With Intel gaining attention for its new Lynnfield processors, AMD has fired back with its own $100 quad-core. At the same time it has also made strides in the GPU market, recently coming out with the first DirectX 11 compatible video hardware. Here’s a proclamation that:

ATI now stands unchallenged in Blu-ray audio processing, power consumption, single GPU performance, and performance per watt, DirectX 11, multi-monitor setups, anti-aliasing performance, and anisotropic accuracy. By any measure, the confluence of these qualities easily makes the Radeon HD 5000 the most significant shakeup of the GPU market in the last two years.
Pretty bold assertions, …read more

Baking a video card (as in an oven) to repair it sounds like total idiocy, but there’s a method to the madness. As anyone with computer hardware experience knows, solder joints sometimes crack over time, cutting the connections between electronic components and causing hardware failure.

Expose those joints to constant heat, in an oven set to 200 to 275 degrees centigrade, and the lead will melt, clearing out any cracks and reconnecting the joints. After the card has seen enough baking, leave it to cool for a few hours, and it should be working once back in a computer.
At least, that’s …read more

Unless you don’t believe what the folks over at Anandtech have to say (and they know their stuff), their new video card buyer’s guide for this North-Hemispherean spring will be quite useful. Especially since it’s got recommendations for a variety of price points:

Price
Product

$75
ATI Radeon HD 4670
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

$100
Wait for a month!

$150
ATI Radeon HD 4850

$165
ATI Radeon HD 4870

$180
An ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
NVIDIA GTX 260 Core 216

$180 – $280
Errr…

$280 – $400+
ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB

Hmmm… looks like ATI’s winning the current round of the never-ending battle between the maker and its arch-rival NVIDIA. According to Anandtech lately, that’s a …read more