myTake on the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5570 - box contents and review

Today I'll be reviewing the Sapphire Radeon HD 5570 graphics card. Here are the technical specs :

Model
Brand	SAPPHIRE
Model	100293L
Form Factor	Low Profile Ready
Low Profile Bracket Included	Yes
Interface
Interface	PCI Express 2.1 x16
Chipset
Chipset Manufacturer	ATI
GPU	Radeon HD 5570
Core Clock	650MHz
Stream Processors	400 Stream Processing Units
Memory
Effective Memory Clock	1600MHz
Memory Size	1GB
Memory Interface	128-bit
Memory Type	DDR3
3D API
DirectX	DirectX 11
Ports
HDMI	1 x HDMI
D-SUB	1 x D-SUB
DVI	1 x DVI
General
Max Resolution	2560 x 1600
CrossFireX Support	Software Crossfire
Cooler	With Fan
System Requirements	400 Watt or greater power supply recommended
Dual-Link DVI Supported	Yes
HDCP Ready	Yes

This card is also overclockable with the stock cooling, I have mine running at 810/1050 core clock/memory clock and it is running at about 44C on idle. In the box there is the graphics card, two low profile brackets, a Driver Cd, though I just downloaded mine from ATI's website, User Manual, and a couple of cables. This card supports DX11 which looks nicely on Heaven Benchmark. It runs Crysis on high settings 0x AA at around 30FPS at a 1280 x 1024 resolution. at highest settings 8x AA 16x antistropic filter on Just Cause 2 with everything enabled and set at highest on a 1024x768 resolution it achieved around 30-40 FPS. The DX11 performance isn't the best at all, I got around 10-20 FPS on Heaven Benchmark while running normal settings on 1024x768 resolution. It was even lower on 1280x768. This card is good for low profile users, and light-medium gamers, and maybe even an HTPC since it has HDMI.

myTake on the ASRock N68-S motherboard - Box contents and review

Today I'll be reviewing the ASRock N68-S Motherboard. It is an AMD motherboard that supports AM2, AM2+, and AM3 CPU sockets, 1066 DDR2 RAM, and has one PCI-e socket and two PCI sockets. There are 4x USB ports on the back of the motherboard. The onboard graphics is the NVIDIA GeForce 7025 chipset. There are 3 audio ports on the back. Inside the box you have a 4 pin to Serial ATA adapter, driver disks, one IDE cable, a back plate, and some manuals. The driver disks include drivers and some utilities for your computer. I couldn't get the utilities to work on Windows 7 Ultimate, but you can always download them from ASRock's website. There were a few minor flaws with this motherboard though.

There are only two DDR2 RAM slots, which are dual channel. There are only two PCI sockets, not a problem for me but might be for others. I ran out of slots for all of my case fans, I couldn't plug in my two case fans without unplugging my CPU fan. My solution was too only power my fan from the 4-pin connector, not the actual slot. Even though my CPU fan now reads at 2,000-2,500RPM.

I was able to overclock my CPU from 3.0GHz to 3.75GHz and my old CPU by the exact same amount, 0.75GHz. This motherboard is also very cheap, one of the cheapest AMD motherboards. This is good for people on a low budget and people who use only dual-channel RAM. It can be found on most online computer stores.

myTake on the HP USB Circumaural Premium Digital Stereo Headset

Hello, today I'll be giving my take on the HP Circumaural Premium Digital Stereo Headset.

First thing I noticed is the ability for them to fold up, this is a nice feature for people who prefer portability. It comes with one 3.5mm jack for the audio, and another for the microphone. Depending on where you buy it from, it may or may not come with a USB 2.0 Adapter. On the cord there is a button for cutting the microphone out. Also there is a dial for volume control.

When I first put these on, they were extremely uncomfortable on my ears. They were very tight and hard to wear for more than 30 minutes. After 2-3 weeks of usage I was able to wear them for 2+ hours without too much hurt. These will make your ears red, and if you have glasses I suggest getting contacts if you want to use these for extended periods of time. Besides the tight squeeze, the sound quality is great. Not Bose quality but good for a $25 headset. At first the microphone cancelled all outside noises, I could whistle with the headset on my desk and it wouldn't pick that up. After 1 week it started to pick up most outside noise though, but still better than no noise cancellation. The microphone quality sounds very good for a cheap price, there is better of course. But you won't annoy other people with the quality, it is better than some $40 headsets I've used also. Overall, this is a good product for those with small budgets and small ears. You can pick these up at Walmart and Newegg for a good price.

Welcome

Welcome to myTake. I will review products I have and receive from companies. At first I will not have the widest variety of items to review but as I acquire more items I will have more reviews. Thanks for coming.