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January
25 - 31,
2000: Archive
Monday
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January 31st
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GamePC has posted a review
of Sony's absolutely beautiful G500 21" flat CRT monitor. I
don't think you'll be able to find a better monitor!
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3D-Unlimited has posted a review
of D-Link's 10/100 Ethernet networking kit in a box. If you want
an easy way to setup a high-speed home network, this is a good way to
get started.
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Chin over at the Overclocker's
Workbench has sent word of quite a few interesting new posts for
today. Here is a quick summary of the items you can find at their
site:
- Intel "Quad-Pumped" processor bus
- Will upcoming i815 chipset kill Camino?
- VIA Joshua to be released soon
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Hot Hardware has posted a review
of Plextor's PlexWriter 8X Write, 4X ReWrite, 32X Read CD-RW
drive.
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Overclockers Australia has
posted their review
of Creative Labs 3D Blaster GeForce Pro DDR card. Do I really need
to mention that this card kicks ass?
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I also noticed over at 3DChipset,
that unofficial Detonator 3.75 drivers for NVIDIA's chips has been
released. Apparently, this new version allows GeForce + Athlon
owners to use AGP2X mode! Grab it below:
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I noticed over at 3DChipset that ASUS
has released what appears to be final 3.68 drivers for their V6600
card. Grab it below:
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Sharky Extreme has posted a preview
of Transmeta's Crusoe processor. It's very detailed and has some
information I haven't seen anywhere else.
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I noticed over at Hardware-One,
that Fuji has announced new Digital Camera's based on their new SuperCCD
Technology. This new technology goes leaps and bounds over what's
currently available. For example, this new Fuji FinePix S1 Pro has
a 3.2 million pixel SuperCCD sensor which produces a 6.1 million pixel
image. You can read more about it here.
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Here are a couple of new case reviews for those of you looking to build
a new computer on your own:
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Anand Tech has posted up a very
information article
on the performance of Intel's i820 chipset when using SDRAM. Here
is a bit from the article:
We've said it
before and we'll say it again, the BX platform is still the most
attractive platform in terms of stability and performance for the
newer Pentium IIIs based on the Coppermine core. Even with SDRAM the
i820 loses its appeal because of the heavy performance penalties
associated with using a MTH in order to gain SDRAM support.
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James over at CNewz
has sent word of a couple new product press releases this morning.
Firstly (and most interestingly), National Semiconductor has announced
the first 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet chip. Can you imagine how fast
you could transfer files over a 1000Mbps LAN?? Secondly, Seagate
has announced their Barracuda 7200 RPM ATA/66 hard drives. Head
over to see the actual press
releases.
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SystemLogic has posted a review
of 3DfxCOOL's 7HO Alpha PPGA cooler. A great heatsink, which I'm
currently comparing to some other PPGA big ones, like the FDP32
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of ASUS's K7M Athlon motherboard. Still one of the best out there,
so head over and check it out if you're thinking of upgrading to an
Athlon.
Update: ASUS has released a new BIOS update for this
board. Grab it here.
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Sunday
-
January 30th
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While browsing the net, I noticed that Powertweak
2.01 has been released. The program is no longer in beta and
contains hardware optimizations, system monitor and a processor cooling
function. Grab it below:
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Another email just came in from BXBoards,
notifying us that they've posted a review
of TennMax's Lasagna X BGA cooler for video cards. They tested it
on a GeForce chip.
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BXBoards has posted a review
of Shuttle's ME64 i810e based Slot-1 and Socket-370 board. Even
though it supports both types of interfaces, you can only use one at a
time.
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Overclocker's Workbench has
posted part 1 of their review
of EPoX's brand new 6VBA2. This board is based on VIA's Apollo Pro
133A (694x) chipset.
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Dan's Data has posted a review
of Aureal's SQ2500 Vortex2 PCI sound card. Head over and see what
Dan thought of it.
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Anand Tech has posted a
couple new motherboard reviews, if you haven't already checked them out:
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Chin over at Overclocker's
Workbench has notified us that AMD has announced their K6-2 533MHz
CPU which runs on a 97MHz FSB (so make sure you're motherboard supports
that FSB speed). Check out the press release here.
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Tech Junkie has posted a rather
interesting article
on how to paint your PC case. If you want to spice up your case a
bit, check out this article :)
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Overclockin.com has posted a review
of The Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler. This baby has dual fans and a
huge heatsink!
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Overclocker's Workbench has
translated a Chinese article which compares the performance of the BX
chipset vs. the i820 (ASUS P3C2000) and both of VIA's new chipsets 693a
and 694x (Apollo Pro 133 and 133A respectively). Looks like the BX is
still the winner. Check it out here.
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Friday
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January 28th
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Anand Tech has posted a roundup
of six available i820 motherboards on the market. Beyond that,
they even give you tips on what to look for in an i820 board, and a ton
of detailed information about the news boards and they're various
features.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted the third
and final part of their Consumer Electronics Show 2000 report. In
this portion, they talk about DSL technology, home networking, DVD &
HDTV, DVD Recorders and Digital Radio
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Gamers Depot has reviewed
the Gigabyte GA-7IX Slot-A Athlon motherboard which like all others
currently, is based on AMD's Irongate chipset. I highly suggest
researching Athlon boards before going out and buying one.
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3DRage has posted their review
of Hercules/Guillemot's super-powerful 3D Prophet DDR-DVI GeForce 256
based card.
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HardOCP has reviewed
the RoadRebel Maximizer Gold Finger Athlon overclocking card. It
seems like one of the better ones on the market.
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of LCF Technologies 917 ATX Mid Tower Case. This is the case I
personally use when building systems for friends who are on a budget,
and it looks great!
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Thursday
-
January 27th
|
iXBT Hardware has posted a huge
8-way comparison
of GeForce 256 (SDR & DDR) based graphics cards. This detailed
comparison has a ton of information and meaningful benchmarks.
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I noticed over at 3DFiles that 3dfx
has released new Voodoo2 and Voodoo3 drivers. Here is the info and
links to download:
Voodoo2:
Fixed problem with resolution switching causing lockups. Fixed
control panel to report correct memory configurations. Bug fixes on
various games. These drivers require DirectX 7 to be installed first.
Voodoo3 2000/3000:
These fix a problem some users were having with the 3dfx Tools
program, (thats me) and you should only download these if you were
experiencing problems.
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Eric over at FastGraphics
has let us know that he's posted his PC
Cooling Guide. This excellent and very detailed guide includes
info about cooling every portion of your PC and even has product reviews
along the way.
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Diamond/S3 Monster Sound MX400 PCI sound card. As many of you
probably know (and are saddened by the fact), this board is based on ESS
Canyon3D chip instead of Aureal's next killer chip. Head over and
see if it's any good.
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Wondering what the differences between a Pentium III Coppermine and a
regular Pentium III Katmai are? Tech
Review has posted an article
which highlights these differences and new features.
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Tweak3D has posted a very useful article
on how to overclock your system and maintain "rock-hard
stability." What good is a fast system when it crashes all
the time?
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Hardware-One has just posted a
great review
of ASUS' P3C-2000 i810 Slot-1 motherboard. However, they've come
to the same conclusion as about every other review site that reviewed
this board.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted their review
of ATI's Rage Fury MAXX card. If you're thinking of buying one,
check out this review first.
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HardOCP has posted a comparison
between Alpha's Socket-370 cooler and Global WIN's FDP32. Head
over and see which heatsink wins the battle.
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3D-Unlimited has posted a review
of MSI's MS-6153 Socket-370 motherboard which is based on the 440BX
chipset. It has 5 PCI slots and 3 DIMM slots, so it's pretty much
identical to a BX board without the Slot-1.
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Speaking of Athlon vs. Pentium III prices, you can check out all the
latest prices (and price drops) in Sharky
Extreme's latest Weekly CPU price list. Again, we have more
significant drops this week in both the Athlon and P3 line.
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of Archtek's Smartlink UE1205RU 10/100Mbps NIC. 100Mbps NIC's have
become so cheap, that you should have no reason no to setup a 100Mbps
LAN in your home if you have more than one computer.
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Leonard Tan over at Tech-Junkie
has conducted an interview
with Richard Brown, Director of Marketing at VIA. Here is an
interesting bit from the review:
Tj: The
Intel 820 chipset relies heavily on the success and adoption of
RAMBUS,which has proven to be unfavourable due to exorbitant prices.
Has Intel shot themselves in the foot by relying too much on RAMBUS?
If the prices of RAMBUS does plummet and become viable, will VIA
support it? Where does VIA see the memory industry going?
Richard Brown: We
believe that the mainstream memory this year will be PC133, and that
it will migrate to DDR 266 in 2001. RAMBUS memory will still be
available, but we think that its market share will remain low because
of the cost.
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Arash's Best Hardware Guide has
posted a review
of Iomega's Zip 100 USB drive. Zip drives are pretty much the de
facto standard in PC external storage, and I would recommend getting an
internal drive because of their speed. But, if you require moving
your data between many computers, the Zip 100 USB is the way to
go. You can also get a Zip 250 which is also compatible with Zip
100 disks and allows you to use the new 250MB disks.
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Wednesday
-
January 26th
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AbsolutePC has posted a review
of Logitech's Mouseman Cordless. Great for playing FPS games on
your TV, sitting on the couch! It seems to work pretty well
too! They gave it a 9/10.
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Gamers Depot has posted a review
of Plextor's PleXWriter 8x4x32 CD-ReWriteable drive. In my
opinion, this is one of the best out there!
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GamePC has posted a review
of the Coolermaster ATC-200 Thermal Mid Tower Case. This case has
a special feature, check it out:
The ATCS stands for "Active Thermal Convection System",
basically meaning this case was built from the ground up to conquer
standard case's airflow problems. The main difference between this and
every other "airflow-friendly" case on the market is that
this one is made purely out of aluminum. Aluminum conducts heat
extremely well, considering the fact that many heatsinks are aluminum
based, you could even go as far to say as your case is acting as a
giant heat conductor. Another giant benefit that it's made out of
aluminum is the fact that aluminum is very lightweight, making this
case extremely light, even when it's packed full of drives. This case
weighs 13 pounds pounds (16 pounds with motherboard and power supply),
amazing considering a standard Addtronics case of the same size weighs
32 pounds without a power supply. Every person at the GamePC offices
who picked it up literally said "Wow", after feeling how
light it was.
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Ars Technica has posted a review
of 3dfx's current top-of-the-line 3D accelerator, the Voodoo3
3500TV. While it has some nice features, it's aging very quickly
and still has a high price tag.
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SystemLogic has posted a review
of ActionTec's USB 56K Call-Waiting modem. This is one modem that
has it all, and is especially great for transporting from PC to PC.
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3DSpotlight has posted their review
of Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum card. While it's a
bit pricey, it does offer more functionality then any other card on the
market. The question is whether you need all the extra toys?
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Bill over at CPUReview has
notified us that he has posted a review
of Viewsonic's PT795 19" CRT monitor. Looks like a great
monitor with lots of extra features.
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus DVD Decoder card and remote control
package. If you want the absolute best DVD hardware decoding, this card
is the way to go.
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Woah, GeForce's galore today! Anand
Tech has posted a review
of ASUS' V6600 Deluxe SDR GeForce card. This card comes with lots
of goodies for a pretty good price.
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Hardware Central has
posted a review
of Guillemot's (Hercules) 3D Prophet DDR-DVI GeForce 256 card.
There are lots of benchmarks comparing to the SDR version on a variety
of Intel CPU's.
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HotHardware has posted a review
of ATI's Rage Fury MAXX card. This dual powered Rage 128 Pro card
looks quite intriguing but the performance doesn't seem to beat a
GeForce and it's quite expensive.
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Voodoo Extreme has posted
their review
of ELSA's ERAZOR X2 32MB DDR GeForce 256 board. We are currently
in the process of reviewing this board also, so look for our review
soon.
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S3 has posted some new
beta drivers for their Savage4 chip. Here are the details and
links to download:
Issues addressed with the new driver release:
8.10.32:
Fixed WHQL DCT test problems.
* Fixed IE5 dropped descenders problem (for real this time).
* Fixed a problem with 3D WinMark99 test.
* Fixed Omikron texture problem (not in release notes but has been
verified).
For PerfICD 1.00.13 (since 1.00.10):
* Added stencil support
* Fixed Tirtanium benchmark going to software renderer on v1.60 and
v1.80.
* Fixed animated textures on Quake3.
* Looks like a registry key AZ (Auto Z-clear, default=ON) was added.
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Tuesday
-
January 25th
|
While browsing 3DChipset, I
noticed that they've gotten hold of the latest unofficial NVIDIA
reference drivers. Grab them below:
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Anand Tech has just been pounding
out the reviews one after another, this latest review
is of NVIDIA's Quadro 64MB DDR board which is mainly targeted at the
Workstation Graphics market.
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CNEWZ sent word that
Quantum has begun shipping their
7200 RPM Atlas V hard drives with the Ultra160 SCSI interface.
Check out the press release here.
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Active Hardware has posted a review
of AMD's Athlon 800 along with Gigabyte's GA-7IX motherboard. Head
over and see how this combo perfomed.
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Overclockers Australia has
posted a review
of Abit's VA6 Slot-1 motherboard which is based on VIA's Apollo Pro 133
chipset, I wonder why Abit didn't choose to go with the 133A?
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3dfx has released new
drivers for their Voodoo3 2000/3000 boards. Here is the info
and a link to download:
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Tom's Hardware Guide has
posted a review
of the ELSA ERAZOR X and Absolute Multimedia Outrageous 3D GeForce SDR
cards. Head over to check out the differences, if any.
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Ars Technica has posted a review
of the Athlon 750MHz running on an ASUS K7M motherboard. They gave
it 4.5 out of 5 Laurel Wreaths
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Reverend over at The
Pulpit has posted an interview
w/Scott Sellers of 3dfx. Quite a bit of interesting information in
it.
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Dan's Data has posted a comparison
between Jester's low-cost 3-piece speaker systems and Sony's SRS-Z750PC
3-piece speakers.
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Hardware Central has posted
their review
of D-Link's popular DFE-910 10/100Mbps networking kit. This kit
comes with two NIC's, a hub and two 20 foot cables.
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The Tech Report has posted a review
of D-Link's USB Radio. This small device plugs into your USB port
and lets you pick up radio stations and play them through your PC sound
system.
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HardOCP posted an article
yesterday which caused quite a stir because it showed that the GeForce
performed very poorly in the high polygon tests with more than 1
light. Today they've posted a follow-up
with some feedback from Nvidia, head over and see the results.
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