The Quadro FX3000 is based on the same NV35 core that powers the latest GeForce FX 5900 cards, but with a few new additions to cater to the professional market. Compared to the older Quadro FX2000, which was based on the NV30, or GeForce FX5800, the FX3000 has double the memory, at 256MB, as well as a 256-bit memory interface, giving double the theoretical graphics bandwidth, hitting just over 27GB/s. It also supports other features from the NV35, including a 128-bit floating-point precision graphics pipeline, 128-bit colour, 12-bit sub-pixel accuracy, 16x full-scene anti-aliasing, 3D volumetric textures, and of course support for all the latest OpenGL, DirectX and NVIDIA’s own Cg graphics language versions.

nVidia GeForce 256

Improved handling of templates, tracing, text and layers along with new table support, but ultimately X4 disappoints

Gigabyte is much better known as a manufacturer of motherboards than it is 3D graphics cards. It has, however, tried its hand with reasonable success - in the consumer graphics market, and the GF-3200TF is its latest offering.

The 720’s features make it a winner. But the high price reflects Map Share: which isn’t available in Australia

The notebook winner this month was a close call. Two units stood out as being at the top of the multimedia field: the Pioneer D47K and the Acer Aspire 1802WSM. Feature-by-feature they were very closely matched, but we chose the Pioneer for several reasons, one of which was its advanced media capabilities.

HP’s latest PC blends power, useful business features and a keen eye for detail

Acer's latest Aspire has the familiar Acer look we've come to expect in recent months but with a few nice tweaks.

Red Hat's latest offering is a finely tuned offensive into the lucrative corporate desktop market. With the Linux steamroller on a collision course for Redmond the last year has seen a number of major wins for the open source upstart with corporations such as IBM and governments that include Germany, France, China, Japan, Russia and Britain either already making the switch or considering it. And not just for servers, but on workstations too.

After the launch of the latest Acrobat a few months ago, everything went quiet on the Adobe front. It's now clear what the company was working on, with the simultaneous launch of each of its main creative design packages -- Photoshop/ImageReady, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive. (Please see individual reviews of all of these packages on this month's cover CD.)

By sticking with the same intuitive management console, the latest version of Computer Associates' (CA) antivirus software remains notably easy to use, and has increased its coverage by adding new virus-scanning capabilities for PDAs, plug-ins for a variety of gateways, and protection options for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino. You also get remote browser access and the option to designate secondary signature servers, which clients will use if the primary distribution server fails.

With advanced packages such as the latest Photoshop (to be reviewed next month) Adobe is the leading software developer when it comes to traditional graphic design...

Sony’s new laptop sports a Blu-ray writer and one of Intel’s latest Penryn processors, but it’s overpriced.

Gateway has made a habit recently of bolstering its offerings in the sub-$2,000 space and this latest model is certainly no exception.

Non-destructive image processing and creative filters feature in this comprehensive upgrade to the market leader.

When Dell shook the Pocket PC world with the aggressively priced Axim X5 (March 2003, page 41), its rivals could always point out that the X5 was bulkier and uglier than their devices. With its latest Axim, however, Dell has produced a slimmer, more attractive model without compromising on spec, features or price.

Your PC is only as good as your last upgrade, and this is truer than ever with current gaming and software applications milking machines for everything they're worth.

FreeHand has had a long, distinguished career since its launch 15 years ago, but time has caught up with it. While Macromedia concentrated development on its Web-oriented MX applications, FreeHand was put on the back burner and fell seriously behind its main rivals CorelDRAW (see issue 60, p54) and Adobe Illustrator (see issue 51, p88). So, is this latest release evidence of further decline, or has FreeHand finally risen to the challenge?

An HDMI-equipped board ideal for small media-centre systems

Intel has promised that Hyper-Threading (HT) will deliver increased efficiency and decrease the amount of time taken to accomplish multiple processes. But is it really all that it’s cracked up to be?