[H]ardNews 5th Edition

The ABIT MAX2 KT400 Review has been pulled down due to a mistake the reviewer made. We reported the top end VCore being 1.65v. This seemed a bit odd to me and I questioned the author on this, he double-checked and reported the same options available. Trey is finding out this morning that the ABIT BIOS scrolls to more options. The voltage option up to 2.325v is available in the latest BIOS. This very well could affect our OC results and Trey is looking into that right now. For those of you that don't know, Trey is our newest mainboard reviewer. Break him in the [H]ard way, but be gentle till we get him fully lubed.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

Rogue DNS:

If someone wants to register a site with OpenNIC, doing so is easy and costs nothing, according to Bandy, who said candidates should "contact the hostmaster for the domain." The only caveat is that "all TLDs are very strictly chartered." That means sites must fit within the scope of the TLD. For example, the ".null" TLD administered by Bandy is for individuals only; commercial entities may not have a ".null" domain.

No RTFM @ Boeing:

WASHINGTON -- The Boeing Co. is changing the way it buys software and is making a product's usability—the ease with which end users can be trained on and operate the product—a fundamental purchasing criterion. It's a move the aerospace giant sees as an essential means of controlling IT costs.

Roll Dem Bones:

Before an atom's spin may be measured, however, it must be detected, and isolating an individual ultramicroscopic atom is a tricky endeavor. Many scientists have been resigned to wait -- decades, perhaps -- for better technologies. Their wait may be over, according to Horak and his research team; today's fiber optics could be up to the delicate task of tracking qubit-bound atoms.

MPeg4 - 2 Cents per Hour:

Less than six months after controversy erupted over royalty rates set by a consortium of patent holders, the MPEG-LA group released the licenses which officially sets the fees at 25 cents per subscriber or 2 cents per hour, subject to a $1 million annual cap.

No Biz Like Pr0n Biz:

While many parts of the nation's economy have suffered, the past five years have been good for the adult industry, as new video and computer technology opened the doors to hundreds of millions of potential customers around the world.

DOS Advisory from Redhat:

Red Hat Inc, makers of Red Hat Linux, have released a security advisory advising that the kernel in versions 6.2 and 7 of their distribution is vulnerable to a local denial of service attack.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

[H]Workshop:

Good to be back after a week in Vegas. Comdex sucked and was a waste of time overall. Everything that needed to be covered could have been taken care of in a day.

We have been getting some things squared away with our workshop that we had previously announced in November and this will serve as an informal announcement. We were booted out of the Hyatt Regency due to the CPL not wanting us there due to competition between sponsors and some other various excuses. Being that we can be pretty damn stubborn and pigheaded (You think we did not know that?) and don't like to be shut down, especially after we have committed something to our readers, we moved forward with obtaining a new venue.

The official [H]ardware Workshop sponsored by Yamaha Multimedia will be held on December 20, 2002 at 6pm in the downtown Dallas Adam's Mark hotel. The Adam's Mark is approximately one mile from the Hyatt Regency, so it is within walking distance. Directron.com, not wanting to see anyone with blistered footsies, has come through with transportation for everyone at the Hyatt. They have chartered two 55-person passenger busses that will travel between the two venues from 5pm on ferrying you to and fro. Also, using the bus will earn you a discount from Directron's online store.

Finally, you will need to register to attend the [H]ardware Workshop by completely filling in the form on this page.

Our workshops usually last 2 to 3 hours, but I would plan on keeping your calendar open through to midnight as we have some surprises still planned that will be announced soon.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

VIA KT400 Roundup:

Ryan has gotten down to work and put together a performance review of some KT400 boards. If you are all about the need for speed, this should point you in the right direction.

The race for the best performing KT400 motherboard is a close and contested one. While the Abit AT7-MAX2 stands out amongst the crowd, the distance of its leads in the benchmarks is not considerable enough to label it as the end-all king of the KT400 world.

ABITs SiS 648:

A review of the Pentium 4 based mainboard that supports DDR333 is posted over at the OCedCafe. Being you are at the OCedCafe, you gotta get a healthy shot of OC right?

Okay, before we go any farther, let me put in words what’s about to run through your minds. “What!?! No overclocked benchmarks? What the…?” Hey, I know, I know. What can I say? It’s not for lack of trying, believe me. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get this board to run reliably over 135MHz FSB.

Light Me Up:

A true geek's guide to decorating around the PC. Admit, you want to do it...

I was walking around a local dollar store with my fiancé, she loves it when I say that, when I saw this package of Christmas lights that ran off of battery power. A light bulb went off in my head, or well at least a Christmas light. Man, that was corny.

Swifty GPU Block:

You looking for OCing that VidCard till there is nothing but a smoking hole where the silicon used to be? If so, you might look into what IPKonfig is reviewing today.

The Swiftech MW50-T comes to the table with more than just liquid cooling; it's specially designed for cooling the GPU. The special feature is the pre-installed Peltier.

Remember, when it comes to Pelts, insulation is your pal.

Xabre 600:

Today it seems as if SiS is debuting their next Xabre chipset, aptly named the "600". We did meet with SiS at Comdex and the Xabre600 is a higher clocked version of the previous chipset with a couple of enhancements.

LostCircuits gives their two cents on the card and directly compare it to the Radeon 9000 and the TechReport chimes in as well.

The problem, however, is at this point, to see where the Xabre600 would fit into the current market. The RADEON 9000 Pro spawns sell for as low as $85 and at that price point, they are almost invincible when it comes to price / performance ratio.

Hexus can now be added to the Xabre600 list as well.

AMD XPP2 Tour Stop:

All you folks in Seattle break your umbrellas out and get ready to head over to the Seattle Center Pavillion tonight to get you some AMD goodness. Check out AMDRealityCheck for more information.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

Logitech MX700 Fix:

We have had several different opinions on the Logitech Cordless MX700 optic mouse. Our final verdict is that is kicks major ass...albeit at a major price. Skymaster linked us up with fix over at the Logitech site that will help a brother out if you have noticed that the wheel action does not work in games.

GAME_WHL.EXE is a Registry file that allows gamers to use a Logitech wheel/roller mouse without having to disable or end task on EM_EXEC.EXE, when playing games such as Rogue Spear and Quake.

[H]ardArt:

While we don't get near as much as we used to.....we still get some that are outstanding. Thanks to Will for the [H]ard work.

Shuttles 4 Shuttles:

The Space Simulator is a 294-processor Beowulf cluster. It is based on the Shuttle XPC SS51G mini chassis, which uses a heat pipe instead of a CPU fan. The small size of the XPC cases allowed us to fit the cluster in about half the space of the previous 144-processor Avalon cluster.

This is just so very cool. Thanks to Insey for the linkage. All you Shuttle fans make sure you click on the picture for a huge image that is great for a wall paper.

Kazaa Down Under:

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson heard arguments Monday on whether Sharman Networks Ltd., which is headquartered in Australia and incorporated in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, is subject to U.S. copyright laws.

Seeing how this works out could shape a lot of the future of the Net and the way we communicate. Interesting for sure.

Like Linux?

VoidedWarranty final posts a look at something they did not tear up, Redhat Linux 8.0. While not perfect it is certainly moving in the right direction. Jason gives a quick one-page synopsis of his thoughts.

If you’ve never used Linux before and can’t decide, defiantly give this version a try. Go with the $39.95 Personal version basically for the manuals and the support through RH. If you can hold your own in a Linux environment, get the download!

Also, if you bust me double-posting something that Steve already put up, drop me a line please. I took three days off and was intentionally out of the loop.

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Multi-Panel Review:

Viper Lair looks at one of them sleek and stylish multi-function panels from Vantec.

The Nexus Multi-Function Panel is a very nice, and useful product. The interchangable faceplates make it very customizable, but for those of you with generic beige cases are out of luck as "dull and boring"... "beige" isn't a colour option. Moving your connections to the front will make it a lot more convenient to swap USB or FireWire devices, and the temperature monitoring and fan control are real bonuses. I've never been terribly thrilled with the look of most fanbuses, but the Nexus looks great.

Vantec has also announced a line of sweet looking fanbus panels out now too.

GeForceFX Downloads:

While you may not be able to get a GeForce FX until Feb 03, you can download the screensavers and wallpapers now. Odd how the name of the page is “downloads_diversions”. There you go….that ought to hold you over until the card comes out. Screensavers are good like that...

Diskless Foldin@Home Farm:

This might be of interest to the many Folding@Home people out there, especially the great bunch of people we have on Team HardOCP. Check out this guide to building a “Folding Farm” at Extreme Overclocking.

No doubt you have heard of the Folding @ Home project, which has been going on for well over a year now. The theory is the client uses your computer's idle CPU cycles to fold proteins to help find medical cures. There are statistics for each individual & team (if you decide to join one) showing how much work has been done, and overall rank. This healthy bit of competition has led people to dig up and recycle whatever working piece of PC equipment they can find to "fold".

For those of you who are interested in putting some of the spare CPU cycles to work, take a look at our [H]ard Folding Team, you’ll be glad you did.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition - Blair Tech Ed

Spam Archive:

SpamArchive.org is a community resource that provides a database of known spam to be used for testing, developing, and benchmarking anti-spam tools. The goal of this project is to provide a large repository of spam that can be used by researchers and tool developers. In the past, there were a few small personal spam archives that were used. There was no large set of spam that could be used to test new anti-spam algorithms. Thus, developers could not sufficiently test their techniques across a range of messages. Also, the lack of a "standard" sample of spam made it difficult to effectively benchmark anti-spam tools.

The Faster We Go…

Patch Your Player:

Security flaws in RealNetworks' media player software could allow attackers to run arbitrary code on a user's computer, the company warned last week. Three vulnerabilities exist in the Windows versions of the RealOne Player and RealPlayer, according to a statement on RealNetworks' Web site. By encouraging a RealOne or RealPlayer user to download a malformed file, an attacker could run code of his choice on a user's system

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

MS Knows Best:

Well, at least they think they know what is best for you. Read this article on Microsoft and see what it means to you. Do you agree? Disagree? Or has MS finally flipped and went too far? Read more here:

Be afraid. Microsoft thinks it knows what's best for you. Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie recently suggested that in the name of security, it may be appropriate to force you to install Microsoft patches or updates, and if that breaks your existing applications, well, it's for your own good.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

Gigabyte Granite Bay:

Gigabyte has got Granite Bay, and it sure looks promising. TBreak has the latest on Granite Bay goodness and what it can mean for you.

Gigabyte's most famous feature has been their dual BIOS and it's been a while since we've seen something innovative from them. Sure, they've been creative with the use of colors for different onboard components but we haven't really seen any new hardware specific feature from them. Well, the waiting period has finally ended as Gigabyte releases their Granite Bay chipset motherboard with something called DPS- the Dual Power System.

Super Cooling:

OcPrices spent some quality cold time with the Vapochill Premium Edition, and came away a fan of their Vapochill products. See what you think of the subzero killer cooling machines.

The VapoChill PE is as far removed from the original VapoChill as a Ferrari is from a Ford. The case aesthetics, functionality and overall professionalism have been improved upon to such a degree where the VapoChill is now the only sensible choice for those wanting sustainable super cooling. Its performance is simply phenomenal, and at 3.7Ghz we are currently enjoying Performance almost 20% faster than the fastest consumer PC systems available to buy - anywhere.

Socket A Cooling:

I have seen a lot of different renditions of this cooler lately; copper cored, all aluminum, and finally this aluminum unit with a copper base plate that the guys at Overclockers New Zealand are looking at.

The Evercool NB18-715 is an average cooler with okay noise level. It should cope fine with a slightly overclocked system. The performance with Stealth 80 mm fan is disappointing, the CPU is approaching 50 degrees when the room temperature is at 12.2 degrees.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

Comdex Coverage:

A few people have put together their Comdex coverage today, sharing with you the things they thought were cool from the show.

Target PC

Future Looks

The Tech Zone

We made sure [H]ardOCP was there to cover the show personally this year as well, so we sent Kyle, who was rather underwhelmed by the whole shindig. Apparently there were a lot of people felt the same way.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

ATuner Updated:

Guru3D has update their popular little video card utility to version 1.2.3.4 ( yes, that is really the version number, I didn’t make that up ) Some interesting features added to this update, read on:

Two new FSAA-Modes intended for NV30 just for your GeForce3 and 4! This is 6xS and 8x, enabled in Detonator 40.72. This aTuner-Update brings also a better Default-Profile Managment. aTuner's Layout was adapted for the new Default-Managment or higher.

Case Fan Roundup:

I am the first one to say that I am not into fan reviews. But if you are gonna do it, you might as well go BIG. Real big, 16 fans to be exact. PCExtreme rounded up a lot of fans, and tested em’ to see which ones blew the best…or sucked, either or, you know what I mean.

Today we will look at a broad selection of case fans available at Xoxide.com ranging from a "normal" fan, to LED fans, to the super high-output Vantec Tornado. Each has a special purpose or function and each is unique in some way. This review will be written more as a guide rather than a competition, and will hopefully be useful in helping you select the case fan best suited for your individual needs.

P4 Socket Adapter:

Viper Lair looks at a socket 478 to 423 adapter. Some people could benefit from these, but these really make no sense to me. I could see putting an older CPU ( that you paid $650 for ) into a newer full featured mainboard. But putting a new, CPU into an outdated mainboard that has outdated features and options is a step backwards.

Getting ZZZ’s:

Issue 152 of the weekly Bizarre Bazaar we have come to know as ZZZ Online. The regular bunch of wild weird and wacky stuff is there for your viewing pleasure. Have a look.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

K8 Single Chip Chipset: