Reviews
At this point in time, it's probably safe to assume that the majority wireless network users are outfitted with some type of 54Mbps solution. First introduced in 2003, 802.11g has proven its worth as a solid wireless technology for both home and business users alike. However, as technology advances and the demands for more bandwidth and...
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It’s been almost one year since Intel launched the 965 series of chipsets, which were originally designed to be packaged with Intel’s Core 2 Duo series of processors. While the 965 series didn't perform quite as well as Intel’s flagship 975x chipset in some cases, most notable in multi-GPU configurations, it made a name for itself due to its...
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AMD hosted a small gathering in the Penthouse at the SoHo Grand Hotel in New York City yesterday (yes, the same place that Lindsey Lohan had her meltdown a few weeks ago), to showcase some of their existing products and technologies, to show off a few products built by their partners, and to demo some products due to be released in the coming...
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What goes faster than a Core 2 Quad processor at 3GHz? Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, nothing from AMD at the moment. Thankfully Intel has a few more "MHz in the can", or so to speak. Actually, it appears they may have a lot more, as you'll see in the pages that follow. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves...
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Gigabyte has almost always been a well respected brand amongst PC enthusiasts, but it seems the company has come on very strong in the last year or so. Gigabyte has released a number of highly praised motherboards is recent months, like the GA-P35T-DQ6 and GA-965P-DQ6 2.0 that were all lauded for their feature sets, performance, and overclockability....
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Although TV tuners have been in the desktop PC space for more than a decade, only in the last couple of years have they started to become integrated and widely used in notebook computers. OEMs started to recognize that many consumers simply didn’t want large desktop systems. But at the same time they wanted the multimedia features offered...
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Over the last few years, a relatively simple PC technology, the TV tuner, has helped to transform the way that millions of people use their personal computers. TV tuners - in conjunction with smaller form factors - have helped to create a new category of PC, the HTPC, that blends the audio and video capabilities of your television with the...
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When we first took a look at the GeForce 8800 Ultra, back in May, we were left with some mixed feelings. On one hand it was, and still is, the undisputed graphics champ. On the other hand, it didn't introduce any new features and it wasn't a whole lot faster than its significantly cheaper sibling, and former graphics champ, the 8800 GTX. The...
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When it comes time for a new rig, there are those who want the power of a full-sized system but without the footprint of a mid or full sized case. Today, we're going to take a look at a barebones kit that promises full-sized performance in a footprint no bigger than a shoebox. Enter the Shuttle SDXi Barebones Kit. The SDXi Barebone...
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About six weeks ago, after an extended development cycle, AMD launched their latest flagship ATI-GPU based graphics card, the Radeon HD 2900 XT. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is built around the company's unified, DirectX 10-class, R600 GPU and offers a number of key features over an above the older X1000 series of products, like new anti-aliasing...
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Over the last year or so, since Intel's Core microarchitecture and Conroe core were ready to be unveiled at the Intel Developers Forum in early March '06, Intel has been more open and has allowed the media a view into more details regarding upcoming products much earlier than they had before. You don't have to take our word for it, however....
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Over the last few years, Thermaltake has had an increasingly greater presence at Computex. The company has used Computex as a launch pad for a number of new products, and this year’s show was no exception. New coolers, cases, power supplies, and even a few gadgets were on display at Thermaltake’s booth....
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For the last several months, DDR2 memory development has been largly stagnent. The fastest DDR2 memory kits from last summer were, for the most part, still the fastest DDR2 memory kits this spring. We haven't seen any truly significant developments in DDR2 since Micron stepped up to the plate with their D9 chips. Although manufacturers...
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One of the more interesting items MSI had to show at Computex wasn’t even on the show floor. MSI had a back room showing of a new technology product they are calling Luxium. The idea behind Luxium is pretty simple, it is essentially an enclosure that houses an external PCI Express x16 slot and is connected to your PC through an external PCI...
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It was at this year's Consumer Electronics Show that we were first exposed to an Intel demo machine dubbed the ' V8' . Intel wouldn't label the machine as a direct response to the QuadFX platform by AMD, but they did want to stress the point that enthusiasts could have a dual-socket, eight-core...
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One of the biggest news stories out of this year’s Computex wasn't of a new chipset, GPU, or graphics card, but rather of the announcement of the ASUS Eee PC, a small, slim, and light portable computer that is priced at $199. Introduced by Jonney Shih, Chariman and CEO of ASUS at Intel’s keynote address the first day of the show, the Eee PC...
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Just around this time three years ago, Intel launched their 925X and 915 motherboard platforms, bringing to market a new microprocessor socket, support for DDR2 memory, and support for PCI Express. Although the chipsets were decent performers and had good features, Intel was criticized for forcing the adoption of these new technologies when...
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While inspecting Hall 2 today, we saw Gigabyte’s cartoon mascot and decided to take another walk through their booth, this time focusing on their new, non-motherboard products. We immediately noticed that Gigabyte was showing off some new processor heatsink fan designs. Most interesting...
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Although they're hard at work on Barcelona and plan to release a new high-end, native quad-core CPU in the coming months, AMD has turned a good part of their attention to a different segment of the market, the low power segment. Back in August of 2006, AMD released several low power CPUs that aimed to balance performance and power consumption....
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Last night in our Pre-Computex coverage, we saw that ASUS had some interesting looking displays set up at the front of their booth, but they were covered up and we weren’t able to take a close look at what was underneath. Today, we were able to dig a little deeper into ASUS' booth, however, and hiding in one display...
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Yesterday we ran through the Taipei convention center to see how construction of the booths for this year’s Computex trade show were progressing. When we walked by Shuttle’s booth in hall 2 of the convention center, we saw pictures of three un-announced barebone small form factor systems, the X38 based SX38P3 Deluxe, the G33 based SG33P3,...
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There's something to be said for Intel's chipset release practices. Typically, each major revision has consisted of multiple versions: a powerful, enthusiast high-end chipset, and then a number of slimmed down versions. Note, we say "slimmed down" instead of "stripped down", as much of the architecture and feature set remains untouched....
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