I was just over at Crucial checking out some memory prices when I spotted they have the Crucial Radeon 9800 Pro on sale at £286.69 inc. VAT! Very nice price.

Just spotted this bit of info at Xbitlabs.com:

Since the NV35 is nearly in retail now and we know almost everything about the part, it is time to start reporting unofficial information about NVIDIA?s next-generation graphics processor, the code-named NV40 GPU. Apparently, we even have some facts to report about the upcoming graphics chip since another unnamed representative from NVIDIA told a couple of things about the upcoming product such as the the NV40 would be twice as fast as the NV35.

OMG! The mother of all graphics cards [ ;-) ] is being showcased in a very cool teaser trailer by Hardware-Tweaker.de. The card is one Voodoo 5 6000 Rev. 3700. They are showing short clips of Quake 3 and 3DMark2K1. According to the website even 8x FSAA is working flawlessly. They plan to post a full feature review soon. Go and check it out!

Elitebastards.com got some nice page scans from a German magazine called, PC Games Hardware Magazine. What a strange name for a magazine dealing with PC games and hardware. Anyway, here are some scans of the Mobile Graphics Showdown that compares the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 (M10), Nvidia GeForceFX 5600 Go (NV31M), ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (M9) and Nvidia GeForceFX 5200 Go (NV34M). They took out the text since it reads German and just uploaded the graphs and charts.

Just got word that NordicHardware have thrown up their 8x budget videocard shootout.

Today we are going to take a closer look at some videocards for you readers out there on a tight budget. Most cards are sub-100 dollar cards in this little roundup! All cards but two are built on nVidias FX 5200 chip, that is 5200 "non-Ultra". The remaining is a Radeon 9200 and I also threw in a GF4 Ti4200-8x. Here's the lineup:

Thanks to Cameron Wilmot at TweakTown.com for sending in this info.

Lyle from ABIT just let us know that their engineers have managed to enable PAT on their IS7-G Springdale motherboard with a simple BIOS update.

AMDMB.COM has posted the first look at a reference 4P Opteron system from AMD today. Using four Opteron 844 processors and 8 GB of PC2700 memory, we have a look at SiSoft Sandra scores (the first AMD64 compatible version) on the processors, memory and cache. The results speak for themselves.

Graphics card maker ELSA recently joined hands with ATI Technologies, introducing new graphics cards based on ATI?s Radeon 9800, 9600 and 9200 chip series (including PRO and non-PRO versions). Shipments of the graphics cards are set to begin this month, the manufacturer said. Given that ELSA is generally seen as a card maker dedicated to the high-end sector, industry observers believe that ELSA?s cooperation with ATI will help ATI consolidate its position in the top-end graphics card market. Read More

The Epox Uk site (Epox.org) are selling off older Epox motherboards at fairly low prices, including an Epox 8KTA+ for £20!

GamesIndustry.biz reports that a number of Japanese magazines are reporting that Microsoft is moving ahead with plans to release a redesigned Xbox, dubbed "Xbox 1.5", which will come in a significantly smaller case than the original model.

Striving to provide computing environments of the highest performance, ASUSTeK Computer Inc., announced a new high-quality motherboard supporting the latest AMD Athlon? XP 3200+ processor on 400MHz front side bus (FSB). The ASUS A7V600 motherboard, based on VIA's latest KT600 chipset, is the company's all-new solution for the Athlon XP processor 3200+on 400MHz FSB. The motherboard incorporates cutting-edge specifications such as DDR 400 memory, AGP 8x graphics interface, serial ATA, IEEE 1394, Gigabit Ethernet and S/PDIF digital audio to bring out the top performance offered by the AMD Athlon XP processor 3200+.

SANTA CLARA, CA?JUNE 3, 2003?NVIDIA Corporation the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, today announced the NVIDIA® GeForce? FX Go5600 graphics processing unit (GPU) with 64MB DDR video memory, has been selected by Toshiba?s Computer Systems Group (CSG), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems for the Satellite® 5205-S705 notebook PC.

Gigabyte is showcasing a new CD-ROM/DVD-ROM combo drive in their virtual Computex product portfolio. The GO-M1600A is nothing like you've seen before. The 16X DVD-ROM / 48X CD-ROM comes with a FM tuner, MP3 playing capability, a VFD display and SRS WOW digital sound processor for 3D surround and enhanced bass playback. To top all of that the unit is controllable by a remote and offers PC power off playback. The drive has 512KB internal buffer memory. Read more for a large sized photograph.

Today Nordic Hardware takes a look at 7 Radeon 9800 Pro cards, where 2 boards are reference boards from ATI and the 5 others are retail products. These are just about the fastest videocards you can get your hands on right now. ATI recently launched their 256 MB version of the Radeon 9800 Pro and it's in here as well, but the focus remains on the retail products.

Read More...

AMDZone have thrown up their nForce 2 motherboard roundup with boards from Asus, Abit, Chaintech, FIC, Epox and Leadtek.

Nvidia's nForce 2 chipset is currently the dominant Athlon chipset on the market. With features that no other desktop chipset can match Nvidia has picked up many more design wins than with the original nForce.

VR-Zone.com reports that Creative has announced the new 3DBlaster 5 RX9800 Pro card based on the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro VPU with 256MB DDR-II SDRAM onboard. This card will be available in June and costs a hefty US$550.

Gericom, a european frontrunner in the field of mobile computing and communications, is the first vendor to launch a new notebook that utilizes the new ATI M10P graphics chip in 64 or 128MB memory configurations. With its own development department and long-term development co-operation with leading technology providers and leading sales partners Gericom sets new standards. The Radeon Mobility 9600 features full DirectX 9 support as well as ATI Overdrive, which automatically adjusts to the ideal clock speed / performance based on the thermal environment. Read more...

Just spotted this bit of info at Xbitlabs. They assume that a lot of manufacturer i865P and i865PE powered mainboards are built on the same PCBs. The only difference between i865P and i865PE is the 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus support. Xbitlabs now flashed a P board with a PE BIOS and it works great.

HisSvt2 over at Abit's forum claims to have got his Abit BE7-Raid 845PE chipset to run at 800MHz FSB and HyperThreading enabled on a board that should not do it. It is done with a hacked BIOS.

Got my 2.4c today slapped it in my be7-raid set some bios setting and bam ive got hyperthreading and 800fsb goodness on a 845pe chipset.

Nvmax have compiled together a list of spec's for ATI's upcoming R360 GPU from various web sources. Here's a snip:

Name: Radeon 9900PRO / GPU Core: R360 Clock Speed: 420Mhz (Bit of guess work there though it would seem reasonable) Man. Process: 0.15µ (TSMC will have massively matured this by now - better high clock speed yields) Pixel Fillrate: 3360MPixels/s

Want to know more? Then click on the above ATI logo.