I was a bit surprised that Asus asked us to review their flagship budget--it's weird just writing that--8600 GT TOP. It's new SKU for a card closing in on its end of life; the model bein...
Gigabyte is a solid company. They're at the top of my list, it would seem, so picking a current-generation entry-level motherboard without integrated graphics narrows things down to about hal...
It's hard to believe, but there are actually many people who don't want the trappings, and cost, of gaming hardware. Integrated graphics aren't always an option and, when they are, ...
While they’re mostly known for their portable hard drives and USB flash drives, US Modular has been making system memory in California long enough to know how to bin the good stuff and slap some sw...
As of Catalyst 8.3, a.k.a. "The New Beginning" a.k.a. "The Big One" a.k.a. "The Humptyback Zinglebert," it's clear that CrossFireX has picked up where SLI left off. Right now, it's a bet...
You wouldn't know by looking, but Intel's a little new at the chipset business. It's not that they haven't been doing it for decades, but just that they've never made a bu...
ATI's HD 2600 XT is a pretty nice card. It plays games acceptably well, consumes a negligible amount of power, and has flawless video acceleration. It's my first choice for the mainstre...
I've said before that the HD 2600 Pro should be passed over in favor of the XT for anyone who wants to play video games, or the HD 2400 XT for people just interested in having a discrete graph...
AMD's 690 chipset doesn't stop turning heads. The way it was introduced, as a low-priced alternative to Intel, with budget trim and no enthusiast options, belittled its raucous performan...
The K9AGM2-FIH is still a decent-performing, good-looking motherboard, but, in the end, it breaks no ground and makes mistakes that cause its mundanity. It serves as an example for what not to do ...
Mushkin has been on the enthusiast scene for over a decade, and consistently produces memory at better timings and higher clockspeeds than the majority of competing memory manufacturers. Their dev...
OCZ plays the high-end game almost exclusively, and has innovation and performance marks to back up the company’s rep. Given all that, their Platinum series is about as vanilla as they scoop. No ...
Good RAM wouldn't be good if it didn't have rows of flashing lights under its heatspreader. Wait, that makes no sense. RAM is good when it, and, therefore, your computer, blazes. It sh...
We're getting into the hardware reviews something fierce, and now is a good time to start a series of memory articles. Let's begin with the basics: DDR2-800. Also known as PC2 6400 RAM, ...
I've said it before: the 8800-series cards are great. They are heavy-hitters in the gaming world. They are well-built and very quiet. And, even though they've been available for some t...
The new iMacs are very thin. The entire stand and unit is only about 8” deep for the 24” display. The unit that houses the display and components itself is only about two to three inches thick. The...
The PC industry is known for making their products small and fast, and the Zonbu Zonbox is an interesting advancement in the arena. The goal of the box is to provide a simple, Linux-based PC that o...
When I think laptop, I think portable computing. I want to be able to check some mail, sync some music, and basically, go a long time out of the house without worrying about where I'm going t...
ATI is changing pace from their flagship by releasing their DirectX 10 mainstream cards within recent memory of NVIDIA's mainstream release. NVIDIA's mainstream release was memorable if bitter; th...
When I played with Asus' 8800GTX, I was disappointed. It wasn't special.It was a stock-clocked GTX, with a stock trimmings, a simple bundle, at a price well above the competition. It didn't even ...
