The Athlon64 platform has been on the market for quite some time now, yet the choice of good motherboards has been very carce so far, which held up quite a number of people from purchasing a 64-bit platform from AMD. Of course, when we say "good" motherboards, this does not mean only lots of extras, but also good overclocking capabilities. At HWspirit we've tested Asus K8N-E Deluxe to see if it is one of the "good" ones...

Plextor. Plextor, Plextor? Does this brand require any advertisement or explanations? The brand name speaks for itself ? Plextor have always been among the leaders when we talk about optical storage.
The company was one of the first to announce 4x DVD recording drives (504A), and also the first to release on the market an 8x DVD-R drive (708A). Now we have their 12x model in HWspirit's test lab, read how did the Plextor PX-712A DVD Writer perform.

The OmniChrome card is S3's attempt at taking on ATI's All-In-Wonder cards at the lower end of the market. HEXUS.net have a review of the card, finding the TV tuning to be good, along with some nice features such as HDTV input/output and reasonable 3D performance. However, it has quite a few downsides, such as a lack of multi-sampling AA, mono audio tuning and a PCB too big to fit in SFF cases such as Shuttle's XPCs. S3's Product Marketing Manager, Nadeem Mohammad, was given the opportunity to respond to the review.

We have a luxury of choice on the Athlon 64 platform at the moment. HEXUS.net takes a look at a value option from Biostar: a Socket 754 nForce 3 board. It tries to bring a host of features to the table for a low price. From the article:

"BIOSTAR has carved out a niche market in producing budget boards based on most currently available chipsets. Stability, decent performance, and, usually, a sub-£70 asking price has made them a genuine alternative to other companies' boards that often retail at the wrong side of £100. Their associated bundles may not be as esoteric as DFI's and the BIOS often lacks fine-tuning available with, say, ABIT boards, but with S462, S478, and S754 now enjoying true budget processors, BIOSTAR reckons there's a significant market for feature-rich boards that don't break the bank."

Intel's motherboards are not one of the most popular solutions among the home users. And they are especially not popular among the PC enthusiasts, because of their lack of overclocking features. Intel's motherboards are preferred mostly by corporative users that don't need some exotic features or overclocking options, but a guaranteed stable and problem free system. Our purpose with this review is not to compare the particular two Intel motherboards, but to use them just to show the difference between the performance provided by Intel 915G/P chipset using DDR and DDR2 memory. That’s why we are going to compare a configuration using DDR400 (INTEL D915GAV) and DDR2-533 (INTEL D915PBL) memory. Read the review here...

Fuelling the PVR revolution, ATI brings to the market an external TV tuner. Using the USB2.0 interface allows it enough bandwidth to provide a high quality video stream for your viewing pleasure. HEXUS.net have a review: "I prefer the PCI version for latency reasons, but if USB2.0 is the interface you need for a TV tuner and multimedia product without breaking the bank, the TV Wonder USB 2.0 is highly recommended."

Today we bring you a review of a very unique product from ASUS, the ASUS Radeon X600 XT Extreme. Targeted for the HTPC and SFF crowd, the Radeon X600 XT Extreme features both native HDTV output and VIVO capability, two features not usually seen in Radeon X600 cards.

ExtremeTech have thrown up their review of Creative's Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS in a PCMCIA format for notebooks!

The LAN party. It's our generation's bowling/poker/movie night all rolled up in one. Hauling gear to a LAN party can be a real drag (literally), and some gamers have taken to bringing high-end laptops instead. And why not? With GPUs like ATI's Mobility Radeon 9800 available now and nVidia's competitive equivalent coming soon, why wouldn't you want to put all your LAN party gear into a single small backpack? Well, for all the CPU and 3D goodness that has made its way into the mobile set, most mobile audio solutions have hardly evolved at all.

3DVelocity got to take a test-drive of Inno3D's no-frills 6600 offering. If price matters more than bundle then this is one to look at.

This Geforce 6600 is one from a big line of many Geforce chips. NVIDIA always had some outstanding chips in the past, except for a minor set back with the Geforce FX series. This 6 Series seems to get rid of that minor set back, aiming for the crown again.

A new ATX box model has been tested; we are speaking about the new Mercury. This is a very atractive model with an elegant line; It was made in aluminium colour, but there is other model in black colour. It has a tool-free to the instalation and a frontal display of 2". To read the review, click on the image.

The new Intel LGA775 platform is out and in full bloom. The Crucible takes our first look at this platform with Albatron's Mars PX915P Pro Motherboard. If you are looking into the new Intel platform as an upgrade path you need to check out this review.

If you're considering buying a GeForce 6800 plain vanilla card then you should head over to TrustedReviews and check out a comparision between the latest cards from Asus, Galaxy, Leadtek, MSI and XFX which should give you a good idea how these different cards compare. Check it out.

Ok, so you checked out the Intel D925XCV Alderwood motherboard and you are interested in the upgrade but you want something a little more overclocker friendly. Well, if that is the case, the AA8 Duramax is absolutely perfect for your situation. Without a single corner cut, ABIT packed every single enthusiast option they could into their entry into the Alderwood including extensive Windows and BIOS overclocking and monitoring, excellent cooling, industry leading uGuru technology and let's not forget about the onboard high definition 8 channel audio and firewire.

NVIDIA launched their GeForce 6 series of GPUs a while back and now every board partner has their versions of 6800 flavors, most notably the regular 6800. This is the most popular version of NVIDIA?s GeForce 6 family of products - maybe because of the poor chip yields. If you are not aware of this, both NVIDIA and ATI are having a difficult time producing chips for their GT/Ultra and PE line of products, which has led to ridiculous price increases for the aforementioned models from NVIDIA and ATI.

Some people say bigger is better and X-trac seems to believe that when it comes to mouse pads. They have designed one of the biggest mousing surfaces we've ever seen called the X-Trac Ripper XL!

As you might have noticed, we at HardwareHounds had a chance to test out the Coolforce GPU cooler not so long ago. Now, thanks once again to the fine people at Spire coolers, we have the chance to evaluate the next generation...the Coolforce II.

Since the launch of the Athlon 64 platform, however, we reviewed every new motherboard with definite skepticism mixed with hope that our expectations would not only be met, but surpassed. The CPU street prices kept falling and today are even affordable for average unpretentious users. Hell, AMD?s prices are once again even below Intel?s.

ATI have been busily churning out desktop graphics chips in 2005 to meet the changing market conditions and take advantage of process changes - the RV410, chip that powers the new line of Radeon X700 boards, is the fifth desktop chip out of a potential 8 in 2004. Unlike some of the chips that have been produced RV40 is a new configuration of performance and feature elements, with the features being drawn from the slightly more advanced R420 architecture, and performance elements from all over the place!

During the course of the review we gamed, we photo retouched, we did everything possible to try and find fault with this unit. In the end we found that the MX1000 is now the best mouse I've ever used. The MX1000 is very response, accurate and is ultra smooth. Logitech took the MX700 - improved upon it's strengths and addressed its flaws creating what could arguably considered the best mouse in the world.

If you've read any of the speaker reviews on the 'Net you've no doubt realised that good speakers cost good prices. The old addage that you get what you pay for is particularly true when it comes to PC speakers, while those designed to turn your living room into a mini home cinema often carry ludicrous price tags. So what can you do? You're fed up with lifeless, tinny sound but you really don't want to lay down in excess of £150 for the privilege of something that only seems to matter to you when you've got a film, MP3 or music CD on.