News

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Secunia Research has reported a vulnerability, which affects most browsers. The vulnerability can be exploited by a malicious web site to "hi-jack" a named browser window, regardless of which web site is the true "owner" of the window.

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The solution, security experts say, is to use two checks to protect systems--what's known as two-factor authentication. This combines a security device that people need to keep with them--such as a smart card--with a password or secret personal identification number, or PIN to protect against unauthorized access.

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Disney--along with its home-video division, Buena Vista Home Entertainment--announced late Wednesday that it will release movies on the Blu-ray format in North America and Japan when the discs become available. Manufacturers and disc makers said players and discs should start hitting the market in late 2005 or early 2006.

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ABIT is one of those companies that people seem to continually expect a lot from. When so many enthusiasts flock towards ABIT's products, that's bound to happen. Enthusiasts expect and demand more, and ABIT delivers that time and time again with abundant tweaking options and innovative features. A company like ABIT is good for all of us really, as it makes other companies think about innovation and staying ahead of the game as well.

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The Albatron Mars PX915P-AGPe fills in the gap set forth by the socket 775 Intel Pentium 4 and Intel 915 chipset which require users to adopt PCI Express graphics solutions. Or course, this board will support a PCI Express x16 videocard (4GB/s bandwidth), but it also has a AGPe slot that is compatible with 8X AGP videocards. Furthermore, since the PX915P-AGPe is built around the Intel 915P core logic and ICH6 southbridge, it makes use of standard dual channel DDR memory, not DDR-2 RAM. Either type of videocard can be used, even at the same time. Although, we should point out that the AGPe (AGP extension) slot is not necessarily equal to that of an 8X AGP slot, as it runs through the PCI bus. The flexibility is nice, and makes it the major selling point of Albatron's PX915P-AGPe motherboard.

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The new Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 motherboard is based on the VIA K8T800 Pro chipset, and with a sticker price of $135CDN is quite a steal next to the competition. Like most Athlon64 motherboards these days, the SL-K8TPro-939 is very nicely equipped with IEEE 1394, 7.1-channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet, a Promise PDC20579 SATA/IDE RAID controller and the always useful Port 80 diagnostics card. There are five 32bit PCI slots, four 184-pin DDR slots, as well as a standard 8XAGP port. The Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 is probably a case modder's dream motherboard to work on. Its midnight black PCB and colourful expansion slots, IDE/Floppy connectors, DIMMs and CPU retention bracket give it a distinctive appearance.

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The X800 XT is based on the GPU chip R420. The GPU is equipped with 16 pipelines, 4 per quadrant. You may be asking what is the difference between the X800 SE, X800 Pro, and the X800 XT? Well there isn’t much difference in the GPU. Since there are 4 pipelines per quadrant, ATI simply deactivates defective ones and sells it as a lower model. The X800 Pro has “12” pipelines. What this means is that one of the quadrants of an X800 XT is deactivated due to defective pipelines. If you look at an X800 Pro and X800 XT both built by ATI they will be physically identical. ATI uses the same HSF, PCB, and component placement on both models. AMD and Intel both use this same method of marketing when they have a CPU with defective cache. They simply disable the cache and re brand the CPU. This is how we get Celeron, Sempron, and Duron.

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Built for Intel's new Socket 775 Pentium 4 'Prescott' processor (533/800MHz FSB), the ASRock 775V88 is a no frills motherboard and does not come with many features. With a retail price of just $76 CDN though, pretty much all can be forgiven. The only onboard components included are built-in 5.1 audio, two Serial ATA ports, and a VIA 10/100 Ethernet adaptor. Not a lot, but really quite perfect for building office PCs.

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When you look at the R480 part we've tested today and compare it to NVIDIA's current high end PCIe offerings, the winner is ATI on every front. With Catalyst A.I. enabled, the ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition is able to at least tie, but usually outperform the 6800GT in Doom 3 tests. In our other game tests, the results all swing in ATI's favor, with the ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition fastest in every other test.

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Can you believe the kind of power the newest offering from AMD delivers? A simple search over the internet can turn up multiple reviews of the socket 939 processor really churning out some FPU. The only problem that has really come around is the small offering of motherboards for this magnificent processor, but they are slowly coming out of the woodwork, although with a lot of glitches and not too much of what Overclockers really want. Nevertheless, it is nice to see such a great processor debut, and with the introduction of the slower speed 90nm Winchesters such as the 3000 and 3200, we Overclockers can rejoice as they become more and more affordable. I personally feel after reviewing both motherboards features and benchmarked in this review that motherboard manufacturers need to really go back to the drawing board, and come out with a board that make use of the features that a 939 processor has to offer instead of placing a 754 chipset and calling it compatible. Many Overclockers out there are having problems with them, yet when they run right they simply run, and they run fast... Even this little Foxconn board benched as equally as our old testbed, a Mach I cooled 3.0Ghz Prescott at 4.0Ghz with an x800 Pro from Visiontek massively overclocked. The socket 939 beats all our existing benchmark numbers without overclocking our system OR video card. That is very significant indeed, and it just simply points out the power of the AMD socket 939 interface. Although we would like to focus on the aspect, the Foxconn board is not an overclocking board, but is simply a board that is rich in features, and runs good and stable as a SIS chipset should.

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What will be going on your Christmas wish list to send to Santa Claus in the North Pole this year - ATI Radeon X700PRO or nVidia GeForce 6600GT? Today we are comparing both mainstream PCI Express graphics cards to work out which one should find its way into your stocking this year in our usual array of benchmarks. If you're on the market for a new graphics cards and Santa can't afford a high-end card, one of these cards is your next best bet!

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The 6600 or NV43 is basically a little sister version of the NV40 chips that are the basis for the GeForce 6800 cards. The 6600 has 8 pixel pipelines, 3 vertex shaders (v3.0), 1 pixel shader (v3.0), 128 MB of memory and roughly 143 million transistors. The 6600 runs @ a core speed of 300mhz, while the memory runs at about 550mhz. Compared to the 6800 which has 12 pixel pipelines and runs at a core speed of 325mhz. For $120 I would say the 6600 is a much better choice than the 6800 for around $300 when looking at the price/performance ratio. Not to mention when looking at the size of your pocket book.

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Today we will be taking a look at the Radeon X800 XT from ATI. The main differences that seperate the X800 XT from the X800 Pro are the clock speeds and pipelines. The X800 XT has 16 pixel pipelines and operates at 520 MHz core and 560 MHz (1120 GHz DDR) memory speeds while the X800 Pro has 12 pixel pipelines and operates at 475 MHz core and 450 MHz (900 MHz DDR) memory speeds. At present, the X800 XT is pretty much the best PCIE card on the market, as the X800 XT PE is hard to find, and the 6800s are nonexistent. So what sort of performance can you expect to get from the best money can buy? Well, I’m glad you asked, because that is just what we intend to find out!

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The technology, called PowerNow with Optimized Power Management, lets the operating system slow the processor's clock speed and consequently reduce power consumption by as much as 80 percent, said Ben Williams, vice president of AMD's server microprocessor business unit.

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Backers at the time warned that Internet use could suffer if tax-happy states imposed new surcharges on the monthly fees that Internet providers like America Online charge their customers.

But some senators said the ban would require states to raise taxes in other areas to make up for the millions of dollars they stand to lose as telephone service and other taxable activities migrate to the Internet.

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IBM selling its PC business to Lenovo, which would most likely result in a joint venture of some sort, would make sense for both companies, analysts said. Such a deal would free IBM--which has been moving away from commodity products--from managing a difficult and often money-losing venture, while still giving it access to desktops and notebooks to provide to its customers.

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Outlook Express has been implicated in numerous security scenarios, often the same ones affecting IE and Outlook. But considering the level of frustration with IE, which has gone years without a feature upgrade and whose recent security makeover is available only for users of Windows XP, Thunderbird may have a tough act to follow.

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The program can distinguish between regular server process behavior and viruses to detect an attack. "A rogue process such as a worm or virus tends to be making the same type of connection at a much more frequent pace," Redmond said. "If a process probes a particular socket on 1,000 systems a minute, what can you conclude? It's probably not a user or (a legitimate) server process."

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Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

* New multiplayer game featuring physics simulation system

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With Tuesday's release, Netscape is betting that ensuring site compatibility through the IE option, providing general surfing security with the default Gecko engine, and offering an easier interface for some of Firefox's more advanced features will make the browser an attractive option for mainstream Web surfers.

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When it comes to videocards, a souped-up deluxe version that caters towards enthusiasts is usually the best bet. This is all well and good, but sometimes just a few extra features are all we really need. Overclocking is nice, but with a videocard forming the basis of a home theatre system, overclocking isn't a very important consideration. With that in mind, PCstats will be putting the Asus eXtreme EAX600XT videocard through its paces today. The card is based on the ATI Radeon X600XT graphics processor, which allows it to bridge the gap between PC and home entertainment with a little thing we like to call 'HDTV.

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The question everyone has been asking is which graphics card is the best, the Nvidia 6800 Ultra or the ATI X800 XT. There is no real answer to this. The differences in performance between the two chips are so small that it is rarely noticeable by the average gamer, but Nvidia appears to hold a slight lead. If you have a beefy power supply that puts out more than 480-watts of power, go with the MSI NX6800 Ultra which is based on the Nvidia 6800 chip. But if you are a loyal ATI fan or you are worried about not having enough power to run the Nvidia based card, then the MSI RX800 is the card for you. Either way, you will not be disappointed by what you get.

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The Albatron Trinity PCX 5750 would be the perfect card for someone in need of a videocard which is faster than budget, but not as expensive as mainstream. The card was always completely stable during normal use and oddly during overclocking and I never once had one single artifact throughout my extensive gaming and benchmarking. The card took a licking and kept on ticking. Image quality was always very good, gaming speed was acceptable if you keep out of the games full of eye candy and the card was very easy to install and setup.

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The Mobility X800 proved to be able to play some of the most current game tittles. We played Doom3, FarCry, and Half-Life 2 on the Mobility X800 at 1600x1200 and the games were smooth. In Half-Life 2 playing at 1024x768 with 4xAA & 8xAF we got over 60FPS, which is amazing for a notebook...

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Gainward's GeForce 6800 GT Ultra/2400 Golden Sample Goes Like Hell 256MB is a fast and furious card that will ultimately appeal to the enthusiast who desires clock speed above all else. In that respect, it's a decent effort. Forget that it's named a GT; that's just clever marketing. The only question you really need to ask yourself when contemplating a video card at this end of the market is whether an NV40-based 400/1200-clocked card is worth £380 of your hard-earned money. If it is, it's well worth considering.

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The Galaxy GeForce 6600 is a great card for those on a tight budget, but still looking for a good PC gaming experience. It handles all of todays games very well without sacrificing image quality or features. My only gripe is with the card's simple cooling solution which will hinder any worthwhile overclocking gains. It seems like RAM-sinks would be of great benefit to realize this potential.

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Today we are taking a look at the GeForce 6200 reference graphics card from nVidia which is designed to take on ATI's Radeon X300 in the low-end PCI Express VGA marketplace. After taking a detailed look at the GPU and graphics card, we compare in our usual array of benchmarks against an older GeForce PCX5900 and Radeon X300. You might be surprised by the budget gaming performance like we were.

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Being the older brother in my family, I have always seemed to pick on my little brother, from as far back as I can remember. I had always thought that being the little brother probably sucked while growing up. But Leadtek has changed my mind about that. The Winfast A400 TDH, their name for the GeForce 6800, makes being the little brother not so bad after all.

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If you've been following our SLI article series, you'll have seen the intro and 6800 Ultra performance, and 6800 GT performance articles. That leaves one loose end to tie up in terms of SLI performance; 6600 GT. Today's article will wrap everything up, examining the cheapest of the SLI card pairs and digging deeper into the question of price-performance to check if SLI is worth investing in from a value-for-money point of view.

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OCZ's Platinum line of ram is primarily aimed at hardcore overclockers and their PC4200 is no exception. With a default bus speed of 200 MHz, today's AMD systems require their buses overclocked by at least 33% to even reach the advertised speeds of the ram. The advantage to buying such high speed ram is that when overclocking you are eliminating one more component that can hold you back from maximizing your systems speed.

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Corsair´s second foray into Samsung TCCD modules brings about higher levels of performance onto the DDR scene. Validating the ram for both Intel
and AMD Athlon 64 platforms at timings of Cas 2.5 4:4:8 with 2.75v there is certainly the promise of memory Valhalla.

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Once again Corsair has raised the bar and has delivered a product worthy of our Editor's Choice Award. For the many people, including myself, that are stuggling to achieve AMD64 1:1 overclocks the answer is here - Corsair XMS4400C25.

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PQI makes a wide range of DDR / DDR2 / Flash memory products that fit everyone from the budget consumer to the performance enthusiast. Today we are taking a look at the PQI4000-1024DBL TURBOmemory modules. These memory modules are rated to run at DDR 500MHz (PC4000) with better than average latency timings of 2.5-3-3-7, and have a mirrored black copper heat spreaders. Also worth mentioning is that this memory carries a lifetime warranty.

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While there have been many reviews on DDR2, I fear early reviews forthe new standard were unconsciously prejudicial. While PCIe/DDR2 technology continues to experience growing pains, Corsair has done an excellent jobwith what is arguably the fastest memory on the market.

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Over the next few pages PCstats will be testing out a set of Corsair TwinX 1024-3200XL DDR 512MB memory modules, using the above-mentioned 2-2-2-5 memory timings at 200MHz. Sweet memory, indeed. These chips sport Corsair's standard black aluminium heat spreaders. If you're into overclocking, you'll be interested to hear that Corsair's own internal tests show this DDR RAM is capable of running up to 250 MHz, with timings of 2.5-3-3-7 (with a modest voltage increase)!

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Toshiba said on Monday it had won support for the HD DVD optical disc standard from Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Studios and New Line Cinema, advancing its cause in the battle for the next-generation DVD.

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The effort comes on top of Google's plans to create a multimedia search engine for Internet-only video that it will likely introduce next year, according to sources familiar with the company's plans. In recent weeks, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has demonstrated new technology to a handful of major TV broadcasters in an attempt to forge alliances and develop business models for a TV-searchable database on the Web, those sources say.

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CA gave Kazaa a high "clot factor," its measure of how much a program slows a machine by adding unnecessary registry entries and directories. However, classifying a popular application like Kazaa as spyware is a delicate matter, and CA admits this creates difficulties in attaching labels.

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Microsoft will be offering anyone who's "unsure" about whether they've got dodgy software the chance to have it checked out by Microsoft, with the promise that if it does turn out to be counterfeit, they'll replace it.

The deal only covers Windows XP, and only five copies per person can be swapped. It's all free, besides the initial postage and packing. The offer only applies to pre-installed home or professional Windows XP bought before Nov. 1.

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"We're seeing a much swifter uptake for 1.0 than for the preview release, which took more than a month to reach 5 million downloads," Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's release manager, said in a statement. "We're clearly reaching a new world of users and we're doing it at a faster pace than any time in Mozilla's history."

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"This is certainly something that is bypassing some of the security features that are meant to be there. It is a way of bypassing the dialogs in IE. It will result in the (malicious) file being saved on the user's computer," said Richmond, who added that the matter would be worse if that file could be saved in a computer’s start-up folder.

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Today we have a very interesting video card on our test bench. We have a sample of Gigabytes Geforce 6600GT card which seems to be the card you should get if you want speed but still don't have enough cash for the best cards. We will test this and see how it performs agianst other PCI-E cards we have reviewed before. We have some gaming benchmarks coming up for you and some overclocking of course.

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The card bundle is one of the better ones out there, though it's a shame ATI (and as a consequence, MSI) no longer bundles a Half-Life 2 voucher which could have made the software package worth getting excited about. Nonetheless, performance is where it ultimately matters, and the MSI RX800XT-VTD256E brings it

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Today we have more than a couple of choices in 64bit computing. It's popularity is quickly becoming mainstream. AMD has recently released it's next generation of 64bit cpu's with the introduction of the Winchester core line built on the new 90nm fabrication process. These cpu's are now made to fit in a 939 pin socket versus the 754 pin socket of previous Athlon64 cpu's which were built on a 130nm process so you will have to replace the motherboard if you want to run these cpu's if you are coming from a socket 754 setup. Today we take a look at the 300+ and 3200+ models, both socket 939.

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The chipset area shows that Epox has a huge heatsink for the nForce 3 250GB. This is probably the largest stock heatsink we have ever seen for a motherboard, and it is actively cooled. To the left of the heatsink are the SATA RAID connectors that will handle RAID 0, 1, and 0+1, and two additional ports above it also supporting RAID. Two are integrated in the nForce chipset, and the other two are courtesy of a Marvell chip located just above the chipset, but covered by the heatsink. Above the heatsink are the IDE connectors. To the right of them are the front panel connectors, the bios chip, the LED status monitor, and the floppy connector. The VIA chip in the bottom right corner adds Firewire support with the connectors to the right of it.

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We were never able to hit 2-2-2-5 timings with the older kit at DDR400, but the latest TWINX-4400C25 had no problems with those timings. We were also able to hit as high as 278FSB at 2.5-4-4-8, which is also something we weren't able to do before.

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For quite some time now we have been reviewing Corsair's top-notch memory and have received much good feedback from readers abroad, and no comments with negative feedback. This doesn't surprise, us to be honest, as we're quite happy with each sample we receive and have yet to experiance any problems with this memory. From high-end servers to hard core gaming rigs, this memory stands out--in great part due to overclockability that continues to be much superior to its competitors.

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Today we have a PCI Express graphics card shootout comparing three different ATI Radeon X600XT cards from HIS, ATI and GeCube. After taking a look at each product we run them through our usual array of benchmarks and then overclock each as far as possible and then re-run the benchmarks to work our which is fastest for modern day gaming.

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Earlier this year, Japan-based TDK began selling blank recordable DVDs treated with its patent pending polymer. The coating has also been endorsed by the industry group behind the next-generation DVD format known as Blu-ray Disc, which has faced significant concerns over its susceptibility to scratches. On Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard said it will include Blu-ray drives in its PCs starting in late 2005, thanks in part to improvements made possible by TDK's technology. PC giant Dell is also supporting Blu-ray.

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"We are excited that, on Nov. 30, we will unveil many new features that will empower your Internet experience," reads a note on the Netscape portal signed by the Netscape browser team. "While other browsers have seen little improvement over recent years--except frequent patches for security leaks--we have consistently added new features to save you time and to make the most out of your time online. As a part of our next evolutionary step, we have developed this new browser prototype, which could change the way the world masters the Web."

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Sears shares have rocketed over the past two weeks, after it was revealed that real estate investment trust Vornado Realty Trust bought a 4.3 percent stake in Sears. Analysts at the time said that the deal highlighted the value of Sears' vast property holdings as the value of retail real estate is rising and that it indicated other retailers could be potential buyers of real estate currently owned by Sears or other department stores.

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With the ATI HDTV Wonder, ATI has once again emerged at the forefront of Multimedia card market. They have released a product HTPC enthusiasts have been wanted for a very long time now, and the bottom line is that this card does exactly what it was made to do, and does it very well.

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It's very hard to recommend the Pentium 4 570J when the competition, AMD, is currently doing so well. I'd either opt for a cheaper 5xx model and overclock it, hopefully, to the 570J's default 3.8GHz clock speed, or go for any number of Athlon 64 CPUs. Dual-core Smithfield can't come soon enough, I say. Up until then, though, Intel's top-end desktop processors' performance won't be giving Dr. Hector Ruiz sleepless nights.

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I believe that this board fits well within the market space it is aimed at, mainly the budget builder market. While not a stellar performer, it does support many of the newer technologies that many older boards with similar prices may not. The ability to use the 400MHz front side bus Athlons is a big plus, as is support for PC3200 memory. I would recommend this board to someone looking to build an entry to mid level gaming PC, but not to the budget overclocker as the lack of overclocking options make it a very poor performer in that respect.

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The latest improvement in Intel's desktop line of processor involves the increase in bus speed from 800 to 1066 MHz. Initial reactions after benchmarking the new against the old configuration ranged from silence to outspoken dismay about the lack of difference. Sometimes, there is more to the story than meets the eye and we started digging and digging and more digging. In the end, we reached the verdict that the current combo of the 925XE is better than originally assessed. However, we also have evidence that the recent platform mislaunch is at least partially a result of poor product planning, resulting in a forced mismatching of the wrong components. We leave that part for last in this article, though.

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According to Mushkin, with the proper timings set, you should be able to push this memory up to and possibly beyond DDR500 speeds. For our overclocking tests we ran this memory up to 250MHz HyperTransport speed with a resulting SiSoft Sandra memory score of 6904/6793 at timings of CAS3 4-4-8.