George's Blog

My monitor is probably the product I was least impressed with in my computer setup.  I was still very impressed with this monitor, and I’m not saying it’s bad, but I was just EXTREMLY impressed with all my other parts.

If you’re looking for a monitor that is cheap, yet still packs a good amount of punch, and has decent speakers, then this monitor will be fine for you.  This monitor is available for around $170, and by my standards, that is a great price.  Other monitors with worse specs cam come in at $300, so I think that this is a great deal.

Let’s talk about specs.  This monitor features a 20000:1 color ratio, full HD 1080p display (max resolution 1920 x 1080), 5ms refresh time, decent speakers, and tilt stand adjustments.  It is 18.01″ x 13.42″ x 7.22″ (W x H x T) (thickness determined with stand), and weighs 12.13 lbs.

It has full HD 1080p, so everything comes out crisp and sharp, no blurriness, or anything like that.  It has a 20000:1 color ratio, making colors vibrant, and clear, but not as vibrant as an apple display or anything like that.  It has a good refresh time so everything is smooth.  The speakers are okay, but not great.  They remind me of a Macbook’s speakers, not good bass, but good everything else.  They work well for everything but since they lack in bass, listening to rap or hip hop with a lot of bass can get not as enjoyable as listening to it with good headphones or speakers.  It also has a D-Sub, a DVI, an HDMI, and there is a audio jack port for the speakers, and it comes with a chord, so that’s nice.

One interesting thing is the OS sort of thing that controls the brightness and contrast and such.  There are 5 modes you can put the monitor in; Scenery, Standard, Theater, Game, and Night View.  These all come in handy when doing those certain things, and the settings just mess with the contrast and all that to give you the best viewing experience possible.  The only bad thing about the OS is how you use the 5 buttons on the bottom of the monitor to control it, and sometimes, it can get confusing.

This monitor DOESN’T HAVE A WEBCAM OR MICROPHONE.  This is the one downside and it is pretty big, so if you’re going to buy this monitor you should purchase a webcam along with it.

Overall, this monitor is an amazing buy, and it has get bang for your buck, so if you’re in the market, this is a great buy.

One mouse to rule them all…..One mouse to find them….One mouse to bring them all….And in the darkness…..point the cursor to the brightness up button.  Another great treasury from Logitech, the Performance Mouse MX.  I’m going to tell you up front the price is a little high at $100, but seriously this is the BEST MOUSE EVER MADE.

Every time you put your hand around this mouse, you feel at home.  Your hand feels in a natural position and you feel like you could just sit there for hours feeling the mouse.  This is because of the ergonomic design.  This type of design dramatically lowers the risk of carpel tunnel because the shape makes it so there is absolutely no stress on your fingers.

Do you remember that feeling of stretching your hands after the long hours of game play just because they are so uncomfortable?  I remember that and I hated it.  After choosing the best quality mouse out there, I can play for 12 hours straight and only feel stress from my keyboard hand.  Not saying I have done that but I assume it wouldn’t stress your hand too much.

On the top on the mouse, it is plastic, but it is the smoothest plastic I have ever felt, and it almost feels like there is some sort of mat type of thing on it.  Around the thumb area, there is a chrome strip, which really compliments the black top, and on that chrome, there is a forward and back buttons, programmable of course, and just below those there is a zoom button, also programmable.  On either side of the mouse, where your thumb, pinky and ring finer go, there is a matish rubbery substance that it very smooth and comfortable.  There is yet another programmable button inside the thumb cradle, effortlessly accessible by our thumb.

Another one of the great features on this mouse is what Logitech calls Darkfield.  This is new technology that Logitech has developed, and it makes your mouse be able to track on, pretty much anything, even glass.  I haven’t found a single flat surface that it can’t track on, and I am overall extremely impressed with the quality of this laser.

Logitech has yet another new technology they call Unifying Receivers.  First of all, the receivers are about as big as my thumbnail, and when plugged in, they stick out ¼ of an inch.  That is pretty impressive, but to dazzle you more, they even made this tiny receiver receive data from all of your other wireless Logitech Unifying enabled devices.  For instance, I also have the Logitech K350 wave keyboard, enabled with Unifying, and I only need to have one receiver plugged into my desktop.  Just because Logitech is awesome, they also include a receiver extender, so that you can plug in into your desktop on the ground, but the receiver will be on your desk, with the most optimal conditions for receiving data.

Last but not least, let’s talk about battery life.  The mouse comes with one AA rechargeable battery, and lasts about 2 weeks, for me, until I see the indicator go to 2 bars instead of 3, but I think it could last me a month and a half, taking all the juice out of it.  That’s pretty heavy use too, I’d say around 2 to 3 hours a day of constant use.  It does come with a USB to wall charger with a chord that plug into the front of the mouse, so you can still use the mouse while it is charging, which, I think is great.  The scroll wheel also has two settings where you can do regular scrolling or “hyperscrolling”, which I find absolutely useless, but it is still fun to play with.  It is pretty much a “frictionless” scrolling where the wheel just keeps going for a while after you stop actually pushing it.

The only one downside to this mouse is that it spoils your hand.  After using it a couple days, and you try to go back to a crappy old mouse, you will feel the difference.  Overall, this is THE BEST MOUSE EVER, as I said before.

Next, I will review my 21.5” monitor from Asus, so stay tuned.

Twitter: www.twitter.com/gmmotto, follow me for updates

For more on the Logitech Performance MX Mouse, check out Logitech’s website: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/mice_pointers/mice/devices/5845

Like all of my other parts, all I have to say is wow. This card has blown me away. The ATI Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition(overclocked), is amazing. It has 1gb of gddr5 memory, ATI eyefinity support, ATI stream support, DirectX 11 support, OpenGL 3.1 support, ATI CrossFireX compatible, ATI Avivo HD video and display technology, ATI PowerPlay support, PCI Express 2.0 support, and on the back, it has two DVIs, a HDMI, and a DisplayPort. That’s a lot of tech blabber to take in. Try soaking all that in while you read some more: It has a core clock of 765MHz, 1440 Stream Processing Units, a 1125 MHz (4.5 gbps) memory clock, 256-bit memory interface, a max resolution of 2560 x 1600, a minimum 500W power supply, 2 6 pin power connecters, and it has a fan with cooling system attached. So let’s get into it shall we?

ATI Eyefinity is amazing, even though I have never used it myself; I plan on eventually using it for some pretty extreme gaming. Being a gamer, the GPU was one of the main attractions of buying a custom built system.Essentially, Eyefinity is the technology that allows you to connect 2 or more displays to one GPU, and with the drivers, it makes the operating system think that all three monitors are just one big panel. So, say you had three monitors and tried to play Modern Warfare 2, but when you started it up, only one screen showed the gameplay while the other two were black. But, if you have an Eyefinity enabled GPU, you could get all of those monitors to play the game, making the game way more immersive and way more fun. However, there is a downside to this amazing technology. You must have a NATIVE displayport monitor or it won’t work. So, one of your monitors has to have a displayport cable running out of the back of it. This is extremely annoying because native displayport monitors are hard to find and if you already have a DVI 21.5” 1920 x 1080 monitor, that makes it double the hard because of the specific specifications you have to accommodate for. In some cases, it will work with an active conversion cable, but those are hard to find. So if you are going to purchase a Eyefinity GPU, then buy a native displayport monitor as your first one, then go looking for another DVI or HDMI, because if you don’t, you will end up with mismatched displays.

OpenGL is a very efficient concept. So pretty much, when you are doing heavy amounts of computing, and your CPU is under a lot of work, your GPU can kick in and help a little bit with that processing. Although you GPU is a lot less processing power than your CPU, it can still help out your CPU a lot so that your computer doesn’t burst into flames.

As for playing games go, this GPU is one of the best out there today. I don’t really believe in benchmarks so I’m just going to say that this thing can play Crysis at max settings, getting probably around 30+ fps. That it pretty dam good.

If you are a hardcore gamer like me, and you are looking for a card that can do it all and more with Eyefinity, then this is defiantly the card for you, and even some less hardcore gamers who just want that extra punch of power, this card will be amazing for you too.

Next I will be reviewing my Coolermaster Cosmos S case.

I cannot be more impressed with the quality and speed of the new i7 processor lineup.  The i7’s pack a huge punch as far as processing goes, and with a geekbench score of around 8000, it is a good buy.   That is an amazing score, and it defiantly shows that score in the performance.  I bought this for around $300 from newegg, but if you buy the quad core iMac, it will also contain this processor.  I haven’t found anything that this processor can’t do without ease.

All models in the i7 series contain hyper-threading.  Hyper-threading theoretically makes your processor theoretically have eight cores instead of four.  You can see on task manager that it comes up as having eight threads instead of the actual four cores.  But threads are different from cores and what hyper-threading does is make each core be able to have two threads of software lines going through it instead of one through each core.  This makes the processor process information at a significantly higher rate than a regular old 2.8 quad core processor.  This feature doesn’t always turn on, however.  Only when you are doing a very processor heavy application will the hyper-threading turn on and make your computer truly have eight threads.  Say, rendering a few photos on Blender, or converting six movies at a time, will turn this on.  I have realized when I converted six movies at a time, it is extremely taxing on the processor and the temperature was reaching 90 Degrees Celsius.  But hey, it converted all six Star Wars movies in a half of an hour, so that is pretty impressive.

If you are concerned about whether this processor will be able to handle your games, you shouldn’t be concerned.  Game play processing is mostly done by your GPU, or graphics card, so your processor won’t be taxed hardly as much as your GPU.

Overall I think this processor is all anyone could ever need.  Unless you are a extreme hardcore video editor and you need to export videos that are ten hours long in eight minutes, this processor will be perfect for you.

My next blog will be about my graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition, so stay tuned.

We all know about custom built computers right?  If not, you should look it up because, well, it is the best thing I have ever done.  Pretty much, it is when you buy a bunch of computer parts from a  website, say http://www.newegg.com, and when you get them, you build the computer ( I will go into more detail later).  I have built a couple computers with really great specs.  The one I am currently using has:

Intel core i7 2.8 (with hyperthreading)

ATI Radeon 5850 black edition(AKA overclocked) with 1 gb of gddr5 dedicated video ram

Coolermaster cosmos S case

750 Watt Corsair power supply

4 gb ddr3 of corsair dominator memory (1333)

Asus P7P55d motherboard

Western digital 1TB hard drive (7200rpm)

DVD/CD reader and burner

Asus VH232 21.5″ monitor (1920 x 1080)

Logitech mouse and keyboard

I got all of this for under $1,400 (minus the price of windows 7), and for that price, considering the competition’s specs and price, this is a pretty good deal.  In about two hours I had it all built and ready  to test with windows 7.  Of course, after you install the operating system, you have to go back into the case and make tweaks like cable management, and fix anything that might have not been plugged in right or anything like that.  After that was all done, I installed all of my games and usual programs, and this machine ran like a dream.  Coming from a dell laptop with so many problems that there is nothing to say about it, it was amazing.  Some people may say that home built machines always have problems, but they really don’t.  You shouldn’t be scared to try to make a computer that has amazing specs and runs anything for practically half of what you will get from some other manufacturers like Dell, Hp, or Toshiba.

Talking just for PCs, you can’t go wrong with a home built computer.  Laptops are a different story, but as far as desktop machines go, home built computers pack the most power for the least amount of money that you need to spend.

I will post full reviews on all of my parts on this blog so stay tuned