Content and news by Rob Williams

Adding additional cooling fans in your system is always great since you want to keep all your hardware components cool. Do the
extra system fans help though?

Head over to InsaneTek for the full review!

The contest rules are as usual, one posted reply to this thread is allowed per day, multiple posts in one day will disqualify. Make sure you have 5 valid forum posts elsewhere in the 3DXtreme.net Forums. Contest open to residents of USA only. This contest will run until August 6th, 2005 at 12:00am.

Check out the full details at 3D Xtreme.

When it comes to 3D gaming on Linux, it’s unfortunate, but there are very few options available due to a lack competitive display drivers and games with native Linux ports. Today, however, we have the honor of presenting NVIDIA’s recently released G70 VPU performance under Linux! Read on with this rare opportunity as we hit the NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX 256MB with a swarm of benchmarks and we actually conclude with a dissenting opinion about this card due to an unfortunate driver situation.

If you use Linux and want a 7800GTX, check out the article at Phoronix. Of course, chances are, that if you have a 7800GTX, you don’t plan to just use it in Linux.

Today we live in a world of more information, more ways to communicate, more things to do. There is more you can do and even more you can discover.

In today’s digital world, you want the PC to adapt to you, so you can cut through the clutter and focus on what’s important to you.

So there we have it, no more Longhorn. After using the Longhorn name for two years, I’m sad to see it go. Vista sounds corny, but after a while, it seems to make sense, by how they are marketing it. You can check out the official Vista site here, although there is not much to see.. yet.

Well if you haven’t been living under a rock, you have heard of and seen pictures of the new Concept Keyboard: The Optimus by Artemy Lebedev Studios. It uses OLED technology to produce a keyboard that is just simply amazing. Each and every key is its own LCD display, all of the keys themselves are fully programmable to allow the user to set the keys up to any configuration they wish. I’d like to thank Art for taking the time to answer a few questions for me about this cool technology. It’s not a lot of questions, but some that I felt needed answered, and what I felt most people would like to know. I didn’t want to take up to much of his time by asking 100 questions, I’m sure I could have asked lots more!!!

Check out the full interview at Think Computer.

This all-black dual-fan PSU pumps out a maximum output (peak) of 580Watts, which should be quite sufficient for SLI and just about anything else you can throw at it. The power supply uses two discrete +12V rails to separate motherboard and videocard power flow. The Ace Power 580U also features a large array of connectors, including dual 6-pin connections for powering a set of SLI videocards. Obviously, the HEC Ace Power 580UB is designed with the possibility of an SLI system in mind, and would be quite suitable for that role.

Check out the full review at PC Stats.

1st Prize: Unchanged. This will still go to the person who puts the most EFFORT into their mod project. Remember, you MUST post your project log in order to qualify to win.

2nd & 3rd Prizes: These are now open to be won by anyone on the forums.

The challenge: to come up with a Slogan for Ultra Products – this can be to describe a single product or the entire range. It must be under 10 words.

Check out the full details at Hexus.

The AN8-SLI Premium board is based on the popular nVidia nForce 4-SLI chipset. I think most people know that Asus is among the world biggest supplier of motherboards, shipping 40 million in 2004. That’s a very impressive figure. Asus builds their motherboards with top quality parts and they tend to be very overclocker friendly.

Check out the review over at NGOHQ.

Working with the Neo4 was a very enjoyable experience with tons of options in the BIOS that allow a multitude of tweaking, in some ways almost too much. I found that this board was pretty picky in some regards (referring specifically to BIOS settings), and it required a significant amount of tweaking at times in order to reach overclocks that I desired with the utmost amount of stability, but after finding out the appropriate settings performed very solidly.

Head over to Viper Lair for the review!

As Lexar’s flagship USB flash drive, the JumpDrive Lightning 1GB is incased in a chrome-sprayed body, which you can clean it with bundled polishing cloth. Performance wise, it is company’s first thumbdrive to hit 22MB/s read and 15MB/s write. Additionally, the Lightning protects data via 256-bit AES, and keeps files sync’ed with pre-loaded software.

Head over to EverythingUSB for the full review!

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 500GB SATA-II hard drive raises the bar for those who subscribe to the theory that bigger is better. When it comes to hard drives; more speed, more capacity, and more cache memory is always a good thing. This is the first drive to come across our test bench with SATA300 speed, and it provides the largest capacity (500GB) and most cache memory (16MB) that we have seen to date. Browse around… 500GB and 16MB are currently the best you will find in an internal hard drive, in these respective categories.

Wow that’s a lot of space! The price is high, but for that amount of space, you may not complain too much. Check out the full review at Big Bruin.

Wow, card readers now it’s mouse pads. I think if someone here has problems with their roof we might be able to fix it using mouse pads. On with the show… Today I have a mouse pad that already garnishes awards such as Maximum PC’s “Kick Ass” award, as well as being reviewed and scoring high with many other reputable magazines and websites. I’m into gaming but most of the time my budget doesn’t allow for those items which gamers hold dear to them and a quality mousing surface is one of those. Try explaining to your wife just how bad you need that $40 or more mouse pad, if you can make it past the price tag you have a better approach than me.

Check out the full review over at Think Computers.

The 3rd 3dGameMan.com get together (July 30, 2005):

Just some of the hardware that will be given away at the 3rd 3dGameMan.com get together:
– Crucial (1GB CompactFlash& 8-in-1 Hi-Speed USB Card Reader)

– EVGA (e-GeForce 6600 GT 128MB AGP Video Card)

– OCZ (T-shirts, mugs, posters, & pens)

– SilverStone (LC14 HTPC Case)…

Check out the full details at 3D Gameman.

WarCry is happy to announce its newest Asheron’s Call: Throne of Destiny contest, where you can win one of five free one-year accounts! You’re invited to participate in the giveaway; all you have to do is sign up!. No purchase or registration is necessary; all you need to do is sign up…..

Tokyo, July 21, 2005 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced today that it
had entered into a strategic licensing agreement with AGEIA Technologiesâ„¢, Inc. (AGEIA), a
physics tool and hardware developer based in California, U.S.A, effective July 20, 2005.
Through this agreement, SCEI obtains sublicensing rights of the AGEIA PhysXâ„¢ SDK (also
known as NovodeXâ„¢), a physics library developed by AGEIA.

The AGEIA PhysX SDK is the leading next-generation solution for creating
compelling in-game physics and has been widely adopted by various game engines, such as the
Unreal Engine 3 by Epic Games. Its multi-threaded capability makes the AGEIA PhysX SDK
ideally equipped to leverage the power of the Cell processor. The licensing agreement allows
for SCEI and AGEIA to optimize the AGEIA PhysX SDK for utilization in
PLAYSTATION®3, and will be included in the Software Development Kit for
PLAYSTATION 3. Frontline support will be provided by SCEI.

You can check out the full press release on the Sony site here. What we’ve already seen of the PS3 has been amazing, and is going to get even more amazing with AGEIA. I can’t wait for this console!

The display sports a resolution of 1280×1024. This is the same as a 17″ LCD monitor, and a step down from a 20″ LCD monitor which provides 1600×1200 resolution. The consequence of this is that you get no extra desktop working room from having a 19″ over 17″ – you just get what you have already, bigger.

Check out the full review at Bit-Tech.

The Zboard came out of nowhere, and with clever marketing and its innovative design, it has become very popular with gamers. It is of course aimed at hard core gamers, and so many of those gamers will own the game, Battlefield 2 (BF2). So if you have both the zboard and the game, should you fork out to buy the BF2 keyset? We find out!

Check out the full look at the board at TechNeek.

Despite the huge success NVIDIA is having with the GeForce 6600 GT series, ATi have done little to strengthen their mid-range line-up. There are two Radeon X600 products and just one Radeon X700 product. Clearly ATi wish to provide mid-range products through the Radeon X800 series, with cards such as the Radeon X800XL. There are now four Radeon X800 products that do not feature all 16 pixel pipelines. These are the Radeon X800, X800 Pro, X850 Pro and X800SE which all use cut down pipelines.

Head over to Legion Hardware for the full review!

sheron’s Call, Throne of Destiny (AC:ToD) is the new expansion pack released by Turbine Entertainment for the Asheron’s Call MMO franchise. This expansion pack, the second in a little more than five years, breaks new ground for the game by upgrading it graphically as well as adding new gameplay for the higher…..

Since January, GameCube owners have been the only American gamers able to enjoy Resident Evil 4. But while the best-selling, critically lionized title will arrive on US PlayStation 2s in the fall, it looked like Xbox owners would never be able to help Leon S. Kennedy slay the series’ signature undead hordes.…..