Content and news by Rob Williams

“The new TNN 300 is a compact, ‘Totally No Noise’ computer enclosure, which in Zalman’s own words is a “petite, sexy variation of the TNN series computer enclosure”. To you and me that means that Zalman have added a stylish twist to their kit, and eye appeal has had a say in how the final product looks.”

Check out the full article at Hexus.

NGOHQ has released updated versions of their tweaked ATI/Nvidia drivers, which you can find here. They have also updated info on their tweaked AC ’97 codec.

To check the drivers out, and find out about a new contest they are holding, check out their site at NGOHQ.

“I’m a die-hard PC gamer, and I’ve got to admit that console games have PC games soundly beat on at least one major aspect: they work like they’re supposed to. No one patches console games because you can’t. While many games these days ship with a built in patching engine, many more do not. Add to this the long file download queue times associated with download sites like FilePlanet and you have a recipe for frustration. Wouldn’t it be good then, if you had a little application that could automatically locate the patches you need and the demos you want, as well as linking you to a dedicated downloading server for them? Well, today we’re going to look at an app that claims to fill just this role, the VIA Technologies “Grease Monkey” software.”

Check out the full article at PC Stats.

“Every year, Intel gets together some of their business partners for a gathering. For those who don’t know, IDF is short for Intel Developer Forum. This is where Intel gets to brag and boast about their achievements the past year and announce upcoming technology for the future. This is my first attendance at IDF, and the experience was rather exhausting. Exhausting in a good way? Not really. Frankly, I expected to be more intrigued by the event. I guess the computer technology excitement is slowing down for me.”

Check out all that’s new at InsaneTek.

MS ~ Kwip’s “Mind If I Vent A Little? “What a crazy few days it?s been. For starters, we?re excited about the prospect of this whole NeenerPalooza ?05 (N305 – yeah, went back to the old name – that was actually a typo anyway). It?s not going to be a Con, and Comment (0) -->

“Rys: “The tough question first. When we met in September last year, we spoke about the imminent release of Theatre 550 PRO and All-In-Wonder X800. It’s taken nearly five months since then for them to be ready for sale in Europe and the rest of the world. Can you outline the biggest issues that caused the delays for both products?”

Godfrey: I’ll start with All-In-Wonder. Basically we’ve added some entirely new features to the latest AGP All-In-Wonder, like SCART output, DVI and VGA on the backplane and FM tuning. All three of those things have to work together and work well, along with everything else the All-In-Wonder has to do. There’s also been a lot of unforseen localisation work involved to bring, especially the TV functionality, the product to different markets with different TV standards, so it’s been a bunch of work to get that done, more than we anticipated.”

Check out the full interview at Hexus.

“Overall the Ballistix memory worked very well indeed. The recomended timings and speeds were obtainable and very stable when in use. At 250Mhz I was able to run with tighter timings of 2.5-4-4-5, however I did have one crash during the testing. The results obtained were slightly better than using 2.5-4-4-10. The voltage setting was set to max during the testing (2.8v)”

Check out the review at Techniz.

“Why Solitaire beats Half Life 2 . . . hands down! Solitaire is hip, cool, and way more popular than Half Life 2. Don’t believe me right? Well, the numbers don’t lie. Read out to find out why Solitaire is better than Half Life 2!”

Har har. Check out the humorous article at The Tech Zone.

“PC modding, and modding products are here to stay if you hadn’t noticed. Enthusiasts of greatly varying degrees, mod, purchase mod products, and drive this somewhat niche industry that higher tier PC makers have almost totally avoided. On that note, it’s always nice to see a new manufacturer emerge, and bring new things to the table. Today is just that sort of day. I’ll be looking at a new product, from a new company, Razotech. If making your memory flicker with bright LED’s sounds like fun, you’ll want to continue on…”

Check out the full review at ExtensionTech.

“While ATI does crow a bit about huge chipset sales (slide 2), the fact of the matter is that finding one of these chipsets can be a quite a task. For the most part, the RADEON line of chipsets has been locked into the low end product segment that does not garner much press from sites like ours.

Throughout 2004, the RADEON XPRESS line has been fairly weak in the performance department due to a crippled a memory bus, at least in the eye’s of the enthusiast computer user. With the initial launch of the RADEON XPRESS 200 for the AMD platform last year, ATI finally overcame their performance woes in the memory bus department where DDR-400 is concerned. Now that ATI has all that fixed, where are the motherboards? Hmmm. I do know where they are not, and that is on our test bench.”

Check out the slides that are posted over at Hard|OCP.

Logitech has announced a slew of new products at this years CeBit. They are releasing 3 new kinds of Headsets, that are all USB based. They promise to minimize outside noise, while giving you a crystal clear sound. You can read the Press Release for these here.

They have also announced new portable speakers for the iPOD MP3 player. They promise awesome sound, that you would not expect from speakers so small. They will retail for $79.99US and the Press Release can be had here.

Looks like a very interesting CeBit for Logitech, as they unveiled over 10 new products. You can read the rest of the Press Releases here!

“We have identified Swiftel as an ISP which has adopted BitTorrent technology to link infringers to music clips and sound recordings,” Speck commented in a statement released this afternoon. “We believe hundreds of thousands of downloads have been conducted in the last year in breach of copyright laws”.

Check out the news posting at ZDNet AU.

“We know that ATI is showing of its Multiple VPU marchitecture at its enormously big booth in hall 27 at Cebit, the one that had to cost some serious money. There is a small room where you have to sign your NDA way in to be able to see this multiple rendering stuff in action. I don’t even think that everyone with NDA can get inside.

Anyway ATI has its marchitecture ready and we learned that you will be able to do ATI Multiple VPU with two different cards. You will be able to plug one X800 and one X850 cards together and faster card will downscale to the slower and will work simultaiously with it.”

Finally, a hope for two ATI VPU’s.. this should keep ATI fans happy. Not only that, chances are that two top end ATI cards should technically be faster than the two fast Nvidia cards. Check out the article at the The Inquirer.

“It turns out that the Holy Father’s email is here [[email protected]], just in case you want a chat. Since he posted his address more than 20,000 emails have shown up in his in tray between March 1 to March 3. The INQ inbox had about the same number of emails during the same people, but they were trying to sell us stuff.

Letters in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German have been arriving daily for the Holy Father, wishing him well, a speedy recovery and a prompt return to his ministry as Pope and Bishop of Rome.”

You can check out the Press Release on the Vatican Website. You may need to turn off your Pope-Up Blocker to view it. News taken from The Inquirer.

RADEON® XPRESS™ 200 for Intel delivers unparalleled onboard DirectX 9 graphics performance and support for next-generation DDR2 667 memory

MARKHAM, Ontario–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 11, 2005— ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY) (NASDAQ:ATYT), today announced the introduction and general availability of a new high performance integrated chipset for desktop Intel platforms – RADEON® XPRESSâ„¢ 200. This new PCI Express chipset is designed to support Intel’s Socket 775 class of processors, both single and multi-core, along with next-generation DDR2 memory up to 667 Mhz. Highly versatile, RADEON XPRESS 200 for Intel provides system builders and OEMs with platform technology that is ideally suited for mainstream consumer PCs and low cost media center solutions. RADEON XPRESS 200 is the only integrated chipset currently listed by Microsoft that supports Windows Media Center Edition 2005. Technology partners for the launch of RADEON XPRESS 200 for Intel include, Acer, Samsung, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Tul, Sapphire, ECS, FIC, Shuttle and Jetway.

Benchmarks! We want benchmarks! I am sure some will pop up over the web over the next week or two. It’s noted that over 15,000,000 of these chipsets were shipped. Check out the full press release at the ATI site.

Bad, bad Google! The lastest version of the Google Toolbar, for Internet Explorer only, has the ability to insert links to other websites within YOUR site. This very page could have links we didn’t put there, if you are using the toolbar.

“Google notes that this feature, called “AutoLink,” makes it easier for users to look up certain information. It also is strongly reminiscent of a Microsoft gambit of a few years back in which the software giant planned to program Internet Explorer to automatically add its own links to others’ Web sites. Microsoft was forced to drop its “Smart Tags” feature after Web site owners and others complained.”

Going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Check out the full article at Personal Technology.

Bit-Tech is also at CeBit this year, and they bring us the first benchmark using two 6800 Ultras 512MB cards in SLi mode. That extra memory on the cards really seems to help, as there were no apparent hitches in the benchmark.

For more info and a picture, check it out at Bit-Tech.

The highly anticipated continuation to The Matrix film trilogy, The Matrix Online has gone gold and is on track for a March 22, 2005 launch. The MMOG, co-published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and SEGA, will take tens of thousands of players down the rabbit hole and unveil a story full of Comment (0) -->

“By now, you should all be very familiar with Arctic Cooling products and their capabilities. Their cooling solutions make computing in silence a reality. The VGA silencers are winning awards at every site and their Freezer coolers are now the preferred choice for my test bed. With VGA coolers, CPU coolers, and case fans already set, what’s the next step in providing a cool computing environment? The case. Arctic Cooling’s step into the case category was somewhat surprising, considering that the majority of new cases today cater towards gamers. All those cases focus mainly on looks and not any increased cooling performance. Arctic Cooling has a different approach. They look to provide better cooling performance while still maintaining the low level of noise they’re very well known for. With the goals in mind, they created the Silentium T1 and T2.”

Check out the full review at InsaneTek.

“With digital SLR cameras so affordable now, it’s inevitable for techies and budding photographers alike to snap them up like hot cakes. But while the cameras are cheap, the lenses are not.

But fret not, because you can actually buy used lenses instead! Used lenses are a real bargain but there are some things you should be aware before you buy them. And that’s what this guide is all about!”

Check out the full article at the Rojak Pot.