Reviews
While solid state drives get faster, mechanical hard drives get larger. Not long ago, we celebrated the first 1TB hard drive, and since then, welcomed 1.5TB and eventually 2TB drives to the consumer market. Yes, the performance increase that SSD's offer is more than impressive. However, they still can't touch the capacity that traditional...
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For all but the most budget conscious buyers, piecing together a home brewed rig often entails forking over a premium for certain components, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're a gamer, you probably bought a high-end graphics card (or at least that's what you should have done). Do you spend more time ripping videos than...
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The most popular and powerful Android phones currently available are quite possibly members of the Samsung Galaxy S line. Powered by Samsung’s very own 1GHz Cortex A8-based Hummingbird processor and featuring a four-inch Super-AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) capacitive touchscreen with a 480x800 resolution, it’s...
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Throughout the third and fourth quarters of '09, and right through the beginning of this year, we watched as AMD launched graphics card after graphics card, until their full product line of DX11 Radeon HD 5000 series parts filled virtually every possible market segment. More recently, NVIDIA has had the chance to answer with a number...
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Lenovo's IdeaPad Y560D is an interesting system that initially caught our eye thanks to its 3D-capable display. 3D films and TVs have been declared hot ticket capabilities by the film industry and TV manufacturers, but this is the first 3D-capable notebook we've had in house. The Y560D isn't the only 3D laptop on the market, but it's priced...
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For a time, Intel’s X25 series of solid state drives stood head and shoulders above the rest of the SSD pack. But with the influx of new players along with the rapid pace of innovation in the SSD space, Intel’s aging offerings—while still very good—are no longer a cut above. In fact, in enthusiast circles, it’s...
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Hardware aficionados know there is more to performance computing than just buying the most expensive parts available and throwing them altogether in the same system. There's overclocking, case modding, cooling, and performance tuning to consider, among many other thigs. Of course, everyone has their opinions on these aspects of the hobby,...
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We never seem to tire of new SSD technologies. The storage subsystem has long been the primary bottleneck with respect to general computer system responsiveness. And as a result, the explosion of Solid State Drives in the market is indicative of the ground-breaking performance gains the average SSD offers over traditional hard...
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Nettops are not nearly as popular as their mobile contemporaries, i.e. netbooks, arguably due to the lack of any significant horsepower within the tiny machines. Up until now, most nettops have been good for little more than basic Office duties, Web surfing, and occasional 720p (max) movie playback. There's a fine line that has to...
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For PC gamers, the gear we use to play can provide a tangible edge in our games. Although much noise is made about backlit keyboards boasting gamer oriented layouts and fancy mice with odd shapes, the most important considerations for gaming are still the guts of the gaming machine, a comfortable desk layout, a good monitor and a quality...
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Prior to its launch, Mafia II was portrayed as a deep, character-driven drama that would take full advantage of PhysX to add depth and realism to the game. With the game out and available, we sat down to investigate how PhysX enhances Mafia II; our review of the game is on page three. The term APEX is also used when discussing PhysX in Mafia...
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AMD is launching a half dozen new processors today, targeted at virtually all market segments, ranging from an inexpensive, mainstream dual-core Athlon II offering to a new, relatively high-end six-core Phenom II. The complete list of processors launching today, along with their respective price points are as follows: 3.0GHz (3.5GHz Turbo)...
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RIM's line of BlackBerry smartphones has been popular among business users for some time, but the brand has been losing market share in recent years to other platforms such as Android and iPhone. Now, the company is looking to turn things around with its new BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone and the new BlackBerry 6 operating system. RIM claims...
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It didn't take AMD long to respond to the release of NVIDIA's new line of Quadro workstation-class graphics cards. The new flagship FirePro V9800 we'll be showing you here is the latest ultra high end professional graphics card from AMD, and competes in the same space as the 6000 and 5000 models from NVIDIA. It replaces the V8800 as the flagship...
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Day two of the Intel Developer’s Forum was kicked off with a couple of keynote addresses from Renee James, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel and Doug Davis, the Vice President and General Manager of the Embedded and Communications Group. The main focus of their talks revolved around...
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In typical fashion, Intel kicked off IDF 2010 with a couple of keynote addresses headlined by the company’s President and CEO, Paul Otellini, and GM of the Intel Architecture Group David “Dadi” Perlmutter. Topics of the keynote addresses included everything from Sandy Bridge to WiDi, and a myriad of others in between, but...
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NVIDIA may have had to navigate a tumultuous path on their way to releasing the company’s first DirectX 11 desktop GPU, the GF100-based GeForce GTX 480, though they seem to be firing on all cylinders at this point. In the last 5 or so months since the GeForce GTX 480 arrived, NVIDIA has released—or will imminently release—a...
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Is Intel's Pinetrail platform really all its cracked up to be? We recently took an in-depth look at the 1.8GHz processor / platform, but it's a different thing to take a look at the same thing in a shipping product that's available today to consumers. We have been longing for faster Atom processors, and particularly in recent months, we felt...
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On September 1, GlobalFoundries played host to the first annual Global Technology Conference (GTC for short). While there were a fair number of partner presentations on display, the conference was primarily driven by GlobalFoundries executives and announcements. When we spoke to GlobalFoundries in March we remarked on the company's aggressive...
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It's that time again. The time of year where students and parents frantically hit e-tailers with overnight shipping deals in order to get that all-important back-to-school technology into a dorm room or backpack before classes begins. It's back-to-school season, and whether you've started classes recently or are awaiting...
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When it comes to Android devices, there are two inevitabilities. The first is that its popularity is unstoppable. Twice as many Android smartphones are sold now than were only two months earlier; Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, claims that about 200,000 Android devices are sold every day. The second given is that an onslaught of Android...
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It's been over 12 years since Starcraft launched, and expectations for the sequel have been quite high*. Well, the highly anticipated sequel, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, is here and we've taken the time to play through the campaign, test various difficulty levels, and tackle both human and the computer's AI in multiplayer. The single-player...
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