[H]ardNews 7th Edition

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4:

PCPerspective has a little Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 review action posted today for your viewing pleasure. The PCP crew had issues with their test board during initial testing but had much better results today with a beta BIOS supplied by ASUS. Hit the link to get all the details. You can also see the ASUS A8N-SLI in action in our NVIDIA SLI upgrade guide for comparison.

It would seem that all the problems and complaints we had against the board initially have been taken care of. No more GPU issues, SATA issues and performance has been bumped just enough to put it in the top AMD ranks, if not THE top.

EPoX 5EPA+:

If you are upgrading on the Intel side of the isle there is an LGA775 powered EPoX 5EPA+ motherboard on the grill at Legion Hardware. Other than minor gripes about the board being bland they seemed to like it overall.

The only feature the board really lacked was Firewire. Overall, the 5EPA+ is an ideal solution for anyone looking to build a computer capable of just about anything.

The Unstate Of 3D:

Michael Schuette over at Lost Circuits has an editorial posted today titled The Unstate of 3D that covers the current, somewhat confusing, state of 3D. Here is a lengthy quote from the write up:

The current (un)state of 3D is about as confusing as it has ever been. Shader wars between 2.0 and 3.0, API wars between OpenGL and DirectX are already known and have polarized those who need to be polarized. AGP vs. PCIe is already getting kind of stale since there is really not much to argue about. But what about SLI vs. single card speed enhancements? Not to mention the necessary infrastructure of it all. And who was it who swayed the votes in favor of PCIe, to enable - in the final analysis - SLI? Last not least, whatever happened to product launches?

Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play:

You can snag a cool $1,000 as part of the latest push to help Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play 2004 reach out and help sick kids. Penny Arcade gathers toys for sick, hospitalized children suffering alone in hospitals during the holidays. If you have a chance, at least take a look and spread the word.

This year Child's Play is expanding to help Children's Hospitals across the United States. Each star on the map below represents a Children's Hospital that needs your help.