Content and news by Rob Williams

MARKHAM, Ontario – September 8, 2005 – ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY,
NASDAQ:ATYT) has been selected by IGT (NYSE: IGT) to power casino gaming
machines on IGT’s next generation Advanced Video Platform (AVP®)
architecture. ATI’s award-winning Radeon® graphics technology will enable a
new level of gaming entertainment with exceptional visual performance,
vibrant 3D animation, and big-screen cinematic quality. IGT, a leading
manufacturer of computerized gaming machines and systems products, will be
showcasing products powered by ATI at the Global Gaming Exposition in Las
Vegas, September 13 to 15, 2005.

“To make the leap to the next level of excitement, IGT selected
groundbreaking visuals and entertainment value that only ATI can provide,”
said Ali Saffari, Senior Vice President of Engineering for IGT. “We chose
ATI for their performance leadership and commitment to deliver superior
solutions with comprehensive support. ATI will enable us to strengthen our
products with enhanced game play and deliver a new world of gaming
entertainment.”

Check out the full press release here!

SOURCES SAID motherboard company Epox is close to releasing a socket 754 Nforce 4 SLI unit that will support Sempron CPUs.

The board doesn’t need two memory modules because it’s only a single channel system, and is aimed at system integrators.

I would assume, that if you wanted SLi, then buying a better CPU and board would make more sense first. Sempron SLi.. that’s funny. Check out the posting at The Inq.

Games publisher Take-Two Interactive will next week re-release Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas having culled the controversial game of its naughty bits.

GTA:SA hit the headlines in July after it emerged that the game contains x-rated content, although it takes a special ‘Hot Coffee’ modification code to open the software’s virtual kimono. In normal circumstances, the nudie shower scenes and digital rumpy-pumpy are never shown, merely hinted at with some suggestive sound effects.

Here we go! An AO rated game, that should not be rated AO. Good stuff for sure. Check out the posting at The Register.

Mandriva 2006rc1 quietly hit the mirrors yesterday and as we continue our coverage of this upcoming milestone release we find some new features and as always, many many bug fixes. Mandriva’s been through a lot of changes in the past year and the world waits with baited breath to see how all will effect their popular operating system.

Much info and many screenshots can be had over at TuxMachines.

Adrian has once again updated his famous BIOS guide with 12 new features:

• Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch
• AGP/PCI Burn-in Mode
• Burn-In Mode
• CPUID Maximum Value Limit
• CPU Adjacent Sector Prefetch
• Host Burn-in Mode
• NX Technology
• PEG Link Mode
• PCI Burn-in Mode
• PCI Express Burn-in Mode
• Silent Boot
• XD Technology

Check out the free BIOS guide here!

HEXUS: Where do you see S3’s position in the graphics market?
KW: When we started up we were in an engineering catch up phase. Our strategy is to start with area that we have expertise in and broaden that to give us competitiveness. We will see this over the next year.

This is yet another great interview from the guys at Hexus. S3 obviously has high hopes for the next year, and I hope to see some great things come from them. Check out the full interview here.

There are so many companies releasing heatpipe tower CPU coolers that Evercool can’t miss the bandwagon. The Ice Man performs well
and comes with an adjustable fan for adjusting the best noise/performance ratio.

This looks like quite the hefty cooler! It comes with it’s own fan controller which is always nice though. Check out the full review at InsaneTek.

I CAN REMEMBER THE DAYS when storage capacity was measured in megabytes. Back then, a 20MB hard drive seemed impossible to fill, at least for the first week. But data has a habit of expanding to fill available space, and over the years, file and application footprints have ballooned to keep pace with rising storage capacities. Our propensity for collecting data has grown, as well, perhaps at an even more rapid pace than the size of the files themselves.

Half a Terabyte otta do it! Check out the review at Tech Report.

What would you do with a graphics card cooler that can cool more than just a graphics card? Well the answer to that is obvious. The cooler definitely outperformed the stock application and well exceeded my expectations. It is quite unfortunate that only one cooler would fit in the SLI application, but even with just one I was pleasantly surprised.

Check out the full review at Big Bruin!

Well, today’s the day! After bringing you numerous updates on
the condition of Mozilla Deer Park Alpha, we have some information from
the just-released Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Public BETA 1. This BETA is a
prelude to the upcoming v1.5 release candidate, which is expected for
availability on the 28th of October. Some of the updates are outlined
with our snapshots from this initial release.

Check out the full picture preview over at Phoronix.

Normally, I’m not really big on specialized game controllers for the PC. I’m a keyboard man, always have been. I mean, I’ve been computing since the Apple II era, and keyboarding hasn’t changed all that much. Personally, I resist change like the Great Wall resists Mongolian hordes. And mouse pads don’t really excite me all that much. In fact, they put me to sleep. But Cyber Snipa asked me to look into their new Gamepad, and I thought maybe it was time to expand beyond my comfort zone. Unexpectedly, they sent me their Mousepad too, apparently not knowing my disdain for mousepad reviews, so now I find myself reviewing 2 products I’d never have gone out of my way to buy.

Check out the full review at Got Apex.

The card you are seeing is the R520 XT. It is a dual slot solution and uses a cooler similar to the X850. ATI will also offer one-slot versions which will have less performance.

The will only be PCI-Express boards. AGP versions are definitely not planned.
Internally the chip will use 512-bit memory transfers. However, the external memory interface will still be 256-bit – expect some nice marketing from ATI regarding that “feature”.

If these pics are 100% legit, we can expect to see a release date not too far off. I personally can’t wait to see if the rumored 32-Pipe wonder is actually going to be a reality or not. Check out techPowerUp! for the pics and posting!

Most new Video Cards on the market are PCI Express; however, this product is AGP. It’s an ideal product for anyone upgrading their current slower AGP or onboard Video Card. While it’s not the highest end product nor is it the slowest, but rather a middle of the road option. Performance & price reflects this, but overall it’s a great product! Watch the Video to find out more…

Head over to 3D Gameman for the full video review!

So here’s the scoop. You get home with your brand new 7800 card, and instead of installing the card, you want to be constructive. En route to your computer, you pick up your hacksaw, and begin to cut off the gold pins on the bottom of the card.

Warning, this *may* warrant your card unusable. For more information, check out this thread for full details.

Unlike all other memory manufacturers who merely buy DDR-chips and solder them on PCBs of other manufacturers, Crucial builds their own memory chips and PCB. On the Tracer PC4000 you will also find unique leds for a good look. Although Crucial/Micron is not very known for overlocking RAM we will do an xtreme overclocking test with high voltages and try to determine if they are a good alternative to sticks with Samsung TCCDs or low latency modules like Winbond UTT BH-5/CH-5.

Head over to techPowerUp! for the entire review!

They’re going after the mainstream market; after the users who want to buy a graphics card, install it, and be able to go forth and play all their games at their monitor’s native resolution at default graphics settings. S3G haven’t been quiet without reason, they’ve been working on putting together a product which might help them score some of that mainstream market share.

It would be nice is S3 could actually give us a worthwhile card. More competition with ATI and NVIDIA, will likely mean better cards all around. Check out the posting at Hexus.

At this point most people have probably heard of VoIP, and many may have used it, but they may not fully understand the basics of this rapidly expanding technology. This Tech Tip will take a look at some of the basic features, modes of operation, and other background information on one of the latest ways technology can be used to connect people.

Check out the full article at Big Bruin.

Crucial Technology is a sponsor at the World Cyber Games this
week, but you don’t have to drive to New York to claim your share
of the winnings! Sign up online for your chance to WIN one of
two Crucial prize packs, each including:

• Crucial(R) RADEON(TM) X800 Pro 256MB AGP graphics card
• Crucial(R) PC3200 (DDR-400) 1GB memory kit

What are you waiting for? Enter to WIN here!

Contest runs September 6 through October 6, 2005. U.S. residents
ages 18 and older are eligible to enter.

Legos may be a fun toy, but it seems that some of the marketing folks there are fairly humorless when it comes to their website. The company wants to protect its brand, which is fine, but if you accidentally type in legos.com rather than the more appropriate lego.com, the company doesn’t just forward you to the proper website — it gives you a lecture on how to properly spell their name. Oh yeah, they also want to focus on the fact that the brand is completely capitalized, but we’re not going to give in to that either.

Wow.. companies lose my respect when they are as retarded as this. Check out the posting at TechDirt, and be sure to visit Legos.com out of spite.

Research & development company AtomChip have announced a new 6.8GHz 1TB RAM and 2TB HDD laptop, which is “coming soon”. Apparently it does not use a hard disc, instead it is based on “solid state AtomChip® optoelectronics”. A new “non-volatile Quantum-Optical” type of RAM is used. Other features include voice commands, “Num Lock mode, Caps Lock mode, Scroll Lock mode”. They’re spoiling us.

Ok, this is more than likely vaporware, but it can get anyone anticipating for more news. They show screenshots of the 2.0TB HDD in the disk properties, and even a shot of the 1.0TB of RAM. Make your own speculations by looking at the site here. Source: Slashdot