Reviews
Gaming enthusiasts can certainly remember a time when the thought of fragging on a Dell system was somewhat comical. Granted, Dell built systems were solid and reliable and often came at an exceptionally good price. However, these systems lacked the aesthetics, upgradeability, and high-end hardware the gaming community craves. As...
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The fastest single graphics card in the world. This is the goal that NVIDIA was shooting for when they conjured up the GeForce 7950 GX2. Some might argue that a GeForce 7950 GX2, however, with its double stacked dual GPU powered PCB design, is anything but a single graphics card. We'd remind you that it does drop into...
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In terms of sheer numbers, Sony is not considered one of the major notebook players in North America. Though, they do remain a staple of what most people consider quality built notebooks worldwide, despite their competitively lower sale figures. Most VAIO machines through the years have been built surprisingly well and more to the point, have...
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As power users, we'd all love to own one, or perhaps even two, of today's latest and greatest graphics cards. But wanting to own the best and having the means to do so are two totally different things. Lucky for us, there are usually a multitude of products that fall in just behind the top-of-the-line that tend to offer similar...
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While many of us are impressed with the features and performance promised by today's top of the line graphics cards, in reality, not too many of us have the budgets to afford one of these gaming powerhouses. Often times, the common user needs to keep things in monetary perspective and consider a more practical approach to...
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Now that the dual-GPU GeForce 7950 GX2 has hit the streets, the GeForce 7900 GTX is no longer NVIDIA's flagship desktop graphics adapter. But that doesn't mean it should all of a sudden be disregarded and brushed aside as an afterthought for a high-end gaming rig. In fact, the 7900 GTX may even become a more attractive option for some...
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Seagate recently released its new Barracuda 7200.10 storage line, and with that, the company introduced the largest hard drive on the market at 750GB. While that is impressive in itself, there is more to the story. Along with bringing a new line and the highest capacity drive to the market, Seagate is also the first company to bring 3.5"...
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Earlier this month we gave you a taste of what AMD has to offer in their next generation AM2 platform launch for the Athlon 64. While AMD's new DDR2-based platform seems to offer smallish incremental performance gains, and increased memory bandwidth, it is widely agreed that it is high-time that Intel responds to AMD's consistent...
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It's a shame, really. After nearly one year on the market, Socket-939 Athlon64 motherboards are finally getting to a point where we've always wished they would be. Feature packed, refined, tweakable, and quiet. Why is this a shame? Well, as AMD is transitioning to their new Socket-AM2 interface, interest in Socket-939 platforms...
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In January of this year, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NVIDIA and Dell jointly unveiled an ultra high-end gaming system equipped with a pair of specialized graphics adapters that were each powered by a pair of GeForce 7800 GTX GPUs and 1GB of memory. The final configuration consisted of two "cards", four GPUs, and...
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With the advent of NVIDIA's SLI technology in 2004, gaming performance on the desktop was dramatically increased which allowed users to run games at higher resolutions with more image quality enhancements. Unfortunately for mobile users, the notebook platform was left behind with no immediate solution made available beyond...
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With the advent of Windows XP Media Center Edition, a whole new playing field was created to help advance the relationship between multimedia and the PC. Designed solely for use in OEM systems at first, Windows XP Media Center Edition helped open the door for OEMs to create PCs with an increased emphasis on all things multimedia. ...
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Market share is the name of the game in the Computing industry and AMD has been slowly chipping away at Intel's market share over the past few years, with the release of faster Desktop processor cores with significantly better performance per watt, clock-cycle and dollar. AMD's performance advantage also...
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"I wish we could open our eyes to see in all directions at the same time. Oh, what a beautiful view . . ." - Death Cab For Cutie Welcome Some "Special" folks at E3... Gears of War Mural Classic Gaming in Kentia Hall More Classic Gaming... And Zaxxon - Such Memories! Hello & Goodbye - The Final Day At E3, Day Three There's...
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Trends in PC hardware usually come about for a good reason. As processor and memory speeds continued to rise, many manufacturers responded by producing more elaborate air cooling apparatuses. Some of them worked well, while others offered almost no improvement at all. In either case, lowering temperatures in this...
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As ECS continues to gain respect and attention in the enthusiast motherboard market, the company is of course extending its reach into the segment it is best known for - the budget segment. While high-end and enthusiast-level boards often cost $150 or more, budget and entry-level motherboards can usually be had for $70-90. Entry-level doesn't...
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"To game is to live." - Anonymous Gamer The Day After Yesterday - Welcome To E3, Day Two The majority of yesterday was spent in the West Hall, which consists primarily of console games with the Sony and Nintendo booths overshadowing everything else in the hall. I tend not to spend as much time in this area, but thought that you might...
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"You'd do better in a volcano with a nitroglycerine towel." That's a quote from our E3 shuttle bus driver sans non-family friendly commentary. Welcome To E3 Here I am back for my 10th E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) - unfortunately, I missed out on the very first one in 1995. Hopefully, never again. E3 is many things to...
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When we look at the Small Form Factor platform's relative size and shape, it is easy to see why these systems are becoming extremely popular as dedicated living room or home theater PC's. With the gradual adoption of Media Center PC's in the home, Shuttle is now trying harder than ever to ensure that those systems are small...
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Though DDR2 has been out for sometime, and both AMD and Intel have platforms supporting DDR2, there are still a large number of people who still require DDR ram to power their computers. While many users don't care what type of ram is inside their computers, there are many who no only care about the brand of ram they use,...
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Without question, one of the hottest topics throughout the industry this year has been the advent of the discrete physics processor or "PPU" (Physics Processing Unit). Developed by a new startup company called Ageia, this new physics processor gives game developers the opportunity to create entirely new game-play characteristics...
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Right from its inception, ATI knew they had to build a solid platform if their CrossFire multi-GPU technology was to gain mass acceptance. NVIDIA already had the very popular nForce 4 SLI chipset in their repertoire, but ATI didn't have a direct competitor that also offered a pair PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slots. ...
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