If you’re curious about when the builds will be updated, how often I plan to update them, how you can receive them via email/RSS or get updated via Facebook/Twitter and what ideas I have planned, this post is for you.

1. Why the High-End Workstation hasn’t been updated yet:

Unfortunately, Intel has delayed and has yet to launch their Xeon E5 series of CPUs, the high-end workstation/server equivalent of their desktop Sandy Bridge-based architecture, that can be used on a dual or quad-CPU motherboard platform.

Those CPUs will be the replacement of the Xeon E56xx CPUs that were recommended in the last update of the High-End Workstations.

The Xeon E5 CPUs are now widely expected to launch this quarter, so at the latest by the end of March.

Once they launch, I’ll update the High-End Workstation in a reasonable time frame. Keep in mind that Workstation articles demand a lot of research and work though, so as usual, please be patient.

2. High-End Gaming PCs and the Mainstream Workstation upcoming updates:

With Intel launching Sandy Bridge-E i7-3xxx CPUs, the X79 chipset and the LGA2011 platform, I updated the High-End Gaming PCs with the i7-3930K in December.

I then started work on the Mainstream Workstation, only to realize that the Core i7-3930K was out of stock everywhere. I figured that demand was high, that Intel couldn’t meet such a high demand and that everything would be back to normal after waiting one or a few weeks.

Core i7-3930K: Why it’s out of stock
So January came around and as I looked into updating the High-End Gaming PCs and the Mainstream Workstation builds, I saw that the Intel Core i7-3930k was still out of stock.

Curious as to why this why the case, I did some research and realized that the was apparently a minor issue with the i7-3930k and i7-3960x, preventing a feature called “VT-D” from working properly.

While “VT-D” is used mainly for virtualization and is a feature that the vast majority of users will never use, Intel still decide to introduce a new stepping (revision if you will) for the Core i7-3930k and i7-3960x.

Making design changes to a product as complex as a CPU takes time of course, which is why the i7-3930k is still out of stock. Intel stopped production of the previous stepping (C1) and apparently recently started shipping i7-3930k and i7-3960x based on the C2 stepping.

From what I’ve read, Intel has started to ship them in limited quantities. With the current high demand for them, the few CPUs that go in stock get bought quickly, which explains why they are still out of stock and also why their prices are inflated compared to the official Intel MSRP.

Hopefully this situation should be resolved by the time that I’ve scheduled the updates to the High-End Gaming PCs and the Mainstream Workstations. I posted the schedule for February below, which is also visible on the right sidebar, in the “In The Works” section.

3. HTPCs and SFF Gaming PCs: Slowly but surely evolving

With the latest updates to the HTPCs (Home Theater PCs) and SFF (Small Form Factor) Gaming PCs dating back to August for the Budget builds and September for the Mainstream and High-End builds, they are starting to be due for an update.

Thing is, the niche for HTPCs keeps shrinking, as now pretty much any laptop can playback HD content. However, by enabling the possibility of easily adding a video card to the builds and adding the SFF Gaming PCs moniker to the Mainstream and High-End builds, I was able to target them to a larger niche and convinced myself to not scrap those builds because they were not popular enough.

If you think about it, most people building HTPCs and/or SFF Gaming PCs will put such a PC in their living room, to use it with their HDTV, right? So such a PC must have a small footprint, must be fairly silent, must be capable of decoding 1080p content and ideally be outputting it via HDMI.

If you want to add gaming capabilities to the mix, you simply need to add a dedicated video card. Simple enough, right? Not quite.

You see, when you want both a small footprint and low noise, as well as enough CPU and video card processing power to handle gaming, you need to strike the right balance, otherwise you will have to sacrifice something in the process: A powerful video card requires a lot of space and is noisy. An integrated graphic processor (IGP) cannot handle gaming at a 1080p resolution.

In this case, a mid-range video card, with enough performance to handle 1080p gaming, being short enough to fit and not being too power-hungry, is the right choice. The last update to the Mainstream HTPCs/SFFs, with low-power CPUs and mid-range short video cards with reasonable power consumption, all contained in a Mini-ITX form factor case, is a great example of striking such a balance.

So my goal with the next updates is to keep pushing in that direction. That is to strike the perfect balance between small footprint, low noise levels and CPU/Video Card processing power to give you the ideal PC for living entertainment, whether that is HD content playback, 1080p gaming, playing back music, archiving your media collection, etc.

That way, the HTPCs/SFF Gaming PCs remain a viable niche that I have no problem supporting.

Rest assured though: While you’ll see Tiers with parts selected with that balance in mind, in the end, my goal is to allow you to choose the ideal PC for your needs.

In other words, if you care less about noise levels and more about raw gaming performance, say for an highly portable gaming desktop for LAN parties and the like, you’ll still have the option and alternative parts so that you can choose to go with a more powerful video card, or four 3TB hard drives in order to archive your media collection or a case of your choice, while being sure that every part is compatible and will fit.

In the end, you’re building your custom PC to your tastes and my goal here is to assist you in building the ideal PC for your desires, not impose my ideas.

If you have a particular need that you’d like to see covered in the next updates, let me know in the comments.

4. Laptops: Future articles to cover types of laptops, instead of price ranges

Starting in February, I’ll be publishing separate laptop articles that will cover different types of laptops, such as general computing laptops, gaming, netbooks, ultra-portable (ultrabooks), workstation laptops and so on, with each article covering the whole spectrum of price ranges for a specific type of laptops, instead of the current system with three articles that cover three price ranges for all type of laptops within the same article.

One of the reasons behind this change being that those articles will be more targeted toward your specific needs. In other words, if you’re looking for a Gaming Laptop, you’re most likely not going to care for Workstation Laptops that are in the same article currently. These changes will instead allow you to more easily compare the differences between budget, mainstream and high-end laptops, all within the same article.

Another reason behind this change is simply to make my life easier. Doing the research and editing an article containing 16 recommendations for four type of laptops , each at four difference price points (Mainstream Laptops article), is simply draining and by splitting 3 articles into 4 to 6 of them will make it easier for me to handle.

I’ll be also adding more relevant accessories to the articles, such as skins, wireless mouse, etc.

Are there specific accessories that you’d like me to cover and recommend? Let me know in the comments.

5. Tier recommendations for games guide (In Progress)

If you’re following Hardware Revolution on Facebook or are a regular on the forums (if you haven’t joined the amazingly helpful community on the forums, what are you waiting for?!), you might have heard of a post regarding a “Tier recommendations for games guide” that’s in progress.

Simply put, I’m working a guide that will recommend specific Tiers for a game at various resolutions/settings, with recommendations being similar to this:

Battlefield 3: Tier recommendations:
Tier 3 and 4 will allow you to play BF3 at 1920 x 1080 with high settings, with Tier 4 loading the the game faster thanks to the SSD. Tier 5 allows you to crank up the settings a tad higher, while Tier 6 and 7 should let you play at Ultra without any problem, with Tier 7 allowing for higher AA/AF settings.

Expect various recommendations for various settings, for gaming at low resolutions such as 1366 x 768 or 1280 x 1080, gaming at 1080p, 3D gaming, gaming on multiple monitors, recommendations to always hit 60 or 120FPS, etc.

The goal here being to cover the most popular games, so that you can figure out which Tier is right for you. Besides, trying to cover every single game would be next to impossible.

If you want to make sure that a game is included on that list, read the “Tier recommendations for games guide” thread on the forums and reply with your request if a game isn’t listed already.

The guide will be published later during the month of February and will be updated as time goes by/new games are released.

6. Youtube Channel: Coming soon!

I still plan on creating a Youtube Channel and posting videos on Youtube and on the website in a close future.

I’ve set money aside to upgrade my DSLR camera to one with 1080p movie recording.

If you’re curious, I currently own a Canon Rebel XS with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens and I’m eying a Canon Rebel T2i but plan to wait until February 7th, to see if Canon releases a new Rebel “T4i” camera or not, as its features may interest me or its introduction would further drop the price on the Rebel T2i. There are currently great deals on Canon lenses too, so I might just get a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens while it’s on special.

Once I have that equipment, I’ll get working on videos and getting more equipment (e.g. dedicated microphone, “green screen”, lightning equipment) as time goes by, if necessary.

That said, if you got video editing skills and would be interested in creating an introduction for Hardware Revolution videos, contact me with your ideas. Same goes if you want to contribute in some way, I’m always open to ideas and suggestions.

7. Hardware Revolution is now proud to be sponsoring online players/teams.

I’m proud to announce that Hardware Revolution is now sponsoring “Wayne”, a Starcraft II player whose goal is to reach the Platinum league. He streams his games on twitch.tv and you can visit Wayne’s twitch.tv stream here.

Are you or your team looking for sponsorship?
Are you an online gamer or are you part of an online gaming team that has followers, an audience of some sort or a website/forums with visitors, that’s looking for sponsorship?

In exchange to you or your team linking back to Hardware Revolution, displaying a banner or advertising the website in a manner of some sort, Hardware Revolution would be proud to sponsor you or your team with a one-time contribution or monthly contributions. We are also open to traffic exchange.

If you or your team are serious about being sponsored by Hardware Revolution or want to exchange traffic, contact me here. DO NOT leave a comment asking for sponsorship: It will be ignored and deleted.

Make sure to mention that you’d like to be sponsored or exchange traffic, tell me about you or your team (games that you play, history, events attended, etc.), any stream/youtube channel, website/forums that you have, where/how you’d display a banner/link back/advertise for Hardware Revolution, relevant traffic/subscribers stats and what you’d consider a fair contribution to you or your team. I’ll contact you if I’m interested.

This is one of my ways to give back to this great community

P.S. Want to organize an online game with fellow Hardware Revolution readers/forum members or simply want to play online with us?

Be sure to post your gamer handle(s) and/or to write a post to organize an online get together in the “Get Together” Forum on the Hardware Revolution forums. Many of us are active on Starcraft II, Counter-Strike, Battlefield 3 and many other online games!

8- Hardware Revolution’s publishing schedule for February 2012:

Here’s my schedule for February 2012. As you may know by now if you’re a regular reader, this is more or less a “publishing guideline” rather than a strict schedule. I’m human, I do have writer-block on some days and I do not control unexpected events in the industry such as recalls, new unexpected product launches, etc.

February 1st – Best SSDs/HDDs For Your Money
2nd- Best Video Cards For Your Money
Gaming PCs Updates:
- 3rd – Budget
- 7th – Mainstream
- 9th – High-End
13th - The Best Monitors For Your Money - new!
14th – Best CPUs For Your Money Update
- HTPCs/SFF Gaming PCs Update
15th – Budget
17th – Mainstream
20th – High-End
21st – Tier recommendations for games guide - new!
24th – Mainstream Workstations v2.0
27th – The Best General Computing Laptops
28th – The Best Gaming Laptops
29th – The Best Ultra-portable Laptops

9 – How often I plan on updating articles from now on:

The Best SSDs/HDDs and The Best Video Cards For Your Money are updated in the fast few days of every month and are usually followed by updates to all the Gaming PCs builds, which are also updated every month.

Laptops articles should be updated about every two months for now and I will consider switching to monthly updates if the demand/traffic is there to justify it.

As time goes by, I’ll be updating “Best Of” articles that are due for an update, such as the “Have a Backup System that you can rely on!” (Every 3 month from now on?), “The Best PSUs For Your Money” (Probably monthly updates after the initial update), “The Best Cases For Your Money” (Every 3 months?) and “The Best CPU Coolers” (Every 3 months). How often I plan on updating those is based on fast the market for those parts change. Backups systems (enclosure, drives and software), cases and CPU Coolers don’t change that much, hence less frequent updates, while we get quite a few new PSUs here and there, but more importantly, a lot of price changes for PSUs.

I usually update “Best Of” articles early in the month, followed by the “Build Your Own PC” builds, seeing as I can cut down on the necessary research for the builds, by using the research previously done for the “Best Of” articles.

Are there any other posts that I missed that you think could use an update? Let me know in the comments section.

10 – Don’t miss out on our articles by getting them by Email/RSS or get updates via Facebook or Twitter

Instead of visiting the homepage everyday, did you know that you can receive our articles via e-mail or RSS when I publish them or get alerted via a Facebook and/or a Twitter update?

Getting our articles via E-mail/RSS is particularly great, as you never have to check the site for articles again because you get them delivered automatically in your RSS reader or Email inbox. Here are 7 Reasons to Get Our Posts By Email or RSS.

Alternatively, become a fan of Hardware Revolution’s Facebook fan page or follow Hardware Revolution’s Twitter feed to get updates when we publish an article.

“In the Works” Section:
Mind you, due to the fast paced nature of the electronics industry, the schedule and rate of updates is always subject to change. Such changes will be shown in the “In the Works” section on the right sidebar of the website, which is a list of what’s coming soon to the website and ideas/updates that I’d to write at some point in the close future. I often update that section and it’s what you want to check for the latest schedule.

Conclusion

I hope that you enjoyed this article and that you’ll be looking forward to what’s coming to Hardware Revolution in February and in the future.

As usual, I welcome all form of feedback, positive and negative, as long as it’s respectful of course.

Same goes if you have any suggestions or ideas. Let us know in the comments section below.

After all, this website and the experience from it wouldn’t be possible without both the outstanding Hardware Revolution team (Admins, Moderators, Contributors and helpful members) and you, all part of this amazing community!

Cheers,
Mathieu

The new Radeon HD 7970 video card, officially announced by AMD today!

Officially announced today by AMD, the Radeon HD 7970 is their first card to be based on their “Graphic Core Next” architecture and the first video card to be produced on a 28nm manufacturing process.

Here’s a nice recap of 10 facts that you can learn about the Radeon HD 7970 in a few minutes:

1. Specifications:

- Radeon HD 7970 compared to Radeon HD 6970
- 2048 Stream Processors 1536
- 128 Texture Units 96
- 32 ROPs 32
- 925MHz Core Clock 880MHz
- 5.5GHz GDDR5 5.5Ghz
- Memory Bus Width: 384-bit / 256-bit
- VRAM: 3GB / 2GB
- Transistor Count: 4.31 Billions / 2.64 Billions
- Manufacturing Process: TSMC 28nm / TSMC 40nm
- PCI-Express: PCI-Express 3.0 / PCI-Express 2.1
- Computer Performance: 3.79 TFLOPS / 2.70 TFLOPS
- Texture Fillrate: 118.4GT/s / 84.48 GT/s
- Pixel Fillrate: 29.6 GP/s / 28.16 GP/s
- Memory Bandwidth: 264GB/s / 176GB/s

2. Performance:

It’s the fastest single-GPU video card in the world, being on average 20-25% faster than the Geforce GTX 580 and some 40% faster than the Radeon HD 6970, two cards with very mature drivers.

Keep in mind that performance of the Radeon HD 7970 is bound to improve further more as drivers mature.

3. Overclocking potential:

Looks like the Radeon HD 7970 has superb overclocking potential, with Legit Reviews hitting 1165MHz on the core, Guru3D 1052MHz, Hardware Canucks 1078MHz and Techpowerup 1075MHz.

Remember that at stock, the core runs at a 925MHz, so in the worse case (Guru3D at 1052MHz), we get a 127MHz increase and in the best case scenario (Legit Review: 1165MHz), we get a 240MHz increase! Also keep in mind that all of that overclocking was done without raising the core voltage.

4. Overclocked performance:

Overclocked, the Radeon HD 7970 hangs out with the dual-GPU cards such as the Radeon HD 6990 and Geforce GTX 590. Impressive to say the least.

5. Crossfire performance scaling:

Hardware Heaven did a review of two Radeon HD 7970 in Crossfire and here’s what they got. Note that their tests were done at a resolution of 5760 x 1080. Average FPS:

• Battlefield: 33FPS -> 64FPS
• Skyrim: 46FPS -> 47FPS
• F1 2011: 54FPS – >72FPS
• Total War: Shogun 2: 27FPS -> 50FPS
• Batman Akrham City: 43FPS -> 55FPS

Keep in mind that the 7970 drivers are still in Beta, so it’s normal to see some games not scale very well.

However, if you look at Battlefield 3 and Total War: Shogun 2, when the performance does scale well, you get nearly a 100% performance increase, which is very impressive!

Support for Crossfire and performance scaling should improve as drivers mature given some time.

6. Power consumption:

At idle, the 7970 consumes less than any other video card on the market, with a TDP around 15W. With a long idle time (i.e. your monitor turns off), its power consumption drop to about 3W.

At load, we’re looking at about the same as the Radeon HD 6970, around 200W during gaming. Also worth nothing: With a Crossfire configuration, when not gaming, the drivers shut down the additional cards, to reduce power consumption.

7. Price:

The MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price) is $549.99. Not cheap, but justified considering that it outperforms the $500 Geforce GTX 580 and that overclocked, it’s comparable to a $700 Radeon HD 6990 or $750 Geforce GTX 590.

Note that it may sell for more, depending on how many cards AMD has for sale and how high the demand for it will be.

8. Availability:

The Radeon HD 7970 should be available as of January 9th 2012.

The Radeon HD 7950 is expected to be launched in the second week of 2012, followed by the Radeon HD 78xx cards some time after and the dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990 in February/March 2012.

9. Do I recommend it?

Without a doubt, yes. It outperforms the Geforce GTX 580 already, its performance is bound to improve with newer driver releases, it consumes less power at idle than any other card, about the same as a Radeon HD 6970/GTX 560 Ti at load, overclocks very well and its performance scales very well under Crossfire. What’s not to like?

10. What did other websites say about the Radeon HD 7970?

I invite you to read reviews from the following websites if you want to know what they had to say about the Radeon HD 7970:

• AnandTech
• Guru3D
• HardwareCanucks
• TechPowerUp
• HardwareHeaven
• HardwareHeaven – Crossfire

NZXT is best known for the cases they make, ranging from budget cases that offer incredible value such as the NZXT Gamma Classic to more high end and elegant cases like the NZXT Phantom and H2 Classic lines. They also make high end power supplies and a variety of different computer accessories.

The NZXT employee has offered to answer any questions you may have on Thursday, September 1st, so feel free to post them over here in this thread on the forums!