Content and news by Rob Williams

If you are not ready to yet jump onto the PCI-Express bandwagon, Toms has put together an in-depth view of the best AGP cards on the market.

Our Summer 2005 AGP edition of the VGA charts covers 24 different AGP graphics cards. We’ve assembled a field of the most important and interesting AGP cards for this test. However, some cards were not available to us for testing, such as NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 SE or ATI’s new Radeon X700 with the “Rialto” AGP bridge chip.

Of course, you’d have to have a real necessary reason to build a fresh computer using AGP, and not PCI-E, but either way, check out the article here.

As Errol Rose made preparations on Monday to bury his 15-year-old son, Christopher, who was killed last week in Brooklyn during a fight over an iPod, he received a telephone call from a stranger. The man spoke in tones that the grieving father said had momentarily quieted his anguish.

It’s retarded that people are killed for such ridiculous things, to begin with, and at all. It’s great to see that Steve Jobs is compassionate enough to call the father though. Check out the posting here.

A German judge on Friday handed down a suspended sentence of one year and nine months to the teenager who admitted he created last year’s Sasser computer worm.

Good to see that a virus writer finally get’s punished. It’s not a massive punishment by any means, but it will likely keep him from writing another virus ever again. Check out the full post here.

Danger Den offers everything you need to convert your system to watercooling, from pumps to radiators and even their own custom-made water blocks. You can purchase individual parts or configure a custom kit to your liking. Today we will be taking a look at one such custom kit and running it through the paces to see what all the hype is really about.

Check out the full review of the kit at OCIA!

Some people say bigger is better, and when it comes to heat sinks Thermaltake seems to think so. Today we take a look at Thermaltakes’s Big Typhoon heat sink. This monster of a heat sink/fan combo boasts a quiet 120mm fan rated 16dBA and six heatpipes. To top it off the Big Typhoon will fit Intel P4 LGA 775, AMD K7, and K8 processors.

Check out the full review at TechTastic.

Gaming, or power computing, on the go simply was not a realistic option – until ASUS released the W2V Notebooks. PCI-Express powered graphics, a mighty shiny 17″ display, and a decent weight of just over 3kg make this a powerhouse on the go – with style: a hitherto unknown combination.

Check out the full review over at Tech Connect.

Few games were as anticipated, or as mildly disappointing, last year than RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, the latest in the gargantuan mainstream hit series based on the simple idea that building theme parks can be an addictively fun and family-friendly affair. The first RollerCoaster Tycoon practically kick-started the entire Tycoon game genre by…..

Officially, the game isn’t an expansion but the next part in the Asheron’s Call series. Completely understandable also seeing that you get the original Asheron’s Call 2: Fallen Kings as well, along with a new month of free online gaming. That means that not only current AC2 gamers start on a new…..

It’s a proposition from two companies steeped in college and music file sharing lore. Michael Dell launched his personal computer business in a university dorm room. Napster is the namesake of the software and file-sharing network created by college freshman Shawn Fanning that started the whole music downloading craze. His Napster was shut down after clashes with entertainment industry lawyers, only to be founded again as a house of good repute for legal, for-pay, digital music.

This is a great idea.. I’m sure it will work out fine. Instead of taxing the school servers, now students can download off seperate servers. Check out more info here.

Google is expected to launch a Firefox version of its popular Toolbar late on Thursday, sources said. However, by noon eastern time the browser add-on had not yet appeared on the Google Web site.

Well, it’s now Friday and it IS available, albeit in BETA form. I’ve been waiting for this for awhile, so I will definitely give it a go and see how necessary it really is. Download it yourself here and view the news posting here.

Microsoft will release three critical software patches on Tuesday as part of the usual monthly update. The patches deal with Windows and Microsoft Office. The software giant will also release an updated version of its Windows Software Removal Tool.

They don’t get into what the fixes actually fix, but some may require a restart. 3 is better than the 10 last time though. Source: Tech World

While there were a couple of tests that the X800XL clearly dominated, the 6800 GT performed very well in every test. As stated above, the image quality is superb, with no problems noticed at all. There is also the benefit of having shader 3.0 available, which ATI does not currently have.

Check out the full review at Viper Lair.

The fan assembly is made out of a translucent blue plastic that slips onto the heat sink and is secured by four screws at the top. This is a convenient way to attach a fan as it allows you to quickly remove the fan to clean the ever-building collection of dust between the fins. The 92mm blue plastic fan has silver chrome colored blades, but no LEDs. A LED fan would make the blue plastic housing glow, which would be a really cool and unique effect.

This is a great looking cooler, I must admit. It’s bulky, but for good reason? Check out the review at Big Bruin.

We suppose it’s a sign of confidence that CDV and Stormregion – a publisher and a developer – slapped on the “Phase One” moniker to last year’s Codename Panzers, positively inviting a sequel. This confidence was well founded though, as that game was a rather splendid little tactical RTS that had enough…..

Well we all know that the thermal transfer goo that comes with the stock heatsinks, and even the after market heatsinks is junk. That’s why Arctic Silver is around, to offer an exceptional replacement for that stuff. Now, Arctic Silver has introduced a way to clean that goo off as well, with ArctiClean. Today for review I have Arctic Silver 5 (AS5), Ceramique and the ArctiClean system.

Check it out at Think Computers.

Things are getting interesting in the video card market once again, mainly because of the ATIs new ‘Crossfire’ dual-videocard feature. In the mean time, ATI still holds quite an edge in the (single) high-end videocard arena with its range of X800/X850 graphics cards. Today, PCstats will take a look at one of MSI’s latest ATI-based cards, the PCI-Express based RX800XL-VT2D256E. Catchy name. The MSI RX800XL-VT2D256E uses the ATI Radeon X800XL core and is backed by 256MB of speedy Samsung GDDR 3 2ns memory. The most notable feature of the card is its dual-DVI connectors, but it also sports a full complement of multimedia abilities including VIVO, and HDTV-out as well as a nice software bundle.

Head over to PC Stats for the full review!

After putting ECT’s awsome little Prometeia Mach II GT though its subzero paces, there’s no way we can overlook a round of phase-change overclocking… so after hooking everything up, I pressed the power button and watched the temperatures drop. A few moments later the Prometeia Mach II GT powered on the rest of the computer, and I immediately loaded the BIOS and found that the processor was running at a chilly -27C.

Check out the overclocking fun at PC Stats.

For some time we have been reviewing cooling products from Titan Computers and today they bring us a rather large heatpipe cooler called the Vanessa L-Type. Companies continue to try and push the limits of air cooling and with the use of heatpipe technology seem to be looking to push it even further. The Vanessa L-Type is a large stack pipe heatsink with many aluminum fins and a 120mm fan. Let’s see if it can provide performance to match its stature…

Check out the full review at 3D Xtreme.

Today, we have a look at Raidmax’s newest case, the Raidmax X-1. The X-1’s main attraction is an LCD on the front bezel displaying temperature, hard drive and fan activity. This coupled with useful and affordable features and an included 450w power supply makes for something that I’m sure will get your attention. Before we dive in, we want to send our thanks out to Raidmax for making this review possible. So without further delay, let’s see what the X-1 is all about shall we?

Check out the full review over at Overclocker Cafe.

Opera Software today launched a technical preview (TP) of the Opera browser for Windows, Linux and Mac that includes support for BitTorrent. Integrating this popular file-downloading technology in the Opera browser offers the end user a faster download process by utilizing full bandwidth and reducing the chance of in-transfer delay when multiple users download the same file.

In another attempt to get a one-up on the competition.. I have to say this is a great idea. Even with BitTorrent though, I still wouldn’t choose a browser on it, unless it was actually *that* good. Check out the full press release here.