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Interview with Gabriel Torres of HardwareSecrets

Interview with Gabriel Torres of HardwareSecrets

In this article, Benchmark Reviews interviews long-time hardware enthusiast and power supply guru Gabriel Torres, who is the founder Clube do Hardware and Hardware Secrets. Despite the demands of two popular technology websites, Gabriel has found time to write and publish twenty text books relating to computers and technology subjects. With over fifteen years of experience overclocking computer hardware and benchmark testing, there are bound to be some interesting tales to be told. Here's the full story...

How to overclock a graphics card

How to overclock a graphics card

When someone mentions the word "overclocking" we instinctively start thinking about a processor and how high we can ramp the bus speed and multiplier up to give the best possible speed. This of course gives you better value for money as you'll end up having a product that goes faster than what you paid for. Result!

Processors aren't the only thing that can be overclocked though. There's memory and of course graphics cards, but for some reason graphics or video cards don't get much attention when it comes to overclocking and we have a theory as to why. Processors, for instance, are generally aimed at a market which lets people purchase them and do as they please whereas graphics cards have more specific models aimed at pre-overclocking and super-overclocked editions and turbo models and so forth. This takes the fun and enjoyment away from the user and even these ramped up pre-overclocked cards generally still have a bit more juice left in them to unleash by the user.

There are several ways to overclock a graphics card and we aim to focus on the main one that we use for our reviews and graphics card testing. Of course you can flash your BIOS or download many different software utilities but when it comes to it, they are all much of a muchness, so who knows best?
 
Personally, we think that we know best. Not us specifically but review sites in general as we review the hardware that you're confronted with day in and day out. The likes of a graphics card goes through some of the most rigorous testing you can think of including us pushing the limits of the card's core clock and memory clock speeds.

So as we mentioned, many different applications can be used to do this, so what's the difference? We've tested many graphics cards over our time, and with this comes experience of the products and the utilities that we use. Our tried and tested methods leave us with a select handful of applications that we know, trust and give us fantastic results every time.

How to repair a graphics card with the oven trick

How to repair a graphics card with the oven trick

Don't tell me none of you have never experienced a dead, artifacting card? I know I have, and have been stuck without a solution with a £300 paper weight.

Many consumer electricals experience the same problem, be it the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or Sony TV. They all suffer from a problem commonly known as 'board warp'. Due to the temperature build up inside the chassis, the board begins to bend under the weight of any Heat-sinks on top. This results in the tiny solder joints cracking, preventing the flow of electricity originally implemented.

By placing your card into a professional re-bake oven, one can re-melt these tiny joints, restoring the card to its original functionality! This process is commonly used by Board Refurbishers the world over! But, how many of us have a pro re-bake oven? Very few. And the easiest replacement? THE COMMON HOUSEHOLD OVEN!

Beginners Guides: Understanding and Creating Batch Files

Beginners Guides: Understanding and Creating Batch Files

Batch files can save time by automating specific actions taken on the computer down to one simple click. They can also potentially hide damaging code, so a good understanding of what they are, how they work, and how to create your own, is crucial to today's IT force.

DIY Guides: How To Install/Remove Intel Socket 1366 CPU

DIY Guides: How To Install/Remove Intel Socket 1366 CPU

PCSTATS receives a good deal of questions from readers who don't know how to install an Intel Core i7 CPU into a fresh motherboard, or upgrade a socket 1366 processor to a faster model. We thought we'd run off a quick DIY Guide illustrating the procedure for installing a socket 1366 CPU for the benefit of our readers. If you are planning on building a Intel based computer anytime soon, bookmark this PCSTATS DIY Guide now...!

Another Major Linux Power Regression Spotted

Another Major Linux Power Regression Spotted

Since Friday there's been a number of Phoronix articles about a very bad power regression in the mainline Linux kernel, which is widespread, Ubuntu 11.04 is one of the affected distributions, and has been deemed a bug of high importance. This yet-to-be-resolved issue is affected Linux 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 kernels and for many desktop and notebook systems is causing a 10~30% increase in power consumption. Nevertheless, this is not the only major outstanding power regression in the mainline tree, there is another dramatic regression now spotted as well that is yet-to-be-fixed.

Futurelooks' Guide to Warming-Up to Tux and Ubuntu 10.10

Futurelooks' Guide to Warming-Up to Tux and Ubuntu 10.10

Ubuntu’s desktop space is now designed to minimize the clutter of your operating system, and bring more attention to your applications. We will focus on applications a little later, so lets start with the operating system itself.

The Tests Showing Ubuntu 11.04 On A Power Consumption Binge

The Tests Showing Ubuntu 11.04 On A Power Consumption Binge

Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" is set to be released on Thursday and while there are a number of new features to talk about in this latest release, the Phoronix Test Suite software has been busy analyzing the performance of this latest release. There is open-source graphics driver improvements leading to some performance improvements (such as Radeon KMS page-flipping), the famous ~200 line Linux kernel patch to improve responsiveness, and various other enhancements that catch our fancy in Ubuntu 11.04. However, one area where there is a frightening regression in Ubuntu 11.04 is with its power consumption. For mobile devices in many workloads, Ubuntu 11.04 is consuming noticeably more power than in any of the past Ubuntu Linux releases. Sadly, no one seems to have noticed in time since continuous integration testing on Linux seems to happen so haphazardly right now.

Mobile Users Beware: Linux Has Major Power Regression

Mobile Users Beware: Linux Has Major Power Regression

For those that follow my personal Twitter feed will know that for the past week I've been closely testing Ubuntu 11.04 and all Ubuntu releases going back to Ubuntu 8.04 on many mobile devices in the office. The overall system performance, power consumption, and boot performance have been the principal targets. However, late this week I discovered a glaring regression: Ubuntu 11.04 is viciously going through power. Compared to Ubuntu 10.10, the power consumption on Ubuntu 11.04 for mobile devices is up about 10% on average but under some workloads, I am seeing the power consumption up by nearly 30%. This is happening on many mobile systems spanning multiple generations of Intel CPUs and with Intel / ATI / NVIDIA graphics. This issue has been tracked down to a frightening kernel regression in the mainline tree that is still not addressed.

NVIDIA Chips Comparison Table

NVIDIA Chips Comparison Table

If you don't follow almost daily the video card market it is really complicated to understand the differences between the several different NVIDIA graphics chips available on the market today. To facilitate knowing and understanding the difference among these chips, we have compiled the following table

Intel Sandy Bridge Overclocking Guide

Intel Sandy Bridge Overclocking Guide

Rules change and we need to be at the top of the technology to understand how new architectures work with our new components. Overclocking is a "sport" which has passed lots of different generations (people and platforms) and from time to time, the way you do it changes a lot. At Benchmark Reviews we put all our effort to bring you reviews and articles covering most of the new products as they arrive to the market, but we also focus a lot on enthusiasts who want to get the best out of their hardware without paying extra money; obviously by overclocking their PC components. With the launch of the new Sandy Bridge processors we feel the necessity to prepare an Overclocking analysis mainly because Intel completely changed the rules.

Overclocking is now 99% limited to unlocked processors, and to mid-high platforms, while low-mid platforms and non-unlocked processors can't simply be overclocked more than some extra MHz. Follow us while we put into test both the Core i5 ! 2500K and the Core i7 2600K paired with the P67 Express platform and discover how they work against voltage, heat and power consumption.

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