NCIX Tech Fair Booth Review 2 - XFX, AViiQ, MSI, OCZ, Sony PS Vita
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,133 words · ~10 min read
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here we are at the XFX Booth this is going to be the start of our second
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round of Booth showcases they have a whole bunch of really cool stuff on demo
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including like this funky music so XFX is best known for their
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video cards they made a little bit of a Switcheroo a couple Generations ago
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where they used to do GeForce cards where now they're focused entirely on
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Radeon cards so they have brought their years of experience designing and
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Manufacturing graphics cards as well as the sweet coolers that go with sorry
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slick says it's a little low to over to the radon side so they have an immense
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variety of different cards including reference cards cards with non-reference
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coolers overclocked version of their cards so if you're going to go with a
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graphics card for the radi on side actually is hard to make a better choice
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than XFX because not only do they build the cards incredibly well they have one
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of the best warranties In The Biz as well which isn't to say that graphics
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cards are the only things that they do this I don't know if you guys have seen
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this episode on my NC Tech tips Channel but I actually showcased this guy right
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here this is their triple monitor stand which is capable of mounting up to three
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24-in monitors either in landscape or portrait mode for the just most Balls to
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the walls Affinity setup that you can get without spending a fortune on a
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custom solution like the Samsung MDT series last but not least we have a
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fairly new addition to XFX is lineup so this is their Pro Series power supplies
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they actually have power supplies ranging from 80 plus bronze all the way
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up to their limited edition 1,000 W 80 plus Platinum 1,000 watt and if you guys
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are following my personal rig upgrades on my lineus tech tips Channel you'll
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probably already know that I'm actually custom sleeving one of those with
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individually sleeved cables and that is what I've opted to use for a couple of
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reasons number one is that it has the best efficiency on the market and number
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two is their hybrid silent fan switch all you got to do is flip that switch in
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your fan on your power supply doesn't even turn on until you hit about 500 WS
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load which means it's 100% silent unless you're in like a Max load gaming
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scenario we're here at the a booth where they have a variety of different
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professional types of products so check this out these are designed to basically
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clip to a shirt pocket or to the inside of a notebook or even like on your pants
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pocket you can see I'm sporting one right now these are meant to replace
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your long bulky cables that have the potential to you know get broken or lost
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more easily these you can clip somewhere keep them safe they're 100% durable and
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they're not long so that's uh that's a
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dummy that's a dummy so that's not going to fit in there at all but that's not
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really the point the point is that it will fit in a real one and then there's
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also a variety of other things so you've got usba a to mini as well as usba to
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micro b we've also got a couple other products so this is their notebook stand
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which is made out of highlight highlight thank you which folds up like this and
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then you can and reassemble
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it like that bam and finally last but
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not least they've got a line of iPad cases that actually uses a composite
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aluminum on the back so it feels like you're actually still holding an iPad
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and they're compatible with the Smart Cover so you just clip your smart cover on here and then you are pretty much
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completely protected as far as your iPad goes we also have one more product here
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Port charging station aha portable charging station so this actually sits
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here it PLS into here this activates a
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hub you can charge up at three devices at one time has 15 WS of power enables
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charging of iPad iPhone Blackberry or
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any other Bluetooth uh headset anything
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that's USB charge enabl awesome there you go and you keep that in a handy little carrying pouch here so that you
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don't lose anything if you're traveling you're on a roll all the time you just
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have one thing to plug into the wall all your cables right here and you're ready
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to build good stuff here we are at the MSI Booth where
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the main focus is military class 3 so the military class 3 con
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basically revolves around using the highest quality most stable possible
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components to design their cards and their motherboards
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so military class 3 doesn't actually refer to some of their other Concepts
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such as hey this doesn't balance unless you have a graphics card on it there we
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go such as their twin frozer three coolers so right here we have their GTX
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580 although they do have next Generation products coming with their
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custom coolers so the advantage of a twin frozer cooler is that rather than a
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reference design which will ually load around 75 to 80° twin frozer coolers can
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keep even high-end graphics cards at around 55° under loow so while you do
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have a little bit more exhaustive heat in your system you get significantly
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better temperatures on your graphics card which is great if you're going to
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overclock your video card on the motherboard side MSI has a full lineup
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of products including everything from basic d41 LGA 775 Legacy stuff all the
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way up to the very latest LGA 2011 and LGA a 1155 motherboard platform so they
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aha c77 motherboard is actually the main
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focus of the booth here today and it's a feature called OC Genie now I've demoed
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OC genie on my channels before but I'm going to summarize it really quick for
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you OC Genie actually overclocks and tunes your whole system for Optimal
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Performance with the push of one button and what's really neat about the new OC
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gen on z77 is the fact that you can customize your OC gen profile so say for
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example example if you were a system builder like NC you could design a
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system to nooc gen to be even more aggressive on that particular system you
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give it to the end user and you say hey you want to overclock your system to the
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max just press this button and it's already all completely set up for you
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you want to turn off the overclock you want to save a little bit on the power consumption whatever else press the
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button turn it off no big deal so we've got their z77a gd65 which in my
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experience is actually one of the easiest z77 boards to work with in terms
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of overclocking and in terms of BIOS navigation with their click BIOS
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2o welcome to the ocz technology Booth you can see they got their ocz logo
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going on here so ocz used to be mostly known for memory products they are now
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no longer involved in system memory
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however they have gotten into ssds in a big way so this was actually my
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suggestion yeah I'm going to take full credit for it see I'm getting like the stink eye over there but it was totally
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my idea my suggestion was that in order
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to demo the value of an SS D they bring two identical systems and we're not even
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talking high performance systems I mean these are Dells what the it's not a
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custom NCI PC by any stretch of the imagination no matter what kind of a PC
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you're using whether it's a netbook or an extreme gaming machine you will see a
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huge benefit from an SSD now you can do the usual boot up demo but I think we've
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all seen that before what I want to focus on is the general responsiveness
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of a system using an SSD so you guys at this time don't know which of these
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systems has a regular laptop hard drive and which of them has an SSD but I bet
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you know now look how long it takes to launch Windows Media Player versus this
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one bear in mind guys too these are fresh installs on these machines with
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nothing running in the background okay that one was pretty close let's go find
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something else that hasn't been opened before Oh Windows Media Center that's a
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good one the more you load up these machines with various applications and
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Antivirus running in the background and all that kind of nonsense the more
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pronounced this difference is going to become and I'm going to have to find a
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way to keep talking here while we wait for this hard drive machine to finally
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launch Windows Media Center these are two brand new machines I have not
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tampered with them in any way we're not even talking Photoshop we're not talking
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complicated applications Windows Media Center takes like five times longer to
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launch on a hard drive than it does on an SSD so if you guys didn't already
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know yes this is the one with the ocz Vertex 4 and if you do happen to attend
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the show you can get one for only1 $77.99 this is the highest performing
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SSD on the market it is pretty much right up there tied for that performance
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Crown right now and at this price it is the best performance per dollar per gig
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that you can buy welcome to the PS Vita Booth here at the ncx tech fair this is
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actually my first time hands on with the PS VA so it uses a 960x 544 screen that
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is almost 1080p so it's pretty darn close this is their full replacement for
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the PSP so it is their latest generation handheld game platform and I got to say
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even launch titles look absolutely fantastic it has dual analog sticks
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which means that you can you can play your games the way you're accustomed to
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whether it's movement with the left and camera with the right or whether the
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game devb screws up and doesn't do it that way you will be able to operate
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your games the way that you're accustomed you've also got a d-pad as well as your full Playstation controls
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and based on how complete the control set is on here I wouldn't be that surprised if uh Sony decided to you know
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make PS1 games or something available on an arcade in the past cuz I can tell you
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these Graphics are more comparable to PS2 than uh than to PS1 that's for sure
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in terms of the overall build quality it's got a nice uh nice overall feel to
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it without being too heavy you've got l&r buttons here so you don't have quite
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as many shoulder buttons as you might be used to on a Sony product however this
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is pretty cool it has a touchpad on the back which the game devs are free to use
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in any way they want so you can program it to be like R2 R3 L2 L3 for example in
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soccer you can aim where you want to do a free kick at the goal according to
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where you press on the back pad so there's all kinds of neat stuff like that let's just have a look have one of
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the other launch titles where they've got one of the golf games going on here
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so let's press X to take the shot yeah yeah okay apparently I didn't take the
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shot oh okay I'm taking that shot there we go sorry I'm not much of a console
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guy here guys I get confused easily oh it's right in the water excellent so
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that pretty much wraps up this round two of Ender boots don't forget to check us
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out at the NC Tech fair and don't forget to subscribe to lus and NCI ex Tech tips