AMD Athlon II X4 Debut: Enter The $99 Quad-Core

AMD Athlon II X4 Debut: Enter The $99 Quad-Core Low-Res Gaming: Crysis

For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Crysis. When testing processors with Crysis, we dropped the resolution to 800x600, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible. However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU. All platforms in this test were equipped with a NVIDIA GTX 280 to eliminate the graphics card as a possible bottleneck, in order to isolate the CPU's performance as much as possible.

For the Crysis gaming test, we pit the new Athlon II X4s against a larger field of competitors including a dual-core Intel CPU and a Phenom II quad-core. We can see here that the Athlon II X4's lack of L3 cache really hurts it in games where cache memory is frequently used, such as Crysis. Unlike in all of the previous tests where both of the Athlon II X4 processors were very competitive with the more expensive Core 2 Quad Q8200, in Crysis the Q8200's vastly superior cache configuration gives it a huge edge. While the rest of the field posted scores in the 110+ area, the two Athlon II X4 processors are stuck around 80. It's clear that the new Athlons aren't the best choices around for gaming chips.

.......................................................................................................

AMD Athlon II X4 Debut: Enter The $99 Quad-Core

AMD Athlon II X4 Debut: Enter The $99 Quad-Core Overclocking

Considering the very low price of the new Athlon II X4 processors, we wondered how well they'd do with a bit of overclocking. We were especially interested in the 2.6GHz 620, which now claims the title of the cheapest quad-core available. Rather than loading the little 620 into a full blown overclocking rig with all the bells and whistles, we decided to try something more typical of an actual build someone might use with the new Athlon II quads. For our overclocking romp, we used a cheap Arctic Cooling Freezer heatsink and fan combo.

It's worth noting that all Athlon IIs are multiplier locked and Black Edition models with unlocked multipliers are currently not available. Therefore, for our quick overclocking experiment, we relied primarily on increasing the base clock speed, which by default runs at 200MHz.

Starting off with the 620, we effortlessly increased the base clock up to 265MHz, bringing the overall clock speed to 3.45Ghz. We found we could push the system beyond 265MHz, but stability becomes unreliable and pumping in more voltage didn't seem to have any effect. We could boot into windows up to 280MHz, but benchmarks would lock the system. We then tried the same method with the 630 which was also able to reach 265MHz, but due to its higher clock multiplier, it was able to achieve 3.71Ghz overall.

In the end, our quick overclocking experiment shows that the Athlon II X4 processors have quite a bit of overclocking room. Even with our crude methods and cheap cooling, we were able to bump up the clock speed by nearly a full gigahertz. That's on par with what we've seen from Phenom IIs and is just another reminder that these Propus cores are basically just cut-down Denebs.

Overall we are pretty impressed with the overclocking potential in the Athlon II X4 quads. The 620 was able to reach 3.45GHz completely stable, which is extremely impressive considering its $99 price tag. The 630 was able to reach 3.71GHz which is certainly very respectable for its $122 price tag. For those of you who like to tweak and overclock their systems, the new Athlon II X4s are looking like an excellent choice for some cheap overclocking fun.

.........................................................................................

Speaking Notepad v6

Speaking Notepad v6

What is Speaking Notepad?
Speaking Notepad is handy text editor with powerful text-to-speech capabilities. Speaking Notepad will read your TXT, RTF, DOC, HTML and PDF documents with SAPI4 and SAPI5-compliant high quality voices, different speed and pitches, read clipboard content, record texts into WAV, MP3 and WMA files and even read every word or sentence you are typing.

How Speaking Notepad 5 differs from previous versions?
Full SpeechAPI 5 support
Multi-language interface support
Different visual styles of program
Record speech into WAV/MP3/WMA sound file easily
... and much more!

Speaking Notepad is handy text editor with powerful text-to-speech capabilities. Speaking Notepad will your TXT, RTF, DOC, HTML and PDF documents, readme's, notes, e-mails and clever and interesting thoughts aloud. With its help you'll cope quickly with routine work at home or in the office. Just imagine, how much easier it is to listen to texts instead of reading them! Give a rest to your eyes! The program will read texts with SAPI4 and SAPI5-compliant high quality voices, different speed and pitches, read clipboard content, record texts into WAV, MP3 or WMA files and even read every word or sentence you are typing. That means you can control your typing aurally without looking fixedly at your monitor. Speaking Notepad is designed for those who value swift commodity in work combined with fascinating abilities and an interface which will delight your eyes. It will definitely become your best friend.

Before you buy Speaking Notepad please look through its main advantages over standard Notepad:

Make a present to your eyes
Your eyes are getting tired during long and intensive work. When you are staring at your monitor your eye muscles strains a lot. Such work at the breaking point of your eye capabilities may cause serious problems with your eyesight in the nearest future. Give a rest to your eyes with Speaking Notepad! Let computer read for you, and your eyes will tell you "Thank you".

Type text without looking at the screen
You are typing long text and constantly turning your eyes from keyboard to monitor to control what you are typing? Now you can concentrate only on work and your thoughts because Speaking Notepad can read aloud what you are typing.

Listen to e-books
With powerful bookmark management system Speaking Notepad becomes an ideal solution for e-books reading.

Record your speech!
Want to bring your texts to another computer in the format of a sound file? Want to learn a foreign language on your own? Want to prepare voice greeting cards? With Speaking Notepad it is as easy as one click.

Keep your ideas in one-click distance
Write down interesting thoughts and you'll never forget them. Click a button and Speaking Notepad will read your thoughts aloud!

You name it!
Speaking Notepad can be useful for many purposes. Maybe you'll find new innovative one. Guess an uncommon usage of Speaking Notepad and you'll get a 10% discount for one of our other products. For example, one of our customers told us that once he used Speaking Notepad to play a good April Fool's Day joke over his friends. He called them and Speaking Notepad read greetings to them with different voices.

And at last...
At last this is just a handy and speedy notepad with vast functional capabilities. We are sure it'll easily replace standard Windows Notepad... or even Microsoft Word!

::Download Link::

http://www.qwertystudios.com/download/site/SpeakingNotepad.exe

Main features

Handy notepad with speaking capabilities
Supporting DOC, RTF, HTML, PDF and text files
Recording speech into WAV, MP3 or WMA sound files
Choose one of dozens of different voices
Change voice speed and pitch in one click
Powerful bookmark system
Type & Read function
SAPI4 and SAPI5-compliant voices
Large number of visual styles
Smart Spell Checker
Efficient work with hot keys
User-friendliness and handy interface

..........................................................................................................