Reviews
In early September, Steve Jobs took to the stage and unveiled the new-and-improved Apple TV. What was once considered a “hobby” device was reworked, streamlined, made more affordable, and aimed squarely at the masses. It enters an increasingly crowded market of devices that offer...
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You have to love competition. With the release of AMD's affordable HD 6870 and 6850 graphics cards, the folks over at NVIDIA decided to respond with a move of their own. In case you missed it, the same day the Radeons launched, NVIDIA dropped the price of their mid-range GeForce products to...
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Tablets, tablets and more tablets. If we were asked to pick only one HOT product category this holiday shopping season, there wouldn't be even a nanosecond of hesitation before we offered the words tablet PCs. Tablet PCs may not be a new product category or idea but they certainly...
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Home Theater PC buffs rejoice, wireless transmission of HDMI® connections has finally come of age. Though there are currently two camps gaining traction in the market (Intel's WiDi and WHDI), the bottom line is lag-free full HD 1080p wireless video/audio transmission is now a...
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Break out your party hats and spike the punch, we're throwing a 'Welcome Back' party. The guest of honor is Dell's XPS brand, whose return is marked by a new family of laptops built around Intel's Calpella platform and featuring Nvidia's Optimus technology. At this point you're probably...
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Notice anything different in that Radeon graphics logo kicking back off to the left here? If not, you weren't paying attention, so forty lashes for you with a bump-mapped, specular lit, highly tesselated wet noodle. Though AMD may have finally decided to do away with their ATI...
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While solid state drives get faster, mechanical hard drives get larger. Not long ago, we celebrated the first 1TB hard drive, and since then, welcomed 1.5TB and eventually 2TB drives to the consumer market. Yes, the performance increase that SSD's offer is more than impressive. However, they still can't touch the capacity that traditional...
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For all but the most budget conscious buyers, piecing together a home brewed rig often entails forking over a premium for certain components, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're a gamer, you probably bought a high-end graphics card (or at least that's what you should have...
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The most popular and powerful Android phones currently available are quite possibly members of the Samsung Galaxy S line. Powered by Samsung’s very own 1GHz Cortex A8-based Hummingbird processor and featuring a four-inch Super-AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode)...
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Throughout the third and fourth quarters of '09, and right through the beginning of this year, we watched as AMD launched graphics card after graphics card, until their full product line of DX11 Radeon HD 5000 series parts filled virtually every possible market segment. More...
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Lenovo's IdeaPad Y560D is an interesting system that initially caught our eye thanks to its 3D-capable display. 3D films and TVs have been declared hot ticket capabilities by the film industry and TV manufacturers, but this is the first 3D-capable notebook we've had in house. The Y560D isn't...
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For a time, Intel’s X25 series of solid state drives stood head and shoulders above the rest of the SSD pack. But with the influx of new players along with the rapid pace of innovation in the SSD space, Intel’s aging offerings—while still very good—are no longer a cut...
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Hardware aficionados know there is more to performance computing than just buying the most expensive parts available and throwing them altogether in the same system. There's overclocking, case modding, cooling, and performance tuning to consider, among many other thigs. Of course, everyone has their opinions on these aspects of the hobby,...
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We never seem to tire of new SSD technologies. The storage subsystem has long been the primary bottleneck with respect to general computer system responsiveness. And as a result, the explosion of Solid State Drives in the market is indicative of the ground-breaking performance gains the average SSD offers over traditional hard...
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Nettops are not nearly as popular as their mobile contemporaries, i.e. netbooks, arguably due to the lack of any significant horsepower within the tiny machines. Up until now, most nettops have been good for little more than basic Office duties, Web surfing, and occasional 720p (max)...
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For PC gamers, the gear we use to play can provide a tangible edge in our games. Although much noise is made about backlit keyboards boasting gamer oriented layouts and fancy mice with odd shapes, the most important considerations for gaming are still the guts of the gaming machine, a comfortable desk layout, a good monitor and a quality...
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Prior to its launch, Mafia II was portrayed as a deep, character-driven drama that would take full advantage of PhysX to add depth and realism to the game. With the game out and available, we sat down to investigate how PhysX enhances Mafia II; our review of the game is on page three. The term...
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AMD is launching a half dozen new processors today, targeted at virtually all market segments, ranging from an inexpensive, mainstream dual-core Athlon II offering to a new, relatively high-end six-core Phenom II. The complete list of processors launching today, along with their respective...
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RIM's line of BlackBerry smartphones has been popular among business users for some time, but the brand has been losing market share in recent years to other platforms such as Android and iPhone. Now, the company is looking to turn things around with its new BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone and the new BlackBerry 6 operating system. RIM claims...
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It didn't take AMD long to respond to the release of NVIDIA's new line of Quadro workstation-class graphics cards. The new flagship FirePro V9800 we'll be showing you here is the latest ultra high end professional graphics card from AMD, and competes in the same space as the 6000 and 5000...
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Day two of the Intel Developer’s Forum was kicked off with a couple of keynote addresses from Renee James, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel and Doug Davis, the Vice President and General Manager of the Embedded and Communications...
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In typical fashion, Intel kicked off IDF 2010 with a couple of keynote addresses headlined by the company’s President and CEO, Paul Otellini, and GM of the Intel Architecture Group David “Dadi” Perlmutter. Topics of the keynote addresses included everything from Sandy Bridge...
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