It is not very often we get to review products which fall into the "outside of the square" category. The Pyramat 300 Interactive definitely falls into this category.

What is it you ask? Imagine a force feedback gaming mat which works with just about any electrical entertainment device on the market and you'd be just about there. Interested yet? If so read on as TweakTown's Cameron "Mr.Tweak" Wilmot tells us all about it

THUS FAR, the performance of NVIDIA's GeForce FX line has left something to be desired. The GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is a noisy alternative to ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro, and the GeForce FX 5200 is a slower performer in real-world games and applications than the Radeon 9000 Pro. For enthusiasts, however, the GeForce FX 5600 may be the most interesting card in the GeForce FX line. Powered by NVIDIA's NV31 graphics chip, the GeForce FX 5600 is a mid-range graphics card aimed at ATI's Radeon 9500 and 9600 lines. Like other members of the GeForce FX family, the GeForce FX 5600 is dressed up with enough DirectX 9 goodies to give users a "cinematic" experience, although features alone don't guarantee performance.

Today we'll be looking at NV31 as implemented in BFG Technologies' Asylum GeForce FX 5600 256MB card. As its name implies, the Asylum GeForce FX 5600 256MB packs 256MB of memory, but the card also has a few other tricks up it´s sleeve

Tech-Report

How many of you have an obnoxiously loud CPU heatsink fan, and are really getting tired of the decibels it emits? Maybe when you purchased it you thought, "What the hell, it can?t be THAT loud?" But soon after the initial power up, you find yourself regretting that logic.

As an alternative, you have more or less three choices you can make at that point. The first is to just accept your losses and live with it. The second is to purchase another fan and throw the current one in the pile of accessories you will most likely never make use of again. Or you have a third option of either purchasing something to lessen the noise, or do some sort of mod to accomplish the same purpose.

Read the complete review over @ ExtensionTech

Degger*: Looks pretty cool ! Overall we found the EluminiX illuminated keyboard to be a solid product and a very high quality keyboard. The illumination is great for late night surfing or gaming and just looks damn cool.
The EluminX Illuminated Keyboard is a computer keyboard with internal luminescence or lighting - the first commercially available computer keyboard that remains totally visible even in dark or low-lit workspaces. Read the complete Review

Which way do you turn when it comes to choosing a brand new stick of memory for your high-powered computer system these days? With so many choices coming onto the market it makes your decision that little bit harder. Once such stick recently entering the market is from Crucial with their PC-3200 DDR SDRAM which TweakTown's Shawn "Toxic" Baker takes a look at today. Does it have what it takes to compete with the best? Read on and find out.

VR-Zone has tested out the new Inno3D Tornado GeForce FX 5800 card, the highest end card offering from Innovision!

This card comes in a decent looking box with some great game bundles for the gamers. We have successfully overclocked the card to 500/1000Mhz core/memory clock reaching the speed of a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra card and also did some comparisons between the Detonator 43.45 and 43.51 WHQL drivers under 3DMark2003

Just got word that Gaming in 3D have posted their Zalman CNPS7000Cu vs. Thermalright SLK-900U: The end of aircooling as we know it review! Here's a snip.

Hmmm..."the end of aircooling"... sounds like a bold statement. A lot of tech sites like making bold statements in order to get attention. Perfects scores of "10 out of 10" and "100%" seem to have lost their value. How can a product be perfect? One that is designed by imperfect humans?

VR-Zone has just posted a review of probably the most overclockable Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card around, the Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 Pro, which was able to get up to 472/370!

Overclocking the Radeon 9800 Pro provided probably the biggest surprise throughout the whole review process, because I was not expecting much after the meager results I achieved with the Sapphire 9700 Pro a few months back. From a default clock speed of 378/338 Mhz, I was able to overclock the card to 472/370 Mhz, higher than any other Radeon 9800 Pro card tested here at VR-Zone Hardware.

Mr A writes the Germany Online magazine Computerbase has released their : NEC ND-1100A vs. Plextor PX-504A DVD burner review!

GamePC have compared performance of almost entire line of the new Pentium 4's with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus CPUs and that includes:

Intel Pentium 4 3.0C GHz - 8 kB L, 512 kB L2 Cache - 800 MHz FSB Intel Pentium 4 2.8C GHz - 8 kB L, 512 kB L2 Cache - 800 MHz FSB Intel Pentium 4 2.6C GHz - 8 kB L, 512 kB L2 Cache - 800 MHz FSB Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz - 8 kB L, 512 kB L2 Cache - 533 MHz FSB Intel Pentium 4 2.80 GHz - 8 kB L, 512 kB L2 Cache - 533 MHz FSB Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz - 8 kB L, 512 kB L2 Cache - 533 MHz FSB

Overclockers New Zealand today, brings you the review of Gainward's Ultra/800 Plus, based on Nvidia's FX5800 GPU. They went through the FX5800's typical operating character and compared it with the Compro FX5800. Here's a snip:

The Gainward's FX5800 is identical to Compro's offering, as they are made by the same manufacturer. The only difference is perhaps the Gainward sticker on the heatsink. All of GF:FX 5800 cards need an external power source (the molex plug) to ensure a constant and clean flow of juice. If the molex plug is not connected before power up, the driver will give you a warning message once we entered Windows.

Nordic Hardware sends word that their nForce2 roundup is out, using the following manufacturers boards; ABIT, ASUS, MSI, Soltek.

Nvidia have really surprised the AMD market with the announcement of their nForce2 chipset. In the first nForce both manufacturers and consumers saw a great potential, unfortunately nForce had some child diseases, the performance and stability was not on the same level as the competitor VIA's chipset.

Just got word from TweakTown that their Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra - Retail VIA KT400A review is out.

Our first VIA KT400A retail motherboard to hit the labs comes from the folks at Gigabyte. Over the past two years Gigabyte has done a fantastic job in improving their products to please enthusiasts' users. Today Cameron "Sov" Johnson takes a look at the Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra based on the new, single channel KT400A chipset. How does it perform against the older KT400 and nVidia's nForce2? Read on and find out if it deserves your attention or not.

In the Pentium 3 and early Pentium 4 days RDRAM by the Rambus Company was greeted with heavy skepticism and in the end, criticized by many generally for its high asking price and high latency times. Intel now refuses to touch RDRAM with a ten foot pole but SiS on the other hand has decided to give it ago with their new R658 chipset for the Pentium 4. Does RDRAM deserve a second chance? Read on as TweakTown's Cameron "Sov" Johnson endeavors to give us an answer!

Toms Hardware Guide has been experimenting with the predecessor of i875P, the Granite Bay or E7205 chipset which features a Dual DDR interface. While it is significantly cheaper than i875P based motherboards in can provide as much performance. Motherboards used to confirm this were the Asus Asus P4G8X and P4C800. Currently, Intel is promoting the 875 chipset as the ultimate in chipsets. Intel has devoted the longest development time to this chipset, ever since components of this type have been available from Intel. The chipset that is sold under the code name "Canterwood" is supposed to enable very fast memory transfer performance (bypass paths and faster paths), thanks to PAT technology (Performance Acceleration Technology). Our tests show that the old Intel 7204 chipset runs stably with a new P4 processor at an FSB clock of 200 MHz. This brings up the question of what advantages the new high-end 875 chipset really can offer over the old 7205.

What's faster AMD's Barton XP3000+ 400FSB or Intel's Pentium 4 3.0G 800FSB processor? If you want to know just that, then check out this shoot-out at OCWorkbench.com.

As we all know, Intel and AMD has been rushing out with newer processors to take advantage of the higher fsb. The most apparent jump was from Intel P4 533 (133 Mhz fsb) to the 800Mhz (200Mhz FSB). This paints another chapter in PC industry as AMD follows suit with an upcoming model known as the Barton 400 which runs at 200Mhz FSB.

VR-Zone has tested the new Radeon 9800 Pro card from CP Technology or more commonly known as PowerColor. Here's a snip:

PowerColor as a close partner of ATi has been following ATi reference design very closely all along and no doubt this time, their Radeon 9800 Pro card looks exactly like the ATi reference card. However, their key difference lies in the speed of the memories as the PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro is using some special 2ns DDR-I memory chips from Hynix that has has an effective memory clock speed of 500Mhz while the ATI reference and its competitors are using 2.8ns DDR-I memory.

Here's a couple of Intel 845PE 800MHz FSB Motherboard Reviews sent in by TweakTown.

EPoX 4PEA800 Motherboard - 800MHz FSB : The launch of Intel Canterwood chipset which gives support to the new batch of Pentium 4 processors with 800MHz FSB has been meet mostly with open arms by the industry. However, for those users who cannot afford the high price for Canterwood, EPoX has developed a solution for you all. They've been clever enough to use the cheaper Intel 845PE chipset and unofficially support 800MHz FSB. Can it compete with the Canterwood? Read on as Cameron "Sov" Johnson gives us the answer!"

Just got word from Crow at Darkcrow.co.kr that he's been searching the web high and low for the latest graphics card reviews to have hit the web and grouped them all together on one page! there's 30 reviews in total.

ELSA FX 534 & FX 930 review Asus V9900 Ultra GeForce FX 5800 Ultra review Compro Poladyne GeForceFX 5800 review Leadtek WinFast A340 GeForceFX 5200 Ultra review Hercules 3D Prophet Radeon 9800 Pro review VisionTek Xtasy Radeon 9800 Pro review

It's been a while since ATI?s spring line-up was announced, and its taken even longer for them to come to market. While Radeon 9800 PRO?s were reviewed in early March, but only made available in April, and 9600 PRO?s have only recently been seen, oddly it?s the low end Radeon 9200?s that have taken the longest to break cover. Today, however, courtesy of Sapphire we take a look at the very entry level of ATI?s Spring line up with a review of the Sapphire Atlantis 9200 64MB.