As I am doing catch up with my emails after all the E3 news! Here's a Modding the Barton XP to a Barton MP guide that was posted at Hardwarezone.com about three days ago! Here's snip:

More than a year ago, we reported a hack which you can apply to current Athlon XP processors to enable them to operate as Athlon MP processors. The hack was fairly simple and it involved connecting a certain trace on the Athlon XP processor to allow motherboards to recognize them as an Athlon MP. The trace has been cut in the factory so it's just a matter of connecting them via soldering (if you're brave enough), or just putting conductive paint on them.

Just got word that Planet 3DNow have updated their nForce2 guide! Contents include:

Questions and answers before the purchase Installation and configuration Troubleshooting APIC troubleshooting Beta Drivers and a lot more.

If like me you have a big collection of Vinyl records and you want to convert your vinyl collection to CD or MP3 format then check out this Recording Vinyl Records To MP3 Or WAV guide at BitBender's.

Many of you will have some 7? singles or vinyl Albums that haven?t been released on CD and this is an ideal way to preserve them on a more up to date media for convenient playback.

Just got word that Adrian has updated his premier BIOS optimization guide to v7.7! Here's some of the updates.

Read more...

VR-Zone has updated their Northwood and T'Bred and Barton Overclocking Databases and much of the interests still falls on the Athlon XP 1700+ T'Bred B where JIUHB DLT3C batches offer the best overclockability so far. we also recieved some great overclocking entries on the Bartons and D1 Stepping P4s. Here are some of the fine entries :

Just got word from RIV@NVX at Driver Heaven that he's updated his Creative Soundblaster Live - Live 5.1 & Audigy 2 Hacking and Installation Guide to inculde the latest released Creative v383 WHQL drivers for the Audigy 2 and Audigy 1-2 Beta Performance Drivers! Here's a snip and don't forget you need to register at DH to access the guide.

Even they are labeled beta, EAX ADVANCED HD Performance Beta Release from Creative contains drivers version .381 - they are newer than .324 released before, and they don't need to be hacked in order to work with Audigy1 (because they are for both Audigy1 and 2), but they do need to be hacked to work on Live! soundcards (in order to hack them, run ctcomp.exe (same as upper) and point to the same folder as Audigy2 Driver).

Just got word that Doom9.og have posted their Video Codec Comparison! Here's a snip.

After more than 3 weeks of work and no free time during that period it has been done: The latest codec comparison is online. 7 codecs have been put through one of the hardest tests in the history of codec testing. The results: find out on your own ;)

Just got word that Ars Technicas Keith McClellan has posted his Windows XP Startup and Performance Tweaks Guide! Here's a byte.

Windows XP is now the predominant consumer OS of both gamers and power users. Sure, many of us still dual-boot with Win9x, because it is faster for many games, but the joy of a true 32-bit operating system with full consumer support is too much for many of us to remain loyal to NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. Now that Windows XP has matured past its infancy and many (but by far not all) of the bugs have been shaken out of it, Ars Technica brings you the first in a series of tweak guides for this illustrious and yet somewhat finicky OS.

Just got word from kup that his new website called Athlon Unlock is now open for business with Unlocking guides for AMD's Athlon XP Palimino , T'Bred and Baton's Processors!

Just thought I'd let you all know that Athlon Unlock is now open, so please visit it for ALL your unlocking needs! I'll be adding a bit more to it in the next few weeks but please feel free to take a look as I have plenty of guides there already!

Just got word from Bink that his guide on how to setup Exchange 2000 on Windows 2003 is out! Here's a snip.

Well with the compatible discussion with windows 2003 took off again this week, especially Exchange 2000 that wont run on Win2k3. I have a surprise for you, exchange 2000 can run on win2k3, only not with a clean install, but with an upgrade you can. Lazereth has written a guide how to get exchange 2000 to run on Windows 2003.

Want to setup a web server! but not sure how to ? then check out the Web Server Setup Guide at WinHQ.net! Here's a snip.

Finding yourself in need of some web space for your own personal usage? There are a couple viable options, and the most popular is signing up for a free service from providers such as Angelfire and Tripod. Most of these web sites are typically slow and are filled with huge background images of someone's household pet behind erroneously spelled bright yellow text that says "OMGHI2U". Creating a decent web page for things such as photo sharing and information does not have to be hosted on such nonsense.

Microsoft Corp. released a guide on April 25 to help systems administrators run Windows Server 2003 securely and reannounced a similar guide for Windows 2000 yesterday. The Windows Server 2003 Security Guide and the Windows 2000 Security Hardening Guide for Windows 2000 Professional and Server editions give instructions on how to set up the software and how to mitigate various attack types, as well as other tips, said Michael Stephenson, lead product manager for Windows Server at Microsoft.

Thanks to Julio Franco at the TechSpot for sending in their new ATI Radeon 9x00 series tweak guide.

Rancho*: Don't get me wrong but it just takes you through the different settings of the driver tabs. Nothing spectacular.

The ATI Radeon 9x00 tweak guide that will give you a hand in optimizing your system for best compatibility & performance. In the guide we go through basic troubleshooting steps and general settings.

Looking for a few extra horses under the bonnet of your ATi Radeon Graphics card? then check out this Upgrade your Raddy bios & gain performance guide posted at Futuremark by Paddy007UK with the help of Celestial_Fury AKA Fymo @ Rage3D forums! Here's a snip.

BIOSes uploaded which are based on MUFUs BIOS for the 9700PRO which allows higher overclocks on a lot of Radeons:

Maximum OC has posted a picture of how to voltage mod your Radeon 9800 Pro.

Who wants a 9800 pro voltage mod! I know I do that's for certain! Luckily, the amazing macci from Finland has figured it out! Click the picture below for a super huge image of how to do it!

VR-Zone has updated their T'Bred and Barton Overclocking Databases and much of the interests still fall on the Athlon XP 1700+ T'Bred B where JIUHB DLT3C batches offer the best overclockability so far. Apparently, Athlon XP 1800+ JIUHB DLT3C overclocks just as well so overclockers might consider that if they can't get the 1700+. Here are some of the best entries this week :

Not sure if your Abit mainboard is compatible with AMD's new barton CPU? Then check out this guide at Rojakpot.com.

Sometime ago, ABIT sent out a press release stating that certain ABIT motherboards have been certified to support the new 400MHz FSB AMD Barton processors. Actually, the word "new" should be replaced with the word "upcoming" because AMD didn't announce the new processors yet! So, ABIT accidentally let the cat out of the bag! However, that's really not the topic of discussion today.

Just got word that Systemcooling's Howard Weitzel has posted part 2 of his The 3DMark Tuning Guide! Here's a snip:

For those of you that read Part 1 of this guide, you know that we started our search for 3DMark performance by establishing a solid platform, namely the operating system. From there, we turned our attention to the system BIOS, where we tweaked and tuned our way to a 2000+ point increase in 3DMark score. In Part 2, we're going to explore the video card itself, along with its associated drivers.

A friend of mine, Olcay, wrote a guide to install Windows Media Center on XP Home Edition...

Just got word that Systemcooling's Howard Weitzel has posted part 1 of his The 3DMark Tuning Guide! Here's a snip:

Go to any online forum where computer performance is discussed, and it's almost a sure bet you will see a great deal of discussion revolving around Futuremark Corporation's video card benchmark programs 3DMark2001SE, and it's newest brethren, 3DMark2003. The programs' legendary popularity comes in part because of the ability users have to upload their test results to Futuremark's online database and compare those results to those of users around the world. Competition is fierce, and users often go to extraordinary lengths to achieve their own ultimate 3DMark score.