Thanks to Dave @ Beyond3D for sending this in. Following on from their Introduction to 3DMark03 article, those guys now published the 3DMark03 Performance Tests article.

Here they take all of ATI?s Radeon 9x00 series, a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and 4600 and Matrox?s Parhelia and test their respective performances over 3DMark03?s rendering tests. We'll begin to see if this a true DX9 benchmark, where its bottlenecks are and begin to explain some of the performance numbers we are seeing from the various boards on test.

This just in from LSDsmurf @ Dvhardware.net: Everybody that overclocks his PC will love case fans (except the watercoolers ofcourse)! Especially those nice plain black case fans! We love them don't we? No? Well then, now we're going to paint them and make them UV reactive! We're going to do it on a simple and cheap way.

Just got word from Crow @Darkcrow.co.kr that Gzeasy.com have found a tweak that will turn your Geforce FX into a Quadro FX and the benchmarks in 3DMark 2003 show Nvidia's geforce FX ahead of ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro! for Darkcrow's article click on the nvidia logo or click, Here for Gzeasy.com article.

The first article in a series from EliteBastards. This guide will help you learn more about networking standards starting with this introduction. Check it out here.

The guy's over @ Systemcooling.com have posted a new overclocking guide for Nvidia's nForce2 motherboards! Here's a snip.

For the purposes of this article, overclocking has been divided into four different levels. Level 1 is simply manipulation of multiplier and/or FSB to their maximum stable level. Level 2 includes tweaking of other settings, such as memory timings, CPU decode rates, AGP settings, etc. Level 3 involves more extreme changes, such as increasing voltages to certain components, and increasing system-cooling capacity. Level 4, which will not be covered in this article, is classified as extreme overclocking, and is defined as overclocking that requires physical modification to components and/or extreme cooling solutions, such as thermoelectric or vapor phase-change cooling. While water-cooling is fast becoming the darling in today?s world, it will be ignored for our purposes this time around.

Just got word from youngcrow @Darkcrow.co.kr that he's posted his results from their 3DMark03 comparison! Here's the cards that were used:

Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro Sapphire Radeon 9700 LeadStar Radeon 9500 Pro Sapphire Radeon 9500 128MB Gainward GeForce4 Ti4600 NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200-8X

LostCircuits reports it has come up with a five second modification to unlock AMD processors which is absolutely risk free. Well, it says it is absolutely risk free but then there's a disclaimer which says the procedure can irreversibly damage kit, so on your own head be it. The article, says Lost Circuits, is based on earlier research by OC Workbench. You don't need a soldering iron, says the site ? you use the good old pin trick.
How to do this procedure is explained here.

This just in from Dave @ Beyond3D:

Well, we've had a release of a new DirectX API late last year, with the introduction of DirectX9, and we've had DirectX9 capable hardware much before that in the form of the Radeon 9500/9700 and the upcoming GeForce FX series, isn't it about time we saw a new version of everyone's favourite 3D benchmark? Well, as if on cue, Futuremark Corporation (formerly MadOnion) have released 3DMark2003 and Beyond3D has been given the opportunity to test the software early.

Just got word that Adrian has updated his premier bios optomization guides to 7.1! Here's some of the updates.

It seems "How Low Can You Go?" is the question answered by the guys over at ExtremeTech. They have released a small guide to build a low or ultra - low budget PC. It starts off by saying: "This time, we're really stooping low - and it's all to save you money. We build four budget systems, as low as $630 with monitor & XP, ponder tradeoffs, and test performance." For the full read warp 2 ExtremeTech.com.

WinXP Tweaking: From Relax to Righteous: TT guys and gals have had many viewers get a lot of help from their previous WinXP Tweaking Guide, so what could be better than another? TweakTown's Koroush "PersianImmortal" Ghazi takes you even deeper into the wonderful world of Windows XP. He'll be showing you how to get the absolute most out of your WinXP operating system!

HotHardware posted a good guide on speaker positioning. They even cover the basics of how sound travels through air. The guide is backed up by picture diagrams. Give it read to improve your sound experience. Here is a snip: When placing your speakers, start from your listening position. Place your speakers well apart and well away from the sidewalls. The basic rule of speaker positioning is to use a triangle. The distance from you to each speaker should be more than the distance between the speakers. This will give a good sound field to work with. By "toeing in" your speakers (angling them toward the listening position), you often improve the stereo image. Experiment with position to get the best results.

This simple guide from Aselabs will show you how to make your very own UV reactive fans. And it uses something that you probably have in the house if you do laundry!

NVWorld.ru have posted their guide to turning your Radeon 9x00 into a professional FireGL Z1/X1 graphics card using software! So there's no tricky soldering involved... here's a snip:

After we've defined the task, let's review, what exactly doesn't allow us to use ordinary R300 GPU gaming card as a professional one. The thing is that unlike Nvidia proposed unified driver architecture, ATI Company is using another approach and separates driver series for gaming and professional accelerators. Just the drivers intended for the professional boards, not installable on usual gaming cards, is the main obstacle on our way. But does it mean that the separate driver series comes out of considerable architecture differences of Radeon 9500/9700 and FireGL Z1/X1 boards? This is what we will find out today.

Just spotted this Guide @ our Good friends..... NFTS.org

The basic idea behind doing this is to make it so that when the CPU does not have any instructions to execute it should stop doing things completely, which in turn should cool it down. Ever wondered why the CPU is so hot even when it's just sitting there? Well, all modern CPUs (including Intel) has the ability to use two chipset settings known as HALT Command Detect and Disc When STPGNT# Detect. In the KT266/KT266A motherboards these registers are disabled by default. So all we have to do is enable them so the CPU will relax when its not required to do anything.

Just got word from Julio @Techspot.com that he's updated their OS page....

We have added a few more patches and overall updated our OS Updates section at TechSpot, be sure to take a look for all your WinXP, 2000, Me and 98se patching needs.

It seems that flashing from 8500 to 9100 works! When you have a card based on the ATI reference Design. kmf has posted a flash guide on the 3DCenter.de Forums, here is a short summery of it in english:
You need 2 boot floppys with a basic DOS (no drivers) -> on one of these floppys you put atiflash and your original Radeon BIOS. -> On this floppy you create an autoexec.bat which should look like this: Read the rest @ Rage3D.

XtremeSystems is pleased to announce that a guide was just posted up on Volt Modding the ABIT Siluro Ti4200 OTES. This mod was originally developed by our Volt Mod Technician DDTUNG, and implemented on an original Siluro Ti4200 by our forum m8 Sysfailur. This guide is an adaptation of the original mod on the newer OTES card. As many of you know, the Ti4200's can differ in their layout very much as this OTES card did from the original Siluro.

wie ist das nochmal?
Eine XP Installation und danach das langwierige Updaten mit den vielen Hotfixes und Security Updates?
Mit diesem Guide soll das der Vergangenheit angehoeren... http://www.toengel.net/projekte/winxp

Just got word from the guy's over @ NTFS.org that their new Describing the windows XP Boot Process and XP Boot Speed tweak guides are up! Screenshots and full explanations are included.