Tech News
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VIA KT400A Chipset Review @ AMDMB
Published: Monday, March 10, 2003 | By: DennisThe NDA has lifted on the new KT400A chipset from VIA and based on the reviews that I’ve seen VIA is a little worried about the popularity of the nForce2. The reviews seem to focus around the more efficient single channel memory controller, it's about time.
"The changes that were made to the KT400 chipset were centered on the memory controller. The KT400A chipset is still a single channel DDR chipset, despite the initial rumors that were circulating months ago. VIA does admit that they looked in to the dual channel options for AMD platforms, but from their research found that having a very efficient single channel controller was the best option and that having a dual channel controller was overkill for the Athlon XP processor that has a bandwidth limit of 333 MHz DDR speeds" -
MSI 655 Max Review @ Hexus
Published: Monday, March 10, 2003 | By: Dennis"We found the MSI 655 Max to be an excellent motherboard, rich with features and looks. Intel’s Granite Bay chipset has been about for a couple of months now and it is great that it now has some worthy competition in the SIS 655 chipset.
There is no doubt that dual channel DDR memory improves system performance, particularly on Pentium 4 based motherboards where the processor can utilise the memory bandwidth. More competition will fuel development and hopefully mean faster systems for us to utilise in the future. "
I'm still really pumped up over Dual Channel DDR and the SiS offering looks to be the inexpensive alternative. -
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA Review @ Envy News
Published: Monday, March 10, 2003 | By: DennisIt would seem that the wait is almost over for SerialATA to become a mainstream offering.
"The real tally for performance is the Read Speed Average. While the competition is again within 1% of each other in terms of performance, the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Serial ATA drive opens the gap again, this time with a 30% lead over the nearest competitor. "
The Maxtor drive looks to be pretty fast too.
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X-Dream Special Edition Review Posted
Published: Sunday, March 9, 2003 | By: DennisThe xDream Special Edition (HAC-V83) is much like the original xDream with a few minor changes; the most noticeable would be the all copper and skived fin design.
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Asus A7N8X Mods @ MaximumOC
Published: Friday, March 7, 2003 | By: Dennis"Another bios issue was that you can only hit 211mhz on the standard bios! So thankfully, Asus was kind enough to release a bios allowing up to 250mhz fsb. You can start to see things falling into place now. 250mhz bios, VDD mod, mem mod, cpu mod, battery, a new bios... what else? Well, I read on the AMDMB forums that if you were to put the "CPU_FSB" jumper from "133/166mhz" setting to "100mhz" you could hit higher frot side bus speeds. And geuss what? It really helps! At one point, I thought my board was dead. I was about to RMA it, and I then saw this and said, hey why not. So I gave it a shot and BAM my system started oc'ing more than ever!"
This is a little modding guide for the nForce2 motherboard from Asus, they seem to cover everything of importance so check it out. -
Pentium 4 Price Cuts Could Boost Sales,
Published: Friday, March 7, 2003 | By: Dennis"As Intel is planning to lower some processor prices when it launches new 800MHz FSB-based P4s on May 11, the general buying sentiment may get a boost again."
Be sure to check out the proposed pricing chart. -
Western Digital Raptor Preview @ Anandtech
Published: Friday, March 7, 2003 | By: Dennis"As impressive and respectable as bringing a 10,000 RPM drive to the Serial ATA market is, the Western Digital Raptor, in its current state, does not cut it. The drive exhibits all of the characteristics of a 10,000 RPM SCSI drive, including the high pitched whine (arguably more annoying than either of the SCSI drives in this roundup) and very low access times, but without the overall performance of the 10,000 RPM SCSI drives we're used to. "
I might have to rethink my Raptor purchase.
I remember the first 7200rpm HDD that I ever installed (it wasn't even for me), the drive was rather noisy, having a high pitched squeal as it spun but the thing I liked most was the seek noise it made. 
I think it was an old Fireball, don't exactly remember now, hummm -
Western Digital Raptor Preview @ StorageReview
Published: Friday, March 7, 2003 | By: DennisStorageReview has gotten a chance to review a beta version of the new SerialATA drive from Western Digital. Based on the previous Special Edition 8meg drives I have high hopes for the new "Raptor", though they might have taken on too much at one time.
"Many readers may be disappointed with the Raptor's relatively lackluster desktop performance. For various reasons, enthusiasts view an increased spindle speed as the largest factor in single-user performance. The reality, however, is that desktop usage predominately consists of highly-localized patterns and is affected more by caching strategies than marginal mechanical improvements. Western Digital's JB series may very well continue to stand as the premiere choice for those seeking the ultimate in single-user speed." -
Go.com is Using Google!
Published: Thursday, March 6, 2003 | By: DennisBack in the day my most favorite search engine was Infoseek, the engine was fast and for the most part I could find what I was looking for very quickly along with getting news and stock information. Since the sale of Infoseek some time ago the face of the site has changed. infoseek.com will redirect you to infoseek.go.com which we can gather by the graphics is a Disney owned company. At the time go.com used one of them highly abused "pay" type search engines that never returned any real results so I always went to google.com to find stuff. That is until now, go.com is using google
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Most of you prolly won't care either way since google.com isn’t going anywhere, but as far as portal sites go, go.com is gaining a little credibility back in my book. -
VapoChill 'Impressions' Review Posted
Published: Thursday, March 6, 2003 | By: DennisFor the past few months I've been staring at a VapoChill case here in the Ninjalane Labs wondering, why does everyone like these things so much? So I decided to throw a system together and give the VapoChill case a run for its money, the resulting article reflects my "Impressions" of it.
