Graphics Cards, PC Monitors And Computer Audio Reviews And News
The sights and sounds of the modern computing experience are driven by key user interface technologies like graphics cards, display monitors and various audio solutions. Here you'll find reviews and news on the latest in cutting-technologies for GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), LED and LCD computer display monitors, sound cards, PC and wireless speaker systems and more.
There's nothing more exciting about PC building than when it's time for the mighty graphics card. The last few years have certainly been a roller coaster ride of availability and pricing changes, however. These uncertainties can easily confuse even the most seasoned PC builders. As we approach the holiday shopping...
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PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7600: Starting At $289 The PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7600 offers a mild factory overclock, LED lighting, and a couple of additional tricks over AMD's reference card. Dual-BIOS Setup Built-In LED Switch Attractive Design Factory Overclocked OC Offers Minor Performance Boost...
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Gaming headsets, in an effort to stand out from regular headphones, often sport flamboyant designs with harsh angles, polygonal shapes, and RGB LEDs. However, this styling trend can put off some gamers who have more subdued tastes or simply don’t like the stealth-fighter-Christmas-tree look. Fortunately, HyperX...
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HP is hoping to offer gamers the best of both world with its Omen X Emperium 65. Although HP is careful not to call the Omen X Emperium 65 a television, per se, there's no escaping that fact that this is a massive display that would be more at home in your living room, den, or bonus room than your average...
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A few weeks back, we gave you our initial take on the retail-ready HTC Vive virtual reality kit. While we were able to explain the Vive’s specifications, setup, configuration, and give some opinions on the experience, at that point, we hadn’t had the kit long enough to form any solid, concrete opinions. We had experience with multiple versions...
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Whether or not this latest push for virtual reality resonates with consumers and brings the technology into the mainstream remains to be seen. But it appears that all of the major players in the space, from the GPU manufacturers, to game developers, and VR leaders like HTC, Oculus, Samsung and Sony (among others) are...
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When Blizzard announced that they were splitting Starcraft II into three titles, Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void, the general reaction from fans was controversial. The fear was that Blizzard would pad out the contents of each game with busywork missions and red-herring plot devices, while charging full price for...
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Diablo 3 players don't need any more bad news. The game is already staggering from a debut marred by enormous lag spikes, dropped games, and auction house errors. Now, widespread allegations of hacking are taking further chunks out of Blizzard's hide. This time though, there's an added twist: A significant number of those hacked claimed to...
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It has been a few months since the AMD Radeon HD 6990 initially launched. Since that time, a number of AMD’s board partners have launched their own Radeon HD 6990 cards, but as is typically the case with the first wave of products based on a new GPU, they all conform to AMD’s reference design, save for a water-cooled card from...
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How should you go about determining what size monitor to buy? It's simple - go out and purchase the biggest, baddest display you can afford, because really, you only get one shot at this thing called life, so why waste it staring at a 23-inch panel? If you're still not convinced, consider that, more than any other component in your entire...
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With the recent run of newer and more affordable graphics cards from ATI, it's almost easy to forget that there's already a sub-$200 frame-rate cruncher called the Radeon HD 4850. Based on the same RV770 chip as the more powerful, yet more expensive HD 4870, the HD 4850 ships with the same 800 stream processors, 40 texture...
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While high-end workstation graphics cards may be based on roughly the same core architectures as gaming-targeted graphics cards, their purposes in life are very different. While they both accomplish the same task, processing commands and rendering images on-screen, workstation cards endure a more...
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Quick! Name that one piece of PC hardware that will automatically garner the most "oohs" and "aahs" from enthusiasts and casual-users alike. No, it's probably not the glow-in-the-dark water cooling system or bright LEDs shining from the multiple fans in your windowed case. The quickest path to glory is buying a brand new, flat, large, widescreen...
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If you have ever been in the market for a graphics card, you are undoubtedly familiar with the constantly changing graphics card market. About every 8-10 months, new GPUs are introduced by NVIDIA and ATI, and after their introduction, dozens of graphics cards built by their add in board partners come to market. Because these add in board partners...
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For the average business-class user, extra RAM, a faster processor or a more powerful video card won't necessarily increase work efficiency or productivity. One of the best ways to boost your productivity is to add more inches, of screen real estate that is. If you simply add another monitor or get a bigger one, you can quickly realize...
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About a month ago, we had the privilege of reviewing HIS' Radeon X1950 Pro, a mainstream oriented graphics card that performed well, but we felt ultimately came up short against the similarly priced GeForce 7950 GT. The model we received was outfitted with an oversized cooler dubbed the...
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A few weeks ago, we looked at the HIS Radeon X1950 Pro IceQ3 Turbo, a mainstream graphics card set to do battle with the GeForce 7900GS in the $200 price segment. Based on the RV570 GPU, the X1950 Pro brought a host of features to the table including native CrossFire. While X1950 Pro is a good performer for a great price, some of us were left...
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ATI made quite a splash a few weeks ago, with the introduction of the Radeon X1950 Pro. The RV570 GPU at the heart of the X1950 card is manufactured on TSMC's 80nm node. It's equipped with 36 pixel shader processors, 8 vertex shader units and 12 texture units. ATI's reference design calls for a 575MHz GPU clock and with...
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Not long ago, when we reviewed MSI's GeForce 7600 GT, the closest ATI-based competitor available was the Radeon X1600 Pro. It was far from an apples-to-apples comparison from a technical standpoint, however. While both models sported the same number of Pixel and Vertex Shaders and had similar prices, the X1600 Pro's...
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As power users, we'd all love to own one, or perhaps even two, of today's latest and greatest graphics cards. But wanting to own the best and having the means to do so are two totally different things. Lucky for us, there are usually a multitude of products that fall in just behind the top-of-the-line that tend to offer similar...
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As the old saying goes, "It's better to burn out than to fade away". This holds true when we think about AGP graphics cards. While PCI-Express has certainly gained a lot of ground, AGP is not ready to die just yet. Virtually any video card manufacturer you look at is still offering AGP based graphics solutions,...
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In January we took a look at the HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo because it piqued our interest with its somewhat unique cooling solution. HIS took a page from the book of "OTES", which stands for Outside Thermal Exhaust System, a thermal management approach pioneered by Abit Computer, that has been out on the market in various...
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