Content and news by Rob Williams

Want to win a cool case with a ton of modding supplies? Check out the contest at Big Bruin.

“AMD will next month detail its answer to Intel’s Virtualisation Technology (VT) with the publication of its AMD64 platform’s virtualisation system spec.

Dubbed Pacifica, the technology will allow AMD’s 64-bit server, desktop and mobile processors to host multiple operating systems – or many instances of the same OS – simultaneously. It’s a technique well established in the ‘big iron’ mainframe world, but one makers of chips for low-end servers are keen to adopt, the better to eat into mid-range to high-end system sales.”

Check out the article at The Register.

Why do famous people do things that they know ‘somehow’ will get out?

“UK tabloid The Sun says it has refused to pay £20,000 for a topless picture of Voice of an Angel Charlotte Church which is currently doing a tour of the UK mobile phone circuit. The “Page Three” style snap was snaffled from Church’s squeeze Gavin Henson’s mobile phone after he mislaid it on on a night out in Cardiff.”

Check out the posting at The Register.

“ATI MULTI VPU might just be a very interesting marchitecture. Even though many people believed that SLI can work with just two cards, Nvidia can use even more cards and will start talking about it when marketing chaps decides to.”

My X850XT PE * 24 runs Doom III so fast that my monitor blows up. Werd yo. Check it out at The Inquirer.

“MOZILLA said it coughed up $2,500 to German bloke Michael Krax after he found five bugs in its Firefox browser.

The payment comprises five ‘bug bounties’ that the Foundation offers to users who report bugs in its software so that they can be fixed.”

Cool beans. Great way to get people to find bugs. Check it out at The Inquirer.

“NINETEEN YEAR OLD Jeffrey Lee Parsons, who brought down Microsoft.com with his Blaster worm variant won’t have to pay the software company $500,000 in “restitution” after all.”

Instead, they are forcing him to use Internet Explorer for 225 hours. Ok.. double whammy. Check out the posting at The Inquirer.

“The first few moments in any crisis response are critical, and mistakes can be costly. So it is with misbehaving computers..

.. Yet the first step for many computer after a computer crash is to hit or yell at their machine, according to a new survey.”

Internet Explorer anyone? Ok.. sorry. Check it out at MSNBC.

“It seems that every effort is taken by companies in order to satisfy all PC users, especially power users and gamers. While we haven’t really seen a trend in input devices with built-in fans, there are still a few companies that certainly want to target these users with some rather unique products..”

Check out the review at ExtremeMhz. For comparison purposes, you can check out our review of the mouse here.

“Even though it will be five years after Windows XP’s debut, Microsoft could still face a tough sell when it releases Longhorn next year. With past updates, users had clamored for more stability and security, but analysts say people are pretty happy with Windows XP.”

Even with the buggy OS we have now, I personally am still looking forward to LH. Check out the article at News.com.

“This latest Epox motherboard, the EP9NPA+ Ultra is complete with Port 80 card and PCI Express, although SLI is not supported. PCI Express is definitely the way to go with AMD Athlon64 systems, and a single high end videocard has more than enough power for today’s games as do regular Athlon64’s and Pentium 4’s processors. The Epox EP-9NPA+ Ultra offers users a very flexible nForce 4/PCI Express platform, and has some useful integrated peripherals like a 8-channel audio, 10 USB2.0 ports, IEEE 1394a, and Gigabit LAN. It’s not the most well equipped motherboard we’ve ever dealt with, but for mainstream users I think you could say it fills out all the necessary points well.”

Check it out at PC Stats.

“But Sony – of all companies – seems to have forgotten the problems that its incompatible tape formulations caused in the early days of DV, judging by what we’re seeing happen right now with HDV tape. We appear to be back in exactly the same situation again with incompatibilities between tapes causing head clogging. Sony, seemingly, decided that these new camcorders need a better formulation of tape – the reasoning being, presumably, that drop-outs with HDV can be seriously problematic.”

Check it out at Hexus.

“Skeptic at first, is what I was, because the actual speaker set that we are testing today has already been on the market for roughly a year and a half and could be considered a little dated. Today’s product my friends are the THX certified (Lucas Film tested and approved) high-end series speakers from Creative Labs, the 7.1 surround sound Gigaworks S750. The latest Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES standards will finally get the attention they deserve in your PC room or even small living room.”

Check it out at Guru 3D.

“As the age of Samsung TCCD memory chips come close to an end, companies are using what’s left in their stock to produce low latency DDR ram. PDP Systems is one of the lesser known memory companies that followed the trend of TCCD. It’s a surprise to hear that their company has been around since 1985. Although in existence for such a long time, they have provided memory for a variety of components, ranging from Flash memory devices to ATI graphics cards. Only recently has PDP Systems decided to join the highly competitive memory market with the name Patriot.”

Check it out at InsaneTek.

“New from MSI is the NX6800GT-T2D256E, which is based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT GPU. Read inside to find out not only what kind of gaming experience this video card provides, but also what unique features it brings to the table for enthusiasts.”

Check out the full review of this killer card at HardOCP.

“Attorneys for the big record labels and Hollywood studios argued in front of the court in one of the most closely watched copyright cases in decades, which many observers say could help set the ground rules in the entertainment and technology industries for years to come.”

There are some pictures of picketers, people from both sides. Very interesting so far. Check it out at News.com.

“Since SLI’s rebirth a few months ago, nForce 4 SLI chipset users have been burdened with the task of inverting a daughterboard or setting a heap of jumpers to reconfigure the lane setup of their PEG slots. However, that is now changing. Motherboard manufacturers are starting to create digital switches for SLI, making life that little bit easier for the enthusiast. Here we have the first box shot of MSI’s P4N Diamond motherboard, which is an nForce 4 for Intel based board, in fact the first P4 SLI board with a digital SLI switch.”

Check it out at Hexus.

“With fiscal matters in mind, PCStats will be testing out a mainstream Athlon64 (socket 939) motherboard based on the VIA K8T890 chipset, with support for just one PCI Express x16 videocard. If that sounds enticing, bear in mind that the Soltek SL-K890Pro-939 motherboard retails for just $157 CDN ($127 US). That’s about $75-100 less than the average SLI board, but still includes a lot of PCI Express goodness! The SL-K890Pro-939 motherboard supports Socket 939 AMD Athlon64/FX processors, and can be packed with up to 4GB of PC3200 DDR RAM. The board supports a single PCI Express x16 videocard as well as three PCI Express x1 devices. Lastly there are two 32-bit PCI slots for your future upgrading needs.”

Check it out at PC Stats.

“We are pleased to announce that as part of our continued effort to provide you with industry-leading creative solutions, and to better serve the rapidly changing markets in which you do business, Discreet has more closely aligned with our parent company of six years, Autodesk, Inc. As of March 24, 2005, we will officially go to market as a division of our parent company, and under a new name, Autodesk Media and Entertainment.”

So now it will be Autodesk 3D Studio Max I guess :D

“For the performance, it’s hard to argue with the £370 asking price, in the face of what you get for the same money invested in NVIDIA, right now. It’s close to X850 XT PE money, but then again, it is an XT PE in all but name. That it ships with an inspired cooler, one that brings back the essence of the initial X800 XT PE design, is all the better. I also get the dual DVI ports and VIVO ability I crave, for good measure.”

Check it out at Hexus!

“These days, there are so many workstation graphics card models that it has become quite impossible to keep up with the different configurations. Therefore, we decided to compile this comprehensive guide to over 60 workstation graphics cards.

We hope this comparison will provide an easy reference for those who are interested in comparing the specifications of the various workstation graphics cards in the market as well as those already obsolescent or obsolete. We will keep this guide updated regularly so do check back for the latest updates!

Here are the updates:

– Added the ATI FireGL V5000 card.
– Added the Matrox Millenium P650 PCIe card.
– Added the Core & Memory Speed, Fill Rate & Memory Bandwidth specifications for FireGL V7100, FireGL V5100, FireGL X3-256
– No. of cards : 61 “

Check it out at Rojak Pot.