Vijay Anand of Hardwarezone.com has posted third part of the series of his investigative review on the diffrences between AGP8X and AGP4X. here is a small snip:-
"Welcome to the third part of our AGP 4x vs AGP 8x articles. In the previous two parts, we had highlighted the differences between AGP 4x and AGP 8x, the graphics chipsets and platforms supporting AGP 8x and conducted head-on performance shoot-outs between the two interfaces using the reference SiS Xabre 400 in the first part and a reference NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200-8x (NV28) graphics card on the second part. The outcome thus far has not really been worthy enough to highlight the new AGP 8x, because of the extremely minimal performance increment. " for full read warp2 .. www.hardwarezone.com News source:- anandtech.com

Techseekers.net have reviewed the VIA EPIA M-9000 board. They test DVD playback as well as many different configurations of MPEG4 video streams (DIVX and XVID). "Although The EPIA-800 and the EPIA M-Series were developed for different types markets, the evolution shows and this second generation EPIA platform has developed very well.It has addressed the issues that plagued the first release and with a 933Mhz processor, MPEG2 onboard decoding, 5.1 audio, the ability to playback DVD, and all types of MPEG4 Video smoothly, the VIA EPIA M-9000 proves to be an impressive piece of kit. "

TweakTown.com: Swiftech have been around in the processor cooling business for many years now. Today they produce coolers that are air, water and thermoelectric in nature. Follow Cameron "Sov" Johnson as he takes a look at the MCW50-T thermoelectric water cooling GPU kit for ATI and nVidia based graphics cards!

Today TheCrucible.ca takes a look at Gigabyte's 845PE board the GA-8PE667 Ultra. You can check it out here.

PCXMods is a newcomer into the mouse pad scene. This one being geared for gamers, and even professional PC users. I'll be looking at the X-Trac Pro HS today. It is a large mouse pad geared towards optical mouse use, but as an added bonus of making a solid mouse pad, it works great with 'ball' mice. This will be one of the shorter reviews you will see here, but hey, nothing wrong with that right? Read on to see what I thought of this newcomer into the field of mouse pads...?

Two blue cathodes for $28. What more can you ask for? The quality is also good. Read the review at Aselabs if blue is the color of your choice.

VR-Zone has posted a review on the EPoX 8RDA+ board based on the nForce2 SPP chipset! Here's a snip.

This board has fast becoming the overclockers' favorite board so I have checked out in details the overclockability of this board. The BIOS allows FSB adjustment from 100-250Mhz in 1Mhz intervals, VCore up to 2.2V, VDIMM up to 2.9V and best of all the ability to locked the AGP/PCI bus frequency. As such, I am able to increase the FSB all the way to 225Mhz at 2-2-2-5 memory timings after VDD mod and the max FSB attained is 240Mhz!

Update: the link has now been fixed

Prolink Ti4200-8x AGP Video Card.... It seems that almost everyone is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the GeForce FX boards. But lets be honest; how many of us can really afford to cough up around US$500 for a graphics board? Come join TweakTown as they take a look at the Prolink Ti4200-8x Video Card. It offers performance with a price tag that won't leave your wallet bare. Come see for yourself!

Anandtech has scored another top-notch product review. It's the latest Hypersonic PC notebook with enough horsepower to make your desktop cripple. However this comes at a price: 60°C plus warm air is coming out of the vents. This system is another indication that towersized desktop systems will vanish in the not too far away future. For the time being I wouldn't mind to have that one as a mobile computing alternative though. The Hypersonic Sonic Aviator is designed to be loaded with powerful components and that is exactly how our sample Sonic Aviator arrived in the lab. The test system came configured with a desktop Pentium 4 Processor running at 3.06GHz (on a 533FSB we might add), 1.0GB of PC2100 DDR RAM, a 40GB 5400RPM hard drive, an 8X DVD / 16X-10X-24X CD-R/W combo drive, and an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 with 64MB DDR memory. With these components in the Sonic Aviator, the notebook was set to go faster than all but a few desktop systems out there. The Test

Today Beyond3D gets the opportunity to check out Leadtek?s K7NCR18D nForce2 based motherboard! Here's a snip.

Leadtek's line-up for nForce2 based motherboards current consists of Winfast K7NCR18D, K7NCR18D-pro, K7NCR18G and K7NCR18G-pro. Unlike other motherboard manufacturers, Leadtek's pro line is capable of adjusting the CPU, e.g. overclocking. The difference between the G and D line are the including of the graphics core or not. The G line supports the NVIDIA Geforce4 MX integrated graphics core, the D line has none -- in other words the G line uses NVIDIA's SPP and the D line the IGP. I have received the K7NCR18D, the non-graphics, non-CPU adjustable version

"I really like this card. For a card that can be picked up for £ 142 including VAT you cant go wrong. This card is Loaded with plenty of features for today and to come ...

Just got word from David Sancho that he's opened Hispatech.com! which was created as a Spanish web magazine dedicated to hardware, programing, electronics, etc. and here's their first reviews to hit the web! so go check them out.

Overclocking of a XELO GeForce4 Ti4200

Analysis of Antec Performance II SX1035BII SOHO File Server

Vantec Nexus Multi-function Panel: How many times have you wished that you could just plug in that extra USB device without having to crawl around behind your system case? If this sounds like you, then join TweakTown as they take a look at the Vantec Nexus Multi-function Panel. It offers this very capability and a whole lot more. Can it hang with the needs of an enthusiast? Let's find out!

Albatron, a new company that was established in the year 2002, was actually started by it's former company, Chun Yun Electronics. In the year 1984, Chun Yun Electronics was a display manufacturer that produced wide-screen multimedia monitors, rear projection systems, TVs, and plasma displays. But time has changed and IT era is blooming and in order to cope with the new enviroment, Chun Yun Electronics changed their name to Albatron! Now Myworld has taken a look on Albatrons latest motherboard offering, based on Intel 845PE chipset. Can it stand up against the competition?

VR-Zone has some info on the latest Triplex GeForce4 Ti 4800SE Deluxe based on the GeForce4 Ti 4800SE GPU (NV28 core). Triplex GF4 Ti 4800 Deluxe runs at 275Mhz core clock with 128MB 3.3ns BGA DDR SDRAM at 550Mhz. It comes with VIVO, TV-Out & DVI function and at a suggested retail price of US$330. Triplex GF4 Ti4800 Deluxe is expected to outperform the current GeForce4 Ti 4600 by 10% and better overclockability at 330/635Mhz.

THG have published their opinion on the possibly most efficient CPU cooling unit available for home use. The Prometeia needs special installation preparations and comes in a 34kg package due to the heavy compressor included and costs about $595 US. Still interested? Then give the 11 pages a read or head on straight to the Prometeia homepage.

PCworld.com have posted their article looking @ Intel's new Hyperthreading technology. they tested 3 3.06gHZ Hyperthreading enabled systems and for good measure they tested the P4's with HT against a P4 2.8gHZ , P4 2.53gHZ . Dual 2.8gHZ Xeon and an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ system! Here's a byte.

On our PC WorldBench 4 test suite, hyperthreading produced little positive effect--as we expected given that the multiprocessor-aware OS imposes a performance penalty because it requires additional resources to run (see " Test Center: Notes From the Lab"), and PC WorldBench 4 uses many standard office apps that can't take real advantage of hyperthreading when run singly. The Athlon XP system scored 130, besting all three P4 PCs as well as the dual-Xeon unit. In fact, the score for each P4 system was the same or slightly worse with hyperthreading turned on. The Falcon suffered the biggest drop, from 127 with the feature disabled to 121 with it enabled.

Today Beyond3D puts PowerColor?s 128MB Xabre 400 under the microscope to see what this board can offer. The Xabre 400 is powered by SiS?s recent Xabre series of graphics processors! Here's a snip.

With regards to 3D support, this is a DirectX8.1 chip with support for Pixel Shaders up to version 1.3. Although SiS have included Pixel Shader capabilities in the chip, they have not decided to use hardware Vertex Shaders, instead relying on the software Vertex Shader path. Interestingly, although they didn't include Vertex Shaders, they do have a hardware Transformation and Lighting Engine - a slightly odd mix you may think, but one that probably suits the current mix of gaming titles quite well.

LSDsmurf writes: I let them all burn for almost an hour and when I came back I noticed that the lamps felt quite hot, the inverters only a little. Compared to Sunbeams CCFLs these run much hotter, but hey they?re almost twice as bright so I think you?ll have to choose between brightness and heat!

Our Overclocking Guru OPPAINTER has just finished up his review of the improved cooling solution from Asetek, the Vapochill PE. This system of cooling uses the Vapor Phase Change, or refrigeration style of direct die(cpu) cooling, which is becoming the wave of the future for the hardcore high performance computer enthusiast.