Tech News
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3.4GHz Prescott @ Legit Reviews
Published: Monday, March 29, 2004 | By: Dennis"Everything looks good when viewing the processor under CPU-Z version 1.21! Looks like a standard Prescott with a little speed boost. It's also nice to point out that the BIOS on our ABIT board noted the CPU Voltage as 1.375V, which is the same as the 3.2GHz Prescott. This is a good thing as temperatures shouldn't be impacted in a large way with the increase in core speed alone."
This processor isn't much different than the 3.2E that was released a short time ago, aside from the 200Mhz speed bump it looks identical.
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Wholy C4w what happened??
Published: Monday, March 29, 2004 | By: DennisYep I've been slacking on the Ninjalane updates but, I had some things that I really needed to complete and there is only so much time in a day. Sux to be me but hopefully sometime in the next 4 months I'll be moving into my new house, designed and built by me.
Gonna check the mailbag, with any luck something good will get posted. -
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra with GDDR3 @ HotHardware
Published: Thursday, March 25, 2004 | By: Dennis"At stock clock speeds, the thermal probe read a temperature that was only 4.5°C above ambient. At this temperature the rear of the PCB directly behind the RAM was just barely warm to the touch. As expected, when we overclocked the card, the temperature readings went way up. According to our decidedly unscientific setup, the temperature peaked at 34.4°C, which is a big jump considering we're measuring temperatures on the underside of the PCB, the actual temperature of the chips would be somewhat higher. However, at 34.4°C we wouldn't say the GDDR3 memory was running terribly hot."
In this review they did get the DDR3 memory to run at around 1.11Ghz, not too shabby considering the 1.06Ghz overclock we got from our Chaintech AA5700U using DDR2 though hardly enough to get all excited over.
It makes you wonder what the manufactures do in terms of "enhanced" clock speeds now that DDR3 is available. We should find out soon enough.
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ATI and Nvidia to roll out last AGP8X chips before PCI Express
Published: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 | By: Dennis"ATI Technologies and Nvidia will both launch new-generation AGP8X chips in the second quarter aiming to sustain their market shares before they start marketing chips supporting PCI Express standards, according to sources familiar with the roadmaps of the two companies.
The two new chips are ATI’s R420 and Nvidia’s NV40. Both chips were highlighted at CeBIT 2004 held in Hannover, Germany, this week. The two chips will be the last generation mainstream AGP8X chips before the PCI Express chips take the reins, said the sources."
This doesn't mean that AGP 8X cards will be going away any time soon but rather a slight shift in what interface the high-end video cards will come with. I think we can also expect to see many of the high-end cards being available in two flavors for at least a year while PCI-Express begins to ramp up. -
DDR spot prices rocket amid Taiwan political turmoil
Published: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | By: Dennis"Spot prices for 256Mbit (32Mbitx8) DDR shot up by over 6% yesterday in Asia, driven by aggressive buying amid political unrest in Taiwan after the island’s contested presidential election, according to DRAMeXchange.
Strong demand drove average spot prices for 256Mbit (32Mbitx8) DDR 266/333/400 above US$5, said DRAMeXchange after the market closed yesterday. Spot prices have reached the highest level in six months."
It kind of makes you wonder how a simple election could be related to DDR chip prices. Then again these are reporters just making up.. errr reporting the news. -
Intel to employ new naming scheme
Published: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | By: DennisThe end of an era..
"Intel has informed its clients in Taiwan that it will employ a new naming scheme for its 90nm processors, starting at the end of the second quarter, according to sources at Taiwanese PC makers.
Instead of using gigahertz, or clock speed, to describe and distinguish its chips from each other, the chip giant is likely to use numbers in the ranges of 300, 500 and 700 to label its chips built using a 90nm process, said the sources." -
Albatron PX875P Pro Review @ Ohls-place
Published: Monday, March 22, 2004 | By: DennisSome people might think that P4 is already showing it's age after the release of AMD's Athlon64 series. I think even after all these years it can still put up a good fight against newest AMD's CPU's. What's next from Intel, and how well will it do, still remains a question. So if you're looking for a motherboard to put the good ol' P4 in, here is something from Albatron that might interest you.
"Albatron's latest addition to their already strong arsenal of Intel based motherboards is the PX875P Pro based on the new Intel 82875P chip which offers up to 1200 MHz FSB speed. So we decided to see what this new blue colored beast was capable of doing and ran it through a few benchmarks and came away with some interesting results. You will have to read the review to find out what they were." -
Danger Den RBX Review @ Crazymodders
Published: Monday, March 22, 2004 | By: DennisCrazymodders review the latest and greatest from Danger Den. The waterblock continues the ongoing battle between the acclaimed 3-barb design waterblocks for those few precious degrees.
"If you look a bit closer you can see that a part of these grooves have a wave-like shape instead of just being dead straight. This peculiar shape raises the turbulence of the water, entering the waterblock, which makes the water absorb more heat thus improving overall performance of the block. Last but not least there are about 45 very shallow holes on the bottom on the inside of the block. These holes are actually called Heat Voids and add to raising the turbulence of the water, every way of improving the block's performance has really been employed by Danger Den."
Here is our own review of the same waterblock for comparison reasons. Check it out. -
PowerColor Radeon 9800XT 256MB Review @ Hexus
Published: Monday, March 22, 2004 | By: DennisHere is something for those looking for one of the fastest video cards out there. The prices for these things are still high, but probably not for very long. The releases of nVidia's NV40 and ATI's R420 will traditionally lower the current video cards' prices significantly.
"PowerColor, then, has to position its 9800XT on the basis of price. It doesn't contain enough novel or value-adding features to warrant purchasing for anything other than low price, and priced at around £320, it's one of the cheaper retail 9800XTs. Overall, our advice is simple. If you require a no-nonsense Radeon 9800XT card the PowerColor version is as good as any." -
Back from the Islands
Published: Sunday, March 21, 2004 | By: DennisWell I made it back all safe and sound. It’s going to take me a few days to catch back up but that happens with most vacations. I’d like to thank Sycorax for posting news while I was gone.
In my vacation downtime I was able to check out a few forum threads that cropped up after I posted the new Demonic XTC (P4) review. It would seem that a few people are concerned about the aluminum bits that can be purchased with Demonic XTC waterblock. Since copper and aluminum don’t exactly get along on a chemical level there is a general concern about corrosion. I honestly don't know if the anodized aluminum will react with the copper though can say for certain that on the Pentium 4 edition the aluminum parts don't ever come in contact the copper block. However since the mounting posts do pass thru the waterblock on the AthlonXP version I can see the potential problem.
I will be talking to the mfg and see what their opinion is on the matter and report back with my findings.
In the meantime I’m still on "Hawaiian Time" so hang loose.
