Reviews
In what seems to be an ever expanding market, we've got yet another look at a new Small Form Factor system on HotHardware. This time the system comes to us by way of Foxconn. The same company that's been putting their stamp on motherboards and other OEM hardware since 1991. Following their recent successful foray into...
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It used to be the case that the fastest optical drive was, by default, the best. Reducing CD burn times from 12 minutes to eight and then to six was considered significant evolutionary progress. But then a barrier was encountered, where the imperfect nature of mass-produced compact discs precluded, or at least made it much more difficult,...
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Mobile Graphics technology is advancing at a fevered pace. In a little over a year, the once dominant Mobility Radeon 9600 was eclipsed by the Mobility Radeon 9700. Then, the MR 9700 was surpassed by the Mobility Radeon 9800, which itself was recently eclipsed by the Mobility Radeon X800. ATI's mobile GPUs went from 4, to 8, to 12 pixel...
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Refinements and performance optimizations in PC motherboard designs often track chipset re-spins and tweaks, as a new base architecture matures. Intel is absolutely famous (or shall we say infamous) for releasing a new chipset only to set sail with a re-spin or further characterization of the product, just a few months later. ...
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VIA is perhaps most notable for its contributions as a supplier of chipsets for AMD's Athlon XP/64 processor families. The company's work with Intel's offerings has ranged, over time, from clandestine manufacturing of unlicensed core logic (in Intel's eyes, at least) to the manufacture of a respectably leading edge product in the form...
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We are going to go start down the proverbial "rabbit hole' for notebooks in the coming weeks. And because of this, we need to lay a few things out before we go on. First and foremost, certain notebooks are designed with certain people in mind. Five or six years ago, not everyone was cut out to own a notebook, for a variety of reasons;...
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One of the major up and comers in the video card industry is HIS. In recent months, HIS has garnered some attention with several impressive additions to their product line. They put a major emphasis on overclocking, cooling and stability, while providing competitive performance. With such innovations as oversized, yet quiet...
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If you are looking to add a TV tuner card to your computer, there are a broad range of choices currently available, ranging from economical solutions to high-end cards that offer more advanced capabilities. However, if you are looking for a TV/Video card combination, there are fewer choices, namely NVIDIA's Personal Cinema, S3's OmniChrome...
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Even though DDR2 memory may be the current talk of the town, thanks to Intel's platform upgrade, there are plenty of P4, Athlon, and Athlon 64 owners that still use standard DDR based systems. Reason being, it's almost always cheaper to stay slightly behind the curve when purchasing hardware. It's...
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When DDR2 first saw the light of day, the memory marked the next level in DDR technology. However, with improved frequencies, lower voltage requirements and improve packaging also came higher latencies. With intial offerings coming in at CAS 4-4-4-12 and even higher, the performance improvements over DDR1 were minimal at best. ...
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Every time a new small form factor system arrives in the lab, inevitable comparisons are made to Shuttle's popular line of XPC systems. The simple fact of the matter is that Shuttle's XPCs have set the bar for the rest of the industry. And their XPC systems have sold so well, they've transformed Shuttle from a second tier motherboard...
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This years 2005 CES show, was certainly a whirlwind adventure for us as we literally ran from meeting to meeting in the two short days we were able to attend the event. For us this year, the show was about meeting up with all the good people at all of the various OEMs we work with and hearing about their roadmap product efforts, as much...
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Competition can be a blessing for consumers, a headache for manufacturers and a driving force for an entire industry. Where a market once may have been dominated by one or two big companies with a handful of smaller competitors striving for their piece of the pie, nowadays the scales are somewhat more balanced. A good example of...
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A few months ago, we took a look at a sampling of Athlon 64 Socket 939 motherboards, and ended up giving an Editor's Choice award to the NVIDIA nForce 3 Ultra based MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. At the time, the K8N Neo2 Platinum struck the best balance between features, performance, overclockability, and price. Another motherboard tested...
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In this our first article of 2005, we're going to take a look back at recent history and examine a driving force in computing technology that was dominant throughout much of 2004. Intel launched its mobile Centrino technology in mid-2003. It took a while to ramp up but once this new platform initiative gathered steam,...
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Over the past year, DFI has made a name for itself with a crowd that is traditionally very hard to please. A company that once built parts strictly for the OEM / white box folks, is now catering to the enthusiast and overclocking communities with a bold, feature laden line of motherboards. DFI's "LANPARTY" products build...
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When we pause to think of some of the more memorable, market driving, changes to the computer industry, the advent of the mini-PC is one of the first to come to mind. What started out as a single offering from Shuttle has grown into a market in and of itself, with new entries from a wide range of companies hitting the retail channel...
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We've been hearing details about NVIDIA's on-chip programmable video processor ever since the NV40 originally launched about eight months ago. Back then NVIDIA had stated that the NV40's on-chip video processor incorporated a high-quality adaptive de-interlacing engine, along with better filtering and scaling techniques, video de-blocking...
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When Intel released the first batch of Pentium 4 processors based on their Prescott core, which were built using a .09 micron manufacturing process, analysts found that the CPUs generated more heat and consumed more power than similarly clocked Pentium 4 processors based on the .13 micron Northwood core. These...
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Back on December 1, 2004 ATI officially announced their latest flagship GPU, the Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition. The GPU powering the Radeon X850, previously code named R480, is an evolutionary product designed to improve yields and hit higher clock speeds than the older R423 GPU used on PCI Express variants of the Radeon X800. ...
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The performance and capabilities of 3D graphics cards for the PC have been increasing at an exponential rate these past few years. High-end video cards that debuted at $500 just over a year ago, are now being surpassed in features and performance by cards being introduced at prices at or below $200. This unyielding drive to push...
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As Intel's Alderwood and Grantsdale chipsets have brought a whole new platform of technology to the P4, OEMs are now in full swing, bringing their own flavors to the mix. With support for Intel's new LGA775 processors, DDR and DDR2 and PCI-Express, the playing field has certainly changed. Granted, while upgrading will require a...
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