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March
1 - 8,
2000: Archive
Wednesday
- March 8th
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This issue amazes me beyond belief, Intel must be kicking
themselves in the ass for releasing such a good chipset, because now
they can't charge a premium for the i820. Can you believe
that the BX chipset with PC133 SDRAM beats the i840/i820 with RDRAM as
well as the VIA Apollo Pro 133A? It simply astounds me that a 2
1/2 year old chipset can do so well. Tom's
Hardware Guide has posted a ton
of benchmarks which show exactly what I'm talking about.
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CRUS has posted their review
of Guillemot/Hercules' 3D Prophet DDR-DVI GeForce 256 card.
Definitely, one of my top picks.
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3D GameForce has posted a review
of Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer. You can also check out our review here.
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Sharky Extreme has also
posted an article
which takes a look at the new technology which ATI announced yesterday
for their upcoming 3D accelerators. Some very interesting stuff is
happening on the 3D front.
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Want to see how well the new 1GHz Pentium III Coppermine performs?
Head over and check out these reviews:
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Dan's Data has posted a review
of OnStream's DI30 and SC30 Tape Drives. If you need some seriously
large backup devices with pretty decent speed, check these out.
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Intel has issued a press release
this morning, stating that their Pentium III will be available in 1GHz
speeds. It also says that they are available now in limited quantities
for $990 USD (1000-unit quantities). Here is a bit from the press
release:
The Pentium III processor 1 GHz achieves the highest PC performance
scores ever, based on today's most current industry standard
benchmarks. The Pentium III processor 1 GHz achieves a SPECint2000*
benchmark rating of 410 and a SPECfp2000* result of 284, versus 355
and 256 scores, respectively, for an Intel Pentium III processor 800
MHz. Using the BAPCo's SYSmark* 2000 running under Windows* 2000, the
Pentium III processor 1 GHz delivers a score of 188, besting the
previous record of 170 held by an Intel Pentium III processor 800 MHz.
For Internet performance, using Ziff-Davis' Internet benchmark iBench
(using Windows 98), the Pentium III processor 1 GHz outpaced the 800
MHz by 14 percent for loading complex Web pages.***
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Apparently, the new Detonator 5.08 not only has S3TC support in OpenGl,
but it also supports Full Scene Anti-Aliasing with a registry
edit. It doesn't stop there! Performance is reported to have
significantly improved, check out these three articles:
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got apex? has posted a review
of EPoX's new EP-7KXA VIA KX133 based Slot-A motherboard. This is
the first KX133 board on the block, and it's finally looking good on the
Athlon front.
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SystemLogic has posted their review
of Aureal's current top of the line Vortex2 SQ2500 Quad speaker PCI
sound card. An absolutely awesome card, with a great bundle at a
great price! I remember paying $400+ CDN dollars for my AWE32 when
it first came out.
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Hardware Central has posted
a review
of AOpen's AX6BC Pro II Millennium Edition motherboard. This is
one of the best BX boards you can get, especially for stability at high
bus speeds.
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of Altec Lansing's ATP3 3-piece speaker set. A relatively cheap
set of speakers that actually provides pretty decent sound.
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Overclockin.com has posted a review
of Supermicro's 370SWT i810E based Socket-370 microATX
motherboard. Expandability is limited with this board.
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Rumors about this console have been flying around like mad lately, but
it will all be settled at the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC).
The Tech-Report has compiled a bunch
of info on what rumors have been flying around and what actually
seems feasible.
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3D GameForce has posted a review
of Everglide's Giganta mouse pad. Head over and see what they
thought of this mammoth pad.
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Tuesday
- March 7th
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Anand Tech has posted a roundup
of five GeForce 256 DDR boards. They include the Absolute
Multimedia Outrageous 3D, ASUS V6800 Deluxe, Creative 3D Blaster
Annihilator Pro, ELSA ERAZOR X2 and the Leadtek Winfast GeForce DDR Rev
B.
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ATI has issued a press
release regarding their two new "revolutionary" 3D
technologies, which will be going into their next graphics chips.
Here is a bit from the press release:
TORONTO, March 7 /CNW-PRN/ - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE: ATY,
NASDAQ: ATYT) will unveil to the world's leading game developers the
details of two important technologies that will revolutionize the 3D
graphics power of PCs and deliver life-like virtual characters in real
time. The new technologies, to be introduced in upcoming products,
will establish ATI as a major force in the performance gaming and
workstation market segments.
``ATI's Charisma Engine and Pixel Tapestry Architecture will
shatter the barriers to realistic gaming on the PC platform,'' said
Philip Eisler, Senior Director of Component Marketing, ATI. ``3D
characters will come to life on the screen.''
The Charisma Engine(TM) is the world's fastest geometry processing
unit and is also the first to incorporate advanced game character
acceleration for 3D skinning and key-frame character animation. These
effects are critical for enabling game characters to reveal life-like
facial expressions and to achieve fluid movement and motion.
The Pixel Tapestry(TM) Architecture features the world's first
GigaTexel rendering engine, and includes support for deep
multitexturing and new 3D effects with eye-popping photorealistic
impact. It easily deals with complex elements such as metals, liquids
and wood and their complex interaction with lighting and shadows.
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PC Accelerate has posted a review
of Tyan's S2380 Trinity K7 motherboard which is based on VIA's new KX133
chipset. Awesome stability, PC133 SDRAM and AGP4X support, 6 PCI
slots, what more could you want?
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Hardware Central has
posted a review
of NETGEAR's Phoneline 10X (10Mbps) network card. It's a nice a
jump from 1Mbps, but still not fast enough for me. I love 100Mbps
and wiring that Ethernet cable through the walls is the best part! (No
sarcasm intended :)
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Reactor Critical has gotten hold of the latest NVIDIA Detonator
drivers. How the heck they jumped from 3.77 to 5.08 beats the hell
out of me, but these ones are supposed to support S3TC in OpenGL.
Grab it below:
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HardOCP has posted some benchmarks
comparing the gaming performance between Intel's BX chipset and the VIA
Apollo Pro 133 chipset using three different boards.
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Aureal has released a
new set of A3D drivers. Here is the info and a link to download:
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The Tech Zone has posted a review
of a rather interesting device from Evergreen Tecnologies, the
AcceleraPCI 466/128. This package includes a PCI card with a
Celeron 466 and 128 MB of RAM on it. You plug it into a free PCI
slot on an old Pentium system and bang, you have a more powerful
system. Head over and see how it performs.
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DocHardware has posted a review
of D-Link's USB Radio. We've seen enough of these, so I'm sure you
know what it does.
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Monday
- March 6th
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HardwareCentral has posted
a review
of Plextor's highly touted PlexWriter 12/4/32 CD-RW drive (12 Write, 4X
ReWrite and 32X read). It's quite expensive, but incredibly fast
and reliable.
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Tech Review has posted a review
of Linksys' EtherFast Switched 10/100 Network in a box. This kit
is right up there with D-Link DFE-910 networking kit, if you want an
extremely fast home network setup, check out this review.
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iXBT Hardware has posted a roundup
of low end video cards. Can't quite afford a GeForce? Then
head over and check out this article for the next best thing.
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GamePC has posted a review
of ASUS' P3C-D i820 based dual Slot-1 motherboard. The layout is
quite different than most boards I've seen, which is a good thing,
because the way things are place on this board, actually makes sense!
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BoomGames has posted a review
of ELSA's ERAZOR X2 GeForce 256 DDR card. You can also check out
our review here.
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NVIDIA has issued a press release
today stating that they're the first to deliver a graphics card with
64MB of DDR RAM. I can only imagine how much this thing will
cost. Head over and check out the press release here.
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Ars Technica has posted a great roundup
of Coppermine motherboards. They've included a BX board, four i820
based boards, and a couple boards based on VIA Apollo Pro
133/133A.
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We already have two reviews of the brand new 1GHz Athlon. Check
them out below:
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Sharky Extreme has updated
their weekly
CPU price list and things are going nuts! With the new 1GHz
processors coming, lower end CPU's are dropping like mad! Which is
a good thing I might add.
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AMD has won the 1GHz race and 1000MHz
Athlons will be available for purchase by the end of this week. CPUReview
has posted some news
on the new processor, head over and check it out.
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HardOCP has posted a review
of Soyo's SVBA-133 VIA Apollo Pro 133 based Slot-1 ATX
motherboard. This board is as good as it's going to get with this
chipset, great stability but lacking performance.
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Cole3D has written up an article
on the differences between decoding DVD (MPEG2) in hardware and in
software. Obviously, hardware decoding is faster, but with today's
incredibly fast CPU's and better and better software decoders, is it
worth the extra money?
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got apex? has conducted an interview
with EMS (Enhanced Memory Systems) about RAM technologies, the future of
RAM (PC133, DDR, RDRAM), stuff like that.
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Hardware Central has posted
a review
of Dell's Inspirion 3700 powerhouse of a notebook. It does seem to
have a few driver problems and stuff like that, but then again isn't
this the case with all new hardware?
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3DSoundSurge has posted a review
of the AVB Sonix S-2000 3-piece flat panel speaker set. If you like
flat, then check these out.
SystemsLogic has also
reviewed this same speaker set, head over and check that out here.
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Sunday
- March 5th
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We've posted our Socket
7/370 Cooler roundup. This includes two entries from Alpha
(one with the copper insert), the Global WIN FDP32, Vantec Peltier
cooler and a regular, off the shelf Vantec heatsink.
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Dan's Data has posted a detailed review
of the two of the newest ASUS boards, the P3V133 (VIA Apollo Pro 133)
and the P3V4X (VIA Apollo Pro 133A). He has also taken a look at
the new Alpha PEP66U Socket-370 cooler which is designed specifically
for Coppermine FC-PGA CPU's.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a review
of ASUS' P3C-E i820 based Slot-1 motherboard. This baby uses only
RDRAM, so make sure you have the mula before splurging on one one these.
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of Sirocco's Crossfire 4.1 channel speaker system. I've heard good
things about this set, and they look awesome! Check out this bit:
There's only one other amplified speaker set that compares to the
excellent Crossfire kit in our minds, and that's the THX-certified
ProMedia v.2-400 from Kilpsch (www.klipsch.com).
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Shuttle's AV64 VIA Apollo Pro 133A based Slot-1 ATX
motherboard. The Apollo Pro 133A has already proven itself to be a
good chipset, now the task is sort out the plethora of motherboards and
find out which ones are the best.
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CTNews has posted a review
of IBM's huge 34GXP 34GB ATA-66 7200 RPM IDE hard drive with a huge 2MB
cache. This drive provides one heck of a mix, awesome performance
and huge capacity.
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Overclocking Australia has
put together an interesting article
which takes a look at performance of different Apollo Pro 133/133A
boards with different drivers. As you may have seen in the iXBT
ASUS P3V4X review,
the VIA 4.20 drivers seem to slow down gaming performance quite a
bit. Head over and check out this article
for more info.
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Matrox has released a new TurboGL driver for their G400 based
cards. If you play OpenGL games like Quake III, you definitely
want to get this:
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3AG has posted a review
of Intel's Pentium III Coppermine Slot-1 800MHz CPU.
Unfortunately, they haven't said anything about how far this thing will
overclock.
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Tweak Town has posted an
interesting article
which takes a look at the difference between PCI and ISA modems.
Yes some people still do use regular modems. I prefer ISA modems,
they just seem to work better.
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3D GameForce has posted a review
of D-Link's USB Radio. This nifty little device will get you FM
radio on your PC.
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Saturday
- March 4th
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Kyle over at HardOCP believes he
has found the next Celeron 300A. It is a new stepping of the
Slot-1 Coppermine 550, which runs perfectly at 825MHz and even 852 if
you have RAM and a hard drive that can take the high bus speed.
Head over and check it out here.
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iXBT Hardware has posted the
first review
I've seen of ASUS' P3V4X Slot-1 motherboard which is based on VIA's
Apollo Pro 133A chipset. The tables seem to be turning on Intel,
first AMD kicks their ass in the processor market, now VIA seems to be
stealing quite a significant market share in chipsets.
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Fast-MHz is holding a contest
to win an ASUS GeForce 256 SDR as well. All you have to do is
register on their forums and you will be entered in a random draw.
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A new version of System
Studio has been released. This program provides details about your
system and provides a few useful tweaks. Grab it below:
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Friday
- March 3rd
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Anand Tech has posted a review
of Soyo's K7AIA Slot-A Athlon motherboard. Unfortunately, this
board is based on AMD's 750 chipset and didn't get too good of a rating.
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of FIC's SD11 Revision 1.8 Slot-A Athlon motherboard. This board,
along with the ASUS K7M are the only two which use a combination of
AMD's and VIA's chipsets to provide more features. Head over and
check out the details of what's new with Rev 1.8.
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I noticed an interesting article
over at Yahoo. IBM has
unveiled their "PREVAIL" technology which will allow chips to
pack tens of billions of transistors on a single chip in the
future. Here is a bit from the article:
The demonstration system was used to create components at 0.08
microns, or 80 nanometers. But Pfeiffer said the system could have
been designed to produce even smaller components.
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Hardware Central has posted
a review
of NETGEAR's RT338 ISDN Router. Want to set up internet access
with dial-up accounts for your small office? This easy to use and
relatively inexpensive device, can help you do it.
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According to this article
over at ZDNet UK, AMD is going roll
out three new processors to knock Intel to the ground, check it out:
AMD is set to deliver a "one-two-three" punch to Intel
"imminently" with the simultaneous release of its 900MHz,
950MHz and 1GHz Athlon processors, ZDNet UK has learned.
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Gamers Depot has posted a review
of Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro 32 MB DDR GeForce 256 card.
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Cole3D has posted a review
of S3/Diamond's Viper II Savage2000 based video card. Head over
and see what they thought of this very capable card.
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Game PC has posted a Video
Card Guide in which they explain many of the terms that apply to 3D
accelerated video cards such as AGP, Z-Buffer, Fill-Rate, HW T&L,
etc.
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Hardware Central has posted
a review
of MidiLand's S4/7100 5.1 channel speaker system. The price is a
hefty $199 USD, but it does look well worth it. Especially if you're a
big DVD enthusiast.
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The Tech Zone is
holding a contest to win an ASUS V6600 GeForce 256 card. All you
have to do is register on their new forums. Click here
for details.
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Thursday
- March 2nd
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The Register has gotten hold
of some leaked information
on NVIDIA's upcoming NV15 and NV20 3D chips. Keep in mind that
this is unofficial stuff, so it may not even be true. Anyway, here is a
bit from the article:
Here are the NV15's key features. It will have a 135MHz 3D core,
333MHz memory clock (obviously DDR), transfom and lighting set-up and
rendering, a 256-bit rendering engine, a 540 million pixels per
secound fill rate, and support up to 128MB RAM. In addition to
T&L, the NV15 will offer a new feature called clipping.
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3DSpotlight has posted a guide
which will help you tweak your system memory for maximum
performance. Head over and to learn how to squeeze a bit more
performance out of your PC.
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James over at CNewz sent word
of some interesting news about a dual Socket-370 Coppermine card from
Nexcom. Here is a bit from the press
release:
The PEAK 6422V uses the Intel 840 chip set. It features a dual
processor architecture that supports the dual coppermine with 100/ 133
MHz Front Side Bus. The highest CPU speed tested is 133 MHz/ 733 MHz
so far. It supports RAMBUS memory up to 400 MHz external clock. With
two memory channels built in, the PEAK 6422V can boost the memory
bandwidth up to 3.2 GB per second! It quadruples the SDRAM based
architectures. Total 2 GB DRDRAM are supported on the PEAK 6422V with
4 RIMMs reserved on board, which is also the largestof its kind. One
of the most prominent features on the PEAK 6422V is the 64bit/ 66 MHz
PCI bus.
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PC Accelerate has also posted a review
of EPoX's EP-7KXA Slot-A VIA KX133 based motherboard. Head over
and see how well it performs.
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PC Accelerate has posted a
glimpse of the future. They posted a roadmap
of what we should expect to see this year from Intel, AMD and VIA.
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Thresh's Firing Squad has
posted a review
of ASUS' top-of-the-line AGP-V6800 Deluxe GeForce 256 DDR card.
This card has great performance, plus a bunch of extras like Video-In,
which are not found on other cards.
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Ga'ash Soffer over at Voodoo
Extreme has posted a good article
which discusses the issue of bandwidth limitations when it comes to
video cards. This is the reason why DDR memory is a requirement
for high-end video cards to excel.
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Tom's Hardware Guide has
posted a performance showdown
at the 133MHz FSB. Want to know which chipset/motherboard is best
for the Coppermine? This article should help you out considerably.
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GameFan has posted a review
of Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro GeForce 256 DDR card. One of
the cheapest and easiest to find cards, so it may be worthwhile to check
it out.
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got apex? has posted their review
of Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer w/Intellieye mouse. Check out
our review as well, by clicking here.
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HardwareCentral has posted
their first
issue of their Industry report. It's not really a report on the
latest technology, but rather a bunch of gripes they have against
certain parts of the industry, such as the organizers of Cebit denying
access to Internet Press.
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Intel has released a new Windows 2000
beta driver for the i740. Grab it below:
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Wednesday
- March 1st
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iXBT Hardware has posted a review
of Tyan's S1854 Trinity 400 Slot-1 VIA Apollo Pro 133A based ATX
motherboard. This chipset may be a tad below the level of the the
BX chipset, but it does pretty well against the i820/SDRAM combination.
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3DHardware has posted an
excellent Cebit 2000 Report.
They've covered stuff from Seagate, AMD, Creative Labs, Abit, ATI, 3dfx,
Videologic and rumors that have been floating around the show such as
info on the NV11 and NV15 and DDR capable chipsets.
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Creative Labs has released
their latest set of drivers
for the following cards: Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT, 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2
3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT2 Value (32Mb) 3D
Blaster GeForce/3D Blaster GeForce Pro. Grab it below:
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3dgn has posted an article
which provides some explanation of what cache is and what it does.
A pretty good article, if you want to learn about cache memory.
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ATI has released a few new drivers for
your downloading pleasure, here they are:
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Sharky Extreme has posted a review
of IOGEAR's 4 port MiniView USB/KVM Switch. This device allows you to
control up to 4 USB enabled computers from a single mouse, keyboard and
monitor.
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Anand Tech has also posted a review
of Leadtek's Winfast GeForce 256 DDR Revision B card. What's new
in revision B? Well for starters, it has a huge gold colored
heatsink on it!
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Anand Tech has posted a wrap-up report
(part 4) of this year's Intel Developer Forum. In this part, they cover
Concept PC's, low profile PCI/AGP & CNR and even have some Itanium
pictures. They've also posted some Cebit
2000 coverage, which looks at the latest Athlon motherboards.
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CPUReview has updated their
Athlon/Pentium III Price comparison article
with the latest information and prices. The headline in this one is that
the Athlon 700 is cheaper than the P3 600!
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Hardware Central has
posted their review
of Evergreen Technologies Performa 500 CPU upgrade. Yes, this is
that overpriced Celeron 500 in a box, but they seemed to like it very
much.
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SystemLogic has posted a review
of Everglide's Giganta mouse mad. This is one thing that will
surely standout on your desktop.
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