Mathew Miranda

Today, NVIDIA officially announced the GeForce GTX 275 mid-range video card, the latest addition to its performance GPU lineup. With the goal of being the best bang for your buck graphics card on the market, the GTX 275 offers a combination of performance, physics, and GPU computing power for budget conscious consumers. Interested? Check out a few highlights:

• 633 MHz GPU Clock
• 1404 MHz Shader Clock
• 1134 MHz Memory Clock
• 240 Processor Cores
• 80 Texture Processing Units
• 448-bit Memory Interface
• 896 MB GDDR3 memory

Physically, the video card is 10.5" in length, requires two 6-pin power connectors, and sports a dual slot heat sink. In addition, it uses a PCI Express 2.0 x16 interface while providing two DVI outputs.

Western Digital recently announced a $65 million cash purchase of SiliconSystems, a supplier of solid-state drives for the embedded systems market.

"We are delighted to have the SiliconSystems team join WD," said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD. "The combination will be modestly accretive to revenue and margins as a result of SiliconSystems' existing position as a trusted supplier to the well-established $400 million market for embedded solid-state drives. SiliconSystems' intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate WD's solid-state drive development programs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, providing greater choice for our customers to satisfy all their storage requirements."

RESCUECOM, which recently increased from annual to quarterly data reporting, provided its latest Computer Reliability Report for the fourth quarter of 2008. ASUS landed the top spot followed by Lenovo and Apple. Here are the scores from the report:

• ASUS - 972
• Lenovo - 348
• Apple - 324
• Toshiba - 172
• Acer - 151
• HP - 142

The analysis compares vendor market share with consumer service calls placed to RESCUECOM's call center. Scores are calculated based on a sample of 15,000 calls received during the quarter. In addition, the report reveals quality of the components and software used in manufacturing the computer as well as support the company provides to its customer after the sale.

PhysX is coming to a console near you. Last week, NVIDIA signed an agreement with Sony to provide Playstation 3 developers the use of PhysX technology software. With the goal of realistic graphics and highly interactive environments, level designers and animators will be allowed to author and preview physics effects in real time.

"NVIDIA is proud to support Playstation 3 as an approved middleware provider," said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA. "Games developed for the Playstation 3 using PhysX technology offer a more realistic and lifelike interaction between the games characters and other objects within the game. We look forward to the new games that will redefine reality for a new generation of gamers."

According to sources at motherboard manufacturers, Digitimes reports significant price drops of several desktop processors will occur in April and July of this year. If you're in the market for a new Socket 775 Quad Core, you may want to hold off for a few weeks. Expect the following markdowns to occur April 19th:

• Core 2 Quad Q9300 from $266 to $213 (19.92%)
• Core 2 Quad Q9550S from $369 to $320 (13.28%)
• Core 2 Quad Q9400S from $320 to $277 (13.44%)
• Core 2 Quad Q8200S from $245 to $213 (13.06%)

July 19th will bring more price reductions of numerous models:

EVGA recently announced the "Ultimate in X58 motherboards." One of the most anticipated products of 2009, the X58 Classified aims to set the standard for enthusiast motherboards by introducing several new features. It is the first board capable of housing 3-way SLI graphics cards, a dedicated PhysX card, and a PCIe 1x sound card at the same time. Also, there are two 8-pin +12V CPU connectors available to provide up to 600 watts of power. When trying to break world records, you'll need the voltage stability the Classified can provide.

Lenovo announces a new, sleek all-in-one desktop PC that is sure to make waves. The IdeaCentre A600 fits the monitor, Blu-ray drive, system components, and speakers into an elegant, space saving design. Multimedia enthusiasts will appreciate the 21.5" screen featuring a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1920x1080 HD resolution. Included is a nifty 4-in-1 remote control that acts as an air mouse, game controller, VOIP handset, or media center remote.

Do you crave cutting edge? BFG Tech has just added gaming and multimedia PCs, called Phobos, to their video card and power supply line up. These hand built machines are designed for the graduated gamer market and those who want a high end computer without the hassle of building or maintaining it themselves.

A major upset took place recently in the ongoing battle for high end video card supremacy. For the past couple of years, it has mainly been a one horse race as Nvidia's 8800 series took the crown and wouldn't let go. After the June release of Nvidia's latest creation, the GTX 280, it seemed like the green guys would continue their dominance and maintain the lead in the high performance market.

Oh, how times have changed.The release of ATI's midrange 4870 video card sent out shockwaves by providing blistering performance while costing hundreds less than the GTX 280. This left Nvidiain the unfamiliar position of scrambling to stay competitive, which it did with significant price cuts of their 200 series cards just weeks after release. The real wake-up call arrived with news that a dual GPU version of the 4870 was due to release, which brings us to where we are today.

Just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should. That old truism goes double for computers. But some PC geeks are so fanatical about performance, so doggedly determined to push their hardware to extremes, that they'll go to ridiculous lengths to wring a few more clock cycles out of their components or add a little more cool factor to their rig.

This article is dedicated to all those insane, irrational enthusiasts who defy all reason and common sense in the pursuit of PC glory. We've tried and tested five risky upgrades that no sane user should ever try. Don't get us wrong--these upgrades deliver genuine benefits. But they aren't for the faint of heart, as each is either time-consuming, expensive, or dangerous to your hardware. If you like to walk on the wild side, though, grab your screwdriver and follow along.