Content and news by Rob Williams

“In single card mode, the race is close with the A8N-SLI Premium taking most of the application tests, and flip flopping with the K8T890 in the gaming tests. Turn on SLI though, and the race will not even be close provided your games can make use of it.”

Check out the full review at Viper Lair.

“”A good power supply is becoming more of an essential component for modern computer systems than it ever used to be. In this review, PCSTATS will be testing out Seasonic’s S12-430 power supply. This 430-Watt supply features Active Power Factor Correction, dual 12-volt outlets, ‘ silent focus’ fan control, honeycomb ventilation and a full three year warranty. It also comes with a nifty ‘DR. Cable’ cable management kit for a neater PC interior.”

Check it out at PC Stats.

“”The HYBRID is the latest culmination of XTracPads’ development efforts. As its name implies, it is a hybrid of two different surface materials integrated together for superior performance. Let’s see if this new method of creating a gaming pad works out!”

Check out the full review at Rojak Pot.

“MIGHTY TIM Sweeney, the developer of the Unreal 3 engine, said that his company is ready to embrace physics processing unit marchitecture and that it has been using NovodeX physics API for a long time now. It is using it in a new Unreal 3 engine that is still under development. We saw some demos of the Unreal 3 engine back in April 2004 when Nvidia launched NV40 and it looked astonishing.”

Read more at the Inquirer.

Take from the official Tabula Rasa site. For those of you who’ve been following the development of Tabula Rasa, you may be aware that the game underwent a major transformation over the last year. We’ve hesitated to share more information about these changes as we wanted to be absolutely confident with this Comment (0) -->

1. Having contributed towards the Matrix comics, was there anything you brought across that fans of both comic and game would find familiar in an Easter egg sense? Paul Chadwick: You’d think I would’ve done that, knocking elbows with all these game designers, but I guess I thought the comics would be Comment (0) -->

“One of the most popular lines of Desktop Replacement notebooks are Dell’s Inspiron XPS notebooks. We took a look last summer at the Dell Inspiron XPS notebook. We found that Dell did a wonderful job of integrating fast desktop-like components into a mobile space. Basically, the Dell Inspiron XPS utilized a desktop Pentium 4 CPU with an Intel 865PE chipset. The Dell Inspiron XPS had the option of either a 128MB ATI Mobility RADEON 9700 or a 256MB ATI Mobility RADEON 9800.”

Who knew we would see a notebook with a 6800Ultra? You really have to see the benchmarks to believe it, they are unreal. Check out the full review at Hard|OCP.

“GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME; GME.B) and Electronics Boutique Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq:ELBO) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement and plan of merger. The combined company, to be named GameStop Corp., will be a leading global video game retailer with annual revenues of approximately $3.8 billion, with over 3,200 stores located in all 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, as well as nearly 600 international stores located throughout Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.”

Wow, what a day for news. Read the full PR at Business Wire.

“Computer document company Adobe Systems said on Monday it agreed to buy multimedia software firm Macromedia for about $3.4 billion in stock, a move designed to extend its lead in the market for creating and distributing digital documents.”

Wow! For some people, that’s like combining the best of both worlds. Adobe makes such popular software such as Photoshop and Acrobat Reader, while Macromedia makes Flash MX and Dreamweaver.

This is quite the announcement. It will be interesting to see how this will affect both companies in the future. Read the press release at Adobe, and read the posting at News.com.

“Wacom Technology today announced the newest member of its Graphire pen tablet family and the first Wacom pen tablet to incorporate Bluetooth wireless technology. The new model, named Graphire Bluetooth, is expected to be warmly embraced by photo enthusiasts who seek the control and comfort of Wacom’s patented cordless, battery-free pen and the freedom of a wireless device.”

The board has a 6×8 surface area, and the pen is battery free and has 512 sensitivity levels. If you want to buy one, you will need to fork over $250US. Read more about it at PhysOrg.

“Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor has posted the group’s new single, “The Hand That Feeds,” on its official Web site as a file that can be manipulated with the Apple hard-disk recording program Garageband. Fans are encouraged to build their own songs out of the NIN track’s constituent parts, or just mess around to their heart’s content.”

Most of us know that Trent tweaks his music to high heaven, so it’s cool that he encourages his fans to do the same. Can’t wait for the new album, it’s going to kick ass! Check it out at Billboard.

“In a bid to keep Windows XP ticking over before the arrival of the delayed Longhorn operating system, Microsoft has fired up the biggest global ad campaign in the company’s history.

The international effort, dubbed ‘Start Something’, is “one of the largest and longest marketing campaigns in the Windows brand history”, according to Microsoft.”

It’s also noted that a total of 51 television ads, 39 print ads and 250 online ads will be featured globally. That’s pretty intense. Check it out at VNUNet.

If you own a Mac, and never heard of Final Cut Pro, you must be living under a rock. The new version touts some great features.

“It features new multicamera editing abilities that support up to 128 cameras and enable editors to simultaneously view and cut from multiple sources in real time..

..The application lets users edit DV and SD material, as well as DVCPRO HD and fully uncompressed 10-bit high-definition video. It also allows work with new formats like native HDV (long-GOP MPEG2) and 50Mbps IMX.”

Read all about it over at MacWorld UK.

“Power supplies are undoubtedly one of the most important components in a system. Especially for enthusiasts the difference between a cheap generic unit and a high quality unit can determine whether or not your system is stable. Today we have a unit from Seasonic’s latest line, the S12 330W power supply. We have reviewed one other Seasonic power supply in the past (Super Silencer 400) and we were very pleased with the results. Let’s see how this one will do.”

Check out the review at Phoronix!

“These heat pipes connect to 40 or more aluminium fans, which should provided excellent heat dissipation. The surface area of theses fins and heat pipes is excellent for heat removal. The base is well lapped, not to a mirror finish but very flat, and we all know that having a level base is better than a shiny surface.”

Read out it at XtremeComputing.

“Well we have some more stuff to give away! This contest is easy! Up for grabs is a Thermaltake Water Level Indicator, and 3 Sunbeam Silent Anodized LED Fan’s! All you have to do is submit your case to the Case Gallery! After 2 weeks we will pick the top 2 cases and they will win the prizes!”

Check it out at Think Computers.

“Why waste your time on skimpy small USB pen drives when you can have a massive 5GB on the go? Once you have the portable storage space, you won’t want to go anywhere without it.”

Check it out at InsaneTek.

“If you want a completely silent system, you should definitely take a look this Silent Box. Be warned though, temperatures do rise a bit.”

Check out the full review at InsaneTek.

“They told us it’s going to provide real support for the new 64-bit processors. They told us that the Microsoft Windows x64 Professional edition is coming very soon. But they didn’t emphasize the ugly fact.”

Check out the full article at NGOHQ.

Case clutter has been a problem with computers forever, especially with PSU cables lying all over the place. Ultra promises to solve this problem, by allowing you to only use the cables you need. The X-Connect PSU includes other cool features as well. You can read about them in our review.