Tech News
-
ATi Radeon 9600XT Review @ XYZ Computing
Published: Thursday, June 17, 2004 | By: DennisHere is a review you don't normally see, an ATI 9600XT vs. an ATI 9600 Pro. We know the XT is supposed to be faster but by how much??
"The card runs stock at a 500mhz core speed. The top speed utilizing the OverDrive function is said to be 527mhz.
Also, all of the XT series card come complete with a coupon for a free copy of Half-Life 2."
Provided that HL2 comes out before Duke Nukem Forever it might be a pretty good deal.
-
MSI NX6800 Ultra @ t-break
Published: Thursday, June 17, 2004 | By: Dennis"The card itself is a monster- pretty much your standard FX6800 Ultra reference design with two power connectors on the back and two DVI connectors along with an S-Video connector on the front. You’ll definitely lose the PCI slot next to your AGP slot due to the mammoth cooling solution."
The 6800 Ultra is prolly the hottest card rumored to be on the market; unfortunately nobody can buy one yet.
-
Promise FastTrack S150 SATA @ MadShrimps
Published: Thursday, June 17, 2004 | By: DennisI've been looking all over for a RAID 5 SATA controller and it looks like I might have found one.
"As you can see, the SX4 (lower card) is much bigger as the TX4 (upper card). Notice the heatsink on the TX4 controller and the absence of any heatsink on the SX4. Also notice the SD-RAM slot on the SX4."
whoa!!
RAID 5 isn't really that fast when compared to a 2-drive stripe but having an extra drive in the loop ensures that your data is safe if one drive happens to fail. -
Mushkin Enhanced PC3200 @ PCStats
Published: Thursday, June 17, 2004 | By: Dennis"In the following pages, PCstats will be testing out a pair of Mushkin's Enhanced Special PC3200 2-2-2 DIMM's. Each stick is 512MB in size, and when run in dual channel mode that equals a nice whopping 1024MB of system memory. As this Mushkin memory is capable of running with a CAS latency of 2-2-2-5 at 200 MHz (at 2.5V), it means that it will work super-well on both AthlonXP/Athlon64 and Intel Pentium 4 based systems."
I'm not sure if Intel fixed their RAS to CAS issue on the Springdale and Canterwood boards but last I checked anything faster than 3 would cause data corruption. However in the future this won’t be an issue since the new chipsets are moving to DDR2. -
Thermaltake Extreme Giant III @ myWorldHardware
Published: Thursday, June 17, 2004 | By: DennisThere is a few basic ways to decrease system noise. You can allow your systems to run a little hotter, install larger heatsinks that use slower spinning fans, or install an alterative cooling method i.e. water or heatpipes.
In the case of the Giant III heatpipes and a huge heatsink help to keep your GPU cool with minimal noise. myWorldHardware has one on display for all to see. -
Albatron PX875P Pro @ Viper Lair
Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 | By: Dennis"The i875P is passively cooled, and not actively cooled as one might expect given Albatron's marketing claim of the PX875P Pro being a 1200MHz capable board. I will say that the heatsink is huge, which makes me more comfortable when compared to boards that use the 1/4" high heatsinks."
By the looks of it the Northbridge heatsink isn't any larger or smaller than ones installed on stock Intel mobos but its good of them to notice.
-
Corsair XMS 3200XL Pro @ hi-techreviews
Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 | By: Dennis"Are you the type of person that try's to get the very last bit of toothpaste out of the tube? The guy that tries to squeeze that last MHz out of that system you have worked so hard to build? Well if you are - then you're just the guy or gal we're looking for."
Now I'm scared. Good memory though. -
Intel Nocona to bust out in June
Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 | By: Dennis"Whether Intel borrowed or not, a licensing agreement means the chip giant does not have to pay royalties to its competitor.
Still, the chips aren't identical. Opteron comes with an integrated memory controller and links to other components through so-called HyperTransport links. Together, these features can boost performance by 10 percent to 15 percent, according to AMD."
This is pretty much what AMD did when they launched the Opteron last year it's just a little something to wet the enthusiast appetite. -
ULi M1573 Southbridge @ AMDboard
Published: Monday, June 14, 2004 | By: DennisI don't normally post ULi/ALi stuff but this one is a little interesting. The prototype board pictured is using an ATI PCI Express Northbridge and A64 939pin socket. It would seem that nVidia has a little competition.
"The M1573 integrates a High Definition (HD) Audio/AC’97 Host Controller, 2-channel dedicated Ultra-66/100/133 IDE Master controller, SATA Host Controller, USB 2.0/1.1 Host controllers, IO APIC controller, as well as 1/10/100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet MAC layer and PCI Express interface." -
Albatron Two-Fer
Published: Friday, June 11, 2004 | By: DennisMy visit to the Albatron booth at Computex wasn’t what I would call ideal and it quickly became apparent that the people running the booth were never instructed to actually help the people that walked in. I guess next year I’ll have to setup a formal meeting with someone there to get any hard information about their stuff.
- Albatron FX5700P Turbo @ LAN Addict
- Albatron K8X800 Pro II @ OCModShop
I do appreciate how they finally moved the floppy connector from the bottom of the motherboard to a more reasonable and accessible location. I wonder how long that will last.
