ExtremeTech has taken a view @ the new ATI Radeon 8500.
Here´s a bit:
We pitted the Brothers Radeon (8500 and 7500) in a tag-team match-up with nVidia's GeForce 3 wrecking crew of the Ti 500 and the Ti 200, and in fine WWF style, there were pile-drivers, sleeper holds and flying suplexes scored by both sides, though the judges' decision gave the nod to nVidia at this point. So without further ado, let's have at it. ExtremeTech Review

Rambus today released details of its next generation memory signaling technology during Rambus Developer Forum (RDF) 2001. Code-named "Yellowstone", the new signaling technology is capable of data transfer rates of 3.2 Gigahertz (GHz) with a roadmap to 6.4GHz.

3DXtreme follow Warp2Search footsteps with their own Audigy review. Here´s a scoop:
The EAX in certain games playing with headphones late at night had the hair on my arms standing up. It's incredible! Being that my wife was sleeping I fired up Red Faction, slapped on my headphones and headed into the world of Red Faction. I had played through it already using my original SB Live card and can say it wasn't even the same. The EAX was extremely accurate in it's directional ability and even with headphones it was intense. The advanced 3d audio makes it easy to determine where the action is coming from in a gaming environment. I have also experienced much richer bass when playing CD music or mp3's. The clarity was better than the Live Value and the bass while using my same speaker setup was much richer, cleaner. Read it

Asus have released some new BIOSes for their motherboards. Here they go:

A7A266 v1008b | 2001/10/18 Add support for AMD Athlon XP CPU.

P4B v1005 | 2001/10/17 Fix system reboots itself when shutting down from Windows 2000 in APM mode. Fix system can not boot up with RAMOS RM28S180TA-13AC 128MB 133MHz SDRAM.

A7V266 v1002c | 2001/10/16 Add support for AMD Athlon XP CPU.

A7M266 v1005 | 2001/10/16 Add support for AMD Athlon XP CPU and for AMD Morgan CPU.

A1B v2.0.3 | 2001/10/16 SiS 630 VGA Driver for Win2000/XP.

Fdrsoft seem to have found some Sparkle GeForce TI Firmware for the following cards:

GeForce3 TI 500 bios v3.20.00.18

GeForce3 TI 200 bios v3.20.00.18

GeForce2 TI 200 bios v3.15.01.04

Don't know if these's work for all Geforce cards but if you try 'em post your comments here or in the forum.

Download the Nvidia GeForce TI Firmware under Mercredi 17 Octobre.

Our affiliate friends from 3DXtreme have taken a close look on ATI's budget board. Here's a snip: The performance of this card puts it under that of a Geforce 3 but on par or above that of a Geforce 2 pro and ultra. The drivers are stable and decent but with more maturity should be able to unlock even more performance. As a gamers video card the Radeon 7500 is perfect for the gamer on a budget that wants the most price-to-performance for their buck! While taking this review from a gamers standpoint, there are many other features of the Radeon 7500 that should not be overlooked. Second to none dvd playback and Dual Monitor support using the Ati Hydravision technology. Hit their review: 3DXtreme Radeon 7500 Review

After Toms Hardware now Anandtech and Rivastation have their Radeon reviews up! The consent of the reviews is the same. The Radeon 8500 is a good performer and a possible threat to Graphzillas GeForce 3 even in Ti versions if ATI manages to improve driver performance and compatibility as well as activate promised features (Smoothvision). All I can say is Go Go Go ATI. Nvidia won't wait... RivaStation Radeon 8500 Performance Check (german only, LOTS of benchmarks)
Anandtech Radeon 8500 Review (She's got potential).

Thomas Pabst did it. He's the first with an online review of ATI latest product. Interesting are the facts he has to offer: The current driver set 4.13.7191 for Radeon 8500 does not support SmoothVision, ATi's multi sampling FSAA solution, but only the old super sampling FSAA instead, which allows only inferior FSAA performance. In fact, SmoothVision has not yet been enabled in any driver, but it is supposed to be added by the end of this month.
The current driver is known to have issues with Athlon systems, but is supposed to run fine with Pentium 4 systems.
Tests showed that the new WindowsXP-driver does not perform stable. It is also showing inferior 3D-performance compared to Win9x or Win2000.
Testing the advanced features of Radeon 8500 with the DX8 vertex/pixel shader OpenGL demo programs "Dronez" or "GLMark" is not possible or sensible, because both programs are using NVIDIA-specific extensions that only work on NVIDIA's GeForce3 family of 3D-cards. This allows Radeon 8500 to only run in DX7 mode, which is not very helpful for comparison purposes.
For the usual scoop of Tom's reviews click here.

Ah the Radeon stands up to the test again. PCPop.com took the Radeon in A12(pre-release) and A13(final) steppings against the Nvidia GeForce 3. The GeForce board also was overclocked to simulate a GeForce 3 Ti500. The results are promising so far for ATI! If they manage to tweak their drivers just as Nvidia is capapable of then we have a killer board competing with Graphzilla. Enough talk. We snapped a pic for you cause the site has a rather strange layout and I guess the lesser part speaks chinese...

Wow! Asus is still working on i440BX BIOSes??? Impressive support indeed! If you want to give your hog a ride check out these BIOSes: CUR-DLS / DLSR 1011 - 04 Beta
CUBX - Series 1008 - 04 Beta
P3B-F 1008 - 04 Beta

Thx go out to 3DGpu.Com for this information.
ViaHardware has taken a look @ the Overclockerz Titan GF3, the MSI Starforce GF3 and the Visiontek GeForce3.
Make sure to see the review over here. Side Note: NVIDIA got a bunch of press release actions going on, so be sure to check them out for the latest scoop: NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti GPU Selected to Power IBM High Performance Desktop Line
NVIDIA nForce and GeForce Products Deliver Highest Performance for AMD Athlon XP Processor 1800+

VIAHardware has a decent review of the new RED MSI VIAKT266A solution: MSI has brought us yet another great board with an abundance of features and support for future technologies. While most companies would?ve just dropped in a KT266A northbridge into their existing designs, MSI decided to distinguish their KT266A board from its predecessors and competing boards. Beyond the red PCB, the K7T266 Pro2 is truly a unique board. In terms of features, no KT266A board has yet been able to match the feature list of the K7T266 Pro2. With the option for 4 USB 2.0 ports, MSI is the first to the market with a USB 2.0 option on their motherboards. Check out the full review via above link.

GotApex have received the VERY first images of 3DPOWER's new POSEIDON. The Poseidon is the first and only water cooling solution ever to be offered by any company as an upgrade to their graphics card.

The Poseidon is revolutionary in design in that the water block is a one piece block that will cover both the memory and the GPU. In addition, the GPU and memory will be flush with copper inlays to assure optimal heat transfer. Every unit will ship with the very popular Arctic Silver II thermal grease. 3DPOWER also states that the Poseidon was designed from the ground up to fit most GeForce3 and GeForce3 Ti500 cards.

So warp to GotApex and check it out! All I can say is WOW!

Amdmb.com have managed to get hold of the lastest Epox bios for the New 8KHA+ and 8K7A mainboards...

ABIT released new BIOS files for both the KG7 / KG7-RAID and KT7A / KT7-RAID motherboards:

KG7 - KG7-RAID - KG7-Lite BIOS 5E 1. Support AMD AthlonXP CPU.
2. HPT 370 RAID BIOS version 1.11.0402.
3. BIOS compile date: 10/12/2001.
ABIT KG7 5E BIOS

KT7A - KT7A-RAID V1.3 And Newer Only BIOS 5S 1.) Description same as above
ABIT KT7A 5S BIOS

Since 1989 and the birth of its very first SoundBlaster, Creative has continued to create revolutionary standards with PC audio. As you will soon see, SoundBlaster Audigy is no exception either. Starting with Sound Blaster 16, AWE32, AWE64 Gold, and the critically acclaimed SoundBlaster Live! series, Creative?s audio cards have garnered a host of industry awards over the decades and are recognized as the worldwide leading audio standard when it comes to PC audio. Read the first ever Warp2Search hardware review. We will take a closer look at Creative's budget Audigy board: The Audigy Player / X-Gamer. Included: Product Overview and nudies of the black beauty
Presentation of the software bundle
EAX Advanced HD explained
Audigy Performance
Summary
Creative Labs Audigy Player / X-Gamer Review

Electic have managed to get hold of some new BIOS updates for AOpen and Soltek motherboards.

So hit the Read More button for the list of updates.

Intel has just released two new BIOS revisions P18 and P17 for its leading Pentium 4 motherboard, the Intel D850GB. The P18 BIOS comes with a reprogrammed ADM1031 to use the internal thermo sensor. The P17 Bios that was released last week is now WHQL certified.

I may be a bit late with these but anyway... Asus Detonators 14.10 Asus 14.10 Win9x/ME
Asus 14.10 Win2K
Asus 14.10 WinNT4
Asus BIOS LiveUpdate Utility Asus BIOS LiveUpdate v3.28.06c Win9x/ME/NT4/W2K/XP Asus BIOSes Bios A7M266 1005 Final (=1005 - 003-A Beta)
Bios A7V133 1007 Final (=1007 - 002-A Beta)
Bios A7V133-C 1007 Final (=1007 - 002-A Beta)
Bios A7V 1009 Final (=1009 - 001-B Beta)
Bios A7pro 1009 Final (=1009 - 001-B Beta)
Bios TUA266 1003 Final (=1003 - 01 Beta)

Here's some news from Xbit Labs. It turns out that any non-4x AGP card must not be installed in the new Intel motherboards, otherwise the voltage level will fry it. Well-known graphics maker, PowerColor, made a very menacing warning today: at any rate do not install any graphics cards, which have no support for AGP 4x, into i845 and i850 based mainboards. Otherwise, the AGP slot of your mainboard will be irretrievably damaged because of the too high voltage (AGP 2x 3.3V, AGP 4x – 1.5V). Here is a list of graphics cards, which should never be installed into i845 and i850 based mainboards (PowerColor stressed that this list might be incomplete, so be careful: Any cards on NVIDIA Vanta and Vanta LT; All cards on SiS 6326; Cards on Savage4 chips up to revision 3.0 (not including rev. 3.0); All Voodoo3 graphics cards. Source:XBitLabs Sent in by Louis Green