Content and news by Rob Williams

Will the Bell System Survive? A Massive Transfer of Wealth from Bell to VoIP Is Underway. The “Internet Revolution” has brought us e-mail, the World Wide Web and quick, convenient ways to communicate that we’ve come to take for granted. And now it’s reached consumers who are looking for a more economical, more flexible way to talk on the phone.

Check out the full article at Big Bruin.

My mother always told me to dust, but I never did, mostly because I was lazy, but also because I couldn’t find any tangible benefit to dusting. I just didn’t see how I’d benefit from my room or my things being less dusty. Well now I’ve gotten a bit older, and I finally found a reason to dust – a cooler running computer. I’m going to give some background on my own system and circumstances first, then run tests before and after dusting, as well as explain how and what I used to dust.

If your computer needs cleaning, definitely check out this article at BFR!

Last week, we took a look at what Internet Anonymity is, and how it works. Today, we will be taking a hard look at two of the most popular Anonymity tools out there.

If you’re in the market for a new North Bridge cooler, the Cooler Master Blue Ice should be on your short list. If does a great job at keeping your NB chilly, and cooler parts all around can only mean a good thing.

Check out the full review over at Viperlair!

In its latest venture into cooling Evercool has created the F117 Nighthawk Universal VGA Cooler. With a crafty, sharp looking design that resembles the state of the art fighter jet, the F117 should prove to be a pretty solid product. Evercool has provided me with one for review, so let’s take a look at how it performs.

This is a great looking cooler, and we ourselves will be taking a look at it in a couple weeks. You can check out the full review over at Big Bruin.

Overall, a bit of a surprising package. Sure, it has its weaknesses, like any mobile, but if you are looking for something really small, to make and take calls and the odd picture you could do far worse than the SL65.

This is an amazing looking phone. I certainly wish my small town had something with half the style to choose from. Check out the full article over at Hexus.

nPowertek’s previous coolers performed exceptionally well with the use of a single heatpipe and multiple fins. Their new column
heatpipe cooler continues the great performance on the toasty LGA775 platform!

Check out the full review over at InsaneTek.

Last week I had a look at two new processors from the AMD stable, The AMD X2 4800+ and the AMD FX-57. I can say one thing, it was a pleasure playing with them ;-)

What more could you ask for, than an in-depth review on the top AMD chips? Check it out at HardwareXL.

The NGO nVidia Optimized Driver is a tweaked version of the nVidia Forceware driver. The main purpose is to satisfy the users with a better performance and better image quality. The Driver has support for all Geforce cards.

If you love the NGO drivers, definitely check out the latest version over at their site!

Last week I looked at the Sapphire X800XL Ultimate edition. It proved to be a good card, putting up impressive numbers, enough so that you can play the latest games at decent detail and AA/AF combinations. This week we take a look at another one of Sapphire’s offerings, the X800 XL Hybrid. The Hybrid puts a different interface onto the X800XL series, using ATI’s PCIe->AGP bridge, but also adds Video In capability to the VO that most Sapphire cards come equipped with. What this means for you is the continuation of your legacy S754/478 boards that normally come equipped with AGP instead of the newer PCIe interface. If you are looking for the video editing portion of this, then the VIVO capability further enhances the bundle.

Head over to Got Apex for the full review!

The latest version of this great tool has been released, with a few bug fixes and additions:

• Latest Sempron and Turion support improved.
• Intel Xeon Potomac, Pentium M 780 support.
• New Windows versions added.
• Support for SMBus on latest SiS bridges (964, 965, 966) and ULi bridges.
• Increased clocks refresh rate.
• Several bug fixed.

Head over to the CPUID site to download!

I have been told that “Power of 3” is not a reference to any new cards from Nvidia or some new form of SLI. Power of 3 is likely referring to SLI, HDR and Shader Model 3.0, all feature ATI currently do not have in there line up.

That’s interesting to note, because I was hoping that it did not mean a 3 SLi setup, because two cards is enough for anybody. Check out the full speculation over at Pure Overclock.

So before we see the launch of the upcoming high-end R520 and R580 graphics cards ATI released something price competitive and definitely has got something there that can compete with the GeForce 6600 GT. In fact in some cases it can even get close to the 12 pipe GeForce 6800. Then again .. still no Shader Model 3 is present as this is once more a refresh product and although I’m not sure on this there’s likely no Crossfire option which is a very strong point for the 6600 GT SLI. I am getting a little puzzled though. At this point in time there are so many x800/x850 products out there that quite frankly the average consumer does not have a clue anymore what the difference is.

This looks to be a fantastic competitor to the 6600GT, as long as they price it the same. The card performs better in most tests than the 6600GT, so maybe ATI did something right here. Check out the full in-depth look over at Guru3D.

Shuttle Computer was one of the first manufacturers to widely market Small Form Factor PCs. When visiting Computex Taipei this year, Shuttle Computer had an exhibition where they simply had their sexy showgirls walk around with these tiny SFF PCs. Although the design and size of these chassis’ are rather impressive, they require some proprietary hardware such as the motherboard and power supply. Wishing to bring SFF PCs to the masses, SilverStone Technology has released the Sugo SG-01, which is a Small Form Factor chassis but is compatible with all micro ATX motherboards and power supplies.

Looks like another clean looking case from SilverStone that surprisingly has a good amount of working space inside. Check out the full look at the case over at Phoronix.

Hardcore gamers know about the many arousing game mods out there. Granted none of them–as far as we know–has involved an actual sex act like Grand Theft Auto’s (GTA) mod, but there are still plenty of available patches available for download if you want to add nudity content to your games. Jack Thompson, who is famous for very loudly denouncing the terrible effects of sex and violence in video games, might use this article in his next press release.

Warning, ingame nudity ahead. Check out the interesting look over at Toms.

After receiving the Zalman Headphones I was very happy to finally have a full surround sound feel to my gaming, music, and general needs. One thing I found out quickly is that you must have a 5.1 supported audio card, with out one you would have to buy the Zalman external 5.1 sound card.

Check out the full review of the headphones over at HardwareMods.

Ultra is becoming quite the visitor to the Overclockers Online pages. If you cruise through their web site you will notice a menu of products about half a page long. That list includes their award winning Power Supplies, complete Tool Sets, impressive Memory Modules, various Cooling solutions, Cases and so much more. It really is staggering what this globally known Ohio based company offers to the market in quality products. They back that quality up with one of the best Warranty programs around, the best I have ever seen.

This is a great looking, and heavy duty fan controller. Check out the full review at Overclockers Online to see how it makes out.

MSI packaged the NX7800GTX in a silver box with a carrying handle. MSI adorns the front of the box with a simple angel graphic, along with the main key features of the video card. The box lists that this card has D.O.T (Dynamic Overclocking Technology), 256MB DDR3, TV-Out/Dual DVI, HDTV, VIVO and is PCI-Express and SLI ready. On the reverse side, MSI goes into more detail about the features of the video card and the system requirements. They also have to areas that describe the game and their D.O.T. technology.

I’ve always been partial to MSI, and these cards seem to live up to the standards. I’m not too crazy over the graphic they chose for the cooler, but it’s the performance that matters! Check out the review over at Hard|OCP.

Finally, after months of waiting, we can now squeeze in a 128-bit, 128MB vanilla GeForce 6600 into our system. We chose Asus because of their reputation and because it was one of the cheapest 128-bit 6600s we could find. This is quite a boost and should future-proof our system against upcoming software and game demands for some time. We can now begin focusing more on storage, processor, memory, and motherboard upgrades. Then again, that all depends on how the market plays out.

Check out the full guide over at MikhailTech.

Whilst ABIT has sugar-coated the X800 XL 512MB VPU with its range of sweet new features, we find it hard to recommend it unreservedly. It’s ostensibly slower than similarly-priced cards, and speed is, after all, why most users shell out £275 on a graphics card. However, it’s been refreshing to see a company willing to design better and cleverer cards than the majority of other board partners, and we hope to see more innovation from the folks at ABIT on, dare we say it, faster GPUs.

Check out the full review over at Hexus!