Nearing the end of my trip, I booted into Ubuntu and it reported that my laptop’s battery only had 34-36% effective life. There was over 60% degradation in one year of very little battery use. I had noticed the battery performance degrade and on maximum charge I was getting just under 2 hours. When I first got the laptop, I was hovering around 3-3.5 hrs, still less than what a 9cell should provide.

I gave Dell a call two days ago to report my issue and after a lengthy discussion with technical support, they offered to ship me a replacement battery. Not bad giving I had 2 days of warranty left at that time.

The new battery arrived this morning and it just finished its first charge.

new battery

New Battery Label (left) & Comparison of the batteries (right)

The original battery:

With a wear level of 63%, I was only managing 1 hour 50 minutes under idle conditions in windows.

The new battery:

With the new battery the full capacity is almost the same as the design capacity, short by only 200 mWh, unlike my original battery where the difference was around 55000mWh! Under full charge, the battery is slated to last in the range of 4.5 hours. This is under idle conditions, CPU throttling, wifi enabled and BlueTooth disabled. Once I get some new results, I will update with another post.

The performance of the Rally2 Turbo is quite good. I hit a maximum write speed of 29MB/s and a maximum read speed of 32 MB/s. During practical testing, I was average a write speed of around 25 MB/s. Very respectable.

From the concept of the Rally Flash Drive family, OCZ has done everything right: a sleek slender body with fast performance. As the series matured and evolved to the Rally2 Turbo, the drive has had a few cosmetic changes and the performance has kicked into a higher gear. The curved edges with no protruding parts and overall small body makes it an easy fit into pockets while the 25-30MB/s performance guarantees you quick copy from hard drive to flash.

I’ll be carrying an old MEC Brio 70 that will house my stuff and Karen’s.  I’ll be bringing along my laptop and PDA (GPS) so that will add to the weight as we move around in Italy via train.  Regardless it should be a ton of fun.

Here are the cities we’ll be visiting and the order it’ll occur in: London, Venice, Milan, Florence, Pisa, Rome and finally Paris before returning home June 10th.

Overall, the HD3650 IceQ was a great performer. It allowed for moderate overclocking games and for a mid-range performing machine the $90, at time of writing, is not a huge investment.

I wouldn’t recommend any 3650 for high resolution gaming or for playing games of the newest title. If you’re the occasional gamer or multi-media type of guy, this card should suit you nicely.

Throughout the tests, the HIS Radeon HD 3650 performed well. It is not a top-of-the-line card but its performance should be satisfactory for all but the most extreme of gamers. If you don’t care for too much eye candy or extremely high resolutions, this mid-range card should fit the bill in terms of value. For its price, it is a great buy. Also, it supports CrossFireX so you can upgrade later if desired.

Manufacturer: Mitron Interlink Inc.

Mitron Interlink Inc. is a new face on the computer component industry, manufacturing PC modding gear to hard drive enclosures. Based in Taiwan, this company is giving us a first hand look at their HDD Selector (Duplus DUP-35).

This hard drive selector device is aimed towards the crowd which uses two hard drives which have issues with booting and O/S isolation. Although this is not a completely new idea on the market, it is rare to come across these in a PC hardware store.

Package

The unit that was sent to us is a pre-production model, so it did not come in a retail package. However, everything included was shipped.

The selector comes with the switch, power cables, and screws. The selector is designed to fit into a standard 3.5″ bay.

As you can see, the selector is a very simple device which takes up very little room. Since this unit is so small, it is wide open for enthusiasts to do their own case modding to fit this device in.

Before we try this gadget out, let’s take a look at the features.

Features

The selector is describes on the website:

The device gives the user the convenience of turning a knob to turn on/off hard drives without having to open up the computer. This is great for users who have multiple operating systems of have problems with virus infections.

Now let’s move onto installation and testing.

Installation and Testing

Installation is fairly simple, as it only requires fitting the unit into the case and replacing the current hard drive power cables with the wires supplied into the switch.

The addition of this device may lead to more cable management chaos.

The switch is a metal knob with a grippy texture for easy turning. The knob clicks firmly in place when switching hard drives and the LED indicator clearly shows the switch position.

Power to A&B, Power to B, Power to A

The hard drives are successfully switched on and off when tested, and no damage was done to the hard drives with the addition of the selector. The operation can only be done when the PC is turned off. Do not attempt to change modes while the PC is in operation.

Conclusion

Mitron has produced a large number of products such as noise dampening, fan grills, even case lights, making Mitron a competitor in the computer accessory market.

Mitron’s HDD Selector is a very clever device which allows the user to switch hard drives when necessary. The unit was very easy to install, and works flawlessly. The only drawback of this design is the limited control of two hard drives.

Advantages

Disadvantages

I have six pictures before the break, a video followed by another batch of photos. The design is quite ingenious with the rotating sensor arm. The robot is definitely not as fast as some of the other kickers, but it is far more interesting and better designed for the class.

Here is the YouTube video followed by some more photos.

Manufacturer: Biostar

NVIDIA has had the performance crown in the high end market ever since they released their 8 series of video cards nearly 2 years ago. Often lost among all the hype of the high end cards are their little brothers in the middle of the pack. Our expectations were never really high for these mid level cards, but lately this has changed. Since the release of NVIDIA’s 8800GT and ATi’s 3870, you can get quite a bit of performance and features for very little. Following on the heels of the very successful 8800GT, NVIDIA has released the first card in the 9 series, the 9600GT.

Today I have the pleasure of taking Biostar’s 9600GT card for a spin around the testing block. With the release of the 9600GT, NVIDIA’s model lineup seems to get even more confusing for the average user. Where does the 9600GT stand in line when looking at performance and price? Coming in at roughly $30 cheaper than the 8800GT at launch, is your money better spent on the older series? Read on and hopefully we can answer some of these questions.

Package and Accessories

Let’s start out by exploring the box Biostar’s 9600GT comes in.

Seems that just about every video card package comes complete with a rendered female adorning the front, and Biostar’s 9600GT is no exception. The front of the box gives you your typical feature set including the various NVIDIA features, model and memory size. Notice also that this 9600GT is an eGate card and comes with Biostar’s latest overclocking utility, VRangerII. The line you see along the left side of the box is actually a slice that came courtesy of customs officials, so I don’t expect your product to receive the same treatment.

The back of the box is also pretty standard for most video cards with a more in depth look at some of the features included in the card. On the right side is a check list of sorts for what you would need to run the 9600GT in SLi. The sides of the box do not include any information other than SKU, so I won’t bore you with those details.

Opening up the box there are 4 different compartments containing the card and various accessories.

Included with Biostar’s 9600GT is an instruction manual, HDTV component out breakout box, DVI to VGA adapter, molex to 6 pin PCI-Express power adapter and CD. On the CD are drivers and applications.

Specifications

Taken straight from the Biostar product page for the 9600GT here are some features of the first of the Geforce 9 series cards.

ENGINE CLOCK: 650MHz
MEMORY CLOCK: 1800MHz
MEMORY SIZE: 512MB
MEMORY TYPE: DDR3
MEMORY BUS: 256-bit
STREAM PROCESSORS: 64
INTERFACE: Support PCI-E 2.0
MAX RESOLUTION: 2048 X 1536@85Hz
OUTPUT: S-Video
Dual-DVI
ACCESSORIES: 1 x HDTV Cable
1 x Power Connector
1 x DVI-VGA Adapter
1 x Driver CD
1 x User’s Manual
PRODUCT FEATURES:

PRODUCT CERTIFICATION:

The 9600GT

We’ve seen the packaging and specifications, now let’s take a closer look at the card itself.

On first glance the 9600GT looks identical to the 8800GT. Biostar uses the NVIDIA reference design and cooler so no real surprises here.

The 6 pin power connector is located at the end of the card which could be a potential issue if you do not have a lot of room to work with in your case. While I use a full tower and this shouldn’t be an issue in mine, it could be a potential problem should you have a cramped area inside your case. I will take a closer look at this once the card is installed.

Looking along the top edge of the card is the SLi connection, along with an SPDIF connection for streaming audio through the video card to your home theater setup.

The I/O panel includes the now almost standard dual link DVI and video out connections. The inclusion of the dual link DVI ports ensure you can use the 9600GT on the larger 30″ monitors.

Installation

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the install, since installation of video cards is pretty much a no brainer anymore.

As you can see the 9600GT is identical in size to the 8800GT, in this case an XFX model. With this longer length you will have to take this into consideration with the space inside your case.

With the 9600GT installed, you can get a better view on space requirements. There are no issues as far as obstructions with my board, a Foxconn Nforce 570SLi. Biostar’s 9600GT is longer than budget cards like the Biostar 8600GTS that was reviewed here at OverclockersOnline last year.

Testing Setup

Below are the system constants followed by the comparison video cards that will be used for testing.

CPU: AMD AM2 5000+ Black Edition
MB: Foxconn nForce 570 Sli
RAM: Mushkin 2×1GB PC8400
PSU: Ultra X3 1000W
HD: Seagate 1TB SATA
DVD-Rom: LG 18x DVD Burner – SATA
Case: Lian Li G70B
Ambient Temperature: 24-25C
OS: Microsoft Windows XP w SP2

Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT 512mb (Catalyst 8.2)
XFX 8800GT 512mb (Forceware 169.21)
Biostar 9600GT 512mb (Forceware 174.16)

The 2900 XT was ATi’s top performing card in their initial foray into DX10 hardware. While it did not dethrone Nvidia from the performance crown, it is a strong performing card and should be interesting to see how well a budget card of today compares to a higher end card of last year. I am also throwing in an XFX 8800GT for comparison as this chipset was extremely well received when released late last year and set the bar for price and performance.

For testing I ran all three cards through benchmarks using resolutions of 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1680×1050 on the following games and applications: FarCry, Half Life 2:Lost Coast, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes, Cryis and finally 3DMark06. Read on to find out how the Biostar 9600GT fares in this gauntlet of tests.

FarCry and Half Life 2: Lost Coast

For benchmarking FarCry I am using the built in timedemo on the Regulator map with the game patched to version 1.4. All settings set to Ultra High with 8x Anisotropic filtering.

At the lowest resolution all three cards are bunched up together but, as the resolution increases the Biostar 9600GT and the 8800GT break away from the 2900 XT. While the 8800GT defeats the 9600GT throughout, the gap is pretty small. I would almost label this a moral victory for the cheaper Biostar 9600GT.

Next in line is Half Life 2: Lost Coast. Half Life 2 is still a favorite among many gamers and each episode released draws attention. Lost Coast was released as basically a technology demo to showcase the Half Life 2 engine. I will use the built in video stress test with all settings to their highest with 6x MSAA and 16x Anisotropic filtering.

I have to say this really perplexed me that there was almost no difference in scores between the two lower resolutions. While I anticipated some similar results as were seen in the FarCry benchmark, we have quite a different story here with the 9600GT running neck and neck with the 2900 XT while surprisingly the 8800GT trails behind. Once again a very strong performance by the Biostar 9600GT.

Company of Heroes and World in Conflict

In the past first person shooter titles were typically the only titles used to benchmark video cards, this changed somewhat with the release of Company of Heroes. I will be using the built in benchmark to get comparable results with settings set to their max.

Here we can see the 9600GT stays neck and neck with the 8800GT until we reach the widescreen resolution of 1680×1050. The Biostar 9600GT edges out the 2900 XT throughout the entire benchmark.

World in Conflict is another extremely demanding real time strategy game that has brought many a system to its knees. For testing I set details to Very High and ran the built in benchmark.

AS you can see all three cards are within a few FPS of each other at all resolutions. While all three are heavily taxed, the 9600GT keeps neck in neck with both cards, I grow more impressed with this card as benchmarking keeps going.

Crysis and 3DMark06 Professional

I don’t think Crysis needs any introduction as it was one of the most highly anticipated titles for its graphics engine alone and is extremely demanding on video cards. For testing everything is set to high with no AA and the built in timedemo benchmark was run.

We can see the 8800GT flexes its muscles here a bit and leaves the 9600GT behind though not by too much. I knew the cards would take a beating and it’s obvious that to get the game to playable levels at 1680×1050 some settings will need to be played with and adjusted. You can still get a very enjoyable experience out of this punishing game from the Biostar’s resilient 9600GT.

While 3DMark06 Professional won’t tell you how well your video card will perform in any given game, it is a universally accepted benchmark and is a good tool for overall comparisons. Stock settings are used aside from resolutions.

As you can see all three cards are within 200 points of each other in the lower resolution. All three cards show nearly identical numbers in the Shader Model 2.0 tests, but the 9600 lags a bit behind both of the other cards in the Shader Model 3.0 tests. When the resolution is bumped up a little to 1280×1024, we get a bit of a surprise when the 9600GT edges out the 8800GT. I reran the tests because quite honestly this result surprised me but I got roughly the same results each time.

For the most part order is restored to what we have generally seen throughout, however the 9600GT is nipping at their heels.

Temperatures and Overclocking

So the gauntlet of tests is complete, or is it? What would be a review without some overclocking?

As mentioned earlier Biostar includes their overclocking utility, VRangerII with the 9600GT. First let’s start out with this little gem of a program.

When firing up the VRangerII, we are first greeted with this warning and I grow a little excited in hoping we are given voltage controls within this utility, but alas much like Biostar’s 8600GTS it seems it is missing the hardware onboard to allow this.

So first off like a kid in a candy store, I decide to hit auto and see what happens. When I keep seeing the numbers rise, I was amazed and hitting the test button resulted with a pass. I knew this was too good to be true as it promptly crashed my computer when launching 3DMark06. While it is a very nice addition, I needed something with a little more detailed control, so I turned to RivaTuner v2.07 so I could get a more accurate readout of the settings and temperatures and used GPU-z to capture the settings.

A little footnote before I move on, I was aware that many 9600GT being reviewed were found to have slightly different core clock speeds than what was advertized as found here at techPowerUp!. I found no such discrepancy in Biostar’s 9600GT.

With much adjustment and many tests run, I settled on a stable overclock of 735Mhz GPU, 1837Mhz shader clock and 1025Mhz for the memory, from stock results of 650/1625/900 respectively. Very nice results for out of the box on stock cooling. Now how exactly do these results translate ingame? I used two of the more demanding games, Crysis and World in Conflict, to measure our gains after the overclock.

I would count this as quite a success when you consider that an overclock achieved on stock cooling pushes the Biostar 9600GT ahead of both the 8800GT and 2900 XT in World in Conflict and puts it just 2 FPS behind the 8800GT in Crysis. With an aftermarket cooler and some adjustments to the voltage, I can see achieving some very nice results from the 9600GT. As you will see in the next graph, overclocking led to a minimal increase in temperatures.

Now this is the part that really amazed me with this card is how cool it runs with the NVIDIA reference cooler which is known to be quite loud on the 8800GT, and I can attest to this from my testing for this review. What I found however was that it remained rather quiet, even under full load, as opposed to the leaf blower sound the 8800GT and the 2900 XT produced under load.

Conclusion

So after all this testing and benchmarking, what are my thoughts? Right now is a great time for anyone looking for performance on a budget. The mid-range market is crowded with plenty of great performing video cards, and Biostar’s 9600GT is no exception. While it may not be all out faster stock to stock than the 8800GT, its only slightly behind it and with a little overclocking it can nearly match the 8800GT. The fact of the matter is you get a lot of performance for not a whole lot of price.

About the only complaint I can find about Biostar’s card is the lack of voltage controls via their VRangerII application. This is more of a complaint for those tweakers out there that like to push their hardware and get the most out of it they can, but this doesn’t affect anything for the normal user.

Positives

Negatives

I finally got an answer from Antec and nVidia, it is not a problem with the power supply but with the nVidia drivers. If you download the newest GeForce drivers, it resolves the problem! Thank you nVidia and sorry to Antec for my false accusations. Go out and get yourself an Antec Quattro!

Manufacturer: Tagan

As of lately, Tagan’s BZ series of power supplies have been making quite a few waves. Tagan, in partnership with ABS Labs, or more commonly, a Newegg subsidiary have put together quite the monster of a power supply. For starters, Tagan’s BZ series comes in nothing lower than 700W and all the way up to 1300W.

Although this is Tagan’s first appearance at Overclockers Online, they are by no means new to the power supply scene. Since the unlikely beginnings found at a Computex dinner party, their presence has grown far beyond simply power supplies to include high performance cases and drive enclosures.

Tagan’s BZ power supplies, or ‘Below Zero’ series are cooled by a single massive 13.5cm LED fan. Today we will be looking at Tagan’s brand new BZ900, a unit that simply does not shy away boasting 900W of clean, solid, and efficient power.

Features and Specifications

Right off the bat, Tagan is not about modesty!

Tagan BZ PSU blows the competition away. BZ PSU are made with best components and loaded with various safety implements to protect your expensive components. Tagan PSU is made to last and outperform. Look no further for the best power. The PipeRock modular cable management with colorful housing to avoid wrong connection.

Although the Tagan BZ Series is marketed as a six rail power supply, it is in all actuality, a single rail unit. Tagan’s Turbo mode switch simply enables or disables current limiting in order to adhere to computer hardware standardization.

Tagan has garnered a reputation for using Topower units, and surely enough, the UL number listed on the side of this unit is E223995, registered to none other than Topower.

Package

The Tagan BZ900 power supply comes packed away in a very attractive cube shaped box.

With no shortage of information and product specifications, the sides of the box are covered with charts, bullet points and certifications.

To the rear of the package, there is a brief product description in quite a number of different languages.

Content

Unpacking the BZ900 is quite an ordeal. Tagan has gone to great lenghts to ensure not only the safety of the unit in transportation, but details in the presentation.

Removing the very first items in the box, we find a ‘Thank you note’ with a $10 dollar web coupon redeemable at the ABS store, the product manual and a zipped up case.

Inside the case are the cables, mounting hardware and accessories neatly organized.

Accessories include a pair of gloves to prevent fingerprints, a rubber gromet for the power supply to reduce vibrations, a screw driver, a bag of screws and an ABS Labs badge.

Finally, the power supply and again, it is packed away incredibly well. The Tagan BZ900 is wrapped in bubble wrap, and then stowed away inside a canvas bag.

Peeling away at the layers of packaging reveals the unit.

Perhaps, visually, the most interesting feature is the modular headers. Over the years, we have seen quite a number of different executions of modular heads, but nothing quite like screw mounted connectors. While I am not a big fan of the color scheme, the screw mounted connectors are truly an interesting touch.

Connector heads are attached to the base of the unit through a simple rounded plug, then screwed in place.

As all of the connector heads are the same, Tagan uses color coding to differentiate between the plugs.

Blue is for peripherals, SATA connectors and floppy connectors.

Green and reds for PCI express connectors.

Attached directly to the unit are the motherboard connectors, and one standard 4 pin peripheral connector.

Flipping the unit up on its side reveals the enormous 135mm LED lit fan. The usage of a single fan serves a few purposes: it does an excellent job cooling the power supply while emitting little noise and it acts as a system exhaust bringing air from inside the case through the power supply and then out through the perforated rear of the unit.

Taking a look at the back of the power supply we of course have our standard AC plug, power switch, and something new, a Turbo mode switch.

Really, the Turbo mode sounds a lot more interesting that than what it truly is. As we discussed earlier, Turbo mode does nothing more than remove current limitations on the 12V rail. Enabling turbo mode simply allows for a 70A +12V rail.

Fortunately, the modular screw mounts at the front are as cool as they look!

Beyond aesthetics, the screw mounted connectors do serve a greater functional purpose. Those who have worked with modular plugs, or for that matter, any sort connector in a confined environment, which should account for everyone who is reading this article, knows the pain of stubborn connectors. Connector tabs like EZ connect are an improvement, but that definitely is not the most elegant solution. Screw mounted connectors pick up where other connectors fall short, they offer a secure connection along with a band- aid and injury free removal. Everybody wins!

For those who just can’t sleep at night without the reassuring ambient glow of their computer, the base of the screw mounts are lit by a plastic ring. Personally I would have opted for the more subtle look of either dimmed LEDs or frosted plastic, but still I have to admit, the lit rings are beautiful none the less.

While I could probably go on and on about the exterior, that is better left off to the consumers. What we are more interested is the insides, and how the unit performs.

As always, with Topower built units, the insides are well organized.

On the primary side we have a single 560uF 400V capacitor by Jun Fu and on the secondary side an array of Hermei capacitors. Neither of these two makers are known for quality components, in fact, they have a notorious history malfunction and leaks.

However, although Jun Fu and Hermei have such a damning history of failures bringing forth with it questions of reliability, we cannot judge a unit simply by its capacitors. So, without further ado, let us begin the tests.

Testing

While our load tester consisted of a large array of wire wound resistors is in the process of taking shape, in order to simulate system load, we will be using peltiers. The reason for this is because when using an actual computer system there is no way we could accurately measure how much load we are putting on the power supply without some very expensive equipment.

Approximate load

The total load on the 12V rail is approximately 708W while the 3.3V and 5V rails will be loaded with approximately 132W totaling 840W or 93% of the Tagan BZ900 900W’s total output capabilities.

Prior to any official tests, the unit will run with no load for two weeks or approximately 336 hours at an operation temperature of 21°C (room temperature will vary throughout this period) as a burn-in period. We will be running two sets of tests, a cold and a hot test, but both under loaded conditions. This is to reflect different conditions the power supply could potentially encounter within an enclosed system. Cold tests will run with an exhaust temperature of 21°C and hot tests will be run with an exhaust temperature of 45°C. All temperature and voltage readings will be recorded with two separate digital multimeters.

Cold test results

Hot test results

Despite the usage of low quality capacitors, Tagan’s BZ900 900W held up incredibly well to our tests. In our cold tests, the unit displayed an impressive ability to stable under heavy load. Once the heat was cranked up, voltage outputs did drip, but barely. Overall, this unit is rock solid!

Conclusion

Tagan has on its hand a truly interesting product. The BZ900 900W is a top notch performer, it held its ground amidst the harsh testing environment and did so while acoustically remaining fairly silent.

And who could forget the lights. This unit packs enough LEDs for its own light show! For the modders, the BZ900 900W is second to none. Unfortunately, for those who would rather a more subtle power supply, there is no switch for the lights and or fix without first getting to work with a pair of wire cutters.

While at this time, I would love to conclude saying that the BZ900 is also incredibly affordable, it isn’t. Priced in the upper ranges of $200 to $300 dollar mark, the Tagan BZ900 900W does cost quite a pretty penny. So in the end, what exactly is the verdict? Tagan’s BZ900 900W is a rock solid performer with the looks to match along with perks such as fully sleeved wires, screw mounted modular connectors, and silent operation.

Advantages

Disadvantages