This article from X-bitlabs.com deals with the investigation of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro performance in a Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon XP based systems of different levels. The reference point will be a GeForce4 Ti 4600 based reference card from Nvidia and the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro will be represented by FIC 1stGraphics AT010.

Just got word from PC-Extreme that they have found the possible solution to why your having problems with your TV output and Nvidia Detonator 40 series. With the release of the all new Detonator 40-series many user have experience tv-output problems? We have worked on this issue and have discovered the reason why. There are 3 different solutions to solve the problem!

Just got word that Viperlair.com have posted a very good article for: Converting your drives to NTFS. Here's snip:

Security is a big issue nowadays. Actually, it's always been a concern to many users. If you were afraid of getting robbed, you get an alarm system and the biggest dog you can buy. Others use infrared sensors or security cameras. Even if someone were to infiltrate your home or office, you do little things to make life hard for the crooks, like bolting things down, or using anti-theft steel cabling to latch onto devices. Industrial espionage is a problem, and some users need several security cards just to get into the computer room.

Now, we're not going to go that far for our home PC. In my opinion, everyone should have a personal firewall, and some kind of router. With broadband Internet, it just gets easier everyday to steal a person's info right off their PC. Despite the number of Windows 2000 and XP security exploits announced daily, fact is, they are probably the most secure OSes released by Microsoft. You have to configure it though, and not everyone knows how. There are a few things to do, but today, I'm going to explain NTFS (NT File System).

Digit-Life.com takes a look @ how far you can overclock your Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 Pro boards! Here's a byte:

The video card was overclocked with the RivaTuner program (by A. Nikolaichuk AKA Unwinder).

Half an hour later the card reached the maximum frequencies - 420/375 (750) MHz at which all the tests were fulfilled without failure. We took measurements in 10 MHz of the core and memory frequencies (physical 5 MHz), we wrote down the initial and final core and memory frequencies to find out how each affected the overall performance.

Just spotted this @ NTcompatible.com:

The fix presented below include only editing of Windows registry, hence no need of running any third party apps of unknown origin.

Theoretically this fix should be display-driver/adapter independent, since it modifies settings for the monitor rather than display-drivers/adapter itself.

This article should provide you with a useful foundation for understanding bandwidth, latency and performance in a variety of systems and settings. Done in the usual comprehensive Ars Technica style it pretty much covers everything from beginning to end.

HWsupport.com have found a great Intel Pentium 4 steppings guide. BUILDING A PC that uses a Pentium 4? System integrators will be pleased to hear that Intel has now produced a handy little table that will let you find out straight away which processors are of the C1 stepping variety.

You will recall that Pentium 4s using the B stepping suffered from the prefetch bug that slowed them down a wee bit. Make sure you buy a C1 chip if you're going for a new one.

The whole point of this exercise was to create a CD with Office XP with Service Pack 2. I know some may be thinking that this is a lot of work, but think of it in the long run. You'll now have a backup of your original CD, since I hear a lot of dubious stories like "I lost my originals!!", as well as a backup of your CD key. No longer will you need to apply Service Pack 1 and/or SP2 whenever you reinstall.

VR-Zone has updated the T'Bred & P4 Northwood OC Databases to include the latest overclocking results of the XP2400+ and P4 based on C1 Stepping. Overclockers representing their countries or favorite sites are encouraged to submit their latest OC results to us so we can update databases more frequently.

Just got word that Extremetech.com have posted their Speaker Buying Guide. Here's a snip.

You've made up your mind to get yourself some new speakers, and you want to get it right the first time. But there are dozens of speakers to choose from, and different configurations, with 2.1, 4.1, 5.1, and now even 6.1 setups among your choices. So which are the right ones for you? Read on, and we'll show you how to figure out which type, and make the best choice no matter what your budget is.

Just spotted this @ NTcompatible.com:

PC Magazine has posted a DVD Creation Guide! Interested in making DVDs? But afraid to ask? PC Mag has assembled a guide on just about everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

I was just over @ Overclockers.com and I see they have a new article posted called Hyp(er)ing A Benchmark! I suggest you give it a read as the only benchmark that can test Hyperthreading is optimized to the gills for it as they put it.

Coincidentally (or not), hyperthreading will put PIV Sandra scores significantly above AMD's Sandra scores. At 3.06GHz with HT, well, see for yourself. To match it, an XP would have to run at over 2.5GHz to match the ALU and forget about the SSE2 FPU. Apparently, this boost will only be available for Intel chipsets.

Just got word from Crow @ Darkcrow.co.kr that he's posted a new guide which looks @ the performance of DirectX vs OpenGL in Unreal Tournament 2003.

Just spotted this @ Bink's Windows XP.

You may have a lot services running in the background of your XP session, claiming resources! Use this guide to see if you can disable some.

Pc-extreme.com has done up a comparison of the newly released Detonator 41.03.

They tested 7 different Detonator driver sets from 30.82 through to the latest build 41.03. Benchmarks like Unreal Tournament 2003, Serious Sam 2 , WarCraft III and 3D Mark 2001 SE are used.

Zephyr?, a long time reader of Beyond3D, has been pouring all over the documentation released by ATI and NVIDIA, and the Microsoft DirectX9 specifications, and has condensed them to produce a technical comparison of R300 and NV30 in relation to what is currently known about DirectX9. Zephyr details all the instruction, register and modifier details known about the Vertex and Pixel Shader pipelines and sums up a whole bunch of information on these two architectures.

The guys over @ Elitebastards.com - nice name btw - have posted a very good guide for BIOS Disaster Recovery! Here's a byte:

Oh dear, you've flashed your BIOS with the completely wrong image, haven't you? What's that you say? - It failed mid-way through the flashing? - ugh!

I will not try to kid you. It's a serious problem if your BIOS is corrupt. This guide will give you the knowledge to get your system on the road to recovery. If you are not comfortable with any of the procedures discussed please ask for our help at any stage. Serious problem as it is, it is not a terminal one in most cases. You should be able to get your system back up and running without having to spend a lot of money on repair bills. You may not even have to pay anything....if you don't believe me read on.

Just got word that Extremetech have posted their SuperGuide: Maximize Windows XP to celebrate Windows XP's first birthday with over 156 Windows tips.

Computers have increased the speed of life, there's no doubt about it. So then, why has Windows decreased the speed of your computer? Don't waste anymore time--dig into the latest tips, tricks, and tweaks that'll help you eek out the last drop of performance from Windows on your PC.

Here's a very cool guide posted by Fraggin_Phun that will show you How to create a Voice Pack for UT2003 using Unreal Editor 3.0! Hey you stink Where's my Gasmask? Hehe

Voice Packs were one of the great ways of personalizing Unreal Tournament. When UT2003 (finally) came out, everyone was very disappointed that voice packs didn't seem to be possible; there is no obvious way of selecting the player's voice in the GUI, and all the taunts for all characters appear to be in a single file (PlayerSounds.uax). Well, after several hours of enjoying UT2003 I just had to get my Homer J Simpson voice pack back. So I went to work, and finally figured out how to do it. I believe the capability was design intent, but that Epic just hasn't gotten around to documenting how to do it, or putting the required components in the GUI.

Just spotted this @AMDZone.com

I've put up the initial portion of our new Hammer section. Initially it has only a few links, but I will add many more as time goes by. This will be the top place to go for links to important Hammer information and articles.