Content and news by Rob Williams

Well, Windows Xp 64 has been out for quite a while now, I for one have already upgraded and there is a noticeable difference, better in some respects, while not better in other. The ‘not better’ part is driver support. 64Bit is the future, pretty soon all CPUs will be 64bit, so why would anyone want to run WinXp 32 with a 64bit CPU, isn’t that like putting Ultra High Test Premium gas in a Yugo? There are no drivers for most of the hardware I own, sure there are workarounds I can do to get my hardware to work, but it is a workaround.

Check out the full review over at Think Computers.

As for the comfort well Sennheiser have got it spot on, remember I was rambling on earlier in the review about the soft padding used on the earpiece. Well it really was soft and after a few hours that usual crushed ear syndrome hadn’t appeared. Mmm so soft… opps wont go down that route again :P

Check out the full review over at Extreme Computing.

We also liked for our example that the normal 4-pin connector leads (2) have four connectors fitted to them meaning that you might be able to get away with only using one depending on your computer and we have the other tucked away neatly. We whole heartily recommend this XG Vortec 600 600w power supply PSU and award it an Editors choice for a power supply.

Check out the full review at A1 Electronics.

Crucial, from my exposure, only advertised their value memory on television to try and appeal to the general consumer. But as we all know the enthusiast market has recently exploded and now all memory providers have an enthusiast based line of memory. Crucial’s enthusiast brand is called Ballistix and today we have a chance to compare 1GB of their PC3200 memory to OCZ’s Gold PC3200 memory.

Check out the full review over at Bona Fide Reviews!

With the success of the Ninja heatpipe cooler, Scythe is now being looked at as a company that can compete with the best of them. The Ninja is right up there with the likes of the Thermaltake Big Typhoon, Cooler Master Hyper 6 and the Thermalright XP-120. Now we have in our mitts the little brother to the Ninja. The Scythe Katana. Today we will see how well it stacks up to big brother.

Check out the full review over at Pro-Clockers.

If you are confused by all of this talk of RSS, RSS feeds, aggregators and readers, and are having trouble wrapping your brain around it, here’s a really simple explanation of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and how to use it. A word of caution, once learning how to receive the feeds on your favorite subjects, you may soon be annoying your friends with all of your infinite wisdom on everything. You have been warned.

Check out the full read over at Design Technica.

In regards to the Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400 PRO itself, the memory is Corsair’s usual high quality stuff. Performance is on par with the Ballistix kit, winning some, losing some, and is a good overclocker. This is pretty important for those of you still using 915P/925X based boards where 533MHz is the current official ceiling, so there’s plenty of headroom to move upwards. One thing to point out though is your overclocking success will vary depending on the hardware setup you have.

Head on over to Viper Lair for the full review!

Corsair has taken the base of the Swiftech H20-120 it and improved it with a nice retail package, a very detailed instruction manual, and their own flair in the paint of the waterblock and brackets. The kit itself is very solid, performing extremely well and not offering anything in the way of surprises. Installation is easy using the directions and manual.

Check out the full review at Got Apex!

Saratoga, California USA – October 11th, 2005 – Futuremark®
Corporation announced today the immediate availability of a software
patch, build 1.1.0, to PCMark05, the latest version in the popular
PCMark benchmark series. PCMark05 is a state-of-the-art benchmarking
tool and has been widely adopted; over 1.5 million copies have been
distributed since its launch in June 2005.

Read: Full Press Release

This machine is designed to be quiet, look good, and offer at least most of the functionality of an ATX Media Center PC. It can be stacked with the components horizontal, or the components can sit side by side for a more low profile configuration. As more components are added, you could obviously build up a 1×4 vertical system, or a 2×2 tiled system, or however you fancied.

Check out the full review at Bit-Tech.

You have expensive toys, and want to prolong the life of them as much as possible. One of the best ways to do this is to take extra steps to keep your components cool. Antec has a solution for your video card, a double slot cooler. They say that use of the VCool can decrease your GPU’s temperature between 5°C and 15°C!

In PCSTATS own tests, we have basically seen that higher memory capacities affect a select few applications, generally very recent programs or games. However, faced with building a PC with 1GB or 2GB of installed DDR to start with, the consumer has a couple decisions to make. Though before making that decision, perhaps it is best to first consider the effects of Corsair’s new 2GB (2x 1024MB modules) TwinX2048-4400 PRO DDR RAM. Rated to run at speeds of up to 275 MHz, who says you had to sacrifice speed for larger capacity?

Check out the full review over at PC Stats.

The Kung Fu game market is hardly large, so when one does pop up, it’s noticable. Kung Fu games also have their own uniqueness to them, but here’s a game that is even more so. This is a creation of Mark Healey, an indepentant game developer. Many people relate independant games to being sub-par or boring, but this is one game to tell them otherwise. Let’s jump right in, and take a hard look at Rag Doll Kung Fu!

Nick from Stirling Services set us up with a weekend up in Sheffield at the LightFighter site where we met Matt Belgrove and Ben Watt, two Stirling Services guys who showed us the ropes and tooled us up. The idea of the weekend was that nearly 200 players would be gathering to play the continuing scenario of previous events. Yep, that’s right, we were taking part in an ongoing ‘war’ that had a continuous storyline, affected by the outcome of the weekends when everyone got together for a fight.

Check out this, any many other articles today over at Hexus.

FRANKFURT, Germany, Oct. 11, 2005… Steganos GmbH, a leading provider of
security and privacy software for consumers and small to medium-sized
businesses, today announced the immediate availability of Steganos Security
Suite(TM) 2006 in the North American market.

Steganos Security Suite 2006 is the latest version of the company’s classic
encryption software package, which provides premium protection for users of
PCs and laptops.

Read: Full Press Release

Looking for a good power supply? Can’t stand noisy fans? Well
today we have XG’s beastly fan-less supply; the Magnum 500W. This unit
features an all aluminum chassis, copper heatpipe cooling technology,
modular cables, and LCD wattage and temperature display, pretty much all
you can ask for in a power supply. Last thing to consider, however, is
how does it perform? Let’s take this out to our test bench and give it a
run!

Check out the full review over at Phoronix!

Battlefield 2 is especially well known for requiring at least 1GB of installed RAM memory to run smoothly… so why not aim high and upgrade to 2GB of installed RAM? To see what effect 2GB of system RAM will have on Battlefield 2, and a couple of other game titles PCSTATS is testing out a (2x1GB = 2GB) set of Corsair’s dual channel Twin2X2048-6400 PRO PC2-6400 DDR-2 memory. This is exactly what the doctor ordered for any memory-strapped dual core Intel Pentium 4 PC!

Check out the full review over at PC Stats.

As an engineering showcase and just as a cool piece of hardware, the Extreme N7800GT Dual presses all the right buttons. The PCB design on its own is worth a separate article, the issues you have when supplying power to two GPUs from a single power input and the layout issues to overcome are fascinating in their own right and in that respect, ASUS’s engineers responsible for the card should be proud.

Even though none of us have a chance at this card, it’s still a fun review. Check it out at Hexus.

With the relaunch of our Dark Age of Camelot Stratics site we are pleased to bring you the following Darkness Rising exclusives! Darkness Falls – Before and After Darkness Rising Detailed screenshots of before and after changes to elements in Darkness Falls Meet the kings of Dark Age of Camelot: Eirik, Constantine…..

ATI practically kicked off its press event for the Radeon X1000 series with a physics demo running on a Radeon graphics card. Rich Heye, VP and GM of ATI’s Desktop Business Unit, showed off a simulation of rolling ocean waves comparing physics performance on a CPU versus a GPU. The CPU-based version of the demo was slow and choppy, while the Radeon churned through the simulation well enough to make the waves flow, er, fluidly. The GPU, he proclaimed, is very good for physics work, and he threw out some impressive FLOPS numbers to accentuate the point. A Pentium 4 at 3GHz, he said, peaks out at 12 GFLOPS and has 5.96GB/s of memory bandwidth. By contrast, a Radeon X1800 XT can reach 83 GFLOPS and has 42GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Check out the full view at Tech Report!