Tech News

• NL: Review Block - Cooling

  Published: Tuesday, November 8, 2005 | By: Dennis

  Cooling solutions come and go however sadly many of the solutions out there are really not that good (IMO). (cept for the ones posted below)
  
  - Dynatron A41 V-Shaped Skived Athlon64 Heatsink Review @ FrostyTech
  - Dynatron A22 V-Shaped Skived Athlon64 Heatsink Review @ FrostyTech
  - Dynatron A22 AMD Socket heatsink @ Pro-Clockers
  - Cooljag SFO-D(18SC) Skived Copper Opteron Heatsink @ FrostyTech
  - Waterchill Xtreme KT12A-12VX @ XtremeResources Umm, ya extreme!
  
  The asetek review is very extreme but only cause it comes with 6x 120mm fans and a triple fan radiator.

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• 256MB PCIe 6600GT finally reappears

  Published: Sunday, November 6, 2005 | By: Dennis

  "It didn't take long for nVidia to realise that two 256MB 6600GTs in SLI could give the 6800 Ultra a run for its money in Doom 3. And two 256MB 6600GTs cost about 30% less at the time. The solution was simple: kill the 256MB version and only sell a 128MB version. That way the cards were hobbled and couldn't interfere with sales of the top end Ultra."
  Now the question is, who is making them, and when will they be available.

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• Athlon64 Cores and Id Guides

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  New interactive AMD Athlon 64 product ID guide version 2.0
  The interactive product ID guide for the easy identification of all AMD Athlon 64 processors
  was completely revised and is now online in the new version 2.0
  
  Athlon 64 Cores @ Hardware Secrets
  A quick guide to all Athlon 64 cores released to date: ClawHammer, NewCastle, Winchester, Venice and San Diego.

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• Abit NI8 SLI @ InsaneTek

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  Here is an SLI ready board for the Intel platform, I can't wait to get my hands on one of these.
  
  Though prolly not from Abit.
  "The NI8 comes in Abit's signature orange PCB. It is not one of the enthusiast favorites, but it is still better than the traditional green or sand color. At least that's what I think. The DIMM slots are located in the usual position at the right side of the motherboard. The slots are color coded lime green and orange to distinguish dual channel capability."
  Since Soltek has folded Ninjalane will need to up and find another favorite, Suggestions.... Send them in.

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• Quake 4 Performance Review @ HardwareZone

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  HardwareZone always puts a unique spin on things, here is what they had to say after playing Quake4 on 2x 7800GTX's in SLI mode.
  "Just as we iterated, SLI does heaps to improve high-resolution gaming and if you combine it with a CPU boost, you'll get even more for your mileage. However, the single most bang-for-the-buck method to crank up performance in Quake 4 is undoubtedly doubling your graphics rendering power and SLI delivers just that."
  Might have to get me some of that.

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• F.E.A.R and Quake 4, more performance with DualCore? @ Hardwareoverclock.at

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  Here is one of them reviews for those with or looking at Dual core procs in their systems.
  "Gerade die in den letzten Wochen erschienenen Games wie F.E.A.R und Quake 4 haben uns Anlass dazu gegeben, den Nutzen unseres Dual Core Prozessors zu überprüfen. Auch wenn dieser Prozessor nicht für Games entwickelt wurde, könnte man Dank der Dual Core Technologie auch in Games seinen Nutzen daraus ziehen. Seit der Release des X2 sind einige Monate vergangen und auch die Softwareoptimierung für den Dual Core Prozessor nehmen langsam zu. Da stellt man sich natürlich die Frage, profitieren die aktuellen Games wie F.E.A.R oder Quake 4 von dieser Technologie?"
  Sadly the review is not in English.

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• NL: Quake 4 Guides and Reviews

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  I've only had a little hands on time with Q4 but damn it was good.
  
  Quake 4 Console & Tweak Guide @ Viperlair
  "The console and .cfg file have a host of tweaks and tricks ready for the user to explore. We outline some of the basics you should know."
  HEXUS.gaming :: Quake 4 - The First 15
  "The first thing that you’ll notice as soon as you get into the meat of Quake 4 is just how similar it looks to Doom 3. On the graphics front the original Quake was very brown, Quake 2 was brown and grey and now Quake 4 may well end up being known as Doom 3 under a new name. In fact, purely as a first impression, I couldn’t help but think that Quake 4 is the game Doom 3 should have been!"
  HEXUS.gaming Review :: Serious Sam 2
  "Just how much mindless blasting can you take before it’s too much? There’s certainly plenty of enjoyment in here, but just as being given the keys to the brewery will see you in hospital with a stomach pump going full chat… Serious Sam 2’s blasting is the digital equivalent of binge drinking… binge blasting perhaps?"

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• NL: Review Block - VIdeo cards

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  Ode to the video card...
  
  Why are you so fricking expensive!
  
  ~fin
  
  - Asus Extreme N7800GT Dual @ ComputerBase
  - Digit-Life Review: Leadtek WinFast PX7800GT TDH
  - XFX GeForce 7800 GT Review @ PC Modding Malaysia
  - Neoseeker Review: Powercolor X800GT
  - Sapphire X800GTO Graphics Cards – Fireblade
  - Neoseeker X1300 Pro preview and AMD 3800+ X2 review
  
  Stay tuned though, we'll have something for you eventually.

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• Antec P180 Advanced Mid Tower @ Tweaknews.net

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  From a modding standpoint this case has potental but I think will also be its downfall. You almost have to do too much modding.
  " Speaking of the fans, each of the three 120mm fans included in the P-180 case are Antec Tricool fans, and have a short cable terminating in a tiny switch, allowing the user to run the fan at any one of three speeds. The manual recommends that the user set these switches to the low or medium setting to minimize noise."
  Nothing like review titles in all caps to make your news posting day.

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• AMD Opteron 254 processor reviewed at TechReport

  Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005 | By: Dennis

  For any of you out there considering a dual processor / Dual core system you might want to read though this review at the Tech Report. They tend to recant though stuff we already knew but also touch on how 4 sometimes not as good as 2 which is only sometimes better than 1.
  "FOR THE PAST 12 months, Intel and AMD have praised the merits of their respective dual-core CPU designs and focused on thread-level parallelism as the key to better perfomance, while gradually distancing themselves from the old "clock speed" performance standard. Although Intel beat AMD by a handful of weeks when it came time to formally launch dual-core desktop systems, AMD was the first company to offer dual-core solutions across the server, workstation, and desktop markets. "
  I still stand behind dual processor systems, not cause they perform better but cause they look cooler.

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