News

A new beta of Winamp came out. [PAGEBREAK]
Full ID3v1/v2 Tag Editing
Fully Functional Media Library.
Improved Preference Selection
Full Support for EQ presets.
Many bug fixes.

Source (Warp).

Direct Download

HotHardware reviews an i850E with 32bit Rambus sticks.

Unfortunately, ASUS forecasts a price of more than $300 for the P4T533. Though the board does include a 256MB RIMM 4200 module, the price is still lofty for a motherboard and 256MB of memory. We all know that the price of performance is steep, so expect to pay for the extra memory bandwidth exposed by the latest RAM technology. ASUS has stepped out onto a limb as the first to adopt 32-bit RDRAM and we'd like to see the technology succeed, not only because it is blisteringly fast, but also because the ongoing battle between RDRAM and DDR SDRAM results in lower prices and an increasing number of options for the end user, you. Availability currently suffers, but innovation and performance earn the P4T533 a solid 'nine' on the Hot Hardware scale.

Mikhailtech has a 10 page review of a case from Lian-Li (I just looked at the pics ).

To sum up the case with one word: incredible. The expansion is awesome, the *quiet* cooling works surprisingly well and pretty much every aesthetic feature has been included, from the side window to the blue door to the lighted strips and LEDs. I wonder what Coolermaster is going to come up with to combat this bad boy. $229 may seem a bit steep, but consider: Coolermaster's ATC series costs a tad more but doesn't even come close to offering everything I've seen with the PC-6089A. Some things keep this from being a perfect case but since there can't be a perfect case I'll always find something wrong with it.

AMDZone also reviews a complete system based on the MP 2100+.

AMD has produced a minor speed bump in the MP line again with the 2100+. Unfortunately it is not the Thoroughbred core, and even if it was there are no architecture changes. The price of the Athlon MPs has dropped dramatically over the past few months as is evident with the 2100+ retail price. When AMD shifts to the Thoroughbred core with the MP line, likely at the next bump up to 2200+ they will enjoy the cost savings of the smaller die size, but performance increases won't be realized until Barton based MP CPUs arrive with the much anticipated 512KB L2 cache, double the amount the current Athlon enjoys. Till then not much is expected to change on the MP front.

AMDZone has a review of a Soltek KT266a board.

With the performance of the board above average, this board is not trying to hide behind its color. It is well situated for most systems, especially tweakers. Of course if purple is your favorite color, do not look any further this board will not disappoint you and you will not have to sacrifice color for performance.

If you prefer your sound card to be the latest in highend end equipment, you should check out the review of the Maya 7.1 and 7.1 Gold sound cards over at Hardware Masters. These puppies boast 7.1 channels of sound output. Just what you need.... more wall to wall speakers to shatter windows and bother neighbors right? Then again......... =)

There is a review of several different sound cards from a variety of a different makers over at The Tech Report.

A new nVidia driver performance database is out over at Tweakers Asylum.

There is a new update posted for SiSoft Sandra. Just use the update wizard in the program to download and install SP1. Or if you prefer you can peruse the SiSoft Sandra page. They have added a few new modules and updated the comparison cpu's, chipsets, etc.[PAGEBREAK]
Sandra 2002 SP1 Released: The new Sandra has been released. It contains a wealth of new features and improvements, most notable being a new benchmark, benchmark result saving, and 6 new modules. Most known issues with the previous version have been resolved in this version. Here's a breakdown:


Full compatibility with Windows XP/.Net.
Native NT/200X/.Net Unicode versions available.
Support for advanced SMP and SMT/HyperThreaded hardware with multiple chipsets.
80 Total; 6 New Modules (Cache/Memory Benchmark, Modules Info (NT/200X/.Net), Installed Programs/Applications, Registered File Types, Event Log).
Dynamic data refresh.
Fixed various issues with detection (chipset, system monitoring chips, etc.) See FAQ for details.

Matrox has made a bad decision to not give [H] their Parhelia for testing. Open that can of worms.

Matrox said they would not be sending us a review unit on the same schedule as other sites and then revealed some interesting reasons. Matrox stated that due to the nature of our testing that they were not “comfortable” with sending us a Parhelia card. They seemed to think that we would be a bit too rough on the Parhelia and possibly show some issues that the “enthusiast” might identify as weaknesses. Logic would dictate that this of course means that Matrox thinks that the hardware review sites getting the first round of Parhelias would not expose those weaknesses. I had to take that as a compliment. Still, you might keep this in mind when you see the initial reviews hit and we will of course make sure you are aware of them as we always want to keep our readers up to date with current information. Interesting to see the 'other' sites that get the ca

Warp has the new Powerstrip handy for overclocking your vid card.

And looking alot like AMD's chipset from pics that I have seen around the net.

Still, one part of ALi obviously thinks that there are some profits still to be made in the chipset area, and especially those supporting AMD processors. We guess that's because unlike Chipzilla, AMD does not want the sort of money for their chipset licences that still give headaches to VIA and Nvidia.

And we're told some motherboard manufacturers are considering using ALi chipset for their Hammer motherboards that should be introduced in upcoming months.

They are looking nice and cheap, I may have to buy some.

Gary Smerdon, vice president of marketing for Marvell’s communications business group, said the price cuts would add fuel to the Gigabit surge now that Intel’s Gigabit card prices have fallen below the US$69 for its 10/100 Mbps Ethernet cards. The downward price trend will extend into next year, with Gigabit card prices possibly dropping to US$20, he predicted. And it is from Intel no less (Intel makes the best network cards IMO).

Damn companies, why don't you pass some savings to the consumer!

However, Taiwanese TFT LCD producers are reluctant to openly lower prices for fear that doing so might affect their profit outlook and stock prices. In particular, they want to avoid anything that might negatively affect their second-half raising of funding for construction of fifth-generation (5G) production lines.

got apex? (no) reviews two cards from Xmicro.

I have had these cards for a couple of weeks now and have played hell out of every game and demo that I could get my paws on. Now, the personal sacrifice and the suffering that I put myself through in doing all this gaming with these cards is something else. Can you imagine having to spend several days doing nothing but blowing things up and driving fast cars real fast on virtual racetracks and such? Hey wait a sec, that is exactly how I love to spend my days! The bottom line here is that I suffered nary a problem nor a single graphical glitch in all that game play testing. In a word… Fantastic. I do that anyway .

Warp2Search has a pic of the box and pricing of the upcoming cards.

Bulk: 128MB DDR, GPU: 200 MHz, Memory: 250 MHz (DDR), Price: ~ $349
Retail: 128MB DDR, GPU: 220 MHz, Memory: 275 MHz (DDR), Price: $399

Interesting to note that the card is set to be a 'Geforce 4 killer' yet the clock and memory speed are well below that of the Ti 4600.

Over at nV News, they yanked some specs from an ATI authored slideshow.

R300

350 MHz. clock
400+ MHz. memory clock
8 Pipelines
150 Million Tri/sec (peak)
Increase Multitexturing to 8 textures
Improved Pixel/Vertex Shaders
DX9 Support
MPEG 1/2/4 Encode/Decode

Because they sell so bad, the company will offer then directly.

The upcoming product family, code-named Tiger, will include motherboards, chipsets, enclosures and a complete four-processor Itanium 2 server, according to a company representative. Intel will not sell these products to the general public, but to computer manufacturers, which will then re-brand them as their own or incorporate them into their own products. Of course Intel claims it be because of 'smooth acceptance'.

The three companies have teemed up to form another company.

Europe's second-largest chipmaker said in a statement that the new company--StarCore, based in Austin, Texas, will design DSP (digital signal processor) cores, which are used by chip manufacturers as building blocks of larger chipsets.

A DSP is a specialized chip that performs high-speed mathematical computations for processing and converting voice, data and video signals. DSPs are used not only by communication gear makers in handsets and base stations, for example, but also in consumer goods such as DVDs.

Moddin.net has a comparison of some nice looking clear case fans.

None of the fans on review were perfect, they all has small things which could be improved upon but I have to say that the Antec Trilight and Blue LED fans are not far off at all - Near perfection.

Tweakers AU has a review of the Asus i845E action.

Although the ASUS P4B533-E motherboard is rather pricey, near the $400-420 AUD or $200-220 USD mark, for the performance and endless list of features you're getting, it's actually excellent value all round. The P4B533-E compares closely with the PC800 based IWILL board, and outperforms the SOYO SiS645DX board that is even teamed with DDR333. If you're after a fully integrated performance P4 platform, without the price premium of an expensive i850E solution, then the i845E based ASUS P4B533-E is definitely worth considering. The onboard LAN and IEEE 1394 ports are actually optional extras, so cutting them out of the equation should save a few extra dollars as well. Special thanks go out to Cassa Australia who supplied the board for our testing, and also happen to be one of the major distributors for ASUS down under.

These cheap PCs start at $299!

The new PCs start at $299 and include a preinstalled copy of LindowsOS, a version of the open-source operating system that sports a graphical user interface and the ability to run Windows applications, according to its manufacturer. but...
Adding a 17-inch monitor, priced at $128, to the 1.3GHz Celeron SYSMAR703 desktop makes for a computer package that costs $527. To beat that price, one would have to purchase Emachines' entry-level T1140 desktop. It includes a 1.1GHz Celeron, 20GB hard drive, 17-inch monitor, CD-ROM and a copy of Windows XP for $519 after rebates.

I don't see why this is a big deal.

What you would usually expect is that the GPU would send data into memory while running its calculations. The chip ordiniarily keeps some data in graphics memory, since the memory can remember and keep some interstates of calculations, before returning it to the GPU to get a final result.

But the result of the experiment was quite surprising; at least it surprised us a lot. Our investigator didn’t get any data transfer from chip to memory and there where no interstates. The result came straight from the chip.