Tuesday Hardware Reviews

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When it comes to videocards, a souped-up deluxe version that caters towards enthusiasts is usually the best bet. This is all well and good, but sometimes just a few extra features are all we really need. Overclocking is nice, but with a videocard forming the basis of a home theatre system, overclocking isn't a very important consideration. With that in mind, PCstats will be putting the Asus eXtreme EAX600XT videocard through its paces today. The card is based on the ATI Radeon X600XT graphics processor, which allows it to bridge the gap between PC and home entertainment with a little thing we like to call 'HDTV.

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The question everyone has been asking is which graphics card is the best, the Nvidia 6800 Ultra or the ATI X800 XT. There is no real answer to this. The differences in performance between the two chips are so small that it is rarely noticeable by the average gamer, but Nvidia appears to hold a slight lead. If you have a beefy power supply that puts out more than 480-watts of power, go with the MSI NX6800 Ultra which is based on the Nvidia 6800 chip. But if you are a loyal ATI fan or you are worried about not having enough power to run the Nvidia based card, then the MSI RX800 is the card for you. Either way, you will not be disappointed by what you get.

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The Albatron Trinity PCX 5750 would be the perfect card for someone in need of a videocard which is faster than budget, but not as expensive as mainstream. The card was always completely stable during normal use and oddly during overclocking and I never once had one single artifact throughout my extensive gaming and benchmarking. The card took a licking and kept on ticking. Image quality was always very good, gaming speed was acceptable if you keep out of the games full of eye candy and the card was very easy to install and setup.

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The Mobility X800 proved to be able to play some of the most current game tittles. We played Doom3, FarCry, and Half-Life 2 on the Mobility X800 at 1600x1200 and the games were smooth. In Half-Life 2 playing at 1024x768 with 4xAA & 8xAF we got over 60FPS, which is amazing for a notebook...

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Gainward's GeForce 6800 GT Ultra/2400 Golden Sample Goes Like Hell 256MB is a fast and furious card that will ultimately appeal to the enthusiast who desires clock speed above all else. In that respect, it's a decent effort. Forget that it's named a GT; that's just clever marketing. The only question you really need to ask yourself when contemplating a video card at this end of the market is whether an NV40-based 400/1200-clocked card is worth £380 of your hard-earned money. If it is, it's well worth considering.

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The Galaxy GeForce 6600 is a great card for those on a tight budget, but still looking for a good PC gaming experience. It handles all of todays games very well without sacrificing image quality or features. My only gripe is with the card's simple cooling solution which will hinder any worthwhile overclocking gains. It seems like RAM-sinks would be of great benefit to realize this potential.

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Today we are taking a look at the GeForce 6200 reference graphics card from nVidia which is designed to take on ATI's Radeon X300 in the low-end PCI Express VGA marketplace. After taking a detailed look at the GPU and graphics card, we compare in our usual array of benchmarks against an older GeForce PCX5900 and Radeon X300. You might be surprised by the budget gaming performance like we were.

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Being the older brother in my family, I have always seemed to pick on my little brother, from as far back as I can remember. I had always thought that being the little brother probably sucked while growing up. But Leadtek has changed my mind about that. The Winfast A400 TDH, their name for the GeForce 6800, makes being the little brother not so bad after all.

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If you've been following our SLI article series, you'll have seen the intro and 6800 Ultra performance, and 6800 GT performance articles. That leaves one loose end to tie up in terms of SLI performance; 6600 GT. Today's article will wrap everything up, examining the cheapest of the SLI card pairs and digging deeper into the question of price-performance to check if SLI is worth investing in from a value-for-money point of view.

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OCZ's Platinum line of ram is primarily aimed at hardcore overclockers and their PC4200 is no exception. With a default bus speed of 200 MHz, today's AMD systems require their buses overclocked by at least 33% to even reach the advertised speeds of the ram. The advantage to buying such high speed ram is that when overclocking you are eliminating one more component that can hold you back from maximizing your systems speed.

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Corsair´s second foray into Samsung TCCD modules brings about higher levels of performance onto the DDR scene. Validating the ram for both Intel
and AMD Athlon 64 platforms at timings of Cas 2.5 4:4:8 with 2.75v there is certainly the promise of memory Valhalla.

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Once again Corsair has raised the bar and has delivered a product worthy of our Editor's Choice Award. For the many people, including myself, that are stuggling to achieve AMD64 1:1 overclocks the answer is here - Corsair XMS4400C25.

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PQI makes a wide range of DDR / DDR2 / Flash memory products that fit everyone from the budget consumer to the performance enthusiast. Today we are taking a look at the PQI4000-1024DBL TURBOmemory modules. These memory modules are rated to run at DDR 500MHz (PC4000) with better than average latency timings of 2.5-3-3-7, and have a mirrored black copper heat spreaders. Also worth mentioning is that this memory carries a lifetime warranty.

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While there have been many reviews on DDR2, I fear early reviews forthe new standard were unconsciously prejudicial. While PCIe/DDR2 technology continues to experience growing pains, Corsair has done an excellent jobwith what is arguably the fastest memory on the market.

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Over the next few pages PCstats will be testing out a set of Corsair TwinX 1024-3200XL DDR 512MB memory modules, using the above-mentioned 2-2-2-5 memory timings at 200MHz. Sweet memory, indeed. These chips sport Corsair's standard black aluminium heat spreaders. If you're into overclocking, you'll be interested to hear that Corsair's own internal tests show this DDR RAM is capable of running up to 250 MHz, with timings of 2.5-3-3-7 (with a modest voltage increase)!