The Madshrimps report back from Cebit 2005 with news on water cooling solutions, new air cooled heatsinks and a nice collection of flashy casemods!

There aren?t many dedicated consumer soundcards in the market that support eight discreet channels of sound in the market and AUDIOTRAK Prodigy 7.1 is one of them.

Hardware Zone

The Chinese website HKEPC Hardware have snagged the first details , pic's and benchmarks of AMD & Intel multi-core & dual core processors! Here's a quick translation by Google.

The HKEPC editorial department one's own looks for AMD new generation of Dual Core the Opteron processor, hoped takes advantage of this discovers the answer for everybody.

HEXUS.net has details on AMD's dual core processors for the desktop. They will be called "Athlon 64 X2" and the flagship model will be called the X2 4800+, with 4600+ and 4400+ models to be available too. The X2 4800+ will feature two 2.4Ghz cores, so does that mean we'll be seeing performance similar to that of two single core Athlon 64 4000+ processors?

DirectX 9-class graphics cards have been available for some time, but a year ago, hardware MPEG2 TV tuners were only widely available from Hauppauge. This situation changed recently with the release of ATI?s TV Wonder Elite and NVIDIA?s NVTV, both of which offer hardware MPEG2 encoding. Hauppauge has also been busy revising and expanding its PVR lineup with products specifically designed for Media Center Edition 2005. But which hardware MPEG2 TV tuner reigns supreme? We've rounded up ATI?s TV Wonder Elite, NVIDIA?s NVTV, and Hauppauge?s PVR-150MCE-l.p to find out.

We have some more pictures and information from our excursion to Germany. Do you like girls, beer and heatsinks? Then this one is for you!

Bit-Tech

Still sitting on the fence about PCI Express? We review the technology and tell you the advantages and disadvantages over AGP.

Viperlair

Anyone can get a bunch of LCD monitors together and show off some pretty benchmarks. However, if the reviewers don't understand the numbers theyre getting from the benchmarks its pointless. Fortunately, you have a trusted partner at FiringSquad, where our team of gamers, videophiles, and pro-photographers can make sense of pixel refresh times and colorimetry. Weve pulled those Dang brothers out of retirement to let them take a look at 8 different budget LCDs.

After years of providing chipsets for AMD processors only, today NVIDIA officially unveils their first chipset for the Intel Pentium platform: the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition. As its name implies, this new chipset is based on the same fundamental technologies found in today's nForce4 SLI chipset for the Athlon 64, including GigE with firewall, Serial ATA II support, 7.1-channel audio, 10 USB ports, and of course, 20 lanes of PCI Express for SLI! But how does this new chipset perform?

The technology called Perpendicular Recording is considered to be an evolution to the world of hard drives. According to technical specifications, this new method of magnetizing particles on two opposite ends of hard drives is similar to what you find in today?s hard drives. The only difference, however, is that the magnetically charged particles will be perpendicular instead of longitudinal. This methodology results in applying more particles into a smaller disk area, thereby, increasing the overall hard drive capacity.

Intel and AMD have taken very different approaches towards achieving the next level of CPU performance. In Part 2 of this article, we examine what the two companies are planning through 2015 and beyond. We also discuss the limits of miniaturization and explore a possible new frontier in CPU technology: probabilistic computing.

Toms Hardware Guide

A sneak peek at the EVGA SLI Twin Turbo Bracket!

A stylish new accessory to go with your EVGA SLI rig!

We recently sat down with Daniel Foster, the PR & Marketing Manager for the EMEA region for Sapphire and had an interesting chat about their current lineup and whats in store.

T-Break

Which card is faster in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition or GeForce 6800 Ultra? What does HDR look like and do the 3.0 shaders Ubisoft has implemented look any better or bring any performance improvements over older shader instructions? All these topics and more are discussed in Part 1 of our 3D Performance with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory article. Read the answers inside!

FiringSquad

HEXUS.net reports on a surprise move from AMD: But suddenly, out of nowhere, AMD have delivered a hammer blow to ATI, NVIDIA and Intel with a stunning new GPU that is set to light up the accelerator scene in a fashion not seen since 3Dfx brought out the Voodoo.

Excited over NVIDIA's dual GPU card? Worried about ATI's survival already? Well, don't worry! ATI has not just one, but TWO aces up their sleeves! Codenamed Sugar Ray and Rocky, ATI's double punch strategy is targeted squarely at NVIDIA. Will they knock NVIDIA off? Let's find out!

We spotted an interesting SLI implementation on MSI's NForce 4 Intel Edition motherboard at CeBit 2005. Today, MSI have revealed the mystery that was underneath the sticker. We have a brief look how the solution works, and how it will improve the whole installation of an SLI configuration.

Bit-Tech

ABS Computer Technologies, a popular custom PC builder, has recently announced its Ultimate E2 Media Center PC that is solely targeted at those with a desire to have a powerful multimedia PC. This particular multimedia system supports an Intel Pentium 4 microprocessor based on the latest Socket 775 at 3.0GHz clock speed. This is a default processor of choice, but for a higher price it could be upgraded to a faster one.

Today TweakTown step aside from the usual motherboard or processor review and take a look at two of the latest DVD burners to emerge from two large Taiwanese companies, ASUS and Gigabyte. Both drives support DVD burning at 16x and both support Dual Layer burning. If you're on the market for a new DVD burner, one of these might be what you're looking for.

Remember the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra? Remember its dual slot cooler? Oh, how we all laughed at the time. Of course, since then dual slot coolers have grown in popularity. After all, these framerate factories need cooling somehow! However, a bit of clever thinking can still bring great performance without the loss of an expansion slot, as proved by GeCube with their Radeon X850 XT Uniwise