The gaming community finally has a networking product it can call it’s own. While many segments in the computer industry embraced gamers with custom motherboards, tweaked memory, and even keyboards, the home networking companies largely ignored the interests of PC gamers and concentrated on the larger, more mainstream market. It’s great to see that D-Link has engineered a product that even it’s employees, many themselves being avid gamers, are proud to use in their own homes.
The bottom line really is that the DGL-4300 does what it is intended to do: keep online game latencies low while still allowing other internet tasks to run smoothly. However, there is a catch, since gaming packets have priority over their FTP and HTTP counterparts when GameFuel is enabled, download and upload speeds are slower as evident by our performance results. The DGL-4300 is limited by the width of your internet pipeline, and therefore cannot maintain 40kb/s uploads, 500kb/s downloads, and 40ms ping in your games; in fact, no router can do that.
As you can see from our tests, GameFuel essentially takes the bandwidth usually diverted to these uploads and downloads and allots them to your online games, a feature I’m sure many of you could have used many times over the last few years if you share bandwidth with others.
Talking about features, the DGL-4300’s Gigabit connectivity will allow for incredibly fast home networks and ultra-low latencies in games when throwing LAN parties. It’s great to see that D-Link has taken the initiative and incorporated Gigabit Ethernet into the DGL-4300. This feature alone is a huge selling point to many enthusiasts that have wanted to build their own Gigabit networks.
The web-interface is the best I’ve personally seen in a home router, both from an aesthetic and features standpoint. The DGL-4300 gives you a level of control commonly associated with enterprise level networking hardware, another first in the home networking segment.
Really the only downside to the DGL-4300 is its price, around $140 at most places. However, when one takes a look at the DGL-4300’s excellent performance and unique features, it can easily be justified as money well spent.
D-Link is definitely a step ahead of the game with the DGL-4300, but you can bet that they won’t be the only networking company we’ll see embracing the gaming community in the months to come.
ATI Radeon HD 5570 Performance Preview
The Radeon 5570 fuses ATI's 400-shader Redwood graphics core with a low-profile board design, giving you the guts of the 5670 in a package that's similar to the 5450. How does the final product compare to ATI's other sub-$100 offerings, as well as the GeForce 9600 GT and Radeon 4670. You'll have to read today's article to find out!
ATI Radeon 5450 Performance Preview
With prices ranging from $49-$59, ATI's Radeon 5450 brings DX11 and Eyefinity to the entry-level price bracket for the first time. But how does it perform? Find out in today's article!
Mass Effect 2 PC Review
BioWare's latest chapter in the Mass Effect series has earned overwhelmingly positive praise on consoles, but is the game still enjoyable on the PC? Find out in today's review!
AMD's New Year CPUs: Athlon II X4 635, Athlon II X3 440, Athlon II X2 255, & Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition Tested
Ready to pull the trigger on a new budget CPU? If so, you'll be glad you waited, as today AMD's providing a free 100MHz speed bump on their latest dual, triple, and quad-core Athlon II CPUs. But that's not all. For the tweakers out there that love to OC, AMD's brought back the Phenom II X2. The 555 Black Edition is AMD's fastest dual-core yet, and it's based on AMD's new C3 Rev. See how the new CPUs OC and perform in today's article!
Gigabyte USB 3.0 Boards Compared: P55A-UD6 and X58A-UD7
Promising transfer rates up to 10X higher than USB 2.0, next-generation USB 3.0 devices should offer considerably more speed to get things done. The same applies for SATA 6Gb/sec. But does the substance live up to the hype? Yes and no. Join us as we take a look at both of these technologies in Gigabyte's latest motherboards for the P55 and X58 platforms!
NVIDIA GF100 'Fermi' Graphics Architecture Overview
With DX11, 512 shaders, and a 384-bit memory interface, NVIDIA's next-generation GF100 GPU certainly looks impressive at first glance. It doesn't stop there though. NVIDIA's significantly upped their tessellation performance with GF100's new PolyMorph engines, and thanks to a tweaked ROP subsystem, the new GPU should deliver improved 8xAA performance as well. Join us as we take a closer look inside GF100's new architecture in this article!
ATI Radeon HD 5670 Performance Preview
Priced at $99 and offering features like DirectX 11 and Eyefinity, ATI's Radeon 5670 is poised to take over the heart of the mainstream graphics market. But is it powerful enough to displace the Radeon 4850 and 4770? How well does it OC? Find out in today's article!
Building a Core i7-920 Gaming Rig
With his Core 2 Extreme X6800 PC beginning to show signs of age, Vandy just finished upgrading his primary gaming rig to Core i7 over the holidays. With dual GeForce GTX 275s, and his Core i7-920 OC'ed to 4GHz, it's a pretty powerful performer. Read about the rest of the components used inside!
Intel Core i5-661 'Clarkdale' Performance Preview
With a 3.33GHz stock clock speed, integrated DX10 graphics core, and 32-nm manufacturing process, Intel's Core i5-661 is designed to make Core 2 Duo obsolete. But does it accomplish its mission? See how it performs with and without its integrated graphics in today's article!
Top Games of 2010
Because multiple blockbuster games were pushed back from Q4'09 to 2010, the next few months should be pretty busy for gamers. Games like Splinter Cell Conviction, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Supreme Commander 2, Mass Effect 2, and BioShock 2 are all expected within the first 3 months of 2010. Hopefully next year we'll also see the debut of games like id Software's RAGE and StarCraft 2. Join us as Vandy highlights some of the most anticipated games of next year in this article!
Ballistics Report
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