[H]ardNews 6th Edition

ATi Radeon 9800XT Launch:

HardOCP

Tech Report

Gamers Depot

Sudhian

Driver Heaven

Official Radeon 9800XT PR:

ATI today introduced the RADEON™ 9800 XT and the RADEON™ 9600 XT, delivering killer DirectX® 9 performance in leading games like Half-Life® 2, which will be bundled with the graphics cards. The RADEON 9800 XT, the most powerful visual processor available, takes the award-winning RADEON 9800 architecture, the first and only to feature eight full pixel pipes, and makes it even faster. Shipping immediately, the graphics cards will feature 256MB of graphics memory and a wide, 256-bit memory interface. In addition to the brute-force capabilities of the visual processor, the architecture is efficiently designed to process instructions in parallel, maximizing performance. The RADEON 9800 XT will be available in stores and online in October from ATI and its board partners.

[H]ardNews - Blair's Tech Ed.

Microsoft’s European Problem:

For an indication of how Microsoft is viewed in Europe, one need only recall the recent pie-in-the-face attack on Bill Gates in Brussels, Belgium. An embarrassing moment, to be sure, but nothing compared to the pain the European Union (EU) would like to inflict on the man and his software empire. The EU, through its executive branch that is the European Commission, has been pursuing Microsoft since the late 1990s, building a case to support allegations that it has abused its monopoly power.

Pink Goop And Ingenuity:

In searching for ways to repair damaged shuttles in orbit, NASA engineers have gone back to the future. They have selected a pink goop, mixed in two parts like an epoxy, that has been in use since the 1960s. The heat-resistant material has the consistency of caulk until it cures, when it takes on the rubbery look and feel of a pencil eraser

SuSE Desktop Linux:

SuSE Linux 9.0 adds support for Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit Athlon processor, allows easier migration from Windows and includes a test version of the latest Linux kernel, said Holger Dryoff, SuSE's general manager of Americas. The company is the largest Linux distributor in Europe. It competes with Red Hat, IBM and smaller Linux distributors in the United States

Identifying Software:

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed software that is able to identify computer users by their individual, distinct typing styles. This 'behaviometric' technology may one-day be part of security systems to prevent unauthorised users from gaining access to computers and sensitive data.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

VeriSign &Internet; Voting:

It looks like VeriSign will be handling internet voting for absentee voters. With all the stink over VeriSign using the redirect trick for misspelled domain names, I wonder if it is smart to have them handling absentee voting. I guess we’ll all know soon enough.

The contract was granted by consulting firm Accenture, which is working with the U.S. Department of Defense on a voting system known as the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment. When completed, the system will allow absentee military personnel and overseas Americans from eight participating states to cast their votes in the 2004 general election.

[H]ardNews - PR Flack

K8T800 & Serial ATA:

Validation of Maxtor's SATA Drives with new VIA K8T800 chipset with native SATA RAID brings highest capacity, performance and enhanced data protection to new generation of high-end PCs featuring AMD64 technology. VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced that Maxtor's DiamondMax® and MaXLine™ Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives have been validated by VIA to run with the VIA K8T800 chipset for the new AMD Athlon™ 64, AMD Athlon 64 FX, and AMD Opteron™ processors designed for the desktop, multi-processor workstation and server markets.

MCW5002 K8 Water Block:

The MCW5002™ series of water-blocks is designed for extreme microprocessor cooling applications, where 1/2" ID (5/8" OD) tubing is desired. They can be used either in straight liquid cooling configuration, or in conjunction with thermoelectric cooling elements ( MCW5002-PT™ thermoelectric assembly for the P4 curently available). 1/2" barb fittings, for maximum flow rate. Core Technology: Patent pending Diamond-Pin Matrix© copper base plate for optimal heat transfer, and turbulent flow.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

Gigabyte GA-8INXP:

Here is some Intel mainboard review action from the fellas at ModFathers. The Gigabyte GA-8INXP is the focus of this quick and dirty one page review.

For a office use then definitely, for a home user with a taste for tweaking definitely. For your power hungry benchmark number cruncher, you can get better. However for those that want to look at extreme cooling and overclocking it's worth considering. Its strong stable and can certainly handle the juice and speeds you are going to want.

Memory 101:

OCAddiction has an article posted today aimed at helping you understand all things memory. They discuss the cool stuff like memory bandwidth, latency and timings to help give you a better understanding of what makes your memory work for you, not against you.

"How is memory addressed?" is another common question. This one is quite simple. Think of a matrix, a collection of rows and columns. Each cell containing a 1 or 0 is defined by a location that is the intersection of a specific row and column, within a certain "bank". The older i845 Brookdale chipsets only had 4 banks, and could only address 2GB of memory. Newer Springdale and Canterwood chipsets are capable of addressing 8 banks, with a total of 4GB's maximum of memory.

HIS Excalibur 9800Pro:

Hardavenue has reviewed the HIS Excalibur Radeon 9800Pro today. Good looking card with a unique cooling solution that places the fan at the back of the card blowing the opposite way a normal cooling fan blows. Worth looking at.

As expected the HIS 9800Pro Ice-Q offers standard 9800Pro performance matching the Sapphire 9800Pro frame for frame, while also offering a slight enhancement with the cooling and value. Despite the fact the Ice-Q system takes up an extra PCI slot, most people do not tend to use the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot anyway for IRQ allocation reasons, so in reality this should not pose as a huge issue for most.

[H]ardNews 10th Edition

ATi 9800Pro A-I-W:

The baddest all around card on the market is reviewed at NextGen Electronics today. The ATi Radeon 9800Pro All-In-Wonder does it all, from TV tuning, video in and video out and top it all off with killer gaming…you name it, this card has it. Read the full review for more info, here’s a clip:

ATI has made a definitive statement to the industry that they can release top of the line hardware that performs just as well as any video card on the market, along with their comprehensive retail package, all at a price that's amazingly competitive. There's no doubt about it - ATI has released one of the best products for upgrading your computer with the All In Wonder 9800 Pro video card.

Print A PC:

Need a new computer? Just print yourself a new one! Check out the “Santa Claus” machine, a three dimensional printer that can print real objects. Kinda freaky when you think about it, ain’t it?

The technology "prints" layer upon layer of conducting and semi-conducting polymers at the same time building up the gadget. Therefore, the housing of the device can be filled with circuitry during the printing process -- in fact the object itself becomes the circuit and vice versa.

Free DVD Burners:

I landed some pretty sweet TDK 4X DVD Burners for my next One a Day for a Week Giveaway at the funky little chunk of the intarweb I call Hypothermia. I got a total of 5 to give away over the next week, so drop your name in the hat. NOW!

How about a handful of TDK 4X DVD+R /+RW CD-R/-RW drives for our next One a Day for a Week Giveaway? Well that is just what we have for you today in our latest giveaway. These are fantastic for data back up and the best way to back up your important movies and DVDs for home use. As always, it is as simple as dropping your name in the hat to get one of these awesome DVD burners. Get in it to win it and Good Luck!

Mods & Ends:

Vantec Nexus NP-301 @ ViperLair - DigiDoc 5+ @ Virtual Hideout - BeanTech Acrylic Case @ Bit-Tech - Dynatron HSF @ Ohl’s Place - CoolerMaster Aero +7 @ Voided Warranty - SilentX 400W PSU @ Gruntville

[H]ardNews 9th Edition

UHDV Coming?

Check this out. A new standard in digital TV called Ultra High Definition Video is promising image resolution 16x better than anything out now. HDTV displays up to 1000 horizontal lines, the new UHDV can display 4000 lines! Whoa. Thanks to Brian Gross for the linkage.

UHDV displays images with 4,000 horizontal scanning lines, compared to the 1,000 offered by the current state-of-the-art high definition television (HDTV) technology and just 625 for standard TV broadcasts. When horizontal and vertical scanning are both taken into account a UHDV picture contains 16 times the number of pixels ? individual image components - of HDTV.

Aluminum EXOS:

Koolance has a new EXOS on the market. The changes are not just cosmetic, upcoming K8 support and top filling reservoir are just a few of the changes to this unit. We’ll have a full review of this unit in the near future.

Bring powerful liquid cooling technology to an existing computer! Koolance maintains its reputation for professional products by simplifying installation-- there is no need for special tools or case modifications. Utilizing a patent-pending design, the Exos™-Al connects to any PC through a standard rear card slot.

HyperTransport DirectPacket Specification:

The HyperTransport™ Technology Consortium, the nonprofit industry organization that manages the HyperTransport technology specification, today announced a major new release of the HyperTransport technology specification, the DirectPacket HyperTransport 1.1 Specification. The new specification provides four new capabilities: native packet handling for efficient transport of user packets through board-level systems, a robust retry protocol for high reliability server and communications systems, peer-to-peer routing for direct connection between I/O devices, and three new sets of Virtual Channels including 16 channels optimized for streaming traffic.

[H]ardNews 8th Edition

Windows+Lindows= Fight!

This is mildly entertaining to see how far companies will go to be a thorn in each others side. Whether you side with Windows or Lindows, both of these guys are know exactly how to push each others buttons. Thanks Joe.

In a letter sent to the Linux seller on Friday and reprinted in a Lindows announcement Monday, attorney Robert Rosenfeld said Lindows' MSfreePC site includes false and misleading information and encourages filing of fraudulent claims. It demands that Lindows take down the site by noon Monday or face legal action by Microsoft.

Letters To Dan:

What does battery chargers, fake 400w PSUs and 3D headphones have in common? They are all part of this edition of Letters to Dan.

Away we go again. This time, letters about PC RFI, strangely expensive phone cables, LED case lighting, finding the perfect keyboard, using every last joule of a batter's power, headphones for 3D sound, suspiciously speedy battery chargers, getting sued, tasty digicams, and air flow. And then, a blatant swindle.

Making LAN Cables:

LAN Addict has a guide to making your own custom Cat5 cables. Trust me, this is certainly the way to go. For the same price of a long cable you can wire your whole house. Check it out.

Today we're going to make some network cables. Making Cat5 cables can be time consuming, but if you do it right the first time, you wont need to do it again. I'm not going to go into pricing or how to find pre-made cables cheaper/etc, just how to make and test them. However, you will not want to spend more per foot on making the cables and taking the time to make them than you can purchase them for.

Booth Babes!

It is about damn time someone posted a Booth Babes of Computex 2003!! Thanks to Hardware Analysis, we have nine (count them…9) pages of booth babes from this years show.

[H]ardNews 7th Edition

ASUS Does ATi:

Exactly one month ago to the day, there were reports that ASUS might announce an ATi based video card at Computex. Then, we had ATI video cards showing up on the ASUS website cementing the fact that ASUS will be producing ATi based video cards. To go along with all of this, we have some great rumor mill stuff too. We heard rumors that there will be an announcement on the 30th ( tomorrow ) of this new partnership. Bad news for NVIDIA, good news for ATi and very good news for consumers because ASUS is known for making great video cards with all the bells and whistles. Interesting development, let’s see what happens.

Albatron GeForce FX5900 Turbo:

How about a little Albatron GeForce FX5900 Turbo review action? The Albatron card is sporting their proprietary brand of cooling called “wise fan”. Albatron makes a very nice card, and the Oc Prices fellas seemed to really like them too.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but this is yet another case of Albatron making a superb video card...which is unfortunately based around nVidia hardware. It seemed like nVidia was really back on the right track with the NV35, but now it seems that they still have a long way to go.

Silent PC Project:

It must be that time of the year again where the “silent PC” projects come to life. System Cooling has the latest in a long line of Silent PC projects sharing some of their ideas to silence the beast under your desk…in your closet…in your head. Heh.

We had high expectations going into this project, but in truth, the Silent PC turned out better than we ever expected. Not since the days of the Pentium II have we had a computer that was so quiet, and at a performance level never dreamed of back then.

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Athlon64 FX-51 Overclocking:

Those guys over at VR-Zone have pictures of an overclocked Athlon64 FX-51 up from 2.2GHz to 3.05GHz. True it takes a lot of effort...well, it took dry ice and ethanol to do it, but it can be done. Last week Aceshardware got a 600MHz OC with a Prometeia. Very cool stuff here, very cool.

Our good friend Katsumi from Japan has overclocked his Athlon FX-51 (2.2Ghz) to over 3Ghz! He uses ASUS SK8N with the new 1003.003 BIOS that allow you to change the multiplier. The multiplier is set to 14x up from the default 11x but the current version of CPUZ cannot detect the actual multiplier as yet.

[H]ardNews - Blair's Tech Ed

Single Atom Lasers:

The laser has the smallest active region possible and emits quantum light. Quantum light beams contain streams of individual photons rather than the usual, randomly timed bunches of photons. The device could eventually be used as a source of single photons for quantum cryptography systems, which guarantee perfect security, and for quantum computers, which have the potential to crack secret codes and search large databases far faster than ordinary computers.

Grid Computing “How To”:

A grid is something like a roster in a team sport like football. It's a list of computing resources that a coach can send into the game. The players are servers, workstations, PCs, and, often, scientific instruments. Their plays are the software and networking equipment that connect them, and the field is the public Internet or a VPN.

Campaign To Counter Spam:

"Spam is the unwelcome by-product of a largely free and open email system", says IIA chief executive, Peter Coroneos. "Spammers are freeriding on the system because their costs are very low relative to their returns. The economics of spam are simple. Send millions, and if a few respond you make a profit. We want the few to understand that their innocent actions are keeping spammers in business. Worse still, many are being scammed, with the US Federal Trade Commission estimating over 70% of spam is either fraudulent, misleading or deceptive."

CD Quality Car Radio:

The move toward CD-quality car radios gained momentum last week, as Kenwood Corp. delivered the first HD Radio tuner and Philips Semiconductors said it will roll out a new chip that could help cut the cost of entry into the fledgling market. The separate rollouts of the chip and tuner"a "black box" that plugs into an existing car radio"follow on the heels of Texas Instruments Inc.'s introduction of an HD Radio chip earlier this month. Analysts believe that the rollouts could be a sign that automakers are preparing to launch the HD Radio technology in their 2005 vehicles, which debut less than a year from now.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

Using RFID Tags:

While using this type of technology to track sales, inventory etc. might be a cool “idea”, the potential to misuse the technology is high and the general public does not like things that can spy on them…regardless how cool or useful it is.

New product tags equipped with microchips and tiny antennas could one day make it easy to scan all the groceries in a bag simultaneously, allow businesses to locate any item in a warehouse instantly and enable the Defense Department to better manage inventories of mundane necessities like meals and spare boots. Hitachi announced this month that it has developed tags so small that they can be embedded in bank notes to foil money launderers and counterfeiters.