Tech News
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Gigabyte FX5700 Ultra Review @ GruntvillE
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | By: Dennis"I tested different combinations and found that the highest this card would overclock with my system and remain stable is; Core clock 535MHz and Memory Clock 1000MHz. Anything greater then this caused multiple artifacts. They would not show up immediately, but after running an intense benchmark program for 30minutes, I would start to see the artifacts. So for this card and my current system specs, 535MHz & 1000MHz is the limit."
Its really hit or miss on how much you can or can't overclock a video card. The Chaintech Apogee AA5700U that we recently reviewed ran flawless at 546 and 1041.
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TwinX XMS4400 Review @ Hard Extreme
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | By: DennisRunning ram synchronous to the FSB is still the best way to run your overclocked system. Just remember that at default speeds the programmed SPD settings will actually hurt performance unless you manually adjust them in the BIOS.
"I’ve seen recent batches of the P4 2.4, 2.8, 3.2 GHz chips reach bus speeds of up to 250 MHz, and I have read that people have gotten them to hit 300 MHz. To do this you need a very overclockable motherboard and a decent Northbridge cooling system." -
Valve System Survey
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | By: Dennis"In Wednesday's update, Steam introduced the "Half-Life 2 Hardware Survey". This mostly automated survey collects information about Steam users' computer hardware (and some software). Valve plans to use this information to tune the performance of Half-Life 2. In three days, the survey has so far collected information from almost half a million respondents."
Check out how many people are still using 16bit color to play games.
Tons of good stuff here, check it out for a good chuckle. -
nForce 3 250Gb Pre-view @ ModFathers
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | By: DennisRumors have been floating around at the actual release date of the nForce3 250 but nothing solid to go by. I think this will be the case for a little while but pre-view events are always fun to hear about.
"Now just so we don't get ahead of ourselves. This is a pre-view and we really will not know for sure how this motherboard is until we have a chance to test it. Secondly I will be looking at this mainly with regards to how it will impact upon the area that most of us at The Modfathers use our systems for, and that's gaming."
Don't forget that DFI has already shown a "pre-view" of their next LanParty board based on the nF3-250 chipset; sadly the demo board was that crappy gold/brown color. -
XFX 5700 Ultra goes DDR3
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | By: DennisHere is a snip from the press release that we got.
"XFX HAS DONE IT AGAIN!
A New high powered weapon is here to turn the tide in the fight against poor gaming performance. The XFX GeForce FX 5700 Ultra with DDR3 is the perfect addition to the plethora of powerful video cards in our arsenal. Through its use of DDR3 Memory and GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GPU, this card has just what you'll need to transform your games into a smooth action packed experience.
Don't put up with low FPS, XFX is here to defend your right to the best gaming experience available." -
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. -
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.
