Reviews
It almost goes without saying that we'd all love to have enough disposable income to be able to afford the best-of-the-best, top-shelf, ultra-high-end, no compromise products, whether it be a 36 foot Chris Craft Corsair with 840hp of Mercruiser under its decks (in the aft section, by the way, the wet bar and mini fridge are in the...
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Asus has been more cautious compared to most motherboard makers when it comes to using Intel's mobile processors in a desktop environment. In late 2004, when the first Pentium-M desktop motherboards started hitting the market, Asus took a back seat and did not put out a product for this rapidly expanding market, whereas smaller motherboard...
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Intel's current line-up of desktop processors based on the company's aging Netburst micro-architecture may not have the allure it once did with power users, thanks in no small part to fierce competition from arch-rival AMD, but their core logic chipsets have always been held in high regard. Intel puts an...
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DDR2 memory technology has been pushing the envelope in terms of memory clock speeds and tighter latencies as of late. Many enthusiasts were pleased when clock speeds hit the 800MHz mark last year, but Super Talent has eclipsed this mark with its 1GHz 2GB kit we'll be looking at today, the T1000UX2G5. This overclocked, high performance...
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There are only a select few PC enthusiasts who like to show off their hardware more than gamers do. With all the questing, spying, and fragging going on, they still find the time to appreciate the machine that grants them such pleasure. As you know though, these days, any old box just won't do. No; something a little flashier than...
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For the last year, Abit's biggest challenge has been conquering itself. Struggling with a combination of internal financial woes, corporate investigations, and a generally un-exciting product lineup, there is no doubt that the once mighty Abit has sagged as of late. Once considered a tier one motherboard maker with a keen ear to the needs...
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**Update: Sapphire re-branded this product the Toxic Radon X1900 XTX after our review was published. Sapphire has been one of ATI's premier board partners for quite some time now. Their products tend to be very similar to those available directly from ATI themselves, but Sapphire does take additional steps to differentiate their offerings...
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Silent computing and overclocking are two topics that tend to be mutually exclusive. Typically, when you overclock something, like a graphics card for example, it needs more cooling, which in turn means higher fan speeds and more noise. Luckily though, there are some companies that disregard these notions and give us both lower...
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As one of the pioneers of the gaming notebook, it comes as no surprise to see Alienware coming to the table with yet another innovation. In 2002, the original Area-51m represented the world's first gaming-specific notebook. In typical Alienware fashion, the notebook carried a pricetag that was equally as breathtaking as its performance....
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When LCD screens were first introduced they were plagued by many problems, but they also had some advantages over CRT monitors. LCD's were lighter, thinner, and used less power. And so they caught on and the technology incrementally improved. Early generations were limited to lower resolutions, tight viewing angles, really slow response...
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Although performance has been greatly enhanced over the last few years through the use of faster spindle speeds, larger caches, and newer interfaces, hard drives still tend to be a bottleneck in a typical PC. Mechanical devices, by their very nature, require time to seek the data requested, read it, and then transfer that information back...
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This weekend Intel sponsored an event for the Global Gaming League, the TransAtlantic Showdown, that pitted some of the best gamers from North America against rivals from across the Atlantic. The TransAltantic Showdown was more than just a gaming tournament though. There were a couple of interesting twists that made the TransAtlantic Showdown...
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About three months ago, we took a look at the Pentium Extreme Edition 955, which was Intel's first Extreme Edition processor built using the company's then brand-new 65nm manufacturing process. Each of the 955XE chip's two cores hummed along at a lofty 3.46GHz, and we found its performance to be quite good when compared to Intel's previous...
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In 2002, AGEIA's founders broke into the gaming industry with the intention of revolutionizing the way PC games would be played. Focusing their attention on the notion of in-game physics, the ultimate goal was to bring a new level of realism to the latest and greatest titles on the horizon. In short, the company has developed the world's first...
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When most home and workstation users think of NAS (Network Attached Storage), they think of big, bulky rackmount servers packed to the brim with terabytes of hard drive space (and terabyte-style price tags to match). NAS became a buzzword in the late 90's, during the dot-com explosion, where the product was targeted at companies who were just...
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For the better part of the last decade, there has only been two major players in the discreet graphics field, and as one of those players, nVidia needs no introduction. The GPU manufacturer has stayed at or near the forefront of technological advances through the years. Although there has been a misstep or two along the way, you generally...
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Fresh from the show floor of Intel's March 2006 Developer's Conference, and after spending some time behind closed doors with Intel, we have a sneak peek at Conroe performance for you today. The following is a run down of benchmark numbers we recorded with hands-on testing of an early 2.66GHz Conroe-based dual-core system, versus...
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Product refreshes in the Graphics world have tended to become rather casual, commonplace occurrences. A little tweak here, a clock speed bump there and presto, there's a new SKU to fill the store shelves and something new to look at in the benchmarks. Historically, refreshes or "kickers" as they...
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Just a few short years ago, the graphics card industry was largely driven strictly by the innovations and technological developments made at the flagship GPU level. For the majority of users who cannot either afford or justify the cost of a top of the line graphics card, the industry was painfully boring, as the latest and greatest features...
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ATI's All-In-Wonder series has been popular with the multimedia enthusiast for quite some time now, delivering all the features of a TV Tuner, along with the performance of a dedicated graphics card. ATI has recently released their X1900 AIW series, which is a perfect card to get if you're a gamer and have the cash to spend. But what about...
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ATI has been coming on very strong these past few months, bolstering their GPU line-up with a slew of new products, ranging from the entry level Radeon X1300 all the way on up to the flagship Radeon X1900 XTX. The company's well documented execution problems from 2005 are behind them, and they seem to be firing on all...
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Over the course of the last few years, the PC industry has witnessed a major transition away from the world of traditional CRT monitors, towards products based on LCD displays. With the inception of LCD's, there was no denying the handful of advantages LCD's had over their CRT counterparts. Less eye-strain, significantly thinner depth and...
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