Weekend Reviews

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Hardware Avenue have today reviewed ASUS’s high end ATi solution, the ASUS Radeon X800XT PE AGP Videocard. Naturally, the main selling point is the raw power of the X800XT, but does ASUS have the touch to make their implementation standout?

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While I recommend spending at least $150 or $200 on a video card if you want to really get into games, what about those of us who aren't into the gaming scene as much, and whose gaming endeavors may be limited to playing the occasional round of UT or Quake 3? What if you don't even care about games, and just want a video card with a few nice features for a cheap price? Why should those people spend $150-200 on a video card? That's why today we're looking at ATi's Radeon 9250, on a board made by our friends at PowerColor.

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Top notch stability is the thing that impresses me the most about the SK8T800 motherboard. While the "non-pro" release of the VIA K8T800 chipset isn't known for its overclocking ability, the chipset does have a very up-to-date feature list, which includes Serial-ATA 150 with RAID-0 and RAID-1 capability. Chaintech has adopted the chipset onto a solid workstation/entry-level home PC motherboard that is second to none in value. With an available market price of $64, it couldn't be more affordable to put a 64-bit processor on your desktop!

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A new trend is forming, memory companies are starting to back away from ludicrous overclocking speeds, and starting to concentrate on making non overclocking memory that is better and faster. We've taken a looks at some incredible PC3200 in the last couple weeks from companies such as OCZ, Corsair and Crucial, now we take a look at what PQI (formerly PMI) has to offer!

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I was pleasantly surprised with the decent showing of PDP System's Patriot PC3200. Though not aimed towards the over-clocker, the Patriot PC3200 is quite a contender among value RAM. The Patriot PC3200 retails around ~$70 a 512MB stick, but is often on sale for ~$50, at which the memory is a steal. While not as solid a performer as the OCZ Premiere PC3200, for half the price, the Patriot PC3200 is a can't miss for builders on a budget. Not to mention a 165MHz over-clock isn't that bad for budget RAM. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this memory to someone on a budget or someone who doesn't need the best performing RAM on the market.

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The design is much like ATI’s reference board, except they went with a blue PCB and a cool little thumb rest at the top of the card to assist in card insertion. The good thing about this design is that the entire card only takes up 1 slot. A cool feature that this card has is the thermal sensing fan on its heatsink. When the card is not in use the fan will slow down and you will not hear it. When the GPU gets hot, you can hear the fan getting louder.

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Well it's been a long time coming, but over the last 70 days, we have finally collected enough motherboards to make up a "shootout" review! Okay, so we have a grand total of FOUR, but that pretty much represents the entire 925x market right now. We look at all the high-end boards from Abit, Gigabyte, and Foxconn. And we have also included the latest version of DFI's Lanparty! The 925x-T2! Our 'shootout' review is more like four separate motherboard reviews put together, so you won't miss out on anything! Check it out for 21 pages of high end motherboard goodness!