February Trance Selection

Let's get one thing straight. February was a shitty month. Yes, it was. In papers however, everything seemed perfect. New tunes from Bjorn Akesson, Armin, Jochen Miller, Markus Schulz (under the alias Dakota), Will Holland, Arnej, Greg Downey, Marcel Woods and so on. What could possibly go wrong? Apparently, everything went straight to hell. We can't help but feel way too disappointed from all those great producers. Their latest tunes were lacking imagination, peak levels and feeling. They were as generic as ever. Seriously now, we've heard those formulaic tunes a hundred of times and after sometime, it get's really boring.

All is not lost though, as we got four tunes that are worth mentioning. It's kind of sad that there were only four but what can we say? Just be grateful that there are at least some that are worth your hard-earned cash.

January Trance Selection

Each and every month, we'll be reviewing the trance releases of our previous month and be selecting the best of the best. January was an average month. We had high hopes from Roger Shah, Orjan Nilsen, First State and Nuera but their tracks were mediocre to say the least. It's getting really hard to find trance tunes that are worth mentioning. Still, things are not as bad as you may thing. It's just that quantity does not equal to quality. Enough of this though, let's see which were the best trance tunes of our previous month.

James Allan & Jamie Drummond - Counterpoint (Original Mix): "Counterpoint" is simply amazing and full of energy. Its intro is so powerful that sends immediately chills down your spine. As with all tracks that begin so energetic, the breakdown is critical as it can destroy it. Thankfully, its breakdown is terific. It retains the powerful vibe with an amazing melody and some amazing sound effects. The outro that comes after the breakdown is even more energetic and enters the tech area. Allan and Drummond delivered, this is a mindblowing trance track. Well done guys!

Benchmarking and Overclocking Q9650 Part 2

After our previous feature on overclocking the Q9650, we've been wondering how much we can push this CPU. We won't be bothering with water cooling solutions, as we want to see how much we can get with the air cooling solutions. So, time to see how much we can push the Q9650 on air.

We used a Gigabyte UD3LR EP45 motherboard with 4GB DDR2 Memory Kit from Kingston, a 1000W PSU from Coolermaster and a GTX295. As we said in our previous feature, in order to achieve a 4.0Ghz frequency we needed 1.45V VCore. That was before our latest tweaks. After messing with the CPU Termination, MCH Core and MCH Reference we managed to achieve 4.2Ghz with 1.4125V Vcore. This had a huge impact in our temperatures, so we strongly suggest not raising your Vcore above this value. Still, 1.4125V is quite high and you will definitely need a good CPU cooler.

Nvidia ForceWare 266.58 Drivers Released

Nvidia released today the much anticipated 26x.xx drivers for all their cards. These drivers are WHQL, so grab them if you were hesitant about trying the beta versions. The 266.58 have similar performance with the 266.44, so if you didn't encounter any problems with those drivers, there isn't any reason to move on. The same goes for the PhysX software, 3D and SLI profiles. Nothing is changed. Some users had encountered AA problems with the previous betas, although we didn't encounter any with our GTX295. Still, if you're one of them, we strongly suggest trying these latest drivers to see if your problems are resolved.

Enhancing the video playback quality

Due to the minor PC games releases of the past few days, we decided to include a simple guide to demonstrate how you can enhance your video playback quality. The easiest way is by buying the BluRay version of your favourite movie. But what if there isn't any high-definition version of it? And what if your camera can't record in HD?


We won't be using the various codec packs, like K-Lite. This is a simple guide after all. Instead we'll use the video enhancements of your GPU, provided you have an Nvidia card. For starters, you'll have to enter your Nvidia Control Panel. Simply click the left mouse button on your desktop and choose the 'Nvidia Control Panel' option. Your control panel will then open. Next, scroll down, find the 'Video' section and double click on it. You'll see two new options, one for the color and one for the image settings.

Top 10 PC Games of 2010

2010 was a nice year for PC gamers. It could have been better, but still it was great. Strategy and adventure fans got to play a lot of quality PC exclusives, from Starcraft 2 and Civilization V to Gray Matter and The Whispered World. The indie devs once again proved that they can really surprise us and deliver some amazing games. Titles like Sleep Is Death, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Minecraft and Super Meat Boy are some of the best indie games we got this year.

Sports and racing fans were left behind but thankfully, EA managed to deliver a great PC version of Fifa11 and NBA2K11 from 2K Games is astounding. WRC 2010 was the perfect blend of arcade/sim rally racing and would have made it in our Top10, if only it had more stages and better menus/presentation. Split Second was a hell of a game, Blur was a fan arcade racing and even though F1 2010 was not as sim as we'd hoped to, it was overall a nice game. RPG fans got to play Mass Effect 2, Two Worlds II, Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol, whereas the action fans enjoyed games like Bad Company 2, STALKER: Call Of Pripyat, Metro 2033, Just Cause 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction.

JohnDio Presents The Dark Side Of Trance (Christmas Special Mix) [21-12-2010]

A couple of months ago, I promised you a mix that would be way different than any of my previous mixes. So here it is, as a Christmas gift to all of you. This is the dark side of trance. Leon Bolier, Kosmas Epsilon, Vadim Zhukov, Mike Foyle, Jose Amnesia, Solarstone, John 00 Fleming, Ashley Wallbridge, Robert Nickson, Aurosonic, Markus Schulz and Tom Colontonio in a hell of a mix. Hope you'll enjoy it.

Merry Christmas everyone!



JohnDio Presents The Dark Side Of Trance (Christmas Special Mix) [21-12-2010]


Genre: Prog Trance / Trance
Date: 21-12-2010
Quality: 320kbps
Length: 68:45
Size: 157MB


Tracklist

1. Leon Bolier - That Morning (Album Mix)
2. Kosmas Epsilon - I Trance You (Original Mix)
3. Mike Foyle & DNS Project - Cayo Norte (Original Mix)
4. Vadim Zhukov - Stop The Time (Original Mix)
5. Solarstone & Orkidea - Slowmotion (French Renaissance Extended Mix)
6. John 00 Fleming & The Digital Blonde - Melatron (Original Mix)
7. Jose Amnesia - Out Of Memory (Original Mix)
8. Ashley Wallbridge - Smoke (Original Mix)
9. Robert Nickson & Ruben De Ronde - Superlative (Lodos Remix)
10. Markus Schulz featuring Khaz - Dark Heart Waiting (Club Mix)[JohnDio Breakless version]
11. Aurosonic - Starcraft Anthem (Special For SC2TV)
12. Tom Colontonio featuring Michele Karmin - Colors Of A Tear (Nick Sentience Remix)

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