Tech News
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Toxic X800 Pro @ Rage3D
Published: Monday, August 2, 2004 | By: DennisThis is that funky card from Sapphire with the huge aftermarket cooler on it. Move over FX5900, here comes something meatier.
"Framerate is still everything (anyone who says differently is full of it), so the most obvious option for an AIB looking to grab some extra attention is to modify the videocard BIOS to increase the usually conservative core and/or memory speeds set by their IHV guidelines. The problem there is that the two big IHVs don't like their AIB partners messing around with the BIOS as any potential instability introduced there is usually looked at as the fault of the IHV and usually not the AIB. If the AIB ignores the IHV guidelines and goes ahead and factory overclocks the card anyway then they can expect to lose their IHV warranty and support. Obviously that's not something any AIB would want to risk."
Gotta love that “framerate is everything” quote.
It would seem that most everyone thinks this way except for the [H]. I say if you got the framerate start turning up the details until you achive a good mix of speed and visual quality.
As for overclocking, I don't mind a good factory overclock and since many companies are doing this either in drivers or BIOS you can't really do much about it, unless the card melts down.
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PC Chips takes over Soyo
Published: Monday, August 2, 2004 | By: Dennis"As second-tier motherboard makers continue to lose money, they are expected to increasingly fall prey to takeovers by investors or be forced out of the market in the second half of the year, as seen by the recent takeover of Soyo Computer by members of the Taiwan-based PC Chips Group, according to sources at the makers."
What do you think, hostile takeover or will PC Chips allow them to clean out their desks first? -
Asetek WaterChill Antarctica @ Hexus
Published: Monday, August 2, 2004 | By: Dennis"To test the noise side of things I used my good old ears. To limit the affects of ambient noise in my wholly unscientific listening tests, I equipped the system with a Gainward SilentFX graphics card and a very quiet Tagan power supply. The SK8V comes without a discrete fan on the K8T800 bridge so things were eerily quiet."
The WaterChill is a very solid kit that comes with everything you need to get started. Be sure to check out our review of a similar kit from asetek. -
Another Day, Another Birthday Past
Published: Monday, August 2, 2004 | By: DennisMy, how the time flies. Yes its true another birthday has past and not a party was thrown.
-- The End --
Tune in later today when the 101(F) degree weather becomes a slight chance of isolated thundershowers. -
Albatron Px915g Pro @ Red and Blackness
Published: Friday, July 30, 2004 | By: DennisAs you may have guessed this is a i915 Intel board using the new 775 pin Prescott processor. Aside from the i865PR and i875P hybrid boards this will be the only chipset to support the 775 Prescott, AGP graphics, and DDR1.
"The cpu is mounted very easily in this new socket system. Just pull up the clip and open it up; and after that you can just push the processor into the socket and push the clip down. The north and southbridge are covered by these heatsinks so we should see some overclocking later on in this review."
Actually you never want to push a 775 processor into the new socket, that is a sure fire way to bend the pins and ruin your mobo. The processor just sets into place quite nicely with no extra force needed. -
NL: Review Block - 6800 Ultra
Published: Friday, July 30, 2004 | By: Dennisthe 6800 Ultra is just about the hottest card on the market, in more ways than one.
- Gigabyte GeForce 6800 Ultra @ HardwareZoom
- Sparkle GeForce 6800 Ultra @ accelenation
Be sure to check back again for more reviews here at... -
PCI-E - but not really - Video Block-0
Published: Friday, July 30, 2004 | By: DennisYep with enough bridges you can attach just about anything. You can also blow up a bunch of stuff by making soap but that’s a different story.
Some of the first PCI-Express video cards are actually AGP cards with a bridge to convert it to PCI-E. HDD companies have been doing the same thing with their Serial ATA products, I guess its cheaper than developing a new controller for a slow HDD.
- Gigabyte GV-NX57128D @ PCStats
- MSI PCX5750-TD128 @ PCStats
- Gigabyte GV-RX60X128V @ PCStats
This kind of turned into a PCStats review block but that’s how the ball bounces. -
OMG Look At The Time
Published: Thursday, July 29, 2004 | By: DennisSorry for the apparent lack of news posting but things have been pretty hectic around here. Deadlines are coming up and the summer heat has really played a number on test bench overclocking. Sit tight there should be a Review Block online sometime later today to cover any losses in review postings. I know how you all love to read reviews.
I've been reading some interesting things about what people are doing to get prepared for Doom 3. Some are making shopping lists for new hardware while others are just having fun looking back at the history of id game engine releases. Did you realize that id is one of the main reasons gamers upgrade their systems?? -
Phj34r the Downtime
Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 | By: DennisSorry for the downtime but due to a freak accident web access to ninjalane.com was restricted for a short amount of time. The sad part of the whole deal is that the issue pivoted around a routine upgrade that was supposed to make things better. I think we can safely chalk this one up to user error with just a touch of shoddy documentation and programming on the part of the software supplier.
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Mini Gradient Mesh Tutorial
Published: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 | By: DennisThis is not really related to computer hardware and hardware review but many of us are graphical people in some form or another. One of the coolest tools that I have recently started to use is Adobe Illustrator CS. This is a vector based drawing tool similar to AutoCAD and 3dsmax so everything that is drawn on screen can be derived by a mathematical formula. (In some form or another). Illustrator just takes things a few more levels to make the images a little prettier.
Knowing this you may find it hard to believe that you can do near photorealistic drawings in Illustrator without needing to import pixel based raster images. For those interested be sure to check out this Mini Gradient Mesh Tutorial at Creative Bush
