Reviews
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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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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