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Netgear today teamed up with Broadcom to announce and demonstrate a new line of wireless networking products that use Broadcom's 802.11ac chips. These are the chips that Broadcom showed off in preparation for and during CES 2012.

These devices include two routers, the Netgear R6300 WiFi and the R6300 WiFi, and one USB adapter, the A6200 WiFi.

All of these devices are based on the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard (or 5G Wi-Fi, as Broadcom calls it). The Netgear R6300 is the top of the line and supports the three-stream 802.11ac standard that offers up to 1.… Read more

Toshiba announced today that its Canvio 3.0 and Canvio Basics 3.0 portable hard drives now offer up to 1.5TB of storage space, the second largest capacity on the market for portable external hard drives.

These two drives both support USB 3.0 (and are compatible with USB 2.0). The Canvio 3.0 also comes in a very sleek-looking chassis and now includes software drivers to make Macs support the NTFS file system.

NTFS is the native file system of Windows in which the Canvio drives are preformatted and generally can only be read by Macs. The … Read more

For a PC-only game built on well-trod swords-and-sorcery territory, Diablo III is generating a surprising amount of buzz from not only serious PC gamers, but also more mainstream and casual gamers. That's good for PC gaming, as this may be the biggest thing to happen to that field since Minecraft.

But will Diablo III be able to capture hearts and minds the way its two predecessors did, starting back in 1996? PC gamers Dan Ackerman and Rich Brown debate the relevance of this action RPG. … Read more

The new 2012 Ivy Bridge Macs might be coming soon to a store near you, according to a couple of recent hints.

Details revealed yesterday by benchmarking site Geekbench point to a MacBookPro9,1. Powered by Intel's Ivy Bridge chip Core i7-3820QM quad-core running at 2.7GHz, the name and number would seem to indicate the successor to Apple's current 13-inch pro laptop.

However, MacRumors believes that since the i7-3820QM processor runs at 45 watts, it's more likely to surface in the beefier 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro units.

Another Geekbench benchmark page appears to tip off an upcoming new iMac. With the name and number iMac13,2, the new model would appear to indicate a 27-inch iMac. Powering the new iMac is Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770 quad-core chip clocking in at 3.4GHz.

How do we know this information is legit? … Read more

One could safely say Dutch computer modder Sander van der Velden adores the behemoth AT-AT vehicle from "The Empire Strikes Back." The self-confessed sci-fi addict recently stuffed a water-cooled computer inside a large Hasbro toy version of Star Wars' most infamous four-legged Rebel annihilator.

The AT-AT computer measures 2 feet tall (plus several more inches for the dock), and contains some spicy hardware, including a Zotac Z68-ITX (Mini-ITX) motherboard running an Intel Core i7 2600k processor, SSD, and built-in Wi-Fi. The water-cooling system (radiator and XSPC pump) uses water blocks to cool the CPU, GPU, and other components.

The designers at Hasbro probably didn't expect someone to take the largest action figure AT-AT ever made and fit a bunch of computer parts into it. … Read more

British audiophile brand Arcam appears to be making a greater effort to go mainstream these days with products such as the Arcam rCube iPhone dock and now, an entry-level USB DAC/headphone amplifier (amp) combo.

Meant as a smaller (and cheaper) alternative to the rDac digital-to-analog converter, this model only has a single USB input, with an asynchronous DAC. Audiophiles tend to prefer asynchronous USB inputs on DACs for the more consistent audio quality they're supposed to provide as the device creates the clock signals and not the (sometimes ancient) USB controller.… Read more

Yes, Maingear has added Intel's new Ivy Bridge third-generation Core CPUs to its desktop lineup. So will all other PC vendors if they haven't already. Click here for a list of Ivy Bridge systems currently on sale.

Far more interesting is that with its new case designs, also announced today, Maingear is demonstrating it understands the power of an easy-to-understand product lineup.

Joining Maingear's existing full-tower Shift gaming desktop are a new version of the standard-tower F131, and the new Potenza, which is smaller. The F131 has existed in name for a few years, but both it and the Potenza now come in vertically oriented case designs.

Not only do those designs have technical merits -- the narrowed chassis channels hot air up and out of the system for efficient cooling -- the size difference between them also makes it immediately clear where each model fits in the performance spectrum.… Read more

A truism of Intel chip announcements: Intel releases a new CPU, and with it a new graphics chip or, since Sandy Bridge, a new graphics core embedded in the CPU silicon. Intel then claims said chip/core will provide at least a baseline PC gaming experience. This claim is never true.

Only now it is.

With its new Ivy Bridge CPUs, Intel has introduced two new graphics cores, the Intel HD 4000 and a lower-end HD 2500 core. You will still have a better gaming experience with a budget graphics card, but for at least the HD 4000, Intel finally has an onboard graphics processor with some 3D processing muscle.… Read more

Intel's latest CPUs will be rolling out in various waves over the next few months, but the first wave of higher-end, quad-core processors is finally here.

So far, the biggest impact has been on gaming without a dedicated graphics GPU, with other differences remaining subtle at best.

Of course, this may not reflect future laptops and desktops in the coming months, but it clearly tells the story of Ivy Bridge at launch: this is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary.

Check out our review roundup below. For more questions on Ivy Bridge, read our FAQ.… Read more