Content and news by Rob Williams

“If you’ve owned a PC, and especially if you are a game player, you have thought at one time or another of upgrading your computer. If you are a PC gamer, you are already familiar with this merry-go-round. Every year or so, there is a must-play game which demands more processor speed, a faster graphics card, more RAM, etc. Once you have got the idea of upgrading into your head, the next step is to figure out how to go about it. This article is intended to help you recognize the range of upgrades that are available to you given your current hardware, how to perform those upgrades yourself, and the potential difficulties involved.”

Check out the article at PC Stats.

“The product we are going to look at is maybe another option or a replacement for acetone, isopropyl alcohol or other type of cleaning products which we “geeks” are using today, for cleaning our processors, video cards and so on.”

Check out the review at Red & Blackness.

“RAIDMAX, a PC case and product manufacturer, has many ATX style cases on the market. We are going to take a look at the Scorpio 868 mini tower. This case is not your high end 200.00 USD case but it appears to be a nice mid range solution for a PC builder or modder. Let’s take a closer look and see what makes this case tick.”

My friend has this case, and the first time he opened the bay door.. it fell off. Hopefully that’s not with all the cases. Check out the review at Marns CDA.

“It was always too good to last. Apple has stamped on an attempt to make it possible to purchase songs from the company’s iTunes Music Store without having DRM restrictions added to the downloads.

In a statement, the Mac maker announced last night that it was henceforth requiring all ITMS customers to upgrade to version 4.7 of Apple’s iTunes jukebox software. iTunes 4.7 was released late last year, and is already notable for nobbling DRM-stripping utility Hymn.”

How long until it’s cracked? Read the full article at Comment (0) -->

“REDMOND, Wash. — March 21, 2005 — Microsoft Corp. today detailed pricing and licensing terms for Visual Studio® 2005, its comprehensive application development tool set, as well as simplification of its Microsoft® Developer Network (MSDN®) subscriptions, the primary vehicle through which most developers obtain Visual Studio. Microsoft will reduce the estimated retail price1 of Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition while offering special pricing to existing MSDN subscribers for Visual Studio 2005 Team System, the expansion of the Visual Studio product line to include integrated software life-cycle tools.”

In the release, they list pricing for all the versions. $300 for the Standard version. If this includes all the base tools, like VB.NET, C#.NET and C++.NET, then that would be an awesome deal, especially if you are a lone coder.

Check out the full press release on the Microsoft Site.

“MESQUITE, Texas – March 22, 2005 – In August 2005, QuakeCon, the largest video game festival and tournament in North America, will celebrate a decade of “peace, love, and rockets” with an event that promises video game fans the greatest four days of gaming and entertainment. The 10th Annual QuakeCon will once again draw thousands of people from around world to the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas, from Aug. 11-14, and is open to video game fans worldwide free of charge.”

Whew time flies. Registration begins April 15th. Check it out here if you are thinking of attending.

“GIGABYTE’s premier socket 939 offering, the nForce4 based GA-K8NXP-SLI, comes bundled with its own single card SLI video card. Read on to find out just how well this motherboard stacks up to the competition.”

Check it out at Hard|OCP.

“Elpida will begin shipping 800MHz 256Mb DDR 2 SDRAM chips in two months’ time – the “industry’s first” DDR 2 devices to reach 800Mbps operation – the memory maker said today.

The chips will be available in 8- and 16-bit widths ready for incorporation into DIMMs. Elpida is sampling the 8-bit parts now, and expects to offer 16-bit chip samples next month. Volume production will commence in May, it said. Both versions are fabbed at 110nm.”

Before we know it, our ram will be 1GHz. Check out the article at The Register.

“The Athlon64 3800+ uses an organic FCPGA packaging as opposed to the ceramic found on Athlon64 FX chips. From the top, the Athlon64 3800+ looks identical to the Athlon64 3200+. On the bottom of the processor, it is simply filled with pins, although this shouldn’t be a surprise considering the amount of pins in the new socket 939 package. Along with the introduction of the Socket 939 Athlon64 3800+, AMD also released the Socket 939 Athlon64 3500+ (2.2 GHz) and moved its high end Athlon64 FX-53 (2.4 GHz) over to the Socket 939 platform. Subsequent processors have since been released for both the Athlon64 and Athlon64 FX, but the 3800+ was the first to make the transition.”

Check out the review at PC Stats.

“Use of the Intel i915GV core logic is what really defines the 915-A’s feature set. At first glance, it’s hard to spot the difference between 915G and 915GV. 915GV doesn’t support a 16 lane PCI Express bundle for routing to a PEG16X electrical slot, for graphics. With that electrical slot physically present on the 915-A, you’ll notice the lanes routed to the slot, of which there are only two, are provided by the ICH6 I/O southbridge processor rather than the 915GV northbridge.

It also supports an AGP 4X/8X electrical slot, conjured up by similar black majiks (the bonding of two PCI hosts from the ICH6), so for the CPU to communicate with any discrete graphics card, be they in the faux-AGP slot or the PEG16X slot with only 2 lanes routed to it, the communication has to go via the 266MiB/sec Intel Hub link between i915GV and ICH6, since everything discrete graphics wise is connected to the ICH6.”

Check out the review at Hexus.

“In recent years cloth mouse pads have proved to be very reliable for professional gamers. Some of the recent cloth/fabric based mousing surface we’ve examined recently here at Phoronix are the Steelpad QcK+, Xtrac Ripper, and X-Ray Aqua3. In this review we have the new Xtrac Hybrid which is a combination of cloth and plastic.”

Check it out at Phoronix.

“This product is much more than the average headset. The headphone has exceptional build quality, styling & sound. They are capable of a wide frequency response, 18-28,000 Hz. Not only do they look brilliant but they are extremely comfortable & easy to wear for extended periods. The microphone that’s included is separate & can be mounted on your monitor. To top it off they come with a volume control. Watch the Video to find out more…”

Check it out at 3D Gameman.

“The Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard is basically the K8NXP-9 motherboard with SLI and and both use the latest high performance Nvidia nForce4 chipset supporting AMD Athlon 64 socket-939 processors and are top of the line AMD Athlon 64 939-socket motherboard.”

Check out the full review of this killer mobo at A1 Electronics.

“Today’s processor tested is on fact the new Athlon 64 4000+ (K8 ClawHammer) 90nm processor, it was released roughly three months ago and still is a rather difficult to find/buy product. Not only availability is an issue, also it’s price as at this very moment you still need to chip in 500-600 euros for this CPU. Undoubtedly you are already aware that the new 4000+ has been released for Socket 939 platforms only. Funnily enough when you look at the Athlon 64 3800+ and compare it with the 4000+ you’ll immediately notice that both processors run at the same frequency… 2400 MHz. Weird but true, why is the 4000+ faster then you might ask. Simple, internal CPU changes, namely the Level 2 cache was increased from 512 to a big 1MB L2 cache giving it an edge.”

Check out the review at Guru 3D.

“Make no mistake about it, this is the ultimate 92mm fan you can get. Rated at an astounding 126.48CFM, it also sounds like it. Very few people will be able to tolerate having one of these in the same room, let alone in their main rig. The TFB9012GHE has “isolated server environment” written all over it. The TFB series also uses an improved hub from the previous FFB generation. The front side has a fixed frame to optimize airflow. It comes pre-wired with a 4-pin molex connector and a separate 3-pin tachometer plug. Because it requires 16.2watts of power and takes about 5 seconds to get to full speed, if you plan on using a rheostat to control it make sure you let it start up at full speed and then decrease the RPMs, otherwise it might not spin up in the first place. As for the noise level – it’s painful. It’s loud, high pitched, and the air pressure generated when seated on a heatsink doesn’t help. My ears were literally hurting after the testing was complete.”

Check it out at MikhailTech.

“After a delay of a few months, Taiwanese manufacturer SiS has advanced to the starting gate with a PCI Express chipset for the Athlon 64. Athlon chipsets differ only slightly in terms of performance, as the memory controller is already integrated into the processor. The number of functions, however, keeps increasing. In view of tough competition from NVIDIA and VIA, SiS must consistently put together an appealing package that will win over manufacturers and customers alike.”

Usually SiS is not the first chip maker to come to mind when looking to get a new Mobo. Definitely not a bad chip though, as you can see in the review at Tom’s Hardware.

“Last week ASUS quietly released a press release on the CT-479 motherboard adapter. While the CT-479 is not yet available on the market, and there is no set retail price, ASUS has set the enthusiast and corporate communities abuzz with this socket adapter that allows Intel’s 479 pin CPUs to be used on current socket 478 boards..”

This is a very cool gadget. Check out the article at Legit Reviews.

“Cases are interesting things to review because people either hate or love the exterior whereas the insides are all pretty similiar (just how many different ways can you think of to mount a power supply?). Especially now, more than ever, the market is competitive as ever and in order to succeed, manufacturers must use every single bit of innovation to give themselves a lead.”

Check out the full review at Hardcoreware.

“Identity theft features were found in 54 percent of the top 50 malicious codes detected between July and December last year, the security company said in a report released on Monday. That marks an increase on the 36 percent found during the same period in 2003.”

Very scary thought. One of the best reasons to make sure your Anti-Virus software is always up to date. Check out the posting at News.com.

That’s.. a lot of change.

“InterActiveCorp has agreed to a $1.85 billion buyout of Ask Jeeves, a search engine that has long been overshadowed by Google and Yahoo.”

I personally didn’t even realize that Ask Jeeves is the 4th ranked Search Engine in the world. Very impressive amount of cash there though. Check it out at News.com.