Ultimately, however, it's those professionals – graphic artists, publishers and the like – that stand to get most out of this wonderfully colour-accurate monitor. If sufficient budget is available, we doubt the XL30 will disappoint for those users. For everyone else, we recommend you plump for a more conventional and affordable 30-incher and if you want to spend a little bit more, it's still well-worth considering the NEC LCD3090WQXi

Even though comparisons will be made, our intention is not to directly compare ATI against Nvidia in this article, but more to see how both leading ultimate solutions will run on a system which should in theory be less CPU bound than most. To further downplay the side effects of the two Quad processors affecting the results, we have watercooled both CPU's and overclocked them to 4.4ghz (a 1.2ghz overclock @ 400x11). This will let both graphics solutions stretch their legs as much as possible at the highest resolutions.

Almost everyone has heard of the new iPhone 3G which is supposed to sport all manner of enhancements meant to entice new as well as existing iPhone users. We sent Dan Shannon out to get one of the new iPhone 3G's to replace his existing 1st generation iPhone. We have Dan's reactions to the new 3G and his take on if the phone is a worthy replacement for you.

On the PCSTATS test bench today is the new Samsung Syncmaster 943B 19" LCD/TFT monitor. The Syncmaster 943B is a mainstream/business oriented LCD display with a competitive price tag of about $290 CDN ($290USD / £60 GBP). The Samsung Syncmaster 943B offers users a luscious black 19" screen (5:3 aspect ratio) with a native resolution of 1280x1024 pixels.

During SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles NVIDIA is demonstrating a fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer. The demo is based purely on NVIDIA GPU technology, and according to NVIDIA the ray tracer shows linear scaling rendering of a complex, two-million polygon, anti-aliased automotive styling application.

At three bounces, performance is demonstrated at up to 30 frames per second (fps) at HD resolutions of 1920x1080 for an image-based lighting paint shader, ray traced shadows, and reflections and refractions running on four next-generation Quadro GPUs in an NVIDIA Quadro Plex 2100 D4 Visual Computing System (VCS). We've got some screenshots and information from the demo posted right here...

Lian-Li's reputation in the world of computer enthusiasts is legendary and their products are considered to be some of the best quality cases available. Today we will take a look at one of their larger ATX midi tower cases the V1010B. The V1010B is a very spacious midi tower case which can easily be mistaken for a full tower and it is loaded with features ... the end result is something quite special indeed.

Cyber Snipa's Sonar 5.1. design is somewhat funky, it has these flame red ear cups and the rest of the design is all black. It has the same styling as the Cyber Snipa Stinger mouse we reviewed a while back. It's like Razer using their neon green and black theme. Cyber does it the other way round and uses hot rod red to fire things up a bit. These headphones have a bunch of neat features, for starters their 5.1 surround. This means you could actually make out the difference between an enemy sneaking up behind on your or watch your dvd's with all the sound effects and rumble. Yes that's right this headset what Cyber Snipa likes to call Force Feedback built inside.

The Akasa Omega has been a pleasure to work with from start to finish, and I feel it is without a shadow of a doubt, the single easiest case to build a system into currently available. The brilliant motherboard tray design makes such a huge difference when building your system, and for those who frequently tinker inside their machines it's of enormous advantage. The build quality throughout the Omega is equally excellent, and is a breath of fresh air after so many recent cases we've reviewed have struggled to just get panels to line up properly.

However, there are some short falls, and one of them is the poor stock thermal performance. The Omega's out of the box cooling configuration is only one or two degrees better than the Mirage, and way off of other cases we've recently looked at like the Lian Li Tyr X2000. However, the stock cooling is extraordinarily quiet and as we've seen, four 120mm fans and a fanbus can happily resolve this issue, leaving you with an excellent case with high performance cooling and low noise levels.

Value is one area where the Akasa Omega does struggle a little though, especially in justifying itself over its painfully similar siblings - the Akasa Eclipse-62 and the Mirage-62. The former can still be found for around £90 and the latter for a few pennies under £100.

In comparison the Omega, with it's precut 120mm fan mounts and aluminium door sell for around £125, although while it's true you're getting less aluminium, you have to consider the time and effort it would take to cut the four 120mm fan mounts yourself, so we can see the justification for the higher cost. In comparison to other cases on the market, we feel you'd struggle to find such an adaptable and more importantly quiet aluminium case for similar money, and in this instance the Omega really is in a league of its own.

While Akasa might not have changed a great deal between the Mirage and the Omega, there wasn't a great deal that actually needed changing. With the inclusion of extra mounts for fans or water cooling radiators, Akasa has ticked almost every box for whatever setup you might want to fit into your system, and while it might not have a pre-cut case window (although they are available separately), the Omega simply oozes class and quality. In fact, it really only slips up on its stock cooling performance.

It's not showy, flashy or brash - it just gets on with the job of being your case. Simply put, the Akasa Omega is a fantastic case, and comes very highly recommended.

One common truth for many gamers is that their budgets are tight. Gamers are always on the lookout for good, low cost gaming peripherals that actually work. Today we are looking at just such a device from OCZ called the Alchemy Elixir Gaming Keyboard.
One thing I have found on every gaming keyboard that I have ever owned is that after using it 8 to 10 hours a day five days a week simply typing -- not even counting gaming -- the keys start to wear after a while. To remedy this OCZ actually includes extra key tops to replace the most commonly used keys -- including the WASD keys used for movement, the spacebar, the shift key, and the arrow keys. Extra keys are a feature I have yet to see much more expensive gaming keyboards on the market offer.

Thanks to a glowing array of 115 individual OLED displays fitted under its keys, Art Lebedev's Optimus Maximus is the first and only keyboard that literally morphs before your eyes. Pressing shift and watching all the letters beneath your fingers leap to caps gives you some idea what the Maximus is capable of, and why it's become one of the most hyped-up, fawned-over and generally talked-about devices on the Web. While it delivers sheer novelty value in spades, we found that its princely pricetag, layout and reliability woes may threaten its practicality as a typing device.

There's an awful lot of panel sharing going on in the LCD market these days, isn't there? It seems that even some of the most no-name brands are now sporting panels made by a few giant, well-known manufacturers. It's enough to make a consumer wonder whether paying extra for a premium branded monitor is really worth it.

With that in mind, what is there to think about Samsung's newly incumbent 24-inch model, the 245T? One thing is for sure, if you want a monitor with a quality Samsung-manufactured PVA panel, you don't need to pay over £600 for a monitor with that Samsung badge on the front. There are plenty of other screens with Samsung PVA panels inside, and some can be had for less than £350.

Hence, the key question is not whether the new 245T is a good monitor. Instead, the question is this: Can the 245T really be worth nearly twice as much as the lesser branded but similarly specified opposition?

On the 21st of February 2008 we took our first look at the GeForce 9600 GT. It has a reference design of 650MHz GPU frequency, 1.625GHz shader frequency, and 512MB of GDDR3 at 1.8GHz memory on a 256-bit memory bus. One of our final thoughts in that evaluation was if we could find it for under $169 what a great value it would be. Soon after that article, our wish came true and the GeForce 9600 GT had become great video card for those with a budget.

Step forward to today with the recent releases of NVIDIA’s and AMD’s next generation GPUs and we see new competitors for the 9600 GT. The Radeon HD 4850, for as low $165 after mail rebate, has proven to be quite a performer. In fact, it has even brought NVIDIA to reduce its prices and bring the GeForce 9800 GTX down to $200. With this new race in the budget minded category, we wondered where does this leave cards like the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OCX at $150 after mail in rebate?

When the GTX 280 first launched, it retailed for the luxury price of $649. This coming at a time when everyone has already been in the groove of seeing killer >$300 GPUs for quite a while. NVIDIA knew it would be a hard sell, but it was a brand-new launch and one truly worthy of the "ultimate" title.

But then AMD unleashed their HD 4800, which delivered very surprising results. That immediately caused a few quiet price drops of the GTX 260 and 280, so that $649 price tag is a thing of the past. It's unfortunate for those early adopters, because most of the cards can now be found for around $500.

It has been a long time since I've written about notebooks since I've been busy looking at desktop hardware, but I finally had the time to dedicate to one very nice notebook. What I have here today is the Dell XPS M1730 gaming notebook, which is hands down the fastest notebook I have ever laid my hands on. The Dell XPS M1730 has been around since October 2007, so I won't bore you with a review on a notebook that is now over half a year old. What we are looking at today is the new 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor that you have the option to purchase when you pick up one of beasts. When the Dell M1730 first came out it was offered with an Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 at 2.8GHz. What is the difference then you ask? The Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 is built with a 65nm process and has an L2 cache size of 4MB, while the recently released Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 uses a newer 45nm process technology and has an L2 cache size of 6MB. What stands out the most about the transition though is the power savings. The X7900 has a TDP of 44W, while the new X9000 has a TDP of just 35W. Intel has managed to add cache and manage an impressive power reduction thanks to the die shrink. This processor is hands down Intel's fastest notebook CPU for the performance enthusiast, gaming, and multimedia markets. If you crave speed and don't mind Desktop Replacement (DTR) sized notebooks then you are in luck.

Seagate Technoogy, the world's largest producer of hard disk drives (HDDs), on Friday unveiled the world's first hard disk drive with 1.5TB capacity. The new product features four platters with record capacities.

The new Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB (1500GB) hard drive features four 375GB platters, another world's record. Like other leading-edge Seagate HDDs, the novelty sports 7200rpm motor, 16MB or 32MB of cache as well as NCQ technology. The new hard disk drives are designed for Serial ATA-300 interface.

Like all large capacities HDDs, the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB utilizes platters featuring perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR).

ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, said that it would release two versions of its high-end dual-chip ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards to target different market segments. In addition, the company said, it is testing 8-way multi-GPU technology, but has no immediate plans to release the technology commercially.

"The HD 4870 X2 is going to be available in August. There will be two different flavors for that, available at different price points," said Chris Hook, head of desktop platform PR and performance communication, in an interview with Techtree web-site.

Currently little is known about the specifications of the different ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 flavours, but a natural guess would be to expect different memory configurations on two boards. This will allow ATI to address customers with different budgets and be a little more flexible in terms of costs.

From a pure techie/gadget standpoint, the Flip Video product line is nothing special as similar products littered overseas shelves even before the first Flip hit the market. So what make’s the Flip so special? Well, for starters Oprah Winfrey got a hold of it and showed it to her millions of fans. But more importantly, Pure Digital, makers of the Flip, keyed in on the fact that people were starting to make use online video services like YouTube in a big way. Despite the fact that the Flip doesn’t do HD, or heck, even the same quality as a quality compact digital camera, Pure Digital got one thing really right for the YouTube generation: Ease of use.

The darling of all of this might be the $199 HD 4850 card - even though it is using GDDR3 memory it has a very strong showing in our tests and is itself able to compete with the HD 3870 X2 card. If it weren't for NVIDIA's recent price drop on the 9800 GTX and 9800 GTX+ cards to $199-229 the HD 4850 would have been the run-away victor; NVIDIA obviously caught wind of the performance of RV770 and made adjustments in pricing to make themselves competitive again though. In truth the performance of both options is pretty much neck and neck - with a slight edge going to AMD's new RV770-based HD 4850 card.

Roughly a week ago NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 200 series of products. Guru3D already published three separate articles on the GeForce GTX 280, but we figured it's about time to have a look at the little brother of the 280, the GeForce GTX 260. A product that is priced much more aggressively than it's bigger brother at 399 USD.

Obviously we'll have a chat about the differences between the GTX 260 and 280, strip her nekked and show you some photo's, but then it's time for the real deal. Gaming testing performance with the latest gaming titles, some overclocking .. and our verdict.

You can almost hear the fanboys vibrating with excitement over the Radeon HD 4800 series. The buzz has been building for weeks. For the first time in quite a while, AMD would seem to have an unequivocal winner on its hands. Read on for our in-depth take on this impressive new GPU.