Product reviews by 'Estuansis'

Excellent AM2+ board. Lets you have a 790FX chipset with the SB750 southbridge without the cost of DDR3. Runs my high wattage Phenom II 940 like a champ and overclocks excellently. 3.7GHz 24/7 Orthos stable. The board is actually quite well cooled despite its seemingly wimpy little heatsinks. I would assume most heat problems are due to FSB OCing because I used the multi and I have no problems with heat whatsoever. It is also multiple video card friendly and does Crossfire extremely well with my 512MB HD4870s and 1GB 5850s.

I might add it needs a case with good airflow to stay cool. The heatsinks are enough. But the Northbridge gets a bit toasty without at least SOME airflow.

The price at newegg at the time of this review is a bargain.

1333MHz FSB. Overclocks pretty well with DDR2 800. Had it to 3.6GHz with a medium-ish voltage increase. On a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L and an Evga 680i board.

Bought it as a step up from my E6600. Definite improvement in some areas. No difference in others. It certainly ran cooler and OCed better though.

If you have one of these, hang on until i5 gets here.

I just had a customer's PC with this card in it. I did some tests and it gets higher 3D Marks than my X1800XT, about 7000 vs 6200. But it performs the same in most titles. So, good for anything but the newest games. Decent card overall for the release price.

I had the Evga version of this. Sold it recently, as it still had lots of value and I needed the money.

I was able to play all my games MAXED. Oblivion all maxed out at 1920 x 1200. FEAR, DIRT, Lost Planet at those settings as well. Ran Crysis with all high settings(Win XP) at 1920 x 1200, though 1680 x 1050 was much smoother XD

It is a bit overpriced as of now. It never really saw ay price drops for it entire life actually. Was about 500-600 bucks from the day it was new to the day it went OOP. The 8800GTS 512MB G92 and 9800GTX out-perform it by a tiny bit, have better driver support, and are much cheaper.

If you already have one, you won't need to upgrade for a while still depending on the size of your monitor. So keep it unless you absolutely need a new card to play your games smoothly.

It was overkill for almost every game ever made at the time and still performs quite well for its age. Crysis and Oblivion are the only ones I've seen even stutter on this card. And that was at 1920 x 1200 with pretty high settings.

First Core 2 Duo to really make the brand stand out. An excellent processor.

Quicly fell out of popularity with newer, cheaper, and better chips like the E6750 coming out shortly after.

I had mine for a while with an 8800GTX. Stock speeds were fast enough for games, but there might be limitations in newer ones. OCing puts this as a decent dual core chip even in the days of 45nm quads.

Overclocks easily. I had mine at 3.2GHz for ~6 months before I sold it and upgraded to an E6750.

These particular drives are whisper quiet. I have had a pair of these for almost 2 years now and they work like the day they were new. Very dependable plus good read/write speeds.

This is a very nice PSU for the price. It has plenty of power on the 4 12v rails and is enough for even modest Crossfire/SLI setups like HD4850s/9800GTs. The ripple at load is also better than other OCZ units. I got mine for $85 and it's as quiet as my Corsair 620HX. If you need a good, powerful PSU and are on a budget, this is the PSU for you.

GOM player is awesome! I've been using it for about 2 years now. I use it solely for music with the "Default Music Player" skin which works great as a low resource, minimalist MP3 player. Every time I start it up, I just go to "add" pick my music folder and there's my playlist. The EQ controls are good and I can really sharpen up the sound with the "Rock" preset.

Overall a solid, well designed, and stable program.

This was an extremely fast card back in its day. I have the Sapphire version and it is still adequate for most games at 1280 res. Oblivion was a pleasure on this card, and you can even run CoD4 with AA. Too bad it was replaced so quickly by the X1900XT. This was the best priced high-end card I ever bought at $199.95. Especially when the 7900GT was about $300 when I got the X1800XT.

An absolute steal at $209 when I got it. This is still a very fast card, even in the days of the HD4870 and GTX280. I have the MSI version. It plays all of my games maxed at 1920 x 1200, barring Crysis. It keeps relatively cool compared to the 8800GTX but performs similarly. In Crysis, there's maybe 2-3FPS difference between the cards. Of course, in other games the difference is a bit bigger, but no more than 10FPS. Sometimes, the GTS 512 is even faster than the 8800 Ultra. Good, powerful card for the price.

Had one of these for a long time. I kept it overclocked to 2.6GHz for a little over a year. On an ASUS M2N32 SLi Deluxe. It served me well for the whole time I had it.

It's a little slow now with Core 2 Duo in its prime. But it's still fast enough for most games and apps.

Anyone with one of these will likely be wanting an upgrade very soon.

This board is a bit older now, but still an excellent overclocker for even quads. Got it for $99 at newegg probably a year and a half ago. It is nearly identical to the GA-P35-DS3L. Same onboard audio, board layout, colors, BIOS, everything. If you have one of these, you have a very nice motherboard, even at its budget price. I went straight from one of these to an EVGA 680i board and I was unimpressed in both quality and features for the $160 I paid. That's why I was glad to sell the 680i and get the cheaper and better P35 :P

This is a good motherboard. I have no problems getting high OCs on it. RAM multiplier and easy OC controls make this a winner for a budget gamer. It is nearly identical in price and features to its older cousin the GA-965P-DS3. Onboard hi-def sound is definitely a big step up from the AC'97 crap of old. But my Sound Blaster X-Fi is an even bigger step up :)

Easy to use. Fast. Effective. I always use CCleaner after installing and uninstalling things. It keeps my registry clean and my PC running fast.

I'm not sure if this RAM is widely available anymore. I snapped it up while it was at newegg.

It is very high quality. Mine came with Micron D9 chips and a CL of 4-4-3-10. It held those timings up to DDR2 960. I could hit 1066 with the CL at 4-4-4-12.

If you can find it, this is some of the best DDR2 800 memory you can buy.

Had one of these for socket 939 right after I first became a member in January '06. It lasted me a while and served me well.

I had it overclocked to 2.4GHz, 2.6GHz, and 2.8GHz on an ASUS A8N5X and an ASUS A8N-E.

Comparatively very slow these days. Stock speed of 2GHz is decent enough, but you WILL notice its limitations very quickly in most newer games.

Was an excellent processor in its day and I have no regrets about owning one.

Upgraded from a 939 3800+ to an AM2 4400+. Definite increase in power. But not a big jump.

Anyone with one of these will want to upgrade pretty soon. It is quickly becoming obselete.

I recommend a higher clocked X2(5000+ and up) or a Core 2 Duo if you want a noticeable increase in performance.

A little pricey. But the quality is worth it.

I generally recommend that most users avoid Dell. But their monitors are the one thing I WILL recommend. Definitely the very best... if you can afford one.

I've had this for a little under a year now. Excellent brightness and contrast. Good quality base and enclosure. Easy image controls. Zero dead or stuck pixels.

The screen is just beautiful. Games look amazing and it scales the image well with HD video.

If you were to get one monitor for all your HD movies and games, this is it.

Plays ALL of my ogg and avi files without a problem. Freedom for codecs means you can play any raw video file even with dual audio and video tracks.

I still use Winamp for my music though. I like to get cool skins and VLC lacks in that department.