MrIcee and OPPAINTER over at XtremeSystems have got their hands on a 2400+ and 2600+ respectively, and are putting them thru their paces in their Prometeia cases with the worlds highest achieved AMD Speed results to date, as both the Xtreme boys have achieved 2700Mhz with their respective CPU's. You can read their entire adventure on this thread. Click Read More... for a link to the thread.

TNR has just put a review up of the recently released Corsair XMS 3500C2 DDR memory. This memory is based on the Winbond -5ns chips and is the latest offering from Corsair Memory. They test it on an Abit IT7-MAX with a modded BIOS and a volt-modded P4 2.26B. Link: Warp 2 the review

ExtremeTech is at it again and tool Logitech's first ever 5.1 system to the test. And according to the test ExtremeTech claims it is the best 5.1 system ever. They may be technically but personally I prefer a more distinguished design... These features include a beefed up 450-watt amplifier, a decoder to handle DTS, Dolby Digital and ProLogic II, a line-level input jack for your DiscMan or MP3 player, and a headphone jack for those late-night gaming or movie sessions. Also new is a wireless IR remote that allows the tweaking of center, subwoofer and surround channel volume levels, overall volume level, a mute toggle, an effect selector, an input selector, and a test button that sequentially outputs pink noise through the five satellites to verify correct speaker configuration. Click the image to get to the review.

Raising the bar on their own multimedia systems, the MegaWorks 510D is a high-end 5.1 speaker system based on the Newton Series MC50 satellites, as offered by Cambridge SoundWorks, 500 Watts RMS of power, much like the Klipsch's Promedia 5.1.

VR-Zone has posted their review of Epox' latest VIA KT400 based mobo EP-8K9A2+. This one sets itself apart from other solutions as it adds BIOS unlocking for Athlon XP CPUs. Features include: Socket A AMD Athlon?, Athlon? XP, Duron? 3 x DDR SDRAM PC2700, 4GB max. 6 PCI, 1 AGP 8x Highpoint HPT372 UDMA/ATA 133 RAID VIA Tahoe VIA VT6103 Physical Layer / Transceiver ATX

This seems to be the first review of a release version of Nforce2 Motherboard. OCWorkbench have released their ASUS A7N8X nForce2 Mainboard Review (with a beta BIOS).
Features including Dolby audio, SerialATA, Dual LAN, USB 2.0, AGP Pro (8x). The Dual LAN allows you to set up this machine as a router.

After working on this project for a great deal of time, Sean Pelletier has just completed and posted a somewhat unusual review. A few weeks ago, he was approached by Sapphire Technologies with the offer of reviewing their RADEON 9700 Atlantis Pro graphics card. Despite being an NVIDIA-based website, NVNews are entirely committed to being an objective and honest website and he eagerly accepted the challenge of reviewing this product. However, the fact of the matter is that this card is likely overkill for the majority of the market. As evidenced by the benchmarks in this review, the key to unleashing the speed of this card is to utilize an extremely fast processor. Given the fact that processors such as 2.8GHz Northwoods are only typical for Hardware Review websites and a handful of dedicated computer fanatics, it is difficult for me to recommend this product or any other top of the line ( ie: expensive ) graphics card.

After looking all over the place for coolers that don't cost a fortune, some have managed to find a company that deals in cheap HSF units. But we need more than just a low price. Join TweakTown as they take a look at the Neng Tyi Nexus NC02 HSF. While the entry price is one of the best available, better take a closer look at the performance of this little thing. If one can match performance with a low price, we'll have a definite winner on our hands.

DataFuse is taking a closer look at Zalman latest 385 gram aluminum/ copper cooler for your video card. It has no fan so should suite your need for silent PC parts. The ZM80 suits Nvidia and ATI cards as well as others. It features a copper heatpipe. Review @ DataFuse and they really love that WeightWatchers nightmare.

Anandtech has posted their latest review of EPoX's newest motherboard the 4PEA+based on Intel's 845PE chipset offering DDR333 support and more (RAID, USB 2.0, onboard LAN, onboard 6ch sound and SATA). Also they have a piece of info why EPoX is so famous for stable overclocking boards: Overclocking-wise, it doesn't seem like many boards can match what Epox is able to consistently dish up. After talking with several Epox reps, we learned that Epox's "secret" to engineering consistently well-overclocking motherboards is to design boards with cleaner circuit layouts, which help in feeding a steady voltage to all the components on a motherboard. Warp 2 the review

ExtremeTech looks at 6 motherboards with the latest VIA chipset for the Athlon XP. They'll recommend what to buy, and reveal an interesting fact from testing: faster DDR400 memory doesn't deliver the best performance. Among the participants are the MSI KT4-Ultra, the Asus A7V8X, Abit AT7 Max2, and boards from Soyo, Shuttle and Gigabyte. On a sidenote Xbitlabs reports that VIA will probably release a A revision (KT400A) that already is in the pipes: If KT400 was expected to be the last Socket A chipset from VIA, they probably do not have anything new to showcase this year. Hence, it is logical for them to update the current version of their product ? VIA KT400. In fact, that is what they do. According to this web-site, Iwill will soon launch three new mainboards for the Socket A platform, one of them will be based on the KT400A chipset. The information is unconfirmed, but looks rather logically.

Dave @ Beyond3D tells me that their Intel D845EBT Motherboard Review has been posted. This board uses the Intel 845E chipset and features DDR 266 support, USB 2.0 and more. Here's a snip.

Despite all the well documented issues surrounding RAMBUS and Intel's relationship with the IP company it is evident that, indeed, RAMBUS did provide the best match-up to the Pentium4. However, one thing became clear: adoption of RAMBUS RAM was not as widespread as Double Data Rate (DDR) RAM and if it continued in this fashion it would always remain a high end, possibly niche, solution. Intel needed something else to bring the Pentium4 to the masses - the 845 chipset was it.

Among the first of a couple of reviews to come today we have the Lian Li PC6099B Miditower Aluminium Case in our testing labs. Here is a snip: For harddrive assembly Lian Li is offering a 5 drive bay cage that is mounted by two thumbscrews, located just behind the two dust filtered front intake fans. This provides good cooling for your harddrives which are mounted vertically in the cage. The two 80mm front fans (ARX FD1280-D3033E) proved to be of the same type as the rear and top fan. They are designed using a ball bearing system which allows a longer life cycle at the cost of a little more noise compared to sleeve bearing designs. Luckily the ARX fans are really bearable in terms of noise production. Read the review

Digit-Life is the first website to publish their Audigy 2 review. They plotted it against the first Audigy series and seemed to highly like it. Main advantages pointed are are richer sound, DVD Audio support, good software bundle. However it does not become clear if Dolby Digital decoding is now done in hardware or not, although the review suggests it is. Read more...

3DSoundSurge is taking a comprehensive look at the Swan highend 2.0 speaker system M200. Made of Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) construction, high quality heavy duty binding posts and very good attention to detail. The amplifier send a true 72 watts RMS to the system feeding a 5 ¼ inch long throw linear excursion design driver and a 1-inch silk dome tweeter that utilizes a ferro fluid cooled voice coil. Everything about them has a feel of quality. Something else that jumps out immediately is each satellite is the size of some of the smaller multimedia subwoofers. For all the test results on this attractively priced ($200) performance system check out the review. Related link: Swan Speakers

Today Xbitlabs is going to take a closer look at a barebone small form-factor PC from FIC. And you know, it appeared a really optimal solution for both: home and office use. If you are not a hardcore gamer and if you are not going to get the Nobel prize for highly complex calculations, then you should definitely learn more about this stylish creature from FIC @ Xbitlabs.com.

Just got word from AC @ Nvmax.com that they have posted their LiteON 48X 16X DVD & 48X12X48X CDRW drive review. Here's a snip:

The one test you have not seen elsewhere, featuring stupidity and complete uselessness is that of our Lee Jeans CD test. Check out the attached images to see what we are going on about. This mini CD is like a standard mini CD except Lee Jeans added on some legs and thus made an irregular CD that not only wont work on just about all CD drives but can also damage them due to uneven spinning. It was purely by chance we managed to snag one of these babies, featuring a special edition of Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire!" soundtrack. We can tell you that every drive tested spins this thing real fast to try and read it.

Looking for a new sound card? Then you should check out Overclockersonline.com as they have posted a new review of Hercules' Fortissimo III 7.1 sound card. Here's a snip:



Budget-minded people probably know the older GameSurround Fortissimo II with Crystal CS4624 chipset and the GameSurround Muse with C-Media CMI8738 chipset. These still are fine & cheap 4-channel sound cards, but of course they both lack 5.1 high-end cinematic audio support. Now times have changed as Hercules have designed a whole new Fortissimo III sound card with 8-channel 7.1 sound support. This means you can hook up no less than 8 speakers to this card ... Let's check it out.

DDR-400 is still yet to be approved as an official industry standard by JEDEC. This hasn't stopped several companies releasing DDR-400 memory, and even faster. Geil is one such company who accelerated in this area who went ahead and released their DDR-433 solution. TweakTown took time to put the memory through their usual torture tests to see how it stood up to the challenge with the most aggressive timings they could possible throw at it.

Xbitlabs tested a four-channel IDE RAID controller solution from HighPoint, which boasts the ability to work with two HDDs connected to a single cable. As a result, the four-channel RocketRAID 404 controller turned our capable of working with 8 hard disk drives at a time. Find out what it is worth in the review.