Tancap Blog

Intel and Micron SSD Reviews

Tim — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 03:56:49 +0000

Playing a bit of catch-up due to an issue that sprang up during my server migration:

AnandTech has posted reviews for two new versions of SSDs from major players:
Intel SSD 320 – While write performance is improved, it’s price and performance don’t match up with the new SandForce products.
Micron C400 / Crucial M4 – Slightly slower read speeds then the C300 and relatively lax garbage collection means for most users SandForce based products will be a better choice.

AnandTech Preview of the OCZ Vertex 3

Tim — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 12:25:35 +0000

AnandTech has posted a preview of the OCZ Vertex 3 showing it may be actually slightly faster than the much more expensive enterprise pro version for most users. Retail pricing will be at $250 for 128 GB and $500 for 256 GB.

Intel SSD Launch Date Anounced / Vertex 3 Pro Previewed

Tim — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 23:36:43 +0000

VR-Zone posts that Intel will launch their 510 Series SSDs on March 1st with capacities of 120 GB ($280) and 250 GB ($580).

Meanwhile Tom’s Hardware has posted a preview of OCZ’2 Vertex 3 Pro (100 GB – $525, 200 GB – $775, 400 GB – $1350). While the Pro line seems to be quite impressive it will be interesting to see how the regular Vertex 3 will perform that OCZ has stated will cost significantly less.

Corsair P3 SSD Preview

Tim — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 06:47:47 +0000

Legit Reviews posted a preview of Corsair latest SSD drives. In RAID 0 a pair of them hit over 880 MB/s read. No word on price though.

Next Generation SSD Announcements Start

Tim — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:23:34 +0000

While we still haven’t heard anything from Intel officially when they will release their next generation drives, both SandForce SF-2000 (OCZ Vertex Pro 3) and Micron RealSSD C400 have been demoed. The C400 promises 400+ MB/s reads sometime in February while the OCZ Vertex Pro 3 is boasting 500+ MB/s reads sometime 2nd quarter of this year.

2010 Video Game Awards

Tim — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 03:07:31 +0000

For the 2nd Annual Tancap Video Game Awards:

Best Action Game
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (XBox 360 / PS3)

Best Driving Game
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (XBox 360 / PS3)

Best Exercise Game
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved (XBox 360)

Best Fighting Game
Super Street Fighter IV (XBox 360 / PS3)

Best Platformer
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)

Best Puzzle Game
Tumble (PS3)

Best Rhythm/Music Game
Rock Band 3 (Multiplatform)

Best Role-Playing Game
Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)

Best Sports Game
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 (PS3)

Best Strategy Game
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC)

Best Multiplayer Game
Call of Duty: Black Ops (XBox 360 / PS3)

Best “Other” Category Game
Heavy Rain (PS3)

Game of the Year
Mass Effect 2 (XBox 360)

Happy Holidays

Tim — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 04:06:10 +0000

Happy Holidays Everyone!

I finally got around to publishing a few new reviews including:

Microsoft Kinect First Thoughts

Tim — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 02:23:34 +0000

I’ve had a chance to play with the Kinect for a little over a week now. Overall I’m actually fairly impressed. While not quite as accurate as PlayStation’s Move, movement is overall tracked quite well for most of the titles I tried. Even though the cost of entry is higher than the Move, when you figure in the cost of all the controllers necessary for two players it is actually quite competitive. While there were some bad initial titles released, overall I feel the initial lineup for the Kinect is substantially better. Some people have complained that many Kinect games are physically strenuous and can’t be played for long periods of times. I would argue that those people are (with a couple of exceptions) missing the point. Kinect is not about providing an better interface for playing hours of Halo. For those type of FPS games, a controller (or better yet a mouse and keyboard) will always be a better choice. Kinect is about providing a pickup and play experience, removing the intimidation factor that comes from dealing with traditional multiple XBox gamepad. In this it is clearly successful, perhaps even more so than even the Wii. What remains to be seen is how well third party developers (many of which have struggled with the Wii), will be able to utilize it.

Windows 7 Media Center / HDMI Audio Tip

Tim — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:10:46 +0000

I’ve been using Windows 7 Media Center for quite a while in a VM with content viewed using an XBox 360 as an extender. However, I’m looking at purchasing one of the Ceton tuner cards and ended up moving the VM to an ASUS AT5ION-I (Atom / ION) based box directly connected to my TV and receiver via HDMI. I ran into a problem where audio would periodically loop and cause playback to stop with an error. After searching various boards it looks like there is a problem when menu sounds are used with a Dolby Digital setup that also transmits audio and video via HDMI. To work around the problem you can either disable Dolby Digital audio, disable menu sounds (Settings -> General -> Visual and Sound Effects -> Play sounds when navigating Windows Media Center), or disable “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” in the sound control panel (advanced tab). There are several posts going back over a year on this issue on technet, but it doesn’t appear Microsoft has provided a true fix yet.

Mac OS X 10.6.5 Patch Released Breaks PGP Whole Disk Encryption

Tim — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:51:29 +0000

Apple released OS X 10.6.5, but those of you with use PGP Whole Disk Encryption will want to wait. Installing the latest update will cause OS X to fail to boot due to modification of the boot.efi file. You can still access your data by using PGP’s rescue disk, but there isn’t an official permanent fix yet.

See this post for more information.