Sins of a Solar Empire is one of those Real Time Strategy games that you won't be able to tear yourself away from easily. Sins is one of those addictive experiences that you start to gauge other games by. Very few space-based RTS games come close to perfection, and Sins is one of them. After playing Sins, you'll be daydreaming about it while trying to play other RTS titles. In this article, Benchmark Reviews offers our opinion of the Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion expansion pack.

Intel always sends reviewers their top-end motherboards when new CPUs are introduced. Called "Extreme Boards", these motherboards are designed for "extreme performance" and festooned with skulls. The past Intel Extreme Boards I've looked at came with early, buggy BIOSes; performed relatively poorly, and had very few additional features other than those provided by the CPU and chipset. So I wasn't expecting much from the Intel DZ77GA-70K Z77 Express motherboard, but was amazed to find that this time, Intel might have a winner on its hands. Join me as Benchmark Reviews takes a look at Intel's new Z77 Express standard bearer.

Everything from Rocket Launchers to Dancing Clowns are available as a USB peripheral these days. Most of us keep our USB devices within arm's length, but there are times where a little more distance is desirable. That's the case for the average consumer; the commercial or industrial user has a tougher life. They have Rocket Launchers and Dancing Clowns too, but they're the full-sized versions. You can bet the computers which control them are located more than 5 meters away. That's the reason for today's article; what to do when your USB device is 300 feet away from your PC? You find a device like the Icron USB Ranger 2211, and a big spool of Cat 5 Ethernet cable, and you hook it up, no problem! Just so you can be sure that there won't be any problems, Benchmark Reviews put the latest USB extender from Icron Technologies on the test bench. We also look under the hood, and show you the technology that's inside.

Many are still waiting for NVIDIA to release the rest of their 28nm line-up, and AMD have already shown their full hand. The question is; do you buy now or wait to see if you can get a better deal? Waiting is a vicious cycle and there will always be something better released after you make a purchase. Don't wait too long to make your choice, there is plenty to choose from without waiting. In this article we take a look at the HIS Radeon HD7850 IceQ X Turbo X 2GB 'GHz Edition' video card armed with AMD's Pitcairn 28nm GPU Core. This is the fastest HD7850 that HIS produce and we intend to overclock it some more to see how much faster it will run. Benchmark Reviews aims to provide you with an unbiased review of the HIS Radeon HD7850 IceQ X Turbo X 2GB video card (model H785QNX2G2M) and report back our findings, keeping you informed on the latest technologies available on the market today.

Back on 22 March 2012, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 video card made headlines and became the best-performing single-GPU graphics card on the market. Only six weeks later NVIDIA engineers have successfully combined two 28nm GK104 GPUs together to create their new GeForce GTX 690. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests game performance with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, a double-slot graphics card equipped with a pair of Kepler GPUs. Featuring NVIDIA's cutting-edge GPU Boost technology, the GeForce GTX 690 video card can dynamically adjust power and clock speeds based on real-time application demands. Using EVGA Precision-X, the GeForce GTX 690 has both GPUs overclocked beyond 1200 GHz to produce ultimate graphical performance in PC video games.

I've sometimes thought that Intel tries too hard with its enthusiast level motherboards. The Extreme series, which is what Intel seeds reviewers with when new CPUs are introduced, tend to "shout" with prominent skull logos, POST code readouts, POST sequence LEDs, and other bling, but in my experience they fall down badly on features and performance. So you can understand that I wasn't expecting too much from the DZ77GA-70K motherboard. But I was in for a surprise.

Intel sticks to their "tick-tock" CPU development cycle, where the "ticks" represent new CPU architectures and the "tocks" represent process refinement. Sandy Bridge CPUs were the "tick", and the new Ivy Bridge CPUs are the "tock". Fabricated on a 22nm process with Intel's new low-leakage "3D" transistors, Ivy Bridge represents a fabrication breakthrough if nothing else. But how does it compare against the immensely popular and powerful Sandy Bridge CPUs? Benchmark Reviews dives into the fray to let you know.

If the you have read the reviews of the AMD Radeon HD 79xx series of video cards here at benchmark reviews you will know that owning the fastest single GPU video card will hurt your wallet. While we can all aspire to (or dream of) owning one or more of these high end video cards, the simple fact is that not everyone can afford such luxuries. In this article we take a look at the more moderately priced HIS Radeon HD 7770 iCooler 1GB video card armed with AMD's Cape Verde 28nm GPU Core. Sure enough it won't run your favorite games maxed out at 1080p but with an msrp of $129.99 you might be pleasantly surprised at its power to weight ratio. Benchmark Reviews aims to provide you with an unbiased review of the HIS Radeon HD 7770 iCooler 1GB video card (model H777F1G2M) and report back our findings, keeping you informed on the latest technologies available on the market today.