Reviews
There were a multitude of products on display on the show floor at the Intel Developers Forum this year, most of which were designed for the enterprise space. In addition to the plethora of servers on display, however, were products from a number of manufactures that are well known to enthusiasts. We stopped by a few of their booths and...
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Midway through the first day at IDF, there was an interview held with Gordon Moore, the retired Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Intel Corporation, in which he spoke of the early years at the company and the many hurdles they faced in the beginning....
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This year’s Intel Developer Forum began with a brief overview of the event given by Pat Gelsinger, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group. Pat spoke briefly about this year being the 10th Anniversary of IDF and talked about the many speakers and partners that will contribute to the event....
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We're in the early stages of a major transition in the PC arena, much like in 2004 when Intel launched their first core logic chipset with support for DDR2 memory. This time around, however, Intel is pushing DDR3 memory with their current crop of desktop chipsets. When DDR2 memory first hit the scene, we recommended users to tread...
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The Ultra ChillTec Thermo-Electric CPU Cooler is a bit more than an oversized aftermarket cooler. This unit marries two technologies into a single package, teaming a heat-pipe type cooler with a peltier and an oversized fan to offer extreme cooling potential. To help facilitate its features properly, Ultra also integrates an external control module...
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A lot of attention is paid to framerates when discussing graphics hardware, and rightfully so. Some argue that they are an outdated method for assessing a video card's performance, but when assessing a potential purchase, buyers need some way to determine why one card is superior to the other. We can talk about how...
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It has been quite a while since AMD launched a truly new CPU core architecture. It was way back in September of 2003 that the first "K8" based desktop processors arrived in the form of the single-core Athlon 64 and Athlon 64-FX. And while the company has launched a slew of new desktop, server, and mobile processors since then, there haven’t...
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A short while after Dell purchased Alienware late last year, news broke that Hewlett Packard had acquired boutique system vendor Voodoo PC. Voodoo PC is best known for their high performance gaming PC's that feature custom cases, some with lavish paint jobs, unique cooling solutions, and impeccable wiring jobs. We evaluated a Voodoo Omen...
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Quick! Name that one piece of PC hardware that will automatically garner the most "oohs" and "aahs" from enthusiasts and casual-users alike. No, it's probably not the glow-in-the-dark water cooling system or bright LEDs shining from the multiple fans in your windowed case. The quickest path to glory is buying a brand new, flat, large, widescreen...
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Most of you probably already know that 2.5" notebook hard drives typically aren't as big or fast as hard drives found in desktop machines. In case you aren't aware, most laptops are sold with 5400RPM hard drives that range from 60GB to 100GB. In contrast, most desktops are currently sold with 7200RPM hard drives with capacities of up to 1TB....
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If you have ever been in the market for a graphics card, you are undoubtedly familiar with the constantly changing graphics card market. About every 8-10 months, new GPUs are introduced by NVIDIA and ATI, and after their introduction, dozens of graphics cards built by their add in board partners come to market. Because these add in board partners...
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End user demand for storage capacity is expanding exponentially year after year, as multimedia content, email, and document and file generation show explosive growth in this age of new media. In addition, protecting that data is becoming increasingly more critical, with investments in digital music and video collections, as well as those...
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It’s a fact that extremely large, high-wattage power supplies tend to get the most press online, as the vast majority of PSU manufacturers are caught up in the never-ending competition of trying to get the highest wattage products out there. While this competition has fostered innovation in this market, in addition to pushing down prices of...
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We first took a look at Intel's P35 Express chipset back in May, when it was released into the wild to supplant the still relatively youthful P965 and usher in the era of DDR3 memory and 1333MHz FSB Intel processors. The P965 is a tough act to follow. Despite its intended mid-range market placement, Intel didn't hamper the P965 in any way...
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Data. Can't live with it, can't live without it. We're sure you can all understand why we can't live without it, but you may be curious why we say we can't live with it. The problem with data is not the data itself but rather the users of that data. More accurately, we should say that the real problem (or challenge or opportunity, depending...
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If you're a PC hardware enthusiast - and chances are pretty good that you are if you're reading HotHardware - Asus is a company that needs no introduction. Asus' track record for building quality products targeted squarely at power users is well known and documented, so we'll forego the history lesson here and get right to the point....
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This past weekend marked the twelfth anniversary of a gaming event started by a group of die hard Quake players in suburban Dallas, Texas. Evolving and growing rapidly since its grass roots founding, Quakecon has become the largest LAN gaming event in the United States, with over 3000 gamers attending, some from places as far as Japan, Iraq,...
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When you think of GIGABYTE, you may envision only a manufacturer of motherboards and video cards, but there is a lot more to this Taiwan based company than initially meets the eye. GIGABYTE also markets Network Servers, Notebook PCs, a broad array of peripherals and their Thermal Solutions line which covers PSUs, air and water cooling kits,...
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For several months, the battle for the biggest consumer hard drive was only fought by Hitachi and Seagate. First, only Seagate was in it with its 750GB hard drive using perpendicular recording technology. Then, Hitachi decided to skip 750GB and go straight to 1,000GB (1TB). Seagate has announced its 1TB hard drive, but we have yet to get one...
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Back in February of this year, we took a look at the AMD 690 series chipset and praised it for its affordability, power efficiency, and strong performance relative to its competition. Since then, the 690 series chipset has gone on to be somewhat of a success for AMD with over 35 different motherboards based on various flavors the chipset...
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DDR3; it's the future of desktop system memory, plain and simple. However, it's far from becoming the mainstream standard. As it stands now, there is little benefit to DDR3 as high costs and latency makes DDR3 a less attractive option in its current state. It's a familiar story. If you recall, back when DDR2 was in its infancy, the same...
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As hardware enthusiasts, our enthusiasm for the latest and greatest PC gear often surpasses our bank account's ability to fund another upgrade. That's when we fall back on the always practical approach to maximizing our bang for the buck. Thankfully, this usually doesn't equate to buying products we're too ashamed to...
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