News

Quote

With configurations costing upwards of $8,000, this system may be out of reach for most consumers. But taking all of the high-end components and custom features into account, the price is quite reasonable.

Quote

NVIDIA's biggest chance of success with MXM comes from the Go variant of their new GeForce 6 series of GPUs. Strong performance and a solution based around it that's attractive to ODMs (cost and support wise), taking away some of the shine from ATI and M2x, their next-generation FLEXFIT (ATI's own V-MAP style spec for pin-compatible GPU replacement) PCI-Express parts, will help drive acceptance of MXM into the mobile space.

Quote

So, you want to cut a cool looking design, but you think you don’t have the right tools or the skills to actually cut it? Well get ready to learn a few Dremeling techniques that will greatly improve your skills, and help you to make those cuts on small, challenging curves. You are going to learn about how to cut, and how not to cut. You will learn all my little secrets that will help you along the way in your Dremeling adventures

Quote

A shell icon is sort of like a file type (ex: .doc, .txt .bmp etc) but it is made for a system feature. For example, the recycle bin. The recycle bin, unlike allot of your desktop icons, is not a shortcut. It is a shell icon. "My documents", "my computer" , "internet exploder" are other shell icons.

Quote

With newer, more powerful processors being released every few months, more people are looking to push their existing CPUs to the limits through overclocking rather than shelling out more money. The problem is that with stock coolers, you usually can't push the CPU past it's stated speed, so you have to look at other means of cooling. The first thing you can do is to invest in a copper heatsink, this can lower your temperatures a fair bit, but for some people, this is not enough.

Quote

Forrester also increases its near-term estimate of lost jobs by 240,000 in its new report, projecting that a cumulative total of 830,000 positions will have moved offshore by 2005. The research reinforces earlier Forrester findings that were cited by Sen. John Kerry, before he became the all-but-official Democratic presidential nominee, in introducing legislation last year to regulate the call-center industry.

Quote

The video card market can really cause a lot of aggravation for the casual gamer that really enjoys playing the latest and greatest titles, but simply can not afford to keep up with the seemingly monthly release of new silicone. Considering a budget level video card does not necessarily mean that you'll be stuck with horrible performance at the expense of supporting the latest technologies. Albatron has added yet another FX5700 chipset video card to their mid-level line-up, with a price that rings in under $130 US. Given a little bit of Overclocking, performance can be increased even further to add longevity to your purchase decision.

Quote

Are you in the market for a new graphics card, but are baffled by all the different makes and models on the market? If so, we will help you sort through this clutter when we look at the PixelView Geforce FX 5900XT Golden Limited.

Quote

ATI has been a strong presence in the multi-function market. Basically, a video card’s main function is to put on the screen visual code from the program – most importantly to many is to display games at an acceptable frame rate. But what about if you want to make your computer a home-theatre system? You could spend a thousand dollars on those retail systems running Windows XP Media Center Edition. But ATI has provided for a long time a different solution: the “All-In-Wonder” line of graphics cards. These cards allow you to do many things, from playing DVD’s, to watching and even recording television shows. Here at Modsynergy we got a chance to see what the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600 128MB video card can do.

Quote

The ATi Radeon X800 series may very well be the best video cards money can buy right now, but what will happen to the cards that were the best just a couple weeks ago? As crazy as it sounds, those cards are now considered mid range. Normally, I almost never run right out and purchase a video card as soon as it is released. I usually wait and purchase that top end card when prices fall due to the next generation of video cards being released. Now is one of those times. We all know the Radeon 9800 series has been the champ for a long time now, so the best of the best would be the Radeon 9800XT series.

Quote

Day 2 of our E3 booth babe hunt brings us the E3 Access Babes, the Dead or Alive girls, nVidia babes, Hooters girls, SRS Racing babes plus a whole lot more!

Quote

With so many manufacturers producing heatsink/fan combos nowadays, one gets the impression that a lot of copycat designing is happening instead of innovation. That is until recently, as Thermaltake has released there newest creation the Silent Tower. This new HSF is compatible with all cpu types, has heatpipes, and an option for a Dual Fan Setup. Not to mention it's also one of the largest HSF's i've come across.

Quote

As GPUs become faster and hotter, cooling has become a real problem. One solution is the sandwich cooler that uses heatpipe technology. One such cooler is the Giant III from Thermaltake. This baby is a no-holds-bared solution to cooling your graphics card. As the names suggests, the Giant III is GIANT. Due to it's size, it may not be the best solution for everyone, but let's take a look at this mega cooler and see if it's worth the Overclocker's time and money.

Quote

Within the last few weeks we've seen a huge amount of drama hit us in the video card sector. Both ATI and nVidia have debuted new cards that flat out cook. Scores of 10,000 pts on 3DMark 2003 are now a reality for the air-cooled crowd, and running full eye-candy is now something you can do at higher than 1024x768 resolution. Of course this power comes with a price, and even though both ATI and nVidia admit that their new cards use less power than their predecessor's, nVidia was rumored to need at the minimum a 460W power supply. Well, some of us out there are still using 300W, and if you are one of those people, and you're wanting to dwell into the insane world of 400fps in Q3, than you are going to need a new power supply. Luckily, we have a newcomer on the table today, and its hardly a budget unit, although it is very affordable, and once testing this PSU, we'll try and see if its advisable to shell out some cash for it. Lets take a look at this new company and what it has to offer us overclockers...

Quote

On the Nokia n-Gauge, we were delighted to see The Elder Scrolls Travels:
ShadowKey. Set in the famous Elder Scrolls series of role-playing games (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind), this first-person role-playing game offers landscapes that reminded this reporter of the dozens of hours spent in the first title of the series (where the role-playing elements were a step beyond most of the competition, but the rich and complex world of intrigue for Daggerfall and Morrowind, as well as the refinements of the engine were not yet in) where combat was king. The graphics, even on the small screen (or perhaps, because of the small screen), were better than those remembered from Arena and even the Alpha version we saw was not crashing in the dungeons (an infrequent, but not unlikely problem in the first game).

Quote

Now updated for use with SP2. For those of us who have been hearing about all the Big Brother characteristics of Windows XP, it is glad to hear the end user still has some control. Ever since Windows 95 we have all been staring at the word “Start” in the corner of our monitors. It made sense at first, but now it almost seems annoying. How many of you actually use the start menu every time you want to start something?

Quote

ECS has been producing boards based on SiS chipsets for the longest time. What sets these motherboards apart is the bang you get for your buck. These boards are usually priced at a lower end and provide all the needed features onboard along with reasonable performance. The ECS 755-A2 pretty much falls into that category as well boasting the SiS 755/964 chipset for the AMD Athlon64 line of processors.

Quote

I'm left wanting for a better display, DDR400 SODIMMs, 802.11g, some slight keyboard tweaks and a nice rucksack to carry it around in. It looks good, it performs well, the bundle is excellent and you get 64-bit computing on the move. Battery life isn't as shocking as you'd think either.

Quote

It may pay to see what NVIDIA have to offer in the same price range and we'll be evaluating 6800GT performance in the near future, but in isolation against the ATI products that sit above and below it, the X800 PRO is highly recommended if you have the money to spend.

Quote

Now off to the fun part, what we will be doing is branching off a new cable directly from the telephone box outside, specifically for your DSL. This will prevent your modem from having to go through the house cabling; instead, it will go directly to the external phone connection outside. By doing this, the line quality will improve a great deal, especially if you live in an old house with old wiring. With an improved connection to the external phone line, your modem will get a much clearer signal, and therefore your internet connection speed should increase.

Quote

The key thing in terms of the support is that overclocked CPUs are not covered by warranties. We have our processors are locked at their frequency, in terms of their multiplier. People of course are going out there and doing stuff with the voltages and FSB, and we know this but as always "do this at your own risk."

Quote

Processing at 64 bit is currently thought of as the future brought to us in the here and now. AMD was the first to market with a consumer level serious 64 bit processor. Shortly after, FIC released an AMD 64 motherboard aimed at the mainstream market that would bring 64 bit computing to consumers at a price that was well below the competition.

Quote

With an onboard graphics core and decent performance from Athlon XP, the N2VIEW makes a lot more sense as a MagicTwin platform, compared to the PT800TWIN. Low cost processors, no need to initially purchase a compatible graphics card and low cost make things that bit more bearable.

Quote

What happens then to those consumers who don't want fully loaded motherboard? Why should they spend the extra money for features that aren't really needed? For example, my main PC has an IDE RAID controller, onboard 5.1 channel audio, IEEE 1394 and onboard CSA Gigabit LAN... but they all sit idle. They're nifty features to have, but if I could have gone with a motherboard without them for a lower price, I would have

Quote

As the latest and the greatest is always better, performance wise, I have decided to take a look at a card by Asus sporting the Geforce FX5900 with the NV35 GPU. I opted for the 256mb version because when newer games come out that can utilize 256mb's I will be ahead of the game. The V9950 Ultra is the 256MB version of the V9950.

Quote

When you build a computer you have the ability to customize it to what you like. However, a common idea that a builder can forget about is that a case is just as important as the components it houses. For that reason today, I am going to look at a case built by one of the most revered case companies in the industry, Lian Li. First I'd like to thank Xoxide.com for supplying us with this marvelous Lian Li 6077 case...

Quote

The FMC-901X is a great system for those wanting to try something new. Gateway was the first to incorporate a computer into the home theater with the introduction of their Destination series systems, and the FMC-901X shows how well this genre has evolved. The FMC-901X is a very powerful system capable of playing the best video games, editing home movies and watching television. The system design is clean and attractive and should look good in most home theater setups. Gateway can still improve upon the FMC-901X by adding quieter cooling, integrating WiFi and adding more internal expansion. But as far as Media Center PC’s go in the mainstream computer market, the Gateway FMC-901X is a serious contender.

Quote

Today we have the great pleasure of reviewing Soyo's latest Pentium 4 motherboard offering, the P4I875P Dragon 2 v1.0 Black Label. This board is based on the very successful and powerful Intel Canterwood (875P) chipset and comes with many extras. Soyo is especially known for their Intel based motherboards let’s see how well this motherboard performs.

Quote

We liked the look of the Biostar, and were happy that it provides space for two drives for easy RAID setup. We were happy to see Gigabit Ethernet, 6 channel audio, and the easy one step heatsink removal. It is also handy that the panels can be removed individually. The price is also a bit lower than the Shuttle.

Quote

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Apple a patent for its media player software interface on May 4, along with several other features of the company's high-profile products. Other parts of the iTunes software, including the ability to stream songs over a network to another copy of the program, had been the subject of earlier patents.

Quote

To all of you who have ever wanted to host your own modding site, case gallery, or anything else, this is your chance. You win 250MB space, 5GB transfer, and more.

Quote

If you are lacking ports to hook up all of your peripherals to your computer, you are probably looking for a PCI card to provide more ports. What I will show you today is a single PCI card which offers USB, Firewire, and gigabit networking!

Quote

"Type U"--a machine that may be the world's smallest Windows XP-enabled PC. Despite its small contour--it's 167 millimeters wide, 108 millimeters tall and 26.4 millimeters deep--the tablet-like PC features Intel's ultra-low voltage Celeron M 900 MHz processor. It is designed to be manipulated with both hands, similar to some portable game devices. The device has a small LCD (5-inch SVGA), and it can be operated by stylus as well as by built-in buttons. A detachable keyboard is also an option. The device has 64MB video memory, allowing users to connect to a full-size display.

Quote

The Xice ExternalCool EC900/H Kit uses a unique design which is slightly different than traditional external water cooling units such as the Koolance EXOS or the Corsair HydroCool. The EC900 is a standalone unit that sits vertically when placed on a flat surface. The construction of the unit is very good consisting of an aluminum based frame covered with a black hard plastic exterior. On the top and bottom of the unit are a series of ventilation slots which aid in the passive cooling design.

Quote

On the graphics side, the processor used in the All-In-Wonder 9600XT is faster than comparably priced Nvidia video cards and should be able to handle most of today’s games as long as the games are configured for medium graphical settings. Priced at around $299, the All-In-Wonder 9600XT is a relatively new card and we expect its price to drop with the introduction of ATI’s next generation video cards. Otherwise, if you would like more graphical power, we would recommend upgrading to the All-In-Wonder 9800 which can be found for only $30 more.

Quote

The All in Wonder 9600XT brings a cost effective alternative to dropping another US$100 to buy the next highest readily available version which is the AIW 9800pro. You can't ignore the fact that this card brings an unbelievable amount of potential to an everyday computer. Instead of just using your computer to surf the web, game and catch up on your work, you can transform that ordinary work box into a complete multimedia center complete with countless audio/video inputs and outputs, a television, a FM radio and lets not forget a very capable gamer.

Quote

"After careful evaluation, the Microsoft hardware group has decided to scale back its broadband hardware and networking business," a representative said. "Instead, the plan is to apply the knowledge we have gained in that category to future products and services."