In an industry where five year's experience virtually qualifies you as a veteran Plextor must qualify as one of the grand masters. For around ten years now they have headed up the CD-RW revolution bringing reliability, innovation and ever falling prices to what was once a privilege of only the wealthiest of PC users. They were first to market with a true 40X CD-RW and now they've gone a step further combining a blistering 48X read and write speed with a groundbreaking 24X rewrite speed.

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• AMD to Make China Classroom PC Plans
• VIA: Tight supply of KT400 chipsets continually felt this month
• Sharp to begin 3D LCD production
• Micron to demo DDR-II at VIA Technical Forum
• Trend Micro to offer cash back for viruses
• Pentium 4 overhaul set for 2005

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Boasting about their features - they're all good at that. But when it comes to outperforming its predecessor, the KT333 chipset, there's dissension in the KT400 camp. DDR400 doesn't seem to be the be-all and end-all of RAM because only rarely do you get more performance with the fast memory than you do with DDR333.

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In order to gain an advantage over competing products like the RADEON 9000 Pro, NVIDIA is retrofitting its bestsellers with AGP 8x support. Apparently, the feature warrants a new core name, hence the recent announcement of the NV28 and NV18 graphics processors. Think of the new products as technology updates, though, rather than the “refresh” we used to expect every six months. We’ll have to wait for NV30 before the real excitement begins.

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While ATI and nVidia battle it on the high-end with the Radeon 9700 and GeForce4 Ti series of products, there is also another battle going on in the graphics market, albeit a bit quieter. Both companies know that only a smaller percentage of the market can, or is willing to, pay $300-$400 for a graphics card. The majority of folks out there simply don't need the absolute fastest graphics chip on the market, they just need a graphics card that will play their current games correctly at decent settings. Full-scene anti-aliasing, pixel and vertex shader effects, high level shader languages, these are just technical mumbo jumbo terms to the majority of gamers out there.

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Given that ABIT already launched their GeForce4™ Ti4200 Siluro card back in April of this year, you would be forgiven for wondering why they have launched yet another Ti4200 based graphics card. The answer lies with their patent-pending Outside Thermal Exhaust System (OTES™) which they claim offers 15% better cooling than other cards and "brings performance to a new level". Their website announces that "Gamers should not consider any other board" and that with "ABIT's OTES Technology, you are looking at the future standard of VGA Cards". Bold claims indeed, but are they justified?

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Since the official release of Windows XP, opinion looks to be divided into two camps as to its merits, you either love it or you hate it. There seems to be very few taking the middle ground. For every person who swears by it, there appears to be someone else who is ready to swear at it. The opinion offered by the author of this article is based purely upon his work in composing this performance database and the problems encountered therein.

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Overclocking enthusiasts have a number of tools at their disposal through which to practice their chosen art without overheating their CPUs. In fact, even user's for whom Overclocking isn't a consideration often find such cooling systems to have compelling advantages over the stock heatsink and fan units that come with most processors. Proper cooling not only improves overall system stability, but also long term reliability; keeping components, such as microprocessor's, from suffering undue stress due to excessive heating can often improve their life spans.

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Now when the XP series was first announced, we were told that this performance rating was a gauge by which to start evaluating how a particular AthlonXP chip equatted [sic] to its competing Intel chip. So by this logic then, we would surmize that the 2400+ would be as fast or faster, because, after all, it does have the "+" sign. And it just so happens that we were able to borrow a P4 2.4GHz from our friends over at ASUS for the sake of this review.

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Saratoga, CA - October 8th, 2002 - MadOnion.com(TM), the leading provider of PC performance information and web services, today announced a strategic partnership with NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, which will result in enhanced customer support experience and drive down costs for NVIDIA system builders.

By utilizing MadOnion's expertise in PC information collection and processing, NVIDIA now offers its system builders the ability to collect critical data on individual PC configurations -- before spending time with the end-user. MadOnion's service enables real-time capture of respondents' hardware and software configurations. This results in substantial cost savings for customer support organizations. Until now, attempts to determine reliable configuration data by asking end-users resulted in increased time on the phone and higher customer support costs.

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Gainward are offering a free DVI/VGA converter for all readers who purchased a GF4 TI product from any naughty vendors who did not include it in their GeForce4 Ti product bundle. To take advantage of this offer please send your name and address along with a proof of purchase to Gainward UK Ltd, Suite 5 The Town Hall, Market Place, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 5AA and we will send you the converter absolutely FREE. While stocks last. UK residents only.

Suitable for any TV/DVI dual output VGA cards.

It has been a long time coming. Finally, Intel yesterday released the i845GE and EP chipsets for the Pentium 4 platform with official support for DDR-333 through a new memory controller. This comes at a time where SiS and VIA have had their DDR333 solutions (and faster in the case of VIA with their P4X400) out for several months already. Do you really need to upgrade your motherboard to the latest and greatest? Follow Cameron "Sov" Johnson has he gives us an answer to this question.

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Cooler Master has long been known for their quality cooling products. Today we bring you the latest and greatest that they have to offer. The HSC-V62. So what sets it apart from the other coolers out on the market?

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Silicon Integrated Systems Comments On The Final Determination Issued by the International Trade Commission (ITC).

October 8th, 2002, Taipei, Taiwan. Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SiS), a leading core logic and graphics supplier, announced that on October 7, 2002, the International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a Notice of Final Determination and Limited Exclusion Order under Section 337 (19 U.S.C. § 1337) in the trade litigation brought by United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC). In a preliminary determination on May 7, 2002, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) of the ITC held that the UMC patents in question are invalid. In this final determination, the ITC has supported this view, with respect to all but one of the twenty-nine individual claims. The ITC has thus issued a Limited Exclusion Order to restrict import into the U.S. of SiS integrated circuits manufactured under process related to that claim.

Though SiS partially disagreed with the determination, SiS has adopted a new manufacturing process to manufacture redesigned products for import to the U.S. Therefore; the production and product shipments will be unaffected, and there will be no impact on customer supplies and imports to the U.S.

SiS has always maintained the highest regard for rights of intellectual property, both that of others and SiS itself. SiS has worked hard for many years to accumulate own advanced IC technical capability and knowledge base. SiS is contemplating an appeal of the adverse ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

About SiS:

SiS was founded in 1987, and is based in Hsin Chu Science-based Industrial Park in Northern Taiwan. The company focuses on developing, manufacturing and marketing leading-edge logic products, including core logic, multimedia and connectivity.

For further information, please visit SiS website: http://www.sis.com

For years now, I've been trying to find the ultimate computer case. The case must be top of the line with all the bells & whistles. Best of all, the case must be GREEN! In the past, I've even tried to paint a generic case green but it ended up looking pretty awful so I gave up on the DYI painting method. I've found some very nice cases over the years, but they all were missing one thing or another, so the quest goes on.

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"The DION-MX MP3 Player (64MB) is very small, affordable, functional and cute. It's capable of playing your MP3's, recording voice and you can even input your own logo/image. Watch the Video to find out more..." ~3dGameMan.com

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