The day started at around 1pm at Vanilla in London and after a quick chat with Tim Hioe I was made aware of some rather bad/sad news; the ASRock guys hotel rooms were burgled while they were out at dinner, sorry to hear that.

Luckily most of the prizes were not taken , so the day would go ahead as planned even if some of their stuff was now gone! It was great to chat with Kingston especially about the pros and cons of SSD’s, we hope to have more on this in the coming weeks. Below you can see the raft of ASRock boards that were on display, I have selected a few of the more Interesting Z77 boards.

Hans Derks was on hand to give us the main presentation of the day and that was a look at all of the new Z77 (Ivy Bridge compatible) boards coming from ASRock. Wow what a lot of boards they have follow this link for more details.

This was followed by a presentation from Kingston by Krystian focusing mainly on the HyperX sub-brand, I also managed to bag my self some memory for answering a question (clever me!). The highlight was a sneak peek at the 2800MHz (yes that’s 2.8GHz, not a misprint) kit, apparently only a handful in the world!

The main event (best described as a show) was put on by Nick Shih from ASRock as we watched an Ivy Bridge (i7-3770K) CPU pushed to 6.8GHz plus on an ASRock Z77 Extreme9 motherboard. This involved lots of Liquid Nitrogen (LN2), a Coffee jug, Orange Juice and a blow torch! (see images below).

After this I managed to catch up with the guys from Coolermaster who were keen to talk about how much effort they are now putting into the CM Storm sub-brand. CM Storm focuses mainly on Gaming peripherals (hey that’s what we do!) and we hope to see more of their products here at pcGameware in the coming months.

I would like to say a big thanks to all of the ASRock team and the guys at Momentus for inviting us along to the 2012 ASRock Intel 7 Series MB Global Tour, hope to see you next year…

ATB J

MSI are preparing to release a pair of new gaming laptops that have some of the best gaming specifications and options that MSI have ever launched. The MSI GT683DX and the GT780DXR should be available during September and be available from Overclockers, eBuyer & Dabs among others.

• The MSI GT683DX – Read more here…

This new 15.6-inch full HD powerhouse brings a quad-core Intel Core i7 2630QM processor to the mobile fight, along with up to 16GB of DDR3 memory and a GeForce GTX 570M graphics card with 1.5GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory. The GT683DX will ship with a total of four DDR3 memory slots and the notebook can support expansion up to 16 GB’s of DDR3 1066/1333 MHz RAM. Based on these specs, the machine will gain a 3DMark Vantage benchmark score of 12,475 points (a very good score) and high-resolution gaming is ‘hiccup-free’ for the GT683DX.



• The MSI GT780DXR – Read more here…

For the GT780DXR MSI has teamed up with premium gaming peripheral maker SteelSeries to create the keyboard for this notebook while upgrade options of up to 32GB of RAM and dual hard drives ensures that its performance is only limited by the size of your wallet. Also sporting Intel’s second generation Core i7 quad core CPU and nVidia’s DirectX 11-supporting GeForce GTX 570M discrete graphic card, the performance of the GT780DXR will be one of the best in the market.

John Inwood, MSI’s UK Marketing Manager commented: “These two new MSI gaming notebooks heralds the arrival of a brilliant new generation of computing experience, featuring the ultimate in gaming performance and hardware.”

After spending a number of months monitoring our review process, we have decided to make some changes (hopefully for the better!). The main change is that we will no longer be supplying 3 separate reviews, each review will still be covered by one of our reviewers and their associated gaming rig, as before. Hopefully this will allow us to bring you more reviews (more often!) over the coming months.

Further details can be seen on our updated About page (see Ethos & Review process).

Thanks for all the support…

James

Previously the only way to guarantee getting on the Battlefield 3 beta was through purchasing the Medal of Honour limited edition game, but now comes news that Origin (previously EADownloader) will also be offering up beta access; an exclusive only being offered if you pre-order BF3 with them.

Although I’m a big fan of physical media (it’s often cheaper!) this could be one where I could be swayed; but at £7 more expensive than at www.play.com it’s a tough choice!

The 29th of July saw the ASRock Fatal1ty 2011 Global Tour II hit London and the pcGameware team were there to drool over the new ASRock Gen3 motherboards and also to play some rounds of Counter Strike with Johnathan “Fatal1ty”. Read on to see how the day went…

Read full article here…

Well the pcGameware team had a great time (as you can see!) at the ASRock Fatal1ty 2011 Global Tour, especially as we (well Terry!) walked away with the latest ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Gen3 motherboard as well as a few other goodies.

Many thanks to VIP Computers and ASRock for hosting a great day. Thanks also to Johnathan Fatal1ty for some great gaming, and hopefully we have got a good bit video for when Terry bags a kill against the master…

We have more media and info from the day, please bear with us as sift through our media and pick out the best bits (see you soon)…

Tomorrow sees the official launch of the new ASRock Gen3 motherboards in London and the pcGameware team will be there. The world’s leading motherboard manufacturer ASRock Inc. partners with CPL world champion Johnathan “Fatal1ty” to launch the brand new Gen3 motherboard series. The new PCIe 3.0 configuration offers more bandwidth to enable faster communication between components inside a system. Designed for gamers and advanced users, the ASRock Gen3 motherboard brings the best package for smooth gameplay. Plus, it comes with plenty of options for gaming excitements and upgrading components. Many thanks to VIP Computers for making this possible.

Check back soon (or just subscribe!) for further news and media from the event…

Listen up Soldiers – The next eagerly awaited Battlefield 3 release date has been set for the 28th October 2011.

You all know the whole pcGameware team are heavily into Battlefield and will be there on day one.

So make sure you put that date in your diary!

See you on the Battlefield!

Pre-orders are available at www.play.com

Battlefield 3 for PC PC DVD Battlefield 3 Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next instalment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

So how come the one who calls himself the ‘Benchmark Junkie’ managed to be one of the last people to update their rig page with info and bench results?

Well James timed it just as I was in the middle of a motherboard review so I didn’t have my latest scores to hand.

Anyway I’ve now switched back to my normal board and have updated accordingly.

Annoyingly, although I managed to beat James on most of the scores; I just cannot beat his Metro result! – Time to look at overclocking my GPU’s?

Checkout Greg’s rig page for details.