While 24 bit capabilities are becoming standard fare in mid-tier sound cards, not all vendors make the jump from 16 bits on equal footing. Our tests show whether or not Hercules' 24 bit Fortissimo 4 sinks or swims against other cards for less than $100.

Tom's Hardware Guide

Pentium 4 processors provide good performance, especially with picture editing or sound when SSE instructions are used efficiently, but have a rather high thermal dissipation. This is especially true since the release of the Pentium 4 90-nm « Prescott ». So, is this the trade-off you get if you want to put together a platform based on Intel processor? No, because now there is processor for your desktop originally meant only for laptops, the Pentium M. Behardware.com has written an article about this processor, which will also interest laptop owners eager to know their processor?s real performance compared to other architectures.

Enthusiasts often go to great lengths to customize their PC cases. From windows to neon lights, for many, their customized PC is a reflection of their personality. Today VR-Zone brings you a review of the Matrix Orbital MX424 front-panel LCD screen. Is this a worthy accessory to your customized case? Come and take a closer look.

Like it or not , the latest hard drive technologies aren't nearly as flashy as those from the processor, graphics, or even chipset worlds. Hard drives occasionally get a spindle speed or cache size boost, but for the most part, they're only treated to expanding storage capacity?not that more storage capacity is a bad thing; it's just not that exciting.

A while back, power supplies were one of the ignored components in the system, and they were one of the dullest topics to talk about. These days, however, we can?t say the same anymore. Now, system builders pay close attention to the power supply they are getting and its specifications.

It's now been two months since Half Life 2's release and much to everyone's surprise, the game was far from a GPU hog. The more powerful your graphics card, the better everything looked and the smoother everything ran, but even people with GeForce4 MXs are able to enjoy Valve's long awaited masterpiece. Immediately upon its release we looked closely at the impacts of GPUs on Half Life 2 performance in Parts I and II of our Half Life 2 coverage. Part I focused on the performance of High End DirectX 9 class GPUs, while Part II focused on mid-range GPUs as well as the previous generation of DirectX 8 class GPUs. Anandtech

What better way to mark the return of new content at HTPCnews.com after their long holiday break and a mention in Popular Science magazine than a full scale editorial on what people can / should expect from their HTPC's? They have been working on this piece on and off since November 24, 2004 and finally feel that it's ready for the public eye. This is a must read for any HTPC user, new or old.

AnandTech takes a look at (and in) the new Mac mini, iLife '05 and iWork...

Weeks before MacWorld San Francisco there were rumors appearing about a "headless Mac", an ultra cheap Mac offered without a monitor. The first thing that came to mind was an Apple version of an eMachines system. Interestingly enough however, the rumors also stated that it was an attempt from Apple to get iPod users to give Mac OS X a try. It sounded odd at the time...

OC-Service.com has just posted the 64 bits for desktop PCs! Here's a snip.

It is the fact that Advanced Micro Devices, which is also known as AMD introduced 64 bit technology processors that was previously only used with servers. Thanks to this, AMD became the winner of the best desktop Pcs processors competition. Few days later, Intel introduced the new version of P4 called Extreme Edition but it did not take the AMD's place.

There are hundreds of different styles of mice on the market today that do a hundred different things. The big question is: what do you need your mouse to do for you? Today, we are taking a look at I-rocks? Beetle mouse. A nice solid mouse that performs very well, without a lot of fancy add-ons.

With cellular telephones and internet voice chat becoming more and more popular, people realize that while enjoying these two communication applications, they are unfortunately tethered to either their cellphone or their computer via a wired headset. Although in most cases this might not be a huge concern, but after a while you will realize that you could doing other things rather than being tied down to your computer, or you could be talking over you cellphone without having that annoying separate headset wire constantly catching onto your clothing and uncomfortably ripping itself out of your ear.

MBReview has taken a look at Foxconn's top Pentium 4 offering to date, the 925XE7AA-8EKRS2. This motherboard is based off of the Intel i925XE chipset, supporting 800MHz / 1066MHz FSB processors. The board comes with a stellar product package, and offers solid performance, though it is lacking a little when it comes to the BIOS. Looking for an i925XE motherboard? Head over and take a look!

The video card is benchmarked with an entire list of games and Synthetic benchmark tools. Games: Unreal Tournament 2004, Far Cry, Doom 3, CounterStrike Source, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 1, Need for Speed Underground 2, Colin McRae Rally 2005, GT Racing (GTR) Demo, Ford Racing 3 Demo, Shade Wrath of Angels Demo and The Punisher Demo. Synthetic benchmark tools: 3DMark01SE, 3DMark03 build 3.5.0 and 3DMark05 build 1.0.0

Gigabyte is here with the second SLI capable motherboard to the PCP labs. How does it compare to the A8N-SLI?

PC Perspective

Shuttle's latest creation, the SB77G5, puts a Canterwood motherboard with LGA775 (Socket-T) into the G5 chassis. The G5 is already quite popular in the form of the SN95G5, a Socket 939 AMD64 based PC. HEXUS.net have a review of the new SFF PC, and while performance is good, an AMD based SFF system could be more appealing to gamers.

In XtremeNews we had published a new review testing the CaseBuy EZ Power Supply Tester; It´s an easy-to-use and very practical accesorie that allow us to check the status on our power supply and detect any damage. If you want to know more about EZ Power Supple test, click here

We finally procured a motherboard based on NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI technology earlier this month. Armed with two GeForce 6600 GT's that were provided by NVIDIA and eVGA, Clay Angelly, aka Dr. Frankenstein, takes his "new" system for a spin.

Razer has been making high precision mice for gamers since 1999. Razer now has made a dual surface mouse pad. It's large like other "gamer" pads if you will, but does have one unique feature, two sides with differing surfaces. One is geared for "control" and the other for "speed." Continue on for my thoughts and impressions of Razer's first endeavor into the mouse pad world...

One of Intel´s latest CPU runs at 1.6ghz, no there is no typo here, the Pentium M normally intended for laptops have been given a chance to shine in desktop systems also with the help of resourceful motherboard manufactures. The Madshrimps take a closer look at DFI´s offering to see how far they can overclock this new "Dothan" CPU.

The Aerocool Spiral Galaxies is a quality made Case; there was never any doubt about that. The "screw-less" design makes installation a breeze. The issues we ran into were related to the non standard Form Factor that everyone is trying to copy while using ATX hardware. Aerocool delivered a quality product, its flaws while not entirely Aerocools' fault can be attributed to the sudo BTX standard implementation.