Monday Hardware Reviews

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Just because it's a budget board doesn't mean you have to settle for poor performance and a complete lack of features. The DFI NF4 SLI Infinity will prove that! Sure the bundle is a little light, and there aren't the typical extras like dual Gigabit LAN. What you'll get instead is a solid performer with a reduced price tag that doesn't come with a slew of features that will go unnoticed, or a big bundle that will get put in the closet and forgot about. No, the DFI NF4 SLI Infinity has only the bare essentials to get your system up and running. Taking advantage of the dual video card SLI configuration was true Plug and Play! Matched with the gaming prowess of an AMD Athlon64 "San Diego" 3700+ - I built, I overclocked, and I benched. Why not go see the results...

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Tell me, isn't that one of the purdiest boards you've seen seen since the Soyo Dragon KT400 Platinum? I "borrowed" the full board pics from Sapphire since the top is pretty reflective and honestly, their shot looks better than any that I took of the full top. I think I would have to cut a window in the motherboard tray and right side of the case just to show off the nice Sapphire logo on the bottom of the board.

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OCZ has managed to provide perfectly for both platforms with high speed DDR-2 for the Pentium 4 market, and low latency, high speed DDR for the AMD64. The modules work well, no stability issues were noticed, the extra voltage is handy for overclocking and as always the OCZ modules are stylish and attractive in appearance.

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Lots of memory manufacturers have tried their hand at custom heat spreaders, but most don't usually make much of a noticeable difference. Being the innovators that OCZ are, they have delivered a very unique new spreader, that incorporates a honeycomb design to aide with better heat transfer. We are taking a look at their Gold GX PC3200 1GB kit.

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If you're running air cooling on a 915P/925X based motherboard with a Pentium 4 5xx series processor, this kit may not make a whole lot of sense. Otherwise, owners of 955X or nForce 4 SLI boards with a Pentium Extreme Edition will want to give this kit a close look.

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My game play is all about Battlefield 2 right now. The OCZ EL-DDR PC4000 Gold Edition kit has proved without a doubt to me that two gigs are a very worthwhile investment for gamers. You could get a rough feel for this in our graph but within a game, you get the emotionally positive feedback that does not translate well into rote figures and results. If you are not a gamer, I think you may be better off saving your upgrade dollar right now as the benefit isn't earth shattering elsewhere.

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With the latest stepping of the dual core processor series, AMD dishes up the Manchester core to set new standards in energy efficiency and price/performance ratio. Taking advantage of the proverbial excellent gaming and floating point performance and stripping the dual cores of 50% of their hard-earned cache in combination with a frequency sweet spot of 2.0 GHz results in a killer CPU at a reasonable price tag. Arguably, there are cheaper processors on the market, there are faster cores out there (as measured in clock frequency) and there are "the others" but after wrapping up this review, there is nothing out there that combines that many positive features as the Manchester running at 2.0 GHz, using the moniker Athlon X2 3800+

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As a reviewer it is easy to always use the high-end stuff you get to review and forget about the mid-end and even low-end cards. Today though, I will test the Albatron 6600GT, a mid-level performance card that promises a nice performance/price ratio. I'm also testing it in SLI-configuration to see if it is worth getting a second GeForce6600GT instead of buying a completely new card.

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There is no way I am going to put this card down. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this card if you consider its' targeted consumer genre. This card is meant to be a value based premium graphics card with exceptional cooling and overclocking potential. What more could you ask for when you are laying down US$139. Sure there might be cheaper, but I bet it isn't as loaded as this model. If you are in the market for a cheap, yet superb value videocard, give this one a try. The overclocking and cooling alone are worth it in my mind..

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Feature-wise, nothing really comes close to the AIW X800XL as an all around product. If your space is limited in your PCI Express based setup and you're in need of a TV tuner and decent gaming card, the AIW X800XL is tough to beat. The multiple inputs, covering the different cable budgets, an easy to use software package and FM tuner makes it relatively easy to setup a multimedia (or at least a multipupose) box.

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Another day sees another graphics card and this one comes in the shape of the newly released Radeon X1800XL from Gigabyte. This is our first sample to be tested with the new official ATI Catalyst drivers with the previous X1800XL we looked at was still running pre-released non-WHQL drivers.

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The ATI All-In-Wonder X1800 XL isn't all about games of course, and the main selling point really is the X1800 XL combined with the myriad of multimedia features put into the product. Simply put, nobody from NVIDIA, Hauppage, Matrox, S3 or anywhere offers anything close to what the AIW family, let alone the AIW X1800 XL can offer.

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With the All-In-Wonder X1800XL ATI has created a card that sits just as confortable in a MediaPC as a gaming-PC. Support for both analogue and DVB-T channels as well as true RGBScart, DVI, VGA and Component output makes it an ideal card for anyone who wants to get the best possible image to their TV.

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One example of what the GeForce 7800GT is capable of is Asus' EN7800GT 2DHTV/256M/OSP/A PCI Express x16 videocard. Built with the massive 320 million transistor GeForce 7800GT 'G70' core, the Asus EN7800GT packs in 256MB of GDDR3 memory. The card supports nVidia's Scalable Link Interface (SLI) for dual videocard gaming like all current generation nVIDIA parts. The bright blue videocard incorporates twin DVI connectors so users can attach digital LCD displays. Component output (HDTV, Y, Pb, Pr) and S-Video output comes standard via a breakout-box. The software package includes a couple of games and some multimedia applications.