Thanks to Mackey D for pointing me in the direction of this article over at Rob Galbraith DPI!

In January 2003, we published a report comparing the processing performance of the Mac and the PC in pro digital photography. At that time, a single processor Pentium 4 PC was shown to be considerably quicker at a variety of tasks than a dual processor G4 Mac. It's now a year later, and a lot has changed in the Mac world:

FX 5500 is placing at the position in between FX 5200 and FX 5700, which has 270/350 MHz (core/ RAMDACs), plus, its 64MB/128 bit DDR, it is so obviously a killer nVidia uses to compete with ATI 9600 SE.

GALAXY ZEUS 5500 is using the HY 3.6n/s mBGA. It implies there are some certain way to be overclock.

AnandTech have a new article out that looks at the PCI/AGP bus on Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 chipsets , are they really locked when you overclock?

Sometimes things are not as they appear. Nowhere is this more true than the Computer Industry. Technology should be very straightforward, but all too often, marketing concerns get thrown into the mix and we end up with specifications with a marketing slant. It has been observed in reviews of the nForce3-150 boards that they often overclock better than VIA K8T800 boards. The nF3 sports a PCI/AGP adjustment in BIOS and it is usually stated that the nF3 should overclock better because of the fixed AGP/PCI bus.

The possibility of serious reliability problems with certain of IBM's GXP-series hard drives has been well documented. High failure rates may have forced IBM's decision to sell its hard drive business to Hitachi, and anecdotal evidence has been overwhelming, spawning a massive thread that will not die here at TR, as over a thousand posts have rolled in over time detailing users' experiences with drive failures, failures of replacement drives, and struggles to get IBM to honor its warranties. The fiasco led to the filing of a class-action lawsuit against IBM on behalf of GXP failure victims. However, IBM has consistently denied unusually high failure rates on its GXP drives.

HTPC News takes a look at two of the options you'll have when you decide to connect your PC to your HDTV. The two options we are taking a look at today are the Crescendo Systems Transcoder and the ATI HDTV Dongle. This is a dual review and a comparison between the two choices. These both allow the user flexability to watch DVD's in 1080i and higher resolutions as allowed by their TV's. Compare this to the maximum of 480p on any progressive scan DVD player and you have a winner:

OCIA.net checks out the TweakMonster RAMsinks / Fan Bracket Kit in their latest review. Below is a direct quote from the review:

"However, it is not the typical thermal tape that you might be used to seeing. It is applied in the same manner that you would apply 3M double sided tape, but it is actually a gel instead of tape. Granted, using something like Arctic Silver Adhesive might work better, but using the Frag Tape will allow you to take the RAMsinks with you to your next video card. I went ahead and used it for the purposes of this review. Only about half of the tape is needed to install all eight RAMsinks, so you should have enough left over to move the sinks to another video card if you so choose to."

Uttar has posted some information over at Beyond3D about Nvidia's upcoming NV40! Here's a snip.

I'd just like to post a (originally short, now long) summary post of the current information, reliable or not, we have regarding the NV4x's "pipeline" technology. None of this information is guaranteed at all; and it's likely at least some of it, if not all of it, is wrong. IMO, though, it's the more logical and up-to-date info you'll find Most of it has already been posted at nV News in the NV40 thread.

Rambus is going to show off its first XDR RAM products at next weeks Intel Delevoper Forum in San Francisco. Rambus will show off some 512-megabit XDR DRAM memory and Samsung is also planning to showcase its XDR DRAM at this event. This memory runs at 3.2GHz and offers eight times the bandwidth of today's DDR400.
More info here

Thermaltake has been increasing their line of Xaser products for a long time now. Their Xaser line of cases is popular amongst the enthusiast crowd. The cases are rugged, durable, and reliable. We reviewed one of the first Xaser cases from Thermaltake ? V1000A. It was great except for its weight and the fact that it used steel. Then Thermaltake released a new case known as the Xaser Lanfire Edition, which further extended the Xaser case line.

"Aftermarket GPU-cooler designers have to find a balance between noise, cost, and size. Vantec's Iceberq 4 Pro tries to meet these requirements with style, but can this small heatsink / fan combination outperform the larger G4-VGA offering from Thermaltake?"

OCIA.net checks out some Corsair TwinX 1024-3200LL Pro RAM in their latest review. Below is a direct quote from the review:

"The next step in the process was to increase the FSB. I increased the FSB to 210 with the same 9.5 multiplier. Right away then SAMSUNG failed and try as I might it refused to boot on anything above 200. I changed the RAM out and the CORSAIR XMS PRO booted the first time. I then ran the Sisoft Sandra 2004 memory bandwidth test below and noticed improvements right away. I next tried 215 FSB and ran Sisoft Sandra again and again I had improvements."

"Cables. Bloody cables. The salesman at the store tells you the fancy, expensive ones make a world of difference. The Mr. Anandtech "I've-posted-ten-thousand-messages-therefore-my-opinion-matters" forums guy says premium cables don't make a lick of difference. Who's right? Who's wrong? Or is there a happy medium? Well, neither extreme is correct. And there doesn't even seem to be a happy medium. There ARE two general guidelines you could..." Article Link: http://www.gamingin3d.com/reviews/monster/

Hardware Pacers has posted a review on the Zippy Slim Illuminated Keyboard (EL 715). Here is a snippet:

"The keyboard produced an attractive sapphire glow, which prevented the keyboard from ever appearing dull. Since the keys were not transparent the light glows mostly from the sides of the keys and not as much through the keys. The keyboard appears in a similar design to laptop keyboards, therefore it will take time to get used to it. This keyboard is highly recommended to anyone who has cathode rings, UV sensitive products, LED fans or other LED products to further visually enhance their computer. On the top right, there are three very bright blue lights that display if the Number Lock, Caps Lock, or Scroll Lock is active."

AnandTech has stumbled across ATI's roadmaps for 2004 including information on R420/423, RV380 and even the first sightings of R480 on a roadmap.

Just spotted this bit of info over at Nvnews.net!

Got sent this link by Wish on IRC. It's a peformance graph of NVIDIA's upcoming new GPU the GeForce FX 5500. The graph states that the core is clocked at 250 MHz and memory at 200 MHz. Although, nothing is said about how wide the memory interface is. The headline will link to the original website from where these pictures originate and is in Chinese. The GeForce FX 5500 is set to battle it out in the budget sector.

Just got word that the guy's at 3DCenter have now translated their early article on Nvidia's upcoming range of grahics cards NV40, NV41, NV45! from German to English and have added a bit more Info.

The decision to equip the NV40 with internal AGPx8 interface was probably made at an early developement stage - and this cannot be changed in a rush, at least not without a substantial time delay. Furthermore during the planing of the NV40 there couldn't be foreseen, when the age of PCI Express would begin. However we know now, that Intel will start it with the mainboard chipsets Alderwood and Grantsdale on 28th of March 2004.

An in-depth look at Danger Den´s latest water block. The standard nozzles of the RBX can be swapped for a more performant one; Madshrimps set out to see what difference it actually makes.

The guy's over at Net2Hardware send word that Intel are selling remaked Pentium 4 EE with 2mb L3 as Pentium 4 C 512 Kb L2 as the sites in French! Here's a Goggle translation

OC Modshop have thrown up their review of Speed Strip SSA-1 which is a small tool that can unlock the internal multiplier of your AMD Athlon XP CPUs based on the Thoroughbred and Barton cores.

"Today 3DXtreme is taking a look at another AMD64 motherboard, this time around it?s the Soltek SL-K8AV-R. This particular Soltek board is based on the VIA K8T800 chipset and features a more robust HyperTransport than the previously reviewed nVidia Nforce3-150 Motherboard (Soyo CK-8). The SL-K8AV-R features a HyperTransport that is 16-bit wide upstream and downstream and runs at 800 Mhz each way. This gives the VIA K8T800 an effective front side bus speed of 1.6Ghz. So what does this equate to in real world performance? Read on...