$139.99
www.amd.com
In October, we gave this chip an honorable mention as one of the best gaming CPUs in the $100 to $200 range. Bang for the buck, Intel's Sandy Bridge-based Core i3-2100 may be better for gaming, but when you’ve got multiple apps to juggle, the Phenom II X4’s four cores are likely the better bet. The fact that we’re still considering this processor at the end of 2011—over two and a half years after its debut—should tell you something about its overall impact on the budget-oriented enthusiast market.
The 45 nm-based 955 was one of the first flagships for AMD's Socket AM3 interface. Clocking in at 3.2 GHz, the chip features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 6 MB of L3 shared across all four cores. All told, AMD crams this performance into a 125 W TDP envelope.

The historical significance of the 955 may turn out to be that, in the spring of 2009, this was one of AMD’s best shots at the high-performance market, though it didn’t even come close to the Core i7s of the day. Only now do we have the company officially acknowledging that it is no longer in a war with Intel for the CPU market’s high ground.
But that doesn’t mean that AMD lacks real value at the low- and mid-ranges. This 955 remains a compelling upgrade for those with AM2+ and AM3 platforms. The Black Edition chips (with unlocked clock multipliers) have always been a great way for those tight on funds to get into overclocking, and the 955 can easily reach into the 3.6 to 3.8 GHz range without so much as a pinch of voltage increase. So, if you’re holiday recipient has an aging AMD platform in need of a quick caffeine transfusion, the 955 remains a very accessible way to have a lot of fun.
$194.99
www.msi.com
All you AMD fans wanting to blast through New Year’s with eight cores in your FX-8150/8210 are going to need a suitable platform. Or perhaps you know such a chip is in your future, but you want to get the board now and carry on with your current CPU. Your best way forward is with a flexible product based on the latest AMD chipset (990FX northbridge, SB950 southbridge) with support for socket AM3/AM3+. Several options are available, but few can boast the feature breadth of MSI’s 990FXA-GD80.

Not surprisingly, MSI hits all of the I/O port high notes: 7.1 analog audio, both optical and coax SPDIF, 400 Mb/s FireWire, two USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 2.0, and two combo eSATA/USB 2.0 ports. MSI specs the onboard audio at 109 dB SNR. We haven’t put this to the test, but, if accurate, this easily puts the motherboard into discrete audio range. Just to the left of the external CMOS reset button, you’ll also find PS/2 ports for the legacy-obsessed. Four 16x PCIe 2.0 slots are interspersed with two 1x PCIe slots and a single PCI slot. You’ll find more USB and 1394 headers on the board as well as six 6 Gb/s SATA ports. Note that MSI includes the latest UEFI BIOS improvements in order to enable 3 TB and greater hard drives to be bootable under 64-bit operating systems.
There’s a lot of bulky heatsinking madness on this unit—so much that MSI opted two screw the fins to the PCB rather than use the typical plastic connectors. (The LEDs that light up to show how many of the eight total power phases are active is a great touch.) Good thing, too, because if you’ve ever enjoyed the one-touch simplicity (and surprisingly good results) from MSI’s OC Genie button, you know that you’ll often want that extra performance pop, and you’ll also want the extra cooling needed to keep things safe and stable.

Cooling is only part of MSI’s answer to stability needs, though. The company uses what it calls Hi-c CAP, which are solid capacitors that incorporate the very temperature-resistant element tantalum. Also check out the row of ten super ferrite chokes (SFCs) along the CPU socket. These use a permeable ferrite core and, according to MSI, run 35 degrees Celsius cooler than traditional chokes.
The 990FXA-GD80 is compatible with both SLI and CrossFireX, plus it’s certified under THX TruStudio Pro. This is a top quality platform from top to bottom and a stunning way to usher in 2012.
$44.99
www.pny.com
What if you don’t quite need the biting power of G.Skill’s Ripjaws Z-series (or, more relevantly, you only need a dual-channel memory kit for your Socket AM3-based build)? Alternatively, you could go the dual-channel route with a Core i5 or just about any of AMD’s latest APUs. After all, Llano-based APUs benefit considerably from improving memory performance, both in higher speed and lower latency. A dual-channel, 8 GB kit like this one from PNY should put a little more cheer in anyone’s holiday.
PNY definitely isn’t out to make any fashion statements here. The plain black, clipped-on heat spreader is merely adorned with a white PNY logo on one side and a stylized, handwritten-style “XLR8” on the other. These 1600 MT/s DDR3 modules feature a CAS 9 latency and a default voltage of 1.65 V. As is often the case with faster memory modules, some motherboards may only recognize the modules at 1333 MT/s, but this is quickly remedied with a manual override in the BIOS. Default timings are 9-9-9-24, but we’ve seen this accelerated into the range of 9-7-7-19.

As of this writing, PNY is still running a promotional deal with Sony: buy this XLR8 kit, and you’ll receive one free movie download. There are 35 titles to choose from, and you can install the movie with unlimited viewing on up to two PCs. Also, be aware that the $85 price still listed on PNY’s site is outdated. Newegg now has the kit at $45, and that still includes the movie offer.
Back in September, we awarded this XLR8 package our Tom’s Hardware Approved label and found it to be easily the best gaming value of any DDR3 kit tested in our round-up. Other kits may have been a bit faster, but with the lowest average Web price in the story, PNY emerged with the highest overall value.
$201.99
www.silverstonetek.com
One of the many bad facets of a rotten economy is that some people, in an effort to conserve resources, will pick the cheapest way to do something and lose sight of the big picture. Many of us forget the importance of green computing. After all, it’s not really about the money saved; it’s about taking strain off the planet. Less energy efficiency means more waste heat means more planetary warming means melting polar caps means...you guessed it: a homeless Santa Claus. There ain’t enough room on those melting icebergs for the polar bears and Santa’s reindeer. Our money is on the bears.
However, you can do your own little part to avert this arctic meltdown and save all those Christmases to come by picking the most efficient power supply possible. The shortcut in this selection process is to pick a PSU certified by the 80 PLUS organization, so named after its eponymous baseline specification, meaning an internal 115 V power supply able to operate under 20%, 50%, and 100% loads at a minimum of 80% efficiency. At the extreme end of the 115 V PSU scale, there’s the 80 PLUS Platinum certification, which mandates 90%, 92%, and 89% efficiency, respectively. As a point of reference, 80 PLUS has granted 1120 baseline certifications but only 61 for Titanium. One step from the pinnacle of the 80 PLUS stack is the Gold certification, requiring 87%, 90%, and 87%.
SilverStone’s ST1000-G Evolution surpasses the 80 PLUS Gold level, testing out at 88%, 91%, and 88%. That alone should make this model worth noticing, but SilverStone sweetens the stocking with so much more. We appreciate that the company plainly states on its jumbo-sized box that the power supply’s peak rated power is 1100 W, yet the unit was still marked for 1000 W sustained. We also praise the use of an extremely quiet 139 mm Air Penetrator fan with fluid dynamic bearing. Maximum noise output for the PSU is 28 dbA.

All cabling with this unit is modular, and there are more than enough plugs for even the most powerful systems, including both 550 and 750 mm ATX12V connectors and eight SATA power connectors. All told, the +12 V rail offers 83 A of current, and a power factor of >0.95 under full load. Another two marks of quality are SilverStone’s maximum allowed load variance of only ±3% and an MTBF rating of 100 000 hours at 25 degrees Celsius under full load. Taken all together, this is a superb, stable, and future-looking power supply if you can float the price. If you can, the reindeer will thank you.
$410.99
www.crucial.com
Speed. The holidays are all about speed. If you doubt, go to any Target or Wal-Mart on the afternoon December 24th. You will witness one of two possible speeds at play: frantic sprinting and dead, bottlenecked stop. Those of us still running hard disks as our primary boot volumes are well acquainted with the latter—we experience it with every reboot. We wait from two to four minutes for Windows to creep through its loading, staring at that little four-color Windows icon on its empty backdrop like the world’s last Christmas light pulsing feebly against a sea of black despair. This is why so many of us have adopted SSDs over the last year or two, even if they had to be low-capacity cheapies. But 40 or 80 GB of C: space erodes sooner than anyone expects, and things...start to...slow...dowwwn. Again.

So welcome Crucial’s 256 GB m4, aggressively street priced at under $1.50 per gigabyte. In addition to hitting the pricing sweet spot, the 256 GB m4 model also offers the best performance specs from the four-model m4 roster at the lowest price point: 40K random read IOPS, 50K random write IOPS, sequential reads of up to 415 MB/s, and sequential writes of up to 260 MB/s. Crucial (which is the consumer arm of Micron, which in turn is 51% of the NAND partnership between Micron and Intel) backs the 6 Gb/s SATA interface with Marvell’s 9174 controller. SandForce fans may be put off by this, and it’s true that several SandForce-based drives, especially the OCZ Vertex 3, do eke out performance wins over the m4, depending on the workload. On the other hand, the 240 GB Vertex 3 currently costs around $1.80 per gigabyte, and we’ve seen fewer reliability concerns over time with Crucial’s design.
We should point out that even though 256 GB remains fairly spacious in 2011 SSD terms, this is not meant for primary storage. Crucial’s 256 GB will hold your OS (maybe even a couple of them) and plenty of apps, but expect to bring up a separate volume for storage. Right now, we’re partial to Western Digital’s 2 TB Caviar Black WD2002FAEX (SATA 6 Gb/s interface). Two of these in a RAID 1 get you 2 TB of mirrored security and a great complement to the m4’s blistering performance. That’s a lot of bytes to put under one tree, but a well-rounded storage strategy is going to give the most satisfaction long-term.
$249.99
www.gigabyte.com
While AMD’s acquisition of ATI was both painful and expensive, there can be little question now that the move was essential. Try imagining AMD today without ATI. Most of the exciting news coming from Intel’s chief rival seems to involve graphics technology, and while the Radeon HD 6900 family is now a year old, it remains at the fore of today’s discrete performance graphics scene. With a 40 nm fab process, 2.6 billion transistors, 1408 unified shaders, and a 256-bit GDDR5 memory bus, the HD 6950 delivers most of this flagship family’s benefits without the top-end price tag.

In part, Gigabyte’s price savings is from this model only using 1 GB of memory rather than the 2 GB possible maximum. This is a sensible compromise, since many users don’t run at resolutions beyond 1920x1080 or crank up features like anti-aliasing. Besides, Gigabyte piles on the perks in compensation. For starters, the company jacks up the 6950’s default 800 MHz core clock speed to 870 MHz in this overclocked version. The memory clock remains at an unmodified 5000 MT/s (1250 MHz times four).
The most striking feature of the R695OC-1D is, of course, its triple-wide “WindForce 3X” cooling system, which spans practically the entire 11.42-inch (290 mm) length of the card. Yes, this is one of the longest cards we’ve seen, so double check that it will fit in your case. Cool air comes in from in front of the three fans, gets pushed through the aluminum heatsink fins, and exhausts out the top and back of the heat sink. The heat sink bolts on top of a vapor cooling chamber, shot through with twin 80 mm copper heat pipes. The three fans are near-silent PWM models, but the interesting thing is how Gigabyte has angled them relative to the plane of the graphics card. In this way, they don’t blow straight down onto the card, which would create considerable turbulence. Rather, the air hits the card obliquely and channels through the heatsink with less noise and more efficiency. Since quiet cards aren’t exactly common in this performance bracket, Gigabyte is to be doubly commended.
Factory specs on the HD 6950 show a 200 W maximum TDP, but Gigabyte’s power requirement is 500 W, so plan your PSU accordingly. This DX 11 card features one DVI-D, one DVI-I, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort output.
Why'd we pick this card? Because of its proven track record. We've already reviewed Radeon HD 6950 1 GB cards in The Radeon HD 6950 Sweet Spot: Five 1 GB Cards Rounded-Up, and this model rose to the top of that piece as an award-winner.
$599.99
www.intel.com
Sometimes, being #1 can be overrated—and overpriced. Witness Intel’s present flagship, the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition, a gleaming slab of LGA 2011 awesomeness that, with a 3.9 GHz Turbo Boost ceiling, sets you back $1050 on Newegg. We have to wonder, is there some arbitrary margin Intel feels compelled to make on its top-end chips that now requires a $1050 price instead of the traditional $999.99? The extra $50 almost feels like you’re tipping the company for drink refills. Anyway. Why worry about that at all when you can opt for the $600 more sensible #2 offering, the Core i7-3930K?

Ignore the fact that our model is holding the Extreme Edition's box. It's the only one we could get our hands on prior to buying our own Core i7-3930K for Intel Core i7-3930K And Core i7-3820: Sandy Bridge-E, Cheaper.
With the second-place chip, you give up only 100 MHz in both the standard and peak Turbo Boost modes. It still features six physical cores, a 130 W TDP, LGA 2011, a 32 nm fab process, and a quad-channel DDR3-1600 memory architecture. Naturally, neither of these Sandy Bridge-E-based chips include integrated graphics, but you do get 40 lanes of third-generation PCI Express connectivity to which you can attach a ton of discrete graphics muscle. One spot in which the -3930K takes a slight hit is in its use of 12 MB of shared L3 cache, as opposed to the -3960X’s 15 MB. But check out the benchmarks in the story linked above; the cache deficit really doesn't hurt that badly.
The -3930K is an unlocked monster. Do you really care that the chip is a 3.2 GHz part instead of 3.3 GHz, when you can set it at 4.-something GHz and not even break a sweat? No. Quite honestly, the -3960X is either a vanity purchase or the domain of a professional workstation user unwilling to overclock for fear of instability. We’re quite content to get most of the flagship’s speed plus all of the expected extras (Hyper-Threading, VT-x and VT-d, AES-NI, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep, and more) for nearly half the price.
$499
www.asus.com
For those who want to give the very best this season (or are lucky enough to receive it), the processor to beat is Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E-based Core i7-3930K. Which motherboard belongs under this powerhouse of a processor? One of the best (and most expensive) candidates around is Asus’ Rampage IV Extreme.
Of course, the Rampage series stands as one of the premier choices for top-end enthusiasts. For five years, Asus has been working to position its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand as the de facto product family for cutting-edge features and top-end performance. The Rampage IV Extreme takes this tradition to new heights, introducing three new features: OC Key, Subzero Sense, and VGA Hotwire. OC Key is a clever nod to those who want control over their performance tweaks and need to see the results of those tweaks during benchmarking, but don’t want a tweaking client app sucking up CPU cycles and skewing results. The “key” looks like an oversized DVI adapter and simply plugs into a graphics output port, acting as a signal pass-through. OC data shows up on-screen as an overlay.
Subzero Sense dovetails with a switch on the board called “LN2 Mode.” This is for users who crank their cooling to 11 with liquid nitrogen. Subzero Sense simply (and accurately) reports the motherboard’s true temperature (a tricky proposition if you don’t otherwise have proper temperature sensing gear). For those who enjoy GPU overvolting but aren’t crazy about some of the technical headaches, VGA Hotwire entails a series of six integrated variable resistors and voltage sensors. Simply plug the included two-wire cable into the motherboard, solder two wires onto the graphics card’s voltage regulator, and start monkeying with your voltage.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’ve sunk a grip of green into your LGA 1366-compatible heatsink, Asus’ X-Socket adapts the new LGA 2011 interface for your old cooler. The board supports four-way SLI and CrossFire, is PCIe 3.0-ready, and sports no less than eight DIMM slots supporting up to DDR3-2400 in quad-channel mode. Naturally, you’re not likely to need 32 GB for any of your individual apps, but all of that capacity can be applied to having a RAM disk, which is essentially like having an SSD on steroids, only the data vanishes when you power cycle.
On the I/O panel, you’ll find a full 7.1-channel audio riser with optical S/PDIF. There are eight USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and even two 6Gb/s eSATA ports. This is in addition to the four 6 Gb/s SATA (and another four 3 Gb/s SATA) headers already on the board. With so much here, features such as BIOS Flashback, an LED diagnostic readout, and the inclusion of Kapersky anti-virus almost seem like afterthoughts. This may be one of the most expensive motherboards you’ll ever consider, but can you think of another that’s ever offered more enthusiast insanity?
$249.99
www.gskill.com
So you’ve rolled into a new X79 Express-based platform with four memory channels and need at least 16 GB of RAM. Hey, who doesn’t? G.Skill gives you a high-performance option that, in a pinch, could probably be used to saw the branches off a Christmas tree for composting. We make no claims about the dissipation efficacy of the Ripjaws Z-series (try pronouncing that—go ahead) heat spreader, but it definitely looks cool without being gaudy.
These 4 GB DDR3 modules feature 9-11-9-28-2N timings and run at a default of 1.65 volts. A command rate of 1T runs fine at stock levels, but you’ll want to drop down to 2T for heavy overclocking. If you’re trying to tuck under a large CPU air cooler, keep an eye on these module’s 1.58” (40 mm) height. Like a good memory vendor should, G.Skill warranties the Ripjaws Z for life.

The -HD version of this kit ($179.99) is for standard performance levels. The -ZHD set shown here is specifically designed to push beyond 2133 MT/s. One perhaps predictable caveat is that these modules ought to be run in XMP mode for maximum benefit, which is no problem—if your platform supports XMP. G.Skill currently shows the Asus Rampage IV Extreme and P9X79 Deluxe as being the only two qualified motherboards for this kit. No doubt, the modules will work fine on other platforms, but exercise caution and check your return policies accordingly (we had trouble at first on Intel's DX79SI board, which has since been solved with a firmware update).
There are higher-end alternatives, to be sure. You can drop over $600 on some 2400 MT/s CL9 quad-channel kits. But early reports are already showing these Ripjaws Z overclocking above 2300 MT/s. Given that, we’d be inclined to put some of these sticks in your stocking and pocket the savings for the next holiday season. Besides, we already showed in Intel Core i7-3960X Review: Sandy Bridge-E And X79 Express that memory scaling on this enthusiast-oriented platform is of limited utility in most applications.
$149.99
www.silverstonetek.com
Give kudos to SilverStone for not being afraid to think outside the box—or at least how to change up the box substantially. At first glance, the RV03 looks like just another gaming tower: lots of bays, a side window, plenty of vents, USB 3.0, and mic/stereo ports stealthed on top, and...then it gets harder. SilverStone has continued its pursuits of orienting the motherboard I/O panel to point at the case’s top, rather than the back. The back panel is now nothing more than a blank plate with a grill for an optional 120 mm CPU exhaust fan. The more we think about this design, the more we wonder why vendors didn’t start doing this years ago. Who among us hasn’t at least come close to pulling a muscle trying to wrestle our loaded towers around in order to reach a cable plug? Where’s a helper elf when you need one? SilverStone solves the problem. Just pop off the top panel, and there are all of your I/O ports and cables neatly routed out to the back. Of course, the real reason for the reorientation is thermally-motivated, but you already knew that.
The RV03 comes at you with seven external 5.25” bays, all of them with removable covers in case you want to see the mesh below and provide more airflow. Most of this case’s air movement comes from the pair of 180 mm intake fans mounted on the floor. The dust filters on the bottom of the chassis below these fans mount with magnets rather than plastic clips—a brilliant move for these most easily clogged filters. You could remove the two 180 mm fans and install an aftermarket 240 mm radiator, and this makes sense for one very big reason: turbulence. See, you’ve got the twin 180 mm fans on the floor and four optional 120 mm intake fan mounts at the front (two on each side of the drive cage). There’s an optional 120 mm exhaust mount on the rear, but only one 120 mm exhaust fan pre-installed on the top. Do the math and you’ll see that out of the box, and especially if you have a lot of large components blocking air flow, you’re setting up some questionable air pressure situations here with the potential for a lot of excess air noise, despite SilverStone’s use of low-noise fans. Just watch your CFM numbers and build accordingly.
On the other hand, SilverStone offers a generous gap behind the motherboard tray for cable routing and additional drive installation. The other standout feature here is that the power supply mounts at the front of the case below the drives. A special 90-degree power cord routes out of the PSU and back into the case while hot air exhausts from a grill in the left side panel. Novel twists like this are what make the RV03 intriguing and a great conversation piece among the technically inclined.
$649.99
www.zotacusa.com
Go big or go home, right? Heading into the 2011 home stretch, the GeForce GTX 580 remains the fastest single-GPU card in Nvidia’s consumer line-up. It might only include half of the total CUDA cores as the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590 (512 vs. 1024), but better thermals mean it's able to run faster, too.
Of course, the GeForce GTX 580 can also be overclocked, though that serves to push a potentially loud card into the realm of ridiculously loud. What’s a self-respecting, ear-protecting gamer to do?

Zotac has one answer: add water cooling. Better yet, just have that water cooling installed out of the box. And while you’re at it, Zotac will overclock your card at the factory, taking NVIDIA’s 772 MHz default graphics engine clock and juicing it to 815 MHz. The shader clock climbs from 1544 MHz to 1630 MHz. Even the 4008 MT/s memory clock gets a nudge to 4100 MHz at the end of Nvidia’s 384-bit GDDR5 memory bus.
Of course, Zotac supports all of the usual amenities: DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, CUDA, PhysX, three-way SLI, and 3D Vision. The card utilizes PCIe 2.0 x16 and offers one mini HDMI and two dual link DVI-I connectors.
Zotac uses the CoolIT Systems Omni ALC cooler, which is factory-sealed and ready for system installation. The interposer plate that attaches to the GTX 580 card is remarkably thin and allows the card to occupy only one card slot. L-shaped tubing connections keep the total card length at only 10.5 inches. Most interestingly, the interposer plate is the only proprietary part of the cooling system. In this case, it’s designed for the GeForce GTX 580, but in theory you should be able to purchase different interposer plates for future cards and carry over the radiator and tubing apparatus, which is a terrific value-add for serious gamers.
Zotac throws in a software bundle, including Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, but the real draw here is the overclocking and liquid cooling. This GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition is without question one gift that would keep giving the whole year ‘round.
$84.95
www.noctua.at
When it comes to comparing your PC with Santa Claus, two similarities may apply. First, you like to fly silently. Forget those jingling bells. When was the last time you heard Santa’s sleigh cruising under full load, eh? Exactly. At the same time, does Santa outfit his rig with water? No way, none of that fancy post-reindeer gadgetry for the Chubby Red Rider. If he can’t go on air, he stays home.
Likewise, Noctoua’s LGA 2011-friendly NH-D14 is legendary for helping you achieve the same two qualities: silence and air cooling so powerful it can practically appear at midnight in every single time zone. Some of this silence comes from Noctua’s Smooth Commutation Drive (SCD) enhancement, which minimizes noises caused by torque pulses as one stator coil transitions to another during fan rotation. Smoother coil transitions mean less noise. It also helps that the cooler comes with two Low-Noise Adapters—essentially modified power adapters that allow the fans to run at lower voltages than the default 12 V. Be sure not to use these if more processor cooling is required.
Also in play here is Noctua’s use of its own SSO-Bearings in its fan. SSO-Bearing design involves magnetically centered, self-lubricating bearings that allegedly surpass other ball, sleeve, and liquid bearing designs in both low noise and reliability. According to Noctua, SSO-Bearings are why the company can spec a 150 000-hour MTBF and warranty the fan for six years.
The two fans (one 140 mm and one 120 mm) in the SE2011 version support fully automatic PWM speed control. The smaller fan mounts in between the two sets of aluminum radiator fins while the other clips on the outside for lateral airflow. Maximum airflow at 1300 RPM without the low-noise adapters is 110.3 m³/h. With the adapters at 900 RPM, this maximum drops to 83.7 m³/h. Top acoustical noise output is 19.8 and 13.2 dB(A), respectively. The base and six heat pipes are copper with nickel plating.
If you’re hoping for a new Core i7-3900-series processor under the tree, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better LGA 2011-based air cooler for your top-end holiday monster than the NH-D14 SE2011.
$149.99
us.creative.com
We keep hearing about how on-board audio codecs have closed the quality gap with discrete cards, and perhaps from a signal-to-noise ratio and frequency response standpoint this is largely true. But from an overall subjective standpoint, there’s no way we’d trade out our X-Fi card for the audio on your average $200 motherboard. The driver robustness and quality of the signal post-processing on something like the X-Fi runs circles around your run of the mill Realtek implementation. Slap on a decent set of headphones and listen to the two side-by-side. The difference is obvious.
We also know from plenty of first-hand experience that even a zippy quad-core CPU isn’t always enough to save integrated audio from the glitches and drops that can occur when, say, another app fires up and grabs an outsized portion of system resources for a few seconds. With that said, just how much horsepower does an audio processor need in order to make sure that the CPU isn’t impacted by audio loads? Good question, and Creative isn’t anxious to quantify an answer. Rather, the company is content to pile on a host of new “3D” post-processing features and imply that a quad-core audio processor is needed to shoulder these new tasks. Sure, four cores is probably overkill, but it’s not really about the hardware. It’s about the amazing effects, and this is where Creative shines brightest.
The old X-Fi suite of software has, with the Recon3D generation, been replaced by THX TruStudio Pro equivalents and improvements. The Surround and Crystalizer tools return, which are excellent at simulating a 360-degree sonic environment and filling in frequencies often lost during file compression. THX TruStudio Pro Smart Volume is largely a normalization tool for avoiding excessively loud or quiet content. People who struggle to make out dialog against background noise (doubly troublesome if you lack a center channel) will appreciate the Dialog Plus enhancements, and TruStudio Pro Bass fills in more bass range material, although we’re not sure how this differs from the bass enhancement in Crystallizer.
Many voice-based clients, even Skype, include respectable echo cancelation technologies, but these consume CPU cycles. The Recon3D performs echo cancelation on-card. Moreover, Creative uses a beamforming-based microphone approach it calls Focus to dampen background noise.
The Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional shown here includes the beamforming microphone; the plain Recon3D ($99.99) does not. If you can take a little I.O.U. from Santa, the Fatal1ty Champion model ($199.99) will arrive in January and offer Creative’s I/O connectivity on a bay device box rather than on the card.












