Reviews
Asus made an interesting statement earlier in the year with their S5N notebook. Its flair wasn't necessarily original, but it was, and still remains, one of the smaller ultra-portable designs available. And it's for this reason, that the S5N remains one of the ultra-portable notebooks in our own personal notebook arsenal. So, needless to say,...
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Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the performance aspect of computing, that we don't pay enough attention to the other important details. Yes, we all want a powerful CPU, graphics card and an ample supply of memory, all tied together with a quality motherboard. But the enclosure you choose to house all of your components is an...
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Today we're going to take a look at three enthusiast class motherboards based on the NVIDIA nForce 4 Ultra chipset, the Abit Fatal1ty AN8, the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum, and the ECS KN1 Extreme. All three of these motherboards take the core features inherent to the NVIDIA nForce 4 Ultra,...
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It has taken quite sometime for ultra-portables to be fully accepted by the notebook community. This really has more to do with their price tags, than any specific design or aesthetic issue. Considering that ultra-portables are usually more expensive than traditional notebooks, it isn't hard to see why most people would choose the cheaper...
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With the Dual-Core processor push in full effect, prospective upgraders now have a whole new line of products to consider before making a purchase. From the Intel side you have the Intel Pentium D series, which offers two non-HyperThreaded cores in a single package and the Pentium Extreme Edition with its dual-HyperThreaded cores. ...
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By now you've all probably heard about PCI Express and why it's rapidly replacing the aging AGP slot; there is no need to beat a dead horse. Nonetheless, the AGP market is still going strong with plenty of potential buyers out there who don't want to replace their motherboard just yet to accommodate a PCI Express graphics card. We can...
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AMD's Athlon 64 X2 series Dual Core launch back in May, along with Intel's Pentium 840 launch in April, underscored an industry-wide move toward a completely new Desktop Processor architecture, one that affects virtually all facets of Personal Computing from code-base, applications and software, to the platforms and technology that support...
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Back in April of last year, NVIDIA released the GeForce 6800 Ultra and began to rebuild a reputation that had been tarnished by a couple of products that didn't quite live up to the expectations of many hard-core gamers. The GeForce 6800 Ultra, unlike the GeForce FX line of products that came before it, had more features than competing high-end...
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The ability to manipulate and access various types of video and audio media has become a big part of the computer life-style. What used to be reserved for those with money to spend on expensive devices and powerful computers, is now available to just about anyone with a PCI slot. Thanks to the interest in these kinds of devices, the market...
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When Intel released their previous line of chipsets, namely the i915 and 925X, they got a luke warm reception at best. Performance gains over of the 865/875 platform were minimal, and there weren't many upgrade options available at the time of launch. On top of that, users were faced with the unenviable task of purchasing a new CPU,...
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Over the past year, it has been interesting to see the emphasis that the big names are willing to put on the "enthusiast" crowd, in regards to notebooks. In the past, notebooks have been targeted towards businessmen and the like. These days, however, the variety is so wide that there is a notebook targeted to just about every niche...
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Today, we're going to take a look at the Sapphire Radeon X850 Pro PCI Express Graphics Card. The X850 Pro follows ATI's reference design closely, sporting 12-Pixel Pipelines and 256MB of GDDR3 memory. Based on the R480, the X850 Pro offers several advantages over the R423, the core driving the X800 series. Like the R423,...
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Over the past few months, the ATI Radeon X800XL has built up a reputation for being one of the best buys in high-end PC graphics. A single-slot card, that's got relatively low power requirements, street prices hovering around $275 (give or take a few bucks) and performance that rivals flagship cards from both ATI and NVIDIA, is sure to please...
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As the old saying goes, "It's better to burn out than to fade away". This holds true when we think about AGP graphics cards. While PCI-Express has certainly gained a lot of ground, AGP is not ready to die just yet. Virtually any video card manufacturer you look at is still offering AGP based graphics solutions,...
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The Notebook Lab here at Hothardware.com is currently full of business and professional class notebooks, but don't fret, we will get to some interesting consumer class designs soon. In the meantime though, there is still plenty to keep us busy, including our latest arrival, Dell's new business powerhouse - the Latitude D810. The Dell...
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With the advent of the mini-PC, a completely new industry has been born. Well, maybe it isn't so new anymore, but what started out almost as a novelty has matured into a major craze in the enthusiast market. Today's mini-PCs come in a broad range of flavors with a wide variety of features. Sitting high atop the list of unique...
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Now that we've got some Dell, IBM, and HP notebook reviews under our belt, we are going to depart from the business oriented line of machines we've already looked at, and take some time to go over Compaq's new Presario V4000. After the acquisition by Hewlett Packard, Compaq fully devoted its Presario notebook designs towards the consumer...
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At this year's E3 show ATi was discretely showing their new multi-GPU rendering technology which until now has been held under wraps of the standard NDA embargos we've come to know and love here in the industry. Last week we were given a full briefing on the technology by the ATi team and were told sometime in the month of June, product...
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So what does a PC Geek and EIC for a Hardware Enthusiast site do on a holiday long weekend? Well, beside sipping a few umbrella decorated drinks by the sea, at night you can find this odd breed playing with the latest Tech Toys of course! This weekend I built a new high performance Workstation/Gaming Rig - something I haven't...
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In recent months, the race between the two major industry playersto bring dual-core processing to the masses has heated up. On April 4th, Intel delivered its first dual-core Pentium offering in the form of the Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840. AMD was soon to follow, on May 9th, releasing its dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4800+. ...
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Though clock speed is no longer a true measure of processor performance, it's hard to argue with a few hundred more MHz no matter which CPU architecture you'd consider. Regardless, it's clear the industry as a whole, as well as the world's largest chip manufacturer, Intel, has now embarked on an effort to provide more computing...
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Over the years, Asus has built a solid reputation for manufacturing high-quality products, that consistently match or surpass competing products in terms of both performance, features and quality. It is with that kind of backdrop that we present today's review of the Asus Extreme AX800XL. Based on the ATI Radeon X800 XL VPU, Asus...
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