Reviews
When Shuttle augmented their marketing strategy for their Small Form Factor PC line-up not long ago, they moved from a barebones only model to a full system approach, which also required them to compete in a different arena. Full system sales require not only the components of the main...
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With the release of both NVIDIA's 6800 Series and ATI's X800 series, the high-end enthusiast has several excellent choices when seeking the perfect gaming card. It really is hard to go wrong either way, with each product line having...
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Back in May '04, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition to counter the launch of ATi's Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, and gamers the world over took notice. Just a few weeks earlier, the GeForce 6800 Ultra was unveiled, and at the time it was smoking through benchmarks like nobody's business. Then, about a month...
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Watch any episode of "This Old House", "Hometime", "The New Yankee Workshop", or any other Do-It-Yourself type program for that matter, and you're bound to hear a certain phrase repeated over and over. Carpenters, mechanics, plumbers, chefs, they all use it. This phrase has almost become a mantra for anyone who...
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While the AMD Athlon XP still remains popular, it is no longer the sought after enthusiast part it once was. This isn't because the Athlon XP is a poor performer, but rather it's because a new era of AMD processors are now in the limelight. Regardless, there are still plenty of reasons to consider a system based on the Athlon...
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With all of our recent articles concerning NVIDIA's latest round of products, it seemed as if our analysis in the graphics space was getting a bit lop-sided. Today, we're aiming to change that with a new card from Sapphire, dubbed the Sapphire Toxic X800 Pro ViVo. This card alone could make up for some of the new mid range Radeon's...
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Back in mid-June we took a look at the latest offering from Plextor, the PX-712A. This drive boasted 12X DVD+R write speeds and maintained the same level of quality we've come to expect from Plextor. For years, Plextor has been in the optical drive business and for most of that...
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Today, avid computer enthusiasts have their pick of some of the best computer hardware ever made available to the public. Processors and graphics cards have truly matured in the past few years, giving the general public computing power to do just about anything. Whether you're a hardcore gamer or you want to develop your own independent...
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The battle between NVIDIA and ATi for dominance in the desktop 3D gaming video card market has been on-going for many years. With each new product they release, both companies attempt to leap-frog the other by introducing new features and increasing performance over their previous generation. The competition has gotten so fierce,...
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Corsair's XMS (Xtreme Memory Speed) memory modules have long been a favorite amongst the enthusiast community. Corsair has memory kits available in many different sizes and speeds, and all of them are regarded as some of the best modules available in their respective categories...
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2004 is easily shaping up to be a banner year for the graphics card market as NVIDIA and ATI continue to trade blows with their high-end offerings. We've seen huge increases in performance between the current and last generation of video cards from both manufacturers, and the competition is as intense as ever. Today, there are...
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When NVIDIA updates their product line, the GPUs usually arrive in the form of a value, midstream, and high-end variety, thus catering to all budgets or tastes. Monetarily speaking, it works out for the most part with those in need of a simple upgrade able to get something on the cheap, while Uber-users can get a new card to brag to...
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A few years back, if you wanted the best of DVD playback and CD burning, you had to buy separate drives for each task. With the advent of combo drives hitting the mainstream market, however, users can now get top-notch CD and DVD performance from a single optical device. MSI's...
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Intel's recent new platform launch of the i915 and i925X chipsets marked a major overhaul of the Pentium 4 system level architecture and brought with it a host of new features and technologies. At the processor and IO levels...
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We get to test and evaluate quite a few high-end video cards here in the HotHardware labs. Over the past few months, we've previewed numerous Radeon 9800 XTs and GeForce FX 5950 Ultras, and cards based on ATi's and NVIDIA's latest Radeon X800 and GeForce 6800 GPUs have also begun to trickle in recently. Burning through our...
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In the weeks leading up to the release of the NV40, the base architecture for the new GeForce 6 series of cards, NVIDIA spoke at length about their new architecture's "scalability". At the high end, the flagship GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition is a 16-Pipeline machine clocked at 450MHz, that can pump out an impressive 7.2GPixels/s....
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It's been a long time since several pioneering companies bridged the gap between the TV and the PC. What initially started out as a novelty is now driving the industry in a new direction with the merging of TV and Radio with the personal computer. Today, thanks to faster hardware, and the advent of the mini-PC, manufacturers and...
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Peruse virtually any PC gaming magazine, or point your browser to any popular gaming web site, and you're bound to find a myriad of information and accolades for Crytek's smash-hit, first person shooter, FarCry. The game has some of...
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It has been a few weeks since ATi officially unveiled their Radeon X800 line of graphics cards based on the GPU formerly codenamed R420. In our initial look at the Radeon X800 Pro and X800 XT Platinum Edition back in May, we found ATi's latest flagship GPUs to be very capable performers, besting their previous high-end product,...
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Since the release of AMD's Socket 939 processors, motherboard manufacturers have wasted little time transitioning to the newer design, but that doesn't mean previous AMD platforms are now completely obsolete. Like the older Athlon XP, the 754 pin Athlon 64 processors still have some life...
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Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we? Where were you in 1999? If you were into the technology scene, especially personal computing, most likely you were scampering about like Chicken Little, wondering what you would do when the sky fell at the end of the year, as the clocks...
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Our first look at the GeForce FX 5900XT was way back in December 2003, and we were mightily impressed by the performance of the original sample sent to us by e-VGA, one of Nvidia's launch partners. We've reviewed a few other 5900XTs since then, and we've recently received two new models, one of which was the card we took a look at last...
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