This part of the guide deals with the another aspect of OCing, or should I say the Sport behind OCing. thus, I'm not stating/declaring that the speeds achieved are 100% stable for my taste. (which I believe should be the same for most OCers) To remind you, for me, a certain OC is Stable if & only if the system can complete an error-free 24 hours of Prime95's (or SP2004) LARGE FFT's, and in this case an since the CPU is a Dually, 2 instances of Prime95 (SP2004) is a MUST! Plus it must complete any other benchmark you choose, including games.

One of the most frequently asked questions we have is about audio drivers. Just because you have a VIA chipset, do you always need a VIA audio driver? How do you tell if your integrated audio solution is actually VIA AC'97? And how do you navigate through the driver database options to end up with the right choice? Hopefully this new guide will provide all of the answers - and reduce the number of inquiries about audio drivers.

VIA Arena

Two years ago I blogged about a similar subject. I discussed the advantages of Internet Explorer (IE) over Mozilla and other web browsers in a corporate environment. I concluded that IE is by far the better choice. Recently we deployed about 250 new computers and so I considered this question again. Now, Firefox is the main rival of IE. The decision was not so easy this time, but IE won again in the end.

There are a lot of Digital Video Recorders on the market right now, some cable and satellite companies will give you one with their service for a small fee. Unfortunately, most of them come with low amounts of storage, sometimes only 20 or 30 hours of regular content. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority aren't network compatible to play files off a file server, they can't run games, they don't allow you to share the programs you record on other computers in the house, and they seem to be almost universally slow.

The GIGABYTE GA-G1975X displays good overclocking potential but is greatly limited by CPU core voltage issues. The CPU voltage drops a lot under load, and this greatly impacts the overclocking on this board. Fear not though, we have tried to perfect this board with a simple core voltage modification.

VR-Zone

The newest development of the interactive Socket 939 Pinmod guide is published on ocinside.de. In the new version 1.1 are some new connections to increase the Vcore (CPU voltage) and now also selections to lower the Vcore which is important to underclock processors. For example to lower the power consumption of HTPCs (Home Theater PCs).

Back in January AMD released the first Athlon 64 FX based on their new dual core technology. The FX60 proved to be a great performer across the board, and we dabbled a bit in overclocking. Today we throw stock air, high end air, watercooling, and phase change cooling at the beast to see what method proves best. Before we do here are the specs from AMD on this impressive piece of silicon.

The ocinside.de OC-Database got several updates and contains at present nearly 10000 registered systems for a direct comparison. Beside other things now also the AMD Opteron dual core, AMD Turion 64, AMD geode, Intel Pentium D and Intel Celeron D is selectable.

In pursuit of further overclocks on graphics card memory, one looks into several aspects, such as memory voltages. When it does not help much, we start looking at cooling. RAMsinks are usually used for this purpose, but I was looking for something more cooling... a lot more cooling.

Elite Bastards retro team have compiled the first half of an 'A to Z of classic games'. Part one of this article covers the letters A through to M.

This is a freeware graphical web browser guide for Windows. All of the following web browsers are 100% free, not Shareware. None have any Adware or Spyware. All have been installed and tested for basic compatibility with Windows XP. Most should work with other versions of Windows, just check the requirements. However, Internet Explorer 7 will only work in Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Using our tips and tricks for quiet PCs, we build a high-performance system that a gamer could love and a roommate could tolerate.

ExtremeTech

OnMac have released the Bootloader and Guide for those of you that want to Install Windows XP on an Intel iMac.

On top of our in-depth reviews of the newly launched 7900 and 7600 series of GPUs, we have also looked into the voltage regulation on each of these cards and we bring to the overclocking community the first Voltage modifications guide in the world for these cards! For the 7600GT all you need is a humble pencil to do it!

We reviewed the relatively new NVIDIA 7800GS AGP a short while ago. It is definitely a very overclockable card by just bumping the speeds up using software means. However, seasoned users may want to unlock the overclocking potential of this card further with hard mods to enable more voltage and current for the card. Now, you can.

VR-Zone

We reviewed the recently launched ASUS A8R32 MVP based on the new RD580 chipset just recently. It is a great platform to overclock on, but for extreme overclocking conditions, some simple hardware modifications may help you break that personal-best record of yours.

VR-Zone

This article is intended to introduce the average user to the various backup methods available and to provide a brief overview of these methods. By doing so I hope to show that backing up a computer is a quick and easy process.

Is 3DMark06 a useful benchmark? That's the question our Group Technical Editor is attempting to answer today as he investigates the ins and outs of the latest 3DMark: "It's my opinion that Futuremark can't reasonably expect to engineer a benchmark that acts just as a game does, without actually engineering a game itself."

HEXUS

OCIA.net has posted their Performance System Building Guide, the last of three in a monthly series of system building articles.

Carrying over from the mainstream guide is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. This chip is clocked from the factory at 2.0 GHz (10 x 200) but is capable of MUCH more. From an overclocker's perspective, I see no reason in purchasing a "faster" model X2. Why? Simple... take the X2 4800+ (clocked at 2.4 GHz), currently retailing for over $600. With good air cooling, most 3800+ chips are capable of well over 2.4 GHz.

Again less coffee may be drunk, because finally OCinside.de succeeded to publish the first interactive Pinmod guide for current AMD Athlon 64 Socket 939 CPUs ! In the version 1.0 it's like in the previous AMD SocketA Pinmod guide necessary to connect different CPU pins with small wires.