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February
1 - 8,
2000: Archive
Tuesday
- February 8th
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Abit's VA6 VIA Apollo Pro 133 based Slot-1 motherboard. The
board got a rather low rating of 80/C-.
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We've posted a review of kärna's
Razer BoomSlang 2000 DPI mouse. This awesome mouse has a
precision which is only rivaled by Microsoft's Intellieye mice, but
without the mess-ups of picking up the MS mice because the Razer still
uses a ball for it's motion. Check out all the details here.
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Riva Extreme has posted a review
of ASUS' K7M Slot-A Athlon motherboard. Until boards based on
VIA's KX133 chipset are released, this is you're best bet for an Athlon
board.
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GamePC has posted an article
which takes a look at Microsoft's newly released Windows 2000 operating
system. They focus on how good of an OS it is for gaming, so if
you're a hardcore gamer you should definitely check it out.
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Gamelinks.net has posted the first
part of their guide to building your own powerful gaming
machine. Head over for some tips if you're new to the inside of a
computer case.
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Cole3D has posted a review
of Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum card. This is the
high-end of Creative's line and comes with a bunch of software and the
Live! Drive .. a device with a bunch of I/O plugs which fits in a 5
1/4" drive bay.
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Digital Clips has posted a review
of Intel's Pentium III 550E FC-PGA chip which they call a 733 in
disguise. This might be one of the best buys right now!
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of ASUS' P3C-E i820 motherboard. This is the version that uses
only RDRAM, so be prepared to spend some cash if you want to get one of
these!
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PC Rave has posted a very good article
on what should be a hot debate when the Playstation 2 is released.
Which system is better for gaming? Head over and read their take
on it.
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3DHardware.net has posted a review
of SMC's EZ Hub USB. This is a 4-port hub will allow you to
connect 4 additional USB devices, but costs quite a bit.
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got apex? has posted their review
of Best Data's Theatrix PCI sound card. For the price it isn't too
bad, especially for DVD's, but we suggest getting something a little
better. Check out our review here
as well.
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Monday
- February 7th
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AMD demonstrated an Athlon CPU running
at 1.1GHz today! The CPU was made using their 0.18 micron copper
interconnect technology at the Dresden FAB in Germany. Here is a
bit from the news
release:
SUNNYVALE, CA--February 7, 2000--AMD today demonstrated a
1.1 GHz(1100 MHz) version of the AMD Athlon™ processor manufactured
in its Fab 30 facility in Dresden, Germany. The demonstration featured
the newest version of the AMD Athlon processor that integrates
high-performance on-die Level 2 (L2) cache. The device is manufactured
utilizing AMD's leading-edge HiP6L 0.18 micron process technology
featuring copper interconnects. The demonstration required no special
cooling techniques and was shown in conjunction with a presentation at
the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
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BXBoards has posted a review
of Shuttle's AV64 Slot-1 motherboard which is based on VIA's Apollo Pro
133A chipset. Head over and see what they thought of this board.
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Lost Circuits has posted a review
of Tyan's S1854 Trinity 400 Rev 3 Socket-370/Slot-1 motherboard.
Looks like the third revision is a gem!
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TargetPC has posted a very
excellent (and more detailed than usual) review
of Altec Lansing's ACS 45.2 3-piece speaker set. I have the
45.1's, and for the price, they are absolutely awesome.
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A3D Fan Site has
posted a new leaked beta driver of Aureal's Vortex2 2048 drivers.
These new drivers are up to beta 20. They add EAX, A3D 3.0 support
as well as a few other enhancements. Keep in mind that these are
beta and may not work as you expect them to:
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ZDNet has posted an extremely
interesting article
about what new heights processors are going to reach in the coming
years. Microprocessor analysts are predicting that the 10GHz
barrier will be reached in 2011. There is also a lot of other
interesting information in the article such as copper technology which
will help manufactures make the switch from 0.18 microns to 0.07, etc.
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Guillemot has released new drivers for their GeForce cards which are based on NVIDIA's 3.72 reference drivers. Grab them below:
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CNet has written up and interesting article which states that IBM plans to unveil a new chip that is supposed to be the fastest chip in the world. Check out this bit from the article:
IBM researchers will announce at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference that they have developed a new family of
high-speed computer circuits that run at speeds of 3.3 to 4.5 GHz (gigahertz), up to five times faster than today's fastest Pentium
III chips.
...
The new system has a distributed clock function. In most standard computer chips, the clock
paces the speed of the circuits and a centralized clock synchronizes the operations of the entire
chip. The clock waits for all operations on a chip to finish before starting the next cycle, so the
speed of the chip is limited to the pace of the slowest operation.
To increase speed, IBM researchers decentralized the clock, using locally generated clocks to run smaller sections of circuits.
The design thus allows faster sections of circuits the freedom to run at higher cycles. It also significantly reduces power
requirements.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has posted a review
of Inari's PassPort Home Networking kit. This kit does not use a phoneline or ethernet type of connection, but rather a proprietary method that offers a relatively slow maximum speed of 350Kbps.
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Anand Tech has posted three very interesting reviews. Check them out below:
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S3/Diamond has released some new drivers
for boards based on their Savage4 chip. Grab it below:
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iXBT Hardware has posted a good review
of Intel's Pentium III 500E FC-PGA CPU. Head over to see the
benchmarks and how far they were able to overclock the chip.
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SystemLogic has posted a review
of D-Link's USB Radio. If you don't have a radio and want a cheap
way to get it if you already have a good computer speaker system, this
looks like a good idea.
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Overclockin.com has posted a review
of Trinity Micro's Northwind GFD Athlon Overclocking card. This
new revision still doesn't have L2 cache adjustments and is still rather
expensive.
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Tech-Junkie has posted a review
of Creative Labs GeForce Pro card (it's called the Annihilator Pro in
North America). Head over and see what they thought of this DDR
GeForce 256 card.
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Sunday
- February 6th
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Olivier Gilliore has released a new version of Powertweak.
This awesome utility optimizes you CPU/memory/chipset subsystem for
maximum performance and even has a monitoring utility and CPU cooling
function. Grab it below:
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of Monsoon's MM-700 3-piece flat panel speakers. This is one of
the better flat speaker sets you can buy, because of the decent
subwoofer they provide, but it will cost you a bit more than other sets.
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Dan over at Dan's Data has gone on
an overclocking adventure.
He started with a BP6, a Pentium III 500E and one of the new Alpha PAL6035MUC
coolers. Head over and see what he came out with.
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Saturday
- February 5th
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Tom's Hardware Guide has also
posted an article
on VIA's upcoming KX133 Athlon chipset. This new chipset will
support every feature the i820 does (except for RDRAM) and even a few
more features which Intel chipset don't have such as Virtual Channel
Memory. Finally we get to see some benchmarks of this new chipset,
Tom has compared it to AMD's Irongate 750 and things are looking good!
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Tom's Hardware Guide has
posted a short article
introducing Trasmeta's new Crusoe series of processors including the
TMA3120 and TMA5400.
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GamePC has posted a review
of AMD's Athlon 800MHz CPU. A great performer, but definitely not
worth the price. Unless you have money growing off trees, stick
with the 650, it's a much better deal and you'll surely get 800+ MHz.
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Sharky Extreme has posted
their review
of Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer mouse w/Intellieye
technology. You can also check out our review here.
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The Guru3D has posted a review
of Guillemot's 3D Prophet DDR-DVI GeForce 256 based card. Head
over and see what they thought of this excellent card.
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Dan's Data has posted a comparison
of two FC-PGA Coppermine compatible Socket-370 to Slot-1 converter
cards, the ASUS S370-133 and Eagle's Slocket.
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of HP's 9100 CD Writer Plus. This ATAPI CD-RW drive has a 8X
Write, 4X ReWrite and 32X Read speeds.
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Hardware-One has posted a review
of Matrox's Marvel G400-TV 16MB card. If you're into video editing
and a little bit of gaming on the side, this is an awesome choice.
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Fast-MHz Overclocking has posted a
review
of the 2COOLPC cooler. This interesting device channels air to the
important parts of your PC.
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Friday
- February 4th
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Leadtek's Winfast GeForce DDR card. Regarded as one of the best
out there, and a at a great price! The only problem you might
have, is finding one.
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Do you ever wonder how all of us hardware guys run these game
benchmarks? Well, Cole3D has
posted a short article
which tells you exactly how you can test out your machine's capabilities
as well.
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Sharky Extreme has also
posted a review
of VideoLogic's DigiTheatre Surround Sound speaker system. A great
system, but who would want to spend $500 on a computer speaker system?
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HardOCP has posted a rather
surprising article
which takes a look a the GeForce's performance on a game that supposedly
takes advantage of T&L through DirectX 7; that game is Test Drive
6. This explains it all:
Well, live by the sword, die by the sword. Here is a
real world app that to the best of my knowledge does use T&L and
has the option to toggle it on and off. THIS IS A REAL GAME YOU
CAN BUY. Remember that. We see from the screens
above that T&L on the nVidia GeForce is in NO WAY a help
whatsoever. In fact it totally hinders the game in 32 bit if in
fact the D3D HAL is running 32 bit. That is why I took the
screenshots from the demo above in 32 bit. There is a big
performance hit but not image quality enhancement that I can see.
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Storage Review has posted a review
of Quantum's entry-level Fireball Ict10 QM330000LCT-A 5400 RPM ATA-66
drive with a 9.5ms average seek time, 512KB cache and huge 10.2GB
platters for a max of 30GB. The drive offers relatively slow
performance, but a huge amount of storage space for non-performance
related tasks.
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GA Source has posted a review
of D-Link's DHN-910 Phoneline Network In a Box. This 10Mbps
solution features an easy setup for a 2 computer LAN. D-Link is
really making some great strides in bringing networking to every home.
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SystemLogic has posted a review
of ASUS's AGP-V6800 Raw Data GeForce DDR (non-Deluxe) card. If you
want a heck of a performer, but don't need the extras provided by the
Deluxe, then check this card out.
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Thursday
- February 3rd
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Quite a few new items have been released today, here is quick list to
grab them:
By the way, Powerstrip now supports the ATI Rage 128 Pro and Rage
Fury MAXX as well as NeoMagic color calibration under Windows NT.
There are a bunch of other changes/fixes as well.
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We've just posted our extensive review
of ELSA's ERAZOR X2 GeForce 256 32MB DDR SGRAM card. If you're thinking of buying one, give it a read,
this card is great performer at a pretty good price.
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iXBT Hardware has posted their review of ATI's Rage Fury MAXX board
(dual Rage 128 Pro chips @125MHz and 32MB of SDRAM each).
Head over too see a ton of great information and benchmarks comparing it
to DDR and SDR GeForce cards.
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Tech Junkie has posted a review
of Abit's BE6-II Slot-1 i440BX based ATX motherboard. Head over
and see what they thought of this popular board.
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VIA has released a new 4-in-1
driver set which works with all their chipsets. This package
includes Win 95, 98 and NT drivers for IDE Busmastering, AGP, IRQ
Routing and ACPI. Grab it below:
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Tweak3D has posted an awesome dictionary
of language used in 3D accelerators and games. Head over and read
it if you want to learn what terms like Anisotrophic filtering and
Alpha-blending mean.
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Speaking of the 1GHz face, Hardware
central has posted an article
which takes a look at this quest and what factors have to be considered
when increasing the clock speed to high levels.
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I saw this link
to a ZDNet article on my MSN home page. The article
outlines Intel's processor plans in the near future (Williamette &
Timna), talking about when we should see a 1GHz processor from
Intel. Here is a bit from the article:
Willamette, however, is a brand-new 32-bit processor design,
Intel's first such new design since introducing the Pentium Pro
processor in late 1995. This core, referred to as the P6 core by
Intel, has been the basis of every processor since then, including the
Pentium III.
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Gamespot has also posted a review
of Midiland's S4 7100 5.1 speaker set. Games sounded good, but musical
material according to them, did not sound to great.
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BoomGames has posted a review
of D-Link's USB Radio device. This small little device allows you
to listen to the FM band on your PC and even comes with software to
convert stuff into MP3's even though I don't see why you would want to.
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Ars Technica has posted a review
of Iwill's VD133 Slot-1 VIA Apollo Pro 133 based ATX motherboard.
Not a bad board at all!
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3DSpotlight has posted their review
of Abit's BE6-II Slot-1 motherboard which is based on the good old
i440BX chipset. If you're not familiar with this board, it has an immense
amount of FSB speeds and ATA-66 support.
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Anand has also posted a review
of Gigabyte's GA-MG400 (Matrox G400 based) 16MB AGP card. This
card will only work in certain Gigabyte motherboards which can provide a
video BIOS signal.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Gigabyte's GA-6CX i820 Slot-1 ATX motherboard. It received a
pretty good rating of 90/B+.
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of Pioneer's slot-loaded 10X ATAPI DVD-ROM Drive (DVD-104S). This
is my personal pick in the DVD-ROM market, head over and see if they
agree.
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CPUReview has posted a review
of Altec Lansing's new ACS54 5-piece speaker set. For under $80
USD, you can get yourself a pretty decent 5-piece speaker set!
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Overclockin.com has posted a review
of Ninja Micro's FreeSpeed Pro Athlon overclocking card. The card
worked just as it should, but price is a little high to pay for
something that simple.
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Wednesday
- February 2nd
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SlotA.com has posted a preview
of VIA's highly anticipated KX133 Athlon chipset. This chipset
will officially bring AGP 4X, ATA-66, PC133 SDRAM and VCM SDRAM support
to the table. If VIA can provide good performance and stability,
the Athlon platform will absolutely rock Intel's market share.
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GamePC has posted a review
of the first i820 RDRAM board to the market, Intel's very own Vancouver
motherboard. Head over and see what they thought of it.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has an interview
with VIA Technologies regarding their latest chipsets like the Apollo
Pro 133A and upcoming Athlon KX133 chipset. Now VIA is entering
the CPU market with its Joshua CPU, Intel is facing some pretty stiff competition
these days.
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It's been an extremely slow news day today. Anyway, I noticed over
at Voodoo Extreme that
Christopher Hill over at UKOnline has updated the Creative
Labs GeForce FAQ. This FAQ has some great tips and fixes for
many of the problems people have, so head over and check it out.
It applies to all GeForce cards.
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of Midiland's S4 7100 Dolby Digital 5.1 speaker system. These
speakers look awesome for a small room and complement a DVD-ROM drive
very nicely, if you're into watching DVD's on your PC.
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GA Source has posted a review
of Diamond's Monster Sound MX400 PCI audio card. The card retails for
$79.99, but it's not based on Aureal's next generation chip like it's
traditionally been. This one is based on the ESS Canyon3D chip.
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Extreme Hardware has posted a review
of Iwill's Slocket II Socket-370 to Slot-1 converter card. This
new revision also works with the FC-PGA coppermine's.
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Anand Tech has posted an
excellent review
of ASUS' high-end $338 V6800 Deluxe DDR GeForce 256 card. Along
with DDR RAM, this board comes with a ton of other features not found on
any other DDR board, but as you can see, the price is way out there.
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Tuesday
- February 1st
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Brian sent an email in letting us know that ATI
has released a bunch of new
drivers. Grab them below:
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Since these boards are very popular, I thought I'd mention it. Abit
has released new BIOS updates for the BE6 II and BF6 which add 133MHz
FSB support for processors up to 800MHz and increase SDRAM compatability.
Grab them here.
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I noticed over at Voodoo Extreme
that Diamond/S3 has released new drivers for their Viper II Savage 200
card. Check out the readme here
and then grab it below. Also, according to Savage Daily News, this
is how you can enable T&L in these drivers:
Someone in our forum figured this out:
[HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Display\Settings]
"ICDHWTL"="OFF"
TreeMark "Simple" benchmark: 5.64908 fps
[HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Display\Settings]
"ICDHWTL"="ON"
TreeMark "Simple" benchmark: 16.7954 fps
Q3 doesn't benefit much from it, but it shows that S3 kept it's
promise about finally getting T&L enabled on the Viper II
The forum thread is here
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted an interview
with Petri Nordlund and Shane Long, Chief Graphics Architect and
President/CEO, respectively. I hope we can see a chip before
year's end.
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BXBoards has posted a review
of Soyo's SY-6VBA133 Slot-1 motherboard which as you may have guessed,
is based on VIA's Apollo Pro 133 (693A) chipset. Head over and see
what they thought of it.
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iXBT Hardware has posted another article
on 3dfx's upcoming Voodoo Scalable Architecture (VSA1). This
article is packed full of updated technical info on the chip.
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Riva Extreme has posted a review
of Guillemot's 3D Prophet SDR card. This is one of the cheapest
GeForce cards you can find (price wise), so you may be interested in it.
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3D GameForce has posted an article
which shows you how to install a temperature monitor in your system, so
you can probe the heat levels of certain devices in your system.
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Extreme Hardware has posted a review
of Act Labs RS Shifter. It's a tad expensive, but can you image
driving with the Force Feedback wheel, pushing the pedals and shifting
gears in Need For Speed: High Stakes?
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Wow, this really surprised me! Matrox made a deal with Gigabyte to
supply them with their G400 chips for use on a card which only works
with some Gigabyte Motherboards. Sharky
Extreme has posted a review
of the soon to be released, Gigabyte GA-MG400 16MB Matrox G400 based
card.
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While I was over at Anand's place,
I also noticed that they've scored an interview
with Shane Long, President and CEO of BitBoys Inc. and Oy. There's
quite a bit of information on the Glaze3D chip, head over and check it
out.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of ASUS's K7M Slot-A Athlon motherboard. It got an amazing 92/A
rating!
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Cole3D has posted an article
which explains the cooling requirements of a GeForce chip and how you
can overclock it to squeeze out some more performance.
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Overclocker's Workbench has
posted a review
of Gigabyte's GA-2 BX2000+ Slot-1 i440BX based ATX motherboard. This new
board has a dual BIOS feature, 6 PCI slots, 4 DIMM slots, ATA-66 (via
Promise PDC20262) and overclocking capabilities. Seems like an
awesome motherboard!
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3DSoundSurge has posted a review
of the Boostaroo miniature audio amplifier. Here is a bit from the
review to explain it:
Every so often you come across a product that is so simple and so
functional that you say to yourself, "why didn’t I think of
that". In this review we are going to take a look at such a
product. It’s called the Boostaroo which is a miniature audio
amplifier that claims to enhance audio listening quality and also
extend battery life of any personal audio device. The better quality
sound is a result of not having to push your system as hard to get the
desired volume level thereby reducing distortion.
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