I just over @ Hardwarezone.com and I noticed that they have posted a 4 page preview of SiS upcoming 655 chipset featured on Asus P4SDX. Here's a snip: What looked like a normal product release turned out to be a shocker when we unzipped the attachment. Inside, ASUS revealed to us for the first time, pictures and specifications of their newest SiS-based motherboard for the Intel Pentium 4. The new SiS655 chipset is not even revealed at the SiS website and here, ASUS already had a sample. Although information was scarce, we later realized that the SiS655 is the next generation of P4 chipset that will support dual-channel DDR333 memory. This would immediately bring obsolescence to Intel's much anticipated Granite Bay as its theoretical memory bandwidth is much larger - up to 5.4GB/s while dual-channel DDR266 chipsets would only deliver 4.2GB/s.

AMD has confirmed availability of two versions of their Athlon XP 2600+ CPU ('yet to hit retailers'). According to this compatibility chart AMD is going to ship two flavours of it.

Microsoft Corp.'s Tablet PC operating system will have its long awaited coming-out party next week, joined by a handful of hardware devices that bring Windows XP to a new form factor.

Vendors announcing Tablet PC-based devices include Hewlett Packard Co., Acer Inc., Fujitsu PC Corp., Viewsonic Corp. and Toshiba America Information Systems. Prices and features of tablet PC models from Acer, Toshiba and ViewSonic, posted on CompUSA's Web site this week, range from just over $2,000 to $2,500.

Just got word from Nvchips-fr.com that they have snagged screenshots and info on Asus's new range of Nvidia Geforce4 AGP 8X cards. There's 6 in all.

VR-Zone has attended the launch of the new Creative MegaWorks THX 5.1 550 and witnessed the live demo today at Creative HQ. The Creative MegaWorks THX 5.1 550 is the highest range of speakers meant for Audiophiles featuring 6-channel BASH amplification that pumps out up to 500 Watts of burst power for a truly immersive experience with games, DVD movies and other multimedia content.

Active Cool, located in Ashkelon, Israel, develops solid-state high-power cooling solutions for PC processors and other semiconductors. Active Cool has developed the world's first solid-state power cooling solution for PC processors, AC4G. AC4G can be installed in any PC in less than 90 seconds. AC4G's patent-pending new approach to processor cooling is poised to a new generation of generic PC cooling solutions. Read more...

Chipset designers VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) are both planning to launch several new products next month, hoping to keep the high-season business momentum going after mid-November with more appealing product specifications. For Intel?s Pentium 4 platform, VIA is expected to introduce its new dual-channel DDR-supporting P4X600 discrete chipset as well as two more integrated chipsets, the P4M266A and P4M400. Incorporating the company?s more advanced ?Castle Rock? graphics core, the P4M400 will primarily target the medium-range to high-end market.

So you want an aluminum case but you don't have the time or skills to modify it properly. What are you to do? Come join TweakTown as they take a look at the Sky Hawk Jupiter Case. It offers an aluminum construction, factory mods and some other items that make it an intriguing enclosure. But of course, we'll also be looking at it's cooling potential and everything else that we can think of. Come see if this is the case for you!

Anandtech has reviewed ATI Radeon 9500 Pro card (which is yet to be launched). The tested card was not a final version but was rather 9500 chipset stuck on 9700 board; the results were not bad, but rather promising (you have to say this when its ATI nowadays...) which means more room for improvement on final versions. This "Card" will be targeted towards GeForce4 Ti 4200/GeForce 4 Ti 4400. Long term upgraders will be happy to know this one is DirectX 9 compatible.
Hit Read more for feature&spec list as well as Review link...

Siliconstrategies reports that Advanced Micro Devices is planning a future version of its Hammer processor family to support DDR-II memory, the JEDEX Conference in Beijing was told. Fred Weber, AMD vice president and chief technology officer, told the JEDEC-sponsored IC meeting that a new processor core with on-die memory controller will be developed to support DDR-II. The initial Opteron Hammer chip for servers and the desktop Claw Hammer version have on-die controllers supporting only the present DDR generation.

Xbitlabs have reviewed two of the latest Socket A chipsets from the two major players on the market: NVIDIA and VIA. Who will win the race? A whole bunch of tests with different memory types and FSB frequencies will help to find this out.

Check out this little bad boy called Cubit.

Xbitlabs reviewed today's fastest gaming graphics solution from ATI: RADEON 9700 Pro. Besides the indepth performance investigation, they also like to offer you a highly detailed coverage of FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering techniques and their implementation in the newcomer and its closest rivals. DirectX9 is coming: get ready now with Xbitlabs.com.

From Matrox Press release October 24th, 2002 :-
"Matrox Graphics Inc., the leading manufacturer of professional graphics solutions, today announced the new Parhelia 256MB graphics board designed for the most demanding 3D workstation users in the AEC, DCC, MCAD and GIS markets. At an ESP of US $599, an unprecedented price for this memory configuration on a graphics accelerator, the Parhelia 256MB provides the ultimate in productivity and reliability, award-winning image quality and cutting-edge workstation features. "

The VPR Matrix 200A5 is the third notebook Best Buy has created, and it's the best. It's also the first Windows notebook with a wide-aspect, 15.2-inch LCD with a 1,280x854 native resolution and a remarkable, high-fidelity digital audio system. The $2,399 system also includes a 2GHz Pentium 4-M, 512MB of DDR SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, a combo CD-RW/DVD drive, and integrated 802.11b wireless networking. It all comes in an eye-catching, silver-magnesium case that weighs 6.4 pounds and measures 13.9 inches wide, 10 inches deep, and 1.2 inches thick.

We reviewed two new generation IDE hard disk drives from Seagate and Maxtor. Higher data density, new huge platters and excellent noise levels. Which one will win now?

Just got word from Crow @Darkcrow.co.kr that he's posted the Sparkle Platinum Geforce4 Ti4600 Review and don't forget the site in Korean.

Designed for the most demanding 3D workstation users at an ESP of US $599, an unprecedented price for this memory configuration on a graphics accelerator, Matrox Parhelia 256MB provides the ultimate in productivity and image quality for the AEC, DCC, MCAD and GIS markets. In addition to offering award-winning image quality, no compromise reliability and cutting-edge workstation features, Matrox Parhelia 256MB enables sustained productivity by providing ample local memory for the most demanding design environments including 3D across triple-displays and complex rendering with abundant high-resolution texture usage.

I had originally planned to write up a little article on the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 launch event I attended today, however, after just returning from it there wasn't much exciting happening at the event that deserves special mention. Furthermore, much of the information we obtained at the launch is going to be discussed in detail in our full review of the sound card that will be written as soon as we get our hands on a 6.1 speaker system to do thorough testing with. Read More