LanOC Gaming News 2/22/2012

Our Most Recent Reviews

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.

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

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!

Read the Full Story

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!

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

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!

Read the Full Story

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.

Read the Full Story

LanOC Gaming News 2/22/2012

gamingnews2 Wednesday is back and that means its time for Gaming News. Nvidia has a new GPU driver out this week, Cities XL 2012 is the Midweek Madness sale, Alan Wake has made its money back in 48 hours, is SLi broken in Alan Wake? LAN support has been confirmed for DOTA 2 and Gaming Nights are back! Update that tired old computer, Gaming News is ready!

Written By: Skyler

Nvidia Drivers

nvidia

Nvidia released a new driver yesterday which included in following updates.

R295 Highlight Summary
New features and performance since last WHQL-certified driver

Game-changing performance boost of up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, “the fastest selling title in Steam’s history”
Up to 2x performance Mass Effect 3 with SLI technology.
GeForce-exclusive quality enhancements with ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo III, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
New 3D Vision and SLI profiles for over 50 titles.
New PhysX software for the best experience in top PhysX titles like Alice: Madness Returns andBatman: Arkham City.

R295 Highlight Details
Performance

Increases performance by up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 1080p Ultra settings in indoor scenes vs. 285.62).
Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
Boosts Mass Effect 3 SLI performance to up to 2x.

Ambient Occlusion

Adds ambient occlusion support for Diablo III. See the comparison screenshots on GeForce.com.
Updates the ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile (also in 290 beta drivers). See the comparison screenshots on GeForce.com.
Adds ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (also in 290 beta drivers). See thecomparison screenshots on GeForce.com.

You can download them here.

Cities XL 2012

Like building cities? What about recking them? Then the Cities franchise is for you. I have been playing this games for the last two years and they are a blast. You can pick up 2012 for $10 on Steam for a savings of 75%. As always, the Midweek Madness sale ends on Thursday at 7pm EST.

Alan Wake

After last weeks Gaming News it seems people wanted to play Alan Wake. An article over on Kotaku explains that Remedy has already made their money back from the Xbox 360 port. On the not so shiny side of things, SLi is broken in the game. There are some work arounds out there but I like to stick with official ways to fix the game. Nvidia has said that they are working on it and it shouldn’t be too long. With all settings maxed in the game and a resolution of 2560x1600 the game was struggling to push 30fps. So let that warn you about what to expect performance wise on your rig. The game should run fine on a 1080p monitor but just don’t get crazy on the AA and AF. I will shoot up a PSA when Nvidia releases a SLi profile for Alan Wake.

DOTA 2
Great news DOTA 2 players. LAN support has been confirmed. When speaking with joinDota.com Valve’s Market Director of Operations Erik Johnson confirmed that DOTA will have LAN support. You can read the whole interview here.

LanOC Gaming Nights
I am proud to announce that LanOC Gaming Nights are back! We had a great time this last Friday playing COD:MW3. Over 20 people came out to show their support of LanOC and get in some game time. The next date hasn’t been set yet but we are working on it. I am thinking that once or twice a month is more than enough. People have lives and are always busy with something. So if I can do it twice a month you won’t miss out if you miss one. Right now I am gauging interest in what day would work best. Check out this thread and cast your vote for what day works best for you.

I would like clear something up right away. We will not be playing the same games. We have already done MW3 so that is out for awhile. Nothing is out of the question so I will have another thread up in a days gauging interest in what the next game should be. This will also be posted in the LanOC Steam Group, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ so you have no excuse for missing out. Also, please install Ventrillo. It is the default LanOC chat program. Make sure you test your headset out before the Game Night so we don’t have to troubleshoot on the fly. We are more than willing to help out, but let us do it before hand. Our Ventrillo info can be found here

Left Field:

Left Field

There wasn’t a bunch of news this week other than some small tid bits.

Looks like Kim Dotcom was released on bail. Should be an interesting extradition hearing in March.

Interesting article over at PCPer discussing NAND Flash Memory for their storage guru Allyn Malventano.

Anyone that uses Steam always gets a kick when Gabe opens his mouth. This is a great read over on Penny Arcade.

Need some more HD 7770 results? Check out our Editor-in-Chief’s look at the Crossfire results.

Barnes & Noble is heading in the right direction with their new $199 Nook Tablet. Glad to see them moving things forward. Hopefully the members over on XDA will hack the hell outta this thing and get ICS on it.

Not one to talk about movies but I know on Friday I’ll be in theaters checking out Act of Valor. For some reason that flick looks bad ass.

Has anyone else seen the L4D Minecraft level? That would be fun to goof around in. Need to find out where I can download that at.

That’s it for this weeks edition of Gaming News. The staff is working hard trying to get a bunch of stuff ready for the coming months. Hopefully we can find some time to get some game time in. Until next week.

Wingless is out!

Posts in discussion

Posted: 2 months, 3 weeks ago by Wingless92 #23147

This weeks article.