Looking to build your dream machine? We explore the latest components on the market, and give you advice on which ones to hunt down, along with the general price you can expect to pay for each major component.

An old PC is like putty in your hands. Tim Dean looks at how you can shape it into a new system with a few easy upgrades.

The Centrino platform has just received a major revision. Tim Dean peers inside Sonoma and takes a look at what we can expect.

Squeeze that extra bit of power out of your existing hardware. Tim Dean looks at the principles of overclocking and examines the potential performance increase.

Blistering speed in 3D and a multitude of multimedia features makes the 3500 an excellent card for video enthusiasts and gamers alike.

The poorest performing GeForce FX 5600 card, AOpen's offering features average performance, most comparable to the mid-point between the 9200 and 9600 graphics adaptors.

It was tough deciding an overall winner for this Labs. There can be no doubt - if you're looking for brute speed, then the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and RADEON 9800 PRO are the obvious choices, but we're not prepared to make a winner out of a graphics card that costs close to $1,000. For this reason, we've chosen the card we believe delivers the best balance of performance and price - which turns out to be the GeForce FX 5600.

There is quite simply no holding nVidia back. Hot on the heels of the top-performance GeForce2 GTS chipset, with its capacity for up to 64Mb of fast DDR...

Another of the RADEON 9200 cards in this round-up. Returning almost identical results to the Auriga 9200, this is an average performer, bundled with an outdated game.

We received two different versions of this card during our testing, with the only difference being the housing and cooler system used.

It's to the video game arm of the Star Wars franchise what "The Phantom Menace" was to the films.

Tim Dean explores the jargon and acronyms of monitor technology in our monthly tech term glossary.

Underneath all the speculation and marketing hype, the Cell processor might actually herald a revolution in computing. Tim Dean investigates.

The Asus GeForce FX 5900 features an interesting heat sink arrangement that effectively cools the core and RAM, adding to overclocking potential.

Even though the PowerColor R9800 PRO has the default core clock and memory speeds for the RADEON 9800 PRO, it ended up being the lowest scoring 9800 PRO reviewed.

Each of the FX5600s in our round-up this month struggled to compete with the Labs Winner's results, options and price.

You would be excused from having the word 'hot' pop into your head when you first set eyes on the Gainward FX 5900.

Another RADEON 9800 PRO-based card, the SmartVGA is designed for hardcore framerate gamers. In performance terms, the SmartVGA is only slightly, albeit consistently, behind the Hercules 9800 PRO.

As it's essentially based on the older RADEON 9000 with AGP 8x, don't expect any groundbreaking performance from this GPU.

Missing out on an award by a hair's breadth, MSI blew the other cards away in most departments.