Reviews
Intel has spent millions making their "Core" brand synonymous with high performance processing. In these days of the Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and Core 2 Extreme, it’s pretty easy to find a Core microarchitecture-based processor to match nearly any possible price point. The performance levels of the Core 2 product lineup have been...
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Heat as you all know is one of the main enemies of the PC and its many components. Just visit any PC Hardware-related site out there today and you will find whole sections devoted to heatsinks, coolers, etc., the sole goal of which is to cool down the ever growing number of heat producing components in a typical PC. Motherboard manufacturers...
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The premium graphics card market is in a lopsided state. NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 series is still relatively unchallenged in the high-end space, a position which has been futher solidified with the addition of the 8800 Ultra. By giving the GeForce 8800GTX a nominal speed bump, NVIDIA continues to maintain its lead. ATI, on the otherhand, is...
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Motherboard chipset technology isn't refreshed at the same fevered pitch that processors, memory or IO products are. A CPU or GPU speed-bump is like low-lying fruit relatively speaking, but chipset enhancements can usher in a whole host of stability, interoperability and verification challenges. Let's face it, when...
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At the end of February '07, AMD released their first new chipset since the AMD/ATI merger. The goal with the new 690G/V series was to bring improved integrated graphics to the market, with better performance and broader compatibility. Initial impressions were generally positive; with an integrated Radeon XPress 1250, support for two monitors...
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While they are still not known as a tier 1 player in the motherboard market, on par with the likes of MSI, Asus, or Gigabyte, DFI is a still a highly regarded name in many circles. DFI is one of the few companies in the market which are genuinely in tune with what overclockers and enthusiasts are interested in. Their LANParty series in particular...
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Take a look at the red-head standing over there. If you're a regular reader here at HotHardware, you know exactly who she is. That's ATI's adventurous and oh-so-curvaceous front-woman, Ruby. And she's holding that 'Perfect 10' sign for a very good reason. It's probably not the reason you're thinking of, however. For a digital personality,...
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If you want high-performance PC gaming action in a portable package, a laptop equipped with a GeForce Go 7 series chip has been your best bet for the last year or so. From the modest GeForce Go 7600 to the monstrous GeForce Go 7950 GTX, NVIDIA has most mobile gaming needs covered. If you were really serious, you could...
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It's springtime here in the United States. The rain is pouring, the trees and flowers are blooming, and as usual NVIDIA is ready with a new product to refresh their existing high-end GPU line up. A few weeks ago we showed you the new mid-range GeForce 8600 GTS, GT and 8500 GT cards, which expanded NVIDIA's DirectX 10-compatible offerings...
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USB flash drives are a dime a dozen these days, right? Well, they are a little more expensive than that, but how cool is it that you can get 1GB of storage capacity that's smaller than a pack of gum for like $20-30? Pretty soon you'll see these great little gadgets in vending machines for a dollar, especially considering that everybody and...
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Nvidia based motherboards and SLI technology typically go hand in hand. In the past, SLI technology was only featured on high-end Nvidia platforms, although throughout the years Nvidia has moved this technology down to lower and lower price points. In years past, one would only purchase an SLI enabled motherboard if they had a specific need...
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When you work with computer hardware virtually everyday for years on end, it's easy to become desensitized as to how much technology really has changed. Take my history here at Hothardware.com as an example. It was October of 2000 when I submitted my first article and since that day, my artilce tally has reach triple digit status. Back...
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Graphics processors are, and have always been, extremely parallel in nature. This sentiment has been expressed time and time again by various GPU architects from all of the major graphics chip designers. If you want additional performance, in the vast majority of cases, you can gain it by adding on more rendering pipelines or a second (identical)...
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A little over a year ago at the Intel Developers forum in San Francisco, Intel allowed a small group of members of the technology press to run benchmarks on a pre-configured Conroe-based system, well before processors based on the Conroe core had begun to ship. This was a new strategy for Intel, but a welcomed one in our opinion as it gave...
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Today's announcement by NVIDIA should come as no surprise to PC enthusiasts. The company's modus operandi has been to launch a new flagship GPU and over the course of the next year or so scale back the design to flesh out a complete top-to-bottom line-up of products, all with essentially the same feature set. We saw this...
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It's probably safe to assert that, by and large, DIY Small Form Factor PCs are still niche products. Although they have been offered by the likes of Shuttle, AOpen, MSI and many others for nearly half a decade now, there's still an audible gasp that's heard from non PC-centric folks when then first encounter one. Questions range from, "What...
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Hot on the heals of the holiday weekend, Intel is launching a new flagship quad-core processor targeted at hardcore power users and PC enthusiasts. As its name implies, the new Core 2 Extreme QX6800 has frequency parity with its dual-core counterpart, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 - sans the "Q". At 2.93GHz this makes the Core 2 Extreme QX6800...
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A few weeks ago, NVIDIA unleashed the relatively affordable 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS on the world. On launch day, we took a look at a pre-overclocked 320MB card from XFX and ended up giving it an Editor's Choice award due to its feature set, performance, and overall value. Today, we're going to shine the spotlight on another retail-ready...
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In early November of last year, NVIDIA unveiled their successor to the nForce 5, the nForce 600 series. The starting line-up included three solutions supporting Intel's Core 2 processor, each aimed at a different segment of the market and each with a different price point. The most expensive chipset in the series, the...
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Late last year, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce 8800 GTX. Armed with a totally new unified architecture and complete DX10 support, this graphics card was an extremely potent new flagship. The world was hesitant to proclaim this new GPU as the ideal enthusiast graphics card as ATI's highly-anticipated R600 GPU was expected at any...
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If you are a regular here at HotHardware.com, you have most likely heard of Alienware, one of the companies that helped establish the market for high-performance, gaming PCs. Since hitting the scene in 1996, Alienware has become a leader not only in gaming PCs but also in high-performance desktop, notebook, media center, and professional...
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Intel held a briefing today to further disclose and discuss details regarding their upcoming 45nm High-K Penryn and Nehalem processor cores. Roughly two years ago, Intel talked about their proposed "tick-tock" product strategy which entailed the shift to a new process technology followed by an enhanced or entirely new...
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