OCIA.net has posted their Budget System Building Guide, the first in a monthly series of system building articles.

This XFX 6600GT card made the list for our video needs as it will suit a wide variety of end users. With a core clocked at 500 MHz and GDDR3 memory running at 1,000 MHz, gamers will find the card to be quite capable of running many of today's latest games at medium quality settings or higher. Multitaskers will appreciate the dual DVI-out ports, allowing you to run dual monitors should you choose to do so. This card also comes SLI-ready. In the event that you upgrade your motherboard to an SLI-model down the road, you can add a second 6600GT and have a nice and powerful SLI system that won't break the bank.

ATI, most of its partners, retailers claiming shipping consumer cards are HDCP-ready. These claims are untrue

We have got to know the specs for the upcoming 90nm G71 series already. There will be two models as we have revealed before; the GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7900 GT. However, the performance differences between the two models seem to be pretty huge and we can expect quite a huge price difference too.

AMD has been quite the busy bee lately. The Athlon FX-60 launched a few weeks ago, the Opteron x85 series launches in a few weeks, and the whole platform will get an overhaul in early June. AMD's latest roadmap reveals more about all of these projects and adds several more that have not yet been disclosed.

DailyTech

We've gotten hold of an upcoming ASUS motherboard that runs off the upcoming ATi RD580, or better known as Xpress 3200 chipset. This new chipset supports dual PCIe x16 meant for multiple graphics solutions. We've got some sneak preview pictures of this upcoming board in our forums.

VR-Zone

Expectations have been building for the release of NVIDIA's next generation G7x parts, specifically G71 which is thought to be the higher performance, 90nm, refresh to 7800's G70 chip.

Beyond3D

We've looked at a couple of nVidia nForce4 SLI X16 chipset motherboards but today we compare it to the original nForce4 SLI chipset in high-end gaming and see what it offers.

T-Break

Nec will release this month the first monitor equipped with a 6ms response time AS-IPS panel.
If its characteristics are verified, it will display good colors, stable and its viewing angles will be the widest of all LCDs. Will it be the TN and VA killer?

LCD20WGX²

Several internal memos and roadmaps from Intel confirmed what many of us already suspected: Intel's Conroe (and Merom) will feature SSE4. The next generation SSE instructions were listed as part of the the platforms "Significant Video Enhancements" built into the upcoming Intel platforms.

DailyTech

HardwareOC have snagged the first pictures of MSI 's M2N Platinum AM2 socket mainboard.

We have seen the GeForce 7900 GT card already and we can say that the PCB layout is different from the current 7800GT card. The PWM area is slightly different too.

VR-Zone

We just received news that internal roadmaps from ATI have revealed more information about R590. R590 will launch at the beginning of March for $279 (depending on vendor). The R590 ASIC is effectively the Radeon X1900 core, but at a lower clock speed with some disabled features -- the roadmap did not state exactly what has been disabled.

DailyTech

MOBILE HARD DRIVES have never been particularly fast, so the fact that hard drives are typically the slowest components in the average PC counts for even more in the laptop world. There was a time when 4,200 RPM was the norm for 2.5" notebook drives, and even today, 4,200-RPM drives are fairly common. The Tech Report

We have been watching the mobile processor space for a while now with some interest, wondering whether the Turion 64 really matches up well against the Pentium M. The Pentium M's power-saving features and performance per watt are the stuff of modern legend. AMD has done well with Opteron in servers and the Athlon 64 in desktops, but surely AMD's K8-derived mobile competitor doesn't match up with the likes of the Pentium M. Does it?

Following our previous report discussing Firing Squads HDCP article we?ve been contacted by Sapphire who presently have some experience with this issue. Sapphire are currently in the process of ramping their mass production of a line of low profile X1600 and X1300 boards specifically targeted at the High Definition Home Theater PC market with an HDMI output and HDCP built in.

Beyond3D

Watching Intel the past few years is like watching a formerly great boxer who took one too many hits in the chin. Stumbling around, not really coherent, but still dangerous because of its size. This year, they're looking to hit a whole new low.

FiringSquad

Will plugging a USB 2.0 device into your notebook kill your battery life? Is Intel's new Core Duo processor the victim.

Everything you need to know about the new digital audio and video HDMI connector, which will be used by DVD players, videoprojectors, HDTV sets and LCD panels.

HardwareSecrets

Looking forward to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray playback now that you have your GeForce 6 or 7, or ATI AVIVO Radeon? It?s too bad. None of the current cards from ATI or NVIDIA available at retail will support HDCP. Yep, you read that right: that $500 video card you just bought doesn?t support HDCP!

FiringSquad

Eizo said to Behardware.com during an interview that general public monitors colors quality didn't last. They aren't stable with time and calibrating them isn't sufficient. Electronic components aren't good enough to permanently display quality colors. This is something that needed to be investigated. Behardware.com has taken four monitors and measured their colors during 30 consecutive hours. Differences were noticed and it is possible to confirm it: some colors change with time. And they can sometime change a lot if the brightness is also taken into consideration.