AnandTech have thrown up their AMD Opteron vs. Intel Xeon Performance Shootout with Intel's first Xeon MP with a massive 4MB L3 cache vs. AMD's Opteron 848!

The regular 2-way Xeons were basically desktop Pentium 4s, while the Xeon MPs included an on-die L3 cache. Fast forward today and things have definitely changed.

"We set out on a journey through Logitech's massive PR Department and what did we end up with? A set of Logitech Z3 2.1 speakers that magazines like MaximumPC have raved about. They are something that HTPCNews wouldn't normally review... However, they found a home quickly here in the office. Check out our review of the Logitech Z3 speakers and find out wether that home is in the closet or in full daily use!"

"Okay. I'll be blunt. If you're not plugging in your electronics to a proper surge protector, you're either ignorant (you've never heard of surge problems), stupid (you've heard of surges, but don't think they apply to you), or just don't care about your electronics. Why do I risk insulting people in the name of pushing surge protectors? Because..."

"If any series of motherboards could be crowned as one of the most popular product line introduction in 2003, the Lanparty line would be definitely on the top of the class. With quality, performance, features, an unrivaled bundle coupled with UV reactive aesthetic goodness, the Lanparty motherboard has been a sought after enthusiast motherboard looking for the complete package. Today I will be reviewing the Revision B release of the Lanparty PRO875 Canterwood enhanced motherboard. With even more features and additions added onto an already solid Revision A release, the PRO875B is not an update to correct problems, but is a release to make a great product even better."

Logitech is our favorite when it comes to PC peripherals. They have an extended line of PC products. Each product has it's unique and innovative features that can only be expected from Logitech. Without a doubt, Logitech is the leader peripheral market.

"Today 3DXtreme has the pleasure of reviewing one of Titan?s latest heatsinks for the AMD Athlon64 platform. AMD64 heatsinks have been for the most part very slow to trickle out to the market and the biggest problem that we have yet found is that they are having a tendency of being loud. For some that isn?t a big deal but for others it can really represent the reason why they would buy the product in the first place, regardless of how well it performs. Will Titan be able to provide a solid cooling solution and also come in with a quiet fan? We?ll soon find out..."

PC Mag have thrown up a round-up of 21 digital cameras! Here's a snip.

For this story, we evaluate cameras in three popular categories: shirt-pocket shooters, midrange models, and professional models. The 21 cameras we test have much in common. All except the Olympus E-1 have a built-in flash, only the Canon PowerShot SD10 Digital Elph doesn't come with or accommodate a zoom lens, and all but the Fujifilm FinePix S7000 Zoom and the HP Photosmart 945 ship with rechargeable batteries. All the cameras have autofocus, macro settings, exposure compensation, selectable ISO equivalencies, and automatic white balance.

Yet another AMD64 based notbook is coming:

Description: Powerfull, stylish and fully upgradeable 17-inch widescreen desktop replacement notebook based on AMD Athlon64 FX processor. Perfect solution for highly demanding gaming and grpahics applications. Loaded with features.

Read more at Amd64notebooks.com

Want to know how DDR II works then heads this way to Hexus.net

DDR-II. What do you think of when you see that written on a spec sheet or a website? DDR at twice the frequency? DDR on a 2x bigger bus? Plain old dual-channel DDR, just written differently? I didn't have a clue either. And when I see it written as DDR2, I get another little bit of confused added on top. Do they mean DDR-II, have they missed a G off the front while talking about graphics card memory? Aieee, it's a bit of minefield at the moment. My thinking is that if I have to explain DDR-II to the HEXUS readership in coming months - Grantsdale and its big brother Alderwood aren't far away now - I should get myself familiar with it. This little article is the result.

Fido over at The Inquirer reports that US sources close to Nvidia have confirmed that their next generation GPU will feature a full sixteen pipelines ? not as previously speculated an 8x2 arrangement - and this is reflected in the increased transistor count of circa 205-210 million, up from a previously speculated 175 million.

Just got word that AnandTech have thrown up a new article which has extended coverage of DDR2 Performance.

DDR2 gets the majority of its punch from the 4 bit prefetch. DDR2 can effectively write/read four times the amount of data per clock cycle to/from the memory array. This effectively doubles the data bus speed while keeping the internal bus speed the same from DDR1. Both DDR1 and DDR2 use a 64-bit interface.

Legit Reviews have thrown up their Prescott Overclocking article! They managed to get their Prescott 2.8GHz CPU hitting 3.75Ghz! Here's a snip.

Going into this review we had high hopes of our retail processor. We reached 3.75GHz, which is just shy of a 1GHz overclock. Not only is this a very nice overclock on an early production core, but it was also done with air cooling.

X86-Secret are reporting that DDR II is a dud as the old DDR is out performing DDR II as the same speeds! Here's a Google translation as the sites in French.

Our Russian friends having received for now several weeks of the platforms Alderwood (i925), we have been able to examine the performances offered. At present, force is to note that platforms GDR-II 533 are approximately 5% to 10% less powerful than the old good i875P coupled to Dual GDR-I 400.

Want to overclock your Radeon 9800SE AIW, Yes then Head this way to Akiba-pc.com! Click Here for Macci's insane 540MHz GPU speed overclock! and Here for the Radeon 9800SE AIW Vgpu Vmem Guide.

I've had this Connect3D Radeon9800SE AIW card for several month now. Its able to run with 8-pipelines (default for SE-version is 4) via driver modification. Default clocks are at 380/338MHz so its just as fast as a 9800Pro card + it has all the AIW features. In 100% stock form the card would run benchmarks at around 435-440MHz GPU. Removing the 'shim' around the GPU and installing P4 Retail cooler on GPU made it clock up to like 450-460MHz.!

Fido over at The Inquirer is reporting that ATI has production silicon for its flagship R420 chip. This is, apparently, a closely held secret and the card design is close to its final phase.

This information might get Nvidia concerned since its samples are just out but Nvidia won't start production before April as we reported before.

Today 3DXtreme has the pleasure of reviewing three new Intel Pentium 4 (Socket 478) Heatsinks. We opted to present this in a round-up pitting the three newcomers against one another. Featuring heatsinks provided by Evercool, Spire and Titan - let?s take a look at the competitors.

[H]ardOCP reports that one of the Big 5 mainboard makers have thrown their hands in the air when it comes to pushing up voltages on the new Intel Pentium 4 Prescott CPUs. If you are looking at becoming a Prescott enthusiast, this might make you reconsider.

The Inquirer reports that we hear, Fido was hanging around the hallowed halls of Intel's Developers Forum in San Francisco this week, hawking a 64-bit chip called the Athlon FX-53 in a bid to steal some of Chipzilla's thunder.

"Software and the portability of files is becoming a very important item for most computer users today. We are seeing an increase in the use of USB Thumb Drives, Compact Media for digital cameras and PDAs to external hard drives and CD-ROMs that connect via USB. It?s with this philosophy that we have the EH-350D external hard drive enclosure from Enermax to review today. With a piece of hardware like this the user has the ability to tailor their portability needs to the amount of space they require. Let?s head in and take a look at this unit and how it performs in the real world. Read on... "

The Intel Prescott processors will soon get a new stepping. Starting at the beginning of May newly produced Prescott processors from Intel will feature a new improved D-0 stepping with improved thermal characteristics. Currently Prescott CPUs have a C-0 stepping.
Read more over at DV Hardware