Got a AMD Duron processor? how would you like to transform the said CPU to an Athlon XP, you would then check out this guide at Xbitlabs.

There is hardly a point to transform a $45 Duron processor into a $60 Athlon XP one, but, on the other hand, such modification is very interesting from theoretical point of view. We remember that AMD Athlon XP ?Thorton? processors are set to appear in the market pretty soon. given that Thorton core is an altered Barton core and has only 256KB of L2 in contrast to Barton?s 512KB of L2, we assume that there will be a way to transform Thorton into Barton winning a massive gain in performance. Hence, the Duron is only the beginning!

Learn how to make a forum sig that rotates between images, so everytime the page loads, it's different! This short article will show you how it's done, it's quite easy to make, but requires a host that runs Apache and has php, but most hosts do!

Read article at Iceteks

NTFS.org have release their newest version of their XP-Tweak Guide, which is now called Tweaking Experience! a tweaking Guide for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 and Windows Server 2003! which brings together all tweaks for Microsoft Windows XP/2000/2003 such as Internet, Miscellanious, System Performance and User Interface related tweaks into a single easy-to-use centralized helpfile.

FrenzY recently published a nice budget cut-out howto on his website, he kindly granted us the permission to translate it and host it here at Madshrimps!

Don't want to spend a fortune on tools and still end up with a great looking cut-out? Then check out this fine piece of work by FrenzY!

If you just bought a new drive and you want to transfer your old files to it, this article is for you. The fastest and safest way is to use a 3rd party utility such as Drive Image.

Gamers Depot have thrown up a new article called Desktop GPU DX9 Showdown! which looks at the Pixel Shader 2.0 DX9 functionality within a gaming environment! what did we tell you? about Nvidia Cards, ATI bitchslaps Nvidia and they didn't even see it coming or did they? Hehe Half-Life 2 DirectX 9 Performance! Here's a snip.

Who are we to argue with NVIDIA?s wishes? They?ve been insisting that synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark 2003 don?t reflect actual game play - yesterday we took them up on that in the mobile space, and today we look at the desktop cards. Using a Beta build of Halo (version 1.5) and the newly released Tomb Raider Patch, we?ve been able to provide an early peak at Pixel Shader 2.0 performance ? even 1.1 and 1.4 performance as well.

AMD Insight.de has done up a performance comparison of the newly released Catalyst 3.7 drivers: They tested Catalyst 3.0 ,3.1 , 3.2 , 3.3 , 3.4 , 3.5 and 3.6 against the 3.7 running on a Radeon 9700 Pro using 6 DirectX benchmarks 3D Mark 2001 SE / 2003, Comanche 4 Demo, UT 2003 Demo, Aquanox 2, Splinter Cell and 4 OpenGL benchmarks Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Serious Sam 2 and MDK 2.

OCinside.de have updated their Interactive Pin-Mod Guide For AMD Athlon XP - T-Bred & Barton CPU's! It's well worth checking out.

This newest interactive project took about a half year, but I'm sure I didn't waste any of this time, because it's a very useful guide which will safe lot of your time and give you a new way to overclock your PC. From now on you are able to overclock the CPU easier with this new interactive Pin-Mod guide.

PCworld have posted a new guide that should come in very handy? when you have to reinstall windows.

Over time, Windows loses stability. If you keep a computer for more than two years, at some point you're going to have to bite the bullet and reinstall Windows from scratch. But contrary to popular belief, you won't have to reformat your hard drive (with one exception, discussed below). The bad stuff you need to get rid of is all in your Windows folder.

Walldow over at OC Forums has thrown up his Volt Mod Your GF FX Guide! Here's a rip.

The mod works for all fx based cards. the only differances are positioning of componants on the card. and the controllers are differant for the 8 piplined cards they have double the pins but the pin being used is the same pin the feedback pin (FB). read further for info.

Just got word that the Software Mod For Turning Your Radeon 9500 Non-Pro Into A 9700 guide has been updated for combination with the Catalyst 3.6 drivers! If the softmod succeeds your card will behave exactly like a 9700 (8 pipelines, 256bit bus) card.

Note: The 9800SE -> 9800 PRO mod has been released! See the download section for patched drivers files. The mod basically works the same as the 9500NP mod. Exact numbers on the success rate are yet unknown but it works.

Julio Franco at the Techspot sends word that he's brought their Radeon Tweak guide up to date, by releasing version 1.5! Now using as reference the popular Rage3DTweak utility.

Configure your system for best compatibility & performance.

Gamergod over at FutureMark's forum has searched around for all the best ATI tweak's, softmod and BIOS guides and stuck them in one guide!

Read More

Thanks to Mackey D for pointing me in the direction of this OVERCLOCKING THE NFORCE2 A BASIC GUIDE for newbies by ricjax99! well hell , some experienced overclockers might even find it useful! Here's a rip.

There are essentially two types of overclocking - front side bus and multiplier. Motherboards have a clock chip that generates a signal. This signal controls how fast the board's circuits run. This speed is measured in millions of cycles per second, or Megahertz. Today's current crop of motherboards run at stock speeds anywhere from 100Mhz to 166Mhz. Additionally, there is circuitry that enables the computer's processor, or CPU, to run at a multiple of the board speed, hence the term multiplier.

RipNet-UK has just posted a brief guide to removing the Lovesan virus from your PC. Bearing in mind the current proliferation of viruses this guide contains some very useful info!

The Inquirer.net is reporting that a Microsoft Word document has found it's way on to the world wide web! This isn't just any old document because just as the headline says, this is the Hands-On manual from the lab for Windows 64-bit editions.

Read More.

Just got word that Adrian has updated his premier BIOS optimization guide to 8.0 Interim Release 1! Here's some of the updates.

Read More.

Thanks to Cellar_Dweller for the Info: NTFS.org have release their newest version of their XP-Tweak Guide that works for both Windows 2000 and XP! and includes tweaks for Internet, Miscellaneous, System Performance and User Interface into a single easy-to-use centralized helpfile.. and has quite a bit of information in it.

A big thanks to Mackey D for pointing me in the direction of this Voltage Mod Guide for Nvidia's GeForce FX 5900 and GeForce FX 5600 Ultra at Xtreme Systems forum posted by fafnir! Here's a rip.

Props to Travis Hayes from O/C forums with help on this and cheers to the folks at theforumisdown.com... Travis' leadtek 5600 did 435mhz@1.45 volts and with the volt mod 480mhz@1.80 volts... my red generic 5600ultra does a bit more with watercooling.... with the stock cooling, the leadtek is at 100 celcius according to Travis... mine was at a more subtle 50 celcius with a koolance block.

Just got word that Designtechnica's Doug MacLean has thrown up his new System Optimization 2003 Guide! Here's a snip.

So you finally saved up enough money for a top of the line multimedia computer. It has that super fast Pentium IV processor, enough memory for a super computer and an ultra fast video card. Problem is you?ve noticed that it is slowing down; month by month the performance seems to be getting worse. Your DVDs start skipping; your MPEG3 files are halting in the middle of a song. Its frustrating isn?t it? The fault is not yours, its how the Microsoft operating systems were designed.