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April
17 - 24,
2000: Archive
Monday
- April 24th
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The damn thing was just announced and there are already previews flying
around. Check them out below:
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ATI has officially announced their
RADEON 256 chip!! This summer is going to be mighty interesting on the
gaming stuff. Here is some info from the press
release:
NEW
ORLEANS, Louisiana, WINHEC, April 24, 2000 - ATI
Technologies Inc. (TSE: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today introduced the most
powerful graphics processor ever designed for desktop PCs, the RADEON
256™ at Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WINHEC).
The new chip
supports the following firsts:
- Most advanced graphics chip ever designed, featuring 30 million
transistors, in an .18 micron technology, giving it a higher
transistor count than CPUs such as the Pentium III and Athlon.
- First chip to support up to 128MB of double-data rate (DDR)
memory at 200MHz
- ATI's Charisma Engine™ which incorporates a 30 million
triangle per second geometry engine as well as radical new 3D
character animation techniques
- First graphics chip to break through the Gigatexel barrier with
an awesome 1.5 Gigatexel per second rendering engine
- First PC graphics chip to include an on-chip hardware HDTV
decoder
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Next Dimension Hardware has
posted a review
of DFI's CA61-B VIA Apollo Pro 133 based Socket-370 motherboard.
The funny thing is that this board 3 ISA slots and only 4 PCI slots.
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Diamond/S3 has released a new driver for
their Viper II (Savage2000 based) card which has T&L. Here is
the info and a link to download:
4. Issue Addressed
Resolved issues with the following games:
Force Commander (graphical corruption)
Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed (graphical corruption)
Homeworld (clipping in OpenGL)
Half-Life (locking in OpenGL)
5. Features Added
OpenGL options now included on Diamond 3D property page.
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GamePC has posted a review
of this new ASUS board that is based on the good old i440BX
chipset. It has a Socket-370 and ATA-66 support VIA a chip I've
never seen from CMD which is actually pretty good.
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Thoughshell has posted a review
of ASUS' already immensely popular VIA KX133 based K7V Slot-A
motherboard. Head over and see what they thought of this top notch
Athlon board.
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3dfx is not the only one showing off their new stuff. NVIDIA has a
new chip in the works as well, the GeForce 2 GTS. While NVIDIA
does not want benchmarks posted yet, a French magazine has posted a
review (download
the zip file) of the card and the benchmarks comparing it to a
GeForce were scanned and posted
at 3Dchipset.com. They scores are looking mighty good, and
it's only on a Pentium III 500! If you would like to see the new
features and specs of the GeForce 2 GTS, check out this short preview
over at ACTU Micro.
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Ace's Hardware has posted the second
part of their Quest for Better Performance Series. This is a
very interesting and technical article which continues their analysis of
the current bottlenecks in PC's and what needs to be done to remedy
them. They focus on memory bandwidth and chipsets.
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Tech-Review has posted a guide
which gives you some tips on how you can decrease your system's boot
time. Head over and give it a quick once over, you may learn
something useful.
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We're starting to see the influx of 3dfx Voodoo5 previews coming
in. Keep in mind these previews are all based on a beta board with
beta drivers. Here they are:
Anand's is especially good because they threw the card against every
other 3D card I can think of in numerous benchmarks.
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To go along with their Logitech Cordless Keyboard review, 3D
Alpha has posted a review
of Logitech's Cordless MouseMan Wheel.
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HardwareCentral has posted
a review
of NETGEAR's RT311 Router. This router allows you to easily
connect multiple computers to your ADSL or Cable modem and provides
firewall capabilities to protect you from attacks.
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Electric.com has let us know that
Soyo has released a new BIOS update for their 6VBA 133 motherboard that
allows it to use ATI's 3D Rage Pro video card. Grab it here.
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The Tech Zone has posted an article
which shows you how to build an 825MHz LAN Party Box for a relatively
cheap price. Of course they use a 550MHz PIII Coppermine
overclocked to 825MHz and the Enlight EN7273 Medium Tower Case which
they reviewed
a couple days ago.
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Frontx sent over an email regarding
a new product called the CPX Computer Port Extension which allows you to
relocate the ports that are on the back of your case to the front of
your case (in a 5 1/4" drive bay. Check out the press release here.
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HipHardware has updated their CPU
price list. Want to know what the current CPU prices are and
where to buy them? Then check out this article.
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PCMechanic has posted a review
of the ECS P6BAP-Me VIA Apollo Pro 133 based Socket-370 microATX
motherboard. Obviously a board like this is not geared to PC
enthusiasts, but rather OEM's who want to build very cheap systems.
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3D Accelerated has posted a review
of a rather interesting new monitor, DTI's fully 3D 18.1" LCD
monitor. Here is a bit from the review:
The second approach to true 3D animation is known as
autostereoscopy (which DTI monitors utilize). In this method, two
solid and unyielding images are produced for the user to view. These
images are merged together, and if viewed by one eye, will appear to
be two overlapping images which don’t quite merge together
correctly. However, when viewed with two eyes, autostereoscopy can
produce vivid lifelike 3D images.
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G3D has posted a short article
which tells you what you're going to need (in terms of tools and
materials - hardware and software) if you're going to overclock your
system.
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If you haven't heard yet, Zoiah
HQ has gotten hold of the latest NVIDIA reference BIOS updates which
are supposed to change the timing of the RAM to allow for higher
overclocking. Tech-Junkie
has posted an article
which takes a look at if it really does increase overclocking capability
or performance.
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Frosty Tech has posted a review
of Fujitsu's smallest hard drive, their 6.4GB 5400 ATA66 hard drive
(MPE3064AT). However, this new drive sports some new technology
which makes it significantly faster than most other 5400RPM drives.
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Sunday
- April 23rd
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For those of you who are celebrating Easter, on behalf of the Hardware
Pros I would like to wish you a happy Easter. And if you're not
then enjoy the holidays! Eat well, go outside, get some air and do
something fun.
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Saturday
- April 22nd
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t-break posted some exclusive
upcoming product advertisements from Creative Labs earlier
today. The text on the GeForce 2 GTS AD was hard to read, but some
people in their forums were able to make it out, check it out:
"Power Punch your games with 3D Blaster Geforce 2. The first
3D accelerator to break the gigatexel barrier. 3D Blaster Geforce 2 is
turbo charged with the superior Geforce 2 GTS, the worlds first
gigatexel shading GPU. This incredible chip pumps fill rates up to 1.6
gigaltexels per second. Now that's dynamite power for insane gaming!!
And with next generation transformation and lighting egines, 3D
Blaster Geforce 2 processes the entire 3D pipeline onboard to deliver
upto 25 million triangles per second, thats twice the complexity of a
Pentium III! What's more, the new Nvidia Shading Rasterizer |NSR|
enables complex per pixel shading and lighting to produce tunning
cinematic effects and rich, realistic material."
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PCStats has posted a preview
of Swiftech's (the makers of the MC1000 cooler) MCW2000 liquid cooling
system. This baby looks amazing! It has 2 Peltier units as
well, I can't wait to see this thing in action!
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Thresh's Firing Squad has also
posted a review
of Abit's new VIA KX133 based Slot-A motherboard, the KA7. Head over and
see what they thought about this overclocker's friendly Athlon mobo.
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Electric.com sent over some
interesting news
about Hewlett Packard developing the technology to be able to print from
an type of device. Here is a bit from the article:
"We're inventing the underlying infrastructure to enable all
sorts of appliances to be print-capable," CEO Carly Fiorina said
during a news conference today. "You can point a cell phone at a
printer and print directions to a restaurant," or you can use a
personal digital assistant to print out a price list or e-mail.
To accomplish its task, HP announced a series of partnership
announcements with: FedEx, to turn printers into personal shipping
stations; ImageTag, for storing, retrieving and sending documents
using bar-coded labels; NewspaperDirect, for printing international
newspapers locally on demand; Mimeo.com, for receiving documents over
the Internet to be printed and bound; Stamps.com, for printing stamps;
and Encryptix.com, for printing tickets.
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3DHardware has posted a review
of ASUS's K7M AMD Irongate (750) based Athlon motherboard. The AMD
750 is still a decent chipset, but judging by our poll below, I would
say that most people would prefer something like the ASUS K7V with the
KX133 chipset.
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Ars Technica has updated their Rockin'
System Guide with their latest recommendations for the "God
Box", the "Hot Rod" and the "Budget Box."
Head over for some good suggestions on which components you should buy.
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GameCenter has posted a great article
about the future of 3D audio. They explain what 3D Audio is, take
a look at the most popular API's: A3D and EAX, and some other
technologies and try to make sense of where we're headed next.
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BXBoards has taken a look
at their first i820 board that uses SDRAM instead of RDRAM.
Obviously performance sucked, but it ranked high on stability and
features.
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Hardware-One has posted a review
of Abit's KA7 VIA KX133 based Slot-A Athlon motherboard. The only
complaint they seem to have is that memory performance is quite low (as
with most other VIA chipsets).
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PCExtremes has posted an article
which takes a look at the latest set of leak NVIDIA drivers, 5.14 on
Windows 2000. They seemed to cause a lot of problems that 5.13 did not
have.
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3D Alpha has posted a review
of Logitech's Cordless iTouch Keyboard. It's a tad expensive, but
has some very sweet features and if you get the cordless mouse as well,
you can play Quake3 from your couch!
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iXBT Hardware has posted a review
of EPoX's EP-6VBA2 VIA Apollo Pro 133A based slot-1 motherboard.
Performance seems to be a bit under par.
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Friday
- April 21st
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According to this
article over at CNet, it seems
like Intel is having some production problems with the new Celeron II's.
Intel is trying to cover it up by saying that they didn't expect demand
to be so high, but I doubt that's the whole story.
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Gamespy has posted a comparison
between AMD's Athlon CPU and Intel's Pentium III CPU. There is
quite a bit of information in this article, but no benchmarks.
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AGN3D has updated their Voodoo5
5500 preview with quite a few benchmarks comparing the V5 to a
GeForce DDR card. Unless 3dfx has some extra performance up their
sleeve, things don't look that rosy for the V5.
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HardwareCentral has posted
a detailed comparison
between Iwill's sIDE RAID 66 controller card which is based on High
Point Technoligies HPT368 chip and Promise's FastTrak66 card which is
based on their own ATA-66 chip. Head over and see which is the winner.
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Chris over at DocHardware has
slapped up a quick review
of Abit's SlocKET !!! Socket-370 to Slot-1 converter card. This
card works with FC-PGA CPU's as well.
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PCStats has posted an article
where they have some fun with a Pentium III 600E and see how far it can
overclock. Head over to see the benchmarks, before and after.
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G3D has posted a review
of the Northwind GFD Rev 2 Athlon overclocking card. This is the
smallest card I've seen, looks professionally built and doesn't require
an external power connection.
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Thursday
- April 20th
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ATI has released a new Windows 9x
driver for their Rage 128/Rage 128 Pro cards. Here is the info and
a link to download:
- Fixes System hangs clicking the START button when ATI TV Player is
open
- Fixes Star Wars Episode 1: Racer - engine smoke is a solid block
- Fixes Display constantly updates/flickers in Windows 95 using
driver version 4.12.6269
- Fixes AMC peripheral not found launching Video In Player on a Rage
Fury Pro (with video in/out)
- ATI
Rage 128/Pro Driver (Win9x - v4.12.6277 - 8.45 MB)
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Ars Technica has posted a shootout
between Diamond/S3's Viper II and ATI's Rage Fury MAXX. I haven't
seen these two cards compared directly, so it should be interesting.
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VR Zone has posted a review
of EPoX's EP-7KXA VIA KX133 Slot-A motherboard. With the new Abit KA7
and ASUS K7V, EPoX is going to have a tough time competing.
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GamePC posted a review
of the Hewlett Packard's new 9300i ATAPI CD-RW drive. This
incredibly fast drive burns CD's at 10X and has a 4X Re-Write speed and
32X read speed.
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Extreme Hardware has posted a review
of Diamond's Monster Sound MX400 PCI sound card. This card is
based on ESS' Canyon3D chip and uses the Sensaura API for 3D
audio. They seemed to really like it's 3D audio output.
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Planet GeForce has posted a review
of Absolute Multimedia's Outrageous Ultra GeForce 32MB DDR card.
To bring they're price down, they've used a few cheaper components than
most GeForce DDR cards, so head over and check it out before buying.
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3DHardware has posted a review
of Act Labs 6-gear RS Shifter add-on for the RS Wheel. This is the
only "real" shifter you'll find for the PC and luckily it
delivers!
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The Tech Zone has put together a review
of this rather unique camera, check it out:
The new Olympus C-2020 Zoom is the first Olympus
digital camera to shoot color or black & white images and the
first Olympus camera with the capability to shoot up to 60 seconds of
QuickTime movie.
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BXBoards has posted their chipset
comparison article in which they take a look a thte BX, i820, VIA
Apollo Pro and VIA Apollo Pro 133A. They have a variety of
benchmarks taken on the 100 and 133MHz bus speeds.
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High Point Technologies has
released a new driver for their HPT366 ATA-66 chip found on some
motherboard and ATA-66 PCI controller cards. Grab it below:
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HardwareCentral has posted
a review
of Evergreen's fireLINE IEEE 1394 (firewire) line of solutions. If
you're into doing some heavy duty video editing or any other kind of
heavy data manipulation, you should definitely look into to this.
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The Tech Report has posted a review
of Everglide's Giganta mouse pad. It has a huge specially coated
surface that gives you the best mouse gliding experience possible.
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3DSoundSurge has posted a very
detailed review
of Best Data's Cabo 64MB Portable MP3 player. You can also check
out our review here.
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D-Link sent over a press release
regarding the first USB Hub and 10/100 Ethernet adapter kit on the
market, the DSB-H3ETX. Here is a bit from the press release:
Irvine, CA, April 19, 2000 - D-Link, one of the largest True
Manufacturers of Networking,
Communications, and digital technology today unveiled the industry's
first USB Hub/Ethernet adapter, named the D-Link DSB-H3ETX. It is a
combination 10/100Mb
IEEE802.3/802.3u compliant Ethernet adapter and integrated standard-based
3-port Universal Serial Bus (USB) hub all in one easy to use device.
As a fully integrated USB solution, the new USB/Ethernet adapter
allows users to easily connect to
the Ethernet network with a complete out of the box,
Plug-N-Play solution.
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Wednesday
- April 19th
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GA-Hardware has posted a review
of Abit's new KA7 VIA KX133 based Slot-A motherboard. There is
already a new
bios for this board in case you already bought it which is supposed
to allow it to overclock better.
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Dan's Data has posted a review
of the i-Vox Voice Organizer for Palm handheld computers. This could be
a nice addition for those times you need to quickly record something and
don't want to waste any time.
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UK Gamer has posted a review/comparison
between two of the biggest Global WIN Slot-1 HSFs the FKK50 and the
VOS32+. Head over and see how they perform, the nice thing about
Global WIN's HSFs is that they are very well priced.
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3dfx has released another new Voodoo3
beta driver. Here is the info and a link to download:
- THESE ARE BETA DRIVERS AND ARE UNSUPPORTED BY 3DFX TECHNICAL
SUPPORT
- Please download and view
the FAQ for more info about this and future BETA drivers
- Updated kit after server failed.
- Contains new Driver installer.
- Contains New edge tools - 1.5.7.77
- Force Commander fix
- Incorrect texture sizes reported from Glide fixed
- Voodoo3
2000/3000 AGP/PCI Driver (Win9x -v1.04.07 BETA - 6.71 MB)
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TweakTown has posted a review
of Alpha's huge PEP66u HSF kit. This monster works with any PPGA
and FC-PGA CPU, and I would venture to say that you will not find a
better conventional cooler than this.
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Three sites have posted Voodoo5 5500 AGP benchmarks last night.
While they look pretty good, they don't look much higher than a GeForce
DDR and the FSAA incurs quite a bit hit on performance. We'll have
to see what 3dfx can do with the final board and drivers:
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PCExtremes has posted a review
of AOpen's DVD-1040 Pro 10X Slot-loaded ATAPI DVD-ROM drive. AOpen
and Pioneer are the only two that I know of that make slot-loaded
drives, and I wouldn't go with anything else.
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HardwareCentral has updated
their buyer's
guide for the month of April. This guide has their suggestions
on what components would be best for a low, mid and high end system.
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iXBT Hardware has written up an article
on DDR SDRAM and VIA's new chipset which will support DDR SDRAM.
They even have some benchmarks against RDRAM. It looks like DDR
SDRAM does have a good future.
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Overclockin.com is giving away
a PowerCharger GFD. We all know how expensive these damn little
devices are, so head on over and enter
it if you have an Athlon.
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Electric.com has posted a review
of Wacom's Graphire Tablet. This device allows you to input your
own handwriting from a tablet. It's useful for drawing sketches or
adding signatures to documents, etc.
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Doc Hardware has posted a review
of D-Link's DSB-650 USB Ethernet adapter. The speed is a bit on
the slow side (below 10Mbps).
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G3D has posted a review
of TennMax's MEGA7 Socket7/370 cooler.
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Tuesday
- April 18th
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FullOn3D has posted a
comprehensive comparison
between the i440BX, VIA Apollo Pro 133 and i820 chipsets. Who would have
known that the BX would still be a viable chipset in 2000?
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Today we finally get to see some real Voodoo5 5500 benchmarks!
Both HardOCP and Beyond3D
have received pre-release boards, which are supposedly very similar to
the final release boards. I'm not positive on what the clock speed is,
but we'll find out later on.
Update: Both sites have posted their benchmarks.
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PCGN has fired off a couple questions
to Eldy Nodal, the Marketing Communications Manager at Aureal.
With the financial troubles they've been having lately, a lot of people
were wondering about this:
PCGN: Due to Aureal's recent financial difficulties, have
plans for the SQ3500 sound card been canceled, or are they still in
development for the expected release?
Aureal: [It is] put on hold for now.
PCGN: Are drivers for the SQ2500 and SQ1500 still being
developed for the Windows 2000 platform, or for that matter, any
platform?
Aureal: Yes.
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If you have a Soyo 6IZA or 6IZA/NA motherboard and you want to run
Windows 2000, they have just released a new BIOS update which will allow
you to do so. Grab it here.
Thanks to Electric.com for the
news.
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While this debate varies heavily from area to area, Fast-MHz
has written up an article
that talks generally about the advantages and disadvantages of each of
these technologies and takes a look at a few specific ones, most notably
FreeDSL.
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of Diamond's Monster Sound MX400. Is it just me or is this board
just not producing the amount of excitement that the MX300 did?
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Tom's Hardware Guide has
posted a comparison
between these two popular VIA KX133 based Athlon motherboards. Tom
seems to like the K7V better, but that was expected.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a comparison
between the Pentium III Coppermine's and the new Celeron II's.
Even though they use the same core, the Pentium III has doubled the L2
cache. Furthermore, the Pentium has an 8-way associate cache as
opposed to the Celeron's 4-way set-associate cache which can increase
the hit rate. In any case, they've posted a bunch of benchmarks with the
processors running at the same speed with both L2 cache on and off.
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Ace's Hardware has posted a review
of the EPoX EP-7KXA in which they focus on stability because when it
comes down to it, that's what really matters when looking for a
motherboard. Performance when using the same chipset is generally not an
issue anymore.
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Extreme Hardware has posted a comparison
between Midiland's S4/7100 5.1 piece speaker system and Altec Lansing's
ACS-56 4.1 piece speaker system. The Midiland's cost a bit more
and have an extra speaker, but they seemed to like the Altec Lansing's
better.
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HotHardware has posted a review
of Intel's Pentium III 800EB processor running on the i820 platform with
RDRAM. On the overclocking side of things, they were only able to
get it up to 900MHz, probably because of the already high 133MHz bus
speed.
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HardwareCentral has posted
a review
of a Dual Pentium III Xeon setup. Wouldn't you love to have one of
those? I know I would!
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HipHardware has posted a review
of Ninjamicro's Freespeed Pro GFD Athlon overclocking device. It
doesn't look too bad, but the Northwind Rev 2 looks a look more refined.
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Bill over at CPUReview has
updated his Athlon/Pentium
III price comparison with the latest prices. The Athlon 700
is now cheaper than a Pentium III 550, and with very good KX133 boards
coming out, the Athlon is looking better than ever.
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Dan's Data has taken a couple
microATX motherboards out for a spin. The AOpen MX3W is based on
the i810 chipset while the ASUS CUWE-RM is based on the i810E.
Check it out here.
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The Tech-Report has posted a review
of Intel's Pentium III 800EB. This is a Coppermine core with a
133MHz Front Side Bus speed.
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3DAccelerated has posted a review
of a stick of 128MB of PC133 SDRAM from Crucial Technologies (the retail
branch of Micron). If you want some high quality stuff, this should fit
the bill.
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Tweak3D has posted an article
which explains how the technology behind the Hard Disk Drive works. This
is a very detailed and easy to understand article, be sure to give it a
read.
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JSI Hardware has posted a review
of Ricoh's all-in-one CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. This writes at 6X and has a
DVD speed of 4X. Not too bad at all.
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Electric.com sent word that Samsung has
developed the technology to etch circuits below .10 microns. Here
is a bit from the press
release:
Reaching below the semiconductor circuit
design rule of ten microns has long been considered beyond the realm
of technological possibility. However, Samsung Electronics has
developed a new photoresistance technology, used in lithography, that
can break that formidable barrier. Until now, manufacturing technology
and tools for argon fluoride (ArF), a light source for forming the
minute circuits needed to commercialize devices with a memory capacity
of one gigabit or more, has been developed.
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Monday
- April 17th
|
We've posted our review of
Aureal's Vortex2 SQ2500 Quad PCI sound card. I'm sure most of you
have already read a review of this awesome sound card, but if you
haven't and were thinking of upgrading your sound card, check it out here.
By the way, we've updated the poll with a new question, so scroll down
and vote.
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Are you confused on what your next upgrade should be? or which
components are currently have the best price/performance ratio? Sharky
Extreme has posted their latest Hardware
Buyers guide which may be able to help you out.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a chipset shootout
between the good old i440BX, the i820, VIA's Apollo Pro 133A, AMD's 750
(Irongate) and VIA's KX133. Head over and see which platform came
out on top.
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VSpot has posted a review
of Abit's Siluro GT2 Ultra (Ultra TNT2) 32MB card. TNT2 Ultra are
still a great buy, especially if you can't afford a GeForce.
Believe me, you won't regret it. They are still very fast and now
have very low prices.
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OcShoot has taken a Pentium III
Coppermine 550E and along with a VapoChill cooling system and a custom
designed device which halts power to the motherboard until the desired
temperature has been reached, they were able to get it up to 965MHz
stably, that's a 170MHz bus speed! Unbelievable, check it out here.
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Anand Tech has posted an article
on the overclocking capabilities of the new Celeron II's and how much
performance you will be able to gain out of them when compared to a
whole bunch of other CPU's.
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Overclockers Australia has
posted a review
of Senfu's CPU Water Cooling kit. A decent device, especially
since it's the first commercial product of it's kind, but it still needs
a little work.
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got apex? has posted a review
of EPoX's 6VBA2 VIA Apollo Pro 133A based Slot-1 motherboard. It's
a decent board, but only has 5 PCI slots, 3 DIMM slots and it still uses
jumpers.
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HardwarenCentral has
posted a review
of Adaptec's 29160. You know that Adaptec makes the best SCSI
cards and this Ultra160 64-bit PCI card is no different. The only
question is, are you willing to pay the extremely high price for it?
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