GamersBeyond Community Blog

Welcome to our first ever Hardware Monday.This week I will discuss the hardware news and reviews from the previous week. there is no exact layout of the article in mind yet so be patient as I find my direction. and as always you are more than welcomed to leave comments or suggestions in the comments below.

This has been an interesting week in hardware. From Nvidia to Intel to AMD and ASUS there have been some interesting announcements and reviews. Nvidia is in the midst of launching their new lineup of cards, the 9000 series, and the overall acceptance from the media has been pretty low. Intel announces a processor fit for mobile phones that is amazingly inexpensive yet powerful enough to change the way we think about mobile computing. AMD releases their new three core Phenom chip. and ASUS is in development of a 3 GPU videocard to the taste of the ATI 3850 cards.

In Nvidia news we have highs and lows, first the news of more 9000 series cards namely the 9800GTX. too bad the reviews that are flowing in are saying the cards increase in power over the previous generation’s equivalent card is sub par, and definitely lower than the increase in power with the 9600 cards that came out recently (edit: The site I used for this news is down so I will find another and post it shortly). Just as disappointing are some of the results from the first 9800GX2 quad-SLI reviews, showing little or no improvement, in most games over the single card solution.

I feel that these are more of a problem of drivers than technology as the specs should show a definite improvement over the previous generation, Though I am wary of buying a 9000 series card until I know more.

Slightly unrelated to gaming news is the Intel atom processors, small enough to power the ultra portable mobile devices that we look to for our entertainment during our daily commute.

For those that haven’t been keeping up with Intel, it seems that the atom will eventually ship in single and dual core flavors and be available in a wide range of devices from cellphones to actual desktops. although the power shouldn’t be compared to the the dual or quad core processors from Intel’s core series, it will offer an unseen amount of performance at a great price when selling for under $30 per processor.

I have yet to see how well they run so I am saving my criticisms until then though I am always looking for ways to distinguish the uses of PCs from gaming and personal. If Intel can sell an atom pc for uses other than gaming then consumers might not be as confused at what their $200-$500 systems can handle.

From AMD this week we have the releasing of the new quad-core processors and the much anticipated 3-core Phenom processor that seems to hit that sweet spot between power and price. The Phenoms, running at max 65W, are toted as the most energy efficient multi-core processors you can buy, significantly lowering heat and thusly the noise from fans required to cool it. the Phenom x4 9850 seems to rate pretty comparable to the current generation of Intel Q6600 quad-core but ends up using more power and overall underachieving when it comes to games.

It seems that AMD is regaining some steps but with the release of the Yorksfield 45nm chips from Intel, AMD is just too far behind for me to recommend a Phenom purchase unless you are looking for a slightly lower price point and don’t mind that your system will be outdated sooner.

Some interesting AMD/ATI related news comes from ASUS this week with the initial announcement and the spec release of the the new 3-GPU water-cooled Trinity card. built on the Crossfire-X technology the tri-GPU Trinity card from ASUS is shaping up to be one hell of a card.

I am looking forward to see how much punch these cards have, as I am always looking for improvements and technological achievements. Plus I like the idea of a card designed from the ground up to be water cooled, though they are really directing this card at a narrow market.

There are some more links that are worthy of a post but don’t really warrant a dialog, along with resources for this post, in the further reading list of links below. Thank you for trudging through my first real article on this site. In the future I hope to offer more on the means of opinions on hardware once I get to testing and building some rigs with new equipment, until then I will do my best to post information relevant to you gamers that need one place for all the important PC news that you would normally have to find.

Leave your comments below, and if you feel that you could do a better job posting than I am, or just have your own voice that needs an outlet, you are welcome to try. Just shoot me a comment requesting author abilities and I will gladly give you the ability to post your own articles or opinions.