MaximumPC 2007 112

december 2007 MAXIMUMPC 143

MAXIMUM

PC

’s

overclockers

handbook!

Stock clocks are for sissies! We’ll show

you how to ratchet up the speeds on

today’s CPUs and videocards—safely

and reliably.

vista: extreme

makeover

edition!

PC enthusiasts deserve an OS they can

be proud of—or at the very least, an OS

they can live with! Vista can be that (we

swear!) if you follow our complete guide

to tweaking and optimizing the OS.

cases cometh

We invite a bunch of the latest PC

enclosures into our Lab, stuff ’em full

of parts, and then render verdicts to

decide whether they’re worthy of your

sweet rig.

IN

rated

a for

aWesome

LetterS POLiCy: MAXIMUM PC invites your thoughts and comments. Send them to

[email protected]. Please include your full name, town, and telephone number, and limit

your letter to 300 words. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the vast amount of

e-mail we receive, we cannot personally respond to each letter.

with enough rAM. i find that it depart-
ments often under-spec rAM in their
machines. So, assuming that your rigs
are free and clear of performance-killing
malware, i suggest that you beg, borrow, or
steal memory to add to the PC—as long as
you won’t end up in the stockade. My sec-
ond suggestion is that you have the it guys
reimage the machine. As time goes on,
Windows XP “rots” and gets slower. And if
you haven’t done a defrag, you should.

POWer USerS Need CAMerAS tOO
You probably caught a bunch of crap for
including HD camcorder reviews (Holiday
2007) in the magazine. I just want to say that
I enjoy reviews like this. I’ve been considering
purchasing a Panasonic HDC-SD1 (or HDC-
SD5), and I’m tired of reading reviews written
by people who aren’t hardcore PC users. Your
perspective on reviews like these is very dif-
ferent from that of other magazines/websites,
and it is greatly appreciated.
—Jeremy Powlus

My ANtiqUAted GPU WON’t rUN
yOUr HOt NeW G AMe
Why didn’t you catch the downside of Medal of
Honor: Airborne? If you download the demo and
don’t have a videocard that supports Model 3.0
shaders, you are out of luck. I’m running ATI’s
Radeon 9800 PRO, which handles all my gam-
ing needs nicely, but it won’t play MOHA. Maybe
you can put a bug in someone’s ear to offer a
patch. Seems even Pacific Assault gives you the
option to run with Shader Model 1.0 or 2.0.
—James G. McKinnis

eXeCUti Ve editOr MiCHAeL BrOWN
reSPONdS: Get with the program, soldier!
Shader Model 3.0 has been around since

2004. it’s been supported in Nvidia hardware
since the GeForce 6 series and in Ati GPUs
since the radeon X1000 series. Seriously,
we’d much rather see developers spend their
time and money wowing us with awesome
graphics than struggling with spaghetti code
in order to support aging hardware. BioShock
and quake Wars also require Shader Model
3.0 hardware, but we expect that list to
get much longer in 2008. We can’t say the

same for Shader Model 4.0, since it requires

Vista—and Vista currently sucks as a gam-

ing platform.

dreAM MACHiNe? MOre Like

tiGHt-SqUeeze MACHiNe!

I’d like to know how you fit all the cooling parts

into Dream Machine ’07. The project inspired

me to build my new machine with water cool-

ing, and I used many of the same parts you

used. However, I couldn’t fit the pump and

radiator into my Cooler Master Stacker case.

What I have right now is Frankenbox, and I’d

like to clean it up. Please, do tell.

—Frank Phillips

ASSOCiAte editOr dAVid MUrPHy

reSPONdS: in this grand ol’ world, each

computer chassis will be a little different

than its peers—or a whole lot different.

Suffice it to say, what works for our Cooler

Master Cosmos case may or may not work

in any other case on the market—it’s just

the nature of the beast.

that said, have you tried mounting your

radiator on the exterior of your case and

attaching the pump somewhere inside? it’s

not the most aesthetically pleasing solution,

but it sure beats the type of “Frankenbox”

you describe.

MAXiMUM PC GOeS diGit AL

I currently do a lot of traveling, which means I

can’t always carry all my Maximum PC mags

with me wherever I go. I also have a current

subscription to another magazine that offers

an online subscription. I absolutely love your

magazine but would love it even more if you

offered an online subscription. It doesn’t mat-

ter whether I get the included CD or not. I just

want to be able to read your mag online in PDF

format wherever I am in the world.

—A. Perez

editOr iN CHieF WiLL SMitH reSPONdS:

today’s your lucky day. you can download

a digital version of Maximum PC to save on

your laptop and carry with you everywhere at

http://tinyurl.com/273ktp. As soon as an issue

is off newsstands, we post the full PdFs, so

anyone can download them for free.

january

ISS

uE

Com

ING

NeXt

mo

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