The Sandra 2011 17.77 Build is sortie…

A new version of Sandra 2011 is available now. This new release which supports priori last components and the latest technologies of the market is 17.77 version number. For the moment, the SiSoftware editor has not yet provided us a detailed list of changes but we should know more soon.

-> download Sandra 2011 17.77

For those who do not yet know, be aware that SANDRA (for System yearretrieved, D.diagnosing and Reporting AWizard) can not only provide much information about your computer (motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, etc) but also to test the performance of each component of your PC. A small program handy.

Last updated:

The editor has just send us the list of changes made to the Sandra 17.77 version:

-Improved I/O in Physical Disks & File Systems Benchmarks: higher queue depth based on system thread availability (2-64). This helps SSDS and RAID systems we tested score ~ 5-8% better. HDD performance does not change significantly.

-BugFix: Tested Intel "ivy Bridge" & "Sandy Bridge – Ex" support & (preliminary) optimizations: previous versions were not tested on actual silicon so a few things had to be fixed.

-BugFix: Memory bus speed may have been detected paradoxically if Sandra & BIOS diverged: pre - SP4 Sandra over - rode BIOS, in SP4 BIOS over-rides Sandra. We restored previous behaviour.

-GUI: Paint all graphs back-to-front, i.e. current results (red) are painted last, i.e. over the reference results. This ensures you always see the current result. Previously the reference results could obscure it.

-Update: AMD STREAM 2.5 for GPGPU.

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Build the PC less than 25 W

Apart from the ecological considerations, can say that there is little reason "urgent" to reduce the consumption of its PC: it's a totally optional and voluntary approach. Consumption in the rest of average desktop varies between 45 and 60 watts once it is built around an integrated graphical circuit and mid-range components. Add an a nothing more powerful graphics card and a little more strong material and you will easily reach 80 watts. Down to 50 watts seems perfectly acceptable for a modern computer without large graphics. But when it reflects well, why would it not reduce the consumption of his PC if it costs nothing and hinder neither performance nor functionality?

Contrary to what one might believe, the main interest of a PC consumes 25 watts at rest rather than fifty is not financial: at this level of consumption, the savings are relatively small, especially given the price of electricity in France. No, benefits stories are mainly of annex order and the most important is without any doubt to the level of the necessary cooling. A system using only 25 watts at rest requires less fast than a normal configuration fans. Result is a reduction in power consumption, but also the noise. With such consumption, it is even possible to consider a computer cooled passively, although in this case make a most important original investment.

The PC to 25 watts at rest

New processors with dual-core Intel Core i3 and i5 and H55/H57 chipset today allow us to design a system fully functional, extremely efficient and consumes only 25 watts at rest. In fact, it is even possible to descend lower still for some settings (low voltage) or a choice of components. Incredible when you know that performance does not suffer! Obviously, speed is not of a quad-core with a high range graphics card, but all similarly: performance are those of a dual-core, the features are excellent, all obtained with midrange components.

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Build Or Buy? Five Sub-$500 Store-Bought Systems Compared

Have you ever claimed you could build a faster machine than top-tier vendors, but needed proof? We dig into five off-the-shelf sub-$500 configurations to figure out what they can and cannot do. The results probably won't surprise Tom's Hardware regulars.

Occasionally, someone asks us to recommend a desktop gaming system. A pre-built gaming system. That tends to catch us off-guard because it cuts against our natural instinct as enthusiasts who construct platforms piece by piece. We're always on the hunt for better performance, but that means we need the freedom to pick and choose parts that work well together. When you buy a pre-built system, you largely give up customization in favor of convenience (or, at the very least, a price premium).

To be fair, there are some benefits to buying a system built by someone else. There’s a certain attraction to not getting your hands dirty, and there's no arguing that the price tags you see at retail stores have been dropping in recent years. However, buying a system, even at today’s discounted prices, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting the most out of your money. Cheap isn’t the same thing as value. A computer’s worth is just as much about performance as it is about cost.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to buy a pre-built machine. You only need two minutes, a credit card, and a device with Internet access. Building requires significantly more effort: time spent shopping for each part, plus you need to know which component combinations deliver the best experience. And then there's the build process itself. Generally that goes well, but we'll all had our share of run-ins with compatibility issues and hardware that lands dead on arrival.

Really, this is what separates the enthusiast willing to do some homework and his mom or dad, who oftentimes don't have the patience, time, or interest to learn what cards plug into what slots. There's an in-between approach, too. Buy a complete system for convenience's sake, and as it gets older add upgrades here and there to suit. Is that any more worthwhile for keeping a machine gaming-worthy?

Today we're pitting building against buying in the entry-level space in order to gauge the difference. We gave ourselves a $500 budget and bought five pre-configured desktop PCs in our quest for cheap performance. Using our recent $500 Gaming PC as a reference point, we're curious to see how five builders measure up to the configuration picked by Tom's Hardware writer Paul Henningsen.

View the original article here

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