"Cables. Bloody cables. The salesman at the store tells you the fancy, expensive ones make a world of difference. The Mr. Anandtech "I've-posted-ten-thousand-messages-therefore-my-opinion-matters" forums guy says premium cables don't make a lick of difference. Who's right? Who's wrong? Or is there a happy medium? Well, neither extreme is correct. And there doesn't even seem to be a happy medium. There ARE two general guidelines you could..." Article Link: http://www.gamingin3d.com/reviews/monster/

Hardware Pacers has posted a review on the Zippy Slim Illuminated Keyboard (EL 715). Here is a snippet:

"The keyboard produced an attractive sapphire glow, which prevented the keyboard from ever appearing dull. Since the keys were not transparent the light glows mostly from the sides of the keys and not as much through the keys. The keyboard appears in a similar design to laptop keyboards, therefore it will take time to get used to it. This keyboard is highly recommended to anyone who has cathode rings, UV sensitive products, LED fans or other LED products to further visually enhance their computer. On the top right, there are three very bright blue lights that display if the Number Lock, Caps Lock, or Scroll Lock is active."

AnandTech has stumbled across ATI's roadmaps for 2004 including information on R420/423, RV380 and even the first sightings of R480 on a roadmap.

Just spotted this bit of info over at Nvnews.net!

Got sent this link by Wish on IRC. It's a peformance graph of NVIDIA's upcoming new GPU the GeForce FX 5500. The graph states that the core is clocked at 250 MHz and memory at 200 MHz. Although, nothing is said about how wide the memory interface is. The headline will link to the original website from where these pictures originate and is in Chinese. The GeForce FX 5500 is set to battle it out in the budget sector.

Just got word that the guy's at 3DCenter have now translated their early article on Nvidia's upcoming range of grahics cards NV40, NV41, NV45! from German to English and have added a bit more Info.

The decision to equip the NV40 with internal AGPx8 interface was probably made at an early developement stage - and this cannot be changed in a rush, at least not without a substantial time delay. Furthermore during the planing of the NV40 there couldn't be foreseen, when the age of PCI Express would begin. However we know now, that Intel will start it with the mainboard chipsets Alderwood and Grantsdale on 28th of March 2004.

An in-depth look at Danger Den´s latest water block. The standard nozzles of the RBX can be swapped for a more performant one; Madshrimps set out to see what difference it actually makes.

The guy's over at Net2Hardware send word that Intel are selling remaked Pentium 4 EE with 2mb L3 as Pentium 4 C 512 Kb L2 as the sites in French! Here's a Goggle translation

OC Modshop have thrown up their review of Speed Strip SSA-1 which is a small tool that can unlock the internal multiplier of your AMD Athlon XP CPUs based on the Thoroughbred and Barton cores.

"Today 3DXtreme is taking a look at another AMD64 motherboard, this time around it?s the Soltek SL-K8AV-R. This particular Soltek board is based on the VIA K8T800 chipset and features a more robust HyperTransport than the previously reviewed nVidia Nforce3-150 Motherboard (Soyo CK-8). The SL-K8AV-R features a HyperTransport that is 16-bit wide upstream and downstream and runs at 800 Mhz each way. This gives the VIA K8T800 an effective front side bus speed of 1.6Ghz. So what does this equate to in real world performance? Read on...

A few months ago we reviewed the Geforce FX 5700 Ultra, at the time it was Nvidia?s direct competitor to the Radeon 9600XT. At that time we were one of the few websites to suggest that the 9600XT was the better card and that the 5700Ultra just wasn?t quite good enough. Today we have our first look at the 5900XT, Nvidia?s new challenger for the mainstream market. Retailing at £170/$200 which is just above the 9600XT at £140 and the 9800 at £200 it should make a very interesting product. We also have a look at Sapphires 9600XT, Sapphire is my number one choice of powered by ATI products and I?m very interested to see how their card stacks up against the 5900XT.

We recently moved to a new server and installed our very own CoolTechZone forums. We would like to make these forums one of the best support forums on the net. To achieve our goals, we need your support. We would like you to join our forums and start a brand new community. As an appreciation to those who join we will be holding a contest. Click on the Pic to enter the Giveaway!

OCIA.net checks out the PowerRight UV Reactive 500w Modular PSU in their latest review. Below is a direct quote from the review:

"This is the first power supply which has, as its name indicates, a modular design. What this means is that you are able to remove any unused power cables from your case, thus decreasing clutter and improving airflow, not to mention improving the all important aesthetics of your cases' internals. The PowerRight power supply also dons an acrylic UV treated casing, 2 LED fans with colored blades, as well as laser cut fan guards."

"Intel's motherboards have hardly been considered the "enthusiast choice" by the more tweaking-oriented of computer users, and for good reason: no voltage adjustments, no overclocking... not even RAM timing tweaks. What Intel DID bring to the table were good, solid, stable motherboards that fit their latest processors like a glove. Shortly after Intel announced their flagship Canterwood board, the D875PBZ, they mentioned a software suite in the works that would allow *gasp* TWEAKING! Intel's "Desktop Control Centre" has now been out since late 2003..."

There are many people who can?t afford the high-end video cards but still want decent game play. Mid-level cards from both nVidia and ATi are still in production and have great market shares. People looking for best deals will appreciate the 9600s and 5700s.

Thanks goes out to TweakXP.de who found the Athlon 64 Processor Power and Thermal Data Sheet. The site is in german but you will understand the most important facts. Else read the paper and see everything in very detail

Antialiasing performance comparison between these two high level boards

From the italian Hardware Setup arrives an interesting article that does a analysis about speed performance and image quality of Voodoo5 6000 and Radeon 9800 Pro cards with antialiasing filter enabled and compares measurement results by clear diagrams.

OCIA.net checks out the ThermalRight SLK-947U in their latest review. Below is a direct quote from the review:

"I debated using the X-Plate, but didn?t feel like going through the hassle of removing the P4 retention mechanism on my board. This was one of the perks of this heatsink. It has many different possibilities for mounting, so if you are using an AMD or a P4, it should still go on without a hitch?..or so I thought."

Hardware Pacers has posted a review on the Auravision eluminX Keyboard. Here is a snippet:

"The keyboard produced an attractive light blue glow through the transparent keys which prevented the keyboard from ever appearing dull. The transparent keys made the illusion that the keys floated in midair. Not only did the keyboard contain Electroluminescent Technology, it also contained the Ergonomic Tactile Key Technology, which allowed easier typing. This keyboard is highly recommended to anyone who has cathode rings, UV sensitive products, LED fans or other LED products to further visually enhance their computer."

"The One-Touch series of drives are great for storing large amounts of data including music and movies and should prove to be a valuable asset to any multimedia enthusiasts. With the included FireWire ports, you can stack a large amount of these drives on top of each other without having to worry about heat issues, and the auto power down feature will help ensure that these drives last a long time."

AnandTech have scooped SIS's latest Roadmap! Here's a byte.

SiS' P4 chipset roadmap is very similar to Intel's in that none of their flagship chipsets this year will feature AGP support; SiS is moving very aggressively to PCI Express for graphics. This leaves VIA as the only chipset vendor providing a dual AGP/PCI Express solution for the Pentium 4.