Tech News April 2005

Ulti-Mat Mouse Pad Review @ Tech-Mods.net
Tech-Mods.net :: Saturday, April 30, 2005

“Ulti-Mat was founded back in 2000 and has created a high quality mousing surface for beginners, enthusiast, and high end gamers. The Ulti-Mat unlike most soft and glossy mouse surfaces the Ulti-Mat is flat, smooth, and fast for accurate gaming performance or day to day use ”

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DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR Socket 939 Motherboard Review @ PimpRig
PimpRig :: Saturday, April 30, 2005
“Here are a couple of features that are targeted directly towards folks like us. If you are like me, my main rig is rarely completely put together and often runs on my Senfu bench outside the case. DFI included a power and reset switch directly on the board so tweakers don’t have to use their modded adapters to power up or reset the board.”

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NZXT Cases: Nemesis Elite Edition & Trinity Classic Video Review #562 @ 3dGameMan
3dgameman :: Saturday, April 30, 2005

“Both cases have a long list of features & bold styling, especially the Nemesis which has a radical front design. The Nemesis case is all aluminum, except for the front & therefore it is fairly light. Three 120mm fans make air circulation excellent, and it even comes with a flip-up LED at the top. The Trinity case is steel with great features & a classy look. Watch the Video to find out more…”

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Com-Pad Speed-Pad & maXXpad Review @ PC Modding Malaysia
PC Modding Malaysia :: Saturday, April 30, 2005

“The large surface of the pad is a plus as we see more and more company producing large mouse-pads and I have mention quite a number of times that this is surely the trend nowadays. The pad is quite the opposite if you compare it with the Speed-pad as this pad is designed for the low sensitivity users.”

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Dell Dimension XPS Gen-4 @ Hexus
Hexus :: Saturday, April 30, 2005
“Dell is both large enough and savvy enough to engineer and market the best gaming system around. This Dimension XPS Gen-4, however, is overpriced and, from a package’s point of view, hasn’t been specified too well. Dell, I feel, needs to reduce the price to below £1,500 inc. VAT and offer a choice between CRT and TFT at no extra cost. Custom touches, such as a gaming mouse and windowed panel wouldn’t go amiss, either. It’s surprising to say this, but Dell, with this XPS system, isn’t doing what it does best, that is, offering unbeatable value for money”

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A.C. Ryan Modding Products @ Bjorn3D
Bjorn3D :: Saturday, April 30, 2005
“We decided to put together this overview article instead of trying to review every little item separately.

The products we are looking at today are:

Connectx™ Kit Deluxe, UVRed – This kit includes all you need to mod all the connectors in your computer. Conductx™ DIY Kit Chain-Your-Drive™, UVblue FlexSleeve™ Kit UVblue – Sleeve up your cables. MORF™ psu modding kit, UVBlue – Everything you need to mod all the cables from your PSU. Roundcables ATA133 60cm UVSilver – Rounded ATA-cable with UV-Active particles. Backy™ Combo, UVBlue – Need access to molex and fan power outside the case? Then backy is the thing for you. SATA cable 50cm GREENEON – Tired of your boring SATA cable. Then this cool SATA cable is for you. A.C Ryan has a lot more mod-stuff, and I suggest you visit their site to check them all out.”

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ED#28 : Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier! @ Adrian’s Rojak Pot
Tech ARP :: Saturday, April 30, 2005

“Six months after the release of the print version of the BIOS Optimization Guide, the e-book version is now available! Come and take a look at the e-book version of the ultimate guide on BIOS optimization for PCs! ”

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AMD announces the END OF SOCKET 754 ATHLON 64 with deadline @ AMDboard
AMDboard :: Saturday, April 30, 2005
“AMD has officially informed European resellers about the end of socket 754 Athlon 64. According to the chart published today at AMDboard.com, orders will still be accepted until March 25 and June 15 for final deliveries before September 25. AMD also encouraged resellers to push socket 939 Athlon 64 instead, insisting on the larger bandwidth, lower consumption and dual-core compatibility of the latter. Finally, Athlon 64 in 2800+ and 3400+ flavor will not be replaced with socket 939 equivalent, while socket 754 Athlon 64 3700+ will be available in new Socket 939 version during second quarter of 2005”

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Jetart JACSH1 Universal VGA Cooler @ InsaneTek
InsaneTek :: Thursday, April 28, 2005

Quote: “Jetart enters the GPU cooling competition and gives Arctic Cooling a good fight. Equipped with blue LED’s and universal installation, it becomes a great choice for enthusiasts.”

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HEXUS.review – SCAN 3XS ISOTOPE System
Hexus :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
Snip: The ISOTOPE chassis is much like Marmite; you will either love it or loathe it. I must confess, having first seen it on display at the recent CTS show, I was set against it. Too many hard edges and too much internal activity. However, it’s the kind of chassis that grows on you … it becomes a talking point as much as anything else, and if you’re the kind of enthusiast that likes to have something look a little different, the chassis, with its pre-distressed look and colour choice, is a real alternative to regular SFF PCs.

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DH Review: ATI Radeon X850 XTPE -AGP
Driver Heaven :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
For a while now the 6800 Ultra and X800 XTPE have been batting it out for the performance crown at the top of the AGP card market, until now neither ATI or Nvidia have released a product to move their AGP lines forward and due to this users of PCI Express have found their performance is slightly higher than those using AGP parts. With the development of Rialto, ATI?s PCI express to AGP conversion technology ATI began moving lower spec PCI Express products to AGP a few months ago. Today we have a look at their first move to convert a high end product?the highest infact, the X850 XTPE.

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Wintec AMP-X PC2-5400 1GB DC Kit @ InsaneTek
InsaneTek :: Thursday, April 28, 2005

Quote: “Wintec introduces AMP-X as their enthusiast line of memory. Although new to the whole ballgame, the AMP-X DDR2 memory provides some tough competition for the bigger established boys.”

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Thermaltake SonicTower Heatpipe Cooler @ SystemCooling.com
SystemCooling :: Thursday, April 28, 2005

snip: “With today’s processors getting more powerful and running hotter and hotter, heatsink manufacturers are going to greater extremes to keep your CPU cool and still run at a respectable sound level. Today we are going to be taking a look at what has to be one of the largest heatsinks on the market, the Thermaltake Sonic Tower. Not only is this heat sink huge, it also runs fanless, making it totally silent.”

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Review: Actiontec Wireless 54Mbps Printer Server @ GideonTech.com
GideonTech :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
“With many households running multiple computers, sharing a printer may be hard when faced with all the networking needed to be done first. If you happen to have a wireless setup already, add this Actiontec printer server and you can get every computer connected to your printer in just a few minutes.”

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AMD to Adopt DDR500 Officially @ CoolTechZone
CoolTechZone :: Thursday, April 28, 2005

“Up until today, DDR400 has been the official memory standard for majority of the platforms, but Intel made the change to DDR2, and now it’s AMD’s turn to make a change to their platform. According to an insider source, AMD has plans to adopt DDR500 as its official memory standard in the very near future.”

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Splinter Cell Chaos Theory Benchmark Utility @ Beyond3D
Beyond3D :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory has recently been released and it contains numerous different options for Shader 3.0 graphics boards and a benchmark mode. We’ve knocked together a short guide to the options available – giving examples of their IQ and performance differences as well as detailing our easily configurable benchmarking script that hopefully will be of use to reviewers and end users alike.

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Titan Vanessa S-Type @ Viperlair
ViperLair :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
“Overall the Titan Vanessa S-Type is a great heat sink. Performance is on par with other similar heat sinks, and the noise wise it is very quiet. If you don’t have a Socket 462, mounting will be a breeze, and the included fan controller gives you that much more control of the performance.”

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Four Supermicro dual-core opteron motherboards
AMDboard :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
Lured by AMD’s Dual-Core potential, Supermicro just ended a long-lasting exclusive relationship with giant Intel in order to offer a complete Opteron lineup with blade, 1U, 2U, 3U, 4U, mid-tower chassis, and, best of all, a range of four dual-opteron motherboards. Three of the four Supermicro dual-Opteron motherboards have the AMD chipset 8111- 8131 duo while the fourth one rely on the new NVIDIA NFORCE Pro chipset to get the best out of 4 cores. All four dual-core Opteron-ready motherboards have features typically server market-oriented like onboard Ultra320 SCSI controller with RAID, onboard dual Gigabit LAN, PCI-X slots, on board ATI Rage XL controller and many more. AMDboard.com, the AMD specialist, is first to publish the complete specifications of all four boards at:

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News Flash – The Olympic Image: High Tech Beijing or Primitive Vancouver
Futurelooks :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
“While Beijing is trying to create the image of a tech savvy nation for their Summer Games in 2008, Vancouver’s Winter Olympics in 2010 is getting primitive. After unveiling a new logo tonight, I’m left wondering if it’s the right image or not.”

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New techPowerUp Review: Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 4 Rev. 2
techPowerUp! :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
Arctic Cooling released a new version of their successful ATI Silencer 4. The new revision fixes all previous problems, most notably the clicking fan noises. Cooling performance is excellent – this is the best cooler for the X800 we tested so far

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…and for our one German reader : überprüfen Sie es

Unhealthy Partnerships Plague the Graphic Industry @ CoolTechZone
CoolTechZone :: Thursday, April 28, 2005

“If I were to buy a graphics card today, I would have little choice but to go with either ATI or NVIDIA. To break down my buying decision, I would probably consider the card’s features, the novel (and pointless in certain cases) concept of future proofing, price and performance in games that I want to play. Everything sounds so clear-cut, doesn’t it? I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but picking a graphics card is not an easy task these days. I can probably list a few reasons as to why my thinking runs that way, but chances are you are already aware of them. Therefore, I am going to focus this column on special relationships between the game developers and the graphics card makers.”

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Printing Troubleshooting Guide
The Tech Zone :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
You troubleshoot printing issues like you would any other computer/network related problem. You start at a general point and rule out the possibilities until you have the specific cause. The first question that you need to answer is: “Is the problem hardware, software, network or performance related?”

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New at techPowerUp: Memory Database
techPowerUp! :: Thursday, April 28, 2005
This database lists which memory chips are used on memory modules of which manufacturer. Also listed is information on suggested Voltages and timings for best performance.

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Zalman CNPS7700-Cu and VF700-ALCu Heatsink Reviews @ GruntvillE.com
GruntvillE :: Thursday, April 28, 2005

“The stock 9800XT cooler is not even in the ballpark! The VF700 just simply outclasses it. With the same clock settings the VF700 outscored the ATI cooling solution, I was able to clock higher with no artifacts long after they appeared with the ATI cooling. For testing temperatures I kept the clock speeds at a level the stock cooling could handle with no artifacts. The CPU was set at 250fsb during all video card tests. Since I could not vary the fan speed on the ATI based card I conducted all these tests with the VF700 operating at 12-volts.”

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Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000 1GB DC Kit @ InsaneTek
InsaneTek :: Thursday, April 21, 2005

” Corsair is not the only player with the flashy looks. Crucial’s Ballistix Tracer steps up with their “bling bling” memory to give enthusiasts great performance, overclockability, and of course, aethestics. ”

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DDR-2 Memory Investigation Guide – Making sense of memory settings
TweakTown :: Thursday, April 21, 2005
”

In our latest guide we investigate DDR-2 memory on the Intel Pentium 4 platform and the differences between high bandwidth and timings to figure out which offers the best system performance. What is better – higher clock speed or super tight timings? We discuss the reasons why one is better than the other and prove our claims through a range of different system configuration benchmarks

”

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Cooler Master Vortex TX Heatsink @ SystemCooling.com
SystemCooling :: Thursday, April 21, 2005

” Today we’re going to be looking at another new Cooler Master cooling product. It seems that Cooler Master has been keeping their engineers hard at work this year, coming out with some high quality innovative products. In my last review we looked at their new water cooling system, and in this one we’re going to see how their latest air cooling solution, the Vortex TX, compares in performance and noise levels. ”

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Coolermaster AQUAGATE R120 @ Neoseeker
Neoseeker :: Thursday, April 21, 2005
”

The Coolermaster AQUAGATE R120 performs quite admirably. At the highest fan speed setting, the AQUAGATE managed to cool the scorching hot Prescott down to 48 degrees Celsius (stock Intel HSF averaged 68 degrees). That is quite an impressive achievement, as the Prescott is not an easy beast to cool. Prime95 puts a very heavy load on a processor, and in most cases probably achieves close to the highest thermal output the processor is capable of.

”

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Intel Knew DDR2 was Poor Design @ CoolTechZone
CoolTechZone :: Thursday, April 21, 2005

”

We all know how DDR2 is struggling to keep up with DDR, which in turn makes Intel struggle against AMD who has better performing microprocessors for the gaming and enthusiast crowd. Although Intel has managed to be “successful” with its latest generation of hardware in the OEM segment, thanks to Dell, majority of the enthusiasts tend to stay far away from Intel’s latest platform due to an unfortunate performance hit with newer standards and technologies. ”

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AMD May Skip DDR2 Altogether @ CoolTechZone
CoolTechZone :: Thursday, April 21, 2005

” According to the source, AMD has other plans with DDR and the company will possibly make advancements in this sector. The source also said that AMD might be going its own way by not following Intel with their DDR2 implementations. Instead, the world’s second largest chipmaker may go straight to DDR3 or XDR in hopes of adopting a better architecture. You see, DDR2 was a poor design to begin with, but considering that Intel has been making quite a few mistakes after its Prescott and i915/i925 launch, no one should be surprised. ”

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