Our flagship motherboard comparison announcement was answered with an interesting selection of models, along with a bunch of “not ready yet” responses. Today we examine a few samples from companies bold...
Forty-two PCIe lanes give the 990FX a clear connectivity lead over competing Intel chipsets. We compare five class-leading products using AMD's FX-8150 to see which offers the best combination of performance,...
With the pending release of the Intel X79 Sandy Bridge-E platform slated for November, manufacturers have begun readying their motherboards and here is a sneak peak of a few.
AMD’s 1 GB Radeon HD 6950s are certainly cheaper than their 2 GB predecessors. But are they really a better value? In theory, the Cayman GPU runs out of steam before 2 GB is needed. So, we're comparing five...
Targeting inexperienced tuners with easy-to-use buttons, several motherboard vendors now provide one-touch overclocking technologies that take away the guesswork. We examine the ease, effectiveness, and safety...
Big changes to a few components radically alter the performance profile of every machine in this quarter's competition. We’ve already seen how these changes affect the value of each machine, but how will they...
Falling memory prices make it easier to spend our $2000 budget on the fastest available components. How much faster is a pair of GeForce GTX 580s than two Radeon HD 6970 cards? Noticeably. But is the value any...
A real enthusiast chipset deserves a real enthusiast motherboard. Today we're comparing four feature-packed platforms that most folks who call themselves hardcore (and informed enough to know what hardware...
Advanced on-board graphics put AMD’s Llano-based APU far ahead of Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture, at least when it comes to 3D apps. But you’ll still need a new motherboard to support the Socket FM1...
Today we put four factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 580 cards to the test: Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 580 Super Overclock, MSI’s N580GTX Twin Frozr II/OC, Calibre’s X580 Captain, and Zotac’s GeForce GTX 580...
There are numerous graphics cards in the range between $100 and $250, but which of them delivers the best bang for your buck? Which is the most efficient or least noisy product related to its performance? We...
Value-oriented system builders celebrate new-found performance and features as Intel continues pushing its mainstream platform towards the high-end. Today, we draw a line in the sand and consider five...
AMD’s Brazos platform, driven by the Zacate APU, offers a lot of performance per watt. It comes up short on features, though. Eight manufacturers try to change that perception by adding slots, controllers,...
With so little happening in the hardware world since the beginning of this year, our second-quarter System Builder Marathon sees only minor hardware changes. But each builder unquestionably comes closer to...
This quarter, we're keeping the Core i5-2500K processor from our previous build, but we're adding a pair of Radeon HD 6850s in CrossFire. How will those two boards stand up against the modified Radeon HD 6950...
Exclusive: Unwilling to divulge details on Gigabyte's first multi-touch accessory, we had to jump through a few hoops to get an early look on the company's latest gaming mouse: the Aivia Xenon.
When it comes to PC form factors, they don't get much larger than XL-ATX. Just how large is Gigabyte's new super-sized G1.Assassin motherboard? Follow along as we walk you through our custom build (with four...
Intel reserved its most feature-rich LGA 1155 platform for (or four?) months past the launch of its Sandy Bridge-based processors, but was it worth the wait? We compare three upper-mainstream Z68 examples to a...
Day 4 of our System Builder Marathon compares performance achieved to money spent. With outright speed the top priority, can either of our high-end systems beat the low-cost build when it comes to value? Or...