84 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| JUL 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
LAB NOTES
IN THE LAB^
HANDS ON WITH THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWAREWestern Digital’s latest hard drive eviscerates the competition
GORDON MAH UNG
SENIOR EDITORShould you buy an
AMD quad core, a dual
core, or the new tri
core? My tests show
that the tri core is
about 25 percent slow-
er than an equivalent
Phenom quad core.
The CPU won’t appeal
to power snobs, but for
budget AMD buyers,
it’s better than the
Athlon 64. For more
details, go to http://
tinyurl.com/6gvqej.WILL SMITH
EDITOR-IN-CHIEFWhen I haven’t
been working on the
MaximumPC.com re-
design (going live the
last week of June!),
I’ve been testing dif-
ferent soft ware and
codecs for DVD rip-
ping at home. Aft er
many faithful years
of service, I’m drop-
ping AutoGK and
Xvid for Handbrake
and better-looking
H.264 video.TOM EDWARDS
MANAGING EDITORHow long can I live
without an optical
drive? Six months
apparently. Aft er
my CD/DVD combo
drive crapped out, it
sat in my rig unused
while I availed myself
of digital downloads
of the apps, games,
and music I wanted.
I fi nally replaced the
drive—but I’m still
too cheap to spring
for Blu-ray.KATHERINE STEVENSON
DEPUTY EDITORThis month I’ve been
testing commercial
DVD rippers. During
testing of the Cyber-
Link 6 DVD Suite, I
realized I couldn’t use
the program to rip com-
mercial DVDs (while
using AnyDVD to take
care of the encryption,
of course). I haven’t
had this problem with
other media suites, so
I’m in the process of
investigating.MICHAEL BROWN
EXECUTIVE EDITORTo prep for this
month’s autopsy
(page 63), I painstak-
ingly removed what
must have been 50
screws from the HP
TouchSmart IQ770,
only then did I realize
that at least 45 of the
tiniest ones were just
holding two pieces
of simple trim—that
didn’t need to be
removed to expose
the interior. D’oh!W
hile its competitors are content to pur-
sue the high-capacity crown, Western
Digital has raised the bar for desktop
drives by introducing the fastest consumer-level
HDD money can buy.
But why is WD’s Raptor line—led by the
new 300GB VelociRaptor—the only 10,000rpm
dinosaur in Storage Park? I’ve spoken to other
drive manufactures and they just keep repeating
the same PR-induced answer: There’s no market
for lower-capacity, high-performance drives.
There isn’t? Since the Raptor’s introduction, two of those drives in a
RAID array has been the de facto setup for high-end gaming rigs. And a
pair of VelociRaptors off ers 600GB of storage with faster performance than
the best terabyte drives. So why do drive manufacturers fear this “lower
end” of the storage spectrum? It’s simple: Western Digital’s Raptors corner
the marketplace, and you can’t nudge a T. rex out of its hunting ground.
Check out our preview of the WD VelociRaptor at MaximumPC.com
(http://tinyurl.com/4zmo6m).Attack of the VelociRaptor
LAB NOTES
Attack of the VelociRaptor
LAB NOTES
Attack of the VelociRaptor
DAVID MURPHY
ASSOCIATE EDITOR