Without a doubt, Comdex 2003 was the most unspectacular Comdex I’ve ever been to. I was honestly expecting that the show would rebound this year now that it had new ownership and the economy has been turning around. In addition, I was getting e-mails and calls left and right as early as September asking me to schedule a meeting.
I learned later from NVIDIA’s Diane Vanasse that it was probably because companies were desperate for people to show up at their booth/suite. I had thought it was because meetings were being booked quickly – a good indicator of recovery. It was only a few years ago that you had to book things a month in advance at the latest. By the time Wednesday (the day before Comdex ended) had hit, I think I could have walked in to all of my meetings unannounced. MSI told me this would be their last year at Comdex. Boy how times have changed.
As a result, the Consumer Electronics Show will now be the North American show you can’t miss. We haven’t reported from CES since the Xbox announcement nearly two years ago. With Bill Gates rumored to announce more details on the next generation Xbox at CES 2004, something tells me I’ll be packing my bags for Vegas once again a little over a month from now. If all else fails, I’ll probably camp out in front of one of the plasma displays. Having that media pass has its privileges after all…
And as for Comdex, I’m pretty much ready to play TAPS for the show. Unless a breakthrough product is announced at Comdex 2004, I don’t think it will be worth attending, despite all the cool goodies. Farewell Comdex, I hardly knew thee.
Phenom II Gets A New Revision: 125W AMD Phenom II X4 965 Performance Preview
Promising lower power consumption, lower temps, and most importantly for enthusiasts, more OC'ing, AMD is back with a new CPU revision for the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, which now boasts a 125W TDP. Is AMD able to deliver on their promises though? Find out in today's article!
Shattered Horizon Review
FutureMark, well known for their popular 3DMark benchmarks, is venturing into new territory with Shattered Horizon. This multiplayer shooter is perhaps best known for its system requirements -- the game supports DX10 only -- but there's more underneath the surface of this game than fancy visuals. Is it worth its $20 price tag though? Read Vandy's take inside!
Borderlands PC Review
Is it an RPG or is it an FPS? Borderlands blends the best elements of both in one entertaining package. Vandy has spent the past week playing the PC version of the game and came away rather impressed. Read his full thoughts on the game in today's review!
AMD Athlon II X3 435/Athlon II X2 240e Performance Preview
Today AMD is introducing 8 new Athlon II CPUs intended to service different segments of the budget CPU market. For HTPC users, new 45W dual, triple, and quad core offerings should deliver good performance along with low power, while performance junkies on a budget will want to look at AMD's new Athlon II X3 CPUs. See how the new chips stack up in terms of performance and OC'ing in this article!
EVGA P55 FTW Review
Looking for a good P55 motherboard to OC your CPU beyond 4GHz? If so, you may want to check out EVGA's P55 FTW. With its extra ATX12V connector, this motherboard can send up to 600W of juice to the CPU, and it's got more voltage settings in BIOS than 95% of the general public needs. But that's just barely scratching the surface of what this board can do. Check out today's review for the full details!
ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview
With prices ranging from $109-$159, ATI's Radeon 5700 series of cards bring DX11 gaming to mainstream price points and usher in new levels of energy efficiency. But are they powerful enough to dethrone ATI's Radeon 4800 series cards? Yes and no. Read today's article for more info!
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Review
While it's not the true sequel to Operation Flashpoint, Dragon Rising is billed as a modern tactical sim just like its predecessor. Does it live up to these claims? Read Vandy's take in today's review!
Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX Features and Performance
One eye candy feature PC users can enjoy over the console edition of Batman: AA is PhysX. Rocksteady's PhysX implementation is more than just tearing cloth and added objects too, although that's of course in there. Vandy goes over the features and performance of PhysX in Batman: AA in this article!
ATI Radeon 5850 Performance Preview
Not everyone's got $400 to spend on a shiny new Radeon 5870 card, which is why it can be argued that ATI's Radeon 5850 is the more relevant GPU for a lot of gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Based on the same DX11 RV870 architecture as the 5870, the 5850 delivers next-generation performance in a smaller, more efficient package, and most importantly it's priced for less than $300. ATI pitches it as their answer to the GeForce GTX 285...See how it compares in this article!
Overclocking the Radeon HD 5870
We weren't satisfied with the 900MHz core/1300MHz memory speeds we hit last week with our Radeon 5870 boards. We wanted to see how far ATI's latest flagship GPU could be pushed, and how well it could perform at those speeds. We also wanted to see which component delivered better performance results: OC'ing the memory, or OC'ing the GPU?
Fortunately thanks to AMD's GPU Clock Tool, we now have unlimited speeds on tap for OC'ing. Is 1GHz within reach? Find out in today's article!
Is it over for Comdex or is Brandon being overdramatic? What did you think of the Sharp 3D notebook, or the Sapphire/Koolance connection? Speak up in the news comments section!
Water-cooled Sapphire card
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
SU
furl
