Content and news by Rob Williams

“This board is targeted towards the mainstream market (as mainstream as SLI gets, anyhow), and supports all Socket 939 AMD Athlon64/FX processors. With room for up to 4GB of unbuffered DDR RAM, its dual PCIe x16 slots handle the graphical duties with a full 16 lanes of PCIe with a single videocard and two sets of eight when in SLI mode with compatible nVidia-based cards. The SLI bridge connector comes included (GC-SLI).”

This is a great looking board, with a lot of features. To see how it fares, check out the full review at PC Stats.

“With numerous companies now offering LCD monitors, you may be faced with a tough time deciding on a brand and model. What size should you get? What about specs? We’ll take a look at the new 19″ offering from Samsung, the SyncMaster 920t. With a beautifully designed exterior and great performance within, don’t miss this one.”

Check out this great looking monitor at Gideon Tech.

Also found today at Guru3D, are new Forceware drivers for 64-Bit Windows OS’s *only*. Even though these are WHQL certified, they note that they should be still used with caution. Especially since these are the FIRST 64-Bit specific Forceware drivers.

So if you have a 64-Bit OS and an Nvidia card, check these drivers out at Guru3D.

“The DHzer0point philosophy is Quality First, Last and Always. Image quality, Driver quality and Performance quality. You’re games should run as fast and look as good as possible, with as few problems as you’ve ever seen.”

If you enjoy unofficial drivers like I do, download these ones at the Guru 3D site. They are for Nvidia only, obviously, and the only Mobile card supported atm is the 6800Go.

Kyle Bennett of Hard|OCP, has found a Chinese website that’s showing off an ASUS branded video card that has TWO 6800Ultra GPUs on the same card.

Gigabyte has done this with the 6600GT, but this is the first news of a 6800Ultra dual. It’s a LARGE card as well. Check out the front page of Hard|OCP for links.

The long awaited new version of Bit-Torrent has been released. Here is a quick list of what’s new:

A few technical notes, for those interested:

Check it out at the official Bit-Torrent site. I will check it out, but doubtful anything could take me away from Azureus.

“The $49.95 CherryOS was developed by Maui-X-Stream — a small Hawaiian company that makes streaming media technologies — and enables users to run Apple’s Mac OS X operating system atop Windows PCs. The software mimics the Mac G4 processor and touts complete access to a system’s hardware resources and networking capabilities.”

I have yet to believe that this is not based on the PearPC open source project. Speculation began late last year, that it indeed was based off the PearPC. Ever since the CherryOS was announced, the whole thing has been sketchy..

Read the release information here, or download it here. Chances are it IS based off the PearPC, which means it’s not very stable at ALL. Would be interested in seeing some benchmarks or real world tests. We’ll see..

“Linux creator Linus Torvalds said this afternoon that he’s now running an Apple Macintosh as his main desktop, mainly for work reasons, although partly simply because he’s a self-described “technology whore”.”

So it’s a Mac, but not a Mac because he runs Linux off of it. The computer he uses now is a dual CPU G5. Check out the article at ZDnet.au.

“Today at GamePC, we’ve got the top member of Intel’s new 600-series processors, which all utilize the new Prescott-2M architecture. The Pentium 4 660 runs at 3.6 GHz clock speed and sells for about $700. We’ve decided to run a comparison of this processor against Intel’s chief competitor in this price range, AMD’s Athlon64 4000+ processor. We’ve also included benchmarks of both processors in today’s Windows XP 32-bit and the upcoming Windows XP X64 Edition. Which processor will give the best value for the dollar?”

Check out the full review at GamePC.

“SUNNYVALE, Calif. — March 9, 2005 –AMD today announced that the industry’s leading operating system vendors are preparing their respective operating systems to support the upcoming introduction of AMD64 dual-core products.

All the leading operating systems currently available today are expected to have versions of their software that will immediately work out-of-the-box with the planned launch of the dual-core AMD Opteronâ„¢ processor with Direct Connect Architecture in mid-2005. These operating systems include Microsoft® Windows®, Novell and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions, and Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 10. Some of the operating systems will include optimizations that specifically enable applications to take even greater advantage of AMD64 multi-core capabilities, providing improved performance across a range of applications.”

Dual-Core AMD, here we come! Check out the review at AMD.

“The motherboard has a COM port (the only port at all!). Motherboard dimensions – 305×245 mm (“wide” ATX, nine-screw mount, all motherboard edges are firmly fixed). The ITE IT8712F-A chip is used to monitor: CPU and memory voltage, +3.3 and +12 V; rpm of two fans; CPU temperature (by the built-in CPU sensor) and motherboard temperature (by the on-board sensor).”

Check out the review at Digit-Life.

“As computer users start to demand better cooling at reduced noise levels, case manufacturers look for better ways to design their cases. Sometimes these design changes lead to a complete rethinking of the typical and standard ATX design. Today we will look at one of the most uniquely designed cases available, the Arctic Cooling Silentium T2. Most of you will know of Arctic Cooling from their famous line of VGA Silencers. We are now going to see if their new cases can continue the low-noise, good cooling trend they have established.”

Definately a unique case. Check it out at ap0calypse.

“In logical terms, it’s easy to split up the hardware on the All-In-Wonder X800 XT and describe its video pipeline. Before I do so, the All-In-Wonder X800 XT is just that, an X800 XT. It changes the 3D hardware not one iota, preserving all that’s great and good about ATI’s latest graphics processing architecture.”

Check out the full review at Hexus.

“SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 8, 2005 – Intel Corporation today announced that Sunlin Chou, senior vice president and co-general manager of the Technology and Manufacturing Group, will retire in early May. The company named William Holt, currently vice president and director of Logic Technology Development, as the new co-general manager of the Technology and Manufacturing Group.”

Full Press Release

“A super computer device for those of us with a collection of now old cassette tapes where we can now listen to them on our computer and make top quality recording for CD, MP3 or any other recording format we want. Use of the Plus Deck 2 cassette player could not be easier, simply half push in the cassette tape and press the relevant button on the cassette player.”

Check out the review at A1 Electronics.

“Sony is launching a new lineup of cheaper Walkman portable music players in another attempt to grab back share from market leader Apple Computer and its popular iPod device.”

Will these be more successful that other mp3 players? Example.

The cheapest models, which come with a 256MB flash memory chip, will retail below $132.50. Sony’s new flash memory players are equipped with chips capable of storing 256MB, 512MB or 1GB of data. The most expensive model, which offers 1GB of storage, will go for about $317.89 and will be able to store the equivalent of 45 compact discs.
Source: CNET

As found over at Hard|OCP, one of their forum posters have been doing crazy AMD FX-55 overclocking.

centvalny has overclocked his FX-55 to an amazing 3,487.4MHz. What’s amazing even more, is the memory bandwidth. 512*2 @ DDR650 has almost 3 times the bandwidth of DDR400.

Definately check out the thread at Hard|OCP.

It looks as though that Google Desktop is now out of beta, and has had some new features added.

“Maxtor and Seagate sent us their latest external hard drives with 250 GB and 200 GB capacities, respectively, with additional backup functions. U.S. supplier CoolMax also sent us the XtremeFiles F1-B, which the vendor says accommodates all commercially-available hard drives and offers similar features compared to Maxtor and Seagate’s devices.”

If you need a new external HDD, definately check out the article at Tom’s Hardware.

“Has AMD begun shipping its Athlon 64 4200+ to OEMs? Apparently so, if leaked processor specification screengrabs posted on a Chinese web forum are genuine.

The shots, initially posted on Digital-Info and re-published on XtremeSystems, purport to show the 4200+ up and running. Unfortunately, the test utility CPU-Z reports the chip as an Athlon 64 2200+, but the 2.6GHz clock speed, 1MB of L2 cache and presence of SSE 3 instructions suggest the part is a second-generation 90nm part, codenamed San Diego.”

You can check out Xtremesystems.org for screenshots of CPU-Z, and check out the article where I found this info at The Register.