(11/06) CRUCIAL RADEON X1300 PRO REVIEW AT ULTIMATE HARDWARE - "Crucial Radeon x1300 Pro 256MB DDR2 tested against the Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT. Step up to 3-D performance and high-definition image quality with the Crucial Radeon X1300 PRO 256MB PCI Express™ graphics card. Combines a radically new and efficient ultra-threaded core architecture with revolutionary Avivo video and visual display technology for enhanced graphics."
(11/06) AMD QUAD FX PLATFORM REVIEW AT TECHREPORT - "The Tech Report has taken a look at AMD's new Quad FX platform, which allows PC enthusiasts to build tweakable, overclocking-friendly systems with dual-socket motherboards in order to achieve a "quad-core" result. In keeping with the quad-core theme, we've tested a range of widely multithreaded applications on a Quad FX system and on an Intel quad-core system, as well. We've also cooked up some new methods of measuring power efficiency that shed a different light on the quad-core proposition."
(11/06) BFG 8800 GTX AND XFX 8800 GTS REVIEW AT RAGE3D - "You know all about it by now; the G80, that MechaGodzilla graphics chip that was the secret response to the R300 surprise kick in the teeth NVIDIA received 4 years ago that set them immediately down a path of utter vengeance. The graphics chip whose entire design process started by replacing the kiddie gloves with a pair of brass knuckles."
(11/06) HIS RADEON X1650 XT ICEQ TURBO REVIEW AT LEGION HARDWARE - "IS has released yet another Radeon graphics card using their IceQ heatsink which is designed and manufactured by Arctic-Cooling. Built around the new Radeon X1650XT GPU the performance of this new graphics card is very good, though we did run into a few small issues. While the Radeon X1650XT is blistering fast for a mid-range contender HIS decided to make their version even faster by boosting the core by 55MHz, but did they go too far and compromise stability."
(11/06) ASUS EAX1950 PRO REVIEW AT AMD ZONE - "After falling behind in 2005 with Crossfire and R580, ATI came out at the start of 2006 strong with the release of the X1950 series of video cards. ATI took the performance and image quality lead but the excitement was dampened a bit with Nvidia's launch of the 7900 and 7600 series of cards just a few months later, not that the cards were necessarily faster (though the mid-range were), but that it was such a perfectly executed launch, with vast numbers of products at retailers all over and cards from numerous OEMs."
(11/06) ASUS GEFORCE 7950GT REVIEW AT AMD ZONE - "The Asus EN7950 GT features 512MB of DDR3 RAM, twice that of the 7900 GT, with the memory clocked at 700MHz (1.4GHz effective). The GPU sees a clock of 550MHz. The 7900 GT clocked in at 400MHz for the GPU and 660MHz for the memory. In addition to that, this card features all 24 pixel shaders and eight vertex shaders, unlike the 7900 GT. While there are a few overclocked versions of the 7950 GT, the version we received from Asus runs at the default clock speeds. We’ll see later on in the benchmarks how it compares to the 7900 GT and 7900 GTX. Another benefit is that all of the 7950 GT video cards include HDCP, which may be a requirement of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, though at this time neither of them use the technology."
(11/06) ASUS EAX1650XT 256MB REVIEW AT HEXUS - "Towards the bottom of this range comes ATi's Radeon X1650XT, which we've already seen in premium overclocked form courtesy the HIS X1650XT IceQ Turbo Dual DL-DVI 256MB. The X1650XT is hardly a low-end specification, though. With 24 pixel units, 8 vertex units, and a reference 575MHz core, the GPU has serious 3D rendering grunt. In fact, the X1650XT only has 8 less pixel shader units than the Radeon X1950 PRO. But it is also restricted by a 128-bit memory path, so although it is equipped with 1350MHz GDDR3 memory, the X1650XT has significantly less bandwidth than its bigger brother."
(11/06) ATI RADEON X1950XTX CROSSFIRE REVIEW AT BJORN3D - "Please join me at Bjorn3D's Southeastern US test facility (my computer room) where we'll take the ATI® X1950XTX CrossFire™ edition to its limits. It is our plan to test this card in comparison with the two fastest single GPU graphics cards currently on the market. Is it a fair test pitting a dual GPU graphics solution against ones with effectively only half the processing power?"
(11/06) S3 ROADMAP REVEALS DX10 AND 10.1 CHIPS AT THE INQUIRER - "DURING COMPUTEX 2005, we had the opportunity to talk with Ken K.S. Weng, General Manager of S3 Graphics. He told us that S3 is skipping the Shader Model 3.0 (DX9.0c) hardware and going straight to Shader Model 4.0 and compliance with DirectX 10 and 10.1 standards in two years time."
(11/06) S3 RELEASE CHROME27 LOW PROFILE DDR2 AT S3 GSTORE - "We are pleased to announce the availability of the newest addition to the Chrome family, the S27 Low Profile DDR2. This board sports 256MB/128bit design, with a 400MHz memory clock for lower power consumption. It also supports the S3 Multichrome technology."
(11/06) HIS X1650XT ICEQ TURBO 256MB REVIEW AT HEXUS - "We took a look at a trio of ATI Radeon X1650 Pro retail cards a few months' ago and surmised that the RV530 architecture, comprising of a 5/4/4 (VS/PS/ROP) configuration and clocked in at 594/1386 core/memory, had a hard time cutting it at around the £90 mark, especially with NVIDIA's GeForce 7600 GS/GT cards providing stern competition and, frankly, a better, more compelling architecture."
(11/06) ATI X1950 PRO CROSSFIRE REVIEW AT TBREAK - "In our opinion, ATI has a pretty decent product with the x1950 Pro. Priced around US$ 200, this card lets you play games at a pretty decent frame rate on a 1600x1200 resolution with some AA and AF enabled. We looked at this card a couple of weeks ago and found it better than the nVidia cards around its price group. Today, we take two of these cards under Crossfire mode and find out if they make a good alternative for a high-end card that costs the same as two of these cards or sometimes higher."
(11/06) GIGABYTE 7900GS TURBOFORCE REVIEW AT MOTHERBOARD.ORG - "GIGABYTE has released a new video card for this price range, the GeForce 7900GS TurboForce card. It should be an interesting review, as the card is overclocked to a very high degree out of the box. What we're looking for in the 7900GS is a high-performance part that isn't going to take out your wallet like the NVIDIA 8800GTX or GTS, but still offer features that matter for today."
(11/06) ATI AND NVIDIA HDCP CARDS REVIEW AT ANANDTECH - "The next-generation movie format wars have begun and although we're far away from crowning a winner, both formats do share one thing in common: codecs. Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD support video content encoded in high-bitrate MPEG-2, H.264 or Microsoft's VC1 format, and decoding any of those formats can be extremely taxing on even the fastest modern day CPUs. GPU makers have been hard at work on offloading as much off the decoding pipeline as possible, and although we're still a couple generations away from full GPU offloaded H.264 decoding there is progress being made today."
(11/06) GIGABYTE GEFORCE 7600GS HDMI REVIEW AT NEOSEEKER - "HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) and HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) have run into a myriad of problems, especially when it comes to connecting high definition devices to personal computers. Computer manufacturers have been late in adapting to HDMI because it simply does not offer much more than DVI for consumers. Justifiably, companies didn't have much to gain from HDMI capabilities since it was created as much for its protection features than its added performance over other mediums. However, it seems now HDMI is reaching further into HD realm in a big way as the larger film studio and software producers try to utilize its unique copy protection to safeguard their content."
(11/06) MSI K9N DIAMOND REVIEW AT HARDWARE SECRETS - "K9N Diamond (a.k.a. MS-7226) is the most high-end socket AM2 motherboard from Gigabyte based on nVidia nForce 590 SLI chipset and targeted to Athlon 64 CPUs supporting DDR2 memory. Its main feature is its on-board audio, controlled by a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE chip – feature not available on competing products. It also features a copper cooler on its north bridge chip and a copper heatsink on its south bridge chip, and they are connected thru a copper heat-pipe. Let’s see how this motherboard from MSI performs."
(11/06) LEADTEK GEFORCE 8800GTS REVIEW AT AMDZONE - "Unlike the 7800 and 7900 series of Nvidia's the GeForce 8800 represents an entire new architectural platform which both in quality and in efficiency easily surpass it's predecessors. Foremost of this new design is a massively parallel, unified shader design for the 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS that eschews the designs of the past and features what Nvidia is calling stream processors. This allows for vertex or pixel or shading functions to be allocated upon need dynamically using what Nvidia has dubbed Gigathread technology allowing for thousands of simultaneous threads and a high utilization of the processors. The 8800 GTX features 128 stream processors running at 1.35GHz and the 8800 GTS 96 stream processors running at 1.2GHz."
(11/06) MSI GEFORCE 8800GTS REVIEW AT TWEAKTOWN - "G80 is clearly the most anticipated GPU update for nVidia for quite some time now and unless you have been living under a rock, you would know why. Previous generation cards like the GeForce 7800 and 7900 series have been more of a speed increase then anything else. While we have seen implementation of new graphics technology built into them they are nothing near as major as what the new GeForce 8800 series brings with it today. DirectX 10 is going to be the platform for gaming over the next few years."
(11/06) NVIDIA G80 GEFORCE 8800 GTX REVIEW AT DAILYTECH - "NVIDIA is set to launch its upcoming G80 GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS graphics cards next week, however, DailyTech snagged a GeForce 8800GTX board to run a couple quick benchmarks on. The GeForce 8800GTX used for testing is equipped with 768MB of GDDR3 video memory on a 384-bit memory bus as previously reported. Core and memory clocks are set at 575 MHz and 900 MHz respectively. Other GeForce 8800 series features include 128-bit HDR with 16x anti-aliasing and NVIDIA’s Quantum Physics Engine."
(11/06) LEADTEK WINFAST PX7950 GT TDH EXTREME REVIEW AT AMDZONE - "As the graphics wars between ATI and Nvidia become increasingly intensive the two companies have tried to plug as many gaps as possible in the market. ATI is most known for pumping out a number of cards and card names with minor differences between them. Nvidia has for the most part stayed out of that but that seems to be changing now with the 6800 GS, 7800 GS, 7900 GTO, 7900 GS, 7950 GX2, and so on. Mid-range graphics cards are an especially competitive market and today we have a new one to look at from Leadtek, the WinFast PX7950 GT TDH Extreme, based off Nvidia's new GeForce 7950 GT."
(11/06) INTEL CORE 2 EXTREME QX6700 PROCESSOR QUAD-CORE REVIEW AT TECHREPORT - "YOU'VE GOTTA LIKE Intel's Core 2 Duo processors. After struggling mightily with performance and power consumption problems in the latter-day Pentiums, Intel came roaring back with the Core 2 Duo, producing a chip that goes like stink without spinning the electric meter into a frenzy. Since it offers a better combination of processing power, energy efficiency, and overclocking headroom than the Athlon 64, the Core 2 Duo has quickly become an enthusiast favorite, capturing prominent spots in our system guide recommendations and prompting a new round of upgrades for many folks."
