Reviews
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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I’ve recently built up two midrange Core i7 based systems, which I discuss on my blog at Improbable Insights. One is based on Bloomfield, more specifically, the popular (among performance enthusiasts, anyway) Core i7 920. The other is the new Lynnfield-based Core i7 860. What’s interesting is the similarity in pricing between the two systems....
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The enthusiast scene is filled with consumers with do-it-yourself attitudes who regularly build their own systems from scratch. In fact, some feel that part of the fun associated with a new build is comparing prices online and asking for advice on tech forums in order to configure the ideal system. Although there are obvious benefits...
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In the last year, a handful of camera manufacturers have added HD video recording capabilities to their DSLRs. Nikon initially beat Canon in this race by introducing the $999, 12.3 megapixel D90. Canon wasn’t too far behind, though, with its $2,699, 21.1 megapixel EOS 5D Mark II that is capable of capturing 1080p (better than the...
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If you've followed the early announcements concerning Fermi, NVDIA's next-generation GPU architecture, you should already be aware that the new GPU core is both an evolution of the existing GT200 architecture and a significant new design in its own right. NVIDIA made it clear early on that they weren't going to be talking about GeForce products...
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I once bought a car because of its sound system...Okay, so I didn’t buy the car only because of the sound system, but it was a key component in my decision making. The car was a Subaru Outback H6-3.O VDC, back in 2001. The car was classic Subaru, spare and lean, all-wheel drive and not very exciting to look at.Then there was the tricked out...
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Exactly one week ago today, AMD unleashed the ultra powerful, DirectX 11-ready ATI Radeon HD 5870 upon the PC gaming world and staked a claim as the undisputed 3D performance leader. Having evaluated the features, performance, and image quality of AMD's latest and greatest flagship we were left thoroughly impressed, not only with the new Radeon's...
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IBM has been a name synonymous with computers and technology for nearly 30 years. That point alone leaves little doubt as to why Lenovo moved to acquire IBM’s Personal Computing Division in 2004. When the acquisition was finalized in 2005, Lenovo instantly became a global PC leader. Over the past four years, Lenovo has worked hard to become...
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Although Intel talked about their upcoming 32nm Westmere-based processors at IDF, and even showed off a few demos of the next-gen core at work right on stage, we still got in some private face-time with a few Intel reps and engineers in a closed door session to glean a few more details. A couple of the items we saw firsthand were Intel's upcoming...
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We know it can be difficult to keep up with all of the latest and greatest hardware. After months of saving up every spare penny, you finally have enough money for that new upgrade that you've been yearning for since its debut. All the reviews are in agreement and you have to own what many are calling the component of the year. Those...
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The second day of IDF kicked off with a fevered pitch of mobile technologies while Intel's Dadi Permutter and Mooley Eden stepped through a slide deck and several tech demos that gave us a view of where Intel is today with their new generation of Core i7 Mobile "Clarksfield" technology and of the future generation products...
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For quite some time now, Intel has been the undisputed leader when it comes to laptop CPU performance. This advantage comes from the fact that Intel has successfully scaled its desktop processor technology for use in the mobile platform. That trend continues with the latest mobile processor platform being unleashed today from Intel: the...
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Over the past couple of weeks, we've been completely preoccupied trying to come up with a catchy and informative introduction for this article. We thought maybe it would be fun to play off of AMD's tree-laden GPU codenames to come up with an interesting segue into the Radeon HD 5800 series' power efficiency. But we came up short. Then we thought...
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We made our annual pilgrimage to Intel Developer Forum this year and upon arriving in sunny San Francisco, we were greeted with the usual IDF fanfare in a sleek, modernistic environment. Presentations and demonstrations of Intel's latest cutting-edge technologies awaited us in the lobby as we noshed...
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In a market where dual-GPU, single-PCB graphics cards are readily available from most major OEMs, product manufacturers are increasingly turning to water cooling as a way to differentiate their products and out-maneuver their competitors. The superior thermal characteristics of liquid cooling allows companies like BFG to hit higher core /...
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In our 2009 Notebook Buyer's Guide, we discussed the merits and perils of CULV based notebooks. This suddenly popular and quickly growing sector looks to bridge the gap between the bargain basement netbook and the full-size notebook. It makes sense to think that a swath of 13.3" to 14" machines would be needed for those who find 10.1"...
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AMD has been attacking the mainstream PC segment lately with a slew of modestly priced processors and chipsets. The attack started with the new Athlon II X2 value processors back in June, which were a much needed replacement for the out-dated Athlon X2 series. Then a few weeks later, AMD released their new mainstream chipset, the 785G,...
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