Wed Hardware Reviews

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Today we are looking at something special from PowerColor. Something overclockers will drool at. What if I told you we have a card equipped with its own liquid cooling system? That's right, it's the first card ever to be coupled with Thermaltake's TideWater system. No other AIB used this type of solution before. The card I'm referring to is PowerColor X800 GT EVO based on R480. Let me tell you, it rocks like crazy in our system! Don't mistake it with Mitsubishi Lancer EVO, although I have to say video chipzillas and vendors are using more and more fancy names to attract customers.

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From a performance standpoint, game experiences were consistently higher than a 6600GT, although in some games it was a close call. Doom 3 was happy to run at 1280x1024 although this was without any AntiAliasing or Anisotropic filtering.

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The HIS X800GT that we've had in the shop performed well for a mid-range contender. While it's performance wasn't outstanding, it brought in playable frame rates and decent image quality, just like the 6600GT's that we've seen. However, with ATi's Crossfire technology not quite out in the open yet and nVidia's SLI already close to a year old, you won't be running a dual card setup with the X800GT just yet.

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NVIDIA captured our attention with their launch of "G70" an evolutionary, if not revolutionary graphics core. The top end model was the 7800 GTX, and unlike what we've seen from their Canadian counterparts, NVIDIA had the products on store shelves the very same day they were launched. Fast-forward to now: Manufacturers have had some time to play around with their designs, and we're starting to see some interesting products. Today we're reviewing teh 7800GTX Extreme from Leadtek. They used a Quadro heatsink, and gave it a nice overclock.

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So who is this videocard targeted for? It is getting harder and harder to say really. Seems that ATI is going to try to stick as many two letter version releases at the end of the X800 line before it is rendered obsolete in the upcoming months. If you were thinking because of the GT tag that this card is an enthusiast card, you will quickly that it is indeed a low to mid-range mainstream card. Does this mean it is a slacker?....... Oh HELLLLLL no..

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MSI videocards are traditionally some of the best on the market, largely because the company bundles the most value into its products by including lots and lots of extras. The MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E PCI Express videocards we'll be testing in this review, in single and SLI mode, each come with a full version of the highly popular "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay" video game.

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Our second review today is of PowerColor's brand new Radeon X800GT EVO graphics card which comes with factory out-of-the-box watercooling. The watercooling unit is actually the ThermalTake Tide Water cooling solution and its clear PowerColor is making moves to get into the hearts of enthusiasts but have they succeeded? Read on for our thoughts on the new graphics card.

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A quick look at the specifications reveals that the 7800 GT is a slightly crippled 7800 GTX, which actually is not a bad thing if you are a 7800 GT. Although the GT has less power under the hood, it still performs quite well when compared to the GTX. Follow along and keep reading to learn about the first retail GT offering to hit our test benches - the Gigabyte GV-NX78T256V-B.

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In Today's world, let's face it, you simply need more ram capacity to allocate to the every increasing resource eating applications and game titles in the current market's. Take the smash hit game Battlefield 2 for instance, this game simply runs better with 2048 MB of ram, no ifs ands or buts. If you are a fan of this game and want the absolute premium performance then invest in at least another gig of ram or simply purchase a dual channel 2 GB kit such as the Mushkin eXtreme Performance 2GB XP4000 Dual Channel pack.

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It is hard for me to find a negative with this memory. Its ran very well at its rated speed, overclocked extremely well, looks great, and is priced in line with other modules in its class.

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Trying to find the "right" memory for one's PC is a difficult task, what with all the different brands and speeds to choose from for both Intel and AMD platforms. On the test block today is a 1GB set of dual channel DDR from Crucial. Sold under the Crucial Ballistix name, this pair of 512MB PC4000 DDR modules have been well received by the enthusiast community. The 184 pin (unbuffered, non ECC) DDR DIMMs are dual channel compatible and have a default rated speed of 250 MHz, or PC4000. Default timings are very conservative at 3-4-4-8. To reach an overclocked speed of 250 MHz, the memory is rated for use with voltages as high as 2.8V.

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In regards to the Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400 PRO itself, the memory is Corsair's usual high quality stuff. Performance is on par with the Ballistix kit, winning some, losing some, and is a good overclocker. This is pretty important for those of you still using 915P/925X based boards where 533MHz is the current official ceiling, so there's plenty of headroom to move upwards. One thing to point out though is your overclocking success will vary depending on the hardware setup you have.