3D Cards : 3D Tweaks
The first place to start tweaking is your BIOS. Enter your BIOS by hitting a key combination on system boot (look out for F1, Del etc). A word of warning though, the BIOS is a very powerful tool, but can cause damage if pushed the wrong way.
ABIT Siluro FX5200
Bringing up the rear, the Siluro consistently scored fewer marks than all other cards in our round-up, half that of even the second-lowest scoring card.
Alias MAYA 5
Maya, from Alias (previously known as Alias | Wavefront) has long been a big name in 3D animation, but after receiving an Academy Award, things look set to get even bigger. Now in its fifth incarnation, Maya should be even better than before, so what's new?
AOPEN FX 5600
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.
APACER audio steno BP300
Take the Xiro internals, pop them in a groovy egg-shaped casing, lose the dodgy controls, put one-touch buttons where they are needed, add a quality pair of headphones with built in volume control and what do you have? The Apacer BP300.
ASUS V9950 TD FX5900
The Asus GeForce FX 5900 features an interesting heat sink arrangement that effectively cools the core and RAM, adding to overclocking potential.
AURIGA 9800 PRO
Auriga's offering to the 9800 PRO market returned rather inconsistent results.
Auriga Excalibur 9200
At its very reasonable price, the Excalibur 9200 is ideal for anyone on a budget or in search of an upgrade.
CREATIVE 3D Blaster 5 RX 9600
The RADEON 9600 is a funny beast. Technologically it is quite advanced, although it suffers from slightly limited memory bandwidth.
CREATIVE RX 9800 PRO
The RX 9800 PRO is another card based on the RADEON 9800 PRO GPU that returned reasonable default resolution results, but slipped under in higher resolution synthetic benchmarking.
DELL LATITUDE D500
Slightly less sturdy than previous Dell models we have seen, the D500 is finished in attractive silver bezel housing, the keyboard is comfortable to use and offers all the functionality of standard-sized desktop keyboards.
EPSON EMP-S1
Before we even delve into this projector's specs, the most important and standout metric with the EMP-S1 is its extremely humble $1,999 price tag, which when compared to the usual $5-10K standard for home cinema, puts the EMP-S1 well within reach of people for whom home video projection was merely a dream.
GAINWARD FX5900
You would be excused from having the word 'hot' pop into your head when you first set eyes on the Gainward FX 5900.
GIGABYTE RADEON 9200
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.
GIGACUBE ATI 9800 PRO
Gigacube is a brand we haven't seen in the Labs before, but the RADEON 9800 PRO card managed a decent showing.
HERCULES 3DProphet 9600 PRO
The RADEON 9600 PRO was an interesting chip when it came to the 3DMark2001SE Pro tests. It actually performed better at high resolution than low resolution at default settings.
HERCULES 3DProphet 9800 PRO
The Hercules RADEON 9800 PRO managed some very impressive scores in 3DMark2001SE Pro at high and low resolutions, and again in 3DMark03, although it suffered a little at high resolutions.
Hitachi DZ-MV350E DVD
Hitachi pioneered the concept of recording digital video direct to DVD . Now into its third generation of DVD cameras, a few competitors have appeared on the horizon with its first generation models
HP D530s
With the same type of easily removable tool-less housing as the ThinkCentre S50 this HP machine can be stripped and rebuilt very quickly, which will appeal to the corporate IT techs and SMEs wishing to avoid lengthy hardware failure downtime.
HP iPAQ H5550
If there was a PDA king, this would be it. HP includes everything in the iPAQ H5550 including 802.11b, Bluetooth and fingerprint recognition. Most importantly, this is the first PDA we've seen to run Pocket PC 2003
IBM ThinkCentre S50
IBM has a well-earned reputation within the corporate sector for providing exceptional quality desktop workstations. Their latest model – the ThinkCentre S50, is set to keep that reputation on track.
JNC SSF-70
The Korean-made JNC SSF-70 is very cool, neat and bursting with goodies – it comes with 128MB of MP3 storage plus voice recording plus a built in FM scanning tuner plus a built in auto-charging battery – all in a tiny tube designed to hang ‘round your neck on a special earphone/neck strap combo.
Labs Intro : 3D cards
The PC Authority Labs team runs about a million benchmarks and looks under the hood of the latest generation of GPUs to find which one's the best.
LEADTEK WinFast A350 5900 Ultra
We received two different versions of this card during our testing, with the only difference being the housing and cooler system used.
LYCORIS DESKTOP/LX
Formerly called Redmond Linux, Lycoris is probably the most Windows-like Linux around.
MATROX MILLENNIUM P750
2D graphics speed has been a non-issue for some years, and the demand for analog image quality is also waning in the move to digital TFTs, all of which means that Matrox's reputation for analog engineering is now a moot point for most users.
MSI FX5900
When it comes to cooling, it's all about conductivity and surface area – and these are features the MSI FX5900 has in spades.
MSI FX5900 Ultra
Missing out on an award by a hair's breadth, MSI blew the other cards away in most departments.
MSI MEGA PC (MEGA651)
While not unfamiliar with barebones PCs and small components designed to take your PC out of the study and into the lounge room, the MSI MEGA PC is the first out-of-the-box system we've reviewed that would snuggle right in amongst your hi-fi components.
PALM TUNGSTEN C
In the past, Palm's approach to PDA design has been clear: keep things simple and produce slick devices with adequate specifications for note taking, appointment tracking and contact organisation.
Pinnacle Edition 5
Not so long ago, Pinnacle concentrated on manufacturing graphics hardware and bundling third-party software with it. These days the company provides its own digital video editing software and makes no bones about competing with Adobe's Premiere.
PLUS U4 136Z
Plus Corporation's U4 136Z projector is a fairly small unit measuring just 53 x 190 x 239mm and weighing only 1.5kg, and while it can be held easily in one hand its got the goodies where it counts.
Pocket PC 2003
Microsoft has four key 'visions' for Pocket PC 2003 (PPC 2003): make it easier for manufacturers to innovate, improve the 'wireless experience', bring easy instant messaging to the PDA, and expand the 'media experience'.
POWER COLOR R9600 PRO Ultra
The Power Color R9600 was the best performing of all the RADEON 9600 PRO-based cards, and managed an almost identical overall score to the Labs Winning X-Micro GeForce 5600.
Power Color R9800 PRO
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.
S-MEDIA FX5600
Each of the FX5600s in our round-up this month struggled to compete with the Labs Winner's results, options and price.
SAPPHIRE 9800 PRO
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.
SMARTVGA 9600 PRO
We see plenty of red, green, blue and even the occasional black or silver PCB in the Labs, but it's not often we see a purple one.
SMARTVGA 9800 PRO
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.
SPARKLE FX5200
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.
SuSE LINUX OFFICE DESKTOP
Not only is SuSE Linux Professional 8.1 the most complete distribution, it's also one of the friendliest.
VIEWSONIC POCKET PC V35
This rather optimistic time assumes no use of the backlight, but we found half-brightness to offer the best compromise – and even at this setting, the V35's screen impresses.
X-Micro FX5600
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.
Xandros Desktop
The first OS to make a serious effort at an easy, integrated Linux to rival Windows was the now defunct Corel LinuxOS.