The Hot Rod: October 2009 Edition

Change seems to be pretty constant in the Hot Rod. Last update was to the Core i7 on the LGA1366 socket; this update saves a few bucks yet maintains performance with Core i5/i7 on the newer LGA1156 socket, and ups the video card to AMD's brand-new DirectX 11 cards, the Radeon HD 5800-series. The upside of these changes is saving a bit of money while maintaining or dramatically improving performance, and we can't complain about that. It also gives unprecedented flexibility in the Hot Rod should you have a little extra money available. We omit a few nice things such as SSD's and Crossfire that would otherwise fit in the budget because we feel that making them optional and up to individual builders works out better, plus the Hot Rod as spec'ed is actually quite in line with our goals of a high performance yet value-oriented system.

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Tags: corei7 corei5 crossfire radeon ssd directx directx11 socket-1366 socket-1156