DFI DDR Mainboard Review
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 10:14 EST by: ryan
PCRoddin got down and dirty with DFI's latest motherboard featuring the Apollo Pro266 chipsetand pushing some PC2100 DDR memory. Quote:
"DDR seems to have become the buzz word of choice for the past few months. First, DDR memory was introduced into graphics card memory, then AMD brought forth their EV6 bus that sported Double Data Rate transfers. DDR motherboard chipsets that support this now available memory technology were just rumors in the not so distant past. The time is upon us and DDR technology is here with both AMD and Intel processors. The misconception seems to be that because DDR has the word double in it, that the performance increase will be double. This is sadly not the case in which will be demonstrated here today with DFI's latest motherboard for Intel Socket 370 processors."
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Mushkin REV3 SDRAM
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 10:13 EST by: ryan
Octools has just posted a review of Mushkin's 128MB High Performance REV3 SDRAM. Guaranteed to run up to 150mhz CAS2, how high can it go? In this review, they were able to take the REV3 to 160mhz CAS2. There's a 10% discount too for people reading that article.
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3D Prophet 4500 PR
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 7:49 EST by: ryan
Sorry for the some-what sloppy post, here's a direct rip of Hercules' PR they just released:
Hercules announces 3D Prophet 4500
A Top-performance Graphics Board Within Every Gamer's Reach.
Montreal, March 9th, 2001 - Hercules today unveiled its brand new 3D Prophet 4500 graphics board, delivering the most breathtaking speed and dazzling image quality, within every gamer's reach. Fully committed to consistently offering the best immersive 3D experience to the gaming community, Hercules now introduces the world's first top-performance graphics board, emphasizing Tile Based Rendering (TBR), Full Screen Anti-Aliasing and 8-Layer multi-texturing. With this latest member in the 3D Prophet family, Hercules, once again, breaks new ground in the graphics market. "Until today, most gamers couldn't afford the levels of reality and sensations offered by the latest 3D accelerator boards." said Claude Guillemot, President of Hercules Technologies. "Only breakthrough technology, combined with 64MB of fast on-board RAM, has enabled us to offer most gamers the ideal graphics board for texture-intensive and high-speed games, which are the future of the gaming industry. 3D Prophet 4500 introduces the future of 3D graphics."
Top performer in 3D games
3D Prophet 4500 Kyro II chip from STMicroelectronics, featuring unique TBR, introduces the new generation of 3D graphics where tile architecture is the keyword. By determining which surfaces are displayed, without creating those that remain hidden, 3D Prophet 4500 calculates and maps textures only onto the visible surfaces. Hidden Surface Removal (HSR) results in an optimized use of memory bandwidth, and a higher fill rate, providing powerful acceleration in texture-intensive 3D games.
Flawless image quality
3D Prophet 4500 Internal True Color(tm) performs texture-blending operations in a 32-bit internal tile buffer. This internal texture blending produces a high-quality homogeneous color rendering, which avoids the graphics artifacts appearing in traditional 3D, where textures are overlaid. 3D Prophet 4500 supports up to 8 texture layers, which are blended together in order to obtain more realistic details on backgrounds and surfaces and generates lifelike 3D gaming environments. 3D Prophet 4500 supports full speed FSAA, even in high-resolution modes, and performs true environmental bump mapping operations, resulting in highly realistic 3D scenes. The 2D and video performance of 3D Prophet 4500 is also impressive, enhancing the display of business applications and Internet navigators, and
accelerating DVD-Video playback thanks to motion compensation and
sub-picture overlay blending.
Price and Availability
3D Prophet 4500 64MB will be available by mid-April 2001 for $149 (USD).
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Huge Hacker Attacks
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 7:44 EST by: ryan
ArsTechnica has the scoop on the recent hacker attacks and the FBI's word on it:
"The FBI and Secret Service are taking a completely unprecedented step in releasing detailed forensic information from the investigations because of the importance of the attacks, according to Alan Pallar of SANS. More importantly, they provided information to the CIS (and SANS) so CIS could get it out to their members before the details went public. Additionally, this provided CIS more time to work on developing a tool to use in assessing if your company's systems have been compromised."
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fUnc Surface vs. RatPadz
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 7:43 EST by: ryan
Virtual Hideout just posted a rodent pad shootout between what is probably the best mousing surface available out there, the RatPadz, and the spiffy-looking newcomer, the fUnc sUrface 1030:
"In the past year or so the computer world has been bombarded with all sorts of new types of mouse pads. Probably the most popular up until now has been the Ratpadz, which is what I’ve been using for almost a year now. One of the most recent editions however, the fUnc sUrface 1030, has the potential to knock Ratpadz from it’s throne. I’m going to take a look at both to see which comes out on top."
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Another Neon Light Kit Review
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 7:41 EST by: ryan
TweakTown have posted a review of the PCMods.com 10" Neon Light Kit. Here's a quote:
"As far as I know, neon lights are illegal to be used in cars in all states and territories of Australia, especially when the culprit is crusin' in his or her car listening to some Nelly. It almost feels like you are breaking the law having a neon light, especially when many are brought off the black market down here in Australia. This is mostly because not a lot of stores stock them down under, at least that's what one of my dodgy type friends told me the other day who likes this type of stuff… Heh, I can just see it now, all my friends getting me to buy them neon lights, they would naturally think I'm buying them through black market channels when I'm really buying them directly through the PC Case Gear store in sunny Melbourne."
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RamSinks Review
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 6:32 EST by: ryan
Overclocked Hardware has just posted a new review. Today they take a look at the CPUFX.com RamSinks.
Here's a snippet:
"Overclocking the memory allows the user to try and surpass the memory bandwidth bottleneck that most high-end video cards face. Cards like the Nvidia Geforce2 Ultra have a huge amount of processing power. But unfortunately they face the limits of the memory on board of the video card. Pushing the memory past its designated clock speed allow the memory bandwidth to get closer to the GPU's processing potential."
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Vantec FCE-62540D Review
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 6:31 EST by: ryan
The Vantec is one wickedly huge HSF, and OverclockedCafe has a review of it. The Delta that sits on top only adds to it's menacing look, couple that with the scream that 7000rpm's puts out, and you have yourself a CPU cooler that is a true overclockers delight:
"The Vantec uses the 60x60x25 Delta 38 cfm fan that kicks out a SCREAMING 7000 rpm's. When you plug this thing in, you'll see what I mean by "screaming" - it's loud. If you have a system that sits next to you, the noise may drive you nuts. It's not leaf blower loud, but you'll defiantly notice a difference. It also includes a metal grill over top of the fan, with the rpm's this thing cranks out it could probably double as a salad shooter, you can imagine what it would do to your fingers."
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Abit KT7-RAID Review
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 6:30 EST by: ryan
Over at HotHardware they have taken a look at the Abit KT7-RAID mainboard.
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Abit SA6R Review
posted: March 9, 2001 @ 6:28 EST by: ryan
PenStarSys has posted up their review of the Abit SA6R, and it is a small step away from what we have typically seen from Abit. It is not the best overclocking i815 board out there, but it does have some exceptional features that lends itself nicely to a more professional setting:
"The board itself is fairly large to accommodate all of the features that Abit put into the board. It is almost the size of an Athlon board, but with a few less capacitors. There is quite a bit of area around the processor, so nearly any heatsink/fan combo can be used. There are of course extreme cases where there is not enough space around the processor, but for the most part there is enough space for most cooling devices."
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X-Micro GeForce2 Pro Review
posted: March 8, 2001 @ 9:23 EST by: ryan
TweakTown has posted a review of the X-Micro IMPACT 4 Pro video card which is based on the nVidia GeForce2 GTS Pro GPU with 32MB of 5ns DDR RAM:
"After the release of the GeForce2 MX GPU, nVidia released the GeForce2 Ultra GPU, until only a matter of days ago this GPU was the fastest on the planet, now this award belongs to the new nVidia GeForce3 GPU. Back on track now, a couple months after the nVidia GeForce2 Ultra was released, nVidia released the nVidia GeForce2 GTS Pro GPU, this GPU was again a cut-down version of the nVidia GeForce2 Ultra, much the same as the nVidia GeForce2 MX was to the GeForce2 GTS. X-Micro kindly sent us along some of their GeForce2 cards to evaluate, in the lab today is the X-Micro Impact 4 PRO, which is based on the nVidia GeForce2 GTS Pro."
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Arctic Silver II Review
posted: March 8, 2001 @ 9:21 EST by: ryan
EXHardware has posted a 4-page review of the new Arctic Silver II thermal compound. Here's a snip:
"The Arctic Silver II now comes in one version both for small and large contact surfaces and now comes in a smaller amount per tube which is 3 grams compared to 6.5 grams before which makes the Arctic Silver II cheaper and this is really good because many people found the original Arctic Silver a little too expensive for their tastes especially since this is just thermal compound and many of us can't make entire use of the whole 6.5 gram tube anyway. Nothing has changed much outside, the Arctic Silver II still being packaged in a tube of the same size but with less inside. At only $8.50 per tube now, I think it's priced resonably to compete."
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Yamaha 16/10/40 Review
posted: March 8, 2001 @ 7:21 EST by: ryan
The ctrl-alt-del guys have posted up a review of the a Yamaha 16X-10X-40X CRW2100EZ.
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VIA Interview
posted: March 8, 2001 @ 7:19 EST by: ryan
Our buds over at Sharkyextreme have posted up their latest installment of the tech interviews, this time with VIA.
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Gigabyte GA-6RX Review
posted: March 8, 2001 @ 7:17 EST by: ryan
Anandtech has posted up a review of the Gigabyte GA-6RX Apollo Pro266 ATX.
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Asking Tim Sweeney
posted: March 8, 2001 @ 7:16 EST by: ryan
Voodooextreme has a new installment of "ask time sweeney" today.
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fUnc sUrface 1030 Review
posted: March 7, 2001 @ 9:39 EST by: ryan
SavageZone has posted up a review of the fUnc Industries sUrface 1030.
"The rubber base keeps the pad even and steady on the desk, and unlike the Everglide or Ratpad the whole base is the "foot" these other mouse pads rely on feet to keep them steady."
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New Tribes 2 Movie
posted: March 7, 2001 @ 9:37 EST by: ryan
Sierra and Dynamix have released a very, very tasty preview for Tribes 2 which is over at FilePlanet.
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AOpen AX 37 Plus DDR
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 10:00 EST by: ryan
Tweaker's Asylum just finished up with their review of the AOpen AX 37 Plus DDR Motherboard. This motherboard has the new VIA Apollo Pro266 DDR Chipset.
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New Diablo II Screens
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 9:59 EST by: ryan
Today, Blizzard Entertainment directly released two new screenshots from Diablo II: Lord of Destruction featuring the Assassin in action against Minotaur Demons.
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Removing Glued Heatsinks
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 9:55 EST by: ryan
TechPortal has posted up an article on the The freezer method: How to remove that glued on heatsink. Here's a snippet:
""What the hell is the freezer method?" It's an easy way to remove a heatsink that you've used superglue and thermal grease to stick down. It is also perhaps the best method for removing a factory stock heatsink that a manufacturer has used standard thermal epoxy to stick in place - which is often the case with video cards."
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Build a Ghetto Router
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 5:57 EST by: ryan
ExtremeOverclocking has a new guide up on how to build a ghetto router out of an old PC.
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Innovision GeForce2 MX
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 5:56 EST by: ryan
The GeForce 2 MX may not be the newest card on the market (compared to the GeForce 3 that has just been released, but it still offers the best bang for buck, and this card certainly doesn't disappoint! TechWatch has the review. Here's a quote:
"Even with the release of the GeForce 3 (NV20), the MX will still offer the most bang for buck for quite a few months yet. The budget market has been dominated by the GeForce 2 MX cards recently, and with the performance that they deliver (read on), it's not hard to see why."
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Monsoon MM-1000 Review
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 5:54 EST by: ryan
BrokenPixel has posted up a new review of the Monsoon MM-1000 Speaker Review:
"Setting up the MM1000's is easy; simply plug in the subwoofer to your computer, the satellites to the sub, and the sub to the wall socket. Now you are ready to rock the block at a decent 102 Decibels. ....compared to anything else I've ever seen in this price range, these speakers have the best audio quality by far. These are the BMW's of computer speakers."
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Epox 8KTA3 Mobo Review
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 5:53 EST by: ryan
Neoseeker posted a review of the Epox 8KTA3 Socket A Motherboard. Here's a quote:
"The overclocking features are much improved over the 8KTA2 although they aren’t perfect. There is a fairly wide range of FSB speeds between 100MHz and 133MHz, although having 1Mhz increments is preferred. The range of speeds above 133MHz is definitely lacking which will limit the amount of overclocking that can be done with the 133MHz (DDR) Athlon CPUs (although these CPUs have yet to saturate the market in quantity). In the 8KTA3’s favour, these FSB settings are configured in the BIOS which is much more convenient than DIP switches or jumpers."
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Alternative Oses
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 5:52 EST by: ryan
ArsTechnica plays with BeOS & QNX.
"A couple of new players have come to fight for OS niches recently, namely BeOS PE 5 and the QNX RTOS. They both focus on pretty similar things, but on the other hand, they also do a lot of things quite differently. Be began as the "Media OS". It was supposed to toss away all of the problems of supporting legacy systems and code, so everything would be lightning-fast. QNX has always been used for embedded systems. According to QNX, you're probably in contact with their product everyday, whether you realize it or not. It's used to run power plants, factories, warehouses, and tons of other things you probably wouldn't even think of. Now QNX is making the jump to the desktop with the QNX RTOS."
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NOLF Tweak Guide
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 5:50 EST by: ryan
3DSpotLight has posted up a tweak guide for NOLF. Here's a quote:
"Despite Blood 2, Monolith are now back & have shown us they can make a good game that isn’t full of bugs. Still, NOLF is not without it’s problems. It’s extremely resource intensive & will make most systems crawl."
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160MHz FSB!
posted: March 6, 2001 @ 5:49 EST by: ryan
HardwareOC got their mainboard up to 160FSB!
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Giants Sea Reaper Demo
posted: March 5, 2001 @ 8:20 EST by: ryan
As promised PlanetMoon Studios has released the second demo of Giants, this time covering the Sea Reapers. You can also download it now from DemoNews.
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Black+Decker Case Mod Tool
posted: March 5, 2001 @ 8:17 EST by: ryan
RipNet-UK has posted up a short review of the Black+Decker Wizard case modding tool.
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VisionTek Vs. Asus GF MX
posted: March 5, 2001 @ 8:16 EST by: ryan
LittleWhiteDog.Com just posted their latest hardware review covering two GeForce2 MX cards, the Asus 7100 and the VisionTek. They also compared the two cards against a GeForce 256 SDR card to show the performance differences between the chipsets.
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AOpen AK37 Plus Review
posted: March 5, 2001 @ 7:20 EST by: ryan
ViaHardware has posted their review on AOpen's AK37 Plus, a board based on the VIA Apollo Pro266 chipset. Here's a clip from the review:
"When it comes to overclocking options, the AK37 Plus is as good as they come. Bus speeds from 66 to a whopping 248MHz are available, although our Crucial PC2100 engineering sample crapped out at 145MHz. VCore adjustment up to 3.5V is also available, but only the very braves with water cooling or peltiers should venture so far."
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Geforce 2 Roundup
posted: March 5, 2001 @ 7:19 EST by: ryan
Review-Zone has just published a new article "Geforce 2 MX Mega Roundup: Benchmaks Workout".
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Logitech Mouseman Optical
posted: March 5, 2001 @ 7:18 EST by: ryan
EXHardware has posted up a review of the Logitech Mouseman Wheel Optical mouse. Here's a snip:
"How often were you mousing around, and got stuck… the mouse just didn’t want to move again, what the heck?! So you turned the mouse around, and opened the mouse ball protector and you look at those rollers. Yuck, dirty as usual and furthermore this is the third time this month! The solution to all these problems has been in existance for a long time namely, optical mousing. Microsoft first started the optical mouse trend (but not the optical idea, that came from Logitech with their trackball) with their Intelimouse Explorer Pro and a while later Logitech followed their footsteps with the Mouseman Wheel optical."
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GF3 & Compressed Textures
posted: March 5, 2001 @ 7:17 EST by: ryan
As it seems, it's still broken in the GeForce 3 :(
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