MaximumPC 2005 03

Best of the Best As of March 200 5

We’ve added a few categories this month, including best external backup

drive, best portable USB drive, and two of our favorite enclosures. We’ve

also bumped Sony’s DVD burner for NEC’s ND-3500A. We’re not fond of

the software bundle with the ND-3500A, but if you have your own apps

(and most people do), you can’t argue with the five minutes the ND-3500A

takes to fill a DVD. We’re also recommending ATI’s Radeon X850 XT PE

in the PCI-E graphics category, but with a caveat: The X850 XT PE is the

fastest single-card solution, but nVidia’s GeForce 6800 Ultra running in SLI

mode bests it. We’re also now recommending just one PDA.

Our current gaming favorites: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher
Bay, World of Warcraft, Half-Life 2

PCI Express videocard:

ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum

Edition

AGP videocard:

nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra

Budget videocard:

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

Soundcard:

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Platinum

10,000rpm SATA:

Western Digital 740GD Raptor

7,200rpm SATA:

Maxtor DiamondMax 10

PDA:

Dell Axim X50v

External backup drive:

Western Digital Dual-option

Media Center 250GB

Portable USB drive:

Seagate Portable External

Hard Drive 100GB

DVD burner:

NEC ND-3500A

Widescreen LCD monitor:

Hewlett-Packard f2304

Desktop LCD monitor:

Dell 2001FP

Desktop CRT monitor:

NEC FE2111 SB

Socket 939 Athlon 64 mobo:

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe

Portable MP3 player:

Apple iPod 40GB

Photo printer:

Canon i9900

5.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-5500 Digital

4.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-560

2.1 speakers:

Klipsch GMX A2.1

Best mid-tower case:

Chenbro Gaming Bomb II

Best full-tower case:

Silverstone Nimiz TJ03

Bad Mojo

Redux

You’re a cockroach,

and you’re gross.

The thing is, you

weren’t always a

cockroach. And

unless you want to

spend the rest of

your life surviving

on the glue from

a postage stamp,

you’ll have to skitter

around a seedy San

Francisco apartment

while avoiding

vicious spiders,

thuggish cats, various poisons, and

boiling chili in order to find out what happened to you and why.

Bad Mojo Redux ups the resolution of the original game’s cut scenes, but leaves

the original game (released in 1996) intact in all its crepuscular glory. Hilarious,

frustrating, moving, and frequently disgusting, Bad Mojo Redux is as much fun to

play now as it was back when point-and-click adventures were still cutting-edge

entertainment. $20, http://www.gotgameentertainment.com

MARCH 200 5 MA XIMUMPC 5

Looking out for #2.

&

Our proprietary two-disk thumbdrive RAID array boasts twice

the capacity of a single thumbdrive and transfer speeds that

are almost twice as fast. Hot

swapping drives in and out of

the array is a cinch, thanks to its proprietary “Band-Raid”

technology.

This DVD writer uses ink cartridges, okay? See, once the

cartridges run out, you have to buy more ink to keep writ

ing to discs! Reaction from focus groups has been luke

warm, but HP and Lexmark ar

e beating down our door!

What do you get when you connect two Audigy 2

ZS soundcards via our patent-pending Soundcard

Link Interface (SLI)? Support for bowel-loosening

14.2 speaker configurations, 48-bit DACs and dual

FireWire ports, that’s what.

Maximum PC Patent Office

Submissions, Q1 2005