As with any year, 1998 held its share of highs and lows within the hardware arena. There were massive performance gains within the areas of CPUs, Audio Cards, Video Accelerators and Mainboards. There were more modest gains from the areas of Hard Drives, CD-ROMs and other storage mediums.
One thing is for certain though, we're gradually beginning to deviate from the tried and true "Moore's Law" principal which states that CPUs and general hardware tend to double in performance every 18 months. By this time next year we may have to acknowledge that technology is advancing at a pace that means hardware can double in speed and power just every 12 months.
And we won't be complaining about that fact one bit.
We'd love to hear your picks for 1998's best hardware, please visit the Sharky Extreme Discussion Board and speak your mind.
Craig Campanaro
Hardware Director