Every technology starts with a motivation, and throughout the past year Benchmark Reviews has watched the computer hardware industry follow trends that seem all too familiar of yesteryear. In this article by Executive Editor Olin Coles, the past 2008 calendar year is summarized for it's accomplishments, but the real focus is on the coming year ahead. Will 2009 be the year that component computer hardware becomes important again, or will it be relegated to a niche hobby for enthusiast?

The GA-EX58-EXTREME is the latest high performance X58-Express Series motherboard from GIGABYTE, designed from the ground up to unleash the awesome power of Intel's new Core i7 processors. Equipped with a host of new features including the new QPI interface, 3-channel DDR3 support, 3-Way SLI and CrossFireX support, Ultra Durable 3 technology and the industry's most extensive range of overclocking features, the EX58-EXTREME is bringing excitement back into the high performance motherboard industry. In this article, Benchmark Reviews compares the EX58-EXTREME to Intel's DX58SO Smackover and last-generations X48T-DQ6 motherboards.

Benchmark Reviews is no stranger to the Radeon HD 4870 and today we add one more to the ranks: the ASUS EAH4870 Dark Knight Top. This 'DK TOP' model comes equipped with ASUS' famed Dark Knight cooler and claims of a 9% performance lead over stock 4870's thanks to an impressive factory overclock. In today's review, we'll put this claim to the test and find out what kind of performance the EAH4870 DK Top brings to the table.

In this article, Benchmark Reviews sets out to detail the performance differences between SSD products attached to the JMicron JMB322 host-based controller and the Intel ICH10R, but instead discovered a larger problem. While read and write performance can sway unpredictably between SATA controllers, the most disturbing subject is the inconsistency between test tools. One version of ATTO Disk Benchmark can record result different from another, while HD-Tach gives different results on the same version and driver. Please read more to learn of the pitfalls and perils when testing SSD's between platforms.

Back in September of 2007 Benchmark Reviews tested Cooler Master's Cosmos RC-1000 full-tower computer case, and was so impressed with the fine attention to detail that it earned our Golden Tachometer Award. Then, a few month later in February of 2008, we witnessed the Cooler Master Cosmos S arrive to the scene with a darkened appearance and sport-car curves. So it's fitting then that Cooler Master offer their most revered computer case in a limited edition set. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Limited Edition E-ATX full-tower computer case kit (SKU: RC-1000S-KKN2-GP), as a supplemental installment to our original comprehensive Cosmos 1000 review.

Overclocking can take on many forms, and experiments can range from minor product improvements to a total re-engineering project that completely alters the hardware. Because of their long history of successful product launches, NVIDIA is the most recognized name in the graphics industry. Their GeForce series of desktop graphics accelerators has become an enthusiast favorite, primarily because of excellent overclocking potential. For gamers, overclocking unlocks a hidden potential to change the graphics quality settings from medium to high without a hardware upgrade. The results are often times worth the risk, and in this article Benchmark Reviews will focus on achieving the most gain possible from any NVIDIA GeForce video card through overclocking, while using the least amount of effort.

Today we are releasing the third review in our Core i7 series which focuses on the features and performance of the Intel Core i7-920. The Core i7-920 is considered to be the processor for the mainstream consumer primarily because of its price to performance ratio. The i7-920 doesn't have the unlocked multipliers that its more mature sibling does, but it is still a quite capable chip with its 2.66 GHz factory clock. We intend to share all of our findings and hope after reading this review you will have a much better understanding of the Core i7 family in general and the i7-920 in specific. We also plan to go into as complete of a discussion as possible on everything you can do to enhance capabilities this processor brings to the table. Unfortunately we don't have a QX9770, Intel's previous "King of the Hill", to compare the i7-920 to; but we should note that in all the test results we've seen the i7-920 (model BX80601920) outperforms the QX9770 in all processor dependant tasks. So the only true competition for the i7-920 are the other members of the Core i7 family which we will be testing for comparison purposes.

Solid State Drives are rapidly changing the computing landscape, and many enthusiasts are using SSD technology in their primary systems to help boost performance. Benchmark Reviews has tested nearly all of the products available to the retail market in this sector, and several do well while others fall flat. It used to be that performance was the largest hurdle for mass storage NAND Solid State Drives, followed by stability, and later price. In this article, we benchmark test the linear bandwidth performance of the Mtron MOBI 3500 3.5-Inch SSD MSD-SATA3535-064 and compares it against the top competition.