Review The basic version of Nvidia’s new nForce 790i chipset is the 790i SLI, with the 790i Ultra SLI coming in at the top of the line. Both chipsets have nearly identical features lists and they both support the latest 45nm Intel Core 2 'Penryn' processors.
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Review You've always felt you haven't got the full gaming experience, right? You wanna wear the armour, carry the weaponry... that kind of thing. The 3rd Space FPS sensory gaming vest might be of interest then.
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Review AMD’s 700-series chipsets covers all the motherboard options that a gamer could require for the quad-core Phenom processor. There’s the 790FX with support for CrossFireX to handle three or four graphics cards, the 790X that does CrossFire with two cards, and the 770 that combines Phenom with a single PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 slot.
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Review Everything about the Mesh Ultimate Q8 is imposing. The black CoolerMaster 832 aluminium case is 62cm long and 53 cm tall, and, according to our bathroom scales, weighs in at 22kg.
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Review Intel’s old V8 gaming system used a chipset to support a pair of quad-core processors and a single PCI Express graphics card. Now the chip giant has added support for multiple graphics cards. The result: a new gaming board, Skulltrail.
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Review Everything about the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card is big, including the model name, so we’re going to stick to calling it the X2 here.
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Review The headline feature of the Asus EN8800GT 1GB is - as the name suggests - the fact that it packs in 1GB of GDDR 3 memory instead of the 512MB that you’ll find on standard GeForce 8800 GT-based graphics cards.
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Review Throughout last year, we ran a steady stream of news about the AMD’s Phenom quad-core processor, mainly because the chip was delayed. When the launch finally took place, AMD took us to Warsaw where we were told again and again about the virtues of its Spider platform: a combination of a Phenom processor, a motherboard with an AMD 790 chipset and a pair of ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards.
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Review Nvidia’s new nForce 780i SLI chipset is heavily – that’s HEAVILY – based on the nForce 680i SLI, adding just two key new features. The first is support for 45nm Intel 'Penryn' processors and the second is the addition of PCI Express 2.0 for top graphics performance. It’s safe to say that the 780i SLI is Nvidia’s answer to Intel’s X38 chipset, but it’s not a direct comparison as Nvidia is sticking with DDR 2 memory instead of making the shift to DDR 3.
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Review The basic version of the 17in laptop Xtreme X770 packed GeForce 8700M graphics. Rock recently offered GeForce 7950 Go GTX graphics with 512MB of dedicated GDDR 3 memory to give your games more oomph, but that’s history now, ‘cause the GeForce 8800M GTX is here.
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Review The AMD ATI Radeon HD 3850 uses the same chip as the HD 3870 with the core and memory clock speeds reduced from 775MHz and 2250MHz to 668MHz and 1650MHz. But the really big difference is the 600MHz gap in the memory speed because AMD has chosen to run the 3850 on 256MB of GDDR 3 while the 3870 gets 512MB of the Full Monty GDDR 4.
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Review The GeForce 8800 GT slipped into Nvidia’s line-up towards the top of the range by offering similar performance to the existing 8800 GTS with 320MB of memory. This was achieved with an updated version of the 'G80' chip called 'G92', which moved the fabrication process to 65nm, changed the memory controller, raised the core speed and increased the number of unified shaders - or Stream Processors.
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Review At first glance, Asus' P5E-VM HDMI looks like a regular Micro-ATX design with the usual crop of integrated features. But when you take a good close look you’ll see just how much Asus has managed to cram in.
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2007's Top Products Intel has been busy sending out a batch of 'Penryn' Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processors to every tech site in the known universe, and if you take a look at some of the reviews that have popped up you’ll spot a common theme. The QX9770 is the first desktop processor to run on a 1600MHz frontside bus (FSB) but right now there are no desktop chipsets that support this new speed.
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Review AMD's ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT wasn’t a bad graphics chip but it spent too long in development and failed to take the fight to Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 series. But after a quick die-shrink from 80nm to 55nm, the Radeon HD 2900 XT has been reborn as the Radeon HD 3870.
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Review Nvidia’s new 'G92' graphics chip is based on the 'G80' used in the GTS, GTX and Ultra versions of the GeForce 8800, and is a die-shrink that moves from the part from its predecessors' 90nm fabrication process to 65nm.
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Review Intel’s 45nm 'Penryn' update for its Core 2 microprocessor family has been an open secret for many months. It's first desktop incarnation, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650, is due to be formally introduced on 12 November, but today we can tell you how it will perform.
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Review The Pro is the current feature-packed flagship of Abit's P35 range of motherboards based around - surprise, surprise - Intel's P35 chipset, and supports Intel's range of 1333, 1066 and 800MHz frontside processors, including the Core 2 Extreme, the Core 2 Quad and the Core 2 Duo.
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Review Intel’s new X38 chipset sweeps aside the elderly 975X and storms to the front of the queue as the natural choice for anyone building or upgrading a Core 2 Duo, Quad or Extreme PC. In essence, the X38 is a souped-up P35 with added support for the next-gen 1600MHz frontside bus (FSB) as well as Intel’s 45nm 'Penryn'.
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Review The vast majority of PCs use integrated graphics instead of an add-in graphics card and therein lies a problem. If you want the wow factor of the Aero interface in Windows Vista then you need a reasonable level of graphics performance, even if you have no desire to play games on your PC.
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Review Earlier this week, we reviewed the impressive yet ridiculously expensive Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850. Now it's the turn of another processor Intel announced this week, one that you can actually afford, the Core 2 Duo E6750.
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Review Intel is getting ready to move to a new generation of processors on a 45nm fabrication process, but that hasn't stopped it from squeezing some more performance out of its existing, 65nm chips. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 3GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6850 with the chip giant's brand new 1333MHz frontside bus.
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UK Exclusive Review Manufacturers love to cram extra features into every part of a PC, but it comes as a surprise that Gigabyte - making its debut in the PSU biz - has managed the same trick with its new Odin GT 800W power supply.
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Review We've waited a long time for AMD's ATI Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 graphics chips. Although they were launched in May alongside the HD 2900 XT - reviewed here - it's only now that these budget and mid-range parts have gone on sale.
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Review Intel has been dancing all over AMD's financials with its Core 2 processors for the past year and it's keeping up the pressure, most recently with the Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and, more intriguingly, it's product-that-isn't-a-product, the V8 platform.
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Review Nvidia has never been shy about slicing and dicing its product line-up to meet the needs of specific groups of the graphics-card buying public with the result that you can buy its flagship DirectX 10 GeForce 8800 chip in a number of versions.
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Review Hitachi's 'world's first' 3.5in terabyte desktop hard drive looks much like any other hard drive currently available, but it packs in five platters and ten read/write heads for an exceptional data storage capacity.
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Review AMD/ATI has been working on its DirectX 10 graphics chip, codenamed 'R600', for an awfully long time, which is somewhat surprising when you consider that this is its second-generation DirectX 10 part. The first was the Xenos chip that powers Microsoft's Xbox 360 games console.
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Review For some time, Nvidia's 600 family of chipsets has had a gaping chasm between the nForce 650i SLI, which typically sells for £90, and the nForce 680i SLI, which starts at £165. Enter the 680i LT SLI chipset, a budget version of the 680i SLI.
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Review Nvidia stole a march on ATi when it launched the DirectX 10 GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX chips back in October 2006. Even though the G80/8800 was a powerhouse of a chip we wondered who exactly would spend the thick end of £400 on a single graphics card or £800 on a pair of the things in SLI.
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