Content and news by Rob Williams

“On the opposite side you can see Koolance’s new innovation for this new series of GPU coolers. Dubbed HydraPak, it’s a pierce and puncture proof container for the other side of the waterchannel. The material doesn’t conduct any electricty whatsoever and cools the back side of the board with direct contact. On a flip-chip design like the X8-series, you can transfer heat away from the bottom of the GPU and to the PCB. Especially with X850 XT, that’s a fearsome amount of heat to get rid of and while the X850 XT’s cooler does a good job in getting direct heat away from the GPU, there’s still plenty radiated from the rear.”

Check out that here. While you are at it, check out some of their other articles:

ASUS – Dual Graphics
ASUS – Intel 955
NVIDIA’s Party on Saturday Night
Tagan PSUs and new IcyBox models at Nanopoint

Great stuff to be had over at Hexus!

“To sum up, if you want the coolest modules on the block and you’re feeling flush, the Corsair Xpert is in a niche of its own. Paired with Samsung’s TCCD modules, there’s a world of performance to be had from them at modest Vdimm. Otherwise, the G.Skill and OCZ both come recommended at around the £200 mark, with Corsair’s XL PRO and XL PT under that price, too.”

Check it out at Hexus!

“FrontX, short for Front X-tension, is a unit that allows you to connect your ports to the front of your computer for easy access. A company that fittingly carries the same name, FrontX, makes the device. You can either use your existing motherboard connectors or you can even extend the ports on the rear of your computer to the front using adapters offered by FrontX. Almost any type of port can be extended to a front port that can be accessed conveniently. FrontX has kindly provided us with a review sample that we will be examining today.”

Check it out at Phoronix.

“Today, more and more people are upgrading their computers. And chances are
they are buying a socket 939 or socket 775. And with the introduction of
all these new mainboards comes a new standard in power supplies. These new
motherboards sports a industry standard 24 pin ATX connection from the
power supply instead of a 20 pin connector. So, in steps the Link Depot
PNP-350-2F.”

Check out the review at Pro-Clockers!

“The Thermaltake 680W has placed Thermaltake in the recommended overclocker’s choice for power supplies. While offering amazing aesthetic features, such as a titanium finish and fully sleeved cables, it has enough power to supply the most straining components available. The power supply is also one of the few power supplies that is able to power two PCI-E video cards, aside from the PC Power and Cooling SLI series.”

Check it out at InsaneTek.

Sunday CeBIT roundup at Hexus!

Everyone’s PC Partner?
Gainward CoolFX SLI Graphics
Team AMD
DDR600 @ G.Skill

Check it out!

“We have heard about Thermaltake before but today we will look at a case from Thermalrock which is a fairly new company on the market. They have sent us their latest case Oceandome that we will take a look at which seems to be a big case with alot of room for watercooling, etc. It also has several fans included which gives it a good airflow if you run air cooling with the case; so lets get this thing going.”

Check out the review at Red & Blackness.

“Here at the Sapphire Stand at CeBIT 2005, Team HEXUS has been hard at work dismantling Sapphire’s latest mainboard, codenamed GROUPER. To the horror of Steve Morgan, Sales Director for UK and Northern Europe, Team HEXUS set about with screwdriver and pliers to bring you extensive pictures of the board’s chipset.”

Check it out as WELL at Hexus :D

“Biostar’s nForce4-based iDEQ 330P has something very close to picoBTX in terms of board layout. Being a small PC that doesn’t support upgrade of the mainboard, the mainboard can have any layout that Biostar want. With their i915-based iDEQ a full picoBTX implementation, it seems they’ve designed the nForce4 version in much the same way. The CPU and core logic are lined up to take advantage of the iDEQ’s cooling system, with the expansion slots and memory slots either side.”

Check out the article at Hexus!

“CeBIT, the biggest IT exhibit that takes place in Europe every year. Roughly two million visitors and well over 8000 exhibitors are present on that CeBIT. CeBIT is focusing on the professional visitor, rather than the end-user. The majority of exhibitors were IT/Enterprise oriented, and only handfuls in attendance were for the consumer level. Guru3D.com wrote up a 21 page overview loaded with some nice photos, exclusives and their experiences.”

Check out the full article at Guru 3D.

“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 50 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:
– Many thanks to Eugene Tenenbaum for these updates!
– Added the NVIDIA Quadro FX 330, FX 540 and Quadro FX 4400 cards.
– Added a new specification of Geometry Rate for NVIDIA cards.
– Added OpenGL Support specifications for the remaining NVIDIA cards.
– Corrected various mistakes in Vertex Pipelines, Vertex Shader Version, Pixel Pipelines and Pixel Shader Version.
– Corrected various mistakes in Core Speed, Fill Rate, Memory Speed and Memory Bandwidth.”

Check out the full article at Rojak Pot.

“Razotech, also known as Neo Maxim Corp, is one of the latest contenders in the computer modding market. With the modding scene already becoming saturated by so many companies distributing similar computer modification products, will Razotech be able to deliver anything new to the market? Today we have the chance of checking out their Blue LED RAM Mod.”

Check it out at Phoronix!

“For the first time in our budget guide we’re making the switch from the now-discontinued Socket A platform to a much more potent Socket 754. The performance difference is a very noticeable one and although we’re not building a system for overclocking, the potential of these new 2600+ processors is amazing to say the least (overclocks close to 1GHz have been achieved). These new Semprons (the 2600+ being among them) are based on the Palermo core which is similar to Winchester with the exception of a reduced L2 cache and disabled AMD64 technology. For those wondering, in order to keep performance similar to Socket A counterparts, AMD lowered the clock speeds on the new Sempron CPUs and this is why a 2600+ runs at only 1.6GHz. The L2 cache is also smaller than older Semprons (128K vs. 256K). The Palermo core uses the 90nm manufacturing process and runs at a measly core voltage of only 1.4V. This is a retail processor so you also get a 3 year warranty (keep in mind overclocking voids this) and a stock cooler.”

Check out the full article at Mikhailtech.

This tool is multilanguage compatible and serves on en/disabling hidden features in nVidia control panel, tweaking nVidia Direct3D and OpenGL settings and overclocking your nVidia graphic card.

Whats new in version 2.2
· added support for PCI-Express cards
· fixed 16x AF mode
· fixed image sharpening status for 6xxx series GPU
· added new ForceWare Direct3D database
· updated Pixel shader settings for 6xxx series GPU
· updated Vertex shader settings for 6xxx series GPU
· updated Performance wizard
· updated Russian translation
· AGP setting page option is not show if PCI-e card is on board
· some others small fixes and changes

Download the new version at Guru3D.

Hexus has a ton of info in their roundup of Saturday at CeBIT.

Corsair Makes Memory Sexy
AMD CeBIT 2005 Treasure Hunt
S3 GammaChrome
Shuttle SLi Spy Shot!
EPoX 9NPA+ SLI
XFX Bring Extreme PC to the Masses

Great stuff there, so be sure to check them all out.

“MVP supports split frame rendering using supertiling, where the screen is split up into tiled areas with each tile processed on a GPU, using any GPUs that support supertiling. That’s anything from R300 up, but it’s likely to be limited to R4xx GPUs. You can use X700 and X800, X800 XL and X850 XT PE, or any other mix that you can think of. There’s the potential to increase anti-aliasing IQ using supertiling (multipassing the tiles through a GPU) and MVP.”

Check it out at Hexus!

“Here at CeBIT 2005, you see innovation galore, but at the ECS stand they have something truly special that stands out as being one of the hottest products of the show. HEXUS brings you the ECS PF88, the first mainboard to support both Intel P4 AND AMD Athlon 64 processors.”

Definately check out the article at Hexus. It’s going to be amazing to learn more about this amazing motherboard. Very, very cool.

“Speeze, a name synonymous with PC cooling, manufactures products such as the Atlantic Wave, Vulture Spin, and the GigaPod. Speeze has been in the thermal solutions business since 1991 and currently possess ISO-9001 and ISO-9002 quality certifications. The subject in this review is the EEA67B4 VultureSpin 3 from Speeze.”

Check out the full review at Phoronix.

“This product is based on the ATI R420 chip & has an exhausting list of features. The default core speed is 500MHz & the 256MB of GDDR3 memory is 1,000MHz. Both the core & memory can be easily overclocked resulting in even faster performance. Included are input/output adapters, a remote control, software, & much more. It will knock your socks off! Watch the Video to find out more…”

Check out the full review at 3D Gameman.

“Today we are looking at Enermax’s highest specification PSU, the Noisetaker 600w Active PFC. 600 watts is impressive even in this day and age, but is it really necessary? SLI (Scalable Link Interface) has single-handedly changed how PSU’s can be marketed, but we here at Pureoverclock won’t be bought into this, oh no!”

Check out the full review at PureOverclock.