News archives from December, 2003

"The worlds No.1 chipmaker this week reportedly confirmed existence of its own 64-bit x86 microprocessor, but then denied the reality of any Intel s x86-64 CPU, when asked for clarification."

"FOR A WHILE there, the Socket 754 motherboard market looked a little bleak. Although AMD launched the platform with its 754-pin Athlon 64 processors way back in September, it didn''t look like motherboard manufacturers were in any hurry to adopt the platform. Honestly, I don''t blame them; with only a $400 Athlon 64 3200+ available at launch, the Socket 754 platform was initially a very expensive upgrade, even without the cost of a new motherboard. However, AMD''s $200 Athlon 64 3000+ has quickly made the Socket 754 platform an affordable option for PC enthusiasts and gamers alike.

As the Athlon 64 becomes more affordable, now is the perfect time to check out Chaintech''s Socket 754 Zenith ZNF3-150. Like Chaintech''s early Zenith boards, the ZNF3-150 is loaded with integrated peripherals, bundled extras, and a decent array of overclocking options. However, this latest Zenith is quite a bit cheaper than Chaintech''s previous high-end offerings, making the ZNF3-150 especially tempting for anyone looking for an AMD64 bargain.

Has Chaintech kept the peripheral and bundle gravy train flowing, despite the ZNF3-150''s more affordable price tag? Can the board''s nForce3 chipset, with a little help from NVIDIA''s latest Forceware drivers, keep up with VIA''s K8T800 chipset? Read on; you might be surprised."

"We tested a new AMD processor based on AMD64 architecture and targeted for the mainstream market. The major advantage of this processor is the price, which is just slightly above $200, while the performance is very nice. Let s find out if this new attractive offer from AMD can compete successfully with the rivalry products."

"Today we are going to discuss the features and performance of another bunch of 17-inch LCD panels from the leading manufacturers, such as Iiyama, LG, NEC, Samsung, Prestigio and Sony. Also note that it was the first time we measured the response time characteristic both on black-to-white and on black-to-gray transitions."

"How many times have you had data you wanted to bring to someone else''s house, or just plain out wanted on another system, but there was just no easy way to transferring your data? Well thanks to this product, you can convert any of your standard IDE hard drives into a mobile storage phenomenon. Let''s see how it works, and what its pitfalls are..."

"The card has a VGA, DVI, and RCA out connection which is pretty nice for a low end card. Because this card is designed to be low profile you have the option to make the card smaller by moving or removing the VGA connection. On most cases there is a cutout there you can mount the VGA port if you need to make the card low profile. If you do not need the VGA at all you can then just remove it."

"SHUTTLE HAS been pushing small form factor PCs for years with its XPC line of barebones systems, but the infectious little cubes have their limitations. For starters, the cube form factor is largely incompatible with home entertainment system furniture. Shuttle''s cubes are also designed to work with standard desktop hard disks, optical drives, and AGP cards, making them quite a bit bigger than systems using 2.5" laptop hard disks, slim optical drives, and integrated video.

To cater to small form factor enthusiasts looking to build systems in something other than one of its XPC cubes, Shuttle has rolled out a tiny Flex ATX board called the FB54. Just two centimeters wider than VIA''s diminutive EPIA Mini ITX boards, the FB54 should be compatible with a good number of Mini ITX cases. However, rather than relying on VIA''s cool-but-slow C3 processor, the FB54 can accommodate a Pentium 4 processor on a 533MHz front-side bus.

With support for processors as fast as the P4 3.06GHz Hyper-Threading included the FB54 could unlock all sorts of possibilities for home-theater PCs and other small form factor systems. Is the FB54 worth its extra girth over VIA''s Mini ITX EPIA M10000? Read on to find out."

"Continuing the series of reviews devoted to multi-channel (4 channels and more) SerialATA RAID controllers, we would like to introduce to you a new solution from Promise aka FastTRAK S150 TX4."

"Now it''s time to talk about my Bestest Friend in the whole world. Actions.

Actions are what make the Photoshop world go around. Learning how to use actions can save you HOURS of work. Seriously! Using them is as easy as pie."

"We decided to resume the good tradition of writing monthly industry news overview. As you may have noticed we ve been doing that for the memory market on a regular basis lately. Today, please find the most detailed coverage of the industry innovations for the CPU, mainboard, storage, monitor, memory, graphics and notebook fields."

"DFI Company has been very aggressive promoting its mainboards lately. Therefore we decided to review one of their recent solutions - the new LANPARTY mainboard on i875P chipset for Pentium 4 processors. Compared with the predecessor, this mainboard boasts the new CMOS Reloaded technology. Let s find out what it is capable of."

"If you know anything about overclocking I''m sure that you know Corsair is just about the best memory you can get. This review has once again proven this to be true with the exceptional results achieved. I was able to reach an exceptional 215 FSB which is the highest I have ever gotten this particular motherboard. Not only is the overclockability of this RAM extremely good but it was able to handle high voltages and comes with heatspreaders stock. "

"S3 Graphics the No.1 graphics company of the mid nineties and a partly-owned subsidiary of VIA Technologies these days announces tomorrow its first design win for the DeltaChrome graphics processors with DirectX 9.0 support. Club 3D, a well-known company to adopt promising technologies, will sell some new S3 products in the European Union."

"Both top graphics companies were caught on benchmark application specific optimizations early this year. However, even though such illegal manipulations harm reputation of hardware developers, it does not mean that nobody will go this route again. Apparently, eXtreme Graphics Innovation may also have quite some application specific optimizations in its new Reactor drivers for Volari chips released recently."

"Intel Corporation may accelerate the transition to land grid array processor packaging and launch the new platforms supporting DDR-II and PCI Express as early as in the very late first quarter, web-site X86-secret.com revealed today."

"AMD today announced that Fujitsu Siemens Computers is offering the CELSIUS V810 high-end workstation based on the AMD Opteron processor 200 Series. This is one of the first workstation design wins with a well-known PC maker for AMD64 technology."