Tech News
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Chaintech Apogee 5700 Ultra Review Posted
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | By: DennisThe Chaintech Apogee AA5700U is a very solid card that not only performs well but also has enough overclocking headroom to boost performance up by 20% across the board. Considering that this free performance is factory accessible using the GOSU software software why not to use it.
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Motherboards - The Designing Process @ MBReview
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | By: Dennis"Have you ever just looked at a motherboard and wondered how it was designed? How did the design engineers decide where to place certain chips, or components? What are these strange components placed all over the board? Why do motherboard manufacturers make a big deal out of multi-layer PCB’s? Today we’ll be taking a good look at what exactly goes into the process of a motherboard’s design, from the planning stages to the finished product."
Good read.
Designing mobos is a pretty lengthy process and one of the most time consuming isn't even mentioned in the article. Any idea what it is?? Yep you guessed it, the process of getting the board approved by corporate, without the approval the design process is kind of dead in the water. -
Nvidia touts GDDR 3 'First'
Published: Saturday, March 6, 2004 | By: Dennis"GDDR 3 runs at up to around 1.5 times the speed of GDDR 2 yet consumes half the power, thanks to a lower operating voltage: 1.8V compared to 2.5V. GDDR 3 provides an aggregate bandwidth of 6.4GBps per device, thanks to a 1.6Gbps per pin data rate. It clocks between 600MHz and 800MHz."
This could mean for some really huge gains in video performance. This will of course depend on how efficient the GPU is in "feeding" the new memory. -
Nvidia to bundle Doom 3 with graphics cards
Published: Thursday, March 4, 2004 | By: DennisMost of us are aware of this but for those of you out of the “know”.
"Nvidia plans to push its sales of its graphics cards by bundling the online game, Doom 3, to be launched by id Software in April, according to sources.
id Software said earlier this week that it recommended the Nvidia GeForce FX series of graphics cards for the soon-to-be released Doom 3."
Now all we need to see is "it" happening.
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Everything you wanted to know about PCI Express
Published: Thursday, March 4, 2004 | By: Dennis"Today's communications and embedded applications are demanding higher bandwidths that push the limits of parallel bus architecture. PCI Express as a high-bandwidth, low pin count, serial, interconnect technology that also maintains software compatibility with existing PCI infrastructure, is uniquely positioned as the logical interconnect technology for products being developed today."
Kind of reminds me of them old PCI only motherboards, just better.
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Chaintech ZNF3-150 ZENITH Review @ OCC
Published: Thursday, March 4, 2004 | By: Dennis"Speaking of odd, did you happen to notice where the north bridge chipset was in the first place? Right next to the PCI slots, this is where you would usually find the south bridge chipset. You can forget using a Zalman or Swiftech north bridge coolers on this motherboard if you make use of PCI slots 1-3, and you can bet that water cooling the north bridge would also be out of the question."
Strange, we came to the same conclusion 4 months ago.
The ZNF3-150 is still an excellent motherboard though at this point I might suggest that you wait for the 250 version, it should be out sometime in the next couple of months. -
Albatron FX5700 Ultra Review @ TechwareLabs
Published: Thursday, March 4, 2004 | By: Dennis"The market for this card is the upper-midrange. With a US$200 price tag, most gamers are willing to shell out the money to upgrade, making the card the mainstream for gamers, though excessive for average email-and-browsing users. The 5700 is an evolution of the 5600 card and is in competition with ATI's 9600 series cards, specifically the 9600XT."
True, true.
The FX5600 was a nice GPU but lacked in any real performance over anything else. The FX5700 picks up where the FX5600 "dropped the ball" and has since ran very hard with it. -
Soyo K8USA Dragon Ultra Review @ The Crucible
Published: Thursday, March 4, 2004 | By: Dennis" Soyo is not a brand that I think of when I am looking for a high performance motherboad. While on paper they always look good, I have been disappointed by them in the past. Soyo is the only company that currently produces a motherboad based on the ALi M1687 north bridge. ALi again is not a company generally spoke of in the same breath with performance, unless there is a 'lack of' in the same sentence."
I could agree with everything that is said in the previous statement. Soyo had a very short-lived moment of fame with the DRAGON series back a few years ago. Since then the products have fallen off the map. Soyo still tries though, most of the new products feature fancy names and come with either black and silver PCBs.
Then again I can say that since nobody at Soyo ever returns my emails. -
eeep!
Published: Wednesday, March 3, 2004 | By: DennisSerious for true, I didn't forget about you all. Let me see about scrounging up some news.
Though on a happy note I did secure some air travel tickets yesterday for a little thing that happens in June.
I'm also working on a little something that will be posted at the end of March. Check back for it, its gonna be supa cool!. -
NL: Review Block - Freaky Review Edition
Published: Monday, March 1, 2004 | By: DennisQuick and dirty, just how y'all like it.
Speaks Not normally news worthy but I folded
- Altec Lansing MX5021 @ NextGen Elec.
- Logitech Z-2200 @ FastLaneHW
Vids
- BFG Tech Asylum FX5950 Ultra @ accelenation
- HIS Excalibur 9600XT @ Envy News
- HIS Excalibur 9600XT @ Overclocker Cafe
Misc
- Kingston HyperX @ AllHardwareZone
- Raptor-2. The return of Raptor @ Digit Life
Someone has a case of the Mondays....
