In pursuit of delivering the most comprehensive power supply reviews on the web, TechPowerUp upgraded its testing methodology with new cutting-edge testing equipment that meets industrial standards. Our PSU reviewer deployed eight new Chroma DC loads, which let us simulate the most precise load onto a PSU, testing its efficiency and other parameters. The new setup includes two Chroma 6314A mainframes, equipped with six 63123A loads (350 W each), one 63101A load (200 W) and one 63102A load (2 x 100 W). Our equipment allows us to load 12V rails with up to 2100 W loads, 5V with 200W, 5VSB and 3.3V with 100 W, each. We make our own software to the extant possible. Our PSU reviewer developed a new software that automates most of our crossload testing. Industry alternatives for this cost a bomb.We invite you to a virtual tour of our PSU testing lab.

TechPowerUp and PowerColor get together once again to bring you "Pimp my Rig" Contest 2012. Pimp my Rig is our undying quest for the fastest slowest rig on the planet, which will be pimped up with some rad new hardware courtesy of PowerColor, AMD, ASRock, and Cooler Master. The contest is divided into two rounds, 1 and 2. Winners of the first round, who qualify for the second round, stand to win prizes including Cooler Master HAF-XM chassis, CM Storm QuickFire Rapid keyboard, CM Storm Sentinel Adv. II mouse, AMD FX-8150 eight-core processor, and ASRock 990FX Extreme3 motherboard. The winner of the second and final round stands to win the grand prize - a PowerColor Radeon HD 7990 Devil13 dual-GPU graphics card. Contest rules and fine-print can be found in the link below. Good hunting!More information and to participate - TechPowerUp and PowerColor Pimp my Rig 2012

TechPowerUp released GPU-Z 0.6.3, the latest version of the popular PC graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. The new release adds support for dozens of new GPUs, including AMD "Trinity" APU-integrated HD 7600D series, upcoming NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660; improves stability in Windows 8, and adds a large number of other stability improvements. GPU-Z 0.6.3 adds support for NVIDIA GPUs including GeForce GT 620, GT 630, GT 640, GTX 660, Tesla M2090, Quadro 1100M, Quadro 5000M, NVS 5400M, G610M, GeForce GT 620M, GT 630M, GT640M LE, and GT 660M; AMD GPUs including Trinity (HD 7600D series), HD 7570, HD 7670, HD 6610M, HD 7550M, HD 7850M, HD 7520G, and HD 7640G.

Keeping in tune with previous versions, GPU-Z 0.6.3 introduces a new killer feature: power-consumption measurement for IGPs (integrated graphics) on Intel "Sandy Bridge" and "Ivy Bridge" Core/Pentium processors. The measurement isolates the power draw of the IGP from the rest of the processor. TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.3 fixes crashes related to OpenCL detection (when using Intel drivers), with improved OpenCL drivers on Intel and AMD graphics drivers. It adds voltage monitoring for Radeon HD 7700 series. Boost clock detection is improved for NVIDIA "Kepler" architecture GPUs.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.3, GPU-Z 0.6.3 ASUS ROG Edition

The complete change-log follows.

In May, TechPowerUp teamed up with PowerColor to run this year's first GPU-Z Giveaway. Up for grabs were some groovy PowerColor Radeon HD 7000 PCS graphics cards, with Vortex series cooling solutions. Today, we are pleased to announce its winners. There is a slight change, though. The prize that was slated for the third-place, the PowerColor HD 7770 PCS+ Vortex II, is launching at a slightly later date than our contest permits, and so we have two second place winners, instead. Both second place winners get an awesome new PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ Vortex II graphics card, each.

The Winners:

• Boris from Czech Republic - wins PowerColor PCS+ HD 7970 Vortex II
• Anurag from India and Rodrigo from Brazil - win PowerColor PCS+ HD 7870 Vortex II, each

Mad congrats to you guys from PowerColor and TechPowerUp! We hope to return with more interesting contests and giveaways to our readers!

People, it's that time of the year again, when you donate some of your CPU/GPU time to help solve tough scientific problems, and make your favourite Folding@Home team win! TechPowerUp Folding@Home team will be partaking in the 2012 Official Chimp Challenge under its catchy handle "ChimPowerUp". The annual F@H competition sees top teams from all over the world compete for F@H glory and the prestigious Lucky Jaded Monkey award.

The 2012 challenge starts today, at 12 PM (PST), ending on May 25. The team with the highest cumulative F@H points wins. ChimPowerUp took the 2nd place in the 2011 challenge, but we could do just a tiny bit better. So get your ego-guzzling gaming rigs, PCs at work, neighbours and friends' PCs, your decommissioned Core 2 Quad/Extreme machines you have lying around, to fold for ChimPowerUp! Make your dishwasher fold for ChimPowerUp if it could! We need all transistors on deck!



DETAILS: Team ChimPowerUp at 2012 Chimp Challenge

TechPowerUp today announced GPU-Z 0.6.1, and with it, a new graphics card giveaway in partnership with PowerColor, in which you could win some of the fastest and coolest Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards in the industry. Version 0.6.1 of GPU-Z adds support for some new GPUs on the horizon, such as NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GT 640 (desktop), GeForce GT 630, GeForce 605, GeForce GTX 675M (mobile), and GeForce GTX 670M; AMD Radeon HD 7970M (mobile), and Radeon HD 7450 (desktop); Intel HD 4000 and HD 2500 "Ivy Bridge". GPU-Z 0.6.1 improves NVIDIA GPU Boost clock speed detection. A host of other stability and reliability changes were made (refer to the change-log below).

With GPU-Z 0.6.1, TechPowerUp is teaming up with PowerColor to present to you this year's first GPU-Z Giveaway, in which you could win some great graphics hardware. Up for grabs are PowerColor HD 7970 PCS+ Vortex II, PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ Vortex II, and the yet-unannounced PowerColor HD 7770 PCS+ Vortex II. To participate in the Giveaway, simply run GPU-Z 0.6.1 (main version), click on the "PowerColor Giveaway" tab, and follow the instructions. Entries are open till June 01, 2012; multiple entries may lead to elimination. Good Luck!DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.1 | TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.1 ASUS ROG Edition

The complete change-log follows.

Can't stay a moment off TechPowerUp? Have school/college already figured out, and find the class boring? Find your daily commute over public transport worth something more than social networking and repetitive gaming? Do zombies run the IT at your work, that blacklist sites you love? We know how you feel, so do we. So we figured out we could put TPU on your Android smartphone, with more features, and to run without a bloated mobile web-browser. Presenting the very first TechPowerUp Android application! We started this project a few weeks ago, after gauging your interest in a recent front-page poll.

The TechPowerUp application is now on the Android Market. It is heavily optimized for small-screens, including screen scaling, and performance. It gives you access to our News, Reviews, and Forums; complete with all our content. Don't just read our stuff, comment on them. Now you're never too far away from your TPU.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp Application for Android smartphones (free)

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. GPU-Z briefs you on the graphics hardware installed in the system, and lets you monitor clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, fan-speeds, and other information in real-time. The new version adds full-support for AMD's Radeon HD 7700 series "Cape Verde" GPUs (HD 7770 and HD 7750) that are bound for launch a little later this month. The new version also has an updated ASIC Quality calculation formula that makes reading on NVIDIA GPUs more reliable.

Other important updates include voltage monitoring support for Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950; support for some rare GeForce GT 520 variants that are based on GF108, GeForce GTX 555 (OEM), GeForce 305M, and GeForce 610M; and more reliable memory size reading for AMD Radeon graphics cards with large memory sizes. Sensors now refresh in the background by default (and not just when the Sensors tab is in the foreground). The board ID is now displayed along with the BIOS version string.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.9 | TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.9 ASUS ROG-Themed

The complete change-log detailing even more updates follows.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, our popular video subsystem information and diagnostic utility that provides you with accurate information about the graphics hardware installed, and lets you monitor their clock speeds, fan speeds, voltages, VRAM consumption, etc., in real-time. Version 0.5.8 introduces two new features. The first one is a render test that applies sufficient load (not stress) on the GPU to pull it out of PCI-Express link-state power-management, to ensure the Bus information is accurate. If you find the PCI-Express bus link speed or PCIe version displayed incorrectly, simply click on the "?" button next to the field to launch the load test.

The next new feature is ASIC quality, designed for NVIDIA Fermi (GF10x and GF11x GPUs) and AMD Southern Islands (HD 7800 series and above), aimed at advanced users, hardware manufacturers, and the likes. We've found the ways in which AMD and NVIDIA segregate their freshly-made GPU ASICs based on the electrical leakages the chips produce (to increase yield by allotting them in different SKUs and performance bins), and we've found ways in which ASIC quality can be quantified and displayed. Find this feature in the context menu of GPU-Z. We're working on implementing this feature on older AMD Radeon GPUs.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8 ASUS ROG Themed

The full change-log follows.

TechPowerUp also published the latest version of ThrottleStop, a nifty utility that lets you monitor the CPU clock speed throttling scheme used by your notebook, and provides you with options to override or change it. This is particularly useful for noteboook users facing performance issues even when the notebook is plugged in, despite enabling Windows "high-performance" power scheme. The application's main window lets you perform both monitoring and tweaking, its left pane provides you with tweaking your CPU's power scheme using three methods, while its right pane lets you monitor the way in which your OS is throttling the CPU, down to the level of logical CPUs (threads).DOWNLOAD: ThrottleStop 4.0

TechPowerUp today published the latest version of RealTemp, a comprehensive system processor temperature monitoring, logging, and clock speed monitoring utility. Version 3.70 packs several important updates over the previous version, starting with support for 6-core Intel "Sandy Bridge-E" processors, complete support for "Sandy Bridge" processors, more reliable power-consumption estimation using VID, updated i7 Turbo GT tool that lets you monitor multiplier changes with EIST and Turbo Boost playing tug-of-war, improved log file formatting, and visually-better max-temperature reporting through system-tray.DOWNLOAD: RealTemp 3.70

TechPowerUp World Community Grid (WCG) team is at the forefront of promoting the power of distributed computing to help solve the world's problems. The team decided to run our biggest distributed computing contest this year in a bid to promote participation. The contest involves scoring the most WCG BIONC points for TechPowerUp! team (#22175) over the duration of the contest. The winner and first runner up get awesome new cruching boxes (distributed computing headless PCs) that are configured with components that help with distributed computing applications. These include multi-core 64-bit processors and NVIDIA CUDA-powered GPUs.

For more information, and to participate visit this page.

It's that time again, when bagging some rad graphics hardware is as easy as showing off your PC tuning skills and filling up a form in GPU-Z 0.5.5. PowerColor is back on board with us, and this time what we're giving away will come with the bragging rights of being perhaps the only people in the world to have it! Presenting, PowerColor and TechPowerUp Pimp my Rig Contest 2011!

You stand to win a rare, one of its kind PowerColor dual Radeon HD 6970 X2 prototype, which is designed by its makers to be one of the fastest, most tweakable graphics cards. There's just one prototype on the planet that's fully finished for the consumer, and you stand to win it! All you have to do is get the lowest possible 3DMark 03 score in default settings (of 3DMark), submit the validation link of your feat along with other details in the "PowerColor Giveaway" tab of GPU-Z 0.5.5. That's right, you don't need the fastest hardware to win this contest, just your skills.That's not all! You can still leave things to Lady Luck. From the pool of valid entries, we will randomly pick one person, who will bag an awesome new PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 X2 dual-GPU graphics card! So there's simply no reason not to try!

For more information, download GPU-Z 0.5.5, and click on the "PowerColor Giveaway" tab. Good luck!

TechPowerUp today announced the latest version of GPU-Z, the graphics hardware information and diagnostic utility trusted by the PC enthusiast community at large. Version 0.5.5 comes with support for the latest graphics processors, makes the interface a little more accessible to users, and improves stability and reliability.

To begin with, GPU-Z 0.5.5 adds full support for AMD A-Series accelerated processing units (the Radeon GPU component embedded in them), a load of new and lesser-known GPUs from NVIDIA including GeForce GT 560 Ti OEM, GT 545, GT 530, GeForce GTX 580M, GT 555M, GeForce 520MX, GT 520M, 410M, 305M, Quadro 5000, Quadro 4000M, Quadro 400; from AMD including Radeon HD 6290, Radeon E6760 & E4690, FirePro V8800, FirePro V3700, FirePro 2460 (FireMV); and the recently launched ASUS ROG MARS II, which probably got Santa's inbox flooded by now.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.5 | TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.5 ASUS ROG Edition

Feel the need to keep up with the latest on TechPowerUp on the go? Carry something a lot more compact than a netbook? We've got you covered. TechPowerUp Mobile is now live and stable for mobile users. The new mobile site is specifically designed with small screens and low bandwidth in mind, and features a minimalist, yet functional interface to grab the latest news, reviews, forums, and browse through the "Today's Reviews" section. To access the mobile page, simply point your mobile's web-browser to www.techpowerup.com, and it will redirect you to the mobile site. You can disable the auto redirect, customize how the site displays to you a little. The mobile site is designed to scale its elements to fit smartphone screens of most sizes.

TechPowerUp released the latest version of GPU-Z, our popular graphics hardware information and monitoring utility. Version 0.5.4 packs a large number of changes, beginning with faster start-up, support for the entire line of NVIDIA GeForce 500M series GPUs, new models of Intel Sandy Bridge processor graphics, a number of AMD Radeon HD 6000M series GPUs, improved support for AMD APUs, and a number of bug fixes.

GPU-Z has overcome the slow start-up issue on AMD Radeon GPUs, it loads slightly faster on NVIDIA GPUs, too. ROP count reading on AMD Radeon HD 6790, Turks & Whistler was fixed; along with sensor count on Caicos, Whistler, Turks. OpenCL detection on some NVIDIA drivers was fixed. The ability to read UMA-shared memory on AMD APU systems was added. GPU-Z has better ability to detect and warn of spurious graphics cards with faked IDs. GPU-Z 0.5.4 is available in both its standard form and the ASUS Republic of Gamers themed variant.DOWNLOAD: GPU-Z 0.5.4 | GPU-Z 0.5.4 ASUS ROG Themed

A complete list of changes with this version follows.

TechPowerUp is at the year's biggest expo of computer and technology, Computex Taipei. Our team on the ground is equipped with in-house design devices that upload pictures to TechPowerUp as they're snapped, so you catch things as they happen. We've designed a page dedicated to this system, called TechPowerUp LIVE. On this page, you'll also get to chat with the people on the ground, as well as chat with other TPU Forums members... and we have girls, too.Visit: TechPowerUp LIVE @ Computex 2011

I want you, yes YOU, to fold for TechPowerUp at the 2011 Chimp Challenge. The annual Folding@Home (F@H) competition sees top F@H teams from the world compete for F@H glory and the prestigious Lucky Jaded Monkey award. Our team, ChimPowerUp, led by its captain BUCK NASTY, will be participating. All are welcome to join our efforts. The competition revolves around earning the most points for folding over a set period of time, starting from Thursday, May 5th at 12pm, Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7); to Sunday, May 15th at 12pm, Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7). TechPowerUp is among the top-30 Folding@Home teams in the world. It relies on generous participation from its members and readers.DETAILS: Team ChimPowerUp at 2011 Chimp Challenge

Power supply units (PSUs) are perhaps the least understood components when buying or building a PC. Very often, buyers don't look beyond the output power rating, and connectors provided. Slightly more discerning buyers look for efficiency rating, but that's about it. TechPowerUp's new PSU reviewer crmaris wrote an expansive article about the workings of a PSU, its various components, to give you a much more informed idea about what to look for when buying a PSU.READ: A Detailed Look Into PSUs

TechPowerUp today releases the latest version of GPU-Z, our popular graphics subsystem information, diagnostic, and monitoring utility. Version 0.5.3 comes with a timely dose of support for new GPUs, and stability fixes. To begin with, GPU-Z now supports recently released GPUs such as AMD Radeon HD 6790, AMD FirePro V5800, NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M, GTX 540M, G315M, Quadro FX 600, FX 2800M, Quadro 4000; a trio of new voltage controllers are supported, including VT1556, uP6266, uP6218; and added capability to show sensors in TechPowerUp OSD Server (upcoming software). Several stability and reliability updates were also made.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v0.5.3

A list of changes follows.

Announcing the winners of the TechPowerUp and BitFenix "I'm a Shinobi" Contest. To celebrate the launch of BitFenix Shinobi PC case back in February, we threw open a contest to find two of the catchiest, wittiest, completions to the phrase "I'm a Shinobi because...", with the two getting a new Bitfenix Shinobi case each. And the winners are:

• sttubs from Illinois, USA (entry)
• TheMailMan78 from Florida, USA (entry)

Huge congrats you two, the organizers will contact the winners privately for shipping information.

TechPowerUp is ready for the numerous enhancements Internet Explorer 9 brings to Windows 7 operating system. We have added IE9 Jumplists for your favorite site to work more like an application, more of a part of your desktop. When pinned to your Windows 7 taskbar using Internet Explorer 9, TechPowerUp behaves like an application. Clicking it launches the TechPowerUp front-page, with a TPU button that takes you to the site from wherever. The navigation buttons on IE9 set themselves to match the red color.

Further, right-clicking the TPU button on the Windows 7 taskbar shows you our Jumplist. Here, you can quickly launch the IE9 with your favorite area on TPU. Five of our latest reviews are displayed in a constantly updating list, so you can catch up with our latest content. To install the TechPowerUp IE9 Jumplist integration, simply drag the TechPowerUp favicon or tab from IE9, and drop it on to your Windows 7 taskbar. It stays there and launches TPU in a flash. Comments are welcome.

Today, TechPowerUp released version 1.28 of Radeon BIOS Editor (RBE), our popular ATI/AMD Radeon BIOS file manipulation utility. This release packs some big features, notably, an easy Radeon HD 6950 to HD 6970 shader unlock mod that works on reference design graphics cards, next to numerous updates that include addition of Radeon HD 6990 deviceID, a fix to bug that reported an error message regarding VendorID writing occasionally, and ATI Overdrive-related bug.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp Radeon BIOS Editor (RBE) v1.28

TechPowerUp today launched its new and improved online review database after a couple of days of community testing, an expansive record of over 36,000 PC enthusiast product reviews compiled, from every "Today's Reviews" entry added so far. We transitioned from an archaic "tree" based review browser to a robust in-house product review search engine. This is accompanied by an easy to navigate category browser. "We found the idea of a highly functional review browser essential to PC enthusiasts as they reach for their wallets to buy something," said W1zzard, editor-in-chief, TechPowerUp.

The TechPowerUp Review Database (or /reviewdb/), begins with the main search page. Here, you'll find a large search box, which searches instantly as you type, listing out products, categories of products, and their publishers below. You can also select what kinds of results you're looking for, to streamline your search. The second component, is the category browser, that lets you manually browse through the various categories and subcategories to find what you're looking for, and also discover things in the process. Reviews are sorted in a variety of ways, including based on popularity. This database couldn't have been possible without friendly cooperation between members of the PC hardware review industry, and coordial exchange of review information between us. Our readers are encouraged to make use of the wealth of information contained in the database for more informed purchases. We'd like to hear any comments or suggestions that you may have.Visit: TechPowerUp Review Database
You can also get there by clicking on "Review Database" in the Databases menu on the site.

BitFenix and TechPowerUp bring to you the "I'm a Shinobi" contest. We are giving away BitFenix Shinobi PC cases to two winners who come up with the catchiest, wittiest, completion to the phrase "I'm a Shinobi because...". The submissions for this competition are open from February 15th to March 1st, 2011, and winners announced at a later date. For more details, and to participate, visit this page. Catch an early preview of the BitFenix Shinobi here.