Unless you've been living under rock in a cave deep underground for the last year, you'll probably have heard all the bells and whistles of NVIDIA's Scalable Link Interface or SLI for short. Despite all the marketing buzz around it, SLI is not for everyone. After one year of existence, SLI is getting easier to use and enjoys more widespread use, both among developers and gamers alike. In this article, we talk about why performance should never be the main reason for buying SLI - one fast card is still way better than two slow cards.

Do you want an overall view of Intel and AMD's current products from the Sempron to the Pentium Extreme Edition to the Athlon 64? Here is a performance comparison of 40 CPUs!

A survey of 40 Intel and AMD processors

On 18th January Nvidia announced new addition to its seventh series GPUs - the 7300 GS model which is aimed at the budget segment. Its recommended price will be $99 for USA and 99 Euro for Europe accordingly.

A forum member at [H]ardForum has already received his X1900XT video card and has uploaded a bunch of pics of the box, card, packaging, etc... Care to see the X1900XT before it's even launched?

3DChipset

Windows Vista is coming. If you plan on moving to the new Microsoft OS, or are simply curious, we offer our tips and strategies on how to build a system that will run Vista effectively.

ExtremeTech

It seems like something is brewing over at ATi to fight against the Quad SLI technology from NVIDIA. Right now, ASUS strong R&D team has managed to come out with a EAX1600-DUAL card featuring two X1600 GPUs on a single PCB with Crossfire enabled. Like ASUS, Gigabyte is also researching on this area with X1600, X1800 and even the upcoming X1900 series.

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WE WERE eagerly awaitiing the first review of the 7300GS to pop up when suddenly HKEPC tests four such cards from Asus, Gigabyte, Leadtek and MSI. "TheInquirer"

DFI Company is very well-known for its overclocking friendly mainboards on NVIDIA nForce4 chipsets. Now they have got down to building a similar solution around the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset from ATI. Will the new mainboard be also to repeat the success of its predecessors? Our extensive testing will reveal the exciting details.

It's been over a year since my PC was last upgraded. Like many of the folks that visit nV News, I also upgrade my own system. This approach gives us more choices for procuring new components and becomes a rewarding experience after the upgrade is complete.

Sapphire appears to have leaked details on ATI's upcoming Radeon X1900 series graphics cards. According to card specs available on the company's web site, the Radeon X1900 XTX will have 48 pixel pipelines and be clocked at 650MHz core and 1.5GHz memory.

AMD new series of processors based on Socket M2 will be launching in April timeframe and all the motherboard makers are getting ready for the Socket M2 motherboards.

NVIDIA is announcing two new chipsets for the Intel platform, aimed mainly at the mainstream and budget markets. You won't find quad SLI systems in here, though maybe you'll find a new system for mom?

PC Perspective

It seems like the AOpen i975Xa-YDG is ready for SLI too where OC.com.tw has done some interesting testing on this board using 2 x 7800 GTX cards in SLI mode.

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Visit any popular discussion board on the internet related to computers and operating system and eventually a comment will arise which implies that Macs are expensive. Kelly McNeill submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews which clarifies a long held misunderstanding that Macs are priced out of sync with the rest of the computing industry.

Now that the industry is focused on Blu-Ray and HD DVD, we thought it would be interesting to see what media manufacturers had to say about the dual-layer standard that was all over the news in 2004 and 2005. Back in 2005, we reported that many media and drive manufacturers believed dual-layer to be a fairly stagnant standard, which wasn't going to take off.

Macworld 2006 will always be remembered as the event where Apple launched its first Intel-based Macintosh hardware. The MacBook Pro is the hottest of the products to be launched, and in classic FiringSquad fashion, when no one was paying attention, Alan Dang snuck in one exclusive benchmark comparing the MacBook Pro against an IBM ThinkPad.

FiringSquad

DFI, a world leader in stable and high performance corporate desktop motherboard solutions, today launched the highly anticipated RS482 Infinity motherboard. Designed for the new AMD Socket 939 platform, the RS482 Infinity features ATI Radeon Xpress 200/SB450 chipset, which comes with X300 graphic core built-in, and features support for DDR400 memory in dual channel mode, S-Video TV-out, HDTV, DVI-D, 16-pipe PCI-Express video cards. HardwareXL has more

While Intel is busy bringing its next processor generation, based on the Merom core, up to speed, AMD is adding the final touches to its DDR2-based Socket M2 Athlon 64 platform, TG Daily has learned. AMD is preparing 12 M2 processors for Q2 launch, spanning the Athlon 64, X2, FX and Sempron series of CPUs. Part of the launch will be an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and an Athlon 64 FX-62 chip.

Intel has an interesting launch on their latest Centrino Duo mobile technology over at Hard Rock Cafe earlier this week and we are pleased to hear from Gary Willihnganz, the Director of Marketing from Intel Technology Asia sharing with us the direction of the new platform. "Intel is focused on creating an innovative mobile computing platform that ushers in a new era of working, playing and living," he said. Gary also added that the Intel Centrino Duo Mobile Technology platform creates a new leap in how people work and play, taking advantage of a new generation of uses and experiences. VR-Zone

Our friends over at HKEPC posted some interesting information on the NVIDIA Quad SLI technology through an interview with NVIDIA desktop chipset manager, George Myers. Apparently, the SLI technology on the Gigabyte 3D1 and ASUS Extreme DUAL cards is different from the Quad SLI technology.

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