phone because of this. So it’s rare than you have any one phone that manages to stand out. Doing something different is the only way to do this normally, but most times this ends off coming off as gimmicky or just lame. When Motorola introduced the Droid Razr Maxx it caught my attention right away. This was just before our trip out to San Francisco for the GTX 680 Editors day, what a better way to put the Maxx’s proposed batter life to the test!

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Lian Li PC 100 “The Hammer” We have had a few different Lian Li chassis come through the LanOC Offices and there hasn’t been a time that we haven’t been impressed with the new and interesting features Lian Li always seems to slip in. When they wanted to ship over their new case “The Hammer” PC 100, we signed up right away. We had seen the case previewed from a few shows prior and this time around Lian Li took a new perspective with its design, I was very interested to see how their changes worked out. Let’s jump in and see what it’s all about!

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Nvidia GTX 670 When Nvidia launched Kepler with the GTX 680 I was impressed with the launch price of the card but even at such a great value it is still out of reach for some people. Just because you can’t afford the top card doesn’t mean you don’t want to experience Kepler’s performance. Of course it was only a matter of time before we saw Nvidia filling in the gaps in their product line, starting first with the GTX 690 then going to the next step down from the GTX 680, the GTX 670. Today we get to have a look to see how the performance compares to both the GTX 680 as well as AMD’s offerings. We are also very curious how it compares to the GTX 580, a card that has found its way into most of our office PC’s.

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ioSafe Rugged Portable So you do the smart thing, you backup your data from your laptop and your home PC to an external or network drive and go on with life feeling confident that you have gone well and above what most people do. For the most part, you did. What about when you’re traveling, have you seen how much abuse a device can take when on the go? For some people, and I know I’m one of them, some of the data you carry with you while traveling is more important than the laptop or device that you actually carry it on. In that situation you need a way to not have to worry about your data, no matter the situation, and to have a guarantee to back it up as well. The folks over at ioSafe focus specifically on this crowd. Not only do they offer products that are according to them build to handle almost anything, but they back it up with data recovery if something does happen. Today we are going to take a look at that Rugged Portable hard drive to see what all of the fuss is about, without any more buildup, let’s dig in.

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Cooler Master Storm Trigger Just two years ago the only mechanical keyboards you would find were from companies like DAS keyboard trying to create a nitch market. Over the past two years things have really exploded with every manufacture you can think of introducing their own mechanical keyboards. Cooler Master has been especially aggressive with multiple unique designs like their Quickfire series. What they did lack was a full featured mechanical keyboard with full backlighting, until now. Today they officially introduce their Storm Trigger, although it you look around the board was available Globally before now. With full backlighting it falls into a small category of Mechanical Keyboards with very little competition. I am excited to see how it performs.

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Cooler Master HAF XM The topic of cleaning your computer out came up last week on our forums and it got me thinking about how often I really need to clean out my computer. As it turns out it’s not very often anymore. All because of improvements in case design like fan filters. You don’t really see them on low end cases yet but they have been slowly trickling down. At CES this year we had a chance to get our hands on one of Cooler Master’s upcoming chassis, the HAF XM. A mid-range case packed with the features we have come to love from their high end HAF line. Today we are going to dig into the final product and see how it came out.

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Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H Z77 boards come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and prices. Just about every manufacture has a whole lineup of boards covering the whole range to make sure you can find what you are looking for. Gigabyte is no different; they have a whole selection of boards that will fit your needs. Today we are taking a look at their Z77X-UD3H, one of their budget boards. It may not be a high end board but it is still packed with features. I am curious how it will perform now that the cat is out of the bag with Ivy Bridge. Let’s jump in and see what it’s all about.

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Intel DZ77GA-70K Now that Intel has opened up the flood gates with Ivy Bridge we can finally take a full look at their latest chipset including testing with the i7-3770. When combining the two we get the latest CPU with the latest chipset and a load of new features. You can now take advantage of PCIe 3.0 along with USB 3.0 integrated into the chipset. We were very impressed with the DZ77GA-70K when we first took a look at it, let’s finally see how it performs!

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Intel i7-3770K Ivy Bridge It seemed like the virtual ink hadn’t even dried on our Sandy Bridge review and people were already talking about waiting for Ivy Bridge to come out. The same goes for our Sandy Bridge E write-up, a lot of people on the forums and at our events spoke about waiting for Ivy before making a decision. Well I can finally say that today is that day. We are going to take a look at Intel’s new Ivy Bridge CPUs, specifically the i7-3770K. We will put it up against all that Sandy Bridge had to offer along with a few Sandy Bridge E CPUs, including the competitively priced i7-3820. At the end of the day you will know what it’s all about and we will hopefully help give you the facts in your buying decision.

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LanOC Gaming News 2/15/2012

gamingnews2 Wednesday is here LanOC, along with a truckload of news, it's been a busy week around the offices. With your staff hard at work, its going to be busy around here for the next couple of weeks. Anyways, let get the new rolling! The Midweek Madness sale has two game this week, Hawken closed beta sign ups have begun, how about a new gaming laptop from Maingear? I am almost done with Warhammer 40K: Space Marine and a boat load of news at the end. Buckle up everyone, Gaming News starts now!

Written By: Skyler

Midweek Madness 1

First game up this week is Rusty Hearts. First off, I am not sure why Steam thought it would be a good idea to put this game up on the Midweek Madness sale because its Free-to-Play. Why put this sort of game when its free anyways? Whatever the case may be, this week only you will receive the Weapon Booster Kit free if you play during the Midweek Madness sale. Also, all Zen purchases will receive a 15% bonus. Check out Rusty Hearts this week and see if it tickles your fancy.

Midweek Madness 2

The second game this week is Killing Floor. This game for me is really up in the air. I have it but I never play it. Usually it will receive some love at LAN parties. Other than that though it sits dormant in my Steam library. Add this to your Steam collection this week only for $2.99 a savings of 80%. As always, the Midweek Madness sales end on Thursdays at 7pm EST.

Hawken

Hawken 1
Hawken closed Beta signups have begun. Head over to the site and sign up today. Hawken is a first person, Mech shooter. The game is slated to release 12/12/12 for free. I have inlcuded the launch gameplay video for anyone that has doubt that Hawken doesn’t look beautiful. Once you sign up if you enlist three friends they will reserve your callsign when the game launches.

Maingear Titan I7
I am not one for gaming laptops but this thing is probably the sickest laptop that I have ever seen. The Maingear Titan I7 is in the realm of not-going-to-buy-unless-I-win-the-lottery but its still fun to dream. With a Intel X79 3960x, Nvidia GTX 580m’s in SLi and up to 3 HDD’s this is one over the top laptop. What I really want to know is how long the battery is going to last while playing BF3 or any other high end game. Head over to their website and check out the other spec’s. And if you would like to donate one to me I am taking orders now.

Warhammer 40k: Space Marine

SpaceMarine 2012-02-08_19-26-23-64
I have been trying to clear out my backlog after last weeks Gaming News backlog story. Warhammer was one of those games that I needed to get thru and fast. Not that I didn’t want to enjoy the game, I just want to get some games out of the way right now while we are waiting for some big releases that are coming. I know that I bought this on sale a couple of weeks ago but I can’t remember how much that I paid for it. Regardless, it’s been quite an adventure so far. I am not going to go deep into the details but the game runs great with the Main Rig that I use. I am seeing over 150FPS consistently and usually more in some cases. The guns feel great along with doing a fair amount of damage. The sounds in the game are also fantastic. You always know when your about to run out of bullets in your clip. Along with great guns and sound the melee aspect of the game has been fulfilling for me. Nothing like meleeing thirty Orks in a row. The next time that you see this game as the daily deal in this thread or on the Midweek Madness pick it up.

Left Field

Left Field

The rumors of a new iPad have been circling for a couple weeks. Along with the iPad 3 we are also hearing about a new Apple TV that could be coming soon.

Remember to sign up for LanOC V10! Our deadline for the price hike is fast approaching. Here is where you can sign up.

Like robots? How about watching Robotnaut 2 aboard the International Space Station? You can watch the live steam over on NASA’s Ustream channel.

One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was Back to the Future II. Now, Mattel is thinking about building a hoverboard movie replica. You can check out all the details here. Thanks to Slashgear for the linkage.

Looks like Intel’s new Z77 chipset is inbound fairly soon. We are already seeing motherboards slipping out. Ivy Bridge anyone?

I know many people loath the COD franchise but this looks pretty damn cool.

I know not to many people use Google Wallet but the hack that was demonstrated is pretty scary. Good thing El Goog is working on it. Don’t get to excited btw, the perpatrators would have to have fisical access to your phone to pull it off.

Why can’t I live in Kansas City with Google's stupid fast internet?

Good article over at Arstechnica about how companies store massive amounts of data in the sky.

The Playstation Vita is launching soon. Anyone else not interested in the least bit? Sure, I love to game but I just can’t see spending $350 on a portable gaming device. I have a phone and that serves my gaming needs quiet well while I am on the go. Thanks goes out to TheVerge for the linkage.

You know, I like to drink just like everyone else does but once you’ve been arrested for your 4th DUI you would think that a person would learn, guess not!

That is it for this week’s article everyone. Keep your eye on the front page as I know we have some reviews that are coming soon. Have a great rest of the week. Until next time,

Wingless is out!

Posts in discussion

Posted: 3 months ago by garfi3ld #22896

:-p

Posted: 3 months ago by Wingless92 #22897

This weeks article, enjoy!

Posted: 3 months ago by garfi3ld #22902

pwned

Posted: 3 months ago by Wingless92 #22904

OH COME ON!

Can't catch a break.

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LanOC Gaming News 2/15/2012

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