The lucky pal's at HotHardware took the DDR-II powered ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB for a spin. The 'built by ATI' board they have there comes with neat silver RAM heatsinks on 16MB DDR-II modules which are clocked at 700MHz (350MHz DDR) while the core stays at 380Mhz. Basically the advantage to have 256MB video memory is two fold: Like in Asherons Call 2 there may be games that let you run special texture settings while AA and AF settings can be run event at the highest resolutions with less performance penalties. [UT 2003] The 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro beat every other card, in every configuration except for one. At 1600x1200 without Antialiasing or Anisotropic Filtering enabled, the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra managed to nudge past the Radeons, but that was it. The 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro showed it's largest lead over the 128MB model at 1600x1200 when 6X AA was enabled, where it posted a 9.7% higher frame rate. In most of the other configurations, the 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro's performance was about 3% - 5% higher. We were able to take our card all the way up to a core clock speed of 428MHz, with the memory clocked at 810MHz (405MHz DDR). That's a full 48MHz (12.7%) higher than the default core clock speed and 110MHz (15.7%) higher than the default memory speed! Note: Overclocking Results MAY NOT be typical of cards sold at retail.

NewsWare writes the last few months we saw a robust price drop of the LCD-screens and especially the 15-inchers became very payable. Also new pcs are more and more standard deliverd with a beautiful LCD-screen instead of a classic CRT-monitor.

The looks, space saving and the high clarity makes LCD-screens very attractive for pc-users. But the offer is large and the differences arent always clear. I searched a few things out for you and tested seventeen 15-inch LCD-screens.

Tyan are a company who has been known mostly for their impressive server / workstation products. Recently they've taken notice of the growing overclocking market and decided to switch their focus slightly with the introduction of their Tyan Tachyon series of video cards.

Follow TweakTown's Cameron "Sov" Johnson as he takes a look at the Tyan Tachyon 9500 Pro video card based on ATI's Radeon 9500 Pro VPU. How does it stack up against the best on the market? Read on and find out!

Techseekers.net have reviewed the MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R P4 Motherboard with comparisons to the Granite Bay and the i845PE chipsets on both 533MHz and 800MHz bus where possible.(2.53GHz, 3.0Ghz). They also throw in a 400MHz FSB Barton (overclocked 2500+ ) into the mix for comparison. They did come across some serious BIOS bugs that might make enthusiasts think twice.

Just got word that Geoff Gasior at the Tech Report has thrown up his review of BFG Technologies' Asylum GeForce FX 5600 256MB graphics cards! Here's a snip.

The GeForce FX 5600 should be a popular mid-range graphics product among NVIDIA's graphics partners, so consumers will likely see a lot of different incarnations of the card on store shelves. Since all GeForce FX 5600 cards will share the same graphics chip and general feature list, it will be up to third-party board manufacturers to come up with attractive features to woo potential buyers to their brands. How does BFG Technologies differentiate its Asylum GeForce FX 5600 256MB? Let's have a peek.

We had a few hours alone with a yet-to-be officially released Pentium 4 2.4C and a new ABIT IC7 Canterwood mainboard. We wanted to quickly share what is to come......
With the 5:4 DDRRam MHz ratio, you can run full DDR400 in the dual channels supplied by the Canterwood chipset. If you don?t have the Ram to reach these speeds, the ABIT board also has a 3:2 ratio that you can pick in the BIOS. This would effectively give you a DCDDR333 memory bus, so PC2700 would do the trick....... [H]ardOCP

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!