Reviews
With today's ever advancing PC technology, it seems that two things ultimately remain unchanged; an increase in performance usually means an escalation in heat output. Currently, air cooling techniques can still keep most computer hardware operating at reasonable temperatures, but those who decide to squeeze every ounce of performance...
Read more...
About a month after Intel officially unveiled their flagship Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor, the crown jewel of their initial dual-core Pentium D processor line-up, AMD revealed their inaugural assortment of dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processors, which included the current flagship Athlon 64 X2 4800+. After assessing the Athlon 64 X2 4800+...
Read more...
For years, AMD has been a growing thorn in Intel's side. Early on, AMD had a much smaller market share than the elder silicon giant, but as the years progressed, AMD's foothold grew. By continually introducing new products that compete directly with Intel's product line, AMD has grown to be a formidable foe for the incumbent chip...
Read more...
NVIDIA most definitely has been on a roll as of late, with the introduction of a very successful 4th generation motherboard chipset with the nForce 4, and more recently with their GeForce 7 series launch and market introduction of the GeForce 7800GTX. In these launch articles we often times work with platform "reference" hardware...
Read more...
When we last took a look at some DDR2 memory back in October of 2004, the technology was still a bit new and didn't seem to offer any tangible performance benefits over standard DDR RAM. Higher speeds could be obtained with DDR2 though, and these modules required...
Read more...
Almost immediately after we begun working with NVIDIA's reference GeForce 7800 GTX cards in the days and weeks leading up to the launch, we were contacted by a handful of NVIDIA's launch partners and informed that they'd have retail hardware ready to coincide with the official announcement of the GeForce 7800 GTX. Leadtek, Gigabyte,...
Read more...
Our previous coverage of the Inspiron XPS Gen 2 was mainly intended for prospective gaming and performance sensitive buyers. However, this perspective doesn't completely explore the multimedia possibilities of the XPS Gen 2, which can be configured with Microsoft's MCE 2005. So of course, we had an Inspiron XPS Gen 2 from Dell configured with...
Read more...
Tomorrow on nZone.com, NVIDIA will release a new set of Forceware drivers that bring with them a few new features, and the prerequisite list of bug fixes. And whether you're a budget conscious gamer or a hard-core graphics junkie, the new features unveiled in these drivers are sure to pique your interest. Before we fill you in on what...
Read more...
We probably haven't stressed this often enough, whether to you our faithful readers or to our OEM contacts in the PR and Product teams at various companies we work with here at HotHardware. But let it be known unequivocally now, we LOVE board revisions. Don't get us wrong, we're not losing it on you. We'd rather a...
Read more...
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,...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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,...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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. ...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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,...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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,...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
