Tech News
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MSI GeForce 6600 GT PCIe SLI Performance Review @ HardwareZone
Published: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 | By: Dennis"Days after SLI was publicly announced, NVIDIA hinted its next version of Media Communication Processors (MCPs) would include support for SLI technology. True enough, the nForce4 MCPs were launched recently and basically built upon the foundation of the nForce3 Ultra, but this time it supports the PCI Express I/O interface. There are currently three variations of this new MCP:- NVIDIA nForce4, NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra and NVIDIA nForce4 SLI. The basic nForce4 was designed for regular Athlon 64 Socket-939 systems with a PCIe I/O subsystem."
In an unrelated note while I was chatting with the guys from nVidia at Computex I stumbled over the SLI topic (in 3dfx terms) and asked if it was possible to link two PCI Express video cards in a similar manner. The guys were rather taken back by the question but answered properly by saying "there was nothing in the spec that says you can't”. I really didn’t think much of it though was rather intrigued by their reaction. About 3 weeks later they made the SLI announcement which of course tied everything together.
All I can say is "Damn, can I guess this shite or what?".
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Chaintech GeForce 6600GT AGP Review @ OCModShop
Published: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 | By: DennisThe nVidia midrange GPUs have always been very popular, they offer some good speed at a fraction of the price.
"Like I mentioned in the introduction this 6600 series was initially released only as PCI-Express. Because PCI-Express is not mature enough, many people are not able to make the move yet. There isn't a big difference between the PCI-Express and AGP versions of this card but there are some."
For this particular GPU the PCI-Express version can also be run in SLI mode. -
Hacker hits McDonalds China Web site
Published: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 | By: DennisThe way I see it Taiwan is a separate country but as we all know not everyone sees things the way I do.
"The world's largest restaurant chain is expanding fast in China and currently has 600 stores in what has become its eighth-largest market.
McDonald's English-language home page features a sign saying "I'm going to McDonald's" pointing at a drop-down menu listing China and Taiwan as separate "country/market" identities.
China has considered the self-ruled island of Taiwan part of its territory since it split away from the mainland after the defeated Nationalists fled there at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949."
The news is a little late considering but its still news, kind of.
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Phantom Robot ChipsMod IV Review @ Big Bruin
Published: Monday, December 27, 2004 | By: DennisThis is really one of the coolest Northbridge coolers that I've seen in quite awhile. The cooler comes anodized and appears to be available in a variety of colors.
"Installation of the unit is not difficult, but does take a little bit of time. Depending on your current Northbridge heatsink, you might have to remove it from the bottom of the motherboard, which could mean totally taking your system apart. Of course if you have an Intel system that uses the hook system, you won't have to do that."
I might have to get me one of these.
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DFI LANParty UT 915P-T12 Motherboard @ Bjorn3D
Published: Monday, December 27, 2004 | By: Dennis"With the LANParty line, DFI caters to enthusiasts and tweakers, and that can be seen in the BIOS. In order to get the best overclock possible, I set Performance Mode to "Disabled" in the BIOS. I also disabled the onboard PCI-Express LAN and set the PCI-Express clock to "Auto." While this board has been known to get up to 270-280MHz FSB, I wasn't quite able to push it that high. The highest stable FSB overclock I could reach was 250MHz."
We also reviewed this particular motherboard and found the performance and usability to be very good. Overclocking couldn’t be easier since with a little watercooling we could easily hit 4Ghz (268Mhz FSB) using our Pentium 4 530 (3Ghz) processor.
The image link above is stored as part of the Ninjalane Message Forum (Ninjaforum) and will require that you be a member and signed in to view. Membership is free so sign up today. -
NL: Review Block - Memory in Review
Published: Monday, December 27, 2004 | By: DennisI forget why but memory is pretty important.
- Corsair Flash Voyager @ PCStats
- Mushkin PC2-4200 @ InsaneTek
- Kingston HyperX PC5400 @ Viper Lair
- Corsair Flash Voyager USB Drive @ TheTechLounge
- Corsair XMS2 PC4300 CL3 Pro @ XtremeNews
Forgetting things since 1999 -
Merry Christmas - Reprise
Published: Sunday, December 26, 2004 | By: DennisAnother Christmas has come and gone and according to the latest web poll 47% of you were hoping for computer stuff, 20% claimed that they wanted to find a nicely dressed Mistress under the tree this year
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So how did everyone do? Here is to hoping you all didn't get socks (unless you really needed them
and may all your future gift-giving ventures not go un-rewarded. -
Happy Holidays Everyone
Published: Friday, December 24, 2004 | By: DennisChristmas is almost here and along with most Americans I'll be spending the holiday weekend with the family. Provided that everything goes well site updates will resume on Sunday with a tentative review release on Monday.
Take care everyone, Eat, Drink, and Be Merry!!. Give some sober friend the keys if you've been drinking lots and be sure to kick that annoying family member square in the ass! Just cause they are drunk doesn't excuse the fact they need a good old-fashioned ass whooping for pissing everyone off.
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Testing NVIDIA SLI - Two Parts @ Digit-Life
Published: Thursday, December 23, 2004 | By: Dennis"NVIDIA SLI operates differently. Like in the latest multi-chip solutions from 3dfx, the pair is formed by a Primary (Master) card and a Secondary (Slave) card. A special buffer is allocated in a master card to assemble the image. But we have written much about operating methods of multi-chip solutions, so we shall not repeat ourselves.
Note that there is a special unit inside the corresponding chips (NV45, NV43), which is responsible for SLI, working with shared resources of the two video cards. The data is exchanged via a bus and synched via a special SLI connector plugged to both cards."
I'm still pretty excited about nVidia SLI, it doesn't seem to be as flexible as 3DFX SLI but should still dominate the video card market. -
Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300 DDR2 @ InsaneTek
Published: Thursday, December 23, 2004 | By: DennisI still haven't heard back from my contact at Crucial about reviewing some of their Ballistix memory. I'm not holding my breath, for some reason they really don't like me or Ninjalane.
"Not many people are aware that Crucial Technology is a sub-division of Micron Technology. Micron is an extremely popular memory chip manufacturer, providing chips with excellent performance and stability. Crucial Technology takes those chips and implements them on a PCB to make great memory. "
Actually I knew that Crucial was part of Micron, I even tried to get a job with Micron back in my youth. I also got my first taste of interview "hazing" during this period of my life. Needless to say after my experiences there I pretty much decided that all things Micron could kiss my ass.
