DFI NT72-SA Motherboard Reviews

DFI’s NT72-SA mother-board aims to provide an RDRAM and RAID solution at a reasonable price, utilising the Intel 850E chipset. There are four RDRAM slots (RIMMs) that can support 2 GB of sys-tem memory. One convenient fea-ture is the inclusion of two Continuity RIMMS (CRIMMS). Another distin-guishing feature is the two-channel onboard Promise ATA RAID controller that supports RAID 0 (striping) or RAID 1 dom read time of 7 MBps, sequential write speed of 41 MBps, and random write speed of 10 MBps. HDTach confirmed this with a maxi-mum read speed of 44.6 MBps, utilitsing only 9.5 per cent of the CPU. The Quake III Arena test saw an fps of 285.8 in normal mode and 281.9 in high qual-ity mode, but dropped to 232 fps in maximum quality settings. The system took 97.54 seconds to convert a 52 MB MPEG file into the DivX format. The real attrac-tion of the DFI is its integra-(mirroring) modes. In the benchmarking tests, the board performed well in data transfer tests. SiSoft San-dra 2003 Pro reported a disk index of 28,766, while PC Mark reported a disk index of 972. This is pretty good
considering the system config-uration. If you use the RAID controllers, you can expect the indices to be better still. The bench-marks also reported a sequen-tial read time of 42 MBps, ran-tion of onboard RAID and an RDRAM solution, and the price tag of Rs 7,950 seems
justified.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Two-channel audio codec (but no onboard graphics); integrat-ed Ethernet controller; AGP 4x
slot; five PCI slots; one CNR slot; two PS/2, two serial, one parallel port and two USB ports
(expandable to 4), connector for optional IrDA interface; the RAID controller and driver CD;
three IDE ATA/100 cables, flop-py disk cable, RAID driver flop-py diskette and I/O shield...

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Mercury HT 5800R Home Theatre 5.1 Channel System Reviews

Though this 5.1 channel system has a 5,800 watts PMPO, it has only 25 watts RMS for the satel-lites and 50 watts RMS for the subwoofer. The RMS power gives you an idea about the actual sound output that the system can achieve without distortion, whereas the PM PO output indicates the maximum out-put achievable by the system, albeit with distortions. The wires are long enough,and speaker stands and wall mountings are provided as well. One shortcoming is the ridiculously short power sup-ply wire. The system provides good performance and at Rs 7,000, it offers good value for money. The subwoofer is quite powerful and you can crank up the volume with-out experiencing too much distortion. If you’re looking to own a 5.1 speaker sys-tem, but are constrained by your budget, the Mercury HT 5800R offers a decent enough solution. How- ever, if you cannot settle for anything less than perfectsound, give this one a miss... SPECIFICATIONS : Four satellites at 25 W RMS, one subwoofer at 50 W RMS, w...

Mercury HT-4500 Reviews

The HT-4500 is a 5.1-chan-nel speaker set and each of the five satellites pumps out 6 watts RMS, while the subwoofer is capable of 20 W RMS power output. The black satellite speakers are compact and subwoofer. Also, the cable for the front channel speakers isn’t long enough for the speakers to be placed suffi-ciently far apart. The cable connecting the woofer to the soundcard is of the same colour, which can cause some confusion. The speakers give a good surround sound effect with reasonable clarity for a good home theatre experience and can also be connected directly to a DVD player. The performance in the low and mid frequencies is also good. However, the speakers are not built to listen at full well-designed, though a tad heavy. The subwoofer has the volume and fade controls on the front, which makes it dif-ficult to access these settings, as subwoofers are generally placed near the feet, with the front face ideally facing a reflecting surface. Another inconvenience is the power swi...

Che-ez Spyz Digital Camera Reviews

Spyz is slightly larger than a matchbox and comes in sil-ver and metallic blue. It bun-dles a dog tag and an USB cable, but oddly, misses the battery. The software bundle comprises the Che-ez manag-er, Arcsoft Photo Studio 2000 and the driver CD. The manual explains fea-tures such as sound beeps, LED and LCD displays very neatly. The device can take up to 26 photos in the high-resolution mode of 640 x 480 pixels, and 107 photos in the low resolu-tion mode of 320 x 240 pixels. Other features include a timer and continuous capture that turns the camera into a cam-corder. The Che-ez Manager also lets you convert frames into a movie in AVI format. The Spyz can also act as a Web camera when used with the Che-ez Manager or MS Netmeeting. However, some-times the manager does not recognise shortcut keys such as the [Alt] + [F4] combination for closing the program. The interface is also very basic and below par. The price tag may justify all the features of the Spyz, but the management software...

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