Tech News
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Crucial PC4200 Review @ PCStats
Published: Thursday, August 12, 2004 | By: Dennis"While there are plenty of manufacturers that have DDR-2 RAM listed in their product sheets, only a few companies are actually delivering those memory DIMMs to consumers. Crucial.com is one such memory manufacturer, and they are more than ready to rock and roll with their new series of DDR-2 RAM.... after all, Micron is the parent company of Crucial."
Crucial is also located not more than 10min away from my current position, tis a small world afterall. -
Doom3 Technology Interview with John Carmack @ Beyond3D
Published: Thursday, August 12, 2004 | By: Dennis"This reporter, finally getting his hands on a copy of the game after a torturous wait, has been corresponding with id's Technical Director, John Carmack, the man responsible for the engine powering Doom3, on a variety of topics concerning the game."
The interview seems like a casual chat about how the game was built and what goes into making a cutting edge game such as Doom III. -
Build A PC Test Box @ CaseModGod
Published: Thursday, August 12, 2004 | By: DennisHere is a fun little guide that describes how to test your extra PC hardware outside the realm of the PC case.
"I got the initial idea for my test box from a cool little PSU tester (shown below) that I bought online for under $10 USD, it's fairly compact and it works really well. I had at first planned to incorporate the PSU tester into my final test box design but changed my mind after coming up with a better idea." -
How about some n3ws
Published: Thursday, August 12, 2004 | By: DennisWell it has been slow going since the server crash but things are progressing quite nicely and with any luck be back up to 100% in short order.
News to follow, (or be listed above) -
GeForce 6600 Product Launch Info @ Hexus
Published: Thursday, August 12, 2004 | By: Dennis"Whereas NV40 starts life as a full 16 pixel pipeline (4 quad pipes) part with a 256-bit memory interface, before being used in 6800 Ultra or 6800 GT product, or as a three-quad part (12 pixel pipelines) in the plain 6800, NV43 is a two quad part from the start (8 pixel pipes) with a fixed 128-bit memory interface and no possible 256-bit interface, as rumoured."
Enter the budget PCI-Express GPU's from nVidia. Aside from the inclusion of new technology I'm going to guess that these new cards will not be much faster than the current FX chips, but I could be wrong. -
HolyShite: That Was NOT Fun
Published: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 | By: DennisWell after many many hours of downtime the Ninjalane server is back online and ready to serve pages... almost..
I have to give props to only a small handful of peeps at "ThePlanet" for helping get the server back online, I'd like to say "Thanks" to all that helped, and "Bugger Off" to those that didn't do shite.
To better explain, The Ninjalane server had some major issues, we had a hunch as to what was wrong but needed The Planet tech support to actually preform the fix. The "approved" way to speak with tech support is thru their support ticket system so I clearly spelled out what was happening and how I figured it could be fixed. After waiting for an hour the ticket gets assigned to someone and about 30min after that the ticket was closed. BUT the server was still broken!! So once again another ticket was opened and yet another couple hours went by, this went on for a good many many hours with the response time ranging between 45min and 2.5hours. Needless to say the whole process really licked bawls.
Around 12:00pm local time (the next day) I finally convinced a tech to check out the server claiming that it was not responsive and needed urgent attention. Off an on he worked on the server until coming to the conclusion that it couldn't be fixed and made a suggestion as to what the next course of action would be. From there things went smooth except for the hour-long wait time between ticket responses.
I must say I love what The Planet does, service is great (when you can get ahold of someone), the price is right, and polices are in place to help the customer. Though when it comes to larger issues needed urgent attention the response time stinks. -
NL: Review Block - Crucial Memory Ed
Published: Monday, August 9, 2004 | By: DennisYa know the sad part about posting Crucial memory reviews is that they are more than willing to ship review samples halfway across the country and/or world but have refused to supply a local review site located no more than 10 miles from their main supply and shipping warehouse. (less than 2 during certain parts of the day)
- Crucial PC-4200 DDR2-533 @ Buddhas LAN Room
- Crucial Ballistix DDR2 - 533 @ VR-Zone
Here is a link to the only review site located nearest to Crucial that has never reviewed a Crucial product. -
Logitech MX510 Review @ Creative Mods
Published: Monday, August 9, 2004 | By: Dennis"5.8 megapixels/sec, 800dpi, 15g acceleration, and a max speed of 40 inches/second. If you haven’t guessed, these specs are for the new Logitech MX510 performance mouse. So is this all techno shmechno jargon, or does it actually amount to a worthwhile product? Read more to find out."
This latest mouse from Logitech is rumored to be the fastest and most accurate mouse in the retail market and based on the specs I would tend to agree. Though buried under the custom colors and high res infrared is a mouse full of awkward button positions and mismatched finger locations.
You see over the years Logitech has done an excellent job in degrading the comfort and ergo styling of their mice all so that people with small hands will stop complaining about their products. -
Enermax UC-9FATR2 Deluxe Multifunction Panel @ Extreme OC
Published: Monday, August 9, 2004 | By: DennisEnermax has been known for making some pretty stupid looking multifunction panels in the past though as it would seem they are getting better.
"SiSoftware Sandra and I are having issues with memory card testing so actual numbers could not be attained but those of you with USB 1.0 readers will see a nice speed jump. I could not find any external SATA devices to run on the ports, although I did run a SATA HDD off the connector but I had to get power from inside the case."
Based on the comments in this review the author didn't have much need for many of the additional features packed into this little unit. I suspect many of you will be in the same boat. -
AlphaCool NexXxos XP @ XYZ Computing
Published: Monday, August 9, 2004 | By: Dennis"Within the small box I found the block wrapped in bubble-wrap. Immediately I saw why it was kept away from everything else- this block has an amazing chrome-plating on it. The bubble wrap did a good job of protecting the block and its base from the sharp edges on the steel retention clip."
I dunno about you but having such a swank waterblock completely covered by the retention clip just seems like a complete waste of time, though I guess it is the thought that counts.
