Monday, September 22, 2003

Daily mailbox: OCW, myWORLD Hardware, G3D, 3DCenter, TweakTown, I4U, Bjorn3D, Legion Hardware — Cormac @ 16:20 

Gigabyte K8VNXP VIA K8T800 Mainboard Review @ OCW

"Last week, we brought you the exclusive coverage of the ALi M1687 Reference board and the Gigabyte K8NNXP (nForce3). In this review, we will bring you more information about the Athlon64 K8 and a review of the Gigabyte´s K8NNXP mainboard based on the nForce3 150 chipset.
This time round, we review its brother using the VIA K8T800 chipset. The VIA K8T800 chipset with Hyper8 technology is powering next generation 64-bit compatible platforms based around AMD Opteron™ and new Athlon™ 64 processors, including Dual Opteron™ processor based workstations and servers, and Athlon™64 processor based performance PC platforms. Combined with the VIA VT8237 South Bridge and VIA companion chips, the K8T800 enables an unparalleled range of cutting edge I/O and multimedia features, including an 1.6GHz HyperTransport Bus Link, AGP 8X, Native Serial ATA/RAID, 7.1-surround audio, and Gigabit Ethernet."

Read more at OCWorkbench.

Albatron PX865PE Pro Springdale board Reviewed @ myWORLD Hardware

"While Intel is happily making money out of producing Intel Canterwood, not long then the first few manufacturers, that are ASUS and ABIT, managed to find out the workaround to hack the springdale board in order to enable the PAT technology, which is actually found on the more expensive Canterwood chipset, which is simply by patching the bios, then voila! You can expect some performance gain! This means for those of you who are hoping for some extra buck out of your hard earn dough, Intel 865PE can be your next board in your buying list!"

Read more at myWORLD Hardware.

SIS 648FX Chipset Overview Article @ Gaming In 3D

"Intel is probably a bit disappointed with the overwhelming success of the 865 chipset... despite it being their own chipset, they would obviously want more buyers interested in the more expensive 875 chipset. But alas, things are getting so bleedin´ fast that good enough truly is good enough (just hopefully not at the cost of quality). Thus, SIS wants to try and direct some of that budget-enthusiasm towards their new 648FX chipset. Let´s see if it is worth your attention."

Read more at Gaming In 3D.

3DCenter.org News: Interview with Futuremark + Detonator 51.75 with new "optimiations"

"There has been a lot of controversial discussions around 3DMark03, but I would like you to keep one thing in mind. 3DMark03 was developed in cooperation with all the major PC hardware manufacturers, just like 3DMark2001. That enabled us to create a product that was ahead of its time. We understand that many people did not believe the performance figures when 3DMark03 was published back in February. Only now we are beginning to see DX9 games emerge and what do you know, their performance readings seem to correlate well with what 3DMark03 showed you already in February :-).
Besides this, we have checked the IQ of Detonator 51.75. And we found new "optimizations": Texture stages 1-7 on all D3D games don´t get a trilinear filter, only a pseudo-trilinear (bilinear/trilinear mix). Under Unreal Tournament 2003, texture stages 1-7 are only pure bilinear filtered. Plus, texture stages 1-7 don´t show any anisotropc filtering above 2x on all D3D games. All this in the driver´s application mode!"

Read more at 3DCenter.org or this Google translation.

Computex 2003 Coverage – Pre Coverage with No Hardware! @ TweakTown

"Fighting away concerns of SARS, Computex Taipei 2003 was delayed from its original date in June and starts tomorrow with full force. We are also here in force and thought it might be interesting to have a look at the surroundings of Computex instead of only focusing on the hardware side of things. Read on as Cameron "Mr.Tweak" Wilmot takes us on a quick tour of Taipei, Taiwan in the Computex area."

Read more at TweakTown.

Chaintech Apogee FX71 GeForce FX 5600 Ultra Review @ TweakTown

"The GeForce FX has recently given nVidia a bad name with various decisions which could have been handled better. Chaintech is a long time supporter of nVidia and has stood by them in thick and thin. Today Cameron "Sov" Johnson takes a look at Chaintech´s Apogee FX71 with some amazing cooling technology which is based on the Apogee FX71 core. Can Chaintech help nVidia in the performance department? Read on and find out!"

Read more at TweakTown.

I4U News: New Panasonic SL-905 thin CD Walkman with Speakers

"Panasonic (Matsushita) introduces thin CD portable Player with attachable small speakers. I don´t know why people still would buy a portable CD player. MP3 players are so much smaller. The only advantage is that you do not have to rip CDs and upload them to the MP3 Player.In any case if you want a CD Walkman than this new Panasonic SL-J905 is definitly a hot choice. The player measures: 126x14.9x126.5mm and weighs 218g. The mini speakers are powered with the integrated output of 380mW. The CD Player features the Panasonic D.Sound system. The Panasonic SL-J905 will be released in Japan on October 20th. No price set yet." and find out!"

Read more at I4U.

Bjorn3D.com reviews the RaidMax Storm 847 Titanium

In our latest review Scott has taken a look at the RaidMax Storm 847 Titanium, a nice Titanium coloured case with side and top case windows and built-in blue led.

Read more at Bjorn3D.

Datacool DWC-A1 — Budget water cooling tested @ Madshrimps

" Most water blocks are not more than a piece of aluminum/copper with a channel drilled into it. But what would happen if you put fins and a fan on it? Probably it will improve your temperature, as you cool everything down at the source. Datacooler used this and I think they succeeded in it. Adding a controllable fan leaves you the choice to make your system silent (Would you buy cheap water cooling if it wasn´t silent?) or more performing. "

Read more at Madshrimps.

Computex Day 1 @ Legion Hardware

"A technology that has been in development for quite some time now is QBM (Quad Bandwidth Memory). VIA has been right behind this technology and around this time last year I was eagerly trying to learn as much as I could about their PT600 series that was said to support QBM technology. However, since then what was formerly known as the PT600 series is now known as the PT800 and PT880. It has been several weeks since the launch of the PT800 chipset which is a single channel DDR solution aimed at being a cost effective solution for the performance market."

Read more at Legion Hardware.