[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Springdale Cometh:

DigiTimes has the story on what is going on with the Springdale chipset that will support the Pentium 4 and dually channel DDR400. This certainly gives creedance to the Q103 rumors we have been hearing.

Intel’s Springdale chipsets are set to beat Taiwanese competitors to shipment, with small-volume releases as early as the first quarter of 2003 and motherboards based on the chipsets shipping by the second quarter, according to Taiwanese motherboard makers.

Also a note on the "Turbo Mode" Canterwood chipset is in the article and the pricing that will surround it.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

Flipping a Coin:

If you are buying a CPU, no sense to leave it up to chance. Check out OCInside in Germany to see what their database has to say about the CPU you may have your eye on.

So that you're able to recognize in one view how highly which CPU can be approx. overclocked and which Vcore is needed for it or which CPU Stepping should be the best one to overclock it.

Cooling Stuffs:

Danger Den Vs. Swifty TEC/Water block units face off @ LiquidNinjas - Spire Falcon Rock II @ PCAbusers - Dr.Thermal Ti-T707TN HSF @ ClubOC - TherMagic CPU Cooling System @ ClubOC as well I have been wondering myself how the Thermagic worked as it is a very unique solution.

Modding Stuffs:

Clean up your PSU lines @ SystemCooling - Beantech Clear Case @ WorldOCers

New Sites:

A couple of new pages are showing their faces on the Net. Good luck guys, you will need it. TimsCorner is software news and reviews, while CelsiusTech is hardware and software news and reviews. No go check them out so when they get big you can say, "I have been reading them since day one." Then you can roll your eyes and say, "Damn n00bies."

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

No Hosting For YOU!

OK, get a load of this....

We had a similar situation happen with Verio (we were collocated with them) before the Creative Audigy was released. We had acquired full documentation of the Creative Labs Audigy and published them on our site. Creative Labs then, without every contacting us, had their legal team get in touch with Verio legal and cite the DMCA as being breached. Verio then contacted us, on a Thursday as I remember it, and demanded that the entire HardOCP.com site be removed from our servers, or all bandwidth we leased would be turned off. A quick meeting with our lawyers and the Verio lawyers changed Verio's mind about the situation and it was dropped.

As for Creative Labs hiding behind the DMCA and using it for a weapon to stifle websites...well, you might remember that next time you make a purchase. Thanks Adam K.

DVD Encryption Coming to a Head:

This will of course be a landmark case in Net history no matter which side wins. Thanks Jeremy Brown.

''The future of digital delivery has been on hold ever since this case first came,'' said Doherty, head of the Envisioneering Group. ''They need to know it's going to be protected, it's not going to be ripped off seven seconds after being put on the Internet.''

That guy must have some serious bandwidth to be downloading entire DVDs in seven seconds. It takes me so much longer I almost did not get to see Episode 2 this year.

The Year in Review:

CNN is running an Associated Press story that starts off with an really interesting "award". Thanks Joseph Alpert.

The DLAPAPA (Designed Like A Picasso And Priced Accordingly) award goes to Apple Computer for the design of its latest iMac, the one that looks like half a round melon impaled with a bent easel. You have to shell out $1,499 to get one with a CD-RW drive, chugging along on a 700-megahertz processor.

Damn Vandals:

Not that we encourage anyone to paint anything where they should not, but this is still pretty cool. Vandalize your own traincar here. Blame Dexter and Cellfish for the diversion.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition - Blair's News

How Fiber Works:

Less Bang:

Smooth Criminals:

Dec. 31 — This year brought no Melissa virus, no Code Red, no daylong outages at Microsoft or Yahoo, and few tales of high-profile hacks. So one might conclude computer crime was down in 2002. And that would be a mistake. Because this year more than any other, fame-seeking teenage graffiti artists were pushed aside by real criminals who have discovered how user-friendly the Internet is. Millions of dollars are being stolen now from innocent and naive Net users by con artists of every flavor, and there’s reason to believe organized crime rings are now taking a sizable slice of that pie.

Why Ask Why?

Where did those traditions come from anyway?

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition - News You Can Use

Wussies:

Midway's NFL Blitz, for example, has caused a fuss. It allows players to pummel opponents, with little or no punishment, with late and excessive hits. NFL officials have met with Midway to discuss changes.

I think the game should be just like real life as well and this late hit stuff is just giving the children the wrong message. Next year NFL Blitz is said to include arrests for drug possession, wife beating, drunk driving, with Michael Irving to make a an apprearance in court wearing his best pimp-daddy outfitt. Now that will be fun. Thanks Mr. Burns.

Make A Wish:

From its early days as a pet project in the Department of Defense to its infamous time nestled under Al Gore's wing, the history of the Internet is littered with dozens of so-called birthdays. But, as Gore can surely attest, not everyone agrees when they are.

Thanks Iceman.

Somebody Step in Something?

Ottowa - A 15-year-old Canadian boy has survived after falling into an open manhole and being swept away by a stream of human waste.

And you thought you were in deep shit? Thanks Iceman.

[H]ardNews 7th Edition

i845GE Review:

SilentPCReview looks at board from one of my personal favorite mainboard manufacturers, AOpen. They do not get a ton of press here in the states, but they do tend to make some very feature-filled products as the reviewer points out.

AOpen has catapulted PC thermal / noise management to a level that has hardly been imagined by even silent PC diehards in SPCR's own forums. With one of these new AOpen motherboards, gone is the need for any external fan controllers, fan bays, system monitors or general purpose thermal speed fans. Whether conventional air-cooling or water cooling is utilized, maintaining the balance between cooling and noise can be neatly carried out by SilentBIOS/TEK. Their implementation of embedded thermal / noise control is so far in advance of the competition that AOpen looks like a warrior wielding a sword of steel against contestants armed only with sticks.

SATA Really Exists:

Now that Serial ATA drives have actually shown up and are verified as being real, it makes me wonder about that whole Loch Nes Monster issue again. Hexus has the scoopage.

Seagate have produced an excellent hard disk drive at the high quality end of the market place which should be very well received.

Cooling Linkage:

Arkua 2U Pentium 4 HSF @ FrostyTech - Lost In Space LCD Panel @ Ripnet - Regal HSF @ WorldOCers - DangerDen Vs. Swifty Waterblocks @ LiquidNinjas

Modding & Stuffs:

Xoxide 6-Port Variable Speed Fan Controller @ OCIA - Spinning Fans with Pretty Lights @ EnvyNews - BeanTech Clear Case @ VirtualHideout

[H]ardNews 6th Edition - Blair's Edition

IBM ChaChing:

I guess that guy that told me IBM had moved to a service based revenue model was not kidding.

NEW YORK (AP) - IBM Corp. and investment bank J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. signed a massive $5-billion US contract Monday that will transfer the bank's computing responsibilities - along with 4,000 workers - to the technology giant. The deal had been expected since November, when J.P. Morgan said it was focusing only on Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM for the outsourcing contract.

Computerized Cockpits:

Now that you think about it...

Drunken Driving Benefits:

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - A funeral home director is adopting a strategy to shock motorists into staying sober - free burial for anyone who signs a pledge to drink and drive on New Year's Eve.

Lunar Capital:

I am still going down to the Horseshoe to gamble.

What’s billed as the biggest and most expensive hotel ever built on Earth is attempting to make a controlled landing in the gambling capital of the United States. But Las Vegas, we may have a problem: It’s going to take some serious cash before the resort project called “Moon” makes a touchdown in reality.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

End the Bloodshed:

But still get your steak rare! Now to just lock it up and not let it run around for a year or so and we will have veal.

Fancy a beefburger, but want to spare the cow? Tissue engineers experimenting with ways of growing meat in a lab dish could soon provide a solution.

So what the hell we going to do with the current cows? Set them free? Blame Blair.

[H]ardMods

Go get you an eyeful of what the [H]'ers have been doing to their boxes lately over in our forums.

Slowdown:

AMSTERDAM/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Growth in global chip sales slowed to 1.3 percent in November from October, well below average growth for the month, the semiconductor industry said on Monday, and investors are bracing for even weaker trading ahead.

Flaky Biz:

"Gaming is a flaky business," said David Ladyman, editor of the new Austin-based magazine Massive Online Gaming. "You put out a game, it doesn't sell, and all of a sudden you're laying folks off. But the larger the company, the better the cushion."

I guess that whole economics thing must be flaky to David. Hard to imagine putting out a crappy product, it not selling, and people losing their jobs. The article goes on to say:

That could complicate any plans to make Austin's gaming community grow like other tech startups.

Makes me wonder if these people read what they write sometimes as they think the gavedev biz should be any different from any other businesses; you suck, you go away. Thanks Blain Walken.

Ti4200 Review:

VRZone does the Albatron 4200 VidCard, but of course you will want to know how well it OCs.

The stock frequency of the Albatron GeForce 4 Ti 4200 Medusa card is a 250mhz core clock speed and 550 mhz memory speed. With Powerstrip, we were able to crank up the frequency of the Medusa all the way up to 315 mhz on the core clock speed and a whopping 705 mhz memory speed.

Damned if you do...

Damned if you don't. Is it just me or does it seem like when Microsoft tried to be everything to everyone, they are called anti-competitive, but when they don't deliver everything to everyone, they are then the bad guy. It would be a very different story if any of the 400,000 Nynorsk speaking population made their own software utilizing their native tongue.

The main organisation working for the Nynorsk language got most of Norway's high schools to threaten to boycott all Microsoft software if they didn't come up with a New Norwegian version of Office.

Of course you and I will absorb cost of this in the end. Thanks Blair.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

NVIDIA Cg @ Work:

You hear a lot about Cg language but what does that mean to you and me? Not much, unless the game developers can actually use it. Here is an article outlining the nVCg plug-in for Maya 4.5. Other Cg tools are available for SoftImage and 3DSMax as well. So bottom line is hopefully we will be seeing real DX8 and DX9 games with a much shorter time to market. VP of GameDev with NVIDIA told us in a meeting at Comdex that we are going to see games this next year that really take advantage of some of the DX9 features. Thanks Iceman.

"I have been waiting for something like this for a couple years now. To have the ability to see our high-end in-game shaders in the Maya viewports is going to streamline our art pipeline and put a lot of creative power in the hands of our artists," said Jeff Dobson, senior artist for Star Wars: Galaxies at Sony Online Entertainment. "The integration of the tools into Maya is seamless."

nForce2 Review:

Scott has been burning the midnight oil over at ClubOC and has delivered us a write-up of the MSI K7N2-L. We currently are testing this board as well. Also, in case you missed it, we posted our review of the ABIT NF2 board on Christmas Eve day.

After beating the board up with quite a few different settings, I found what seems to be the most stable Overclock while holding a 200MHZ Front Side buss. The RAM bus is running 1:1 using Manual settings of CL-2: 3/3/6 to match the specification by Corsair for running at this speed. The CPU Multiplier is set at 11.5 which gives us a total of 2300 MHz.

Dets Comparisons:

First you can head over to TweakersAsylum to see what those crazies have to say about the latest NEDs, and if that does not blow your skirt up, you can always check out BitBenderTech if you need a second opinion.

[H]ardNews - In the News

Gates on Longhorn:

Either MS does not know when Longhorn will be ready or they simply ain't telling. I know one thing for sure though, it will take a lot to pry my fingers off of WindowsXP. Thanks William Herbert.

There's a lot of ambitious work in Longhorn. We don't even know exactly when we'll have that.

Net Hopes:

You know, dagnabbit, we hears all sorts of good thangs about that thar Enturnet. You git Enturnet in your 'puter?

A study released Sunday finds that most Americans who do not use the Internet still have high expectations for getting information online - with those online having even greater expectations.

Yeah, but after you get over the free pr0n, it just has a different luster to it.

DigitTimes Notables:

Samsung develops 54-inch TFT LCD for DTVs

UMC increases SiS stake to 4.46%

Notebook industry headed for overcapacity

Stuff That Rocks:

Silicon Strategies has composed their list of the Top 10 Stories for 2002. If these give you a chubby, you are allowed to go get the words "Geek 4 Life" tattooed on your forehead. Don't worry, nobody will argue with you.

3.The 'Year of Alignment' between foundries and IDMs

Performing Without a Net:

No, these are not the high flying Chinese guys you saw under the bigtop last summer. These Chinese guys are flying higher than any Chinese before them. Except maybe for Yoko Ono...or Tommy Chong. (Yes, Yoko was Japanese and Chong was born in Canada, but they still fit the joke.)

Never mind, it was unmanned again. You would think they could fit four or five of them in there.

BEIJING -- China's fourth unmanned space capsule blasted into orbit early today in a test launch that soon could lead to a manned flight, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

Cube Steak:

Sink you teeth into this over at TechReport! They pull out yet another Shuttle mini-barebones system, this time an AMD rig based on the KM266 chipset from VIA. AGP slot onboard? Oh hell yes.

The SK41G is an impressive machine in its own right, and has the distinction of being the first Athlon-based Shuttle cube with an AGP slot. If you look at it on its own merits, it achieves very respectable performance that is on par with many full-sized desktop PC's, at least when it's paired with a good graphics card.

ABIT KT400 Review:

Joel from Sudhian Media pulls no punches with the ABIT AT7MAX2 from ABIT. I think he likes it! Here is our review for comparison. We liked it as well.

While the MAX-2 arrived on the scene a little later than some of our other KT400 boards, there's no doubt that this latecomer packs a massive punch. While its high price may deter some buyers, there's no doubt you get what you pay for.

You Winking @ Me?

Thanks Iceman.

Modding & Cooling:

Vantec Nexus Fan Controller @ SoundcardCentral - Starlight starbright @ ipKonfig - Matrix Orbital Review @ ExtremeMhz - Vantec Aeroflow TMD HSF @ PCExtreme - Mousepad get rounded up @ ViperLair

i845E Review:

DigitalDaily, deep from the heart of Russia, is serving up an Albatron review on their latest Pentium 4 board.

Then Albatron`s marketologists appeared, they overclocked the processor speed to FSB = 150 MHz (and it became 150*43=200MHz on memory) and announced about support for DDR400 memory. So we may see just another example of misleading the buyer.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

Athlon64 Vs. Pentium 4 mit SSE2:

c't Magazine, a German publication, sends over the results of more benchmarks. This time with AMD utilizing SSE2.

Read the whole shebang over at Heise.de, but take your translator.

Cooling Stuffs:

Xoxide Acrylic Fan Grills @ VoidedWarranty - Pretty LED Fans @ OCersOnline - Xpider TM200 Thermal Monitor @ ModTheBox

Modding & Stuffs:

Network Switch Mod @ PimpedOutCases, thanks Ken - Fabbing Acrylic @ Bit Tech - Aluminum CD Bay Cover @ Hexus - Plexiglas Case @ VoidedWarranty - PC/Toaster Mod @ LiquidNinjas

ABIT 4200 OTES:

ABIT is still getting tons of press for their OTES cooling solution and their 4200 card that goes along with it. Interesting that the GFFX solution looks to be a takeoff on ABIT's design as well. GamingNexus has the review.

ABIT’s cooling system is a superb design and I can’t wait to see more come out of them. Sure, it’s a little more expensive than other Ti4200 cards out there but you get good quality, the excellent OTES design, decent overclocking capabilities, and the ABIT quality that they are known for.

id Interview:

CEO of id Software takes a few moments to answer some questions for GamesDomain. While not being that interesting to myself overall as it has a lot to do with consoles, you have to love this analogy made by Todd Hollenshead. Thanks Shack!

I Am All For It:

I think some rules need to be put into place here in the States as well. That way the adults can continue to get all the cursing, gore, and sex we so much deserve in our games. Just imagine a day gone by where you are not allowed to beat a virtual prostitute to death with a baseball bat. Thanks Paul.

From April all computer games sold in the EU will carry the new classifications. Those with no violent content or sex will be rated 3+, indicating the age from which they can be played. There will also be classifications of 7+, 12+, 16+ and 18+.