[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

SCO Challenging GPL:

Just when you thought you couldn’t hear another word about the whole SCO vs. Linux deal, SCO pops out with another legal challenge to snag everyone right back into the mix. If SCO is successful in challenging the whole general public license, what ramifications will that have across the industry? Interesting stuff for sure.

In its lawsuit against IBM, the SCO Group has begun a direct challenge to the General Public License--the legal foundation for Linux, numerous other open-source programming projects and software SCO still ships today. "The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, together with copyright, antitrust and export control laws," SCO Group said in an answer filed late Friday to an IBM court filing. In addition, SCO asserted that the GPL is unenforceable.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

9800XT Vs. GFFX 5950Ultra:

TecNation is hosting a battle of the Titans. By now everyone should know I am talking about the two bad boys on the block, the the Radeon 9800XT and the GeForce FX5950Ultra are slugging it out for that coveted top spot.

Improvements to nView and the other ForceWare features are welcome, but pale in significance to what should be NVIDIAs primary goal - to reclaim the leadership of the top-end, a position they haven't held with any authority for well over a year. With equal IQ between the two new boards it's only down to framerate, and at least two thirds of our tests were resounding victories for the 9800XT.

If you haven’t taken a look at the new way we are evaluating video cards, you can go check out the new process as you read our GFFX 5950Ultra review for comparison.

ABIT Siluro FX 5600 DT:

Hexus is screaming something about “Midrange Madness” as they look at both the Abit Siluro FX 5600 DT 128MB and 256MB cards. Have a look and see what the fellas had to say about these two budget boards.

The FX 5600 / Ultra series is a reasonable stab at attempting to balance features and performance to cost. ABIT has a couple of cards here that are quite different beasts. The 256MB model is a disappointing card, especially in view of its potential. The 128MB Ultra version is worthy of consideration, however. We just wish it was based on the newer revision.

SiS655FX Chipset:

For those of you looking to do the Intel upgrade but you want a non-Intel chipset, the SiS655FX is certainly an alternative. I am a fan of the Canterwood & Springdale chipsets so I am interested to see how well other chipsets like this stack up.

Given that this chipset will likely end up in the budget performance arena, I’d say that it will suit the needs of users looking for some serious performance, while not having to shell out the premiums for an Intel i865PE or i875P motherboard. If the motherboard manufacturers can put out products based off of the 655FX chipset that put to use all of the available features, and allow for the maximum tweaking and overclocking capabilities, then the 655FX chipset could turn out to be a choice those upgrading will certainly want to look into with great interest.

[H]ardNews 8th Edition

SFF Extravaganza!

The people at SFFTech have more small form factor PC news in this one article than everywhere combined. The bulk of the info gathered for this write up was during Computex in Taipei, but there is well over 30 pages worth of info and pictures.

This year, my visit to Computex in Taipai, Taiwan, lasted for 4 out of the 5 days of the show. Almost all of my time there was taken up with pre-arranged meetings - but there was enough time left to rush around the three thousand stalls at the event - in order to bring you in-depth coverage of what Computex had to offer in the way of Small Form Factor (SFF) hardware. During my visit, it soon became obvious that the whole SFF 'scene' had exploded, since my visit to CeBit in March 2003.

Power Up!

Vantec ION 400W PSU @ Oc Prices - PSU Tester @ 3DXtreme - Seasonic 400W PSU @ Ohl’s Place - Antec PSU Tester @ Bitbender - Super Tornado 300W PSU @ LANAddict

[H]ardNews 7th Edition

Mushkin PC4000 DDR500:

Legit Reviews has a review of Mushkin’s PC4000 DDR500 dual channel memory kit. The guys at Legit Reviews used a PCI based card called the RAM Stress Test Professional instead of the old “we plugged in the memory and it worked” method. Have a look.

Mushkin has been operating its memory and components e-commerce site since 1994 and it is not hard to see how they have made it this far! We can clearly see that their DDR500 memory modules are some of the best on the market after looking at the majority of 512mb modules sold in North America.

Ŝpäm 5ũcks:

It is amazing to see the great lengths spammers will go to just end up getting deleted. I see about 99 billion of these a day though so there is something to the story.

While Hormel's Spam never changes, e-mail spam mutates nearly every hour like a freakish germ. Spammers tout Vicodin when the Viagra market goes flaccid. They misspell the word "diploma" every way possible to get you to buy a master's. And they insert invisible HTML tags in between letters of words to sneak snake-oil penis-pill pitches past keyword filters.

Death To Analog TV!

If you already have a big fat HDTV this ruling won’t have much impact on you….yet. But then again, moving everything over to Digital is the way to go, right? We’ll see how this plays out.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a government rule requiring all but the smallest new televisions to have tuners that can receive digital TV signals by July 2007. The makers of TVs, VCRs and DVD players tried to block the Federal Communications Commission rule, saying it would make sets more expensive and is unnecessary because cable and satellite viewers don't need the tuners.

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Diamond's Back:

Not only is Diamond Multimedia announcing that it is back, they are saying that they will be "silicon-agnostic", serving up both ATI and NVIDIA chipsets.

Do be advised that this is much like the Hercules acquisition we saw by Guillemot back in the day. What is really interesting here in some sort of cosmic way, even though the Diamond PRs are dated yesterday, Guillemot officially took over the Hercules' Intellectual Properties on October 28, 1999. Four years ago today...

This started taking place back in August as shown by this cached Google page. From my best assessment the only thing that will be "Diamond" will be the logo and the naming.

Los Angeles, California – October 27, 2003 – Best Data Products, Inc. today announced its has completed its acquisition of Diamond Multimedia from SONICblue Incorporated including the Diamond Multimedia®, Stealth®, Viper® and Supra® trade names and trademarks as well as business assets, product inventory, and other intellectual property. Diamond will be run as an independent division of Best Data focusing on selling select, high-quality graphics, communications and other media devices that enable people to experience the best of the digital lifestyle.

Still another player in the USA market will be a good thing and it will be interesting to see if they get really aggressive with design or just become another reference card reseller. It will be interesting to see just how much respect they get from NVIDIA and ATI while being the first to ride the fence here in North America for quite a while.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

MSI KT6 Delta-FISR2:

Hardware Zone has a MSI Kt6 Delta-FISR2 VIA KT600 review posted today. For all you AMD fans looking to upgrade your mainboard, this one might be a via-ble option…get it? VIA-ble option! Heh…I’m funny to myself.

Performance was a two-pronged fork with FSB333-DDR333 leading to very average results, but FSB400-DDR400 saw pretty good results for a VIA KT600 platform. This would be advantageous to those who overclock their CPUs to FSB400, but you would most likely need to reduce your CPU multiplier to do this.

Panther Review:

This Wired.com article about a bad Panther install is kind of funny. The lesson to be learned? Always back up your data….so us PC guys can’t laugh at you for hosing your Mac.

How do you waste an unseasonably warm and beautiful weekend in San Francisco in late October? The answer is: by attempting to install Apple's newest version of OS X, better known as Panther, on Friday night without first backing up the machine.

Sapphire Radeon 9800 XT:

Given that everyone on the planet likes the latest and greatest from ATi (well, maybe not NVIDIA), I think the guys at Hardware Mag liked the Sapphire Radeon 9800XT they just reviewed. I say “think” because you’ll need a translator to read this review because the review is not in English.

ATi´s Radeon 9800 Serie wächst immer weiter und zählt mittlerweile schon vier verschiedene Modelle: Radeon 9800, 9800 SE, 9800 Pro und 9800 Pro mit 256 MB. Seit dem 30. September besteht diese Serie nun aus insgesamt fünf verschiedenen Produkten, welche in Sachen Performance nun vom neuen Radeon 9800 XT angeführt werden wird.

[H]ardNews - Blair's Tech Ed.

Instant Manufacturing:

Machines that create products directly from digital files can save hours of painstaking human labor, compress production schedules, and eliminate costly overstock. A boundary line of manufacturing history cuts across the factory floor of Siemens Hearing Instruments in Piscataway, NJ. On one side, skilled technicians use casting techniques, precision tools, and years of experience to craft the acrylic shells of hearing aids modeled from silicone impressions of actual ear canals.

How The Hemi Works:

If you like cars, then you have probably heard of the HEMI engine. If you were born in the 1960s or before, you remember the phenomenon created by Chrysler's HEMI engines in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. If you follow muscle cars or drag racing, you know that the 426 HEMI engine is a popular engine because of its performance. You've probably also heard of the new HEMI engines that Chrysler is used in 2003 Dodge trucks.

Pocket PC:

A full-featured PC that is small enough to slip into a shirt pocket is being hailed by its makers as the world's first modular computer. The machine can perform as both a PC and a handheld computer, but it remains to be seen if consumers are willing to pay for such a hybrid device. Inside the MCC is a 1GHz microprocessor, 256 MB of RAM and a 10 or 15 GB hard drive. It will also run a full version of Microsoft's XP operating system.

Cheap Gold Plating:

Researchers in the UK and Sweden have created a new material that could cut costs in the electronics industry. Lidija Siller at the University of Newcastle and colleagues in Durham and Göteborg have developed a simple method to mass-produce thin films of gold nitride. In addition to being cheaper than the gold-plating methods that are currently used to make electronic components, gold nitride also offers improved performance.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

More Memory = Slower PC?

There have been a few review sites claiming that higher memory density was causing a serious performance slowdown on Intel based boards. Lost Circuits did some very good research and shows you why you shouldn’t believe everything you read. Good stuff.

The reason for going through all these benchmarks and writing this article is not to point a finger at anybody. Rather, it is to dam spreading of wrong information caused by some software glitches or else, being typical only for one particular hardware configuration but which, by no means, can be generalized. In not a single instance did we incur any performance hit greater than 6%, and those can be accounted for by some stabilizing measures, that is, more relaxed timings on the chipset level.

Just A Game:

Sony knuckled to pressure to remove a reference to Canadian terrorist from the upcoming Syphon Filter game. Canada took exception to the fact the game portrayed the bad guys as being Canadian...everyone knows bad guys can't be Canadian. Sheesh.

Before Sony agreed to withdraw the game, the Toronto Transit Commission strongly objected to the way the TTC was to be used in the game as a scene for hostile activities. "The fact is someone is putting the Toronto subway as a terrorist site, that is a very dangerous thing to do," TTC spokesman Marilyn Bolton said in an interview.

Yup, if a videogame says it…it must be true. Damn! I guess this cancels all my plans to travel to Mars. After all, Doom3 shows us how dangerous it can be up there and let us not forget the triple-boob hookers on Mars in Total Recall.

Free Music Solution:

Two students developed a pretty innovative way to get free tunes at MIT ( and other schools ). Check this out, you log onto the school site, choose the tunes from 3500 CDs that the school legally pays for the right to use, and then the tunes come to your room over an analog cable connection.

The system is operated over the Internet but the music is pumped through MIT's cable television network. That makes it an analog transmission, as opposed to a digital one, in which a file is reproduced exactly. The downside is the sound quality: better than FM radio, but not as good as a CD.

I bet the RIAA will still find a way to sue them.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

ATi Grabs Clone Market:

ATi looks to have half of the Chinese clone market under its belt by the end of the year, some say as high as 70%. What makes this so funny is that 18 months ago, no one could have foreseen the amazing progress ATi has made.

ATI Technologies, banking on the continuing momentum of its Asia Pac Partner Program (APPP) rebate program and the late September launch of its Radeon 9800XT and Radeon 9600XT chips, expects its graphics chips will capture 50% of China’s clone market in the fourth quarter of this year, according to company chairman and CEO Ho Kwok-yuen. In the OEM graphics chip sector, the Canadian chip designer hopes to claim a 70% share, Ho said.

DFI 875 Infinity:

TBreak has a little Canterwood mainboard action for you in the form of a DFI 875 Infinity mainboard review. The fellas seemed to really like the board other than the fact that it was a tad bit spendy. Here’s a quote from the review:

The Infinity is a good but expensive addition to DFI’s retail line-up of motherboard. It offers good performance and a reasonable number of features, of which, CMOS Reloaded is a good one by letting you keep different BIOS settings saved for a later recall. Overclocking was also pretty decent on this board and DFI provides some very good voltage options. We do wish that the board was a bit lower in price as that would've made the 875 Infinity an excellent buy.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

Intel & AMD Price Cuts:

Now this is the kind of news I like, both Intel & AMD have price cuts on the way, just in time for the holidays. The high end stuff got the biggest cuts, but it makes them 3GHz CPUs a reality for most of us now at $275 compared to the well over $400 range it was before.

Intel reduced the cost of its Pentium 4 desktop chips by between 7 percent and 35 percent on Sunday, with the most expensive chips receiving the biggest whack. The 3.2GHz Pentium 4 dropped from $637 in volume quantities to $417, a 35 percent drop, while the 3GHz Pentium 4 with an 800MHz system bus declined from $417 to $278, a 33 percent reduction.

Half-Life2 & ATi:

While we are on the subject of killer hardware deals, Best Buy announced last week a deal where all the new ATi products they are selling 9800XT down to the 9600SE comes with free Half Life2. Sweet. For $129 schmackers, the 9600SE is a great gift since it comes with a $50 game. Thanks to BB, you won't look like a tight-wad either.

Looking At Longhorn:

Bill Gates gave everyone a sneak peek at Longhorn. Bill says this will be the biggest thing since…ummm, well, the last OS they released! I have to admit, I have actually liked every step up Win95-Win98-Win2000-WinXP so far out of MS. WinME users…well, I feel bad for them, but everything else was cool.

Bill Gates (pictured) on Monday offered the first public look at Longhorn, the next generation of the Windows PC operating system that he said would be Microsoft's "biggest release of this decade and the biggest since Windows 95." However, the Microsoft chairman gave no timetable for the launch of the software, which has already slipped to a later timetable than originally thought.

[H]ardNews 15th Edition

Swapping Samples:

Another in a long line of "Say it ain't so Joe's". Our friends over at DesignTechnica are learning about what is simply the dark underbelly of our community. That belly includes companies that will do pretty much anything to rip you off.

Samsung and OCZ Technology are just a couple of the companies I know of who might have deceived the consumer, whether intentionally or not, it makes me wonder just how much of this is going on.

No MP for FX:

We have been waiting to see if the Athlon64 FX CPUs would run in a multiple CPU configuration. Since we have not wanted to spend nearly 800 bucks to find out, we have not tried it. We did ask our contacts at VIA today and they fired a couple up for us. Well, they fired one up at a time. They could not get the test board to see both FX CPUs. Take it for what it is worth, if you want duals, buy you the Opterons....they are the same exact thing anyway.

[H]ardNews 14th Edition

Intel Control Center:

While I know not many of you use Intel brand Desktop boards for your enthusiast activities, Intel does have a new control panel out that is very much a walk on the wild side for them. It actually looks pretty darn cool. We will give it a whirl and give you our thoughts.

Stress It The built-in stress test helps check the stability of your customized settings by allowing you to conduct “burn-in” testing. Select which tests to perform, the test duration, and test intensity to help you ensure a rock-solid configuration.