News archives from July, 2004

Lian Li s V1000 is a revolutionary product, breaking the stereotypical
concept of what a case should be. Usually, if the product has visually
appealing features, these sometimes act as the bottleneck on its
performance. However, Lian Li s V1000 is not just easy on the eyes, but it
combines practical performance and the appearance. This gives it a serious
advantage, making it among the next generation of cases, I dare say.

Whether you''re gaming for hours, scrolling through internet web pages, or designing in Photoshop, this mouse is perfect in everyway. The only drawback that I could find is the fact that there are only three buttons, but to some people this is not an issue. The rubber coated, long buttons work great for any game or application and never let your finger slip. The scroll wheel with its rubber grip and stiff scroll makes it easy to change weapons without any mistakes in game. Rubber grip side rails makes slipping impossible, and the Teflon feet on the bottom glide over any mouse pad surface extremely well...The Razer Viper is easily one of the best gaming mice on the market.

IT''S ALMOST RITUAL by now. We follow up our evaluations of new Intel chipsets with reviews of third-party motherboards based on those chipsets, and the third-party mobos shed new light on the Intel chipsets. The most recent chipsets for Intel, of course, are the 915 and 925X Express series, which we reviewed not long ago. These new core-logic bad boys pack in all kinds of novel features, including PCI Express, DDR2 memory, and high-definition audio. But for all the new goodies, they haven''t shown much performance advantage over the 875P chipset that preceded them. Even the high-end 925X, with fast internal timings and 533MHz DDR2 memory, couldn''t outrun its predecessor in our tests.

Now comes Abit''s AA8 DuraMax motherboard, and things look different for a couple of reasons. First, Intel''s 925X review kit didn''t arrive at Damage Labs until a couple days before Intel pulled the curtain back on the product launch, so we didn''t get time to tweak the Intel D925XCV mobo as we''d have liked. We''ve had some time to tweak and tune the AA8, and we''ve discovered a surprising amount of headroom in both the chipset and its associated DDR2 memory. Second, the Abit AA8 is a true enthusiast''s mobo, with more tweakage options, voltage settings, and overclocking facilities than your average button-down corporate motherboard could even contemplate. Not only that, but the board is fast, stable, and robust enough to handle some abuse.

This is one of the most exciting reviews I have done in a long time
and it is a mouse. After getting fed up with my previous mouse and how bad
it was I started looking for the best mouse on the market. The overwhelming
response from everyone I talked with was to get a Logitech MX500 or MX510.
Now that I am a MX510 user I understand why everyone vouches for this mouse
and says it is the best. Not only is this mouse technically superior to all
others it looks great and is very comfortable. Simply put this is the best
mouse I have ever used and you can''t go wrong with it. If you are a gamer
you will notice the difference in your game and feel the response this mouse
offers to your movement.