Reviews
Memory has come a long way in the past few years. What was once a nondescript PC component, consisting of nothing more than a few black chips on a green PCB, has since evolved into a brightly colored, and lighted, crucial system component with a multitude of different heat spreader types and speed grades. Just take a look at this pair of Corsair...
Read more...
It seems that Shuttle consistently expands their line of XPC small form factor systems as new core logic chipsets are released. A quick trip to their product page reveals a current line-up of XPCs based on chipsets from Intel, NVIDIA, ATI, SiS and VIA. There are no less than six different chassis designs available as well, with each one designed...
Read more...
Last weekend, over 300 gamers descended upon the Boston suburb of Wilmington, MA with little else but 32 hours of non-stop fragging on their minds. Well, that and possibly coming home with some new gear for their PC. Just over a year ago LPANE, the LAN Party Association of New England, was formed with the hopes of pulling together...
Read more...
Lightweight notebooks have always been the weapon of choice for the professional with a need for speed and an eye for style. As new entries are brought into the market during the spring refresh, numerous companies have been scrambling to bring something that fuses aesthetics and power together in a conveniently portable package. Asus's track...
Read more...
When Intel released the i925XE chipset, it took their existing line of top-tier motherboards to the next level, by providing additional support for CPUs running on a 1066MHz bus. The current list of CPUs that run at this speed is, however, quite short. Combine this fact with the imminent release of Intel's dual-core processors and...
Read more...
A few months ago, we assessed the performance of a pair of GeForce 6800 GTs and a pair of GeForce 6800 Ultras running in SLI-mode, and were impressed by the platform's performance. We did have some concerns over driver support and the TCO of the platform, however. NVIDIA's current SLI (Scalable Link Interface) technology requires a specific...
Read more...
In July of 2004, AMD released their latest economy class processors in the form of the Sempron line. The initial release was predominantly Socket A-centric, with only one Socket 754 solution being offered. Since that day, the Socket A Sempron family has grown to incorporate 7 flavors, yet the socket 754 Sempron line only recently...
Read more...
It seems that today's mid and high-end video cards are coming with increasingly more creative cooling solutions. Lately, large, quiet fans are becoming more popular as seen with Abit's OTES, HIS's IceQ II and Sapphire's Lethal Cooling. All of these options aim to keep a video card cool under load while minimizing fan noise, and...
Read more...
Once the dominant player for chipsets compatible with AMD's Athlon, VIA has fallen out of favor lately, it seems. The company introduced its K8T890 chipset with PCI Express support way back in November of last year. Yet, we've heard very little about retail products centering on the platform until recently. The PT-series, destined for...
Read more...
With the next notebook refresh cycle right around the corner, we are taking the time to look at some of the more recently refreshed notebooks. In the meantime, there is a lot of buzz surrounding the AMD Turion platform, which we have been eagerly anticipating. The news so far (directly from a few system vendors) is that it does surprisingly...
Read more...
When it comes to making Small Form Factor PCs, we find that most manufacturers need to make compromises in order to create a viable product. Radical heat dissipation techniques typically consume much of the area in already cramped confines, motherboards are usually cut-down versions of full-sized models which, in turn, have...
Read more...
Hot on the heals of the official announcement of Intel's new dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor, we have more news for those interested in Intel platform solutions. Today, NVIDIA is finally taking the wraps off of their nForce chipset for the Intel platform, a chipset now known as the nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition. For months there...
Read more...
Today, we're bringing you a Dual-Core Pentium quick take, on short notice from the folks at Intel. With only a few hours of testing at our disposal, we're attempting to make time with some level of meaningful analysis for you and hit Intel's NDA embargo lift time this morning. Would we have liked to spend more quality lab time on such...
Read more...
Every so often a new technology, or a new piece of hardware, comes along that polarizes the PC enthusiast community. One such product is the recently released NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI chipset. The nForce 4 SLI chipset is the preferred platform for NVIDIA's Scalable Link Interface technology, that gives users the ability to use a pair of GeForce...
Read more...
While we have already taken a look or two at NVIDIA's current mainstream offering, the GeForce 6600, in the past, today we've got a completely new take on this card with Albatron's PC6600U Trinity Series. While the basic technology behind the PC6600U remains largely the same as past cards, the core clock and memory speeds have been raised...
Read more...
In January we took a look at the HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo because it piqued our interest with its somewhat unique cooling solution. HIS took a page from the book of "OTES", which stands for Outside Thermal Exhaust System, a thermal management approach pioneered by Abit Computer, that has been out on the market in various...
Read more...
When shopping for a new video card, naturally, we all want the fastest card available performance wise. However, many simply can't justify the price that some high-end cards currently command. With many premium models now selling for more than $500, gamers on a budget often need to focus their efforts on finding a good,...
Read more...
It's been a little over six months since ATI first announced the All-In-Wonder X800 XT, but in the months following the announcement the card never made it onto retail shelves. It's no secret that ATI has struggled through some supply issues recently with their high-end GPUs. Since the time that we were first introduced to the card, ATI has...
Read more...
Centrino based notebooks are the mobile computing industry's current bread and butter. There is really no denying the huge market share that Intel has claimed in the notebook arena. Centrino is synonymous with mobility and power efficiency, and it is generally regarded as the present gold standard when it comes to mainstream mobile computing....
Read more...
Years ago, when computers with a 200MHz Pentium processor and 32MB of RAM were all the rage, we came upon a nifty device that came pre-installed in a wimpy Packard Bell PC. This device was a PCI TV Tuner Card. Back then, the ability to watch TV on a computer was somewhat of a rarity. And now, while there are many more options available,...
Read more...
When it comes to mainstream notebooks, the big three: Dell, HP/Compaq, and IBM still lead the pack in regard to overall notebook price, design, quality, and service. Of course, the enthusiast notebook vendors still get to set some interesting aesthetic and performance trends, but Dell and HP (Dell more so) have been picking up on the...
Read more...
As the old saying goes, "Times are a changing". When the personal computer first caught on, word processing and text based gaming was all the rage, and then there was this thing called the "Internet" on the rise. Today, the Internet is at the center of the technological universe and the PC has become a powerful...
Read more...
