Reviews
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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Nvidia had been somewhat slow getting out of the gate with their initial Intel Core 2 compatible chipsets. Their first nForce 4 and nForce 5 series products for the Core 2 weren't very well received by enthusiasts, who mostly opted for more stable and less power hungry Intel based chipsets, unless Nvidia's SLI technology...
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When going to a party, it's customary to not show up empty handed. Depending on the type of party, a cake, pastries, a bottle of wine or maybe even your favorite beer are all acceptable items to bring as a gesture to the host, thanking them for the invitation. When it comes to a LAN party, however, the term 'customary'...
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In PC enthusiast circles, Corsair is a name that needs no introduction. For years, the company has consistently produced some of the most sought after, high speed memory modules available at the time. Their XMS line of DDR memory was incredibly popular when it was initially released, as were the company's Pro and Xpert modules. Today...
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For almost as long as there have been PC enthusiasts, it seems that Asus has been there catering to them with feature laden, high-performance products. Nowhere is it more apparent that Asus caters to enthusiasts than with their motherboards. Yes, some of their notebooks and graphics cards are cutting edge as well, but the company has...
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Today at HotHardware, we will be looking at two video cards from Asus. They don't necessarily scream "power user" and they aren't adorned with the flashiest packaging. Instead, these two cards are more like the utilitarian work-horses that one might expect to find in a mid-range PC, or even a DYI build that's...
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Without question, the process of choosing a standard, pre-built PC or building one yourself has become almost trivial over the last few years. Given the caliber of hardware on the market, even with just a little bit of knowledge, it is difficult to purchase a system today which would not be suitable for nearly any standard application....
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For reasons unknown, a good portion of the enthusiast market still thinks that memory cooling is a fruitless effort. Many high-end users still believe that memory chips run plenty cool, and that putting heat spreaders and heatsinks on them is a superficial effort at best, and that they don't provide any major benefits. The fact that nearly...
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There is a common occurrence in the graphics industry that happens near the launch of any major new architecture. Before a company introduces a major change in their GPU designs, they will take their existing GPU designs and offer them at a wide variety of different speeds and price points, sometimes surprisingly low priced, in order to clear...
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With no major processor architecture updates in the immediate future and their DX10-capable graphics solutions still a few months away, the new AMD seems to be slowly picking up slack as we roll through the first two thirds of Q1 '07. Today, AMD is officially introducing their first new chipset since the ATI acquisition,...
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For the average business-class user, extra RAM, a faster processor or a more powerful video card won't necessarily increase work efficiency or productivity. One of the best ways to boost your productivity is to add more inches, of screen real estate that is. If you simply add another monitor or get a bigger one, you can quickly realize...
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Last year, we had the pleasure of taking a look at Dell's flagship Inspiron XPS M1710 notebook. Taking into account the top-notch components, excellent build quality, and best-of-class performance, we awarded the system our coveted Editor's Choice award. Dell has since returned to market with a minor refresh of the...
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AMD has been fairly quiet as of late. A few months ago, we took a look at their initial Quad-FX platform and FX-70 series offerings. However, on the mainstream socket AM2 front, AMD hasn't made any real noise since the release of the Athlon 64 FX-62 way back in May of 2006. That's not to say AMD hasn't released any products...
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Last summer, Dell agreed to purchase Alienware in a controversial merger of two very different companies. Alienware, who was looking to raise capital to fund its world-wide expansion, found a good partner in Dell when it came to realize that it would be able to meet its demands while simultaneously benefiting from...
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A thousand watts, a kilowatt. A kilowatt or a thousand watts. We can't decide which term sounds larger when spoken aloud. In any case, when said aloud, both terms are conversation starters when in discussion about PC power supplies. In this day and age where energy efficiency is something which many gravitate toward, anything with such...
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