Maximum PC - Reviews

Hauppauge HD PVR Review

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:50:30 +0000

Exploiting the Analog Hole

HDMI is vastly superior to the high-definition connectivity solution of yore, which relied on one of two types of digital cables for audio and a second, well-shielded, three-gang cable for component video. Unfortunately, HDMI is tightly entwined with HDCP, and that DRM standard interferes with our ability to exercise our fair-use rights to time-shift TV programming and to make back-up copies of Blu-ray movies.

If you’re willing to settle for digital recordings of analog high-definition content, Hauppauge has a solution that exploits the so-called “analog hole.” Set-top boxes and Blu-ray players currently encrypt their digital video streams, but they output completely unprotected analog streams. The HD PVR captures component analog video (at a max resolution of 1080i; 720p is also supported) and either analog or digital audio, digitizes those streams, and sends them to your PC’s hard drive over a USB 2.0 cable (these files will be large, so use an NTFS-formatted drive). Plug in the included IR blaster and install the scheduling software on your PC and you can power up your cable or satellite TV set-top box, tune it to the desired channel, and record whatever TV programming you happen to be interested in.

The HD PVR has standard-definition video (composite and S-video) and analog stereo (RCA) audio inputs in front.

Video is recorded using h.264 compression in AVCHD format with stereo (if you use analog audio connections) or AAC or AC-3 (if you use digital audio connections). Your video container choices are TS (the MPEG-2 transport stream compatible with a range of digital media players), M2TS (the modified MPEG-2 transport stream used for Blu-ray discs and the Play Station 3), and MP4 (the MPEG-4 container compatible with the Xbox 360).

Hauppauge puts a copy of Arcsoft’s Total Media Extreme in the box, a software suite with modules for video capture, playback, editing, and conversion to other formats. You can also use this software to burn your recordings to a DVD disc (but not Blu-ray). Total Media Extreme is incredibly easy to use, but it won’t satisfy users who like to twirl every possible knob and lever. Alternative software that’s compatible with the HD PVR includes versions of SageTV and MythTV, for Linux users.

The high-definition analog video inputs are in the back. You can use the component-video output as a pass-through to your TV, should your set-top box turn off its digital video output while its analog video output is active. 

We connected the HD PVR to a Dish Network ViP722K set-top box and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 based home theater PC and made several recordings. The ViP722k is a strong DVR with a 500GB hard drive, but you can’t easily move its recordings to a PC or digital media player or burn them to a disc. We then connected the HD PVR to the component-video output of a Panasonic DMB-BD85 Blu-ray player and copied a couple of the retail Blu-ray discs we own.

The set-top box, Blu-ray player, and home theater PC were all connected via HDMI to an Onkyo TX-NR3007 A/V receiver, so that we could easily compare the video from all three sources. We were very impressed with the high-definition recordings we made to the PC’s hard drive: Image quality was slightly software than the digital output of the Blu-ray player and the set-top box, but you’d probably notice the difference only in a side-by-side comparison.

Arcsoft’s Total Media Extreme includes a real-time video-capture module. 

Here are a last few caveats you’ll want to be aware before purchasing Hauppauge’s HD PVR:

• It’s not compatible with Windows Media Center (unless you spend $40 for the third-party software DVBLink). UPDATE: Hauppauge has since announced a free downloadable plug-in that enables Windows Media Center (the Windows 7 versions) to schedule TV recording in conjunction with a cable or satellite set-top box.
• It currently does not capture closed-caption data.
• Some set-top boxes disable their analog component-video outputs while their digital (HDMI or DVI) outputs are being used..

Other than that, the Hauppauge HD PVR is a great piece of hardware for recording high-definition video, and it’s dead simple to use.

Editor's Note, 7/26/2010: This review was updated to reflect Hauppauge's announcement of a free plug-in that adds Windows Media Center compatibility. --mb

iBuypower Armada Touch MT20X Review

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:45:32 +0000

No multitouch games? Roll your own

Veteran gaming-PC company iBuypower is offering the first multitouch gaming laptop, along with a workaround for the complete dearth of multitouch games.

The 15.6-inch MT20X features a capacitive screen with glass overlay to take full advantage of Win7’s multitouch support. All the neat features we’ve come to associate with multitouch—finger-based dragging, scrolling, zooming, rotating—are performed with smoothness and precision on the MT20X’s screen. But neat as this is, it felt a bit unnatural to use on a conventional laptop. For instance, we resented that the trackpad’s lack of a scroll feature forced us to move our fingers from the keyboard to the screen to scroll through web pages and documents.

We were pleasantly surprised that the MT20X’s glass-covered 1920x1080 touch screen didn’t appear covered in fingerprints after regular multitouch use.

But then again, the main selling point of the MT20X is gaming, and here touch functionality could actually be handy, particularly in RTS and MMO games, where you could dispense with all the mouse clicking and more directly control the action onscreen using your fingertips. Unfortunately, PC game developers don’t seem too keen on exploring this technology. No touch-supported PC games currently exist (other than the three casual games that Microsoft includes with its free Touch Pack software) and little attention was paid to touch gaming at this year’s E3—as all efforts seemed focused on 3D.

To fill this void, iBuypower has developed third-party software called MAGIC (short for Multitouch Advanced Gaming Interface Control) that lets you remap mouse and keyboard controls to multitouch gestures in games (and most other apps) that don’t support multitouch natively. The software is beta, but it’s available for free to anyone who buys an iBuypower multitouch laptop. The company provides a few sample profiles, but a straightforward interface makes it easy to create custom profiles. We experimented with a sample profile for Supreme Commander II and appreciated the added touch functionality, although the experience wasn’t perfect. There’s naturally a learning curve involved and the implementation itself has some glitches that iBuypower acknowledges. We were most frustrated at being unable to smoothly scroll around the game environment using our fingers. IBuypower says it is committed to refining the software over time.

Performance-wise the MT20X’s Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is DX11-capable but still just a midrange part. In our gaming benchmarks, it couldn’t hold a candle to our zero-point’s GTX 260M. Its performance was closer to that of the ultraportable Alienware M11x we reviewed in August. In DX11 titles, the MT20X didn’t buckle, but it hardly soared. In our STALKER: Call of Pripyat benchmark, it averaged 23.7fps at 1680x1050 with both tessellation and contact hardening shadows enabled. In the very graphically demanding Heaven DX11 benchmark, the MT20X averaged 8.2fps.

The MT20X is more impressive on the CPU side, thanks to its Core i7-720QM, which offers eight effective threads of processing power to apps that can take advantage of them, as well as Turbo Boost.

But it would be silly to buy the MT20X for productivity purposes, paying a premium for its touch screen in the process. As a gaming rig, it offers a novel, if still imperfect, new approach for enthusiasts of the RTS genre, but its GPU will likely hold it back on newer titles.

PNY XLR8 GTX 465 Review

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:40:50 +0000

Nvidia closes in on the Radeon HD 5850

In the raging battle between AMD and Nvidia over DirectX 11 supremacy, AMD has had a decided edge in price/performance ratios, if not raw performance. Now, Nvidia aims to rectify that with the GTX 465.

Like the GTX 470 (and even the GTX 480, for that matter), the GTX 465 uses the same Fermi chip, with key functional units disabled. This may be by choice or because of yield issues, given the massive size of Nvidia’s latest progeny. Whatever the case, it allows Nvidia to bring a card to market that’s generally priced just a little less than AMD’s sweet-spot card, the Radeon HD 5850. We’ve seen prices for the PNY card at around $280, as opposed to an average price ranging from $290 to $300 for the HD 5850.

The PNY XLR8 GTX 465 is the first sub-$300 Fermi-based card.

So, what does the 465 give up relative to its bigger siblings, the GTX 475 and GTX 480? While there are indeed fewer shader cores (see chart), which implies lower performance in shader-heavy applications, game performance is also likely to be affected by the reduced number of ROPs in the final output stage. There are also fewer texture units, but that’s actually balanced by the ROPs, and by the smaller memory interface.

How does that play out in actual performance? To find out, we compared the GTX 465 to a stock (not overclocked) Radeon HD 5850. Both cards are running the latest drivers at the time of the review: version 257.15 for Nvidia and Catalyst 10.4 for AMD. The XFX card comes in at around $295, while the PNY 465 GTX can be found for $280.

The result is a wash, with both cards winning some and losing some—although it’s worth noting that when the Radeon HD 5850 wins, it wins by fairly large margins, while the GTX 465 ekes out just marginal wins when it pulls ahead.

Some of this, of course, is due to drivers. Fermi drivers are still relatively immature, and each driver release from Nvidia has produced notable performance increases. Power usage on the GTX 465 was still higher at full throttle, though the gap is narrowing. So the GTX 465 won’t eat power supplies for lunch.

In the end, however, the GTX 465 is still a cut-down version of the GTX 480 (which in itself is somewhat crippled). It’s great that Nvidia has brought the price down to a more affordable level, but we’re looking forward to the next set of Nvidia GPUs, which will be built from the ground up for midrange and budget-class cards. That will tell us how effective Fermi really is as a scalable architecture.

In the end, if you buy your midrange card based on flipping a Maximum PC coin or simple brand loyalty, you’ll be fairly satisfied either way.

Warpia Wireless USB PC-to-TV Audio/Video Display Adapter Review

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:41:57 +0000

Ultra Wide Band finally delivers something good

Our first experience with Ultra Wide Band technology left us decidedly unimpressed. Gefen’s UWB-based Wireless USB Hub was both overpriced and uninspiring (who wants to pay $400 for a limited-range USB hub?).

Fortunately, we’re feeling more encouraged about UWB’s prospects after spending time with Warpia’s poorly named but pleasant-to-use Wireless USB PC-to-TV Audio/Video Display Adapter. The, umm, Wireless USB AV adapter is simple to install. Just plug one end into a USB port on your PC, and the other end into your TV via HDMI. (The unit has VGA and 3.5mm analog ports, as well.)

Streaming audio and video has never been so easy or cheap.

The adapter will then beam both the video and audio streams (a version without audio support costs $40 less) to a distance of up to 30 feet. The device is capable of streaming up to 1440x1050 resolution, although Warpia recommends that you stream video at 1280x720. The TV is treated as a second monitor hooked up to your PC, but you can also clone or just turn off your primary monitor if you want to. The device works in the 3.1GHz to 4.7GHz range and is intended for in-room use with mostly unobstructed line of sight, so don’t expect to watch video in your lead-lined safe room.

There is some compression applied to the stream, which you’ll notice on more pristine source material. For those who just want to view already piss-poor viral videos, this won’t be a problem. But you will definitely notice it on any of the HD streamed content from Vimeo, YouTube, or Netflix. So, temper your expectations or just build that HTPC instead.

Overall, the Warpia AV adapter is surprisingly satisfying. It’s a cheap way to stream video, albeit of marginal quality, but hell, if you wanted to do this with a notebook, you’d either have to buy a $1,000 Gefen 1080p streamer or invest in Intel’s Wireless Display technology. WiDi, as it’s called, requires a current-generation laptop and another $100 for the TV Adapter. That makes the Warpia AV adapter a fairly compelling piece of hardware if you can swallow its limitations.

HP Mini 5102 Review

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:09:20 +0000

It's business time

Is “business netbook” a misnomer? Aren’t business notebooks supposed to be both portable and powerful, while emitting a confident and businesslike aura? Can a netbook ever be enough for a business user? HP is one of the few companies out there betting that a netbook can be appealing to a business audience.

The HP Mini 5102 certainly looks businesslike. Its squared-off, all-metal chassis, matte-black magnesium alloy base, and brushed-aluminum lid exude a much more professional vibe than most netbooks, including HP’s own consumer line. And though its base configuration hews close to the standard netbook build of this generation, HP offers a wide array of options that can turn the 5102 into something else entirely.

This “business netbook” starts strong and gets stronger—to a point.

The model tested here has a 1.66GHz Atom N450, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 10.1-inch 1024x600 display, and Win7 Starter. Its 160GB HDD is 7,200rpm, which is nice. Its 6-cell battery (a $25 option), also offered notable benefits. The netbook performed to within a few percent of every other Pine Trail netbook we’ve tested, with the exception of battery life. In our rundown test, the Mini 5102 lasted eight hours, 10 minutes. That’s half an hour longer than the previous champion. The 5102’s square-key chiclet-style keyboard is spill-resistant, easy to type on, and doesn’t feel mushy. One thing we don’t like: the reversed function keys. To hit an actual function key, you have to hold the function button. Otherwise you’ll wind up triggering the Mini’s volume, brightness, or other secondary function keys. The convenience of hitting F10 to turn down the volume instead of Fn+F10 is counteracted the first time you instinctively hit F5 to refresh a page and send your computer into sleep mode.

At $425 (base price plus $25 for the extended battery), this Mini 5102 is a solid deal, if nothing to write home about. But it’s the more esoteric configurations that bump up the Mini 5102’s appeal—and price. Add $50 for a multitouch screen, or $25 for a 1366x768 screen res (no, you can’t do both). Likewise, you can spend $45 and get the Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, but not if you have the $125 broadband modem. For $25, you can even boost the RAM to 2GB (but you’ll also have to pay for an upgraded version of Windows). You can even swap in a 128GB SSD for an added $325, if you’re so inclined. For what it’s worth, we did test a model with the integrated multitouch screen, which worked fine, though we don’t see much use for a touch screen on a non-convertible device. The optional $30 handle, however, is quite useful if you’re sans backpack, but it does add five ounces to the netbook’s overall weight.

The Mini 5102 has a lot of selling points, from the great keyboard to the good-looking (if fingerprint-prone) chassis. At the base model, it’s a match for any Pine Trail netbook out there, and fully decked-out, it’s considerably better. But even after you’ve upped the screen resolution, doubled the RAM, and added the 6-cell battery, you’re still hobbled by the Atom processor and integrated graphics. A $650 netbook is hard to justify—unless, of course, you can expense it.

Accell UltraAV Multi-Monitor Adapter Review

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:00:31 +0000

Driving two monitors is easy enough with most modern videocards; in fact, late-model AMD Radeon HD cards can drive three (although one must be equipped with DisplayPort). Accell’s UltraAV multi-monitor adapters allow you to connect three displays to a single DisplayPort source. The model we examined supports three single-link DVI monitors using a single DisplayPort source; the company offers a second SKU that supports three DisplayPort monitors from a single DisplayPort. Both suffer from the same limitations: Reliance on DisplayPort on the host side, and maximum resolution of 3840x1024 (supporting three 1280x1024 displays).

Connecting the Accell's UltraAV is a dead simple process.

The adapter is extremely simple to set up: Connect its built-in 45-inch locking DisplayPort 1.1a cable to your source and use three DVI cables to connect three monitors. Accell recommends using displays with the same native resolution and refresh rate; otherwise, the adapter will use a resolution that’s common to all three. DVI connector 1 drives the left-hand monitor, DVI connector 2 drives the center, and DVI connector 3 drives the right-hand monitor. The box draws power over a USB connector that splits from DisplayPort cable, eliminating the need for a brick. You don’t need to install any software.

The UltraAV adapter uses an IDT PanelPort VMM1300 chip and reports itself to your GPU as a single output device via EDID (extended display identification data) that supports a variety of resolutions, including 3840x1024, 3840x720, 2400x600, 1280x1024, and 1440x900. Whichever resolution you choose, that number of pixels image gets stretched over the three-screen combo--unlike Matrox's pricier TripleHead2Go product, you can't set up three independent desktops. And while there’s nothing stopping you from using higher-resolution displays that support at least one of those lower resolutions, you won’t want to because you'll get either black bars (if the monitor can display the correct aspect ratio) or a stretched, distorted image.

Windows sees the Accell adapter as one very wide display.

We plugged the UltraAV adapter into an AMD Radeon HD 5870 card and then connected three 21.5-inch Dell LCD displays to the adapter. Each display's native resolution is 1920x1080 pixels. The UltraAV adapter detected the monitors and set the videocard’s display resolution to 3840x720; we had to manually goose the operating system to drive the card at the max resolution of 3840x1024. The entire Windows desktop was stretched across the three displays, including the taskbar, so the system behaved as if it were talking to a single, very wide display.

Once the hardware was set up, applications ran without a hitch. Even games ran fine, though always stretched across all three screens. Benchmarks were typical of a Radeon HD 5870 running at 3840x1024. The Unigine Heaven benchmark, for example, posted 23 frames per second (all settings at normal, with AA off) on our Core i7 965X system.

If you have a relatively new desktop or notebook PC that supports DisplayPort, plus three monitors that support the same native resolution, Accell’s UltraAV adapter is a good solution. If you’ve moved up to higher-resolution wide-screen monitors, the adapter isn’t all that compelling because it can't take advantage of their native resolutions. In that case, one of AMD's Eyefinity videocards might be your ticket to multi-monitor bliss--although that solution is available only with desktop computers, requires adapters to drive DVI displays, and costs three times more than Accell's UltraAV adapter.

Spring Design Alex eReader Review

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:10:30 +0000

This underdog ebook reader comes at a price

In an ebook reader market that’s rapidly approaching the saturation point, a device needs to have a certain set of features to stand out from the crowd. The Alex eReader, a new ebook reader from Spring Design, has enough of them to make it an intriguing new product, and a fun one to try out, but not enough of them to warrant a buy recommendation.

First, the design of the Alex eReader is second to none. While it shares a general architecture with the Nook (an e-ink screen up top and a smaller, Android-powered, full-color touch screen below), the Alex is both better looking and more functional. At approximately 4.5x9 inches, it’s longer than the Nook, but feels surprisingly sturdy, and is easy to balance while you read. The longer design leaves room for a larger color display down below, although the e-ink display is somewhat smaller than the Kindle’s. Beauty is subjective, of course, but it’s hard to argue that the Alex eReader isn’t a fine-looking piece of hardware.

While reading a book, the Alex eReader's Android-powered second screen can display your progress, bookmarks, or notes.

The color screen on the Alex isn’t just for show, and it packs a couple of cool features that help the device serve for more than basic book-reading. For one, there’s a full-fledged browser, which lets you surf the web, download ebooks, and even send content up to the top screen for easy reading. You can also use it to check your email, manage your library of books, and listen to music with a built-in MP3 player. When reading a book, the screen can be used to navigate, manage bookmarks, and highlight and annotate the text. The folks at Spring Design also have (ahem) designs for an “Alex Marketplace,” where developers will be able to sell apps built for the device.

The e-ink screen looks just as good as any of its competitors’, but not any better, and the pages turn at about the same speed, taking just over a second to refresh. The secondary screen also looks nice, but gets pretty choppy when browsing the web or (frustratingly) trying to enter text using the onscreen keyboard. Battery life is excellent as long as you’re just using the e-ink screen, but drains much faster when using the bottom touch screen.

So, generally speaking, the Alex is a nice piece of hardware. Unfortunately, there are two huge problems that make this one a nonstarter.

First, there’s the matter of buying books. The Kindle has Amazon’s monster bookstore, and you can make purchases right on the Kindle and start reading them almost instantly, downloading over 3G. The Nook also has a built-in shop, as does the iPad. With the Alex, you have to find your own ebooks from a third-party store such as Ebooks.com. You can download them using the Alex’s browser, but the experience just isn’t as streamlined.

The second—bigger—issue is that of price. As of press time, the Kindle has had its price reduced to $190, and the Nook has a Wi-Fi-only model available for $150. The Alex, on the other hand, is listed at $400. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if a nicer-looking ebook reader without the support of a major electronic bookstore is worth an extra $210 over the price of the current king of the category, but we have a hard time believing anyone will want to make the tradeoff.

Crucial C300 256GB SSD Review

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:50:31 +0000

A new land-speed record—for sequential reads

It’s about damn time. 6Gb/s SATA is old news now. It’s been half a year since we saw the first 6Gb/s SATA–enabled hard drive, and it was a frickin’ mechanical drive. Talk about unnecessary. Solid state drives, on the other hand, have been bumping at the ceiling of 3Gb/s SATA’s available bandwidth for a while now. So why not slap a 6Gb/s SATA controller on a solid state drive? Duh. Crucial, apparently alone among flash memory vendors, heard the call. Thus, the Crucial C300, a 6Gb/s SATA–enabled SSD that comes in 128GB and 256GB flavors.

But does the C300 actually benefit from a 6Gb/s SATA connection? Yes and no. In sequential read tests, it blows every other drive out of the water, with a maximum sequential read speed of 317MB/s and an average read of over 300MB/s! That’s more than 50 percent faster than the SandForce-based drives, like OCZ’s Vertex 2, that comprise our favorite SSDs and typically top out at around 200MB/s read speeds. On a standard 3Gb/s connection, the C300’s read speeds were a still-impressive 222MB/s—about the same as a Barefoot Indilinx-based drive, like the Patriot Torqx or Corsair Nova.

The Crucial C300 tops 300MB/s in sequential reads, but can its write speeds keep up?

Unfortunately, write speeds are a bit of a mixed bag. Initial sustained write speeds looked promising, but the drive started showing decreased performance quite rapidly—which should have been fixed after the drive was zeroed, but wasn’t. Average sustained write speeds at 3Gb/s were nearly 200MB/s, but only 171MB/s on a 6Gb/s SATA port. And it got worse the more we tested. This seems to be a firmware problem, but as of press time we were running the latest firmware. It’s worth noting that even 171MB/s sustained writes aren’t bad—after all, that’s on par with last year’s Barefoot drives, which are still damned good SSDs.

Random reads in HDTune were in the 7,000 IOPS range—respectable, but nothing special. HDTune write IOPS of just 2,500, though, left us unimpressed. So we turned to IOMeter, which we haven’t used for a while, but which seems to be the industry standard for SSD random write speeds. And since we’ve finally got a working, stable hard drive test bed with both USB 3.0 and 6Gb/s SATA (more on this in this month’s Lab Notes section), which we’ll be sticking with for the foreseeable future, we took the opportunity to reintroduce the benchmark. We’re running a 4KB random write pattern at a queue depth of 32—pretty standard stuff. It doesn’t give the same numbers as HDTune (to nobody’s surprise), but it’s a good second data point. At 6Gb/s SATA, the C300 put out 12,425 IOPS, and 8,760 at 3Gb/s. By contrast, the OCZ Vertex 2 (running SandForce’s “Max IOPS” firmware) blazed through at 48,958.

There’s no question that on a 6Gb/s SATA port, the Crucial C300 has by far the fastest read speeds we’ve ever seen. And on a 3Gb/s port, it’s nothing to sneeze at. But for sequential and random write speeds, it can’t touch SandForce drives. And its current firmware’s instability is worrisome, though we have faith that Crucial can fix the problem. But hey, 300MB/s reads. So cool. If your rig has 6Gb/s SATA ports, and random writes aren’t your biggest concern, prepare for the ride of your life.

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid Drive Review

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:55:12 +0000

Hybrid drives come back to the future

We got the first hints that Seagate was planning a hybrid hard drive when, in response to an offhand question last year, company reps replied with “no comment,” instead of saying “hybrid drives are deeeaaaad!” as we expected. Our suspicions were confirmed when we got our hands on the Momentus XT, a 500GB 7,200rpm notebook drive with 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory and an “Adaptive Memory” algorithm designed to speed up your system by copying the most frequently accessed files to the NAND flash.

By adding a small amount of high-speed flash memory to a standard mechanical drive, Seagate hopes to hit the middle-ground between solid-state speed and mechanical price and capacity. Under the hood, the Momentus XT is virtually identical to the non-hybrid 500GB Momentus 7200.4, with three key additions: a 32MB DRAM cache instead of 16MB, 4GB of SLC NAND, and the Seagate Adaptive Memory algorithm to make sense of it all.

It's like a mechanical hard drive, but better. And more expensive.

Rather than trying to speed up the whole disk, Adaptive Memory moves the most frequently used files to the NAND for faster access time. So we won’t see massive raw-speed improvements in the first sectors of the disk like we did with Silverstone’s DIY hybrid HDDBoost, but instead should see considerable improvements in day-to-day tasks.

Indeed, in our low-level drive benchmarks like HDTune, the Momentus XT was mostly indistinguishable from a current-gen Momentus 7200.4. We did see decent improvements in burst speeds, and massive improvements in random-access times for files present on the NAND flash—1.9ms read access times and 1.2ms write access times versus 16.5ms on the Momentus 7200.4. HDTune read and write IOPS also benefitted from the SLC NAND, with 4KB random-read IOPS at nearly 2,500, versus just 60 on the mechanical drive. This, of course, is due to the flash memory and is not present across the whole disk.

But if raw numbers don’t tell the full story for the Momentus XT, what does? Real-world benchmarks, of course! After a few iterations to allow Adaptive Memory to get the hang of our Premiere Pro encoding benchmark, the XT turned in results that were 5 percent faster than the 7200.4.

The most impressive part of the Barracuda XT, though, was its performance in PCMark Vantage’s HDD subtest, which tests hard drive performance over a series of real-world tasks. Our first run yielded a subscore of around 4,500, which is nothing to write home about—it’s the same as a standard Momentus drive. But subsequent scores kept going up. And up, and up, until the Momentus XT’s HDD subscore leveled off at 9,300 PC Marks—not exactly current-gen SSD levels, but faster than any mechanical hard drive has the right to be.

What does that mean? The drive works. Its base performance is every bit as good as a fast 500GB mechanical hard drive, and for your most frequently used files (including system files, hooray!), it’s substantially better. And considering that it’s only $50 more than a standard 7,200rpm Momentus drive, it’s a good upgrade before the giant step to an SSD.

OCZ Enyo 128GB USB 3.0 SSD Review

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:45:32 +0000

USB 3.0 and solid state storage; two great tastes that go great together!

We’ve seen a few USB 3.0 external drives here at Maximum PC, and we do appreciate the long-overdue speed boost. It’s nice to have file transfers limited by drive speed again, rather than the interface—the 33MB/s maximum was killing us. And while we appreciated the boost we got from USB 3.0 in WD’s My Book 3.0 and the Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed enclosure, the former was only as fast as the mechanical drive within it and the latter couldn’t even match the speeds of the drives it enclosed.

It’s great to have a USB 3.0 interface on a mechanical drive, but wouldn’t it be nice to combine USB 3.0 with SSD? With a theoretical bandwidth limit exceeding 5Gb/s, why wouldn’t you? Thankfully, OCZ did. The Enyo is a compact anodized aluminum brick stuffed with MLC NAND and a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed port.

The OCZ Enyo is beautiful, fast, and very expensive. And fast.

At 5.6x12x1cm, the Enyo is longer and slimmer than a 2.5-inch drive in an enclosure—it’s more the size of a slim phone. Its 128GB of MLC flash and 64MB of DRAM cache are controlled by a Barefoot Indilinx controller. So it’s essentially a last-gen OCZ Vertex or Agility (or any other Barefoot drive) and a SATA-to-USB 3.0 controller in a slightly different chassis. But the last USB 3.0 device we tested with an SSD couldn’t come close to a drive’s bare SATA numbers. How does the Enyo stack up?

Like a boss. We tested the Enyo on our hard drive test bed’s USB 3.0 ports (based on the NEC chipset) using both the latest NEC drivers and OCZ’s custom Enyo drivers. Performance was about the same using both drivers, topping out near 180MB/s sequential reads and 166MB/s sequential writes. The OCZ drivers actually seemed slightly more sluggish, with random-access times bumping up to .2ms from .1ms on the native NEC drivers. We were able to write a 2.79GB test file from our rig to the Enyo in 23 seconds (or about 121MB/s), while a 660MB folder of smaller files wrote in 11 seconds (60MB/s). Not shabby at all. The Enyo is USB 2.0 compatible, of course, but you won’t get more out of it than the USB 2.0 maximum of 33MB/s read and 30MB/s writes.

At $410 for 128GB—it’s also available in 64GB ($230) and 256GB ($820) flavors—the Enyo is slightly more expensive than a SATA solid state drive of the same capacity, which is to say it’s very expensive for external storage. It doesn’t support TRIM (because the signals can’t pass over USB 3.0) but it does have its own garbage-collection routines. It’s also stupid fast.

If you have a computer with USB 3.0 and you need fast, portable, external storage (and you have a spare $400 to spend), the OCZ Enyo is the best thing going. Given the obvious benefits of combining solid state drives with USB 3.0 interface, the coming months and years will surely bring a spate of USB 3.0 SSDs, including many that will surpass the OCZ Enyo in capacity and performance. But the Enyo is hella speedy, good looking, and available today. To quote Woody Allen, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”