Maximum PC

Ok it's been a while and I'm back. Now I don't know if this kind of question or thread is missplaced, but if it is let me know and I'll try to get it corrected. Moving on.

Ok so I'm looking at some hardware, video cards at the moment, and I was thinking, I know the magazine does benchmarks and such when they review hardward. Now I was wondering if there is an archive or way to access this kind of info when you want to look at the performance comparisions for the type of hardware you are looking at. Is that possible or do you just post questions for say a video card, in the video card section and so on and so forth; or is this considered one of those help mebuy type questions?

I'm just curious.

From the main page, go back thru the reviews and features. MPC has a couple of good Video card round up reviews that does some pretty good comparisons.

Also look at some sites like Anand Tech, Benchmark Reviews, Guru3D, Hardware Secrets, jonnyGURU, etc. They all present the data from several relevant cards along with the one they are reviewing for comparison. Some good examples would be:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/1
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=628&Itemid=72
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/sli_vs_crossfire_which_dual-card_setup_best
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2010/03/27/nvidia-geforce-gtx-480-1-5gb-review/1

This forum should be fine at this point to discuss the pros and cons of the various brands and power of the cards. But the Help Me Buy forum would be more appropriate for help matching up to a system/monitor and the uses you will be putting it to.

Very much appreciated. The info is proving to be helpful, I like knowing what the specs are while thinking about the possibilities of what they could be used for and in what they excel in.

There is a suite of benchmarks called SPEC which are one of the better industry/academic references. There database is pretty incredible and goes back at least 10 years (and maybe as far back as 30).