Reviews
Today, avid computer enthusiasts have their pick of some of the best computer hardware ever made available to the public. Processors and graphics cards have truly matured in the past few years, giving the general public computing power to do just about anything. Whether you're a hardcore gamer or you want to develop your own independent...
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The battle between NVIDIA and ATi for dominance in the desktop 3D gaming video card market has been on-going for many years. With each new product they release, both companies attempt to leap-frog the other by introducing new features and increasing performance over their previous generation. The competition has gotten so fierce,...
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Corsair's XMS (Xtreme Memory Speed) memory modules have long been a favorite amongst the enthusiast community. Corsair has memory kits available in many different sizes and speeds, and all of them are regarded as some of the best modules available in their respective categories. Unfortunately, with the demise of Winbond's BH5/BH6 chips,...
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2004 is easily shaping up to be a banner year for the graphics card market as NVIDIA and ATI continue to trade blows with their high-end offerings. We've seen huge increases in performance between the current and last generation of video cards from both manufacturers, and the competition is as intense as ever. Today, there are...
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When NVIDIA updates their product line, the GPUs usually arrive in the form of a value, midstream, and high-end variety, thus catering to all budgets or tastes. Monetarily speaking, it works out for the most part with those in need of a simple upgrade able to get something on the cheap, while Uber-users can get a new card to brag to...
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A few years back, if you wanted the best of DVD playback and CD burning, you had to buy separate drives for each task. With the advent of combo drives hitting the mainstream market, however, users can now get top-notch CD and DVD performance from a single optical device. MSI's XA52P for example, reads DVD-ROM discs at 16x, writes...
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Intel's recent new platform launch of the i915 and i925X chipsets marked a major overhaul of the Pentium 4 system level architecture and brought with it a host of new features and technologies. At the processor and IO levels, the addition of DDR2 memory and the PCI Express interface significantly...
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We get to test and evaluate quite a few high-end video cards here in the HotHardware labs. Over the past few months, we've previewed numerous Radeon 9800 XTs and GeForce FX 5950 Ultras, and cards based on ATi's and NVIDIA's latest Radeon X800 and GeForce 6800 GPUs have also begun to trickle in recently. Burning through our...
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In the weeks leading up to the release of the NV40, the base architecture for the new GeForce 6 series of cards, NVIDIA spoke at length about their new architecture's "scalability". At the high end, the flagship GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition is a 16-Pipeline machine clocked at 450MHz, that can pump out an impressive 7.2GPixels/s....
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It's been a long time since several pioneering companies bridged the gap between the TV and the PC. What initially started out as a novelty is now driving the industry in a new direction with the merging of TV and Radio with the personal computer. Today, thanks to faster hardware, and the advent of the mini-PC, manufacturers and...
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Peruse virtually any PC gaming magazine, or point your browser to any popular gaming web site, and you're bound to find a myriad of information and accolades for Crytek's smash-hit, first person shooter, FarCry. The game has some of the best graphics to hit the PC to date, and except for a few minor issues like...
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It has been a few weeks since ATi officially unveiled their Radeon X800 line of graphics cards based on the GPU formerly codenamed R420. In our initial look at the Radeon X800 Pro and X800 XT Platinum Edition back in May, we found ATi's latest flagship GPUs to be very capable performers, besting their previous high-end product,...
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Since the release of AMD's Socket 939 processors, motherboard manufacturers have wasted little time transitioning to the newer design, but that doesn't mean previous AMD platforms are now completely obsolete. Like the older Athlon XP, the 754 pin Athlon 64 processors still have some life left as a relatively economical alternative. With...
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Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we? Where were you in 1999? If you were into the technology scene, especially personal computing, most likely you were scampering about like Chicken Little, wondering what you would do when the sky fell at the end of the year, as the clocks ticked over to the year 2000. The Y2K support...
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Our first look at the GeForce FX 5900XT was way back in December 2003, and we were mightily impressed by the performance of the original sample sent to us by e-VGA, one of Nvidia's launch partners. We've reviewed a few other 5900XTs since then, and we've recently received two new models, one of which was the card we took a look at last...
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Anyone who follows the computer hardware industry knows that, aside from developing a broad range of Graphics cards, ATI has carved itself quite a niche in the multimedia market as well. Known for their "TV Wonder" and "All-In-Wonder" series multimedia cards, ATI is a true pioneer in the industry, being one of the...
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Major product launches don't seem to be getting any easier these days, at least on our side of the fence here in the online media community. Competition is fiercer than ever in all of the major functional blocks for personal computing, whether it's Graphics, Platform Chipsets, Drive technology or...
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For video card manufacturers, the drums of technology beat forever. Today's hot new release is tomorrow's eBay listing, because the hardcore enthusiasts are always looking for the next "big thing". It's a hard to stay on top of the list for very long, so we were interested in the recent arrival of two new GeForce FX 5900XT's...
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For years Plextor has set the standard for optical drives in both quality and features, being the first to bring major innovations to market on a number of occasions. These days, the competition fierce, with cheaper offerings available that can compete on the same performance level as slightly more expensive Plextor products. However, what...
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It has been barely over a week since we first took a look at AMD's new Socket 939 Athlon 64s, and motherboards equipped with the new socket have already started to arrive in the HotHardware Labs. The first motherboard to land on our test bench is the fully-loaded Asus A8V Deluxe "Wireless Edition". The A8V Deluxe...
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Water cooling is becoming increasingly more popular amongst hardcore overclockers. Not only does water cooling provide the utmost in cooling potential, short of refrigeration, but it can also quiet things down significantly. With today's processors producing upwards of 100 Watts of heat energy, cooling them down has becomes...
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We've taken a look at quite a few dual format DVD burners over the last few months, and found some to be better than others for various reasons. Most, if not all, of the drives we've reviewed shined in one area, but were lacking in another. Whether it be slower CD-R burning speeds, lack of options, or slow access times, we keep pressing...
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