Reviews
There is a current trend in PC hardware to have two of everything. Whether it's two (or more) drives in a RAID configuration, dual-core CPUs, dual-channel memory, or adding an additional video card to increase frame rates; it's apparent that doubling-up is here to stay. Up until recently, running two video cards simultaneously...
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As usual, the Las Vegas convention center, and a handful of the nearby ritzy hotels and restaurants, were overflowing with gear being showcased at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. There are a couple of other major electronics and technology-related trade shows that take place all around the world, like CeBIT...
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Intel's launch of their next generation Pentium Extreme Edition 955 dual-core processor last month, marked a solid improvement in overall performance for what is to be the last core iteration utilizing the Pentium 4 Netburst architecture. While this Intel dual-core kicker...
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Intel has been relatively quiet over the last eight months or so, since the initial release of the dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor back in early April of this year. The company has released an entire line of dual-core...
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No question about it, Flash Memory devices have taken on the Consumer Tech industry by storm. Flash memory is utilized in so many different applications these days, from Cell Phones and PDAs, to MP3 players and Digital Cameras, that it's hard to imagine a world before the Flash...
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With the holidays looming around the corner, and a bit of money burning a hole in your pocket, we here at HotHardware.com thought we'd do what we could to ensure that you spent your hard-earned cash in the most appropriate manner. Before we begin, it makes sense to outline our approach and...
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The onslaught of ATI announcements this quarter continues today, with the official unveiling of the Radeon X1800 XT Master Edition graphics card -- the "missing link" necessary to run a pair of X1800 cards in a dual-GPU CrossFire configuration. From the end of September '05 through to today, ATI has announced and released a top-to-bottom...
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Abit has earned a reputation over the years, as a builder of top-quality motherboards geared for high-performance enthusiasts and extreme overclockers. They've produced some exceedingly popular products in the past, like the legendary BX6 and long-time favorite the TH7-II RAID, and the company continues to innovate today. In our tenure here...
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When NVIDIA first resurrected the term "SLI" from the technology archives, it was welcomed back with open arms. Although the exact definition has changed from it's 3Dfx roots, it boils down to two graphics cards working on the same job. The obvious benefit is that two cards should be...
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ATI has been on tear the past few months, releasing a number of new and interesting products. Since late September / early October of this year, we've been presented with Radeon X850 CrossFire and requisite CrossFire capable dual-PEG slot motherboards to go along with it, a whole series of products based on the new X1K family of GPUs, and...
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For the last few years, there has been an undeniable trend towards packing all the functionality and performance of a full-fledged desktop system into a smaller form factor. As one of the chief pioneers of this new form factor, Shuttle enjoyed having dominant market share as they were one of the only true contenders in the SFF category. Fortunately...
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Although they were once a dominant market leader, S3 is now a company that almost exclusively focuses on the budget / business-class graphics market. For years, S3 has been marketing budget / business-class video cards, managing to offer competitive solutions in a segment that is dominated by "the big boys" - ATI and NVIDIA. ...
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An unfortunate side effect of many of today's high-performing PC peripherals is significant heat output. The need to tame this heat has led to bigger, and unfortunately, louder cooling solutions, which is something we at HotHardware are very familiar with. With the number of fans we have in some of our test systems, you'd think we were trying...
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The big headlines in today's video card related articles almost always come down to seeing double; whether it's two NVIDIA GeForce cards connected in SLI or two ATi Radeons running in CrossFire mode. Perhaps it's justified in that people always want to see higher framerates and increased performance, regardless of the cost. ...
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With the adoption of PCI Express as a next-gen I/O technology, all of the major chipset manufacturers worked hard to bring compatible chipsets to market. Naturally, Intel was first on the scene with the 900 series chipsets. But on the AMD side, VIA was first to market with its K8T890 Chipset. Building on the successes of...
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It has only been about six weeks since ATI officially unveiled their new Radeon X1K family of products, but the Canadian based graphics giant is already introducing a new addition to the line-up today. It probably comes as no surprise to many of you that, in parrallel with their X1K family of products launch, engineers at ATI were also hard...
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If we took a moment to reflect on some of the biggest technological advancements in recent history, SLI has to be on the short list. Thanks in part to the increased bandwidth of PCI Express, NVIDIA paved the way for running two matching PCI Express based video cards concurrently, resulting in what we know today as SLI. As with...
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End user demand for increased hard drive capacity is waning somewhat, now that we can store over 200,000 typical digital photos, or 60,000 music files, for less than a $100 street price. Sixty thousand music files could play for almost six months without repeating and you'd have to stay...
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The launch of ATI's Radeon X1K family of graphics cards last month served multiple purposes. First, it allowed ATI to showcase their next-generation graphics hardware, well before the start of the holiday buying season. Something ATI needed to do after suffering from multiple delays. But it...
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Unlike a traditional desktop, a notebook is a very specialized system which typically excels in one particular area. However, there are usually design constraints that impede the system's performance in other areas. For example, at one extreme we have the ultraportable notebooks that are extremely light and easy to handle. In exchange for...
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Around this time last month, ATI made a lot of noise with the launch of their new X1000 series of graphics cards. With much of the buzz still continuing a month later, it's little surprise that NVIDIA is feeling the need to showcase something new. With their 7800 boards covering the enthusiast market, and the new 6800 GS tackling the mainstream,...
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The mainstream video card market is about to get a shot in the arm courtesy of the folks at NVIDIA. Today the company is officially unveiling a new addition to their popular GeForce 6 Series of products, the GeForce 6800 GS. The GeForce 6800 GS is a new 12-pipeline, mainstream product, that promises relatively high-performance at a much more...
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