Asus Ares - fast and expensive

Buying a graphic card for PC is always a difficult. Just when you finalize your decision new model comes along. One option to reduce frequency of graphic card upgrades is to buy fastest dual card. One of these is Asus ARES. I would love to give you personal experience but for a number of reasons I can only point you to a review done by Hot Hardware site.

Here is how this beast looks like.

Summary of features includes:

• 4 Gb GDDR5 memory
• 4800 MHz memory clock
• 3200 stream processors
• metal case

It is obvious this is no average stuff. Everything that comes in metal case with foam mould is expensive, really expensive. Think about $1200 USD.

To find the details about this card check the review. If you find reading of 11 pages too long here are the key points:

• fastest card ever (for now at least)
• overclocking is supported
• gaming mouse included

So, if you have some extra money and big power supply treat yourself...

Are you fast in Starcraft?

Starcraft is a truly legendary RTS game. It stood the test of time and it is probably the best RTS game. I've been playing it with friends for a long time and it was a great fun. We used to record matches and then discuss them and have a good time analyzing strategies and moves made. All those games were very casual, even we tried hard to be the best.

Korean players are well known to be the Masters of Starcraft. In general, Korea has adopted Starcraft as a national sport. Just have a look at this or this.  As a result they have a lot of really good and really fast players. Professional players must be fast if they are expecting to win the tournament(s). Speed is measured as APM (actions per minute).

To see what this is watch the video below.



So, you think you can beat 200 APM? Or even 300 APM? I would love to know your secret and see you play.

New high definition cable - HDBaseT

Just when you think you are all sorted for HD TV and 3D movies somebody thinks of new standard or in this case, interface. But it is not all bad. The latest is HDBaseT.

What is HDBaseT?

This is a product of HDBaseT Alliance - a specification for unified distribution of uncompressed HD content. It has a bandwidth to support full HD, 3D and 2Kx4K formats.

How does it look like?

You are almost certainly familiar with it. It is your standard network cable, cat 5 or 6 with RJ-45 connector.

For comparison of features have a look at this document.

Who is behind it?

HDBaseT is supported by founding companies: LG electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures and Valens Semiconductor.


Will it matter?

It's hard to say yet. Definitely it is a good candidate for a race. It is base on existing, cheap, proven and standard port/cable pair. The questions is how will other big player respond. It is hard to say what Sony Entertainment will do since they are supporting (installing) HDMI in Playstation 3. I don't see a change coming to PS 3 any time soon. But I would love to use my existing home network used for delivery of HD movies. As always, time will tell who will prevail.