Highpoint has released the official Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP driver & BIOS v2.0.1019 for the famous HPT 370 RAID controller sported on many ABIT for example. You can download the file right away: Download from Highpoint-Tech
Download from Warp2Search

Asus have released a couple new bios files for the A7V266 motherboard:

A7V266 version 1003

A7V266-E version 1003e Other BIOSes: Bios TUSL2 1011 Final (=1011 - 04 Beta)
Bios TUSL2- / CUSL2 - Series ( i815e ) 1011 - 04 Beta
TUSL2-C / CUSL2-C ( i815ep ) 1011 - 04 Beta
Bios TUEP2- / CUEP2 - Series ( i815ep ) 1011 - 04 Beta
Bios CUR-DLS / DLSR 1011 - 06 Beta
Bios A7A133 / A7A266- Series 1010 - 01 Beta

nVNews has posted a review of Leadtek's GeForce3 TDH video card. How does improved Tv-out display, on-board Hardware Monitoring and the largest GPU/Memory heatsink from the factory sound? Here's a snip: Leadtek's card features Hardware Monitoring courtesy of an onboard Winbond chip (W83783S) connected to a thermistor. The thermistor is located on the left edge of the heatsink and extends underneath the heatsink. The chip is capable of monitoring various on-board settings such as two different temperatures (chip edge and center), as well as GPU and memory voltage settings. The on-board fan is connected by a 3 lead wire - 2 of the wires provide the power to rotate the fan and the third relays information about the fan's rotation speed. Check out the NvNews Leadtek GF3 TDH review.

OkiDoki, everyone should be after a well performing HSF these days cause Ghz CPU's could turn into smoke if not properly cooled right at startup. OverClockerCafe has taken 3 HSF into their labs to check their cooling abilities: Glaciator II:
Poor contact between the fins and the base can kill a sink's performance. This is why there are so many wildly different results around for the Hedgehog and the Fortis coolers. Some days on the assembly line are better than others. Well, this is not an issue with the Glaciator II. The base and fins are cut from a single piece of copper. OCZ Dominator 2 HSF:
The Dominator 2 gives you a choice of one of two fan options, both of which are attention getters. The first is a Y.S. Tech 60x60x25mm that pushes 40 CFM at 7,200 RPM while making 46 dBA of music for your ears... Thermaltake's Volcano7:
So far, the only players that have stepped up to the plate have been the Swiftech MC-462 and the Alpha PAL8045. Both of these products are VERY FINE heatsinks. Even though these two products are the closest comparisons it is still comparing apples and oranges with these two and the Volcano 7. Thermaltake is attempting to address the performance / noise issue with the first temperature controlled, variable speed heatsink/fan. This is to be a true "active cooling solution.

Hi all! It's time for me to upgrade my graphics card, so off I went surfing the local online stores and here's some of the deals I found. Nice. All I need now is the Money!

Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet 2 Titanium Card £119.00 ex.VAT
ATI Radeon 7500 64MB DDR AGP Retail DVI VO £125.00 ex.VAT
Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet 3 Titanium 200 Card £165.00 ex.VAT
ELSA GLADIAC 721 TV-Out GeForce3 Ti200 AGP Graphic £169.00 ex.VAT
ATI Radeon 8500 64MB DDR AGP Retail DVI VO £205.00 ex.VAT
Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet 3 Titanium 500 Card £229.00 ex.VAT

Well those's are the best deals I've found so far. If u find any better deals post your deals in the comments.

256Mb - 168pin 133Mhz SDRam Module Only £12.72 ex.VAT

oh S*** i forget as am from the uk add 17.5% vat

Most of those deals on the video cards is watford.co.uk and Dabs.com have some good deals on software and memory.

I just got this email in my inbox from Marvin Tschechne, editor-in-chief of MediaXPlosion, our new affiliate. They have got a 30!-pages article on the Elsa & Gainward offerings. We have finished up a roundup of four GeForce2/3-boards from ELSA and Gainward. The GLADIAC 516, GLADIAC 721, GLADIAC 921 and Gainwards GeForce2 Ti/500 XP were compared in the test. We want to concentrate now on the following 30 pages and looking for pro and cons. Particularly the GLADIAC 921 will not make it easy for our normal GeForce3-board. Note: The article is written in german so bust out your translators. Hit the well written article via this link.

Intel has released a new BIOS update for the D845HV motherboard version HV84510A.86A.0024.P06.

Express BIOS Update P06 HV84510A.86A.0024.P06 1.23 MB 30 Oct 2001

Use the Intel® Express BIOS Update if you are running Windows* 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT*, Windows 2000, or Windows XP*. An executable file runs a Windows InstallShield* program which automatically updates the BIOS.

Intel also has an updated sound driver for the same motherboard

Integrated Audio: ADI 1885 WDM_5.12.01.3034e_SM3 24.2 MB 29 Oct 2001 for Windows 98/2000/ME/XP

TheInquirer has been told by Nvidia that their nForce motherboards will indeed sport an AGP slot! They talked to european spokesman Luciano Alibrandi: When it comes to upgrading, maybe because the budget is there or some new game comes that that demands a GeForce 3 board, upgrading will be a simple matter of just plugging the new board into the AGP slot, claimed Alibrandi. ?The drivers will already be installed.

What costs 50 bucks, has an integrated T&L engine, and does environmental bump mapping?
If you answered, "A stolen GeForce3 card", you're right, but that's not the only correct answer. Initially, I thought the 315 was going to be a bit of a dog when it came to performance. I'm pleasantly surprised that it held its own against more established competition. Instead of spending all of its time at the bottom of our pack of budget cards, the 315 took a few opportunities to flex its muscles and take the lead. As one of the select few graphics processors on the market with a really useful T&L engine, the 315 certainly bodes well for SiS's future graphics parts, at least on the low-end. Check the full review out @ Tech-Report.

Once again Asus Germany has some updated BIOSes for you: A7V266 1003 Final ( 31.10.2001 )
A7V266-E 1003 Final ( 31.10.2001 )
TUV4X 1003 Final (=1003 - 02A Beta)
TUA266 1004 - 05 Beta
Use caution when flashing your BIOS! The new A7V266 series BIOS is reported to sport a deactivation feature of the optional Promise RAID chip as with the old A7V133 and some "Performace Improvements" as well.

Canopus has announced their Spectra X21 card based on NVIDIA GeForce Titanium 500. It comes with 64MB DDR SDRAM onboard and the usual specs like 250Mhz DDR Memory Clock and 240Mhz Core Clock. Some of the unqiue features include SSH, DFS, APS 3.0 and ABS 2000 Active BIOS. Spectra X21 makes use of their FireBird G2 Copper GPU/RAM sinks and an Aerodynamic fluid bearing fan to cool the card efficently. There is an onboard blue power LED too. This card was highly priced at US$572.

Hardware Extreme has a new review on the Biostar M7VKD motherboard. Here´s a scoop:
This review is looking at the M7VKD Biostar?s rendition of the VIA KT133A motherboard chipset. Most motherboards with this chipset have been designed for over clocking and game play, this is not the case with the M7VKD. I realize that a lot of our readers care more about speed and over clocking than stability, but I think of them as equal. I would much rather have a board that is 10% slower but 10% more stable than a board that is faster and less stable. Stability has become so overlooked that random crashes are being accepted by a lot of computer users..... Read more over here.

M762A, one of the two Multi Processors (MP) AMD solutions created by EPoX. M762A is tentatively schedule to be launched in middle of November 2001. The ATX form factor is made with 6-layer PCB. This server board house?s the AMD 760 MPX + 768 chipset, 4 DIMM slots, up to 4 Gigs of DDR memory, a AGP 4X slot, 2 - 64 bit (66 MHz), 2 - 32bit (33MHz) PCI Slots, ATA 100, 4 USB (2 Optional), single (Intel 82559) LAN, the usual Phoenix BIOS, over clocking abilities and of course every motherboard you buy comes with our award-winning technical support who is here to help you in times of need.

So for the full press release warp to Epox.

Version 3.1 of the Award BIOS has been made available by MSI. This BIOS applies to the following boards: K7T Pro, K7T Pro2, K7T Pro2A, K7T Turbo, K7T Turbo2, K7T Turbo LE, MS-6330 LE1 and MS-6330 LE3. The new version includes the following fixes: Fixed problem wherein system cannot install WinXP when using other K7T series board except K7T Turbo2. Fixed that ToolsEvent ViewerSystemACPI error under WinXP. Update the BIOS of ATA100 function of Promise 265 chip to B43.

These guys really are on the working spot: new final & beta BIOSes are out for the following boards: A7A133 1009 Final (=1009 - 01 Beta)
A7A266 1009 Final (=1009 - 01 Beta)
A7A266-E 1009 Final (=1009 - 01 Beta)
A7V133-M 1004 Final ( 24.10.2001 )
P4B 1006 - 02 Beta
TUV4X 1004 - 02A Beta
CUV4X-D 1014 - 04 Beta
CUV4X-DLS 1014 - 04 Beta
CUR-DLS / DLSR 1011 - 05 Beta

I was just over at NvNews when I saw a link to Amazon International testing Elsa's Gladiac 921 video card, but the most interesting part of his benchmarks is the second system that he used and the OS:

System 2
Tyan Tiger MP Motherboard, Dual Athlon 1800+ MP 1GB PC2100 ECC Reg memory, ELSA Gladiac 921 with ELSA proprietary driver release 21.81, 80GB Maxtor DiamondMAX D740X - UDMA 133, Operating System - Windows XP Professional with SP1 installed.

As u can see he's claiming he's got Windows XP Professional with SP1 installed. So the question is where did Amazon International get the SP1 fixes for Windows XP Professional from? From Microsoft? Anyway here's Amazon International benchmarks for the Elsa 921

X-Bios have something for u to do on a sunday if you're bored and got nothing better on schedule :)

NVIDIA Reference BIOS GeForce 2 Ti v3.15.01.04B20

NVIDIA Reference BIOS GeForce 3 Ti 500 v3.20.00.18X20 And here's one for u GeForce3 owners:
NVIDIA Reference bios GeForce 3 (A)

ReactorCritical have some news on a Mystery Visiontek Geforce2 GTS-V that's been selling like hot cakes on a cold morning, lol.

Here's a bite from their article:

It seems that some of the manufacturers have begun to make GeForce2 GTS based boards for low end market segment. According to this site , Visiontek offers its Xtasy 5632, so-called GeForce2 GTS-V based videocard for $70. The only difference between this one and an ordinary GeForce2 GTS is core and memory frequencies:

GPU GeForce2 GTS: 175 MHz. DDR SDRAM: 286 MHz (143 MHz), 7ns.

According to unofficial information, this card can be easily overclocked to the standard GeForce2 GTS frequencies(200/333) and even up to "extraordinary" for such cards 200/375.

WinOsCentral has a fix for your Audigy + Windows XP problems so here goes:

A lot of people have complained about the drivers that ship with the Audigy cards especially those running Windows XP. It seems the problem lies in the WinXP file sfman32.dll. This file is NOT being updated properly when the drivers are installed causing all kinds of crashes and problems. There is a fix for it that I found over on Live Center.com which is a pretty detailed/involved fix but it does seem to correct the problem.

If you are experiencing a problem with the drivers that came on the Audigy CD then this might be the answer you have been looking for. Now you can also try the "leaked" Audigy XP drivers over on (where else) Warp2search.com which I installed and they seemed to work just fine.

Just thought some of you would like to get this fixed since you dropped a cool $100.00 on the card.

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. Thursday, October 25, 2001 - ABIT's Siluro line of high-speed video cards just got bigger -- and meaner. Introducing the Siluro GF3 Ti200 and Siluro GF3 Ti500. These video cards feature nVidia's newest GeForce3 Ti200 and Ti500 GPUs to bring you unsurpassed graphic performance. Model Feature Siluro GF3 Ti200 Siluro GF3 Ti200V Siluro GF3 Ti200DVI Siluro GF3 Ti500 nVidia GF3 GPU Ti200 Ti200 Ti200 Ti500 GPU Core Speed 175Mhz 175MHz 175MHz 240MHz Operations/sec 700 billion 700 billion 700 billion 960 billion Memory 64M DDR 64M DDR 64M DDR 64M DDR Memory Speed 400MHz 400MHz 400MHz 500MHz High-Resolution AA Yes Yes Yes Yes Lightspeed Memory Architecture Yes Yes Yes Yes 2nd Generation T&L Engines Yes Yes Yes Yes Vertex & Pixel Shaders Yes Yes Yes Yes TV-Out No Yes Yes Yes DVI-Out No No Yes Yes