Content and news by Rob Williams

Our last review of a Biostar board was when we tested their nForce 3 250GB offering, the K8NHA Grand. Today we are evaluating their latest board as they upgrade to Socket 939 and to PCI Express with the nForce 4 Ultra based NF4UL-A9. Unique to this board is the XGP port which is an AGP port that can be used instead of the PCI Express graphics port.

Check out the full review at AMD Zone.

AMD’s 90nm Athlon 64s have been almost everything that the enthusiast community has wanted them to be. Being little more than a die shrink, the 90nm chips are cooler, can run faster, and are cheaper to make than their 130nm counterparts. But the improvements didn’t stop with the move to 90nm. More recently, AMD has released their Revision E 90nm Athlon 64 cores, which featured a number of small improvements.

This is the reason I could hit DDR600 in our latest review. Check out the full article at AnandTech.

The in-house magazine of the digital underground, Phrack is closing after 20 years as its editorial team steps down.

As much manifesto as hacking handbook, the magazine was hugely influential in the early days of hacker culture.

Updates to the magazine have been scarce lately anyway, so people knew it was coming. It was definitely an in-depth resource for computer security though. Check out the full posting here.

Cooler Master could be regarded as one of the cooling authorities when it comes to enthusiast products. It’s in the elite league with Thermalright, Thermaltake, and Swiftech, just to name a few. I believe it was about a year ago when Cooler Master first released the Hyper 6; combined with heatpipes and a large number of fins, this giant was able to cool the hottest machines.

Head over to Overclockers Online.

The Logitech Wireless Headphones use Bluetooth technology to connect to the iPod via an additional adapter that is included in the package. This particular adapter gets connected to the iPod and transmits signal for the headphones. According to Logitech, the headphones are capable of providing crystal clear sound with digital wireless technology that provides 30 feet of range.

Looks like Logitech does it again. These are seriously great looking headphones! Check out the first look at CoolTechZone.

Right out of the box, I knew this case was going to be a treat to review. The shipping enclosure is made of a hard cardboard material and the case itself is wrapped in plastic and securely shipped between two pieces of Styrofoam. After removing the shipping materials, I finally got my first real look at the case.

Check out the full review at Hardware-Review.

The G70 launch – the 7800 GTX – has come and gone, though there are still other members of the GeForce 7xxx family to be introduced. Generally hailed as a stonking success, doubling the power of the 6800 series, we thought it rocked.

We asked David how he thought the launch had gone. “I personally didn’t work on it, but the team did a tremendous job. They set out to double performance from the previous generation. The hardest part was to do that and reduce power at the same time. As a techical achievement, to get 2-3 times the performance with lower power consumption is unbelievable.”

Check out this must read interview at Bit-Tech.

Software giant Microsoft has moved to quash claims it gave preferential treatment to adware maker Claria.

The beta version of Microsoft AntiSpyware previously recommended that users quarantine several products from Claria (previously known as Gator) but this changed last week. Instead, users were advised to ignore the messages.

If anyone knows what Gator is, it’s one of the most notorious spyware ever. Microsoft claims that they made no special rules for Claria, even though it was downgraded in importance. Check out the full post Silicon.com.

Rockstar has denied that the “Hot Coffee” pornographic mini-game, which is enabled by a mod for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, is actually a part of the game, after it became the subject of an investigation by the ESRB in North America.

San Andreas is currently rated M (Mature) by the ESRB, but last week the ratings board came under fire from Californian assemblyman Leland Yee, who accused the board of failing parents and generally being untrustworthy after news of the Hot Coffee mod broke.

This is a retarded investigation at any rate imo, but you can check out the full news posting here.

Stratics is pleased to announce a House of Commons with the developers of Planetside on today, July 11th . It will be at 5pm PST / 8pm EST in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. Alex “Samhayne” Von Minden and Lydia Pope will be in attendence. After this HoC is over, we…..

We take the full retail BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC video card and run it through our gauntlet of game play testing and compare it to a reference 7800 GTX, a 6800 Ultra, and a Radeon X850 XT-PE. Read inside to see what kind of performance advantages BFGTech’s product has to offer.

Check out the indepth review at Hard|OCP.

Recently, Jason went for Seagate’s 2005 Technology Briefing in KL. They covered topics like FDE (Full Disk Encryption), CompactFlash hard disks, Perpendicular Recording technology and Seagate’s range of new storage products! Check out Jason’s report on the tech brief!

Check out all the info at Rojak Pot.

Expansion packs have been a great way of capitalising on the success of popular PC games, but for obvious reasons, the concept has never really caught on with consoles. Only the Xbox has the inherent capability to store large quantities of additional content, but so far we’ve only seen expansions of the…..

In the world of fast performance memory, Crucial sometimes get’s overlooked. We are taking a look at their PC4000 Ballistix, which we hope will prove overclocker friendly, as were the PC3200’s. Let’s check them out!

Sunbeam continues to pump out accessories to add flavor to your personal computing. This time they show us a flashy LED
keyboard and LED mouse.

Head over to InsaneTek!

Until genuine changes are made to support SIP VoIP QoS there does not appear to be a convincing or compelling reason today for users to choose anything other than P2P VoIP services such as Skype to render Internet “best effort” home phone services.

Check out the full article here! I’m sure that in the future, we will see VoIP turn out to be very common.. but there’s a lot to be fixed before then.

With the TRIO removed from the packaging, the first thing that caught my eye were the three analog meters on the lower left front corner. These measure sound, temperature, and fan speed…. Turning the system on, all the lights activate and the front analog meters light up with blue LEDs. The case looks incredible all lit up! I was pleasantly surprised at how the analog meters looked.

Check out the full review here!

When a company releases wallpapers in support of their products, it shows they care. Titan is the first company I have seen to release such high quality wallpapers such as the ones found here.

Of all the computer cases we’ve examined here at Phoronix, one of the best cases we’ve seen when it came to innovation was the Sytrin Nextherm ICS-8200. However, today up on the testing bench we have the latest chassis from NZXT. The NZXT Trinity features SECC steel construction, a thermal display meter, custom NZXT fan grill, and several tool-less features. Just how well does the NZXT Trinity compare to the swarm of other chassis’ on the market? Read the review to find out.

Check out the full review at Phoronix.

Basically, I do not like the Corepad. I do not like any mouse pad that causes the cursor to move when I am not even touching the mouse! While the idea behind the surface of the Corepad looks good on paper, and probably works quite well with a ball-mouse, my Razer Viper had nothing but trouble, even though the Viper is listed on the Corepad Mouse Compatibility web page. I found my Viper to be far less accurate on the Corepad than on my Razer ExactMat, even when using the Speed side of the ExactMat! For what is charged for the Corepad, you can do a lot better.

Well, that no doubt sums up the review! At any rate, check out the short review here.