Download Colin McRae DIRT 2 PC DEMO

A PC demo for DiRT 2 is now available on Torrents and at few other places on the internet. Included below are a few choices for download locations. Also for those interested here are some non-english sites that offer downloads of the demo.

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USB 3.0 vs USB 2.0 read write Review & Benchmarks speed Test

Hello again guys, hello performance lovers and welcome to this new "All in one Review", on this post I want to share with you some valuable information comparing the all new USB 3.0 standard Vs the previous generation USB 2.0 in term of performance, of course the new USB 3.0 is faster but do you have any idea how much its faster ?
 
Lets have a small briefing, features and specifications about the new generation of USB, Then some selection of best reviewers.

The USB 3.0:

On September 18, 2007, Pat Gelsinger demonstrated USB 3.0 at the Intel Developer Forum. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced on November 17, 2008, that version 3.0 of the specification had been completed and was transitioned to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the managing body of USB specifications. This move effectively opened the spec to hardware developers for implementation in future products. The first USB 3.0 ports were featured on the Asus P6X58 motherboard; however this board was canceled before production.

Features:

* A new major feature is the SuperSpeed bus, which provides a fourth transfer mode at 4.8 Gbit/s. The raw throughput is 4 Gbit/s, and the specification considers it reasonable to achieve 3.2 Gbit/s (0.4 GByte/s or 400 MByte/s) or more after protocol overhead.

Features comparison table:

The USB 3.0 Logo

Benchmark selection

USB 3.0 vs USB 2.0 Super Talent Benchmarks Test :

MacBook USB performance:

On the new Retina MacBook pro USB 3.0Vs the old 2011 MacBook pro USB2.0, performance diference is huge (by anandtech).

USB 2.0 Vs USB 3.0 ATTO Benchmark result :

Using ASUS TUF X58 SABERTOOTH motherboard and 7,200 RPM internal drive, (by bjorn3d)

Why USB 3.0 is only around 150MB/s speed:
Because of the CRC check on the two ends, the final performance result of the USB 3.0 is not as we expect, take look at the Theoretical table bellow:

Interface	Data Rate (Bits/s)	Theoretical Bandwidth (Bytes/s)	Theoretical Bandwidth After 8b/10b Encoding (Bytes/s)
USB 2.0	480Mb/s	60MB/s	48MB/s
USB 3.0	5Gb/s	625MB/s	500MB/s

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Leadtek Geforce GT 220 1Gb VS 9500 GT vs 9600GT All in one Review

So this is a comparative between the low profile Leadtek Geforce GT 220 and a wide range of Nvidia and ATI cards by madshrimps website , lets begin with the Features and specifications of each card. 

WinFast GT 220 1024MB DDR3 Low Profile

The GT 220 preview:
Today’s digital world is demanding and you need a PC that can keep up. With the NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 220 graphics card, clean up and post your home videos faster, make your ordinary DVDs look like HD, and play popular games with better performance. Get more for your money with GeForce GT 220 graphics and equip your PC for the digital world.

Highlight

• PCI Express 2.0 provides support for next generation PC platforms and doubles the interconnect bit rate from 2.5 GT/s to 5 GT/s (PCI Express 2.0 card is fully backwards compatible with existing PCI-E 1.0 motherboards)
• The 40nm process technology, better performance & power management
• Support HDMI output
• Compatible with Microsoft Windows 7
• NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD delivers the ultimate HD movie experience when playing Blu-ray and HD-DVD
• Support NVIDIA® PhysX technology
• Ultra-high speed 1024MB DDR3 memory
• Support Dual-Link DVI with awe-inspiring 2560x1600 resolution
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 Shader Model 4.1、OpenGL®3.1support*
• Ultra-smoothly playback H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies
  *Requires R190 drivers or later

The GPU and Shader clocks are reference speed (625Mhz and 1360Mhz respectively) but the memory is running at only 800Mhz (vs 900Mhz reference).

 

Leadtek Geforce GT 220 Specification:

WinFast GT220 1024MB DDR3 Low Profile

GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GT 220
Graphics BUS	PCI Express 2.0 (fully backwards compatible with PCI Express)
Memory size	1024MB DDR3
GPU/Memory clock	625/790MHz
Memory data rate	1580MHz
Output	Dual-Link DVI, VGA, HDMI
Memory Interface	128-bit
Stream process	48
RAMDACs (MHz)	400
PureVideo™ HD delivers the ultimate experience when playing Blu-ray and HD-DVD
Support Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 Shader Model 4.1
Support OpenGL®3.1
Package contents	WinFast GT 220 1024MB DDR3 graphics card
	User manual & Software disc
	Quick installation guide
	Low Profile bracket
System Requirements	Windows XP / Vista / 7
	PCI Express or PCI Express 2.0-compliant motherboard with one x16 graphics slot
	Minimum 300W or greater system power supply
	DVD ROM drive for software installation
	A VGA or DVI compatible monitor
Software Bundled	WinFast Graphics Driver DVD (w/WinFox III)

• PCI Express 2.0 provides support for next generation PC platforms and doubles the interconnect bit rate from 2.5 GT/s to 5 GT/s (PCI Express 2.0 card is fully backwards compatible with existing PCI-E 1.0 motherboards)
• The 40nm process technology, better performance & power management
• Support HDMI output
• Compatible with Microsoft Windows 7
• NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD delivers the ultimate HD movie experience when playing Blu-ray and HD-DVD
• Support NVIDIA® PhysX technology
• Ultra-high speed 1024MB DDR3 memory
• Support Dual-Link DVI with awe-inspiring 2560x1600 resolution
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 Shader Model 4.1、OpenGL®3.1support*
• Ultra-smoothly playback H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies
  *Requires R190 drivers or later

Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT

Nvidia will launch the 9500 GT to replace the 8600 GT in the low-end market in 1H' 08. It will be based on the G96 core with 32 stream processors sitting on a 6-layer PCB. Similar to the 8600GT, the 9500GT features 128-bit memory bus width and can be coupled with either GDDR2 or GDDR3.

Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT Specification :

Core	G96-300
Process	65 nm
Transistors	?
Core/Shader	550/1375
Memory	GDDR2 900Mhz GDDR3 1600Mhz
Stream Processors	32
Memory Bus Width	128 bit
Memory Bandwidth	14.4GB/s (GDDR2) 25.6GB/s (GDDR3)
Memory Size	256 MB
Texture Filtering Rate	8.8 GigaTexels/sec
DirectX Support	DirectX 10
PCI-E Interface	PCI-Express 2.0

Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

The NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600 GT GPU offers a powerfully immersive entertainment experience designed for extreme high-definition gaming and video playback. Play the hottest DirectX 10 games with awesome speed and watch the latest HD DVD and Blu-ray movies with brilliant clarity. Featuring next generation GeForce and PureVideo® HD technologies, the GeForce 9600 GT GPU puts amazing graphics performance within your reach.

Geforce 9600GT 96 Watt and 59 Watt Specification :

96 Watt

59 Watt

GPU Engine Specs:

CUDA Cores	64	64
Graphics Clock (MHz)	650 MHz	600 MHz
Processor Clock (MHz)	1625 MHz	1500 MHz
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)	20.8	19.2

Memory Specs:

Memory Clock (MHz)	900 MHz	900 MHz
Standard Memory Config	512  MB  GDDR3	512  MB  GDDR3
Memory Interface Width	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)	57.6	57.6

Benchmark Tests (via madshrimps.com):

3D mark 06 test :

3D Mark vantage Test :

The Leadtek Geforce GT 220 1Gb clearly beat the 9500 series and the 9600 serie still the leader of the low range graphic card , so if you are searching for a low profile graphic card the Leadtek Geforce GT 220 1Gb is a good choice and the 9600 series is the best choice.

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