Tech News

Vantec 2.5″ NexStar 3 Enclosure Video Review

The incredibly stylish Vantec Nexstar 3 external enclosure fits a 2.5″ hard drive. It has a tough, cool aluminum casing and it’s USB2. This tiny enclosure is easy to connect to any computer system, fantastic for backup, and extremely easy to transport. This model comes with a great carrying case that holds the enclosure and the USB2 cable. If anyone knows enclosures, it’s Vantec! Watch the Video to find out more…

Head over to 3D Gameman for the full video review!

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Rosewill R114A Mid-tower Case Review

I’m sure if you asked anyone these days what brand of computer case they wanted, they would probably tell you Lian Li, Thermaltake, Silverstone, CoolerMaster or maybe even Antec. But if you asked that person which one of those cases they can afford they might tell you none of them. Sure it might be nice to spend at least $100 to buy a high quality case, but not everyone has that kind of money to spend. So they look for a budget case, maybe around the $50 mark, hoping to find a decent case with the features they want. Today 3DXtreme is going to look at one such case, the Rosewill R114A mid-tower. Does it have the features you need at a price you can afford? Let’s find out…

Check out the review at 3D Xtreme.

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ThermalRock Eclipse

Like the ThermalRock Circle but a tad too big and heavy for you? Count on ThermalRock to have the answer. The Eclipse is
great for LAN parties without sacrificing what’s important in a case–the spacious room.

Head over to InsaneTek for the review!

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AeroCool Turbine Power 550 PSU

AeroCool has brought to market a short list power supply with the Turbine Power 550. It is an efficient solution that can drive most anything you have to throw at it. There is ample power, connectors and separation of 12V rails to alleviate headaches on high end water coolers and the like. Their design plays nice with your customizations, no matter the level, without taking over as the centerpiece of your hard work.

Check out the full review at Viperlair.

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MSI K8N Neo3-F Motherboard Review

Today, PCSTATS will be looking at MSI’s nForce4-4X entry, the K8N Neo3-F. This motherboard supports all AMD Athlon64 and Sempron Socket 754 processors and up to 2GB of single-channel DDR memory. As with other nForce 4 chipsets, PCI-Express is integrated and the K8N Neo3-F sports a full PCIe x16 slot for video cards as well as a single x1 slot for peripherals. A standard compliment of four SATA 150 ports and two IDE controllers are present, as well as four built in USB 2.0 ports and two more on the included PCI bracket.

Check out the full review at PC Stats.

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SCYTHE ‘Kamaboko Z’ Universal CPU Cooler Review @ CACHE-Community

Scythe and Quiet PC were generous enough to allow us to review the Scythe ‘Kamaboko Z’ Universal CPU cooler. The cooler boasts compatibility with different CPU sockets including sockets 478, 754, 939, 940, as well as LGA 775, and also offers 2 copper heatpipes, a solid copper base, and a massive 92mm fan with adjustable speed via backplate control dial (1000rpm @ 14dbA – 3800rpm @ 46dbA).

Check out the full review over at Cache-Community.

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Watercooling Kit Contest – Runs Only 1 Week @ InsaneTek

This is part 3 of InsaneTek’s 1 year anniversary contest. The prize is a complete kit of watercooling parts:

1 Swiftech MCW6000 CPU waterblock (hand painted black by Randy)
1 DangerDen Maze4 GPU waterblock (originally black)
1 Black Black Ice Pro 120mm radiator (originally black)
1 MCP350 pump
1 MCRES-525 reservoir

Check out the full details at InsaneTek!

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Jon Peddie June 2005: ATI drives CrossFire to market

While Nvidia has never denied that SLI’s speedup is application and usage dependent, we were impressed with ATI architects’ willingness to look for ways to make the 2nd GPU useful when applications, user demands, and/or host systems make it difficult for AFR or Scissor mode to produce a solid performance increase. As a result, CrossFire architects added support for two additional modes that SLI’ have. (or at least not yet): Supertile and Super AA modes.

Check out the full article over at Hexus.

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NVIDIA graphics drivers to go multithreaded

I spoke recently with Ben de Waal, NVIDIA’s Vice President of GPU software, and he revealed that NVIDIA has plans to produce multithreaded ForceWare graphics drivers for its GeForce graphics products. Multithreading in the video driver should allow performance increases when running 3D games and applications on dual-core CPUs and multiprocessor PCs. De Waal estimated that dual-core processors could see performance boosts somewhere between five and 30% with these drivers.

If this is true, there may be more of a reason to go Dual Core than people thought. Check it out at Tech Report.

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Price Guides June 2005: Motherboards

Dual core processors are here. AMD folk won’t need a new motherboard for their X2 dual core chips, but they will need a second mortgage. Intel dual core chips are significantly cheaper, but require one of those new Intel 945P and 955X boards we just mentioned. Since a lot of people want us to mention DTCP-IP (“featured” on the new 945P and 955X motherboards), we will talk a little bit about that as well – and whether or not it should hinder your next purchase decision.

Check out the in-depth guide over at AnandTech.

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PowerColor AX480A-GF (RADEON XPRESS 200P) @ Techniz

TUL XPRESS 200P is designed to fully meet the increased system bandwidth requirements placed on today’s PCs and is optimized to work with the latest PCI Express graphics cards. The TUL XPRESS 200P offers best-of class performance for networking and storage. It offers performance that can effortlessly scale from everyday multimedia applications to high-definition 3D gaming. Whether you are interested in 3D gaming or outstanding home entertainment, you can push the TUL XPRESS 200P to maximum performance with PowerColor graphics processors. You can enjoy your system with confidence with VPU recovery technology that adds stability by reducing system crashes and reboots and improving data recovery to keep you focused on your work and game play. The platform also supports RAID technology for extra protection. RAID can be used to mirror all the hard disk content to protect data from catastrophic damage and provides “auto rebuild” capability for data recovery.

If you are looking for a solid Socket 939 ATI based board, check out the review at Techniz.

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Mushkin High Performance Memory PC3200 2GB (2x1GB) Kit @ SystemCooling

Established in 1994, Mushkin Enhanced Memory Systems has always delivered a quality product. But to me this product seemed like that exotic car that you knew would be a solid performer but for some reason or another you always passed on it. Call it bad marketing or being lost in the crowed filled with an ever-increasing number of memory suppliers. Mushkin for the last year seems to have reorganized itself and is hitting the computer enthusiast market with force and they no longer seem to be the exotic you can’t decide on. So to help make your decision even easier in today’s review we’ll taking a look at one of Mushkin’s latest offering, the DDR High Performance Memory 2GB (2x1GB) HP3200 2-3-2 Dual Pack kit.

Check out the full review here!

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Gigabyte’s 3D1 @ Sudhian

Gigabyte’s 3DV1 is a dual 6600GT video card in the spirit of earlier fusion cards—the Obsidian X24 is probably the last time we’ve seen a card quite like this (that video card combined two Voodoo2’s into a single slab of 24-meg 3D goodness). It’s a gutsy move for Gigabyte to make, but its also one way for the manufacturer to offer a product that stands, head-and-shoulders, above the rest. We didn’t actually receive a formal 3DV1 bundle—Gigabyte included the card with out SLI motherboard—but Gigabyte is offering the board and card combo for sale together. There are some twists and turns to this product, so lets begin by breaking down what it is—and what it isn’t.

Is the card all it’s cracked up to be? The benchmarks are definitely good, but there’s a lot of problems as well. Check out the full review at Sudhian.

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Shuttle SN25P Review @ Bit-Tech

Shuttle is probably the leading manufacturer of Small Form Factor (SFF) PCs. Today, we are having a look at one of its latest additions to the P-series XPCs: the SN25P. It amalgamates NVIDIA’s very popular NForce 4 MCP into Shuttle’s equally popular XPC product line. It provides native support for the PCI-Express interface, along with support for all Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 processors, including the Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 X2; the latter after a BIOS update.

Check out full review at Bit-Tech, especially if you are looking to go NF4 SFF.

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Eclipse – Half-Life 2 TC

Eclipse is a third-person total conversion of Valve’s Half Life 2 . You play as a young Sorceress named Violet whose father went missing five years back. After learning the secrets of Telekinesis, you are teleported into Auld-Haven, a lush and fertile land where Violet grew up. Your objective is to return to Violet’s home where she last saw her father years ago and dig up any clues to his whereabouts. In the broken down tower of her home you discover a journal left by her father. The journal unlocks a handful of secrets that ultimately leads you on a quest to find the ancient teleportation device – the Standing Stones.

This is an amazing looking total conversion! I’m downloading it now, but it’s going SLOW, understandably. I’m sure the servers getting pounded. Check out more info and download it on the Official Site.

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Perfect Dark Zero: Website Launched

The official Perfect Dark Zero website is now live for all keen gamers wanting official details about the highly anticipated shooter. The game is not due for release until this winter, alongside the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. The site includes some information on the history of Joanna Dark and the Read More Comment (0)

ATI Catalyst Report – Q2

The Control Panel is coming to the end of it’s life and 8.16, August, will be the last driver to support it. ATI are moving towards CCC as the only UI available and from 8.17, September, only CCC will supported. All next gen ATI products will support CCC only.

Hopefully they improve the CCC though, because right now.. it’s too bulky for the lack of things you can do with it. Check out the full article over at Hexus.

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Sytrin NextTherm ICS 8200 Air Con ATX Case @ XtremeComputing

My first impressions when I opened the side panel was ouch and wow, the wow was the size of the air con unit the ouch was it had taken up the normal spot for the lower HDD bays. Which means there is only 2×3.5 bays in this case and that might be a problem for some, although with a couple of HDD coolers in the 5.25 form the problem would not exist anymore.

Very tough looking case, with the addition of great features. Check out how it makes out in their review, over at Xtreme Computing.

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The State of XGI Linux Display Drivers @ Phoronix

Over the last couple of months, we’ve quite extensively examined the latest Linux display drivers from both ATI and NVIDIA. We have even published two articles about Linux NVIDIA overclocking with both NVClock and CoolBits. Today, we will be continuing this never ending driver coverage as we see just how well XGI Technology fares when it comes to their Volari Linux display drivers as we attempt to run a Volari V3XT and V8 under Linux.

Nice little read over at Phoronix. XGI is hardly a name that comes to mind right away for graphics adapters, but they do support Linux!

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Mushkin Redline PC4000 1GB Dual Channel Kit @ InsaneTek

If you’ve never heard of Mushkin’s infamous Black Level II BH5, you should be ashamed of yourself and quit this computer
hobby. Well Mushkin is back with blazing fast Winbond UTT BH5 but with a pretty red heatspreader.

Check out the full review at InsaneTek.

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AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Review @ GDHardware

Clocked at 2.8GHz, the FX-57 continues the “San Diego” core AMD released with the FX-55, but is stepped up a paltry 200MHz faster. What’s interesting is that 200MHz on the Intel side of things doesn’t always mean that great of a performance gain – not so with AMD. Additionally, the revamped memory controller tweak introduced on the FX continues in this new chip and it means it’s not as particular as previous designs were with varying memory configurations.

If you are the ultra-gamer who needs the fastest, check out the review at GD Hardware. It comes in at 2.8GHz, and while the review doesn’t get into overclocking, I’m sure it would easily touch 3.4GHz at least. At least it should, considering the $1,000 price tag.

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Return of DVD Decrypter

I just would like to spread the word and let everyone know, you can now find DVD Decrypter at: http://www.dvddecrypter.r8.org After a lot of hard work, I’ve brought the website back! The bad news is I lost all my programers which means until I find a new team I will only provide version 3.5.4.0 for download. If you have programming skills please e-mail me AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!! I’m looking for a wide range of people including reverse engineer, C++, C+ or anyone who knows how to update and maintain software programs!!

Glad he got the site back on it’s feet. I know a lot of people who were upset about the halting of the program. Read all about it here.

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Sony BMG’s New Protective Scheme

Users will be allowed to make three additional CD copies for their own use and to store the music files on their computer in a protected format from Microsoft.

Sony BMG’s new copy-protection effort comes with at least one downside: PC users are unable to transfer the songs to Apple’s popular iPod portable music player, because Apple has declined to make its software compatible with Microsoft’s Windows Media digital rights management (DRM) system.

Bah! These companies wonder why people are so quick to crack these schemes. We can pay $15 for a music CD, and not even be able to port it to the iPOD? Why not just download the album protection free instead? Sound good Sony? Read about it here. (No, I’m not endorsing that :P)

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Microsoft’s Own BitTorrent?

In a strange twist, researchers at software giant Microsoft have ideas about how to improve BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, even though BitTorrent is often used for sharing copyrighted music, movies, and TV shows without the copyright holder’s permission.

Now that’s interesting. In the future, I could see people downloading Microsoft software illegally, via Microsofts means. Nutty. Check out the full posting at Red Herring.

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Intel ups Wi-Fi speed beyond 100Mbit

Intel unveils a new advance Wi-Fi chip technology. The new technology extends the variable bandwidth current solutions use. The new solution will support data rates over 100 megabits per second, while at this moment 802.11g and 802.11a reaches a theoretical datarate of 54 Mbit/s.

Check out the full read over at Data Fuse.

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