MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme Edition (XE) 3GB

Author: SKYMTL
Date: May 30, 2011

     Let’s start this off by saying this isn’t a case of déjà vu. Less than a month ago we featured the MSI GTX 580 Lightning; a card which was essentially the pinnacle of their graphics card lineup. Other NVIDIA board partners have also stepped up to the plate with products like Gigabyte's Super Overclock edition, ASUS' upcoming Matrix and Zotac's AMP!. Well, things don’t last long in this industry and MSI is now one upping their original Lightning by introducing an “Extreme Edition” of it.



 Called the Lightning XE here in North America (in order regions it will go by the Xtreme Edition name), this new GTX 580 basically takes all of the great features from the original GTX 580 Lightning and expands upon them with a few additional bangs and whistles. Naturally, we still get the pre-overclocked goodness along with an excellent heatsink design and more additional overclocking headroom than most people can actually use. But things like additional monitoring capabilities and dust removal technology for the heatsink have also been tacked on.

  From a specifications standpoint there really isn’t all that much to differentiate the Xtreme from the standard Lightning. The clock speeds are identical and as we will see later, the two cards share the same PCB design as well. What allows the newer Lightning is able to stand out is its 3GB memory layout which doubles up what most other GTX 580s come equipped with.

For high resolution situations that demand copious amounts of memory bandwidth, more and more enthusiasts have been looking for high end cards which have larger framebuffers. In the past we have seen larger memory allotments be all but pointless on lower end cards since the underlying architecture reaches its saturation point long before the memory subsystem does. Whether or not this will be applied to the cream of the crop is something that will be looked into a bit later.



Naturally, more features and 3GB of GDDR5 combine to make the Lightning XE one expensive card. MSI has set the suggested retail price at $580 but expects retailers will be charging a cool $600 to $630 for the privilege of owning this limited edition card. Considering a stock GTX 580 will run you around $500 and even a 3GB card like Zotac’s 3G Edition goes for $540, spending a good amount more will likely be pointless for most But for the few users who will actually be able to get the most out of this card and its features, the Lightning XE may actually be a bargain in disguise.

Full review from Hardware Canucks for the MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme Edition (XE) 3GB

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler

Written by Ron Perillo -crowTrobot-
Tuesday, 27 September 2011 00:00


An exciting new movie called “Drive” is currently playing in theaters and it has been met with mostly positive reviews for good reason. The story basically revolves around a protagonist involved in a heist gone wrong and the double-crossing criminals that are after him and his loved ones. While it is a story that has been told several times before, the approach taken by the director to tell the story is what really sets it apart from other crime-action genre movies. Often we forget that storytelling is just as important, if not more so, than the story itself. We get easily distracted by the size and grandiosity of certain crafted things that we overlook the essential, which is sometimes lost beneath all the shiny things. This is an idea that extends beyond movies and can be applied to other facets of life, for the point really is about making the most of what you have and making it work effectively.



In the world of computing, Cooler Master is a name synonymous with efficiency and has won multiple awards for products which revolutionized the way we look at cases and various cooling solutions. With their Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler, Cooler Master has earned the respect of critics and system builders alike, for its extremely low price and excellent performance on par with coolers that cost twice as much. Cooler Master figured out that creating a heatsink with direct contact heatpipes can cool just as efficiently as some coolers with a separate contact base and higher heatpipe count. This Continuous Direct Contact ™ design has worked very well for the CM Hyper 212 Plus and has now been improved in the CM Hyper 212 EVO.

                                                       Unboxing and Product Overview

The CM Hyper 212 EVO retails for $34.99 and is aimed at budget conscious enthusiasts. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO looks almost physically identical to the Hyper 212 Plus with a few subtle, but very effective, changes. With a new wide range PWM fan and an updated Continuous Direct Contact ™ surface design, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO takes budget CPU cooling performance to another level. Thankfully, this level of performance is compatible with the entire current desktop processor lineup from Intel and AMD and is even compatible with the upcoming AMD FX-Series processors, so enthusiasts armed with the CM Hyper 212 EVO will be ready, no matter what system they choose to run and overclock.


 Full review from Hi Tech Legion for the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler

AMD FX CPUs

 Written by Gareth Halfacree on 14 March, 2011


AMD today officially released the inaugural models in its new line of AMD FX high-performance consumer CPUs. The chips, which during their development were code-named "Zambezi," are based on the "Bulldozer" core design AMD unveiled last year.

Intended primarily for gamers and enthusiasts who regularly perform "extreme" tasks, the new chips help round out the upper end of AMD's 2011 releases, following the budget-aimed E Series and the midrange A Series. All the CPUs in the AMD FX line come with unlocked multipliers for easy overclocking, and support for both high-resolution displays and AMD's Eyefinity multimonitor technology, but do not include integrated graphics and therefore require the use of a discrete video card. CPUs in the FX family will only work in motherboards based on AMD's AM3+ socket and utilizing AMD 9-Series chipsets.

Each Bulldozer unit in a CPU contains two dedicated cores (that support two processing threads), but share some functionality between them to reduce "bursty" or inefficient usage in certain situations. Dynamic resource allocation also exists between the threads. (When only one thread is active, that thread can access all the resources that are typically shared.) AMD claims that this configuration improves throughput on multithreaded workloads and offers "greater scalability and predictability than two threads sharing a single core."

AMD says these design changes also help the chips be more power efficient. Also playing a role are flip-flop clock gating throughout the design, dynamically power-gated circuits, and a number of additional power-saving features that can be controlled by firmware or software, such as C6 state, Core P-states and AMD Turbo Core technology, Application Power Management, DRAM power management, and a C1E low-power idle state.

With these chips AMD has also introduced a number of instruction set extensions, including for SSE 4.1 and 4.2, Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), AES, XSAVE state space management, and XOP instructions.

The flagship CPU in the FX family is the FX-8150, which has a base CPU speed of 3.6GHz (which, with AMD's Turbo Core capability, can increase to as much as 4.2GHz in certain situations), and a full eight processing cores in addition to 8MB of L2 cache and a Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 125 watts.

Also available at launch, and slated to ship before the end of October, will be another eight-core chip, the FX-8120 (3.1 GHz, with Turbo Core taking its clock speed up to 4 GHz, and with a TDP of 125 watts), the six-core FX-6100 (3.3 GHz to 3.9 GHz, 95-watt TDP), and the four-core FX-4100 (3.6 GHz to 3.8 GHz, 95-watt TDP). All FX-series chips will have 8 Mbytes of L3 cache and support RAM up to DDR3-1866.

The FX-8150, FX-8120, and FX-6100 are slated to list for $245, $205, and $165 when they're made available later in October; AMD has not yet confirmed pricing on any of its other chips.

PCMag is working on its review of the AMD FX-8150. Check back by the end of the week to see how it stacks up to previous processors from both AMD and Intel.

ASUS Mars II

By Vlad Savov posted Jun 1st 2011 1:35PM
Hands-On


If you thought the original Mars graphics card from ASUS was a little bit ridiculous, get ready to see what a lot of ridiculous looks like. The company's Mars II that was recently teased alongside a fresh new Matrix GTX580 Platinum card, squeezes two GeForce GTX 580 chips on the same board and overclocks them for good measure. In order to achieve such great feats, the card requires no less than three 8-pin auxiliary power connectors and takes up the space of three (2.6, to be precise) PCI slots with its ginormous dual-fan cooler. Heatpipes are also employed to keep the raging fires within in check, and -- for situations where all else fails -- ASUS has installed a special red button that sends the fan into full speed when depressed. ASUS hasn't yet finalized how far above the default engine clock speeds the Mars II will reach, but it has a bit of time to figure that out as this extremely limited edition card is coming sometime in July. Buyers in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific region will have to be quick on their credit card trigger, as only 1,000 Mars IIs will ever be produced. Oh, and if you're wondering how much power a dual-GTX 580 graphics card might consume, the answer is 600W. All by itself.

ASUS Mars II eyes-on at Computex 2011

Also making its debut at Computex this week is ASUS' latest offering for the truly overclock-mad PC gamer: the Matrix GTX580 Platinum. Frankly, it feels barren by comparison to its Martian sibling, coming with just one GTX 580 graphics processor, albeit an overclocked one, and the requirement for only two 8-pin connectors for added power. ASUS has thrown in a pair of physical "plus" and "minus" buttons, which permit voltage alterations on the fly, added the same fan override key as on the Mars II, and included a Safe Mode switch at the back in the event that you get carried away with your tweaking. Mashing that last button will reset all clock speeds, voltages and other settings to their default values, which should hopefully let you boot back up and try again. A final note of merit goes to the LED-infused Matrix logo atop the GTX580 Platinum. It's not there just for decorative purposes; its color changes in response to the load the GPU is under, so that blue and green will tell you there are no worries and orange and red will indicate you're cranking it close to its limits. The GTX580 Platinum should start selling worldwide next week, though pricing has yet to be announced.

Techpowerup review for the ASUS Mars II card