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.

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.

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.

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

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

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...

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

For our second runner-up this month, we opted for a low-end card for those people looking for something affordable, but also with decent performance and features.

Want to skip the Christmas crowds, or nab a once in a lifetime bargain? Online shopping could be the answer. Tim Dean looks at the glory and the pitfalls.

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

One of the top performing cards in our round-up, the Sapphire was also an award contender this month. It was the fastest overall RADEON 9800 PRO card, and gave the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards a real run for their money, which is especially impressive as it's $100 cheaper than the Leadtek A350 5900 Ultra.

As the technology is getting more mature, there is now an abundance of 802.11b cards on the market.

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.

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.

Gigacube is a brand we haven't seen in the Labs before, but the RADEON 9800 PRO card managed a decent showing.

In this line of work, there's really nothing quite like the all-too-occasional experience of opening a box from Apple, and unveiling the shiny wonders squirreled away inside. In fact, it's the only event that never fails to draw all and sundry AJB staff from throughout the office into the Labs to catch a glimpse of what the tech company with only 3 percent market share worldwide has managed to innovate this time.

Discover if your bank is leaving serious security holes or lacks cutting-edge features in our in-depth analysis of online banking.

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

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.