• AMD Barton-core Athlon XP on market in October
• ATI: Delayed launch of DirectX 9 won’t hurt Radeon 9700 PRO sales
• Napster Goes Unmourned to the Grave
• Tweakers claim to crack XP SP1 anti-piracy code
• iSCSI specification complete, clears way for products
• Adobe sues Agfa over Acrobat fonts

[View Here]

The most eye-catching feature of the Soltek SL-85MIR-L microATX motherboard is, in my opinion, the great looking silver PCB. Many manufacturers are now starting to market the 'revolutionary' silver PCBs for their increased reliability, enhanced performance, and reduced EMI. I'm not too sure whether or not any of this is true, but if there is one thing I'm certain of, that would that silver PCB looks truly awesome. The back of the board has a special strengthening plate for the CPU bracket, which will prevent the board from warping when using high-pressure CPU coolers.

Graphics cards don't get closer to the reference design than this. The only somewhat impressive blue PCB makes the card stand out. At first glance you may notice there are no cooling devices of any kind on the ram. It's no question that the ram gets hot on these bad boys, so the missing heat sinks took me by surprise.

The best overclock I could get was 1.533 with the multiplier at 9 and the FSB at 170. Going to 171 on the FSB with 9 on the multiplier was possible but not stable enough to run 3DMark or PCMark every single time. As I stated earlier I had already raised the DDR voltage to 2.65v and further increases didn't help me in my overclocking endevours.

The increasing popularity of the Radeon 9700 PRO-based cards has propelled Gigabyte Technology and CP Technology to place additional chip orders with ATI Technologies, sources from local channel vendors said.

To fulfill the demand, the Canadian graphics chip designer was said to immediately raise its wafer orders with its foundry partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

I have to admit that I have been one to skimp on CPU coolers in the past, usually opting for the cheaper all-aluminium models when putting together a new AMD setup. However, after trying out CoolerMaster's latest skived fin, auto-sensing, copper HSC-V62 never will I skimp again!

Microsoft's latest Service Pack for Windows XP has found its way onto the Internet. Reports say that users who are running illegal copies of the operating system will run into problems. It turns out this is true, although in this guide by TweakTown shows us how to avoid this obstacle with a work-around to install Service Pack 1 for those of you who use Windows XP.

So, you have that spanking new KT333 or Intel 845G mainboard just waiting for something to go fast with, and you have a window in your case to show off what good taste in hardware you have?Sounds like it's time to make the jump to some serious DDR, I'm talking about "grind your teeth wondering what will melt down first" high speed DDR like PC3200 or PC3500.

Today, I'm reviewing a heatsink from dynatron.com, the socket A/370 model # DC1206BM-0. I am really surprised by the size of it. Most CPU coolers you see now a days are fairly large this one is half the size of my Volcano 7+. Will it cool my CPU enough, is it quiet? Read on and we shall see how it performs.

The only thing that I'm really disappointed about with the Radeon 9000 Pro is the price. The 64MB edition of the 9000 Pro sells for a minimum of $85 on Pricewatch.com's search engine, and the 64MB edition of the 8500 sells for only $2 more. If this card could be moved into the $70 price range it would be an absolute steal. Remember, however, that the Radeon 9000 has just hit the shelves a few weeks ago, and it's probably going to drop even further in price, as more third-party manufacturers like Sapphire catch on, and Gigabyte will probably make a souped up version of this card. Once ATI gets the pricing glitches worked out, this card will enter the $70 and below range and will eventually become the bread and butter of thousands of budget gaming rigs.

We would definitely recommend these to anyone looking to spiff up their case a bit. All of a sudden $7 goes a long way :). The quality of these was great and to my surprise they were extremely easy to install. I was a bit skeptic at first on how the transfer backing was going to come off without ripping the sticker right along with it, but sure enough it worked flawlessly. We give this a 9/10 because they just look so cool and they're dirt cheap!

Here's the situation; you walk over to your computer to do some major online gaming. You hit the power button and your computer literally "roars" to life. As all of those case fans gain RPMs, it reminds you of a Boeing 747 throttling up for takeoff. As your case fans reach max speed, your computer begins to vibrate and suddenly starts to levitate! Suddenly, a power surge comes through your house... In an instant, all those cooling fans "red line" and your computer blasts off like a rocket and flies right through your window and explodes against your neighbors new Beamer. Okay, this may sound like an over exaggerated "B" rated comedy, but many of our high end computers systems have so many cooling fans that you need hearing protection to even sit next to them.

Using TV-Out you can play games on your television, which many people prefer to do. Also, it can be used for some projectors, and video-capture equipment. This is helpful if you are presenting information to a large audience, or making a video on how to use computers. The most common use for TV-Out is primarily games.