Tech News October 2005

Sapphire X800GTO Graphics Cards – Fireblade and Limited
TweakTown :: Friday, October 21, 2005

QUOTE: “With all the hype surrounding the new generation ATI graphics cards, there are people who don’t have that kind of money to spend. Sapphire is one of ATI’s partners doing the X800GTO chip and they’ve recently released two new graphics cards based on it – the Fireblade Edition and the other being the GTO² Limited Edition. One of these suckers might be just what the doctor ordered if you’re budget doesn’t extend to around $500 USD for a graphics card.”

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Creative Labs Zen Nano Plus Review at Designtechnica.com
Designtechnica :: Thursday, October 20, 2005
“The Creative Nano packs a ton of features in an incredibly tiny MP3 player. Creative included everything in the box that you’ll need to take this miniscule music toy out for a jog. While you will be stuck using an external battery charger and a mini USB cord to transfer music, these minor inconveniences shouldn’t deter most people from considering it a top-of-the-line MP3 player worthy of serious consideration.”

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Bigbruin.com Article: PC TV Tuner Primer
Big Bruin :: Thursday, October 20, 2005

Quote: TV tuners add a whole new dimension to any PC, and don’t have to cost much to do so. With the ability to watch TV full screen or in a small window, as well a recording programs much like commercially available personal video recorders, they can be quite a convenient accessory to have… This Tech Tip will look at some of the basics of computer TV tuners, including the interfaces, the technologies, and the performance.

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Paradise|OC checks out the Chaintech AE6800 PCI-E
Paradise|OC :: Thursday, October 20, 2005

“The Chaintech uses the newer NV42 GPU. This makes it a true PCI-E based graphics card, instead of using the NV40 GPU which AGP cards used. The NV42, unfortunately, keeps better track of its pipelines, making use of all 12. So there is no way to unlock the core, which was popular on the older AGP versions. However, the NV42 is said to be more stable, so a higher overclock might make up for the lack of the 4 extra pipelines.”

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ATI X1K Driver Analysis – More performance for X1800XL
TweakTown :: Wednesday, October 19, 2005
QUOTE: “Low and behold, it worked and we noticed some extra performance gains in the Radeon X1800XL, compared to the drivers that shipped with the reference card that went out to all other website reviewers. This should indicate that we’ll see the new VPU from ATI performing better next month in the Catalyst 5.11 (November 2005) drivers which should officially support ATI’s new X1K series of graphics cards.”

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Logitech Z-5450 Wireless Surround Speaker System
hardCOREware :: Wednesday, October 19, 2005
If you’ve used the Z-680, Z-5500, or any good surround PC speaker system, you might have been annoyed by the rear speakers. Having to run speaker cables from them to the amp most likely means you have cables running from behind your chair to under your desk. Not exactly tidy.

To remedy this, Logitech has released the Z-5450. While it is mostly inferior in specification to the Z-5500, it does have one major advantage: the rear speakers do not require cables to transfer the audio signal. Instead, it uses an 802.11b WiFi signal. Do they sound good enough though?

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NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GS Revealed @ NGOHQ
OCModshop :: Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Description: We learn that NVIDIA’s upcoming product will be named “7800 GS”.

That’s it? Well, here the link anyway… check it out

HEXUS.reviews :: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
Hexus :: Saturday, October 15, 2005

Creative has been going strong since the days of ISA sound cards because its family of audio products moves with the times. This is reflected well in the new four-strong range of X-Fi cards of which the leader is the Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro under review. The X-Fi cards span a price range from about £100 to £250, offering enthusiasts add-in alternatives to the on-board audio that is common in many of today’s PCs.

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ATI Catalyst 5.10 (October 2005) Performance Analysis
TweakTown :: Thursday, October 13, 2005
“It’s that time again! The folks over at the ATI HQ in Canada have just released a new set of Catalyst drivers for users of Radeon graphics cards. In our usual fashion we compare the latest Catalyst 5.10 (October 2005) drivers against the previous release Catalyst 5.9 to see what has changed. If free performance is your thing, read on and find out the latest in our performance analysis!”

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Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA 5.1 Surround Sound Headphones Review @ Tweaknews.net
Tweaknews :: Thursday, October 13, 2005

“Here we have one product model from Turtle Beach’s new line of high quality surround sound headphones, made specifically for PC usage be it DVDs, gaming or anything audio related. Now I have been known stickler for not settling for anything but the best when it comes to sound quality. Let’s see if Turtle Beach can wet my very dry proverbial throat.”

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Asus EN6600GT Silencer Videocard Review
PCStats :: Thursday, October 13, 2005
“The Asus EN6600GT Silencer offers users an excellent mix of performance from its GeForce 6600GT core and silent operation thanks to its passive heatpipe cooler. The videocard is based on the GeForce 6600GT core and is backed by 256MB of DDR3 memory. The card sports dual output with a pair of DVI/analog connectors. There is also a DVI to analog converter in the package for dual monitor users.”

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HEXUS.beans :: ATI boosts Doom 3 AA performance
Hexus :: Thursday, October 13, 2005
The fix will shortly be rolled into CATALYST 5.11 according to ATI sources and a beta drop of that driver will be made available for testing in due course, before the final WHQL driver from Terry Makedon’s CATALYST team is made available for public download in November.

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Samsung SyncMaster 930MP 19 Inch Multifunction LCD TFT Monitor Review @ Tweaknews.net
Tweaknews :: Wednesday, October 12, 2005

“With Samsung’s brand name bringing strong backup, we’ve come to expect the highest quality available. As a multifunction panel, this monitor excels in every capacity. The monitor sports a high contrast ratio, an excellent viewing angle and nearly every input you could imagine.”

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Gigabyte GeForce 7800 GT (GV-NX78T256V-B) Review @ Bjorn3D
Bjorn3D :: Wednesday, October 12, 2005
When NVIDIA introduced us to the 7 Series GPUs with its current flagship GeForce 7800 GTX, we were quite impressed. Most people, though, aren’t going to buy flagship hardware, so they wait for the little brothers of the flagship. Currently, the only ‘little brother’ released has been the 7800 GT.

A quick look at the specifications reveals that the 7800 GT is a slightly crippled 7800 GTX, which actually is not a bad thing if you are a 7800 GT. Although the GT has less power under the hood, it still performs quite well when compared to the GTX. Follow along and keep reading to learn about the first retail GT offering to hit our test benches – the Gigabyte GV-NX78T256V-B.

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News: Creative’s Sound Blaster X-Fi audio processor
The Tech Report :: Tuesday, October 11, 2005
FOR A WHILE THERE, the PC audio market was pretty boring. Creative had bought out Aureal and Sensaura, and seemed content to issue only incremental improvements to its Audigy line of sound cards. VIA challenged Creative’s dominance of the market with various respins of the Envy24, and although they were generally well-received, those chips’ lack of hardware acceleration for 3D audio ultimately limited their appeal. Then, in May of this year, Creative surprised many by announcing an all-new Xtreme Fidelity audio processor loaded with 10,000 MIPS of processing power—24 times that of the Audigy chip it would replace. A radical departure from architectures of old, the X-Fi arranged its on-chip components around a pipelined audio ring with a whopping 4096 internal audio channels. The X-Fi also upgraded EAX to support up to 128 simultaneous hardware-accelerated 3D voices, and promised to enhance compressed audio playback to sound better than the original CD.

Modesty has never been one of Creative’s strong suits, but could there be something to all the X-Fi hype? To find out, we subjected the most affordable X-Fi offering, the $110 Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic, to a punishing battery of performance, quality, and listening tests against competitors ranging from M-Audio’s Revolution 7.1 to integrated “Azalia” High Definition Audio. Read on to see how the XtremeMusic fared and why the X-Fi is such a bold departure from audio chips of old.

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HEXUS.hardlines :: ASUS Extreme N7800 GT Dual World Exclusive first hands-on test
Hexus :: Monday, October 10, 2005
ASUS didn’t can the idea of two GPUs on a single board in SLI mode, though. The recent release of NVIDIA G70 which powers the GeForce 7800 GTX and 7800 GT SKUs has given ASUS something new to work with. The G70 GPU, built on 110nm, is actually cooler and less power hungry than NV45, despite a large hike in transistor count and die area.

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Sapphire Radeon X550 Video Card Review @ The TechZone
The Tech Zone :: Thursday, October 06, 2005

The new Sapphire Radeon X550 represents an affordable graphics upgrade for the gamer who wants performance at a price that won’t break the bank. The new video card operates with a standard core clock speed of 400MHz and memory speeds of 500MHz. The X550 also feature both 64-bit and 128-bit Memory Interface which provides significant performance advantages over competitor’s 32/64-bit solutions. Several models will be available offering a choice of memory configurations with 128 or 256MB of memory, including versions with enhanced memory specifications suitable for overclocking and with a choice of conventional fan or fully passive cooling, like our review sample.

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The Future of ATI @ CoolTechZone.com
CoolTechZone :: Thursday, October 06, 2005
“With the launch of Crossfire, ATI has finally entered the arena of dual GPU graphics. However, it could be too little too late for ATI as SLI has almost become the term when referring to dual or multi GPU graphics performance. Crossfire, being a very late entrant with no availability thus far, the future appears to be bleak for ATI at best.”

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Albatron Mars PX915SLI Intel 915PL SLI Motherboard
PCStats :: Thursday, October 06, 2005
“Albatron is one of the more innovative motherboard manufacturers, and its team of engineers has actually figured out a way of running SLI on the budget Intel 915PL chipset! Albatron’s method does not split the PCI Express bus evenly between videocards like a true SLI chipset does, but it’s close enough and it works! We will get into how the 915PL is turned into an SLI chipset in just a moment. Since the Albatron PX915SLI is based on the Intel 915PL chipset, the motherboard only supports Socket 775 Pentium 4 processors that run on a 533/800 MHz FSB. ”

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nVidia ForceWare 81.84 BETA Performance Analysis
TweakTown :: Thursday, October 06, 2005
“A couple of days ago nVidia released their much talked about ForceWare Release 80 graphics card driver to the world. The new nVidia ForceWare 81.84 BETA drivers offer such things as performance optimizations when using Dual-Core processors, mixed vendor support for SLI and Black and White 2 support. We examine the drivers in our typical fashion against the last official release driver, ForceWare 78.01. Do the new drivers give some more punch to nVidia’s current line-up of GPU’s? Read on for the answers!”

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ATI Radeon X1800 XL Review
Hardware Secrets :: Thursday, October 06, 2005
“Radeon X1800 XL is part of the new high-end graphics chip family from ATI, competing directly with GeForce 7800 GT from nVidia. We’ve got a reference sample for this model from ATI, so we will compare its performance to other members of the Radeon X1000 series, to previous ATI chips and also with competing products from nVidia. Theoretically this video card was released yesterday, but so far we couldn’t find it for sale.”

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ATI All-In-Wonder X800XL 256MB PCIE Video Card Review #607
3dgameman :: Wednesday, October 05, 2005

“This product is absolutely loaded with features. It’s based on the R430 chip with 16 pixel pipelines for excellent performance, even in the most graphically demanding games. This card doesn’t stop there! It has many Audio/Video inputs/outputs, TV & FM tuner, a remote control & more. Only ATI can pull off a true All-In-One Video Card! Watch the Video to find out more…” ~3dGameMan.com

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Neoseeker X1800XT,X1600XL and X1600XT family Preview
Hardware-Pacers :: Wednesday, October 05, 2005
“With the X1000 series of boards, ATI have done something that Nvidia doesn’t have currently – a top to bottom line-up of cards that feature the same high end features from the least expensive card to the most. Though not all cards are available immediately, ATI have a full lineup ready in time for Christmas that should be able to service anyone in the market for a video card.

Price and availability are ultimately what will sell these cards, as the potential for performance is there, the cards right now are just missing a few pieces to allow them to match consistently the numbers that Nvidia is posting. As it stands, ATI has an extremely solid product line up ready at the gates, but whether or not they will be able to leverage that with cards in the channels will have to be seen. ”

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HEXUS.reviews :: ATI Radeon X1800 XT Preview
Hexus :: Wednesday, October 05, 2005

The performance – where we see massive gains in F.E.A.R., sizable improvements in Far Cry and Splinter Cell: CT, and consistent CPU-bound performance to match 7800 GTX in mostly everything else – is undoubtedly mighty. Combine that with the image quality improvements and output connectivity available from the X1800 XT in terms of Avivo, the 6x AA carried over from R480 now with less performance hit, adaptive AA for improving alpha textures and rotation invariant anistropic texture filtering for basic excellent texture IQ, and you have a compelling consumer graphics product that almost demands you purchase it as soon as possible. ATI’s considerable investment in a clockable new architecture on 90nm low-k has certainly paid off, despite well documented delays. Well worth the wait.

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ATI Radeon X1000 Series Preview @ TheTechLounge
The Tech Lounge :: Wednesday, October 05, 2005

“ATI unveiled the entire next-gen family of boards, dubbed the X1000 series. As one would expect, there will be three price-points: low-end, mid-range and high-end. Oh, and did I mention that they gave me four boards to test? The boards received include the X1800 XT, X1800 XL, X1600 XT and X1300 Pro.

Obviously, I wanted to conduct a full review of all four of these video cards, but I had a little bit of a problem. Since I wrote the XFX 7800 GT Preview about a month ago, I’ve been planning on getting an AMD FX-55 to replace my 3500+ with. The reason I’m replacing the CPU is that I was starting to see in my testing results that I had a CPU bottleneck. I was expecting to get the FX-55 on September 29th, giving me about six days to test all my cards, but UPS had to re-route the package for some reason and it was re-scheduled for delivery on October 3rd, giving me less than two full days to benchmark all the cards. So, I was pretty much left with only once choice: do a preview of the X1000 series with the 3500+, and then do the full reviews with the FX-55.

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ATI Radeon X1800 XT Review
OCModshop :: Wednesday, October 05, 2005
“Radeon X1800 XT, formerly known as R520, is the new high-end chip from ATI, directly competing with GeForce 7800 GTX from nVidia. We’ve got a reference sample for this model from ATI, so we will compare its performance to other members of the Radeon X1000 series, to previous ATI chips and also with competing products from nVidia. But don’t get too excited: video cards based on Radeon X1800 XT will only reach the market in one month from now.”

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NVIDIA GeForce 7800 Ultra? @ NGOHQ
OCModshop :: Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Today we took a look into the NVIDIA ForceWare 81.40 which has been leaked by The French website, Station Drivers. I’ve opened the setup information file (NVDISP.INF) and noticed a lot of new Hardware DeviceID entries.

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News: Bjorn3D takes a look at the new X1000 chips from ATI
Bjorn3D :: Wednesday, October 05, 2005
After 2 days with ATI at Ibiza it is now time for us to share our impressions about the new chips from ATI, the X1000 series.

We’ve written together an articel with info about the chips and even more important lots of benchmarks made with both the X1800XT and the X1800Xl where we compare it to both GeForce 7800GTX, GeForce 7800GT and the X850XT and X800XL.

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HIS Radeon X800GT IceQ II Turbo @ Viperlair
ViperLair :: Tuesday, October 04, 2005
“From a performance standpoint, game experiences were consistently higher than a 6600GT, although in some games it was a close call. Doom 3 was happy to run at 1280×1024 although this was without any AntiAliasing or Anisotropic filtering.”

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HIS Radeon X800GT IceQ Review
Overclocker Café :: Tuesday, October 04, 2005

The Overclocker Cafe’ has posted their review up on the middle range VGA card from ATI. Aimed squarely at the NVidia GeForce 6600 GT controlled sub $200 bracket, the Radeon X800GT makes a nice showing. Other than HIS’s impressive IceQ cooling setup that provides better and quieter cooling, the HIS Radeon proves to be a rather vanilla product; nothing really negative just not a lot to separate it from the crowd. Here’s a snip of the review.

The HIS X800GT that we’ve had in the shop performed well for a mid-range contender. While it’s performance wasn’t outstanding, it brought in playable frame rates and decent image quality, just like the 6600GT’s that we’ve seen. However, with ATi’s Crossfire technology not quite out in the open yet and nVidia’s SLI already close to a year old, you won’t be running a dual card setup with the X800GT just yet.

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HIS ICEQII Radeon X800GT Turbo PCI Express Videocard Review @ Tweaknews.net
Tweaknews :: Tuesday, October 04, 2005

“So who is this videocard targeted for? It is getting harder and harder to say really. Seems that ATI is going to try to stick as many two letter version releases at the end of the X800 line before it is rendered obsolete in the upcoming months. If you were thinking because of the GT tag that this card is an enthusiast card, you will quickly that it is indeed a low to mid-range mainstream card. Does this mean it is a slacker?……. Oh HELLLLLL no..”

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