After launching their server and workstation-oriented dual-core Opteron processors last month, today AMD is allowing the press to release benchmarks on their dual-core desktop "X2" Athlon 64 processors, which will be available starting in June. See how the new processor stacks up to the latest single and dual-core processors from both AMD and Intel, as well as overclocking results with our Athlon 64 X2 4800+ chip inside!

Both ATI and NVIDIA have released ultra-budget GPUs that utilize the PCI Express bus and system memory to function. Which vendor has the better implementation? We take a look at ATI's offering and compare with pair of PNY GeForce 6200 TC cards.

PC Perspective

According to an industry insider, NVIDIA will add support for large flat panel displays in its next generation of GPUs. Currently, only the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra with 512MB support this feature, but the company will make this characteristic a standard throughout its upcoming product line.

Thanks to our good friends over at www.xoxide.com we are giving away two Thermalright XP-90 CPU Coolers. These are the top of the line air coolers overclocking. Again, we'd like to thank the folks at www.xoxide.com for making this one possible. Be sure to check out their X-Hour every week 9-10pm EST on Sunday nights. Also, they stock some of the latest cooling, case and other assorted products on the market at some of the lowest prices!

In our 512MB Radeon X800 XL review we ran several Doom 3 tests because id Software have long since spoken of Doom 3's "Ultra" mode requiring more than 500MB of video memory to operate effectively. However, our first look at a 512MB board we could see very little performance difference between a 256MB and 512MB board with either our own Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil test or the standard, pre-supplied demo1 test in Doom 3. We've queried this with id, asking how our performance numbers reconciles with their comments on the Ultra mode's memory requirements and id Programmer Brian Harris replied with the following:

Logitech has released the Logitech® V250 Cordless Mouse and Number Pad. The number pad was first only found with the dinovo family of mouse keybaord and pad. But is is now available without the keyboard.

The latest SiS roadmap shows that SiS649FX and SiS656FX chipsets are able to support 1066FSB and DDR2-667. EM64T, XD, EIST Technologies are ready on all of SiS P4 chipsets. Dual core technology currently under validation will be ready on all of SiS P4 chipsets.

VR-Zone

AMD's next generation of processors will be based on the Socket M2, like the current Socket 939 it will be based on the PGA package, but the pin counts will increase to 940. Looking at the picture above, it seems like it will not be able to accommodate the current AMD Athlon64s and Opterons.

VR-Zone

With its arrival on the chipset market with AMD processors in 2001, NVIDIA has slowly made its way to the top of this market, this is due more particularly to the nForce 2 and nForce 4, which have provided better performances and functionalities than the competition. NVIDIA is now attacking the Pentium 4 market with the Intel version of the nForce 4 SLI. What is this chipset worth compared to the i925XE ?

NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition - Preview

Based on information from a number of sources, HEXUS can exclusively reveal details about ATi?s dual-card technology for Multi Video Processing units (MVP).

Previewed earlier this year at CeBIT, ECS's upcoming PF88 motherboard was very much the centre of attention in the motherboard dept due to its ability to support both Intel or AMD CPUs (with the help of their "SIMA - Simply Smart" convertor card technology). The board is natively a well featured Intel LGA775 arrangement with support for EM64T, but simply adding the convertor card allows one to switch to Athlon64 with ease, rather then heading out and picking up a whole new motherboard.

TweakTown

Air cooling seems rather old-hat in these days of water and phase-change, but it's still the method of choice for the vast majority of users. 3DVelocity takes a look at a couple of coolers for Intel's Socket 478.

I'm not quite sure if the recent surge in CPU coolers is due to some kind of upsurge in air cooling or if it's just one of those unexplainable coincidences that we have to put down to some strange, latent energy force that circles the universe causing all manner of phenomenon. Phenomenon like buses that arrive in threes or friends offering things for sale at ridiculously cheap prices the day after you paid far too much for the same thing elsewhere.

As we reported recently, ATI and NVIDIA may very well introduce their next generation of GPUs at Computex this year. Along with that, ATI may also unveil their Multi-VPU or "SLI" technology at the world?s largest hardware tradeshow as well. We also discussed pricing with our sources, but unfortunately, we only a got a broad reply. Since R520 will be ATI?s flagship product line, you can expect the high-end graphics adapters to be more expensive than ATI?s X850 XT PE, which retails around $470.00 on Newegg. That being said, we expect the prices to fall down on the X850 series significantly, therefore, keeping the pricing of R520 prices in a reasonable spectrum. No real surprise here.

Fresh from our review and presentation of the 3DXtreme Editor's Choice Award, Aerocool is providing us another Turbine 550 Watt Power Supply (value $105 USD) to give away to one lucky winner.

The contest rules are as usual, one posted reply to this thread is allowed per day, multiple posts in one day will disqualify. Make sure you have 5 valid forum posts elsewhere in the 3DXtreme.net Forums. Contest open to residents of USA and Canada. This contest will run until May 28th, 2005 at 12:00am.

Ever since NVIDIA introduced its SLI to the market, everyone immediately thought about ATI and the company?s possible reply to its rival?s Scalable Link Interface technology. Soon after NVIDIA?s launch, speculations flooded numerous publications, which stated that ATI was also working on its version of "SLI" or Multi-VPU technology.

The World Cyber Games at Cebit included a European Casemodding Exhibition this year. Hypercube creator Gert Swolfs reports on all the modding action.

Bit-Tech

Majority of us knew that ATI and NVIDIA were going to stick with their 9-month product refresh timeframe and launch their next generation of GPUs sometime this year. Earlier speculations revealed that both companies would come out with new products towards the end of the year, but it looks like that won?t be the case, after all.

CoolTechZone

Thus far, we have seen memory makers offer their DDR2 modules with Cas. Latency of 3 at the lowest. In fact, 3 is what is being as labeled as "low-latency" in the DDR2 market these days, but that may change in the near future.

CoolTechZone

Seems as though folks with a pocket full of money are getting the shaft when it comes to using their NVIDIA SLI setup. Users that have recently purchased monitors such at Dell's 2005FPW Widescreen LCD panels are having some major quality issues when it comes to using their SLI setups. The biggest complaint seems to be a "jittery" or "rolling" screen. Also some folks have complained about Vsync being broken as well under SLI with their widescreens.

[H]ardOCP

3D stereo technology has made major strides in the past few years, so we felt it was time to take a look at the state of the industry and several different 3D stereo technologies that are available. We include a discussion of autostereoscopic displays, which allow a viewer to watch 3D images without the need for 3D glasses or other aids.

Toms Hardware Guide