[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Chipset Serial ATA/RAID Performance:

Tech Report has a very nice 30 page chipset serial ATA and RAID performance comparison posted today that pits today’s top chipsets against one another. Represented in this southbridge shootout are the NFORCE3, SiS964, VIA VT8237 and the Intel ICH5R.

Of course, I would be remiss not to point out how little performance impact different RAID levels had in our application benchmarks and stopwatch tests. Although multi-user and synthetic disk subsystem tests like IOMeter, HD Tach, and ATTO show clear differences between the performance of each RAID implementation and array configuration, the performance benefit in more real world applications is significantly less pronounced.

Visiontek Radeon X800Pro:

The gang at Bjorn3D has finally gotten their hands on the Visiontek Xtasy X800Pro for a little review action.

VisionTek's X800 Pro can't really be faulted. Since it uses the reference design, you can be sure that it works well. Sure, a novel fan design would have been nice, but considering the overclockability of the memory as it is, I'm not sure what benefits it would give.

4GB Compact Flash:

While the tech aspect of a 4GB compact flash drive certainly is cool, the cost is out of this world.

4GB Compact Flash card has debuted, but Kanguru is the first to release a 4GB flash drive. The KanguruMicro 2.0 drive can even hold 8GB data, assuming 2:1 data compression.

Another [H]’er:

The ranks of [H]ard|OCP readers has risen again by one. Ubence Quevedo sends along this picture of him holding his beautiful brand new baby. Only a true [H]’er would remember to wear his AMD t-shirt into the delivery room.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

Microsoft Interview:

There is an interview with Bob Muglia, Vice President of Windows Server development. The interview is very interesting covering a wide variety of topics. I thought these comments about 32-bit applications running on a 64-bit OS were fairly interesting:

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

ABIT KV8-MAX3:

People looking for a nice K8T800 powered Athlon64 mainboard will be interested in this ABIT KV8-MAX3 review posted at Tweak News today. You can see our review of this board here for comparison purposes.

The ABIT KV8-MAX3 is indeed a hell of a board, and it did perform very well during testing. The OTES system has proven itself to be a very good cooling solution for overclockers.

GeForce 6800 Ultra:

3DVelocity has gotten their hands on a GeForce 6800 Ultra reference board today and smacked it on the test bench. Here is a clip from the review:

Overall the card performed very well but there were image related driver niggles at times that quite clearly need some work before we're getting the best from what this architecture has to offer.

Albatron GFFX 5700P Turbo:

PCStats has the Albatron GeForceFX 5700P Turbo in house for a round or two of benchmarks. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, although we like the GFFX 5700 just fine, NVIDIA’s very own 5900XT is by far the better choice at the same pricepoint.

It's a good mainstream card, and at $210 CDN ($150 US) it should easily suit the gamer on a budget. Looking back at the benchmarks PCstats ran through it, the Albatron FX5700P Turbo can handle pretty much any game on the market at 1024x768.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

Cinemedia PC:

Check out the Cinemedia PC made by the fellas at Bit-Tech. Pretty swanky looking custom HTPC mod that has great functionality and even has enough horsepower for playing games.

One of the inherent qualities of a modern HTPC is it's relative size of normal everyday home theatre components. Our astute readers pushed me to take one more stab at the home theatre pc and this time push the constraints of size, design, and my fabrication skills.

NFORCE3 250Gb Comparo:

HotHardware has pit two NFORCE3 250Gb mainboards against each other in a fight to the death. The review not only compares the boards to each other, but compares them to K8T800 and SiS755 mainboards as well.

Today, we are going to have a look at two new NFORCE3 250Gb motherboards, comparing their performance to the K8T800 from VIA and SiS755 from SiS. The first board comes from MSI in the form of the MSI K8N Neo Platinum, the other board is the Epox EP-8KDA3+.

KingMax Hardcore DDR500:

With a name like KingMax Hardcore DDR500 you had better be able to hang with the big dogs. ExtremeMHz put the memory to the test with rather impressive results.

This is our first review of Kingmax memory and it has been a rather impressive one to say the least. In all honesty, I never expected its performance to surpass that of our Corsair TwinXPro memory.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

Yahoo Anti-Spyware Tool:

Here is a good idea. Yahoo will release an update to its toolbar that adds anti-spyware functionality. Most people use a standalone app like AdAware right now to scan their PC daily. I think that having a built in feature for your toolbar is a good idea. Here is a link to the toolbar.

Yahoo on Thursday is expected to release an upgrade for its downloadable toolbar to help people detect and remove spyware, or malicious files, on their PCs. It can be used to perform a high-level scan of files on the PC to detect viruses or other applications that were installed surreptitiously and are used to spy on computer behavior, or spyware.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition - Press Releases

EPIA SP Mini-ITX Preview:

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced that the new VIA EPIA SP Mini-ITX mainboard featuring the VIA PadLock Hardware Security Suite and the VIA CN400 Digital Media chipset with hardware-based MPEG-4 acceleration will be on display at Computex 2004, starting next week in Taipei.

AMD Alchemy™ DBAU1550:

AMD today announced the AMD Alchemy™ DBAu1550™ security network processor development board, designed for network access devices. Using the new board, developers can accelerate the design and production of next-generation wired and wireless devices that leverage the security features in the high-performance, low-power AMD Alchemy Au1550™ processor, which operates at only a half a watt.

Corsair Announces XL Memory:

Corsair Memory announced today a new family of "XL" memory modules that supports 2-2-2-5 latencies at 400MHz, making the XL family the highest performing PC3200 memory in the world. All these parts are available immediately from resellers worldwide, and are also available as individual 512MB XL modules, as TwinX matched memory pairs and as Pro Series extreme gaming memory with activity LEDs.

[H]ardNews 10th Edition

Sucky Game Fee:

The CEO of Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, Jason Hall, has come up with a way to hold game companies accountable for cranking our crappy movie-based games. The solution? Charge royalties on a sliding scale instead of a fixed fee. If you make a game that rocks, you get a low royalty fee. If you make another ass-tacular movie game, you get a high royalty fees. Jason Hall is a personal friend of mine, and many of you might not agree with him, but one thing we ALL agree on is the fact that movie-games generally suck and something should be done.

"The game industry has had its time to exploit movie studios all day long and to get away with producing inferior products," says Hall. "But, with Warner Brothers, no more. Those days are over. And we mean it. This isn't just lip service. Honestly, the bad games are over."

Arrrr Matey!

Well, the RIAA pioneered it, but the Department of Justice might soon have the power to go after software pirates much in the same way the RIAA have done against music downloaders. Blame P. Brent Buist for the news.

The so-called Pirate Act is raising alarms among copyright lawyers and lobbyists for peer-to-peer firms, who have been eyeing the recording industry's lawsuits against thousands of peer-to-peer users with trepidation. The Justice Department, they say, could be far more ambitious.

[H]ardNews - Mods & Ends

Case & Power:

GlobalWin SlimPC S27 @ System Cooling - BeQuiet 450W PSU @ OC-Zone (Portuguese) - Antec P160 ATX Case @ Hardware12v

Cooling:

Super Talent Memory Module Cooler @ 3DXtreme

Etc.:

EasyGrip Molex Connectors @ Crazy Modders - Transcend USB 2.0 TV @ Bjorn3D - CoolMax X-Treme Files @ extreme Reviews

[H]ardNews 8th Edition

2004 Spring Tech Tour:

The AMD 2004 Spring Tech Tour has been announced. Make sure you sign up to get in on all the Tech Tour has to offer and check the locations nearest you to attend the events live.

The 2004 Spring AMD Tech Tour offers you and your peers an information-packed exchange with AMD factory representatives and key technology partners. You will learn about AMD’s current and upcoming products and technologies, marketing strategies and programs, and uncover partnering opportunities. Tour the site for details and register today for the 2004 Spring AMD Tech Tour, coming soon to an area near you.

[H]ardNews 7th Edition

Alphacool Cape H20 Kit:

The Alphacool Cape H20 kit may not be suitable for big time overclockers, but it does seem to provide decent cooling for non-OC’d rigs. The Gang at Gruntville seemed very impressed with the quality and craftsmanship as well. While our UK readers might be jazzed over this kit, we are not sure about US distribution on this kit at all.

It was a pleasant surprise to find the Alphacool kit performing as well as it did. The next thing to consider is the quality craftsmanship that goes into each and every aspect of this kit.

More BlackMesa Case:

There is more of that BlackMesa HL² case mod we posted here yesterday over at Bit-Tech. This photo gallery has a lot more pictures in it than the original article did but there is no article to go with it. Again, an awesome case that is extremely popular with your guys judging by the amount of e-mail we received on it.

X600 Next Week?

Faud “You can trust me with a secret” Abazovic at the InqWell says ATi PCI Express cards are due next week.

The RV380 based card that will be called X600 from now on is a mainstream card that will occupy the sub $200 market and it based on 0.13µ (micron) architecture

Win Stuff:

How many times can you say you won $100 and got to ask a p0rn star a question? Well, if you answered that “never”, that is about to change for 20 lucky people who submit a question to me in the latest Ask Asia at Hypothermia.

In two weeks we will select 20 user submitted questions, each person will win a $100 gift certificate to Best Buy, and have their question answered her by the Goddess of Geek, Asia Carrera.

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Annoying Ads:

When the Ad dollars seemed to dry up a while back, times got hard for a lot of websites. You knew exactly which websites these were because they are/were the ones that have resorted to putting huge browser hijacking ads, annoying pop –ups, pop-unders, full-frame ads that make you watch them before proceeding and so on. This Wired article says that things might be getting better simply because the ad revenue has returned over the last year or so allowing websites to be more selective about what types of ads they will run. There are still some really annoying ones out there, but things are supposed to be getting better. Thanks to our friends at Tech Report for spotting this one...and not having annoying ads.

A resurgence in online advertising is not only putting more money in Web publishers' pockets, it's also allowing them to be more selective about the ads they allow on their websites. The resulting shift in power could lead to a trend in less-intrusive advertising, some of the Web's top publishers predicted Monday.

Something you can ALWAYS do is let your opinion be heard. As a viewer of these annoying ads, you can always use the power of e-mail to drop a line to the advertiser and let them know how bad you (the consumer) hate certain types of ads. Overall, advertisers will push the limits of acceptance but the truth of the matter is, they are after your click…so you do have a say so.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

Half Billion Dollar Router:

How about a router that costs a staggering $500 million dollars to develop? Cisco has it and it is called the Carrier Routing System (CRS-1) which has cool stuff like 40 gigabit per second optical interfaces. Damn…I’ll take two.

After four years and $500 million in investments, Cisco Systems unveiled its high-end router--but it could be six months to a year before it starts seeing any revenue from the product.