News

ATI pushes Athlon above P4 motherboards.
At CeBIT last week, senior executives at the company said that Athlon boards – FIC is one of the first to use ATI chipsets – are nearly ready for the market because R&D started for AMD XPs three months before Pentium 4 products.

Geforce 4 TI 4200 coming in a month
This Geforce 4 card will be positioned as the cheapest GF4 of the family. It will compete with some of the lower Radeon 8xxx line.

Via's daughter wins Intel help
Little known Via subsidiary – High Tech Computer – is scoring huge wins by being the world's top Pocket PC maker with a little bit of help from its friends Intel and Microsoft.

Korea knocks Japan off TFT slot
But the gains Korea made against Japan were aggravated by Taiwanse manufacturers, who managed to grow by over 200 per cent last year and now holds 22.7 per cent of the world marketplace.

Just got word from Rye that FrostyTech has reviewed the Zalman CNPS6500-Cu heatsink.

The recipe card for the CNPS6500Cu reads like this; take 52 copper fins, place in a machine that presses them together under high pressure, bolt in place with stainless steel screws, mill base razor smooth. There is certainly no denying that Zalman have hit upon a good thing, and the 6500-series is proof of that.
This time, the full-copper CNPS6500Cu weighs in at 910 grams, or almost 1 kilo! For a heatsink, this currently is the heaviest cooler we have ever reviewed. Socket clips are out of the question, and even the standard socket 478 HSRM is left out. This time, the heatsink is bolted directly to the mainboard, and there is no way it's coming loose... we hope. - FrostyTech

ASE Labs has reached 400 users. Let's give mike3169 a big welcome!

Remember, we've got a contest for everyone as well. All you need to do is head over to the forums and give some posts. Click the link at the topic, or 'discuss this topic' at the end of this news post.

I saw this at AMDZone. This is a spec sheet at Planet3Dnow.de (German) that gives the details about the upcoming chips of AMD.

At the Inquirer, they say that Samsug is shipping 400mhz (2x200mhz) DDR samples and that they have been shipping DDR 333mhz for awhile now and that they control 40% of the market. Mike wonders, as do I, where the onslaught of 333mhz chips are? I just went to Crucial and I don't even see any CL2 PC2100 chips.

We're still not sure just how many true DDR 333 chips are swilling around in the channel, which aren't overclocked. Kingston Technology is still sampling these devices, rather than shipping them in any quantities.

The Inquirer reports that since LCD panels are in such demand, the iMac (with its fancy LCD screen) will be delayed.

According to a report in ZD Net, some customers have been told they may have to wait a total of 20 weeks before their iMacs can be delivered.

According to this Inquirer news post, Microsoft is strong arming Dell and Intel to promote its operating systems (and not Linux).

The damaging allegation was revealed by a lawyer for the nine states, who said that a memo sent to CEO Steve Ballmer suggested he "remind" Dell that promoting other operating systems wasn't appropriate for such a close partner of Microsoft.

This news post at Ace's Hardware links to a German site that says the Clawhammer will be 20-25% faster than an Athlon XP at the same clock speed. Wonder how fast the Sledgehammer will be.

This article at ViaHardware show the new small PC from Shuttle. This is an improvement over the SV24 because the graphics and CPU support are much better.

This article at Neoseeker shows the close performance of the two chips.

The most visible differences between the two are that Intel is better suited for the future. AMD has already used the 0.18 micron process to its fullest and the only thing for them to do is to go to 0.13 micron. However, Intel has already implemented this technology and has a head start. In addition, Intel has increased the L2-Cache from 256 KB (Willamette core) to 512 KB (Northwood core) and the real performance is seen in the way it handles data from memory to CPU.

Here we go with another Inquirer news post. This one is about how Microsoft is more than able to make the graphics and cpu for the Xbox 2 if they need too. This would kick Nvidia and Intel out of the Xbox (and Microsoft into the hardware realm?).

The Inquirer tells of an increase in LCD prices. Buy now, not later.

This post by the Inquirer tells that since Intel with their 845D chipset and DDR demand, cost will still by high (as opposed to the $30 we paid last year for a 256MB DDR chip).

Van Smith, as you may or may not have known, was a well worded article writer for TomsHardwareGuide for quite sometime. He left in Dec 2000. Now, THG is removing his name from the articles he produced. This makes the credibility of THG very, vrey low. I will not visit there again as this violates a journalists' right to claim the articles she/he has written. I stand by Van with whatever he does.

Benq (former Acer Communication & Multimedia) posted drivers for its scanner series Acer 2740S/2720S for Win 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP.

You can get the drivers version 2.0.1.1 here.

ATI Multimedia Center v. 7.6 that provides unsurpassed DVD playback on ATI based cards can be downloaded from here.

Hardwarezone has an article about how to change an Athlon XP into an MP.

Modifying the CPU to run in a dual configuration is much simpler than unlocking the multipliers. Just use conductive paint to connect the two pads together. No lacquer, or glue, or epoxy needed to cover up the hole. It doesn't matter if it shorts the underlying metal. However, do note that connecting these pads together does not automatically modify the CPU into an Athlon MP. It stays as an Athlon XP.

Check this out at Accelenation. A review of the last 7 years of graphics. A good read.

I saw on Blues that they have a Castle Wolfenstein patch v1.3.

Some additions are:

• Punkbuster
• Auto-Updater
• "Ice" multiplayer map
• MOD button

ATI seems to have delayed the release of the 8500XT (128MB, BGA packaging).

Some samples of RV 250 should be available on the 1st of April. - The Inquirer

The Inquirer is reporting that the SiS 330 graphics chipset is DX8.1 certified, but has no vertex shader. Instead, it offloads this onto the cpu itself.

SIS scored over 5000 3Dmarks which is almost the same as a Geforce 4 MX 440 or ATI Radeon 7500.

We have another contest for you. We are giving away the Dragon Orb 3 from ThermalTake. This one is a pure forum contest. rules are simple. Now just post away! Remember, the more you post, the better your chances are! You can get to the forums by clicking the above titlebar, or by clicking 'discuss this topic' at the end of this post.

Before I rip my computers apart for the benchmarking of the two motherboards, I'll let everyone go with some news.

The Inquirer reports that VIA has introduced the P4X333 chipset.

VIA TECHNOLOGIES has introduced its Apollo P4x333 chipset, incorporating DDR333 support with a 533MHz frontside bus, with AGP 8x, ATA-133 and USB 2.0.

I've just received two motherboards from ECS, both are Pentium 4 and I'll be reviewing them side by side. I'm interested in the reader's (AKA you!) questions about the boards. I'll try to answer as many as I can in the review. Click dicuss this topic and ask your questions!

• Fixed minor uninstall bug that left behind a file it shouldn't. (the directory where the actual install files themselves are extracted is purposely left behind for those of you who keep asking about that. Just delete that if you don't want it around.)
• Fixed an Overclocking issue where asynchronous clocks would revert to being the same as the memory clock on reboot.
• Added in the text for some missing help items.
• Implemented experimental support for Memory Latency changes on the Radeon 7500 and 8500 series cards. Memory Timings are not really supported yet, but at least it don't crash the system if you play with them now. Timings and latency work on the older Radeons as always.
• Incorporated some other user feedback.

Get it here!

AMD Chipsets Intel Chipsets

Who's onboard

The RADEON IGP family is the world's most powerful, feature-rich integrated graphics processors for the desktop and mobile PC markets. The new RADEON IGP family includes five integrated graphics processors - RADEON™ IGP 320 and RADEON™ IGP 320M for the AMD Athlon™ and Duron™ processor-based platform, and RADEON™ IGP 330, RADEON™ IGP 340 and RADEON™ IGP 340-M for the Intel Pentium™ 4 processor-based platform. ATI also announced the IXP™ 200 and IXP™ 250 integrated communications processors.

These are all the reviews I've seen.
AthlonXP VIA Hardware
AMDZone Tech Report
SimHQ Hot Hardware
PCStats Anandtech
Computer Source Techhard

It looks like the ingenius minds of Microsoft are at it again, this time they are going to revamp the filesystem. Well, going with a database apporoach has its advantages (SPEED).

For those using Windows, this will mean easier, faster and more reliable searches for information. Replacing its antiquated file system with modern database technology should also mean a more reliable Windows that's less likely to break and easier to fix when it does, said analysts and software developers familiar with the company's plans. - Seen Here

This press release from PowerVR gives the details of the Kyro 2 SE chip.

The PowerVR KYRO II SE processor, rated at 200 MHz, delivers an outstanding combination of frame rate performance and image quality, thanks to an architecture that makes extremely efficient use of the available memory bandwidth and incorporates a host of sophisticated features that support user demand for ever-increasing scene complexity.

Hercules has already announce boards based on the chip.

Madonion released their new benchmarking program. The new testing utility will be able to do the following:

For freeware version will feature these:

• CPU - integer и floating point benches
• Memory tests (L1 and L2 cache speed)
• Graphics test (including AGP bandwidth)
• HDD benchmark
• Full system summary
• Online system comparison with other users

There will also a registered version for a fee of 9.95$ that will give you more test tweaking options. The Pro version will cost 39.95$ and will give you more advanced tests some of which are Win XP specific and more tweaking options for the test bench setup. See Madonion for more details.

As of now you can enjoy the freeware version available here PC Mark 2002.