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Detonator 6.47 Drivers

posted: November 1, 2000 @ 5:54 EST by: ryan

3DChipset.com has posted the Beta 6.47 Drivers that are floating out and about.

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Prologue of a Fan Fiction

posted: November 1, 2000 @ 6:14 EST by: ryan

Gamesurge launches a new feature today with the prologue of a Fan Fiction written by Jodias.

"As the complex patterns of light are intensified, she nears the edge of the leaf canopy, making her way out into the sudden heat of the blazing sun, removing herself from the cool, moist atmosphere of the forest. The narrow path that led from the forest now expands into a small road in which she walks steadily down the center, with her white cloak balancing slightly above the ground. She increases her stride and begins to move faster toward her destination."

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Utopia Live! GM Soundfont

posted: November 1, 2000 @ 6:12 EST by: ryan

HardwareZone have just posted a very detailed review on the Utopia Live! 32MB GM Soundfont. Here's a blurb from the review:

"Utopia Live! is a must-have for computer MIDI musicians who are using Creative SoundBlaster Live! soundcards. The increase in quality of MIDI reproduction is quite noticeable. For non-MIDI musicians, Utopia Live! offers a fairly cheap upgrade to their computers overall audio subsystem and enhanced audio for listening to MIDIs found in some current computer games and applications."

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AMD 760 Chipset? Good?

posted: November 1, 2000 @ 6:11 EST by: ryan

You have heard all the hype, we are sure of that. [H]ard|Ocp has posted up a few facts and a few solid benchmarks that will show us if the new AMD 760 Chipset supporting Double Data Rate Ram is all it is cracked up to be.

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40GB Fujitsu HD Review

posted: November 1, 2000 @ 6:10 EST by: ryan

PCRoddin have posted a review of the 40GB Fujitsu hard drive that uses liquid filled bearings. Review Excerpt:

"First up to bat is the Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) technology. I found this to be one of the most intriguing features of this drive. Fujitsu first introduced the FDB motor in July of 1999. The FDB motor features quieter operation as well as greater impact resistance and durability. So what makes this FDB so special? The Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor uses viscous oil in it's rotational components instead of metal ball-bearings."

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HipZip MP3 Player Review

posted: November 1, 2000 @ 6:08 EST by: ryan

Gamer's Depot has posted up their review of Iomega's newly released HipZip mp3 player.

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Hercules 3D Prophet II MX

posted: October 31, 2000 @ 5:43 EST by: ryan

T-Break has published a review of Hercules 3D Prophet II MX which is an SDR based card and compared it with Creative's DDR based MX card along with a GeForce 2 GTS and Ultra. Here's a bit from the review:

"There are power users and then there are power users. The Hercules series of graphics cards have always been associated with the second type of power users- who aren’t satisfied with buying a card with just the fastest chipset. Rather they want their cards to be tweaked to the max and offer performance like no other card in that category."

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It's Halloween!

posted: October 31, 2000 @ 5:34 EST by: ryan

BOOO! Um, grrr. Did I scare you? no. We'll that's my corny way of saying HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Or whatever...lalla.

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Max Payne Preview

posted: October 31, 2000 @ 4:28 EST by: ryan

In The Trenches has just kicked up a preview looking at Remedy Entertainment's upcoming first-person shooter, Max Payne. The preview contains some new information on the game technology and on some build-in editors. Here's a snip:

"To keep the frame rate stable (no software renderer by the way, only 3D accelerators), Remedy placed a few tech tricks inside the engine. The first is the LOD (Level Of Details) system, which changes the detail on objects which are far from the player, reducing their polycount, and as you get closer increases the detail. The second is the Exit Optimization. Instad of drawing all the objects in a specific area, it only draws the objects the player can see. The game also comes with 3 editors, MaxED which is a tool for designing your own levels, the ParticleFX which allows you to create fire, water, explosions and such effects to use in levels, and the ActorFX to create and redesign the characters."

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ELSA GLADIAC Ultra Review

posted: October 31, 2000 @ 6:17 EST by: ryan

FiringSquad has just put up a new ELSA GLADIAC ULTRA review. ELSA's latest card features 64MB of 4ns DDR memory, and a 250MHz core clock speed. They put it up against a regular GeForce2 and a Voodoo5 5500.

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ATI Radeon 64MB Vivo Review

posted: October 31, 2000 @ 6:16 EST by: ryan

HardwareZone have just posted a very detailed review on ATI's Radeon 64MB DDR. Here's a blurb from the review:

"The Radeon is a new Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) that combines all the features of nVidia, 3dfx and Matrox to become the "jack of all trades" along with a few more of its own innovation. It brings with it hardware T&L (Transform & Lighting) support, FSAA (Full Scene Anti Aliasing), EMBM, Vertex-Skinning, Key-Frame Interpolation, ATI's HyperZ Technology, hardware DVD support, and much more. ATI made quite a breakthrough here and it is ATI at its best."

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C&C: Red Alert 2 Review

posted: October 31, 2000 @ 6:13 EST by: ryan

Over at GamesBasement they have posted up their review of Red Alert II. Here's a quote:

"Multiplayer was even more fun! But once the novelty of this wore off (which happens in all games) one begins to look at the actual game play factors. What could be better? What would make it easier to control units? Build and expand more efficiently? Were there limitations?"

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A Look Into Modern CPUs

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 8:54 EST by: ryan

Over at G3D:Gaming In 3D they have come up with a snazzy article detailing Intel's history throughout the ages. Starting out with the Pentium 60-200:

"Pentium II 233-300, This was the successor to the Pentium PRO, and is basically a mix of a high end CPU along with features for home users. While the Pentium Classic CPUs kicked some sand on AMD's line of CPUs, the Pentium II buried it completely under. Basically these were the first of Intel CPUs to carry the exterior cartridge, known as SECC (or Single Edge Contact Cartridge) which carried the external L2 cache. On previous Intel CPUs, the cache was on the actual motherboard and ran at the speed of the system bus (which in most cases was 66mhz), whereas now it ran at exactly 1/2 the CPU speed."

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Rune Demo Out

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 8:52 EST by: ryan

Yep, its out, and if you haven't downloaded it already we have a local mirror right here.

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Antec SX1030B Case Review

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 5:01 EST by: ryan

CoreMeltdown.com has a new review up, this time of the brand new Tower Case from Antec, model SX1030B the "B" means it's black. Here's a Quote:

"Antec's SX1030 is the sibling to the SX1030B they are Identical except for the "B" ending which indicates it's color is Black. Antec's SX1030B is really the first black case I've been most impressed with. It's cooling options are awesome, two 80mm exhaust fans in the rear and two 80mm intake fans in the front pave the way for sweet case cooling in this tower case. It's strong and sturdy as well, this thing can take a beating and still won't dent, perfect for a home LAN server."

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AMD 760 chipset Benchmarks

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 6:12 EST by: ryan

FiringSquad has posted their preview of the fastest Athlon system they've tested to date. Based on AMD's 760 chipset, their 1.2GHz Athlon system tore threw our standard suite of benchmarks. They also decided to throw on a 600MHz Duron (overclocked to 800MHz via the system bus) to see how this low-end processor benefitted from the DDR memory. Here's a piece from the article:

"AMD's 760 chipset consists of two new chips: the 761 Northbridge and the 766 Southbridge. As we mentioned before, with 760, the system bus speed has been raised to 266MHz, providing 33% more bandwidth than
previous Athlon chipsets. In addition, 760 is fully compatible with existing 200MHz Athlon and Duron processors. Production motherboards should be able to automatically detect the bus speed supported by the processor without any input from the end user. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case for our 760 motherboard (which was one of AMD's reference motherboards)."

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Agilent Arcticooler Review

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 6:10 EST by: ryan

CaseJunkiez Case Modders Australia got the funk happening with a review of the much saught after Agilent Arcticooler. Here's a little snippet:

"Some HSF's use bulk size to do their job, others have big-arsed fans to draw off the heat. The Agilent Arcticooler claims to be different. Agilent, which is an offshoot of Hewlett Packard are the guys responsible for the original panaflo orb and have used everything they know to create the Arcticooler."

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Rune Game Review

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 6:09 EST by: ryan

Human Head's third person action title, Rune is a stunning game. There is simply no other way to describe the great graphics and fast and furious gameplay. Instilled with a blend of Norse mythology and traditional fantasy, Rune is a game that comes very close to deserving a place among the gods at Valhalla. Check out 3DGF's full review for the whole story.

"Nothing in the game really offered up much of a challenge, and the enemies were just an annoyance until the third episode. The combat system, while primitive and stripped down to your bare essentials of jump, strafe and swing, is really what makes Rune so damn fun. Who knew that chopping off your foe’s head with a long sword cold be more fun than blowing him up with a rocket launcher? To make things a little more interesting, each of the fifteen melee combat weapons comes with its own special Rune Power. My favorites were the Dwarven Battle Sword’s avalanche attack, in which large stones are hurled at your enemy every time you swing, the Dwarven Work Sword’s incredibly useful lightning attack, and Sigurd's Axe and its deadly freeze attack."

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Novasonic MP-786 CD/MP3

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 6:08 EST by: ryan

The Tech Zone starts the week with a look at the Novasonic MP-786 CD/MP3 player. What's so great about it? Let's do some math. Normal portable MP3 players has 32 to 64 Megs of storage for about a dozen songs. The Novasonic CD/MP3 player will play your MP3 encoded CD-R/RW for 650 Megs of non stop music. That's over 170 songs! The kicker? It cost less than the average Diamond Rio. And here's a clip:

"Playback quality is certainly more than adequate, it thoughtfully includes NiMH batteries and a charger, and can play 10 times the songs the average MP3 player can. It's larger than most MP3 players on the market so it's not shirt-pocketable, but people don't seem to mind carrying around portable CD players, and this player is no larger than most of those.

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Epox EP-BX7+100 Review

posted: October 30, 2000 @ 6:07 EST by: ryan

TweakTown has taken a look at the Epox EP-BX7+100 motherboard. This motherboard uses a Intel 440bx chipset with support for RAID and ata100 file transfers. Here's a clip:

"Epox have been in the PC motherboard and communications business for around 10 years now and was established in February of 1995. Victoria Chin from Epox Taiwan contact us a couple weeks ago asking if we would like to review one of their Intel 440bx chipset motherboards, we of course said sure. The Intel 440bx motherboard we are reviewing today is the EP-BX7+100 offering a 100MHz Bus Clock, supporting a single Socket 370 (FC-PGA370) Pentium III processor. This motherboard has a host of good features, one which really stands out is the HPT370 IDE-RAID controller which supports RAID 0, 1 and 0+1. As the name of the motherboard suggests, the board also has support for ATA100 for 100mb/s file transfer rates on ATA100 enabled hard disk drives. Epox have chosen to use a 1 AGP / 6 PCI and 1 ISA format, I think this is good as many PC users still use ISA modems and sound cards. Epox have included four DIMM slots which support pc100 memory up to 1GB in total. One thing which should also be mentioned is the large size of this motherboard, it is the biggest (305mm x 240mm) BX motherboard I have seen and used ever."

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2 New Creative Nvidia Cards

posted: October 29, 2000 @ 8:16 EST by: ryan

T-Break has published their benchmarks on the two new Creative cards: The GeForce2 Ultra and the MX with DDR RAM. Here's a bit from the review:

"The two new cards in the GeForce family cater to the two opposite ends of the market. The Ultra is the most powerful graphics card on the market today whereas the MX is targeted as the lowest-end GeForce card, costing only one third of what the Ultra would cost. Now all of you will start wondering whether Ultra performs three times as fast as the MX because you are paying that much extra for it. That’s what we’re here for!"

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ASUS AMD-760 Mobo

posted: October 29, 2000 @ 8:15 EST by: ryan

x-bit labs, former ixbtLABS, has posted a news item on ASUS A7M266 mainboard based on AMD-760 chipset.

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Server Burps

posted: October 29, 2000 @ 8:14 EST by: ryan

Well, as many of you may have noticed, our server has been going up and down all day today... hopefully they have everything all straightened out now... stay tuned.

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How To: Install A Harddrive

posted: October 29, 2000 @ 7:45 EST by: ryan

AcidHardware have written a step by step guide titled How To: Install A Harddrive. In the article they explain how to install both IDE and SCSI harddrives:

"Just bought that shiny new system with that 15gig harddrive and thinking sweet, i'm all set. Then a few weeks later after all those nights of downloading full version games and mp3's your harddrive is full up. So you go out to your local hardware shop and buy a new harddrive, you come back home and realise that installing one is alot harder than you thought. I've always hated installing a harddrive. It's always been the most annoying part to install for me. Even though it is a bit annoying it isn't that hard to do really. Hopefully this article will enlighten you on how to install a harddrive."

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MechWarrior 4 Dev Diary

posted: October 29, 2000 @ 7:43 EST by: ryan

GameSpy has posted up a new MechWarrior 4 developer diary by Christopher Blohm, along with four new screens.

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ASUS A7V Review

posted: October 29, 2000 @ 7:40 EST by: ryan

ASUS A7V Motherboard Review
TweakTown has reviewed the ASUS A7V socket a motherboard which is based on the VIA KT133 chipset. In the review they put the ASUS A7V up against a ABIT KT7-RAID board and a MSI K7T Pro board:

"This motherboard was basically a K7M motherboard with the new KX133 chip, AGP 4x support and PC133 SDRAM support. The board was larger in size but no additional features were added. When AMD released the Slot A Thunderbirds ASUS went back to the drawing boards and once again added some new traces and resistors to the K7V to accommodate the new Slot A Thunderbird that on just about every other KX133 motherboard would not run above 750MHz due to the timing issues with the Thunderbird and the KX133 chipset. The instants that VIA released the KT133 chipset for Socket A CPU's ASUS immediately started work on the new motherboard for the Socket A market, enter the A7V."

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Golden Orb Review

posted: October 28, 2000 @ 9:26 EDT by: ryan

UKGamer.net has reviewed one of the most eye pleasing heatsinks available on the market today for Coppermine CPUs, Thermaltake's Golden Orb. While many see the Golden Orb as more of a showpiece rather than a serious overclocking device, it deserves recognition for it's design (and it's efficiency). Here's an extract from the review:

"Once you open the packaging you see a piece of art sculpted in metal. The design of the Golden Orb is the same as it's Socket 370 counterpart. However to make it fit into the P3's heat transfer plate Thermaltake has welded the Orb onto an aluminium plate which covers all of the heat transfer plate."

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An Insight on PocketPC

posted: October 28, 2000 @ 1:12 EDT by: ryan

Guru-X of PCinsight has whipped up an interesting guide called, "An insight on PocketPC." This guide goes in detail describing the origins of PocketPC as well as what this platform of handheld computing devices can offer. Here is a clip:

"Unlike Windows 9x, the WinCE (and PocketPC) devices run on a variety of processor types. Win9x systems all use CPU's based under the x86 instruction set, while the PocketPC devices currently use either a MIPS CPU or Intel StrongARM. In terms of speed, these chips currently run between a 133MHz MIPS (found on the HP and some Casio units) up to 206MHz StrongARM (Compaq's iPaq). Needless to say, you won't be waiting on these devices for very long when launching applications. Yes, they do take slightly longer than launching an application on the Palm, but then again, PocketPC offers far more."

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Creative GeForce2 MX Pics

posted: October 28, 2000 @ 7:28 EDT by: ryan

ixbtLABS has posted exclusive pics of the new Creative 3D Blaster GeForce2 MX graphics card with DDR memory.

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Enlight EN-7238 Review

posted: October 28, 2000 @ 7:26 EDT by: ryan

There is a new Enlight EN-7238 K7 Case review @ PC Extremes. Here's a clip:

"Ever looking for the easy way out when building a system? Looking to only install the easy stuff such as a processor, ram or a Hard Drive. Well Enlight may have a system just for you. The Enlight EN-7238 K7 system is drummed down consisting of everything except a few components. The EN-7238 K7 is geared toward those looking to throw a few pieces of hardware together or for use as a dumb terminal in a network. Primarily being a premium Computer Case manufacturer for quite some time, Enlight has created durable, functional and most importantly easily modifiable cases. However Enlight hasn’t restricted itself to just a manufacturer of cases, they have also outstretched the olive branch to include such items Server Racks, Power Supplies and Barebones System."

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Asus Deluxe Geforce2 MX

posted: October 28, 2000 @ 7:25 EDT by: ryan

Today Hardware Avenue have scooped up some juicy info on the soon to be released. All-In-Deluxe Geforce2 MX from Asus. This is packed with many features, including tv-out and video-in.

"AGP-V7100ALL-IN-DELUXE offers a simultaneous and independent dual-display control and output to VGA monitor and TV. For example, you can browse the web on PC while watching a movie on a big screen TV."

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MidiLand S4 7100 5.1 Review

posted: October 27, 2000 @ 5:28 EDT by: ryan

Chick's Hardware posted a review of the MidiLand S4 7100 5.1 Speaker System, a great set of speakers. Here's a snip:

"MidiLand are one of the biggest names in the PC speaker market thanks to the sucess of their 2-channel system, the S2/4100, known for the startlingly clear sound and exquisite power. So when they announced their new S4 series, it raised a lot of consumer interest, however as most manufacturers found out, the main hurdle was to develop a true 5.1-channel audio system for the PC, but at the same time keep costs low. Therefore MidiLand's mid-range 5.1-channel product, the S4 7100, is targeted at the PC audio market sweet spot of good performance at a good price at under $200."

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