|
Sunday -
January 9th
|
GamePC has posted a review
of ELSA's Gloria II Quadro based card. The Quadro is pretty much
the same as the GeForce 256 other than a few minor optimizations for
workstation graphics and the fact that the board comes with 64MB of RAM
instead of 32.
|
|
3D-Unlimited has posted a review
of Microsoft's Natural Keyboard Pro. Here is a bit from the
review:
Conclusion, all around this is a very nice keyboard for the
hardcore user who likes to have it all at his/her fingertips. However,
due to the price and the fact many other companies also have ergonomic
keyboards for quite a bit less, I recommend one of the lower class
models if you’re on a budget of any sort. As for a final note, I
recommend if you can possibly test out the keyboard before you buy it,
do so because something’s just have to be experienced first hand
before you can pass judgment.
|
|
UncaMilty's Website has posted a
decent review of
Abit VA6 Slot-1 motherboard which is based on VIA's Apollo Pro 133
chipset. As you may very well know by know, this VIA chipset has
some great potential but is still significantly slower than the BX in a
few areas, most notably memory and AGP performance. The 133A does
a little better, but still not quite up to par and only a few
motherboards are using it.
|
|
Hot Hardware has posted a review
of 3dfx's Voodoo3 3000 PCI video card. If you're stuck with an old
motherboard that doesn't have an AGP port, but still have a decent
processor, this card can give your 3D gaming experience a serious boost.
|
|
AGNHardware has posted a review
of Alpha's new Athlon Heatsink - P612H35M. The heatsink is huge
but it doesn't have the same look as the rest of Alpha's heatsinks,
which is kind of disappointing.
|
|
Fast-MHz has posted a review
of Logitech's iTouch Keyboard and Mouse. This combination would be
great for first person shooters, especially on a nice soft couch in
front a 60" TV and Dolby Digital Sound System :)
|
|
Alex van Kaam has released a new version of Motherboard
Monitor which fixes a few small bugs, grab it below:
|
|
Thresh's Firing Squad has also
posted up some coverage
on the Consumer Electronics Show that is going down in Vegas right
now. They've taken a look at quite a few interesting new toys.
|
|
Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a review
of Guillemot's (Hercules') 3D Prophet DDR-DVI GeForce 256 based
card. Head over and see what they thought of this super powerful
card.
|
|
Here is something you may be very interested
in, Sharky Extreme has posted
a DVD player
buyers guide (the players that are part of your home theatre
system). A lot of good information on what you should be looking
for, but I think they are a little biased against Sony players though :)
|
Friday -
January 7th
|
James over at CNEWZ has pointed us in
the direction of this interesting news
post at Avault, check it out:
IDG is reporting that Samsung has developed a 288 megabit Rambus
Dynamic Random Access Memory chip. The new chip, produced using 0.17
micron technology, can hold twice as much data as the previous largest
capacity Rambus DRAM chip. The data processing speed at each pin has
also been improved to 800 megabits per second. Rambus DRAMs use
interface technology to speed the moving of data in and out of the
memory chip. As processors get faster and central data buses run at
higher speeds, the speed of the memory interface is said to have an
important role.
|
|
Tech-Junkie has posted a review
of Abit's BP6 motherboard. This is still the only dual Socket-370
motherboard on the market and is great for making low-cost servers or
powerful workstations. It is going to become an especially
attractive board as soon as Windows 2000 hits the streets and people
will want to run Quake 3 Arena and other SMP enabled games on this kind
of platform.
|
|
Bill over at CPUReview has posted
an article about
the very high probability of 0.13 micron copper chips being mass
produced by next year. The article has some interesting links and
speculation about which companies and which fabs will be making the
chips.
|
|
Here are a couple more reviews of Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer
mouse I've never seen so many reviews of a single mouse! By
the way, you can also check out our review here.
:)
|
|
AbsolutePC has posted a review
of D-Link's USB radio. This small device plugs into your USB port and
gives you instant access to radio stations! Pretty cool stuff,
especially if you don't want to spend money buying an expensive stereo
system if you already have a good sound system on your computer.
|
|
CTNews has posted a review
of Abit's BE6 motherboard. The newer BE6 II's are much more
intriquing but it's still a bit hard to find them in some places and
they are probably more expensive, so the BE6 is still a great buy.
|
|
PCInsight has posted a preview
of Cyrix's code-named Joshua CPU. These chips, when released, are
supposed to have performance comparable to Celerons but with a few added
features which should make it a very interesting chip. I can't
wait to see how it performs.
|
|
Tech-Review has posted a review
of Guillemot's Maxi Flat Speakers 2.0. The price is very cheap, so
don't expect anything special from this 2-piece flat panel speaker set,
it doesn't even have a subwoofer!
|
|
Hot Hardware has posted a review
of Shuttle's AV61 Slot-1 motherboard which is based on VIA's Apollo Pro
133 chipset. When are these companies going to ditch the 133 and
start using the 133A? On the good side, it seems like Shuttle has
finally come up with a better and less confusing naming
convention! Maybe they came by our site and saw me bitching about
it every time I saw something like "Shuttle HOT 629BSD294" for
a mobo model name :)
|
|
AGNHardware has posted a review
of AOpen's new AX6C motherboard which is based on the much hyped but
hardly desired i820 chipset. Head over and see if this board is
worth the money.
|
|
Hardware Central has posted
a review
of Matrox's Marvel G400-TV card. They call it the swiss army knife
of video cards, because the only thing it can't do for you, is cook your
meals.
|
|
Dan's data has posted a comparison
between ASUS's V6600, V6600 Deluxe, Leadtek's Winfast GeForce 256 and
just recently added, Leadtek's Winfast GeForce 256 DDR card. What
I would give to have one of those cards! :)
|
Thursday -
January 6th
|
Weekly CPU Prices Updated 8:48
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Sharky
Extreme has updated their weekly
CPU price list with the latest and cheapest CPU prices on the
net. This week there were drops across the entire board, but most
notably on the Athlon series where the drops were as high as $36 for the
750MHz.
|
|
Basics of Cooling & Heatsink Tech 8:45
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Anand
Tech has posted an article
on the basics of cooling and heatsink technology. In this article,
they outline the various methods of cooling and how they work in great
detail, a very interesting read.
|
|
D-Link DSB-560 USB Modem Review 8:36
AM EST - Email Us |
|
SystemLogic
has posted a review
of D-Link's DSB-560 USB 56K modem. This baby will fit in the palm
of your hand, but apparently the connection speeds are a bit slow.
|
|
Abit VA6 Slot-1 Mobo Review 8:31
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Ars
Technica has posted a review
of Abit's VA6 motherboard. This board is based on VIA's Apollo Pro
133 (not A). What I like about this review is that they've
compared memory and 3D performance to Abit's BE6 (i440BX chipset) so you
can see exactly how much slower the VIA chipset is.
|
|
K7, P2, P3, Celeron & SGI Benchmarks 8:26
AM EST - Email Us |
|
CPUReview
has posted some more benchmarks
of the above processors running specicialized scientific code which is
often very FPU intensive. Head over to see the Athlon kick some
butt!
|
|
Pentium III 500E FC-PGA Review 8:21
AM EST - Email Us |
|
GamePC
has posted a review
of Intel's Pentium III 500E FC-PGA processor. They were able to
boot the processor at 770MHz with the standard heatsink and were able to
get 630MHz stably. What a great value this processor could prove
to be.
|
Wednesday
-
January 5th
|
New NVIDIA Reference Drivers 9:03
PM EST - Email Us |
|
While browsing, I noticed that Reactor
Critical has posted the new unofficial 3.66 NVIDIA Reference drivers
which works with the TNT, Vanta, TNT2, TNT2 M64 and GeForce 256 based
cards. It works perfectly for me, but since they are unofficial,
use at your own risk:
|
|
P3 600 FC-PGA Overclocking Article 8:58
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Thresh's
Firing Squad has posted an article
which takes a look at how far they were able to take a Pentium III
Coppermine FC-PGA 600MHz CPU and what kind of performance they were able
to scrounge. These new chips are wonderful for overclocking, too
bad they aren't as cheap as the Celerons!
|
|
VIA Chipset/Device Drivers 3:04
PM EST - Email Us |
|
VIA has
released a few new drivers
for their chipsets, AGP and USB devices. Here are the instructions
and links to download:
VIA 4-in-1 Driver (for all VIA
chipsets) includes:
VIA AGP Driver Installation
Instructions:
- Install Windows 95 (OSR2 v2.1 , 1212
or 1214 later version, USBSUPP support)
- Install DirectX 5.
- Install AGP Graphics card
Driver.
- Install VIA AGP VXD Driver
VIA USB Filter Driver:
|
|
Afterburner Athlon Overclocking Card 3:00
PM EST - Email Us |
|
HardOCP
has posted a review
of Outside Loop Computers' Afterburner Athlon overclocking card.
You simply snap this thing on the extruding pins of the Athlon CPU and
turn some knobs here and there and you've got a potential powerhouse of
a processor!
|
|
TCP/IP Fix For Windows 2:53
PM EST - Email Us |
|
I noticed over at Voodoo
Extreme that Microsoft has released a small
patch for the TCP/IP stack on Windows 9x systems. It is
specifically for those with high speed connections (Cable & DSL) who
are experiencing less than stellar speeds and the number of packets
transmitted is unnecessarily high. Grab it below:
|
|
Motorola G4 vs. AMD Athlon 2:48
PM EST - Email Us |
|
CPUReview
has posted up some Photoshop 5.5/Lightwave and Bryce benchmarks
comparing the Athlon 700 to a couple G4 systems (400 and 450MHz) and a
dual P3 600 is also thrown in somewhere. Head over and see what
you make of it.
|
|
Trident 4DWave-NX Sound Card 8:31
AM EST - Email Us |
|
3DSoundSurge
has posted a review
of Trident's 4DWave-NX PCI sound card. Interesting new sound card
which has quite a few advanced features and is not based on the standard
chips we're used to seeing.
|
|
Aspects of a Performance Machine 8:24
AM EST - Email Us |
|
SystemLogic
has posted an article
which takes a look at what components go into making a performance
system. Head over if you want to learn about which components
affect performance most and in which ways they affect it.
|
|
Athlon 800 Running at 900MHz 8:17
AM EST - Email Us |
|
The Tech-Report
has posted a review
of the Athlon 800 running at 900MHz with the standard
heatsink/fan. They were quite impressed with the benchmark.
|
|
3COM Internet Gaming Modem 8:15
AM EST - Email Us |
|
3DAlpha
has posted a review
of 3COM's Internet Gaming Modem which still connects at a measly 56K
(compared to cable and DSL) but promises to lower ping rates by a
significant amount, making gaming more enjoyable and fluent.
|
|
PPGA Heatsink Roundup 8:08
AM EST - Email Us |
|
Overclockin.com
has posted a review
of four popular Socket 370/PPGA heatsinks, the Global WIN VFP32, FEP32,
CPM25603-32 and Alpha's Socket 370 heatsink.
|
Tuesday -
January 4th
|
Intel Announces Celeron 533 5:19
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Intel
today announced the availability of the newest, fastest addition to the
Celeron line, the 533MHz. $167 USD in 1000 unit quantities. Check
out the press release by clicking here.
|
|
X-10 DVD Anywhere Review 5:08
PM EST - Email Us |
|
BoomGames
has posted a review
of X-10's DVD Anywhere product. This product allows you to send
the video signal from your DVD-ROM on your computer to a television set
to watch DVD's. Unforunately, you still need a wire for the sound.
|
|
MS Intellimouse Explorer Review 4:57
PM EST - Email Us |
|
ReviewFinder has posted a review
of Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer w/Intellieye mouse. You can
check out our review as well by clicking here.
|
|
Tyan S1854 Trinity 400 Mobo 4:54
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Penn
Star Systems has posted a review
of Tyan's S1854 Trinity 400 motherboard. This Slot-1 and Socket370
board is based on VIA's Apollo Pro 133A chipset. It even has 6 PCI
slots but only 3 DIMM slots.
|
|
Another Vortex2 SQ2500 Review 4:47
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Cole3D
has posted a review
of Aureal's very own Vortex2 SQ2500 4-speaker output sound card.
The only gripe I have about this card and Aureal is that they are taking
forever to release those new 2048 (or 2050) drivers with EAX
support! Otherwise, its a fantastic card.
|
|
Sony FD Trinitron VAIO 17" Monitor 4:41
PM EST - Email Us |
|
Digital
Clips has posted a review
of Sony's FD Trinitron VAIO HMD-A200 17" Flat-CRT monitor.
Looks like a truly excellent monitor. I have a Samsung 700IFT
Flat-CRT myself and once you go flat, you can never go back, its like
looking a soccer ball when you go back.
|
|
ATI Rage Fury MAXX Review 8:30 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Sharky
Extreme has posted a review
of what looks to be the final revision of ATI's Rage Fury MAXX
card. This 64MB card has two ATI Rage 128 Pro chips running in
sync for double the performance. The benchmarks should be mighty
interesting.
|
|
3D Blaster Annihilator Pro Review 8:28 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Riva3D has
posted their review of Creative
Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro DDR GeForce 256 card. Head over
and see what they thought of it.
|
|
AOpen AX6BC Pro II Milly Edition
8:26 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Lost
Circuits have posted a review
of AOpen's AX6BC Pro II Millennium Edition motherboard. It's
black, has lots of shiny chrome, is based on i440BX chipset and has very
high quality components for extra stability when overclocked.
|
|
SYS Tech Cold Fusion 1000 - Athlon 1GHz
8:24 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Anand
Tech has done a review of Kryotech's 1GHz machine and now they've
posted a review
of SYS Technologies Cold Fusion 1000 system which also has an Athlon
overclocked to 1GHz using supercooling techniques.
|
|
Diamond Rio 500 MP3 Player
8:21 AM EST - Email Us |
|
GA Source
has posted a review
of Diamond's new Rio 500 Portable MP3 player. One of best portable
MP3 players you can get, but it seems to be lacking some features which
can be found on other new players like the Cabo and Nomad II.
|
|
ASUS V6800 DDR Deluxe Review
8:18 AM EST - Email Us |
|
GamePC
has posted a review
of ASUS's top-of-the-line GeForce card, the AGP-V6800 DDR Deluxe
card. This card is a dream, but must cost a fortune as well!
Here is a bit from the review:
We have no doubt that this card will be
a big hit this year, it's simply the best GeForce 256 card that we've
seen to date. While the drivers aren't up to par yet, Asus is usually
very good about updating and releasing new driver sets when problems
occur, we have faith that Asus will pull through and perfect the
drivers before this card actually ships to retailers. All of the speed
and features come with a price though, we're expecting this card to
debut with a hefty $400 price tag. Of course, retailers will drop the
prices a bit, but most people will eventually have to shell out at
least $350 to get their hands on one of these cards, a price most
people simply aren't willing to pay. Most gamers won't use many of the
features that the Asus card has, and there's really no reason for them
to pay the extra price premium for these features. Call it what you
will, the Rolls Royce of video cards, the Swiss Army Knife of video
cards, it's just simply got it all.
|
|
PC vs. Dreamcast Part 2
8:15 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Thresh's
Firing Squad has posted the second
(and concluding) part to their comparison of the PC and Sega
Dreamcast in the perspective of being a hardcore gamer. Here is my
conclusion, if you have money and are bored out of your mind, just get
both! If not, get a PC instead, at least you can have fun
tinkering around with it and fixing problems :)
|
|
Benwin BW2000 Flat Speakers Review
8:13 AM EST - Email Us |
|
SystemLogic
has posted a review
of Benwin's BW2000 3-piece flat panel speaker system. From what I
hear, the bass the subwoofer gives out is the main thing that is
lacking, but head over and see for yourself.
|
|
Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32 IDE Review
8:11 AM EST -
Email Us |
|
Tech-Review
has posted a review
of Plextor's PlexWriter 8X Write, 4X ReWrite and 32X Read IDE CD-RW
drive. Probably one of the best, if not the best CD-RW for
the money. |
|
Turtle Beach Sound Card Roundup
8:07 AM EST -
Email Us |
|
Dan's
Data has posted a comparison
between three of Voyetra Turtle Beaches sound cards, the Montego
A3DXStream, Montego II and Montego II Quadzilla. |
Monday -
January 3rd
|
ASUS V6600 Deluxe GeForce Review
8:29 AM EST -
Email Us |
|
GamersDepot
has posted their review
of ASUS' AGP-V6600 Deluxe NVIDIA GeForce 256 based card.
Don't be fooled by the Deluxe, this is still a 32MB SDRAM
card, but has quite a few of extra features like Video-In/Out and
VR glasses input to add value. |
|
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum Review
8:27 AM EST -
Email Us |
|
ActiveWin
has posted a review
of Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum card, the current
top-of-the-line sound card from Creative Labs. Head over and
see what they thought of all the goodies that comes with this
excellent card. |
|
DiamondMax40 vs. DiamondMax 6800
8:25 AM EST -
Email Us |
|
Digital
Clips has posted a comparison
between Maxtor's DiamondMax 40 Plus and DiamondMax 6800 Plus.
The first is a 5400 RPM drive and the second is a 7200RPM drive. |
|
December Hardware Buyers Guide
8:23 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Hardware
Central has posted just notified us that they've posted their December
Buyers Guide. Want some help choosing the components for your
kick-ass system? Then head over and check out this guide.
|
|
G4 and K7: An Architectural Look
8:21 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Ars
Technica has posted a great article
which takes a look at the G4 and K7, two highly advanced modern
post-RISC processors whose architecture are very much worth reading
about.
|
|
Aureal Vortex2 SQ2500 Review
8:18 AM EST - Email Us |
|
BoomGames
has posted a review
of Aureal's Vortex2 SQ2500 awesome sound card. Positively a great
card, the only downside I see is that the SQ3500 is on the way and looks
much more intriquing.
|
|
ELSA ERAZOR X2 GeForce DDR Review
8:16 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Sharky
Extreme has posted a review
of ELSA's ERAZOR X2 GeForce 256 32MB DDR board. You already know
performance kicks ass, all I have to add is that the PCB color kicks ass
too!
|
|
Matrox Millennium G400 MAX Review
8:14 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Cole3D
has posted their review
of Matrox's popular (but expensive) Millennium G400 MAX 32MB card.
Head over and see what they thought of this card.
|
|
Pro/Engineer Performance P3 vs Athlon
8:12 AM EST - Email Us |
|
While I was over at Anand's
place, I noticed that he has also posted an article
which takes a look at Professional and Engineering application
performance on high end x86 CPU's, namely, the Pentium III and Athlon
CPU's.
|
|
Guillemot Cougar TNT2 M64 Review
8:09 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Anand
Tech has posted a review
of Guillemot's Maxi Gamer Cougar TNT2 M64 based card. If you're
really tight on the budget, you may want to check out this card.
|
|
Powerstrip 2.6 Beta Released
8:05 AM EST - Email Us |
|
Entech
Taiwan has released a new beta version of Powerstrip
(I'm sure you all know what it is by now). Here is the info and a
links to download:
PowerStrip 2.6
(639kb) has been released as a unified build, with transparent support
for the original retail release of Windows 95 to the latest RTM build
of Windows 2000. Support has been added for the GeForce DDR and Savage
2000, as well as - belatedly - for Number Nine's proprietary T2R4.
Fixes relate to, amongst other things, Rendition CRTC calculations,
ATI Rage hardware configuration under Win2000, the TNT2 M64 clocks,
and Intel overlay color correction. Also new in this release is a
comprehensive diagnostic module and command-line support for
configuring AGP transfers, along with automatic, temporary disabling
of "secondary monitors" when you switch to DirectX or OpenGL
settings (including the second of the G400's DH). Both the PowerStrip
and the latest PCIList - now at Version 1.5 - include support
for several new PCI class devices.
|
Saturday -
January 1st
|
Act Labs Gun System Review
2:24 PM EST - Email Us |
|
3DGN has
posted a review
of Act Labs Gun System. This 2-piece package is very well
constructed and looks awesome. I can't wait till more games
support it.
|
|
3D Blaster Annihilator Pro Review
2:21 PM EST - Email Us |
|
AGNHardware
has posted a video
review (with benchmarks of course) of Creative Labs 3D Blaster
Annihilator Pro GeForce 256 DDR SGRAM card. Overall rating, 9 out
of 10.
|
|
ATI Rage Fury MAXX Review
2:16 PM EST - Email Us |
|
Tom's
Hardware Guide has posted a review
of ATI's Rage Fury MAXX card. Here is a bit to get you
familiarized with this beast:
For those unfamiliar with the Rage Fury
MAXX, it literally is two Rage 128 PRO chips each with isolated 32MBs
of memory per chip. That's right, two graphics processors and 64MBs of
memory on one board. Unlike the first consumer brute-force approach
taken by 3dfx using SLI, the ATI product uses AFR
Technology to tap the power of both graphics processors. In
essence, AFR Technology lets the graphics card alternate rendering of
each frame per Rage 128 PRO chip. AFR gives ATI fill-rates never
before seen in their products as well as a broad memory band that can
deal with memory intensive factors like 32-bit textures and high
resolutions. The Rage Fury MAXX also sports the ATI Rage Theatre chip
that enhances DVD playback and offers impressive video encoding. For
greater details on the Rage 128 PRO chip, check out our ATI
Rage Fury Pro Review.
|
|
Happy New Year Everyone!
2:11 PM EST - Email Us |
|
Well, its January 1, 2000 and luckily no
major problems have manifested themselves because of the rollover.
I want to wish everyone a happy new year, new century and new
millennium :) Seeing what happened in the latest decade, I
can't wait to see what the next decade holds for us.
|
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