GIGABYTE Quietly Launches Low Profile GeForce GTX 1050, 1050 Ti Graphics Cards

by james paslis | Jan 24, 2017 | PC, Uncategorized

GIGABYTE has quietly added two low-profile video cards to its lineup of products during CES. The graphics adapters are based on NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1050-series GPUs and will be among the most affordable gaming-grade products in the company’s family. The new low-profile add-in-cards will be especially useful for those building mini PCs or HTPCs as well as for those upgrading inexpensive computers from OEMs.

GIGABYTE’s GeForce GTX 1050 Ti OC Low Profile 4G and GeForce GTX 1050 OC Low Profile 2G graphics adapters are based on NVIDIA’s GP107 GPU (albeit, in different configurations) and carry 4 GB and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory running at 7 Gbps, respectively. Both cards use the same PCB (marked as V16156-0) as well as the dual-slot cooling system featuring an aluminum heatsink and a fan. As for connectivity, the boards also have a similar set of outputs: one DL-DVI-D, two HDMI 2.0b and one DisplayPort 1.4 with HDCP 2.2 support that is required for Ultra HD Blu-ray playback.

It is noteworthy that GIGABYTE decided to slightly increase GPU clock-rates of its low-profile GeForce GTX 1050-series graphics cards versus NVIDIA’s reference designs to give them some extra punch over rivals. Meanwhile, TDP and power requirements of its low profile GTX 1050-series graphics cards remained at approximately 75 W level, which means no additional power connectors are required and the cards can be installed into any contemporary computer with a PCIe x16 slot.

It seems like low profile graphics cards are back courtesy of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1050-series as GIGABYTE is the second company to announce such parts after MSI, and it likely that these two companies will not be the only suppliers of such products. For those building low-power HTPCs or upgrading entry-level PCs, the GP107-based graphics adapters seem to be a good choice because the GPU supports DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs as well as has an advanced media playback engine that features hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding of H.265 (HEVC) video.

GIGABYTE does not specify MSRPs for its GeForce GTX 1050 Ti OC Low Profile 4G and GeForce GTX 1050 OC Low Profile 2G graphics adapters on its web-site, as these are typically determined at regional release. Given the positioning of these products, it unlikely that they will cost significantly more than NVIDIA’s MSRPs for similar video cards: $139 for the GTX 1050 Ti and $109 for the GTX 1050.

Vuze

by james paslis | Jan 23, 2017 | PC, Uncategorized

A fast, smart and powerful BitTorrent client

With many torrent clients out there, it’s hard to stand out and offer something drastically different compared to the established names of uTorrent and BitTorrent. That’s exactly what Vuze has achieved, though

Why you need it

First off, Vuze handles all torrents in the quick manner that you’d expect from any torrent client and, yes, like most of its peers you will have to negotiate an installation process that involves dodging potentially unwanted programs by reading each step carefully and unchecking the relevant boxes. That aside, it’s plain sailing.

Downloading torrents with Vuze is incredibly simple. Its brilliant meta search function trawls the web to find you the best downloads, saving you time and effort. You can subscribe to feeds too, ensuring you always have the latest content.

Vuze also features optimization tools for faster, more reliable downloads. It can download multiple torrents at once, prioritize downloads using an easy drag-and-drop interface, and find multiple sources for the same download to boost speed.

There’s also a remote control app for Android, an HD video player, and a built-in converter to save videos and music in a format suitable for any device.

Download here: Vuze

The best free file recovery software 2017

by james paslis | Jan 20, 2017 | PC, Uncategorized

Lost or deleted an important file? These five free file recovery tools could help you get it back

The best free file recovery software

File recovery can be an expensive business, which is why it’s no substitute for backing up your key documents, photos and other data on a regular basis. But that’s of little comfort to anyone – even those with good backup regimens – who suddenly find themselves confronted by the stomach-churning feeling of data loss.

Whether it’s a virus infection, a hardware failure, or just human error, it’s all too easy to lose vital files. As soon as you’ve become aware of data loss, it’s critical you stop using the drive affected immediately. Whether the drive itself is failing or you’ve simply deleted a file accidentally, this is the golden moment when you may be able to get your data back before it’s gone for good.

We’ve cherry-picked five of the best free data recovery tools in the business. Just pick the one closest to your requirements and with a bit of luck (and no small measure of help from the app involved), you could yet save your files.

1. Recuva

With a simple wizard and advanced recovery scans, Recuva is the tool you need in an emergency

Recuva makes things as easy and stress-free as possible. It opens by default to a file recovery wizard, which advanced users can subsequently skip: from here, choose the type of file you’re trying to recover (picture, documents, compressed, emails and all files are among those on offer) and it’ll focus its search accordingly.

You can target your search to a specific location or search all your drives, and you can opt to choose a quick or deep scan. The latter takes much longer, but flushes out more results. Then click ‘Start’ and wait for the scan to complete.

Once done, your results are presented, with each recovered file given a rating depending on its condition. You can recover files direct from here or switch to Advanced Mode for a frankly better view, offering file preview, information and a peek at the file’s header.

Download here: Recuva