Reviews
MAD DOG Entertainer 7.1 DSP Sound Card 8 Channels of Chest Pounding Sound By Tom Laverriere February 17, 2004 Many of today's motherboards are equipped with more than ample integrated sound solutions, which has made aftermarket sound...
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The MSI FX5950 Ultra-VTD256 NVIDIA's Flagship GPU, MSI Style... By, Marco Chiappetta February 12, 2004 After facing some fierce competition from ATi's R3x0 GPUs and fielding a mountain of criticism regarding questionable driver "optimizations", NVIDIA has had to deal with quite a bit of adversity as of late. They have also...
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Albatron's PX875 Pro Motherboard Power, Performance, and Good Looks By: Jeff Bouton February 5, 2004 Since the advent of Intel's i865 and i875 chipsets, the two have performed similarly, with a slight advantage going to the 875 and its PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology). Soon after the release of the 865 however, motherboard...
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Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Prescott And Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition Significant changes in P4 architecture bring future scalability By, Dave Altavilla February 1, 2004 During the course of the year in 2003, AMD and Intel were engaged in a rigorous competition of raw MHz versus IPC (instructions per clock cycle) marketing. While...
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Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Wireless Edition Performance Anywhere You Want It By, Tom Laverriere February 5, 2004 Ever since its inception, the nForce2 chipset has taken off and never looked back. It brings a lot to the table in terms of stability, performance, and most importantly affordability for the Athlon XP platform. The latest...
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Soyo's SY-CK8 Dragon Plus Motherboard A New Enthusiast Board for the Athlon 64 By: Jeff Bouton January 29, 2004 If all goes as planned for AMD, 2004 will be the year of the Athlon 64. They gave us a taste of their new product line in the last quarter of 2003, with a limited supply of Athlon...
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ASUS DRW-0402P/D DVD±R/RW Drive Review High Capacity on a Budget By Chris Angelini January 28, 2004 It's hard to believe that the very first DVD writers were priced in the neighborhood of $16,000, especially considering the current landscape of low-cost optical hardware. There's still a market...
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The Shuttle ST61G4 XPC ATi's Radeon 9100 IGP In Action... By, Marco Chiappetta January 26, 2004 A quick glance and Shuttle's XPC feature comparison table hints at one of the reasons why they have been so successful with their line of small form factor systems. Browse over to that page and you'll see that they have consistently...
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Hercules Video - Prophetview 920 Pro DVI A Gamer's Flat Panel And More Jason R. Gibson January 15th, 2004 It has been a while since we at Hot Hardware have taken a look at a new Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). Back in March of 2001 my fellow H.H. colleague, Dave, ventured a look at one of the forerunners of modern LCD displays. Needless...
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Soyo Raptor SY-PS400 Adjustable PSU Review Not Your Father's PSU By: Jeff Bouton January 6th, 2004 When someone is getting ready to build their new dream machine, the power supply is often overlooked. Generally people focus on the performance side of the equation, getting the fastest CPU, hard drive and Memory they can afford, along...
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The AMD Athlon 64 3400+: The Athlon 64 Gets Its First Speed Bump... By, Marco Chiappetta January 6, 2004 AMD closed out 2003 by quietly releasing the Athlon 64 3000+. The 3000+ was clocked at the same 2.0GHz as the Athlon 64 3200+, and it used the same 754 pin socket, but it featured 512K of L1 cache, only half that of the 3200+. ...
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ASUS SK8V K8T800 Motherboard Review Socket 940 Platform Featuring VIA's K8T800 Chipset By: Chris Angelini January 4, 2004 They say it takes years to establish a solid reputation and minutes to destroy it, which is why the office Christmas party requires a delicate balance of business and pleasure. Dating back to 1997, the folks...
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The Sapphire Atlantis 9800XT Up Close and Personal with Sapphire's Radeon 9800 XT 256MB By, Marco Chiappetta December 30, 2003 In late September '03, ATi refreshed their fall line-up with the Radeon 9800 XT, knocking the then dominant Radeon 9800 Pro from its perch atop ATi's video card food chain. We reviewed one of the first Radeon...
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The Plextor PX-708A 8x DVD±R/RW Drive Plextor fulfills the need for speed! By Robert Maloney December 28th, 2003 When it comes to optical drives, one brand that folks have turned to time and time again, for reliability and performance, would be Plextor. We have had our looks at many a CD-RW drive and even a few 4X DVD burners...
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Ideazon Zboard Interchangeable Keyboard System Tom Laverriere December 23rd, 2003 Every once in a while a company will develop an innovation that makes an ordinary piece of hardware exciting. In the arena of input devices, more specifically, keyboards, there have been many innovations to aid with the ever monotonous task of typing. ...
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The AOpen EZ65 & Biostar iDEQ 200T Shuttle Isn't the Only OEM Making SFF Systems... By, Marco Chiappetta December 16, 2003 With all of the buzz surrounding Shuttle's popular XPC line of small form factor systems, you'd think they were the only company producing these diminutive machines, which obviously...
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The Asus P4S800D-E Motherboard Pentium 4 Powered Performance With The SiS 655TX Chipset By: Dave Altavilla December 22, 2003 All year we've been waiting for a chipset manufacturer to get into the Pentium 4 chipset arena with a Dual Channel DDR capable offering that finally gave Intel something to sweat over. We've seen offerings...
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ABIT AI7 865PE Motherboard Review The i865PE board with "µGuru" By: Jeff Bouton December 18th, 2003 When it comes to overclocking an Intel based system, no processor has shown more potential than the Pentium 4-C. More specifically, Intel's Pentium 4-C at 2.4GHz has proven to have a ton of headroom, with many user's hitting...
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eVGA's e-GeForce FX 5900SE A curiously named GeForce card hits the market By Robert Maloney December 15th, 2003 It seems like only yesterday we were testing the latest and greatest releases from both ATi and NVIDIA, as each company tried to one-up the other in the mainstream graphics market. While we were pleased with the ATi Radeon...
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The BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128MBs, AGP 8X, and the Muscle to Get the Job Done! By, Jeff Bouton December 11, 2003 As 2003 comes to a close, we have to wonder if NVIDIA is looking to 2004 with eager anticipation. The last year has been tough for them, to say the least, with a number of nagging issues plaguing the embattled graphics...
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VIA PT880 Chipset Preview A Performance Preview of VIA's Dual-Channel P4 Chipset By: Chris Angelini December 8, 2003 For the first time since NVIDIA unveiled its nForce2 chipset more than a year ago, VIA is in a very promising position. To begin, AMD's Athlon 64 is upon us, bringing...
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The AOpen DRW4410 4x DVD+R/RW Drive A drive that won't burn through your budget! By Robert Maloney December 4, 2003 If we were to step back for a second and look at the state of optical storage a couple of years ago, we were just getting used to having CD-Writers come standard in pre-built PCs. They might not have been super-fast, or...
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