Back in March, we explored ATI and NVIDIA's strategies for tackling the new PCI Express graphics standard. At the time, ATI touted the benefits of a native approach to PCI Express that eschewed bridge chips like NVIDIA's High-Speed Interconnect (HSI). ATI's native PCI-E implementation was certainly an elegant solution, but at the time the company didn't have much to say about specific PCI Express graphics products.

PC Perspective has taken a look at Alienware's new "Video Array" technology at E3. They share the unknown information regarding this dual PCi-Express graphics solution complete with the appropriate eye-candy.

OCIA.net checks out the Zalman Theatre 6 Headphones in their latest review. Below is a direct quote from the review:
"The Zalman Theatre 6’s use three headphone jacks to provide six channels of sound. Each plug is clearly marked with F, R, or C for front, rear, and center, respectively. You will need a 5.1 channel sound card to get the full effects of the headphones, but they work on any of the three plugs if you wish to plug them up to a laptop or a computer with a 2-channel sound card. In this case, I would recommend using the center channel."

Outpost Firewall Pro 2.1 scores very well under a few online security test in this review. "Firewall’s attempt to use Mozilla Firefox to connect to the net was prevented. But the fact that Outpost Firewall detected Firehole’s attempt to connect wasn’t what really impressed me, what did impress me is the way the prompt warning is presented. Instead of warning the user that Firefox.exe is trying to connect to the internet, it informs the user that a new or updated component has changed and is trying to access the internet. If a user is informed the Firefox.exe is trying to access the internet, they would most likely accept the prompt and let the application breach the firewall. "

Here's a quote:
"It seems after high performance memory and heatsinks, OCZ now joins the PSU arena.
We have announced this before, but this time we can confirm it, and even give you proof.

It seems the upcoming PSU from OCZ will be called PowerStream, the product will be available in three flavors: 420Watt, 470Watt & 520Watt."

This post on Rage3d.de shows some unofficial R420 and above benchmarks. Click on Read More to view the URL.

Polish site PCLab.pl posted an ATI Tech Day Coverage. Warp Yourself there and see Black & White 2, FarCry and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault on R420 and ATI labs inside!

I was eager to get my hands on the newest version of SUSE Linux , the first version produced by the company under the Novell corporate umbrella. Like many others, I wondered how it would jell. SUSE has been a leading commercial proponent of the KDE desktop environment. Common wisdom the past few years has held that if you liked KDE, SUSE was your best bet. If Gnome was your choice, Red Hat was the best way to go. Prior to the SUSE purchase, Novell acquired Ximian, with its deep involvement with the Gnome project. Would KDE suddenly find itself a second class environment on the distro that loved it? Many feared that would be the case. What I learned with the beta should go a long way towards allaying those fears.

Tom's Hardware Guide have thrown up their CeBIT 2004 Preview of Major New Products! Here's a snip.

ATI appears in Multimedia Hall 19, C04 with a booth of 360 square meters. With its slogan "Get in the Game", ATI hopes to present its Vision of a modern graphics and gaming world. A podium of 25 square meters offers running shows, raffles and entertainment. 25 PC stations inside the booth entice visitors with the hottest games and gaming competitions.

WHEN WE PREVIEWED the DeltaChrome S8 chip late last year, we saw a promising new GPU with a few of the customary glitches one might expect from an all-new graphics chip and all-new drivers. Since that time, S3 has been hard at work refining its graphics drivers, and now the company is ready to show the world the S8's big brother, the DeltaChrome S8 Nitro.

Tom´s Hardware Guide have thrown up their sneak preview of Intel's upcoming Alderwood - Grantsdale Chipsets! Here's a snip.

In order to properly run the platforms, which have been overhauled from the ground up. Among the extensive changes are the introduction of DDR2 memory with high performance potential, serial PCI Express as a replacement for AGP (and in the mid-term also for PCI), the radical structural adaptation of systems and motherboards to BTX and, last but not least, the processor socket LGA775.

XtremeSystems.org have just posted up the first US exclusive Intel P4 Prescott Pre-view by their member, FUGGER.

"My processor is a early o­ne with stepping of 1, and the current stepping is 3. my results are from a early sample. Please keep that in mind. Like all products they take time to mature and work bugs out. And I have found out that the chip layout has changed since my stepping was introduced and the current stepping resolves some of the issues I have experienced with this ES chip. Intel has done a great job in responding to the problem and adjusting quickly. I expect clock speeds to be ramped up quickly."

New Reviews at Rage3D:

ASUS Radeon 9800XT/TVD Review
SMC Networks EZ-Stream Universal Multimedia Receiver Review
Sapphire Radeon 9800XT

ExtremeTech.com have posted their preview of Microsoft's Windows Longhorn PDC build 4051!

The Longhorn preview also shipped with a 64-bit version that supports AMD's line of 64-bit processors. We were able to install it on our Athlon64 FX-51 system, though we didn't have much time to characterize performance. Any attempt to measure performance on such an early release is pretty meaningless anyway. At any rate, it looks and behaves just like the 32-bit version.