Tech News
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Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra Review @ Guru3D
Published: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 | By: DennisWe have seen quite a few Gigabyte boards over the years and everyone has really good things to say about them. Personally I like the onboard RAID features and ample overclocking controls. I could do without the psychedelic colors but that’s just a personal preference
"Overall the mainboard is excellent despite the tiny minor points I just pointed out to you. It really is high value and the total package is truly great, I mean you get a lot with this board and won't propbably have the need to upgrade for a long time. Two thumbs for Gigabyte up and definitely recommended. Editors choice award is in order here."
This board come with Gigabit Ethernet too, how appropriate.
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VIA Still Holds Lead?
Published: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 | By: Dennis"VIA Technologies on March 10 introduced its latest Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) K7-platform chipset, the KT400A, hoping to fight against the growing threat from Nvidia’s nForce2 with the new product’s enhanced performance and competitive price."
It will be interesting to see what the mobo makers do with this new chipset. -
New CoolerMaster Products
Published: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 | By: DennisYou can officially add 2 new heatsinks and a harddrive cooler to the CoolerMaster line of products. You can see one of the new items, the XDreamSE in the reviews section. The other products include the Aero 7 (similar to the XDreamSE with a big blower instead of the typical fan) and CoolDrive 3. All should be available on April 1st. Check out the press release for more info.
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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
