Asus launched the first of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) series for the AMD platform way back in 2007, calling it the Asus Crosshair for the AM2 platform, which was based on the Nvidia nForce 590 chipset. The second in the series was the Asus Crosshair II Formula, which was based on the Nvidia 780a chipset. The third in the series is the Crosshair III Formula and this time Asus did the smart thing and ditched the Nvidia chipsets. They went ahead with the brand new 790FX chipset and made one of the best overclocking and feature rich boards for the AM3 platform.

The ROG series has always been the top end of the Asus line up of motherboards and the Crosshair III lived up to it’s pedigree. Today, we have the opportunity to take a quick look at Asus Crosshair IV Formula, which is the latest iteration in the legendary series of AMD based ROG boards.

The Crosshair IV is now based on the latest high end 890FX chipset from AMD along with an 850 series southbridge, allowing a total of 32 usable PCI-E lanes, 6 Gbp/s SATA III and USB 3.0 support. Let’s take a quick look at the specifications before going ahead:

Model Name

• ROG Crosshair IV Formula

CPU

• AMD socket AM3 Phenom™ II /Athlon™ X4 /Athlon™ X3 /Athlon™ X2 processors

Chipset

• AMD 890FX/SB850

System bus

• Up to 5200 MT/s HyperTransport™ 3.0

Memory

• 4 x DIMM, dual channel, up to 16GB, DDR3 1866 (OC)/1600(OC)/1333/1066MHz
  

Expansion

• 3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots (@ dual x16, triple @ x16, x8, x8) with ATI CrossFireX™ technology
• 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4
• 2 x PCI 2.2

Storage

• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10
• 1 x SATA 3Gb/s
• 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s

LAN

• Marvell Gigabit LAN

Audio

• SupremeFX X-Fi 8-channel audio built-in with EAX 4.0 support

USB/ IEEE1394a

• 2 x USB 3.0, 12 x USB 2.0 (7 at back I/O, 5 onboard)
• 2 x 1394a ports (1 at back I/O, 1 onboard)

Software

• Kaspersky antivirus 1 year license

Features

• ROG Connect
• GameFirst
• Core Unlocker
• Turbo Key II
• MemOK!
• CPU Level Up
• SupremeFX X-Fi built-in
• Extreme Tweaker
• iROG
• Loadline Calibration
• Voltiminder LED

Form Factor

• ATX, 12” x 9.6” (30.5cm x 24.4cm)

As you can see, this board comes with all the features that were available on the previous Crosshair series, with a few differences. We will get into that in the next part of our review.

Unboxing

The Asus Crosshair IV Formula comes in a box very similar to almost all the ROG series motherboards. The only difference is the AMD/ATI badges at the bottom.

The rear of the box has a whole list of specifications, along with pictures of the more innovative features of this board.

Once we open the box, we are greeted by two small black boxes, stacked one on top of the other. The first one contains all of the accessories and the second, the board itself. Let’s first take a look at the accessories.

The list of accessories is quite large and consists of everything that you could ever want or need with a new motherboard. They have even included stickers for your SATA drive cables, a large ROG sticker for your cabinet, and a smaller ROG sticker for your case or what have you. They have also included six SATA III cables and they are thankfully black in color. The only thing missing from this accessory list is the LCD screen, which I did miss during my OC session. There is also a white USB connector, which is used for the ROG connect feature.

Now let’s move on to the highlight of this preview and that’s the board itself.

Beautiful right? Asus has changed the colors on this board from Blue/Black to Red/Black and this in my opinion only goes better for all of the AMD/ATI fans around. On to a closer look at some of the features of this board.

A Closer Look

Lets start with the rear connectors first and contrary to expectations, there are a few things worth checking out here.

To start with, we have the usual sets of USB, LAN, 1394 and Audio connectors. What I would like to draw your attention to are the USB 3.0 connectors, marked in blue, the clear CMOS button (it’s extremely helpful in a closed case) and the ROG connect button. The ROG button is a new feature on an AMD board, which basically helps you to monitor and overclock the system using another computer. Now this is quite an interesting idea and Asus did demonstrate this earlier this year, using an Asus Eee PC to overclock an i7 system. The system uses a special USB connector, which is a part of the accessories list.

Moving on to the board, let’s look at the CPU area.

The board uses a single 8 Pin E-ATX connector for power. The PWM area has a beefy heatsink which keeps the 10+2 phase VRM’s cool. You also have the Game First chip, which helps to give priority to your online gaming sessions and maintain a low ping time, even as you use the internet for other tasks.

Moving on, the CPU area remains the same as previous generations, with AMD stubbornly holding on to the same bracket type, which in a way is great news for those who want to carry over their existing cooling setups. The things to look out for are the alternate slot arrangement for memory. AMD boards have had adjacent slots running dual channel for a while now on most boards, but in this board it’s the alternate slots which provide the same feature. Asus has also made it so that the ram slots need only one side to be closed now which makes it a bit easier to install ram.

The second important feature is the “Probe It” points, which will give you accurate and real time information on all the major voltages using a multimeter. The CPU area does look a little cluttered, but I did use a Noctua NH D14 on the board and it cleared everything fine. Ram using tall heatsinks will probably cause a problem however. If you look carefully, you will also notice that Asus has done away with the IDE/Floppy drive connectors and that in my mind is not a bad idea at all.

We can see the NB heatsink in the picture above with the three heatsinks on this board being connected by a heatpipe. This should help to dissipate the heat better than individual heatsinks can, but mostly it’s just for flash. The heatsink does look a bit close to the first PCI-E slot, but it does not interfere with the 5850 that I installed there.

I would have loved to take the heatsinks off to show you the new chips, but that’s not possible at this point in time.

As we get closer to the bottom of the board, we can see the southbridge heatsink as well as the six sata ports. The SB heatsink covers the new 850 series SB chip. There is also a small red “GO” button, which will help to configure your ram for optimal performance settings automatically. Moving along to the bottom, we can see the ROG chips, as well as a bunch of headers for various front panel connectors.

And finally we come to one of the last parts of this preview, the on board buttons area.

The board comes with a total of five on board buttons or switches. We have already seen the first, which is the “GO” switch. The other four are at the bottom of the board and consist of the start, reset, core unlocker and the turbo key. The first two are pretty straight forward. The third switch, which is the core unlocker, is used to unlock hidden cores on AMD chips. Theoretically AMD had disabled the ACC unlocking functionality on the 890 series chipsets, but Asus was able to re-implement this feature on their own.

The last switch is the Turbo Key, which is also a pretty nifty feature to have. The Turbo key helps to overclock the computer while in the OS. You have to set a predefined OC, which is then activated at the press of a button.

A little higher up we see a VIA chip, which is part of the Supreme X-Fi chipset for the audio. This should provide a superior audio solution to what most boards offer with Realtek HD Audio solutions.

Conclusion

This is one good looking board which also brings a lot of the features from the high-end Intel line up to AMD. In the final review we will take a look at various benchmarks as compared to the MSI GD70, which has been one of the top selling, high performing 790FX boards on the market. As of now we have the following list of benchmarks that we will be working on:

1. 3D Mark ‘06
2. 3D Mark Vantage
3. PC Mark Vantage
4. HD Tune Pro
5. Crystalmark
6. Everest Memory and System Benchmarks

And of course we will also be trying to OC the hell out of it.

Overall, this looks and feels like a really solid board, which should work well for both beginners as well as advanced users. There are a lot of features built in and we will be spending a lot of time on benchmarking this board, so do come back for the final review.

Thanks for reading!

The most attractive thing was the Bluetooth IRog module

The I/O section and the bundle are pretty stuffed

The power sections for CPU and RAM are fully enforced

Firstable started some test  on air-cooling to check the capability of Bclock and Ram frequency ( different sets of timing)

let’s see how far is possible to push the RAM

230 bclock and 2300 RAM 3D benchable on air …..not bad right ?

Keep your eyes peeled on this page, be sure to digg and retweet, and we’ll see you at PAX!

Nvidia Fermi Launch Event Updates:

6:08PM – Waiting for show to begin…fans going crazy with noise makers.

6:11PM – “Please take your seats, show will start in 1 minute”

6:13PM – Drew Henry (General Manager, GeForce GPU’s) is coming on stage to begin the event…

6:14PM – Drew is telling everyone how awesome us gamers and Bostonians are.

6:15PM -  Nvidia snuggies are confirmed for giveaway….lol

6:17Pm – Here comes the spin, discussing why Fermi was delayed.  “We wanted to make something great for gamers”.

6:19PM – Showing off Fermi.  “The GeForce GTX480…is something you are really going to be delighted with.”

6:20PM – ” It’s the most complicated GPU we have ever built.”  3 Billion transistors.

6:21PM – “And we have the GeForce GTX470..it’s little brother, also a great gaming GPU.”

6:22PM – Performance Numbers: GTX480 compared to 285, “sometimes more than 2x performance, no less than 1.5x”

6:23PM – “2x performance in overall gaming is cool, but it’s not just a GPU for gaming.”  “We’ve invested a lot in physics, to allow you to blow things up. “  “Up to 2.5x the gpu physx processing performance of the last generation”

6:24PM – “Real-time interactive ray tracing…”  Is this a Larrabee conference?

6:25PM – New Nvidia “Crank that S#it up!” t-shirts.

6:26PM – This next part is in 3D.  Now he’s talking about he feels the PC can lead the industry in 3D, with 3D VISION.

6:27PM – EA’s Gordon Van Dyke here now, showing off BF:BC2 in 3D.  Showing how they were able to incorporate 3D VISION into their latest hit.

6:28PM – Showing BC2 in Nvidia 3D Surround, that’s three screens, full 3D.  Looks VERY impressive actually.

6:29PM – Showing BC2 jungle fight scene with the militants when you hold out in the shack.  Again, very impressive, but the full surround sound is certainly adding to the effect.

6:30PM – Basically 3D Vision Surroind is 3D Vision meets ATI’s Eyefinity.

6:31PM – Going to show WoW in 3D Vision now.  Allll of the nerds are going berzerk.

6:32PM – Little LOL as the frame rates totally suck as they are in flight mode in WoW in 3D Vision Surround.  Not sure what that’s about…but they say it’s fresh support, just added, so perhaps it’s still in “beta”.

6:33PM  – Jesse Addly (?) from EA.  Does Tech Dev at EA for the PC platform.  So, engine development.  Going to talk about Need For Speed now, also in 3D Vision Surround.

6:34PM – Ooooh, going to show off real-time ray tracing, with cars in Need For Speed.  It’s in 2D, but it’s showing you interactive Ray Tracing, in what looks like a few frames under 30fps.  It’s allowing you to customize a ray traced car in game.

6:36PM – This is a downloadable app with the entire NFS Garage inside, you can customize and collect your cars, add your creations to in-game NFS.

6:37PM – Apparently this app will ship with every GTX480 and GTX470, so a bundled app, but not a full game by any means.  Interesting.

6:38PM -  “Working with the guys in the game industry is really important for us.”  “Often times what we’ll do is put together technology demonstrations to show what they can do with our technology in their game”

6:39PM  – Next up “This is what we call Super Sonic Sled”.  This is a full game they are going to include with every GeForce card.  This is the rocket sled demo everyone saw a few weeks ago.  It’s in full 3D Vision Surround.  All the latest DX11 technology and lots of tesselation.

6:40PM – Showing off different parts of the game world they created.  Showing off the rocket sled, Barney (the sled driver), the millions of pieces of the bridge that gets destroyed.  Showing the details in wire frame as well, so the viewers have an idea of the complexity.

6:42PM – They are using the chicken gun that they have implemented in the game to blow off pieces of the rocket sled, which destroys the sled as he takes off.

6:45PM – Added a million particles to the bridge and blew it up to show the capability of the GPU’s Physx processing.

6:47PM – Next up Metro 2033.  Louis Giglioti (?) from THQ to discuss.

6:48PM – “Let’s see the game…”  Metro 2033 running in full 3D Vision Surround.  Lot’s of game background talk, the author, the story, blah blah..go read the review.

6:53PM – Ok, that demo is finally over.  Just a game promo essentially.

6:53PM – “With this generation architecture, we have them in full production, full launch today, the reviews will be posted in about 10 mins. ” And they will be in stores in about 14 days.

6:54PM – Something with green nailpolish on their 3d glasses just won a GTX 480.  Now they are tossing out tosses. I just punched out some nerd to get one!  “Sucks to be you nerd”  j/k…or am I?

6:55PM -  Show is clearing out, it appears it might already be over, even though it hasn’t been officially stated yet.

6:56PM – It’s over, good night.

Be sure to check our Interview with Nvidia’s Bryan Del Rizzo here

They took things much further though, by comparing those results with Radeon HD5870 and they came up with those:

There are many questions to be raised here, one being: why they have used such a low-end CPU for the testing. That is a potential bottleneck and if nothing else it lowers the score in 3DMark06 as this synthetic test is not very CPU friendly. Other issue could be with having not optimized drivers as this could seriously limit GPUs performance as we’ve all seen when ATIs 4xxx series came out. All the same, it will be exciting to see if those results will be confirmed once the cards are out and what will be ATIs reaction to them. Even more so, to see in the real world how the bigger brother GTX 480 will perform.

I hope you like pictures because I am bringing a lot for you to look at. Lets get started with the massive PSU and all the glory that is 1200w!

Features:

• PowerCache™, a high-performance capacitor that delivers an extra power reserve when and where users need it most
• NVIDIA™ SLI™ – ready certified and ATI CrossFire™ certified
• 80PLUS® Silver Certified – 85% or more efficiency at 20%, 50%, and 100% load
• Designed to support quad core, Core i7 and Core i5 CPUs, quad GPUs
• Six 12V output circuits and DC to DC Voltage Regulator Modules ensure supreme system stability
• 80mm cooling fan uses Pulse Width Modulation for whisper-quiet operation
• Advanced sleeved cable management improves airflow and reduces clutter
• Gold plated connectors for superior conductivity
• Industrial grade protection: OVP (Over Voltage Protection), UVP (Under Current Protection), SCP (Short Circuit Protection), and OCP (Over Current Protection)
• Universal Input and Active PFC allow the Quattro to operate efficiently on any power grid in the world
• Approvals: UL, CUL, FCC, TTüVV, CE, C-tick, CCC, CB, BSMI
• Unit Dimensions:
  - 3.4″ (H) x 5.9″ (W) x 7.9″ (D)
  - 86mm (H) x 150mm (W) x 200mm (D)
• Package Dimensions:
  - 9.4″ (H) x 12.4″ (W) x 5.3″ (D)
  - 240mm (H) x 315mm (W) x 135mm (D)
• Net Weight: 7.0 lbs / 2.72 kg
• Gross Weight: 10.0 lbs / 4.53 kg

Output Voltage Range / MAXReg.OCP Set / PointRipple / Noise

+3.3V, +5V max. load: 170W

+12V1, 12V2, 12V3, 12V4, 12V5, 12V6 max. load: 100A

The continuous maximum total output power shall not exceed 1200W.

Input:

With only being able to look the Antec 1200w over, since it is not ready to be installed yet, I can just give a little info on it.

With everyone these days overclocking everything and running SLI/Crossfire or even tri and quad SLI/Crossfire. People are starting to pay more attention to the efficiency of their power supplies and how they handle different load types. This Antec TPQ model is 80PLUS Silver Certified (85% or more efficiency at 20%, 50%, and 100% load) Which makes this an extremely efficient power supply, and does not matter what kind of load the PSU is under.

You also may have noticed above the modular spots have stickers as a little guide to what to plug into each section. It is a nice addition to the power supply and will help take the guessing work out of where you need to plug hardware into. This will be greatly appreciated by a user who is not well read up on PSU’s and the multiple rail system.

One thing I was not super impressed with was the cable sleeving. It looks very half assed and for the price you pay on this unit I expect better. Also, the sleeving itself is not the greatest. Yes it helps with the aesthetic value of somewhat hiding the wire colors, but the sleeving is cheap and pretty much see through. I have seen a lot better sleeving on a lot cheaper units. With the money you dish out for this unit I do not see why they could not up the quality of the sleeving, e.g., Murdermod sleeving.

Now doesn’t that look so much better than what you see from Antec. If they used quality sleeving, I am sure it would help boost sales and win customers over who are on the border of buying the PSU. Another thing that annoys me is the fact they did not even complete the sleeving into the casing itself. They left it dangling at different lengths outside the PSU casing, and it looks atrocious.

Overall, other than the crap cable sleeving, I am happy with this unit. Once I can run further tests I can be a little more help with this power supply. I am really pleased with the solid feel of all the cables and the unit itself. It seems very well put together and the paint job is a nice touch!

EVGA Classified Dual Processor Motherboard

First of all, most of you are probably aware of the primary specs that have already been released for the board.  These include three phase PWM for each set of memory slots per CPU, industry leading digital PWM for the CPU’s, dual NF200 chips for Quad SLI (and still more lanes free), ICH10R, and high quality solid state capacitors, chokes, and PCB.

Some things you may not know:

The board is able to run with two entirely different models of CPU, or the same CPU’s at different multipliers.

There are two 8 pin, three 6 pin, and two 4 pin floppy connectors in and around the CPU sockets for delivering extra power to the DIMM slots, CPU’s and graphic cards while under extreme overclocking condition.  Peter tells me that only the standard 8 pin connectors will be required for most operational circumstances and that only under really serious overclocking will the additional power connectors become necessary.

Peter says the board itself is essentially finished, what is left is BIOS tuning which is still relatively early on and will take a few more weeks to complete.

Board will have two SATA 6GBPS ports on board (red ports), as well as two USB 3.0 on the back IO.  Marvel is the chip.

MSRP is still unknown, but I was able to ascertain that it will be between $450 and $550, pricey but to be expected for a board of this caliber and quality.

Expect boards to arrive to the market sometime in April, or possibly later if BIOS tuning takes longer than expected.

CPU Socket Area - Digital PWM

Peter holding his new marvel...

Joe Darwin, Peter Tan, Jacob Freeman - Pride!

After seeing these units at Reachtech.com who manufactures these units in all different sizes and specifications I thought to myself that one of these units would be a great MOD to show computer data on the front of my TJ07 that I had just built. With the help from my friend Jeff I managed to get a unit from Steve over at Reachtech, both of whom are great guys and friends that I have known for some time.

The 4” LCD Display has a fully programmable SLCD6 controller with touch screen and the ability to upload programs and graphics, and talk to the computer through a USB port.

This is the unit I started out with to give you an idea of what these look like.

Starting with this I began to mock up what I thought the screens should look like. As I was extremely busy at that time I happened to come across a really good graphic artist Ross Fairbanks of GUIMagic who has done a large amount of work with Windowblinds. We exchanged ideas and came up with the very first set of screens that would show CPU usage, CPU temps, Fan Speeds and a Clock. These were the basic building blocks of the project and later changed to better fit programing problems and new ideas.

The project was begging to take shape now, this is the first screen.

Uploading this image to the LCD to seeing what this would actually look like. It looked very, very good so we dove into this and began to add more features.

Mocking this up in a bezzel and fitting it to the front of the TJ07

everything is great so far and looking good. Jeff ran into a programer by the name of  Craig Williamson who worked his magic and helpped get this unit up and running so it would animate the images and talk to a computer through a USB port and get all the vital data needed to display on the LCD.

As a test I installed the unit on my benching setup and it worked great.

Now with a working unit we began to look at cases or bezzels to mount the LCD into. Jeff managed to pick up a Garman GPS unit and we took out the display from that and installed ours into it. This looked really good and was just what we had been looking for. However having a injection mold setup made so we could make our own cases was rather costly and way out of our price range for this project.

Later Jeff had a simple plastic stand made up that worked well and easy for us to have made.

We still have lots of  loose endso complete this project but it stands right now it is  fully functional unit that can display CPU Usage, CPU Temps, Fan Speeds, RS Feeds and a Clock. Some of the data that is used to display on this comes from Everest and we can configure our own app to show a few different things like GPU temps or a mix of GPU and CPU temps and different fan speeds from what ever is installed in the computer. Different screens can be shown by pressing the buttons at the bottom of the screen to show what ever you want to display.

Around this time ZombieTek was born.

This unit works really well and would be great for a modding project, custom built computer case or other projects. Some features that we still need to work on is displaying more than 4 CPU cores and the number of Cores has grown a great deal from when we started this project. Other features that we had in mind were to include a skinnable graphics library so a user could upload different back grounds. Much of this would take a fair amount of time to do so that has been pretty much put on hold for now.

Here is a few examples of splash screens that could be used, really what ever you wish could be uploaded here. These are a few branded screens.

The longevity of your computer components varies wildly, with the most expensive pieces often being a top performer for the shortest period of time.  In order from longest lasting to shortest Hard Disk Drive/ Optical Disk Drive, Power Supply Unit, Video card, Memory, Motherboard, CPU.  This breakdown is purely subjective, and while easily could instigate discussion on what pieces do have the longest longevity citing specific models of components, for brevity’s sake we will continue in this order with explanations as to why.

HDD/ODD Drives have been using a 40pin or 80 conductor interface for over a decade, while device performance has increased and the interface has evolved to accept Serial ATA over Parallel ATA for various reasons, the PATA interface is still included on motherboards today.  PATA Expansion cards are also available very cheaply to allow even more devices to be connected to a PC. The newer SATA interface, is about due for another upgrade, but much like USB and PATA before it, the ports will be backwards compatible to support older hardware, either automatically, or more likely initially by a BIOS setting controlled by the user (much as early SATAII/SATA300 did).  Both hard drives and Optical disk drives however are mechanical and will suffer the effects of wear and tear faster than many other components will, and it is very important to secure your data accordingly.  Extra hard drives in your PC for data storage, their access rate will not be as severe as your operating system’s hard drive and will be less likely to fail.  Raid is instituted on many motherboards today to allow you to use two or more drives for performance or data redundancy.  Online backup is also a viable option with high speed internet, as it provides a 3^rd or 4^th tier of data backup.  Lastly a flash drive or optical disk with network drivers on it is important, if you ever have a PC fail in a single PC household, and nothing else works, an operating system reinstall can get your PC back up and running.  The network drivers you have secured are to make sure that you can get online to download updated drivers for other components.  A small spare hard drive can also be used, as a “backup OS” to just install when you need to recover data from a corrupted or infected PC.

Note: Most motherboards only have a single IDE (PATA ) channel built on them, if ODD and HDD are run on the same IDE cable they will operate at the speed of the slowest device (the ODD).  A cheap SATA drive will alleviate this major performance issue, and to further enhance storage capability external solutions can usually be found for your PATA hard drive in the $20 range, this also gives portability to your backed up data)

Power Supply Units (PSU), only handle longevity if purchased well as an individual component.  OEM Companies will install a power supply made of the cheapest available parts that will handle exactly what it is specified for with very little else added.  Modern CPUs with discrete Video cards, extra hard drives or upgraded multi-core CPUs can put a toll on the PSU that will have it overheating, breaking down or simply failing to boot within no time at all.  A solid PSU from a reputable company, purchased with headroom on the wattage, will make upgradeability and longevity synonymous.  There are a number of online power calculators to help you consider the wattage needs of the planned system, extra head room should be added for upgrades that are not foreseen.  Power efficiency of a PSU tends to be greatest in the midrange 50-70% of a PSUs wattage rating, and the online calculators are geared for full load on the entire system, something very few applications can do at this time.   While the difference is only a few percentage points, it is something to e considered when building a power efficient general purpose or home theater PC where heat is more of an issue.

Video cards, for the most part have a pretty decent longevity, for all but Video game PC builds.  As long as the GPU is supported with software and can handle widescreen resolutions it can be used on even the latest x58 core i7 system.  AGP cards are the exception, as an EOL interface, AGP cards that are still being manufactured break the price: performance ratio into the expensive category, and tie one to a motherboard that is most likely end of life as well.  Before AGP there were PCI video cards, while these cards are not capable of supporting modern video games, due to limitations in bandwidth on the interface, PCI slots are still included on motherboards due to the wide range of expansion devices that still utilize it.  PCI-e or PCI Express is a new interface standard, with much higher bandwidth capabilities that all new video cards are built on.  (Note: PCI-X is another industry standard, a PCI expansion that offers a double wide data path for PCI, used almost exclusively in servers and workstations, when PCI was not fast enough, but PCI-E had not yet been standardized.  This is an unusable standard as well).  There are 2 revisions of PCI-E out at the present with a third version due out in 2010.  Backward compatibility should be identical to PCI-e 1 and 2 with cards from either generation working in any of the others. (Although with reduced bandwidth, it could cause performance issues).  As long as the card is supported with software, and in some cases, by your PSU (with PCI-e power cables) it can remain in a system or carry over in upgrades through a few generations.  The average $100 video card today from an online retailer like newegg, should handle even minor video gaming for the next couple of years, by then DirectX 11 might be fully supported and an upgrade could be reconsidered.  For Avid gamers, a more powerful GPU is more important and care in selection should be treated as such.

RAM or memory is only readily available in 2 standards currently, DDR2 and DDR3.  DDR2 is in the process of being phased out, as both CPU manufacturers are supporting DDR3 now.  As such DDR2 is selling for much less than DDR3.  While some chipsets support using DDR2 or DDR3 the only motherboard that actually supports installing either one on the same motherboard is Asrock.  Asrock dual standard motherboards will be covered in the motherboard section of components.  DDR2 is slower, with tighter latencies than DDR3, and is available to run in single or dual channel configurations.  DDR3 has the same pin structure as DDR2, (240 pins) but operates at much lower voltages, with superior speeds, usually at the expense of latency, and can run in single dual and triple channel configurations.  32 bit operating systems can only address 4 Gigabytes of memory, this includes all memory a system can access not just the amount of RAM you have.  PAE extensions can add support for more memory in a 32 bit environment with an accompanied loss in performance; 64 bit operating systems can address much more ram and should be considered when shopping for an Operating System.  Purchasing enough memory is important, 4 gigabytes is the new standard for serious PC usage, with 2 Gigabytes being accepted for almost any usage in a 32 bit PC (with gaming being an exception in certain cases). I7 in triple channel works well in 3 or 6 GB amounts, although 4 GB in dual channel will also work very well and be a great upgrade for many PC users.

Motherboard upgrades are the trickiest, and the shortest longevity next to CPU’s.  A motherboard upgrade usually necessitates an operating reinstall, both for OS activation reasons and Driver incompatibilities.   The previously mentioned support for soon to be released operating systems, is a little more lax, since one can often ID the specific ICs (integrated circuits, or computer chips) used on a motherboard with a simple web search, (chipset, audio, networking) and find updated driver support from the original manufacturer not the company that built the motherboard.  BIOS support however is up to the motherboard manufacturer, and purchasing motherboards with well known BIOS support is important to using your motherboard as a stepping stone to more powerful setups.  Price is not indicative of effectiveness either, as many manufacturers will simply code out some enthusiast class features, and remarket the board for less money, as a “budget” board.  Motherboards should be selected based on expansion slots and onboard features that enhance any upgrade roadmap.  Integrated Graphics Processors, or IGPs are video cards that are built into the motherboard, while not suitable for gaming purposes, some models are more than adequate for most other purposes, from multimedia playback to hardware accelerated video encoding for HD/BluRay video.  AsRock (a budget brand of motherboard from the makers of ASUS products) have cross-architecture motherboards available, which support 2 separate architectures on the same motherboard.  Socket 939 to AM2 upgrades, DDR to DDR2 upgrades and DDR2 to DDR3 upgrades were all designed and produced, the effectiveness however is debatable.   Most modern motherboards that support AM2 socket will support AM2+ and AM3 socket CPU’s as well.  Intel socket 775 maybe end of line, but it supported chips from the Pentium D processor, up to quad core processors with a couple of die shrinks thrown in as well.

CPU or central processing unit is the brain of the PC.  The most rapidly evolving piece of technology in your PC, keeping up with the changes can be a constant process.  There are traps to get caught in with these purchases as well.  As mentioned previously in the motherboard components section, socket 775 and AM2 both had a very good run with support for a number of architectures that suits the piecemeal upgrade perfectly. Bottom of the line electronic components can be purchased very cheaply online either from e-tailers that offer used/ refurbished components, eBay/Craigslist sales, or from your local paper.  While the ultimately dead socket 478 Pentium 4 systems can usually be purchased for under $100, a Pentium 4 D or AM2 Athlon 64 system can be found for little more, and offer many more upgrade options.  Purchasing an entire PC also can add temporary memory, PSU and storage increases until a better performing upgrade can be acquired.  Parts can often be sold individually for more than there sum as well.  White box purchases (no name complete PC purchases) are also a good way to acquire Windows licenses, especially if it is a retail license.  These are most valuable as a retail license can be reused on many PC’s (although only one at a time) any issues with activation can be solved with a simple phone call to Microsoft.

The main problem with using an OEM build to start off upgrading however is part of the end of life path.  OEMs often cram the best components on a motherboard it can handle, and even though the architecture could support upgrades that would vastly improve performance, without BIOS updates, the OEM PC’s are maxed out.  This saves them money on construction costs, and reduces user error issues and damage, as well as well as generates new revenue, when a consumer needs to upgrade the entire PC to see a performance boost. Identifying your needs, wants and haves is vital to designing a system that keeps you from making a large financial investment, or if purchased on credit, still paying for the equipment after the expected lifespan of the system has expired.  Another large benefit of upgrading your own PC, aside from financial reasons, is knowledge gained.  The average person can benefit greatly just from knowing about the different components in a PC and that there are different industry standards with interfaces.

You can read his full results in his thread in the TechREACTION forums, here.

Watch the video here:

What we know so far:

TWKR = “Tweaker”
-We can assume that this means this chip is a special performer for enthusiast overclockers

Special Packaging
-This chip comes in a very mysterious, but irresistible black box

Cherry Picked/Best Binned 955
-Sources state that these chips are some of the best 955 X4’s chosen from the binning process. This could mean that they have a high rate of Electron Migration, or capability for very high clock speeds acquired on low voltage. Rumors are saying that these chips are suited for exotic means of cooling only (ie. LN2, DICE, Water etc.)

It has not yet been announced and early images show it is not for sale
-You cannot get these anywhere, nor do we have any confirmation that they will be for sale in the retail channel

42
-This number gets me. There has been speculation as to what it could be, however, IMO I believe it is some sort of number indicating what chip it is as far as manufacturing. So maybe this could be #42 out of a limited amount.

TWKR, not BE or FX
-As far as the new naming scheme, some people have been speculating that AMD wanted to use TWKR for their best binned BE’s, while leaving the “FX” brandname for chips that are on top of the market (ahead of Intel’s best offerings)

How It Performs
-The answer is no one knows. MainGear is probably putting it to the test as we speak.