Weekend Reviews

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Gigabyte introduced a micro ATX motherboard featuring this ATI chipset, and called it the GA-8TRS300M. It was one of the few companies that actually produced a Radeon 9100 IGP motherboard in fact. And now Gigabyte is releasing the GA-8TRS3500MT, a micro ATX motherboard touted as an ideal solution for system integrators, and packed with video features more common for a videocard. The Gigabyte GA-8TRS350MT is based around ATI's new RS350 core logic, which the company insists is better than equivalent integrated graphics solutions from Intel.

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The PQI3200-1024DPU is a matched pair dual channel 512MB DDR 400MHz PC3200 TURBO module. Capable of achieving ultra-low latency 2-2-2-5, PQI3200-1024DPU optimizes overall system performance with superior stability. Efficient heat dissipation via elegant high quality Platinum Copper heat spreader extends the life expectancy of the module. Applying the advanced ICs sorting cutting edge technology, PQI - TURBO series utilizes only excellent quality ICs that are capable of reaching highest possible frequency.

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I'll be the first one to admit I've been taking my sweet time upgrading to DDR2. One thing good about waiting is it gives companies time to work out bugs and to create better hardware. This is just what Crucial has been doing...now we have Ballistix DDR2 to play with! According to Crucial, the Ballistix™ line of high-performance memory modules features advanced speed grades, low latencies, and integrated aluminum heat spreaders. Ballistix modules are specifically built for performance enthusiasts who want to push the performance envelope without worrying about data loss or corruption, mysterious intermittent errors and display problems, or worse-the dreaded blue screen of death! Our friends at Crucial have sent over a pair of Ballistix DDR2 PC2-5300 for our testing pleasure. We've taken a look at Crucial's DDR PC4000 and it was some of the best memory we've ever seen, now let's make the jump to DDR2 and see what this stuff has to offer!

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PCI Express is a versatile I/O interconnect technology that will eventually completely replace existing PCI technology as well as the current video card interconnect - AGP. The key difference between PCI and PCI Express is that 'classic' PCI is a parallel bus architecture; whereas, PCI Express is a point-to-point serial I/O technology. It only takes a few numbers to see the advantage.

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We last looked at a new VIA chipset when the K8T800 Pro was released. It increased the HyperTransport speed to a full GHz, and doubled the V-link bandwidth to a gigabyte a second. While these were definite improvements today's look at the K8T890 is a bigger event. This marks the first time an AMD CPU has had a PCI Express chipset to hook up with. So AMD users can finally say so long to the limits of the 133mb/sec PCI bus. So today we look at the K8T890 which comes coupled with the VT8237 Southbridge. Look forward to a K8T890 Pro, and VT8251 Southbridge tests at a later date.

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Over the next several pages, PCstats.com will be testing the brand new, nVidia-based Asus V9999 Gamer Edition videocard. This baby is a beast, and behind its shinny exterior rests the precious nVidia GeForce 6800 GPU. Like many GeForce 6800's, the Asus V9999 Gamer Edition is equipped with 256MB of DDR3 memory. Oh, I can almost hear those Quake 3 pixels shaking with terror. ;-)

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The Albatron Mars PX915G Pro motherboard supports all current Socket 775 Pentium 4 processors, but even though it is based on the Intel i915G chipset, it still uses regular DDR memory. The PX915G Pro can run two pairs of dual channel DDR, instead of the more expensive DDR2 DIMM's. Keep a close eye on the benchmarks a little later to see how the PX915G Pro handles loads without the aide of DDR2... very interesting! Other standard features are an IDE RAID controller, 7.1 channel audio, and twin Gigabit and a 10/100 Mb LAN connections.

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The only thing really keep us from getting overly excited is the lack of native SATA, and the inability to run 4 x double sided ram at 400MHz.. All the other issues are really minor, and doesn't change the fact that MSI put together a good, solid motherboard.