November 23, 2007

The LifeBook S6510 by Fujitsu was released on Wednesday. It's a 4-pound version of its 14-inch LifeBook which is one pound lighter then the normal 5-pound weight. The new LifeBook is designed with thinner and lighter components and underscores the growing preference toward lighter laptops across all categories.

November 1, 2005

Anandtech has published a review of the new Sony DRU-810A DVD recorder. Based on an entirely new chipset from Philips, this DVD burner features 16x DVD+R recording, 8x DVD+RW recording, 8x DVD+R DL recording, 16x DVD-R recording, 6x DVD-RW recording, 8x DVD-R DL recording, 48x CD-R recording, 32x CD-RW recording, 16x DVD-ROM reading, and 48x CD-ROM reading. See how it performs in various benchmarks against other top of the line DVD burners.

August 26, 2005

Tom's Hardware has published complete coverage of the Fall 2005 Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Topics covered include the new virtualization technology (VT), new dual-core CPUs, energy efficient CPUs with five times better performance per watt of energy usage, WiMAX wireless networking chips, the VIIV digital media architecture, SATA II, the Intel partnership with Skype, and much more.

August 7, 2005

LaptopLogic.com has published a review of the new Toshiba Satellite M45 notebook PC. Features include an Intel Pentium-M 730 CPU at 1.6 Ghz with 2MB L2 Cache and 533 FSB, Intel 915GM Express chipset, Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG (802.11b/g), 15.4" WXGA 1280 x 800 TruBrite LCD, Hitachi ATA-5 80GB hard drive at 4200RPM, 512MB DDR333 PC2700 SO-DIMM RAM (maximum 2GB), Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, S-Video TV-Out port, 4x DVD+RW DVD Burner, Integrated V.90 Modem, Ethernet 10BASE-T/1000BASE-TX Ethernet, Memory Card Reader, i.LINK IEEE 1394, and more.

August 6, 2005

Just in time for school, manufacturers are now offering PC notebooks with prices below $500, after rebates. Some of these notebooks are the Dell Inspiron 1200, the Toshiba Satellite A85-S1072, and the Acer AS3502WLCi.

August 6, 2005

Anandtech has published a review of the new Plextor PX-740A DVD burner. Among the features of this product are: 16 DVD+R writing, 8x DVD+RW writing, 8x DVD+R DL writing, 16x DVD-R writing, 6x DVD-RW writing, 4x DVD-R DL writing, 48x CD-R writing, 32x CD-RW writing, 16x DVD-ROM reading, 48x CD-ROM reading, 2MB buffer, and more.

July 6, 2005

AnandTech has published a comparison and review of seven top nForce4 Ultra motherboards. They include the Epox 9NPA+, the Biostar NF4UL-A9, the Winfast NF4UK8AA, the Abit Fatal1ty AN8, the DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D, the ECS KN1 Extreme, and the Chaintech VNF4-Ultra. The article compares the features of these products as well as testing them in a number of general, synthetic, media encoding, and gaming benchmarks.

June 27, 2005

AnandTech has published a review of AMD's new Athlon 64 FX-57 processor. Clocked at 2.8 GHz, it is the fastest single-core CPU available in the PC marketplace. See how it performs in a number of system, synthetic, rendering, multimedia, and gaming benchmarks.

June 22, 2005

NVIDIA has just released their new NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX graphics card, and a number of tech sites have published reviews of it. The card has a number of new features compared to previous NVIDIA cards, in addition to being faster. The reviews look closely at the card as well as perform the usual system, synthetic, and gaming benchmarks.

June 14, 2005

HardwareZone has published a massive 22 page comparison and review of the seven top RADEON X800 XL graphics cards. The cards reviewed were the Elsa Falcox PX80 XL, the GeCube RADEON X800 XL, the Gigabyte GV-RX80L256V, the HIS X800 XL IceQ II Turbo, the MSI RX800 XL-VT2D256E, the PowerColor RADEON X800 XL, and the Sapphire RADEON X800 XL Ultimate. See how these cards compare in terms of features and performance in a number of synthetic and gaming benchmarks.

June 9, 2005

Seagate Technologies has announced ten new hard drives, part of their new Momentus line, including the first drive to use perpendicular recording storage technology. The drives include a 8 GB one-inch drive for portable media players and a 500 GB drive for servers and home entertainment systems. Another new Seagate drive, the Momentus 5400 FDE (Full Disc Encryption), features transparent hardware-based encryption for protecting data in case of notebook theft. Perhaps the most intruiging of these new drives is the Momentus 5400.3, a 2.5" notebook drive that stores 160 GB of data using perpendicular recording.

June 8, 2005

AnandTech has published a review of ATI's new Mobility Radeon X800 XT notebook graphics chipset. One major difference between the Mobility Radeon X800 XT chpset and the previous Mobility Radeon X800 is that the newer chipset has 16 pixel pipelines instead of 12. This makes the X800 XT just as powerful as most desktop graphics cards from ATI. To evaluate performance, benchmark tests of Half Life 2, Doom 3, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory were conducted on an Alienware Area-51M 7700 notebook containing a 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 1 GB of RAM, and of course an ATI Mobility Radeon X800 XT graphics chipset.

June 7, 2005

Tom's Hardware has published a comparison and review of six bestselling 19" LCD monitors. These include the AG Neovo X19AV, the Sony SDM-HS94, the Sony SDM-HS94P, the NEC Multisync 1970GX, the LG 1940P, and the LG L1980U. The article compares these LCD monitors in terms of design, features, ergonomics, display quality, delta tracking, contrast stability, spatial uniformity, latency, and more.

June 4, 2005

HotHardware.com has published a review of the Compaq Presario V4000 notebook PC. Features of the Presario V4000 include an Intel 90nm Dothan Pentium-M processor with 2MB on-die L2 cache and a 533 MHz FSB, an Intel 915 chipset, up to 2 GB of RAM, Intel Graphic Media Accelerator 900, an internal 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, or 100GB Ultra ATA hard disk, a choice of CD/DVD burners, 10/100 Ethernet, Intel Wireless 2200BG (802.11 b/g) or Broadcom 802.11/b/g WiFi card, 56K v.92 fax modem, 15.4" WXGA TFT LCD 1280 x 800 pixel display, AC'97 2.3 audio, a weight starting at 6.45 pounds, 2 PCMCIA slots, an S-video out port, an SD/MS/MSPro/MMC/SM/XD memory card reader, four USB 2.0/1.1 ports, and one Firewire port.

June 2, 2005

AnandTech and Phoronix continue with Day 3 coverage of the Computex 2005 trade show from Taiwan. This time they take a look at a number of new hardware products including new graphics cards and motherboards from Albatron, the Sapphire liquid metal cooled graphics card, new motherboards and small form factor PCs from Biostar, the FIC and Intel Mac mini-like PC clone, new BTX form factor motherboards from a number of manufacturers, new RAID 3 and RAID 6 storage solutions, as well as LCD displays from BenQ, Sampo, and AG Neovo.

June 1, 2005

Tom's Hardware, Phoronix, and AnandTech have published Day 2 coverage of the Computex 2005 trade show in Taiwan. New hardware covered includes the Gigabyte i-RAM card, the new ULi M1695 chipset for the Athlon 64, even more information on the NVIDIA G70, more details on ATI CrossFire and R520 graphics technology, the new Shuttle XPC SN26P small form factor PC with SLI capability, new water cooling subsystems, dozens of new motherboards, the Cypress CSC-200 HDTV scaler/deinterlacer, the NetBox PC from Foxconn, the IWill DPMax2 dual Opteron small form factor PC, the Momitsu HD DVD player, the PQI mPack portable multimedia player, Sapphire liquid metal cooled video cards, the Shuttle M1000 personal video recorder and multimedia center, and more.

June 1, 2005

ATI Technologies has announced that their new Radeon R520 graphics processor features hardware accelerated H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) decoding. The H.264 compression format is used on forthcoming HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movie titles, and is twice as efficient at compressing video as MPEG-2, the current standard.

May 31, 2005

Several tech review sites have posted coverage of the first day at the Computex 2005 trade show in Taiwan. New hardware covered includes BTX Athlon 64 motherboards, the NVIDIA G70 GPU, affordable SLI motherboards, dual NVIDIA 6800 Ultra GPU graphics cards from Gigabyte and ASUS, the ATI R520 GPU with hardware H.264 video decoding, ATI CrossFire multi-GPU technology, new nForce4 motherboards, the Athlon 64 X2 dual-core CPU, IWill's new H8502 8-way / 16-core AMD Opteron servers, the Intel 945 and 955 chipsets, new small form factor (SFF) PCs with SLI support, the ECS PF88 motherboard (which supports Pentium 4, Pentium D, Pentium M, Athlon 64, X2 and Turion 64 CPUs), Mio GPS devices, Turion 64 notebook PCs, the RX800 combination AGP and PCI Express graphics card, TwinHan HDTV tuner cards, XGI Volari 8300 and Volari 8600 graphics cards, and more.

May 31, 2005

Prototypes of a Mac mini look-alike PC were on display at the Computex trade show in Taiwan this week. The machines use Intel Pentium M processors and run Microsoft Windows. The company is trying to inspire PC manufacturers to adopt the design in order to better compete with Apple's Mac mini.

May 31, 2005

A number of tech review sites have published articles detailing ATI's new CrossFire multi-GPU rendering technology. CrossFire supports several methods to load balance graphics rendering among multiple graphics processors, including SuperTiling, Scissor, and Alternative Frame Rendering. All game titles benefit from CrossFire right out of the box, because the ATI drivers can adaptively select the most efficient method based on the game title being played. The articles also benchmark several game titles, look at other features like the new Super AA anti-aliasing modes, and compare CrossFire to NVIDIA's SLI technology.