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Richard Vanderhurst Reviews Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2

June 10th, 2009

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It started at $399 when it launched back in Nov , but costs have come down as low as $299 for the 2GB version reviewed here. You want to connect this card without delay to your Computer power supply through one six-pin and one eight-pin PCI Express power input.

And as a double-wide card, it also takes up a fair quantity of space within your Computer . Dial down the antialiasing or overall image quality and you should be expecting an improvement by ten frames or so usually. If Crysis is maybe too demanding, Far Cry two is kind of the sweet spot for 3D testing at the moment, as it is a little more forgiving than Crysis, but still looks great by current standards.
The sole proviso we’ll add to the performance debate is that because this is a dual-chip card, it depends on the scalability of 3D games to put both chips to good use. If a game or the card’s driver software fails, you will see limited performance.

2 latest cases in point : Far Cry two had an argument with cards using ATI’s CrossFire multichip technology ( since resolved ), and as of this writing, the Computer version of Grand Burglary automobile IV will not recognize Nvidia chips in SLI mode. Single-chip cards, like the 2 from Nvidia in this price range, do not have that issue.

It’d not surprise you a quicker, dual-chip card desires more juice than comparably priced single-chip cards, but it is still worth spelling out the difference. Allegedly the Radeon card is relatively more effective at load than it is at idle, but in all cases, the additional performance has a real-world cost re power consumption. If this card does not quite deliver on power potency, it can basically have a direct result on your productiveness, at least if you use screen property as your scale. The card identified every one of them successfully, and let us operate in either clone mode, with the same image mapped on all 4 screens, or in extended mode, which extends one desktop screen across each display. ATI’s driver software makes that straightforward, though , as it also gives you relatively robust controls for preparing the displays in whatever order you would like, and also adjusting each display’s settings. Adding 4 displays does not always mean you can all of a sudden play a game at 7,680×1,200, as most games will only scale to preset resolutions, and / or need explicit code to support multiple monitors.

You can put a game on one screen and a Internet-based map and a walkthrough on the others.

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Richard Vanderhurst reviews the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked

June 9th, 2009

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GeForce GTX 260 Review

“Core 216″ refers back to the fact that this is the second issue of this chip, with 216 processing cores, compared to 192 in the first. Sadly , potency in 3D cards does not usually translate into speed, and if you spend a little bit more you will find a noticeably quicker graphics card powered by ATI.

We like that card in its price class, but it is actually not the most reasonable product out there, neither is it acceptable for those with smaller monitors. Its frame refresh rates on all but Crysis are playable, so it’s in no fashion incapable, but current relative speeds also supply a guide for which cards might perform well on more demanding titles down the line.

We are especially impressed by its efficiency at load, consuming a full fifty watts less than the GTX 280, which was only a little quicker on our performance charts.

If you are feeling aware of your power invoice and the environment, and do not mind sacrificing some frames per 2nd, this EVGA card may all of a sudden look more engaging. Likely, you would still wish to match this card with at least a 550- or 600-watt power supply, presuming you combine it with a quad-core or fast dual-core CPU. You will not find a budget Computer with such a high wattage PSU, but you could be in a position to sneak it into a lately bought Computer around $1,000 or so. You want to attach the audio to the motherboard audio chip or your Computer sound card to send audio over the HDMI port, however. And, naturally, this card supports Nvidia’s SLI multicard technology, as well as hardware-accelerated PhysX, CUDA-enabled software, and all the other supposed “visual computing” features Nvidia likes to gloat about.

Some parallel computing features, like the agnostic zooming features in Adobe’s Photoshop CS four, are helpful, but we haven’t begun to see any gaming or widespread software implementation to persuade us of GPU-based computing’s main line use. We believe it’s only a matter of time, but by that point you will likely have a completely new array of 3D cards to choose between.

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Richard Vanderhurst Discusses Behavioral Targeting

May 31st, 2009

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Advertising techniques have been evolving alongside technological advancements. The traditional method is to invest a huge amount of money for ads to reach a specific portion of the population. However, most of these target audience are not interested with the product or service being marketed. Because of this problem, advertisers found ways to improve targeting techniques in such a way that ads would reach a more specified group. One of these techniques is contextual targeting which is the placing of ads within the context depending on the content with which it surrounds. For instance, an article in a magazine about weight loss has ads on diet pills or gym memberships placed along with the texts or at the end. This form of advertising supports the assumption that readers might be interested with products and services related to the article. Apart from contextual targeting, another method used is the demographic targeting. In this method, the age range of the target group is identified to distinguish the appropriate approach needed.

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Richard Vanderhurst explains that although the two aforementioned targeting techniques are effective, a better way to reach a highly qualified lead on the internet is through behavioral targeting. This refers to the study of consumer behavior based on their web activities. This is done by tracking and recording how people behave without getting any personal information through the use of cookies. These are pieces of code that companies place on a user’s hard drive to track past search behaviors and surfing habits. They can track every search movement a user makes and can therefore gauge whether the potential customer will or will not avail of the product and/or services that was searched. In this process, the advertiser can hold back the ads if the potential customer is not yet ready to purchase or sign-up. Advertisers will only pay for exposure that will have a conversion result. Since divisions of audience groups are getting more and more fragmented, this method provides more specificity as that of the contextual way of targeting. This, in turn, constitutes to a higher conversion rate.

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Behavioral targeting provides a pinpointed way to find potential customers. It lets you reach them when and where they are most likely to accomplish a certain goal conversion – be it to purchase, fill out forms, sign-up for a newsletter or other services. Apart from the pre-conversion advertisements that behavioral targeting provides, the said method also helps develop post-search ads which are ads that show up at the landing page of your site. In this page, visitors who click through your PPC ad are offered additional related products and services. This can also help create more traffic to your site.

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Richard Vanderhurst Discusses Search Engine Manipulation

April 22nd, 2009

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The main goal behind SEO is to manipulate a search engine. In his lectures, Richard Vanderhurst reminds his students that they should try to convince the crawlers that they deserve that top search engine ranking above anyone else. But manipulation can only go so far before it becomes maltreatment. If you are overdoing it with your SEO work, you could be black-listed and banned from a search engine.

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This is a list suggested by Richard Vanderhurst of the many things you may and may not do in the manipulation process:
1. Utilize elements such as content, tags, graphics, and keywords to fully enhance your site.
2.Employ multiple keywords where they fit and are effective. Don’t overdo it.
3.Incorporate shared links from live and relevant sites.
4.Promote traffic flow to your site through means of marketing efforts, shared linking and keyword advertising.
5.Avoid waiting for search engines to notice you and manually submit your site to search engine databases instead.

You should not:
1.Hide keywords throughout your site to try and trick search engines. This will get you banned in no time.
2.Create synthetic links from your site to unrelated sites to augment the link analysis of crawlers. Search engines can distinguish between good links and bad links.
3.Produce fake traffic flow to your website in an attempt to appear more popular then you are. In most cases, search engines will be able to tell what you’re doing, and again you’ll be banned.
4.Attempt to shove your website into a search engines database by continuously submitting it. Richard Vanderhurst suggests that once every six weeks is a good, steady pace for submission, if you do indeed need to submit it more than one time. By repeatedly submitting it, you are bound to end up with a highly displeasing result: banishment.
5.Assume the search engines will give you a high ranking in your area, subject, or keyword the moment it is taken in. Building your site up takes time and in SEO you should work through multiple failed attempts before you have a high rank. Search engine optimization is an ongoing practice; don’t expect that you’ll be able to walk into a first page position.

These are only a few of the central rules you should work by when manipulating search engines and optimizing your site.

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