Today VIA announced the new DDR333 supporting chipset KT333. VIA again extends their leading position in AMD supporting DDR chipsets. The new revision step is not such an evolutionary leap as the introduction of the KT266A chipset was though. Nonetheless the new KT333 chipset will mark the performance bar among DDR333 solutions. Reviews so far: KT333 Review @ AMDMB KT333 Review @ The Tech-Report KT333 Review @ [H]ardOCP KT333 Review @ Anandtech KT333 Review @ ViaHardware Read more...

Just got word from Visionary@vr-zone.com that he's got hold of information on the upcoming SOYO K7V DRAGON Ultra board based on the VIA KT333(CE) chipset! The specs are:

3 184-pin DDR SDRAM up to 3GB (DDR 200/266/333)
5 PCI slots, 1 AGP Pro slot
On board CMI 8738 Audio chip
4 independent channels for eight IDE devices (two for raid)
VCore, DIMM and AGP voltage adjustable
SOYO Wizard On Hand II Function1MHz increment
Supports High-speed USB 2.0 ports (4 ports)

For more information visit VRZone under read more .

I was just surfing a message board and came across this link -- don't know if you guys report on this, or if Savagenews covers more hardware chipset related issues. VIA KT333: Credible Details Here @ Xbit-Labs

Savagenews.com A few hours ago we have received from InnoVISION Multimedia their Inno3D GeForce4 MX 440 video card. First I saw the excellent looking box, this seems to be just the best one made ever by Inno3D. The whole looks more like Inno3D GeForce2 Ti than anything other. I've got a few shots just for you and a quick 3D Mark 2001 SE test... so hit the link above. I expect that the GeForce 4 MX series will not find many friends out there. Lacking DirectX 8 support can not be evened by good performance at least not in the Doom3+ era. You might be able to find a better card in the MX price segment so keep your eyes open.

LOL! I myself report on Planet-XP.de - our german branch - that a german supermarket ring will offer an Elsa Bundle with the following: Elsa Nvidia TNT2 M64 32MB graphics card Elsa 3D Revelator | cable version And all that for the shiny price of ?14.99. Read the full article over there if you live in Germany and want to grab yourself some pretty 3D glasses:
Beware of the run to the supermarket...

These are some features I found while testing the A7V333 - just scroll down & read a post by Naser from Tbreak.

Thermalgoo.com has recently opened it's doors.

They have posted an 'interesting' article on lighting your case WITHOUT having to buy expensive 'neons'.

Click here to view the case mod article

t-break has published a review for the ASUS KT333 motherboard. Rumors say that the new VIA chipset will ship after Cebit 2002 at the latest.

As much as we love our Athlons, we have to agree that the P4 runs cooler and is less likely to burn. When AMD released the Athlon XP, they offered a way for SOME kind of protection through the on-die temperature sensor that could be used to prevent overheating. However, almost all motherboard manufacturers have still not implemented this feature. Now on the A7V333, ASUS offers a feature called C.O.P. or CPU Overheating Protection and although nowhere does ASUS mention about C.O.P. taking the reading from the Athlon XP's on-die temperature sensor, we have a feeling that it does because ASUS clearly states in the manual that it only works with the Athlon XP CPU and we couldn't find any thermal sensor under the CPU socket.

I noticed an interesting article @ TweakTown regarding the unbelievable amount of customers who reported serious data loss errors and frequent fail rates. I myself had fortunately no problems at all with my 75GXP HDD but nervertheless this article might solve a few problems for ya. And you might have already guessed it - it's all about cooling. Read more...

After processors and graphics cards it is now possible to cool your harddisks with water.
The guys over @ Digital-Explosion have an article online how to do just that.
Here's a byte: So how do you cool two hot disks with water? Well, some imspection of my Seagate Barracuda's revealed that there's what appears to be a large aluminium heat-transfer block that runs right through the disk. This is the bit you normally attatch to your case. So, the best option I figured would be to bolt a couple of plates to this and cool them with water. Unfortunately, bolting to the sides only gives you quite a small contact-area so to increase the effectivety of the cooler I decided to sandwich the two drives around another cooled plate. To cool these plates down the easiest thing to do is solder some copper pipes directly to them and connect it up to my existing rig. Head over and read the article if you're interested.

The guys over @ X-bit Labs have the new Asus roadmap for their graphics card lineup online.
Read more to take a look @ the map.

T-Break seems to have a premiere here. They review MSI's VIA KT333 solution. This board is feature packed as one can get: USB 2.0, Onboard ATA133 as per VIA VT8233A southbridge, Promise 20276 ATA-133 RAID controller supporting four additional hard drives and Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio. Here is a snip from the review: VIA's KT333 is the third chipset for the Athlon platform that is aiming to bring PC-2700 or DDR-333 into mainstream. We looked at the first two chipsets supporting this faster type of memory- the ALi Magik in the form of Iwill's XP-333 and SiS 745 in the form of ECS K7S6A. Unfortunately, both the chipsets disappointed as far as DDR-333 performance was concerned. Would VIA be able to succeed where ALi and SiS failed? We'll find it out today with the MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU motherboard, based on the highly anticipated KT333 chipset. Read the full hardware scoop here.

Suma have released a GF3 Ti 200 64MB SE overclockable BIOS. This BIOS will enable you to improve the memory frequency.

Please be cautious that the system may be scrambled or damaged when you overclock it excessively!

Adek from M3DZone reviews the nForce 420D chipset based board, which supports the latest AMD Athlon, Athlon XP and Duron processor series. Well if you're looking for an all-in-one solution you can find the review here.

NVIDIA have updated their list of Device ID's to include the new line of GeForce4 Ti/Mx based graphics cards. This is handy to verify that the graphics card you purchased is legit.

According to this Chinese source, ATI will announce a new RADEON 8500XT graphics card and a new RV250 chip in March, at the CeBIT show. The official name, which will be assigned to RV250 is said to be RADEON 8800. Although this name of RV250 implies that this chip will have some architectural differences distinguishing it from RADEON 8500, we still know nothing about it. Maybe these differences will lie with the improved T&L unit, however, we don?t have any evidence proving this information. The cards built on RADEON 8500XT and RADEON 8800 will be equipped with 128MB high-speed DDR SDRAM, and the chips will be made with 0.15micron manufacturing technology. The chip and memory frequency of RADEON 8500XT cards will equal 300MHz, and of RADEON 8800 cards ? 350MHz. Thanks to X-bit Labs for the pointer.

X-bit Labs has a review of IBM's new 120GXP HDD online. This drive features 80GB storage capacity as well as 7200 RPM on an ATA100 interface. According to X-bit Labs the harddisk is also a top performer: The disk drives were connected as Master-units to a separate IDE-channel. DMA support in Windows was enabled. We used FAT32 and NTFS file systems to format each of them as one logical drive of the maximum size with the default cluster. All the tests were run 4 times and then the average results were taken for the diagrams. The HDDs didn't rest for cooling down between the tests. Check out the full review here.

Taiwanese company GlobalWin comes with a nifty surprise for all hardware geeks. They announced two new cooler systems namely the TAK58 & TAK68! The TAK58 is designed for CPU's up to 1.7Ghz while the TAK68 is capable of keeping a 2.1Ghz CPU cool. The goal was to provide customers with a silent but efficient cooling solution. Innovative about the new products is that two fans are mounted vertical to a cooling base and simply snapped onto the socket with a 6 point clam using a simple thumb screw. Neat!

ReactorCritical seems to have some scoop on Gigabyte's latest offering "powered by ATI": Apparently, Gigabyte has changed the layout of their RADEON 8500 board. The reason? Better cooling or funky look,the board will be equipped with 64 MB of 3.6 ns DDR and clocked at 275/275 MHz core/memory; VGA, DVI and TV-Out connectors are maintained onboard. As the previous "versions", this very board has hardware monitoring functions and advanced cooling system. who really cares? Here we go with the pictures:

NeoSeeker has some monitors reviewed for you. Thought this might me quite interesting cause I'm on the lookout for a new monitor myself. I'm probably going for the Eizo 21" F931 soon. Here are the ones Neoseeker has given a treat: 17": LG 795FT Plus, NEC FE750, Viewsonic PF775, Samsung 700NF. 19": LG 915FT Plus, NEC FE950+, Viewsonic PF790, Samsung 900NF Check out this informative review @ Neoseeker.