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January
18 - 24,
2000: Archive
Monday
-
January 24th
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Speedy3D has gone on an
overclocking frenzy in their latest article.
This quote describes it best:
"What
do you get when you cross a PIII 600e with an Alpha P3125, a Creative
Annihilator Pro and a whole lot of cooling?"
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Ars Technica has posted a review
of Fong Kai's 600/603 Mid Tower case. The case looks very sturdy
and stylish and the power supply is certified for Athlon CPU's.
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I noticed over at Voodoo Extreme
that The BitBoys have introduced
their Xtreme Bandwidth
Architecture. Why must they invent new words? Doesn't
the English language have enough already? Anyway, the
concept of XBA looks interesting, but by the time this chip is out, it
won't be so spectacular anymore.
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VR-Zone has a some shots of the just announced
Canopus Spectra 7400
GeForce 256 DDR board. I wish they still sold cards here in North
America. Check out these special features:
- 32MB DDR(Double Data Rate)SGRAM
- Super Cool Fan
- Advanced Power Supply
- Signal Super Highway
- Dual Filter System
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GamePC has posted a review
of Adaptec's 29160 Ultra160 SCSI controller. Do you want
speed? Get one of these! Do you want to be poor? Then this
will do that for you too! :)
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Wow, a lot of motherboard reviews today! This latest review
from Sharky Extreme is of the
ECS P6IWT-Me. The Slot-1/Socket-370 board is based on Intel's
low-end i810E chipset and unfortunately only has 3 PCI slots.
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Active Hardware has posted a review
of FIC's KA-11 VIA Apollo Pro 133A based Slot-1 motherboard. The
Apollo Pro 133A is a great alternative to Intel's chipsets and gives you
AGP4X and ATA-66 support.
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3DHardware has posted a review
of Midiland's S4 4060 3-piece speaker set which sells for $99. For
that price, it better sound pretty good in my opinion.
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Hardware Central has posted
a review
of Iwill's WS133 i810E based Slot-1 motherboard. Integrated sound
and 3D video are one of this board's forte, which makes it ideal for
that 2nd or 3rd "cheap" computer to hook up to your home
network.
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The Tech Report has posted a review
of the Ratpadz extra large, extra hard mouse pad. This seems like
a good competitor to the Everglide large attack.
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Ace's Hardware has put
together a massive roundup
of video cards and put them through the test. Here are the cards
included:
- Savage 2000 (Diamond Viper II)
- ATI Rage Fury Max
- ATI Rage Fury Pro
- Three nVidia Geforces DDR cards:
- Elsa ErazorX²
- Guillemot 3D Prophet DDR DVI
- Creative Labs Annihilator pro
- Five nVidia Geforces SDR cards:
- Matrox G400 Max
- nVidia TNT2 Ultra(150/183)
- 3DFx Voodoo 3 (Voodoo 3000)
- nVidia TNT2 M64 (Guillemot Cougar)
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Anand Tech has posted one heck of
a huge Athlon
overclocking guide. Where the hell does he find the time to
write this stuff? Anyway, this has to be the be-all-end-all of
overclocking guides, so head over and check it out.
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BoomGames has posted a review
of Pioneer's 6X DVD-303S SCSI DVD-ROM drive. The 10X drives are
out now, and are not too much more expensive, so I would suggest going
for those.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a roundup
of five inexpensive 17" monitors which are more in the budget range
of most of us. In fact, if you're like me, you already have one of
these monitors sitting on your desk.
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got apex? has posted a review
of AOpen's newest motherboard, the AX6C Slot-1 board which is based on
the infamous i820 chipset.
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Sharky Extreme has posted
their review
of S3/Diamond's Viper II Savage 2000 card. The board is finally
available, so head over and see how it performs in real world
situations.
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Bill over at CPUReview has
decided to put that Sys Cold Fusion 1000 Athlon system through it's
paces. He installed Linux on it and ran some benchmarks
to see how well it performed on that platform.
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Dan's Data has posted a review
of of A-Tec's Cobra 2000 USB memory card reader. Memory cards are
typically used in Digital Cameras to store the photos and are then
transferred to your PC. However, the built-in transfer mechanism
of the cameras are usually very slow, which is why there is a need for
separate readers.
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Sunday -
January 23rd
|
iXBT Hardware has posted a preview
of Transmeta's recently announced Crusoe processor. The main
driving force behind this processor is it's code morphing technology
which allows it to be run on almost any platform and it's very low power
consumption which makes it ideal for laptops.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Supermicro's PIIISED ATX Slot-1 motherboard which is based on Intel's
current low-end chipset, the i810E. Surprisingly enough, the board
did get quite a good rating.
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Overclockin.com has posted the
temperature and overclocking results
of two sanded down Celeron 366MHz CPU's running at various speeds.
Wondering what all the trouble of sanding will get you? Head over
and find out.
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H.Oda has released his WCPUA2
program and a new version of WCPUID today. WCPUA2 is a program
which allows you to adjust the L2 cache settings of an AMD Athlon CPU
and I'm sure you all know what WCPUID is. Grab them below:
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GameWire has posted their review
of the Razor Boomslang 2000DPI mouse. This mouse is becoming quite
popular.
Update: Game
Forces has also posted a review of the same mouse which you can
check out here.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Fong Kai's FK-603 ATX Mid-Tower case. This is one I've never
heard of before, but it does look quite stylish and has some very nice
features.
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Ga'ash Soffer over at Voodoo
Extreme has posted a short editorial
on the pros and cons of hardware rendering vs. software rendering in 3D
applications.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a review
of Swiftech's MC370 Socket-370 cooler which comes in three flavors. If
you remember the MC1000 and MC2000 Slot-1 coolers, you'll know that they
were absolutely insane cooling devices and allowed processors to reach
new overclocking heights. This new cooler was able to bring down
the temperature of a Celeron 581 from 118 F (using a Vantec cooler) to
85.1 F.
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t-Break has posted a review
of Intel's Pentium III Coppermine 750MHz Slot-1 CPU. They compare it to
a Celeron 550 and an Athlon 700.
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Saturday -
January 22nd
|
Exxtreme3D has posted a review
of 3DCool.com's Tornado 1000 medium tower ATX case. This case is
built for overclocking in mind; it has quite a few extra fans built-in.
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Speedy3D has posted their review
of Aureal's SQ2500 Vortex2 audio card. If you are into 3D audio
when playing video games, this is definitely the card to get. Plus
those EAX/A3D 3.0 2048 drivers should be coming out any day now.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of the Addtronics W8500 WTX Workstation/Server Tower Case.
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GamePC has posted a review
of Supermicro's PIIIDM3 i840 based dual Slot-1 motherboard. This
thing is nuts! You should head over and just take a look at the
picture, it has a ton of chips on it! Integrated Video, Sound and
Ultra160 SCSI controller.
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Friday -
January 21st
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We've completed our review
of Best Data's Theatrix 6 Channel sound card. This card supports
Dolby Digital 5.1 output, A3D 1.x and EAX 1.0 for $69, but it does have
a couple small drawbacks which you should check out. Click here to
read the review.
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Dan's Data has posted a review
of Sony's CPD-G400 19" flat-CRT monitor. This thing is truly
a beauty, but it won't come cheap.
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Doc Hardware is giving away the
FDP-32 and FEP-32 heatsinks they reviewed
the other day. All you have to do is send in constructive
criticism about their review, click here
to read about it.
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The Tech Zone has also posted a review
of a rather interesting device from AMK Services. Here is a bit
about what it does:
AMK Services just keeps coming up with more innovative devices all
the time. The latest is the CO-3123 Control Panel. I know, you're
wondering what in the world does this thing do? The CO-3123 Control
Panel controls the fans and temp probe in your overclocked system.
Those of us who run our system overclocked will have quite a number of
fans in the computer to keep it cool. All those fans running at the
same time can get pretty loud. What the CO-3123 allows you to do is to
either cut the fan speed in half or turn them off completely, all with
the flick of a few switches. In addition to controlling the fans, the
CO-3123 also lets you monitor the temperature of up to two devices.
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of KDS' 19" VS-195 monitor. This is one of those monitors
that is very inexpensive and therefore appeals to many people, so head
over and see if its any good before buying.
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Wicked3D has released new beta
drivers for their Voodoo2, Vengeance and eyeSCREAM products.
Here are the details and a link to download:
* Added support for i810, and GeForce chipsets.
* Improved compatibility with nVidia M64 chipset.
* Added support for Detonator 3.XX nVidia drivers.
* Improved compatibility with the latest 3dfx
reference drivers.
* Known installation program bugs fixed.
* Improved overall compatibility with games.
* Quake3 retail version now supported on 3dfx chipsets.
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CNewz.com sent over some news about
Acer Labs (ALi) announcing their Aladdin Pro 4 chipset. This new
chipset is for the Slot-1/Socket-370 architecture and supports Virtual
Channel Memory and ATA-66 but I don't see any mention of AGP4X.
Check out the press release here.
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Thursday -
January 20th
|
Aureal has finally released some beta
Linux Drivers for its entire line of audio chips, including the
8810, 8820 and 8830. They work, I tried them myself on Red Hat
6.1, but A3D and Wavetable MIDI is not yet implemented. Grab it
below:
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Ars Technica has posted a great article
on Transmeta's recently announced Crusoe processor/architecture.
The article has a ton of interesting information, especially on
the technical side of things. The Crusoe platform is incredibly intriguing,
I can't wait to see applications of it in action.
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I don't see why anyone would want to spend the money on a 533MHz
Celeron, when you can get a 400 for much cheaper and go higher than 533
or buy an Athlon 500 for just a bit more and overclock it to 700, but in
any case, GamePC has posted a review
of this new CPU.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of a VIA Apollo Pro 133A based Slot-1 motherboard, the FIC KA-11.
The board got a very decent rating of 82/C+, if you're looking for an
Apollo Pro 133A board, check this one out.
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iXBT Hardware has posted a review
of Transcend's TS-AVD1 VIA Apollo Pro 133 based Slot-1
motherboard. Head over and see what they thought of it.
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Todd over at CoolerGuys.com has
let us know that for any order placed today, they will be shipping two
free Hard Drive coolers along with your order. This is a great
deal, so if you need a new cooler, today is a good day to get it!
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Hardware Central has posted
an article
on the new Crusoe architecture that Transmeta announced yesterday.
Here is bit to get you started:
Transmeta has developed a whole new approach to microprocessor
design. Currently an entire processor with the accompanied instruction
set is implemented in hardware, for example a x86 processor such as
the Intel Pentium III, and then the software is written specifically
to make use of that instruction set. Transmeta choose to do it
differently; rather than implementing the entire x86 instruction set
of the processor in hardware, the Crusoe processor consists of a
compact hardware engine surrounded by a software layer.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted an article
which talks about what the future holds in terms of PC memory.
Will RDRAM become the standard or will DDR RAM steal the
limelight? Or will it be a completely new type of RAM? They also
explain how the PC memory-processor subsystem works with the relatively
slow speed of today's RAM compared to CPU's.
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Overclockers Workbench has
posted posted part
1 of their review of MSI's new K7 Pro Athlon Motherboard. This
board has much better overclocking capabilities with bus speeds of up to
150MHz, 6 PCI slots and ATA-66 support.
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got apex? has posted a review
of Enhanced Memory Systems PC-133 HSDRAM. This stuff is awesome,
and will allow you're system to go beyond the 133MHz bus. Pair one
of these up with a new Coppermine and I can only image what kind of
speeds you could get.
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3DSoundSurge has posted a review
of Hoontech's SoundTrack Digital-NX PCI sound card. This card uses
the Trident 4DWave-NX chip and uses the QSound Q3D 2.0 engine for DS3D
and EAX 1.0 support. It also has coaxial and optical outputs.
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As you may have heard, these companies are teaming up to create a robust
OpenGL implementation for Linux. CPUReview
has fired off a few
questions to the companies and Michael W. Hara, Vice President of
Corporate Marketing for Nvidia has responded.
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Overclockin.com has posted an article
which shows you step-by-step how you can sand the nickel layer off your
Celeron CPU until you get a flat copper surface. This usually
allows for better heat transfer and thus potentially higher overclocking
capabilities.
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Sharky Extreme has updated
their CPU
price list for this week with some very large drops. For
instance, the AMD Athlon 650 dropped $140 dollars and 750 dropped
$201. There were drops across the whole Athlon line and even on
the Pentium III (a much lower drop). If you want to buy an Athlon,
I can't see any better time to do it!
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Wednesday -
January 19th
|
Anand Tech has posted their review
of ASUS' V6600 Pure GeForce 256 SDR card. No special features,
just a good quality card for a pretty good price.
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Leadtek has released a whole
bunch of new drivers for their graphics cards including the GeForce
series, S320 II, S325, etc. Grab them from the link below:
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a review
of ASUS's new i820 motherboard, the P3C2000. Head over and see
what the boys in the firing squad think of this board.
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You gotta love ASUS for always
updating there drivers! They have released a new one today for the
V6600/6800
series, grab it below:
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Ars Technica has posted a review
of a rather interesting system case from Palo Alto Products Int.
The ATCX is a convertible case. In other words you can use it as a
desktop case or a medium tower case, pretty cool stuff.
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Ace's Hardware has posted
their review
of Sys Technologies Sys Cold Fusion 1000 system. This system is based
around an Athlon CPU overclocked to 1000MHz using supercooling, but it
also has a ton of other extremely high-end features like a NVIDIA Quadro
DDR card.
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BXBoards has posted a review
of Trinity Micro's Gold Finger Athlon overclocking Device (GFD).
This set of Dip switches mounted on a nicely laid out PCB will allow you
to overclock your Athlon CPU and change cache and voltage settings as
well.
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Sharky Extreme has posted the
first review
of Absolute Multimedia's GeForce 256 DDR card. This card has a
very attractive OEM price. If you can snag yourself one of those,
you could save yourself quite a bit of money.
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ELSA has released a new driver for
their Erazor II TNT card which are based on the 3.69 reference
drivers. Grab it below:
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Savage Daily News has posted up some
specs of S3/Diamond's next card which will be based on the
Savage2000+. Keep in mind that the product has not been announced
yet, so any of these may change:
Diamond Viper II LE Z400
Savage2000+
Chipset
64mb 5ns SyncDram
400mhz RAMDAC
175mhz Clock, 150mhz Memory Clock
Full AGP 4x abilities, also AGP 2x/1x ready
S3TC, S3T&L,
Direct3D, OpenGL Compatibilities
Analog and Digital Outputs, Digital Flat Panel Port (YEAH!!!)
Composite Out & S-Video Output
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Planet GeForce has posted a detailed
guide of what you need to get (cooling wise) and what you need to
do, to overclock a NVIDIA GeForce DDR card. Overclocking the SDRAM
version is slightly easier since the clock speed of the RAM is not
doubled as it is with DDR.
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SystemLogic has posted an article
which explains the benefits and drawbacks of overclocking as well as a
guide to overclocking. This guide is mainly for people who are new
to overclocking.
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Tuesday -
January 18th
|
Hot Hardware is has posted a review
of Leadtek's Winfast GeForce 256 DDR card. Head over and check out
the great review and the blazing fast benchmarks scores.
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iXBT Hardware has posted a preview
of VIA/Cyrix's upcoming Joshua Socket-370 compatible CPU. Head
over and see if this CPU will actually be worth the silicone it's
printed on.
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Gamers Depot has posted their review
of AMD's current flagship processor, the Athlon 800MHz. The only
downsides to this powerhouse, are it's slow L2 cache speed (because of a
1/3 divider) and the high price.
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CTNews has posted their review
of AMD's Athlon 700MHz. If I had the money, this would probably be
my personal choice for a processor. Then I would overclock the
hell of it and hope to get at least 900.
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BoomGames has posted a review
of TerraTec's XLerate Pro PCI sound card. This board is based on
the Vortex2, so you know it'll be good .. but just how good? You'll have
to head over and read it.
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Planet GeForce has posted a review
of D-Link's DHN-910 10Mbps phoneline networking kit. Easy to
setup, and decent speed too. I don't know if I would be able to
settle for 10Mbps, I'm too used to 100Mbps. For gaming it should
be enough, but for file transfers, it's a bit too slow for me.
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GamePC has posted a review
of Abit's new VA6 motherboard. This VIA Apollo Pro 133 based card
has quite a few nice features, but performance is still lagging behind
the BX.
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Sharky Extreme has posted
their review
of Guillemot's 3D Prophet DDR-DVI GeForce 256 card. This card is
made by Hercules and is one of the best GeForce cards you can get.
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Tweak3D has posted a tweak
guide for all your GeForce 256 owners. Most of the time you
will not need to tweak a card like this, but hey, who doesn't want to
squeeze the last bit of performance out of their card? Besides,
there are some issues with Unreal Tournament, where tweaking will
definitely help.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Intel's newest addition to the Celeron line, the 533MHz. When
the heck are they going to add SSE and start using the 0.18 micron
process?
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