Wed Hardware Reviews

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Are you in the market for some blazing fast DDR?? Is your gaming rig craving that low latency performance?? Are you sick of flashy LEDs and marketing gimicks?? Then read on, because believe me, we have found just what you are looking for in our latest review, Kingston Hyper X PC3200UL 2-2-2-5 DDR Modules.

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After the smoke has cleared and all the dust has settled, what do we have? Well, I think we have one very impressive PC3200 dual channel memory kit from OCZ! While it may need its timings loosened up a bit fairly quickly in the overclocking game, there is no denying that OCZ has a fantastic product here. About the only thing they could improve upon would be increasing the voltage they\'ll cover under warranty from 2.9V to 3.0V+.

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The SwissBit 1GB Dual Channel PC4300 DDR2 memory module will meet the needs of the users that require DDR2 memory modules for their system such as the Intel LGA 775 system. These dual channel ram are able to run at tight timing for the DDR2 memory module which is the best and basic requirement for a good memory module. But, with a bit looser timing, the ram was able to hit 286 MHz which is equal to DDR2 572. That was an excellent results. According to the specification sheet, this pair of RAM is able to reach DDR533 only. It has an overclock potential. But due to the limit of the processor, I was unable to overclock it to the maximum.

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So, what's the point? Well, for those wanting a top gaming rig now, an Athlon64 motherboard with AGP is probably high on the list of 'must haves.' That's where the VisionTek XTASY X800 XT comes in. You already know that it will offer great performance for gaming, but you might not realize that it includes VIVO capabilities with HDTV support.

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I wanted to do something a little different this time. I had this 6600GT video card to review, but I knew there would be lots of sites out there with the same old hard facts and figures with benchmarks of games like UT2004 and Far Cry. I decided to go a different route. I wanted to bring to you a review of the card, including the specs and such, but also wanted to provide some useful information as far as how well it plays the most system demanding game to date, Half Life 2.

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Before we get to the benchmarks let me give you some background on the card. The 6600 series of graphics cards are based on the NV43 GPU. This is basically the little sister GPU of the ever so powerful NV40 or 6800 Series. The NV43 GPU is 8 Pixel Pipeline GPU with 3 3.0 vertex shaders and 1 3.0 pixel shader. The GPU core speed is 500 Mhz while the ram is at 1000 Mhz. The only real difference between the GT and the regular 6600 is the clock speeds. I wonder if I was to overclock a 6600 regular to the same speed as a GT if it would perform the same. I will save that for another day and article.

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ES, XL, SE, GSR and every other combo of letters used to describe a car, razor, or your favorite deoderant can be confusing. So which one is the best, which one is fully loaded, and which one sucks like a black hole? The same kind of system has been floating around the video card world for a while now, and NVIDIA's latest line of 6 Series cards has their own to throw around. Well today we are going to take a look at the Albatron 6800 GT, the gran turismo of the video card world. We won't call this the model with heated leather seats and navigation, but it definitely comes with 17's and a moonroof.

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For those who have had an interest in performance computing for several years, you'll remember the name EPoX as being one of the several companies who really pushed overclocking in the beginning stages and worked hard on competing with the best in the motherboard business. Today we are taking a look at their 5EPA+ board which is based around Intel's 915P chipset with DDR memory support. Does the overclocking trend still exist today or does EPoX have a little more work to do? Read on and find out as we take a closer look!

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The EPoX EP-9NDA3+ motherboard is based on nVidia's nForce3 Ultra chipset supporting the latest Athlon64 & AthlonFX Socket 939 processors. The nForce3 Ultra chipset officially supports a 1GHz HyperTransport link, along with all the features of the regular nForce3 250gb chipset (like Gigabit Ethernet, on-chip Firewall, and "Any Drive" RAID technology). EPoX has packed as many features as they can onto this board, providing the user with the ultimate NF3 S939 platform. Overclocking has not been forgotten either, with tons of CPU and memory tweaking options, along with a variety of voltage choices in the BIOS, this board is sure to be a hit.

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Wow, that is a long name isn't it! Irregardless, Foxconn has really impressed us at the club with their newest offering based on the Intel 925 chipset. This board is a fine specimen of computer hardware, and just like previous Foxconn motherboards, has pretty much everything you could possibly want, and they also threw in some voltage options! That's right ladies and gentlemen, Foxconn is learning from us overclockers that test and review their stuff, and the nicest thing about it is that we get to watch Foxconn literally evolve into a board manufacturers capable of being reckoned with...

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The leader in producing highend video cards teams up with Gigbyte to produce a chipset to perform. The leader in chipsets for Intel processors the past few years has been Intel. So to have a video card company compete is an attention getter. The main factor in the performance of a system is the chipset of the motherboard, (the traffic cop if you will of the system).

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Soltek has put together an impressive S754 package with its K8AN2E-GR motherboard. The intelligent board layout made installation simple. I especially like the way DIMM slots are orientated away from the AGP slot. Soltek has also done well on the feature count, adding in discrete SATA and IDE RAID through Promise's PCI-riding controller. Benchmark performance, too, was right on where I'd expect a well-tuned S754 board's to be, and the sample board overclocked like a champ.

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With Intel pushing the 1066 MHz host bus interface for the 925X-E chipset, yet failing to provide affordable processors or even unaffordable ones that would take advantage of the higher bus interface, the second speed step of Alderwood boards can only target the Prescott LGA 775 as possible driving force. Yet, what looks good on paper may not stand up to reality. On the other hand, ASUS has once again come out with a mainboard that is setting new standards in hardware, including the bundle. We have drilled down to the nitty gritty on the component and implementation level to bring a full report of the P5AD2-E which looks identical to the P5AD2 in all its glory.