Back from E3

Subject: Editorial | May 23, 2005 - 05:43 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

I got back from E3 late last night, and unfortunately fell straight to sleep.  There wasn't a lot of excitement going on there from a hardware point of view, especially with both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 missing in action for playable demos.  I am putting the finishing touches on an article I think you'll find very interesting, though it falls outside the boundes of what current technologies are out there.  It should be up in the morning tomorrow. 

I think I might have enough info on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 GPUs to get a short article comparing the

Off to E3

Subject: Editorial | May 17, 2005 - 11:42 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Well, in about 6 hours I'll be on a plane to LA for this years Electronics Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as the mecha of the gaming world.  While the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Revolution announcements have all already been shown, now its time to get the nose on the floor and hunt out information on the hardware behind these beasts!

Look for updates in my weblog and on the main site during the show!

Fighting With Dual Core

Subject: Editorial | May 16, 2005 - 04:35 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

I happen to come across an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ processor in my mail box today and am currently engrossed in attempting to test it.  I say attempting because the motherboard I am using and the one I have an updated BIOS for is giving me fits.  Somehow, when using the X2 processor, any use of the USB bus locks the system, but with the same board, bios, bios settings, etc and an FX-55 or a 3700+, the system is just fine with USB usage.  I have no idea what is going on, but I am pretty sure we have a BIOS issue not a processor issue.

In other news, I found out that my clos

Some Random Updates

Subject: Editorial | May 13, 2005 - 12:03 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

First, it looks like I will be getting an Athlon 64 X2 processor to review, just not from AMD.  I've had to go to various other sources to get the hardware I need for testing, and under the cover of secrecy to do so, but my readers will soon get to see what I make of AMD lastest processor announcement. 

Also, you may have noticed my review of the first retail nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboard, the Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe.  As far as I know its the first review of the board on the web, and it liv

AMD X2 Review??

Subject: Editorial | May 9, 2005 - 10:51 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Today you may have noticed some AMD Athlon 64 X2 reviews on the web, like this one here at HardOCP.  You may also have noticed while looking at the front page of PC Perspective, that we do NOT have a review/preview online.  Not only do I not have a review online, but I also never got any processors from AMD.  AMD seems to have turned their backs on me and PC Perspective and my readers.  The reasoning for this is still up in the air, but running AMDMB.COM and AMDFORUMS.COM for o

Another Day, Another Article

Subject: Editorial | May 6, 2005 - 11:32 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Well, that's not exactly true, else I'd have a whole lot more content up on the site!  My Budget GPU Comparison article is online and I compare NVIDIA's 6200 TurboCache cards against ATI's X300 SE HyperMemory card.  In the end, the real winner is going be the GeForce 6600 and ATI X700 cards -- I just can't recommend the ultra-budget cards to anyone that is actually going to be playing games on their system. 

I will have my Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe motherboard review up either Monday or Tuesday o

512 MB GPUs are Here

Subject: Editorial | May 4, 2005 - 11:17 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Well, with the release of the ATI Radeon X800 XL 512 MB card today, a new stage has been set for games and gaming.  I'm not trying to tell you that you need a 512 MB card today, or even next month, as that is obviously not the case.  But, you can be sure that the next-gen graphics cards are going to have 512 MB of frame buffer and maybe, just maybe, by the end of the year you'll actually be using it all!

Also, in case you missed, I finally got that

First Dual Core Article Online

Subject: Editorial | April 20, 2005 - 05:05 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

After a couple of late nights of work, and an early start this morning, I finally have published the review of the Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor.  It was a lot of work, and the most of it was involved with coming up with the new testing style to at least TRY and take advantage and properly test dual cores.  After all, I for one know that my normal computer usage patterns do not amount to running a single application at any given time, be that MP3 encoding, web browsing or anything else.  There are always num

Bad Things to see on your Batter Backup Device

Subject: Editorial | April 17, 2005 - 12:59 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

If you don't use a battery backup, and you still use your PC for any number of even SEMI-important things, may I recommend that you look into buying one.  Mine has saved me countless times in the past year or so on power outages and hiccups. 

However, this is something you hopefully won't have to see on your monitoring application:

My APC unit is rated at 1500VA and 865 watts of power.  That should be more than enough right?  Well, based o

Venice Core Seems all the Rage

Subject: Editorial | April 8, 2005 - 12:44 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

It seems my Venice core article has gotten quite a few links in from around the web and has gotten a lot of reads over the last couple of days.  I have gotten a lot of positive emails and the discussion in the forums is good as well.  I'm glad to see people excited about these parts again, as I know a lot of the online media is too.

I've still got a few articles in the pipeline, two of which are based around the Pentium M and two of which are graphics c

Introducing the New Master at PC Perspective

Subject: Editorial | April 5, 2005 - 10:57 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

I'm sorry, but isn't that about the coolest toy you have ever seen?  And the name, "Darth Tater"?!?  Who comes up with this?  :) 

I've been caught red handed, I am a huge Star Wars fan.  As if the Mr.

Done for the night, see you in the morning

Subject: Editorial | April 5, 2005 - 01:49 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Just finished up an article that is going live at 9am EST tomorrow (can you guess which?).  Turned out to be a fairly good product for the targetted platform, though you'll have to get the full details in the morning.  I just feel lucky this is the first time I have gotten an NDA'd article done before 3am or so in a long time!

Another long day for me to catch up on those reviews I promised you, but for now good night!

Worn out from the Weekend

Subject: Editorial | April 4, 2005 - 07:32 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Over this past weekend, actually from Wednesday until Sunday night, I have done nothing except move people.  One of my good friends bought a condo, and we moved what few things he had furnture-wise on Wednesday in what turned out ot be only a single day job.  My mom also moved this weekend, and that was quite a different story.  I started organizing a somewhat-packed 4 bedroom house on Thursday morning, into Friday and to Saturday afternoon.  Then the heavy lifting starting Saturday evening and went on until Sunday at about 6pm.  A big hearty thanks goes out to my f

Deep into the Night...

Subject: Editorial | March 29, 2005 - 01:57 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Still plugging away at two seperate test setups trying to get them far enough along that I don't feel like I failed the entire day to complete something.  If anyone has any skills writing some complex Windows scripting to help me with some more automated testing than I already have, please email me!  Anything you want can be yours!  :)  It looks tomorrow will be pretty busy as well as I have to send a couple parts BACK to where they came in time for overnight shipping, which means by 5:30pm here.  Everything needs to be done by then, so sleep will come at the bottom

A Week Cut Short

Subject: Editorial | March 28, 2005 - 11:33 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

It's a Monday night and I've been sitting in my office pretty much non stop since 10:30am.  Anyone who said the life of an online reviewer was all glam and glory, is sadly mistaken.  But at least I have all the comforts of home here, so I can't complain too much. 

I've been trying to mix up the article content that I am writing, getting away from just motherboard reviews and trying to branch out into newer, more exciting and different PC items.  The DFI 855 Pentium M article was the first in that department

Coming up at PC Perspective

Subject: Editorial | March 23, 2005 - 07:51 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

It has been a stressful couple of weeks for me here; both on the site and off the site.  As I mentioned before, I am building a house in Florence, KY, to which I will hopefully move sometime this summer.

R.I.P. Voodoo Extreme's Billy Wilson

Subject: Editorial | March 15, 2005 - 01:38 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged:

If you didn't know who Billy Wilson was, then you weren't into gaming.  If you never went to VoodooExtreme.com in its hayday, then you didn't know what you were talking about.  News reached me today that he passed away at the age of 33.  Wow, really makes you think about your own life, doesn't it? 

I talked with Billy numerous times over the years, and in conclusion, I'll leave you with a portion of an email that just shows what kind of humor this guy brought to the industry.  :)

I swe

Welcome to PC Perspective v2.0!

Subject: Editorial | March 15, 2005 - 12:27 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: blog

Well, if you are here already you no doubt have seen the changes we made tonight to the entire PC Perspective website.  The forums have had a preview of this new design for some time, but it has taken us quite a long time to work out all the bugs and kinks with the site formatting to get it where we were ready to present it to you all.  Before I get into the new features and what has changed in the new PC Perspective v2.0, I'd like to take this chance to publicly and completely thank Joe White (The Wise One