• Europe's ISPs Overrun with Website Take-Down Orders
• Asustek said to land Intel mobo orders for 2003
• Creative Labs explains new driver policies
• DDR memory spot prices surge suddenly
• Macrovision takes its tech to audio
• Is DVD copying software legal?

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Saratoga, CA - December 11, 2002 - MadOnion.com(TM), announced today that it has changed its company name to Futuremark® Corporation. The goal of the name change is to leverage the strength of the 3DMark® and PCMark(TM) product lines and to align its corporate and product brand identities.

Futuremark® Corporation will continue to be the leading provider of computer performance analysis software and services to its established corporate and end-user customer bases. In addition, the company provides services to IT industry companies, enabling online marketing based on personalized performance information and allowing them to provide enhanced customer support.

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Effective December 11, 2002, the NVIDIA Corporation seeks to change that mind set by introducing a single binary driver for over 200 NVIDIA products. The Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) shares 95% of its code base between all supported operating systems. The UDA features speed, stability, support, and forwards and backwards compatibility across multiple platforms, not just Windows. The 12/11 release also includes full support for the CineFX Architecture, the core feature set for the new GeForceFX line of graphics processors (GPU's).

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You can grab the drivers here :

Version: 1.0-4191
Operating System: Linux IA32
Release Date: December 11, 2002

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Version: 1.0-4050
Operating System: Linux IA64
Release Date: December 11, 2002

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Version: 1.0-4180
Operating System: Linux AMD64
Release Date: December 11, 2002

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We will put the card to it's extreme, we'll benchmark it with a plethora of tests, resolutions and features.. Why ? Because it's the only way to stress the card and the things the enthusiastic gamers expects nowadays. Furthermore we'll compare it to every known videocard of the past year and then will sum it up in a conclusion for you.

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Triplex is able to catch a lot of people's attention with the 007-style aluminium box (To be honest, it got me too). However, the packaging is rather plain besides the fancy box. There is no DVI to VGA converter (that is rather unusual for a Ti-4600 card) and no games were included either. The ram chips on the back of the card don't have any pre-applied ramsinks and the users need to attach the ramsink provided to the rams themselves!

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the Digifire brand sports the leading edge audio processing capabilities, as well as a host of other features, including of course, Firewire connectivity. With support for 7.1 digital surround sound and FireWire DV Editing, this card should cover just about ever aspect one could ask for in a sound card. But, the thing to keep in mind is that quantity of features does not always mean quality, or vise-versa. So, lets throw this card into the machine and see what it can do.

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With proper cooling and increased chip and memory voltages, we managed to raise the graphics core and memory clock-rates by 38.5% and 29%, respectively. The maximum frequencies the graphics card would work at were 450MHz for the core and 800MHz (400MHz DDR) for the memory. That's definitely a record-breaking performance!

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As for the memory settings you can tweak the CAS Latency Time, the Act to Precharge Delay, the DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay and the DRAM RAS# Precharge. The memory controller on Intel chipset based motherboards can not be tweaked as much as the memory controller on VIA based boards, that's why these settings may seem disappointing for many enthusiasts. In order to test the motherboard's stability we used the most aggressive memory settings and a higher FSB. In the reliability tests I used mainly three single sided 256Mb Corsair PC3200 memory modules. I preferred these modules because all the other PC3200 modules I had in the lab were double sided or in insufficient inventory.

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But how much power do you really need, exactly? Most of you probably don’t know the answer to this. In fact, before last month, I didn’t know the correct answer either. Early on, I used to rely on AMD’s power supply list, but AMD stopped updating that. Since then, I’ve just dropped back to my old-school criteria: start with a case/power supply combo that’s in the range of $50, and then put down extra cash for a better design and cooling.

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A few days ago we took a look at the Vantec Nexus (NXP-101) Multi-function Panel which controlled the CPU fan speed, as well as gave us a few temperature read outs on a LCD screen. While it was a great product, it left us a bit lacking as it only controlled one fan. Well, Vantec has given us a new toy to take care of all those other fans; The Vantec Nexus (NXP-201) Fan Controller.

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DFI have produced a exceptional motherboard in the NB80-EA, especially when you consider that it is using a brand new Intel chipset. There are reports of instability and problems with the Granite Bay chipset, none were evident on this board which is a real achievement. What happens when you take a Granite Bay board, a mad overclocker, some high quality components, and a Vapochill?

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Even though the 845PE chipset offers integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN support, ASUS have opted to go one further here and offer BroadCom's Gigabit LAN controller. The Intel chipset doesn't natively support IEEE1394 and so ASUS have included VIA's VT6307 IEEE1394 controller so that the motherboard has this functionality. Also on hand is a Promise Serial ATA controller offering support for up to two Serial ATA ports.

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If the case is available at half the quoted price, I would recommend it for someone wanting a unique case where you can see all the internals. It has adequate cooling for most people, those wanting high overclocks should look elsewhere.

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So instead of a screaming 4800RPM fan blasting all day and night, you can finally control the amount of performance you need. Let it auto adjust itself through temperature changes using the probe or run it non-stop if you need the cooling. Better yet, slap on the adjustable dial and tweak to your hearts content.

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