Reviews
The first thing that came to mind when we tore the Asus UL80Vt from its box was this: "Hmm, this seems familiar." Turns out, the UL80Vt isn't all that different on the surface than the 13.3" UL30A that we reviewed back in September, but just because Asus' latest is another model in the expanded UL range doesn't mean that this machine...
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As the holiday season rapidly approaches, there’s one question that you’ll hear very frequently: Have you been naughty or nice? Of course, we all know that a lot hinges on this seemingly simple question. If you’ve been nice, then perhaps Santa will bring you an awesome gift, that one piece of hardware you've been jonesing for, like a Core...
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AMD's "Sweet Spot" GPU strategy over the last few years has been fairly predictable. Instead of producing the biggest, most powerful GPU possible--yields be damned--the company sets out to produce a relatively high-end GPU, using a cutting edge fabrication process, that hits a proverbial sweet spot between cost and performance. Then derivatives,...
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NVIDIA is launching a new mainstream graphics card today, aimed squarely at consumers in the market for a relatively low-cost upgrade from an integrated graphics solution or older entry-level GPU. The new GeForce GT 240, features a GPU outfitted with 96 processor cores, 8 ROP units, and 32 texture filtering units. In addition, the GT...
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It's rare we get genuinely excited around here about a product. To be honest, likely we're spoiled by all the bleeding-edge technology we have the great opportunity to look at week in and week out. Or perhaps it's just that we're jaded a bit and have heard one too many marketing pitches, but truth be told it takes a lot...
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Apple is a funny beast. We say "beast" because it's hard to deny that this company is ripping through the tech world like no other that we've seen in the last decade. Our television programs are laden with Apple ads poking fun at Windows and seducing you into buying yet another iPod, and every quarterly earnings report is filled with...
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About a year ago, Lucid started making waves in the graphics space with claims of being able to revolutionize multi-GPU computing. It promised consumers the ability to add any graphics card, unrestricted by model or vendor, to an existing set up and achieve highly efficient load balancing with near linear performance increases. This...
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Windows 7 is upon us, and with the launch of Microsoft's self-proclaimed "best operating system" comes a slew of new desktop machines, notebooks, and netbooks looking to take advantage of its added stability and features. One of the companies that is looking to serve up a number of new Win7-based rigs is Asus, and without a doubt they have...
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There's no denying that the Motorola DROID is receiving a lot of hype. Not only is this phone a big deal for Motorola, who has struggled to produce widely successful handsets since the famous RAZR flip phone, but the DROID is also the first handset that will be released as part of a partnership between Google and Verizon Wireless. Combine...
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We're seeing more and more CULV notebooks hit the market these days. The growing sector of Consumer Ultra Low Voltage machines attempts to bridge the gap between lower cost netbooks and full-size notebooks, offering a more powerful chip than the ubiquitous Atom options we see in netbooks, but one that consumes less power than the mainstream...
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August marked the launch of AMD's current flagship desktop processor, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. Today, we have a fresh revision of this CPU that brings some new features to the table. Unfortunately, these new aspects do not improve stock performance of the 3.4GHz quad-core chip. Instead, they tweak it in other areas that many...
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Whenever I build a system, I always build it with one eye towards the future. I like to think that I’ll upgrade the system over time. Maybe I’ll swap in a new CPU, maybe a new graphics card, upgrade the RAM, etc. But these days, it’s not so easy.I can’t remember a time when the upgrade picture has been so confusing. Just think of the situation...
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Although the Core i7 and X58 combo is a proven performance leader, there are still plenty of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPUs out there in the wild. The Core 2 is still a very capable processor with many models costing less than half the price the cheapest Core i7 processor, the Core i7 920. Thus, systems based...
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Computer hardware enthusiasts are a unique group. Its true that some enthusiasts may spend hours, days, or weeks tweaking their BIOS and other settings to achieve optimal performance, while others might spend an entire evening painstakingly routing wires for proper cable management. Fortunate ones find themselves eagerly awaiting...
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In all of our recent solid state disk (SSD) coverage that featured one of Intel's X25-M drives, a common, underlying performance trend consistently emerged. The Intel drives were always amongst the top performers in read performance, and were unquestionably the best with regard to random writes. However, in sequential write performance...
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Network-attached storage (NAS) devices come in all shapes and sizes; some even come without hard drives--with the intention that the users will add the drives themselves. There is even a relatively new category of NAS devices that don't have any internal drives at all, and instead use USB-attached drives as their storage source. These NAS...
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This week may be as big a week in the company's history as Microsoft has ever had. We know, that's a pretty bold statement, but there's a lot of evidence to back that up. Microsoft has been drowning in negative press and negative vibes for most of Vista's life; it has tried for years to spit-shine the image of its "Wow!-inducing" operating...
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With the current price war going on between Intel and AMD at the lower-end of the market, consumers are left with more affordable options than ever before. One can argue that there has never been a better time to build a computer or upgrade an aging system, especially with the cost of relatively high-performing hardware reaching attainable...
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An interesting thing about NAND Flash SSD (Solid State Drive) technologies, beyond the fact that the market is flush with competitive product offerings, is that the technology itself is very flexible and adaptable to a number of different design approaches, other just the straight-forward SATA-based SSDs. Take for example the...
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One of the sub-categories cropping up amongst OEMs are videos cards which feature highly customized cooling along with special controller chips or other functionality that help facilitate tweaking the card's performance. These cards all have a few things in common. First, they all mount beefy and often very radical cooling designs which are...
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Hard-core gamers are all about squeezing the best performance they can out of their rigs, while ensuring that the visual quality of the games they play are at the highest settings possible. As desktop PCs typically have access to higher-end components than notebooks--and are also far more configurable, upgradable, and tweakable--the vast majority...
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A little less than a month ago, AMD unveiled the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards to much fanfare. And for good reason. Not only is the Radeon HD 5800 series the first to offer full DirectX 11 support, among other unique features like Eyefinity, but the flagship ATI Radeon HD 5870 signifies the first time since AMD acquired...
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