Tech News
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nForce 3 250 Review @ Hexus
Published: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | By: DennisOnce again nVidia battles VIA for the best chipset on the market for AMD systems. This time it's latest and greatest fron nVidia - nForce 3 250. Check out this article and see what chance does it have against it's rival from VIA.
"With NVIDIA giving the 250-series chips a feature upgrade, a 'fixed' HyperTransport implementation, some new disk based ability with the changed ATA and SATA controller, 1000Mbit/sec Ethernet capability to let marketroids tick a box, along with an all round spit and polish, nForce3 250 is rather good. The hardware firewall for example is a fine chipset level feature upgrade, scoring NVIDIA good brownie points." -
Albatron K8X800 Pro II Athlon64 Motherboard Review @ GruntvillE
Published: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | By: DennisLooking for a motherboard to put that brand spanking new Athlon64 processor in? Well, Albatron might have something for you. Not only it comes with it's signature cool blue PCB, but also is loaded with features.
"The K8X800 Pro II uses the same blue PCB we liked so much in both of our past Albatron reviews. The overall layout of the board is much better than the KX18D Pro II. The ATX power connector is in the upper right hand corner of the board allowing for much better wire management but the 4-pin 12V connector is still located on the left hand side of the board. It would be nice to have both connectors on the right hand side, but no luck this time." -
OCZ PC4000EL Gold Edition Memory Review @ PCStats
Published: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | By: DennisAnother memory review, this time it's OCZ's one of the best modules from their memory line. What do they have that others don't? Read up and find out.
"The memory market is pretty saturated right now with high speed memory modules from every corner, and in an attempt to differentiate themselves from their competitors we've noticed that OCZ have been tightening up their memory timings just a bit. After all if you're running PC2100 DDR and PC4000 DDR at stock speeds, it really doesn't make any difference to the computer.... but then if you overclock that is where speed, and memory timings really come into play." -
ASUS A9800XT Radeon 9800XT 256mb Limited Edition Review @ Digit-Life
Published: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | By: DennisAsus decided to come up with a limited edition video card for those wanting to get the feeling of owning a limited edition product. Apart from getting a blazing fast 9800XT you also get a cool leather briefcase along with some extra goodies. Make sure you're ready to shell out a top dollar for this one though.
"Remember that the RADEON 9800 XT is the most powerful gaming accelerator for today. The price is tremendously high and doesn't correspond to the real competition of R360 vs NV38. But it's the market. Price is formed by demand. It turned out that such cards can be in demand. That's wonderful." -
Corsair TwinX1024-3200LLPro 1Gig DDR400 Review @ Tweaknews
Published: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | By: DennisHere is one for those looking for a lots of memory and performance in one package.
"The version of the DDR400 standard boasts low latency timings of 2-6-3-2, but what really separates it from the pack is the inclusion of activity LEDs which would be a great addition to a windowed case. Although this memory is meant to be used in its stock speed, we wouldn't be called tweakers if we didn't try to see what extra free performance we could squeeze out of this unique purchase."
For comparison purposes, you can read our own Ninjalane review on this memory here. -
Demonic XTC Waterblock (P4) Review Posted
Published: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 | By: DennisDemonic Water Cooling has been busy finishing parts for the XTC waterblock and was nice enough to send over the updated components for review. These include an upgraded mounting kit, anodized hose barbs and Pentium 4 poly top.
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Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 Serial ATA @ The Tech Report
Published: Monday, March 15, 2004 | By: Dennis"Unlike my old 60GXPs, the 7K250 is available with a Serial ATA interface. The drive also comes with standard Serial ATA and four-pin Molex power connectors, though Hitachi cautions against using both power connectors at the same time; doing so will apparently result in drive failure."
I use one of these drives for all of the motherboard reviews and its blazingly fast. The sad part, the first drive I bought was DOA.
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NL: Review Block - Spring Fever Ed.
Published: Monday, March 15, 2004 | By: DennisSifting and sorting, taxing and waxing. Not normally what you do when looking for hardware reviews, but it sure takes the edge off.
- Kingston HyperX PC4000 @ Tweaknews
- Corsair TwinX1024-4000PRO @ LAN Addict
- Thermaltake XaserV Damier @ A True Review - (Thermaltake of course never sent us a case, bastards)
- MSI GeForce FX 5950 Ultra-VTD @ Hexus - (and now we rock, according to Hexus
)
phj34r the di554p0in+m3n7.
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DangerDen RBX Athlon64 Review @ TheCrucible
Published: Monday, March 15, 2004 | By: DennisWe have the Pentium 4 version of this block reviewed here.
"The DangerDen RBX bests the Venus12 by four degrees. While this may not seem like much, it is a great improvement. The fans used on our radiator are barely above a whisper. This shows the effective heat transfer capabilities of the RBX. "
Our heatsink and waterblock testing doesn't really follow conventional methods but does provide a real world look into what the average Joe would expect to see had they installed the heatsink or waterblock into their system. The numbers used may not be "accurate" to the degree but are accurate in relation to whatever else is being tested. -
High-Speed CDROMs - The Hidden Dangers
Published: Monday, March 15, 2004 | By: DennisI've never actually had a cdrom disk explode on me before, but they do make some pretty lights if you "nuke" them for a few seconds.
(Perform at your own risk)
"So can your CDROM cause your CD to explode? You bet! But first, we have to understand how this is possible. CD Drives are getting faster by the day so the possibility of this actually happening to you is quite high. For example, a 52x CDROM can have a spindle rotational speed in excess of 10,500RPM's. "
