Monday Hardware Reviews

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AMD released their Athlon 64 X2 and it was good. The enthusiast community clamored for more. They wanted a lower speed grade X2 that would still pack a punch, and go head to head with Intel's lower priced dual CPU packaged Pentium D series. Many thought AMD made a mistake by not offering this grade, but of course lines must be converted, and it makes sense to project numbers, and product the CPUs that will bring in higher ASPs. We feel the launch today of the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is perhaps brought about by so many requests, but also a result of AMD having ramped up dual core production higher enough to begin supplying higher volume lower cost parts.

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We were able to reach nearly 2.4GHz with default voltages, or almost a 33% overclock. Yes, that is a nice looking overclock without too much effort put into it. There is a chance that some of these Palermo cores could have 3GHz coaxed out of them with a bit of luck, and a better overclocking setup. With the 64 bit support that Sempron has been missing for so long this becomes an attractive CPU to the budget overclocker. The only downside is the comparatively short life of Socket 754 compared to 939. That being said Socket A Semprons are still available.

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The K8WE from Tyan features NVIDIA's NFORCE4 Professional chipset. How's this for loaded: Dual CPU, dual PCI-E x16 slots, supporting SLI. Yeah! We put the Tyan through the paces against a board from IWill, sporting the previous generation dual CPU chipset from NVIDIA; NFORCE3 Pro 250.

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The top graph represents Far Cry running with the DivX Converter pumping out that DVD, while the bottom graph shows us Far Cry going by itself. As you can see, the dual core CPU does make a difference. The Asus motherboard took a massive hit in frame rates, as did the Foxconn 955X7AA while using the single core CPU. However, the 955X7AA, when couple with Intel's dual core chip, chugged right along barely noticing the extra load going on. Very cool!

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While flexibility is the name of the game in the software world, the computer hardware realm is a lot stricter. AMD and Intel technologies are completely different from each other, so it's impossible to use one product in the other's platform. Or at least that has been the general rule until now... The ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid motherboard is on our test bench for a thorough examination, and in the configuration pictured it works with either a socket 775 Intel Pentium 4 or socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 processor. Intrigued yet?

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Overclockers and enthusiasts these days usually pursue one of two goals: to reach DDR600+ memory speeds at slightly relaxed timings, or to maintain tight 2-2-2-5 timings while pushing up to around DDR520+ speeds. If you're looking for the latter, then OCZ's new Gamer eXtreme PC-3500 might be the perfect modules for you.

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Performance takes a few forms. If your are a fan of synthetic memory tests than this RAM is significantly better that DDRI and overclocking helps quite a bit. However most of us don't run these tests continuously so we look to the real world results. For the most part there is no significant increase due to DDRII memory. The exceptions are TMPGEnc which shows a 4.5% increase by moving to DDRII, and the game tests which show a 3-5% increase in frame rate (3-4fps) also by moving to DDRII.

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My evaluation of such low-end hardware using the latest graphically challenging games might seem pointless at first glance. Look twice and you'll see that while both HyperMemory and TurboCache boards were generally really unhappy with the latest games, analysis of UT2004 shows that in older games (and to some extent new ones at very low resolution) they'll do fine. If your aim is to build a really cheap PCI Express-based gaming box for the kids, or to use a card as a stop-gap solution before you pick up something more powerful, they do fine.

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The Radeon X850 XT is the fastest chip ATI has to offer. Sapphire Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition cards are available in both AGP and PCI-E models. The card we got our hands on was the AGP version. The Platinum Edition tag means card is clocked higher than the regular edition. This is the top of the line video card using an ATI chip.

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Over the next few pages PCSTATS will be reviewing a pair of PCI Express MSI X6800 TD-128E SLI-capable videocards in both single and SLI mode. We're going to see just what kind of performance a user can expect from these high-end cards operating in tandem. By now, most consumers should be familiar with SLI benchmarks from 6600GT mid-range nVidia cards, so let's take things up a notch! Each of the MSI NX6800 TD-128E videocards we'll be testing are based on the nVidia Geforce 6800 GPU and sport 128MB of GDDR3 memory, SLI compatibility, full HDTV/S-Video/composite TV-out capabilities and dual-monitor support. The blue analog connection is for CRT monitors and the white DVI connector is for digital LCD displays.

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Up until a few weeks ago the X850 series video cards were proclaimed as the fastest cards on the planet but now with the release of that other companies new card does it make the X850 obsolete? Come along as we run it through a battery of new and not so games to see how it stacks up and also to see if the X850XT is a worth while choice as opposed to the X850XT PE.

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Old games of yesteryear look primitive compared to the stunning games of today and visually it's hard to go back and play those old favorites. Today, if you want the best videocard on the market regardless of price, it's definitely going to be something based on the nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX core. The GV-NX78X256V-B is backed up by 256MB of GDDR3 memory and supports VIVO as well as component output, and is fully SLI compatible. Included in the package is also a pretty good software suite which includes two full version games and some multimedia software.

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The Albatron GeForce 7800GTX videocard is pretty darn impressive. In addion to its nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX GPU with 302 million transistors, the PCI Express x16 videocard packs 256MB of GDDR3 memory, SLi compatibility, a low-profile & low-noise heatsink, twin DVI video connections and support for a host of video input and output formats. Albatron ship along a basic set of software and cabletry with the Albatron 7800GTX videocard so that every feature can be used (SLI bracket excluded), but there's nothing else in the box aside from the 7800GTX card to really get excited about

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Last week I looked at the Sapphire X800XL Ultimate edition. It proved to be a good card, putting up impressive numbers, enough so that you can play the latest games at decent detail and AA/AF combinations. This week we take a look at another one of Sapphire's offerings, the X800 XL Hybrid. The Hybrid puts a different interface onto the X800XL series, using ATI's PCIe->AGP bridge, but also adds Video In capability to the VO that most Sapphire cards come equipped with. What this means for you is the continuation of your legacy S754/478 boards that normally come equipped with AGP instead of the newer PCIe interface. If you are looking for the video editing portion of this, then the VIVO capability further enhances the bundle.

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Today ATI is launching a brand new RADEON® graphic card the X800 GT. This particular VPU is targeted at NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT and 6800LE series of cards. ATI's partners will supply roughly 50,000 units during the launch month which means there will be quite a lot of X800 GTs available. While testing the card I talked to Andrzej Bania -- PR and Marketing Manager for Northern Europe & South Africa. We spoke about X800 GT and how it will impact ATI's current line of products. You might recall X700 XT which was a direct competitor to GeForce 6600GT, unfortunetely ATI decided to can it in favor of a more powerful X800.