Wed Hardware Reviews

Quote

So what we did learn here? That integrated video is slower compared to even the least expensive cards on the market including an add-in board with the same name. The X300 was much faster while the 6200TC was easily capable of doubling the performance of the integrated video in all but one situation. It's really important to point out that the integrated video and the ATI card in this test are using the same GPU, but they are clocked at different speeds and have much different ways of accessing the memory, which is why there is such a difference in our tests. This should illustrate just how much more efficient an add-in board is.

Quote

One of Intel's big pushes for the motherboard market at the moment is the VIIV standard. VIIV is the combination of Dual Core CPUs, an Intel motherboard, High Definition Audio and more to present a unified digital home entertainment platform. The ECS board is a decent example of a VIIV board, with everything needed with the exception of a CPU, memory, hard disk drive to have a new system. The integrated GMA950 graphics is barely adequate for playing todays modern game titles, but beyond that it is a great start for a Windows Media Center PC.

Quote

The highly anticipated return of Voltage Extreme memory from OCZ is finally here. The latest revision rolls in with DDR2-1000 speeds and a very tight 4-4-4-15 timing set. They are not called Voltage Extreme for nothing though. Let't see how far these can be pushed.

Quote

Feature-wise, the ECS KA3-MVP motherboard includes the ability to Crossfire two ATI cards, 7 SATA devices, a Gigabit Ethernet controller, and two Firewire ports. The minimal expansion on the board is a bit disappointing, but the multiple SATA devices on a single port make for an excellent new feature as more and more devices move to SATA.

Quote

Today in the BFR labs we have a pair of HIS' X1600 Pro Turbo Dual-DVI graphic cards.Yes, I said 'pair' as in two and yes we will be running them in CrossFire mode which should be interesting since there currently aren't many X1600 CrossFire benchmarks out there on the web.

Quote

his is the best way to look at the TOXIC X1900XTX. We know that the water cooling solution is going to be nowhere near as effective as a custom made job and the effectiveness of the Liquid Cooling Solution in use here isn’t amazing from a performance point of a view, but when you stand back, close your eyes and then think... I have an X1900XTX and I cannot hear it!

Quote

nVidia's releases of the nForce 590 SLI chipset and reference designs have been implemented one way or the other by a number of manufacturers - each of which has added a little bit of his or her own secret sauce to make things more comfoming to the rest of the product line-up, shave off a few pennies here and there or simply "because". There is, however, Foxconn, who manufactured the original , nVidia-internal reference boards. Reference boards have in the past always stomped the final production versions - in terms of performance and reliability and, often enough, also in terms of overall compatibility. Reason enough to greet reference boards with a bit of skepticism. However, in this case, we have a one-to-one conversion of a reference design into a GTO production - with an unspeakable name, produced by Foxconn and sold at a perfectly acceptable price.

Quote

Enter the Sapphire Technology X1600 Pro HDMI 256MiB. The penultimate word, HDMI, is what makes it special. With an integrated HDCP-certified HDMI connection as standard, and half-height form-factor, could this be the card for those of you who have invested in HDMI-enabled LCD and plasma TVs of late?

Quote

After reviewing ten enthusiast brand lines from eight companies I feel confident to call Corsair's PC2-6400C3 memory line the ultimate enthusiast memory on the market today. Thanks to ability to run super tight CL3 timings up over 880MHz and CL4 timings well over 1.1GHz these modules will give gamers and overclockers ample room to best optimize their system performance. Corsair made the smart move to use Micron D9 IC's on their PC2-6400C3 modules and thanks to super tight screening they are able to produce these kits in volume...

Quote

Like the X1800GTO we looked at a few weeks ago, the HIS X1900XTX is using the third revision generation of the IceQ cooling solution funnily enough known as IceQ 3. It has a few improvements over the previous one and is of course a lot more peaceful than the screamingly loud fans that we find on most other X1900XT(X) graphics cards.

Quote

Asus has embraced the nVIDIA GeForce 7600GT GPU and released a videocard which is not only ideally suited towards the occasional gamer and even hardcore gamer on a budget, but also doubles up the value by offering 100% silent operation which makes it ideal for home theatre PC's or just anyone who wants a quiet computer. The TV output and HDTV output capabilities of the Asus EN7600GT Silent/2DHT/256M/A work hand in hand with its 256MB GDDR3 memory and its 560 MHz GPU to provide a strong feature set for anyone walking down the multimedia path.

Quote

One of our readers wanted to know what would happen if you put a top of the line video card into a system that was running an average processor. We were a bit curious ourselves so we thought we would just show him. Using a Pentium 4 - 3.4 GHz we ran it though a number of benchmarks to see just how well it would perform. Perhaps our experiment will help him decide if he buys a new video card before he buys a new processor.

Quote

The first performance chipset to provide native support for Core 2, is Intel's 965-Express series. With that in mind, we've taken a look at a high-end offering from Gigabyte. The GA-965P-DQ6 looks impressive on paper. Let's see how it pans out in our comprehensive review.