Techgage Reviews

Managing Your Audio to Keep Neighbors Happy

Whether you live in an apartment or a house ten feet from another, it's important to make sure that sound levels coming from your home aren't going to result in trouble from the neighbors. But don't fret, as there are simple ways for you to tweak your sound to maximize the experience without affecting your neighbors, all of which are explained here.

Intel's 34nm TRIM Firmware & SSD Toolbox

Few people would argue that the solid-state drive is one of the best types of storage ever created, but there have been certain downsides up to this point. Aside from general pricing, eventual slowdowns caused some to think twice about a purchase. But, TRIM, along with Windows 7, is here, and the problem is (almost) a thing of the past.

NZXT M59 Mid-Tower

The value in PC components today is fantastic, with the chassis being no exception. With its M59 mid-tower chassis, NZXT proves that value doesn't have to mean cheap, as this one is packed. It features a cool design, LED lighting, features usually only seen on higher-end models, and of course, a $59.99 USD price-tag.

Using the ASUS Xonar Essence STX Under Linux

Crave high-end audio, but use Linux? The situation surrounding this has been bad in the past, but that's not so much the case now, especially where ASUS' Xonar family of cards are concerned, including the headphone-specific Essence STX. Thanks to dedicated developers, the support today is just about as good as the audio quality.

ATI Radeon HD 5770 - DirectX 11 for the Masses

AMD may have released its first Evergreen GPUs mere weeks ago, but don't think it's slowing down for anybody. The company has followed-up with its first mid-range parts, belonging to the HD 5700 series. Performance is much more modest on these new cards, but no features have been scrapped. It's all here... DirectX 11, Eyefinity and more.

Nero Linux 4 - Still the Best Burning Tool for Linux?

One of the best features of Linux is its sheer number of free available applications. But once in a while, certain commercial offerings deliver enough features and an ease-of-use that makes it worthy of consideration. Nero Linux is one of those. Now in its third iteration, Nero Linux remains the definitive optical-burning tool for the OS.

AMD Athlon II X4 620 - Quad-Core at $99

Last month, AMD became the first company to bring a $99 quad-core processor to market, the Athlon II X4 620. The question, of course, is whether or not it delivers. At 2.60GHz, it looks to offer ample performance, but the lack of an L3 cache is sure to be seen in some of our tests. Luckily, the chip's overclocking-ability helps negate that issue.

SilverStone Raven RV02 Full-Tower

SilverStone's Raven RV01 chassis might not have been the most well-received, but the company has attempted to make up for all the mistakes of the initial chassis with a follow-up, the RV02. Fortunately, the company has done just that, and except from a rather minor issue, and possibly its price, this is almost a perfect chassis.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Super Overclock

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 is not a new card. In fact, it's been available for over a year in its 216 Core form. So is it even worth a look at today? Where Gigabyte's "Super Overclock" version is concerned, yes. Although it costs less than a stock GTX 275, this new card beat it out in almost every single game and setting we put it through.

ASUS G51Vx 15" Gaming Notebook

To purchase a quality gaming notebook just a few years ago would have set you back at least $2,000. The situation is far better today, and it's proven with ASUS' G51Vx, coming in at $999. It comes complete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260M graphics card, a great feature-set and plays most of today's games at max detail settings with ease.