Can a truly high-end system still be assembled for $2,500? We set out to find the answer and learned some important things along the way. And here's a bit of a teaser: we're going to compare the performance of two Radeon HD 5870s to last quarter's 4890s. Radeon - Zune HD - Personal computer - United States - ATI Technologies

  Intel's Atom processor family showed promise when it launched back in 2008, but it certainly wasn't an ideal desktop platform. Atom is back with an integrated memory controller, on-die graphics, and a new two-chip configuration. But is it any better? Intel Atom - Intel Corporation - Hardware - Memory controller - processor

  Windows 7 is here, and we've already established that it tastes great, is less filling, and performs well. But do you want it on your notebook? We compared the performance and battery life of Windows XP, Vista, and 7 on an upper-mainstream mobile system. Windows XP - Microsoft Windows - Windows Vista - Operating system - Windows 7

  This holiday season doesn't bring any major processor launches our way, but a handful of price changes do shift some of our sub-$150 recommendations. Come check out the latest Best Gaming CPUs For The Money column for December's hierarchy of top values. Central processing unit - Christmas and holiday season - Economic - Games - Kids and Teens

  

  Fusion-io has produced enterprise-class flash-based SSDs since 2007. But the firm now offers PCI Express-based flash devices for enthusiasts at more attractive price points. Today, we're looking at the ioXtreme and ioXtreme Pro to see how they stack up. PCI Express - Solid-state drive - Fusion-io - Serial ATA - ioXtreme

  Intel’s P55 Express remains a mainstream chipset, so by breaking through the $200 barrier, we have high expectations of superb overclocking, unsurpassed stability, and uncompromising features. Can all of today’s boards meet those enthusiast demands? Overclocking - LGA 1156 - Hardware - Chipset - Components

  Welcome to Part Two of Tom's Hardware's Holiday Gift Guide. This second edition is loaded with extras that complement the machine we built in Part One, from networking gear to I/O, and a beautiful display. We're even including an Ion-based netbook! Tom's Hardware - Tom - Hardware - FAQs Help and Tutorials - Arts

  Microsoft is hyping Windows 7 as the operating system that everyone should adopt. We'd already done a bit of benchmarking in the new OS, but we revisit a longer list of tests today, including more real-world tasks, like boot-up, hibernate, and shutdown. Windows 7 - Operating system - Windows Vista - Microsoft - boot

  Intel might have postponed USB 3.0 support for chipsets, but that hasn’t stopped motherboard manufacturers from offering it. We look at solutions from Asus and Gigabyte at two distinct budget levels. Motherboard - Asus - Gigabyte Technology - Universal Serial Bus - Hardware

  ATI's new Radeon HD 5870 is a powerful card at stock speeds. However, its 40nm manufacturing process just begs to be overclocked. PowerColor's liquid-cooled model gives us a great opportunity to see just how far we can push the Cypress graphics processor. Radeon - Graphics processing unit - ATI Technologies - PowerColor - Evergreen

  

  We’ve seen how faster memory scales on Phenom II, Core 2, and Core i7 for LGA 1366. Now it’s time to analyze the impact of different memory speeds on a Core i7-870-based LGA 1156 platform. We test from DDR3-800 to -1600 at tight and loose latencies. Intel Core i7 - Phenom II - Hardware - DDR3 SDRAM - Intel Core 2

  Increasing prices on the most popular graphics card and low availability mark (or mar?) this holiday season, changing some of our recommendations. Also, we're affected by the introduction of a new king of the hill: ATI's new Radeon HD 5970 2GB. Video card - ATI Technologies - Radeon - Christmas and holiday season - ATI