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We’ve decided to take a slightly different approach to this review than our typical comparison between the featured product, and its closest competitor. It has already been established by most reviews available, as well as ATI themselves, that the 9700 is THE most powerful card available, and will be until nVidia releases the elusive NV30, of which relatively little is known. The approach we opted to take this time around was more or less concerning the scalability of the 9700 PRO, and what you can expect performance-wise in your very own system.

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I was looking for a mid tower case I could easily adapt to water-cooling and came across the AMS gTower from America Media Systems. It is the model CF-1006 in silver and blue. It is an attractive aluminum case with a blue tinted acrylic front panel. The case is also available in silver with a clear acrylic front panel. A full tower version is also available.

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So, what's my point here? My point here is that the majority of pre-modded cases online are being targeted at mainstream gamers who have never touched a dremel in their life. The end result? A massive influx of sub $100 pre-modded cases that are built from cheap materials, functionally impaired, and look at their best in pictures posted online compared to actual use in real life. I"m not pointing any fingers here at specific companies or product lineups as this is neither the time or the place, but I do want to acknowledge that they exist.

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With a 25% increase in available memory bandwidth over the KT266A being the only real performance enhancement of the KT333, it became clear that the added bandwidth had a very minor affect on overall system performance. We soon found that in most tests the 25% increase in bandwidth had an effect on the benchmarks ranging from 1-5% in general. So ,naturally, with the introduction of the KT400, were we a little more hesitant to becoming excited about VIA's successor to the KT333. Were they going to take us down the same path again?

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Tweakers Australia has just updated the Next Generation Fans article that was posted yesterday. The update concerns the noise levels of each fan, including a visual comparison of each. Here's a snip:

After many emails and hard thinking, I decided to add a section that dealt with the noise levels from each fan, including each speed setting the in the case of the variable RPM fan like the Enermax and Thermaltake models. Using my trusty sound level meter, I recorded the noise levels from a distance of 15cm. Now I know that other variables such as the distance you sit from your PC, the positioning of the fans, and the material your PC case is made from is going to change how quiet or how loud each fan is, so please keep in mind the following is only a rough guide - but far more precise than just comparing manufacturers readings.

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I have posted an update to my Corsair XMS PC3500 RAM Review which was posted a week or so ago. In this update, I was able to further stress test this module. Below is a snip from the update:

I recently had the opportunity to test this RAM in a more suitable test system. This rig consisted of a 2000xp chip (unlocked), Epox 8K5A2+ Motherboard, ThermalRight SLK800 HSF, 420watt PSU, GF4 Ti 4400, Win XP Pro, etc... We were able to attain a max stable FSB of 210. To get this speed, we had to lower the multiplier to 8.5 and raise the DDR voltage to 2.8 as well as the CPU core voltage up to 1.85 This gave us an overall speed of 1785 MHz. All RAM timings were set to their most agressive values.

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So, SiS products still bear a label of average inexpensive solutions, and the manufacturers still consider them cheap products which, without added functions, will remain only budget chipsets. We hope that our regular readers are able to give a just mark to SiS's products and choose a high-performance, feature-laden and inexpensive board based on the SiS645DX or SiS648.

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EPoX factory is just located in the building next to their office and of course it is always interesting to visit their factory and see how EPoX boards are being made. Victoria, the marketing manager who is always kind enough to bring me around and tour EPoX factory premises.

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While in my quest for building the “perfect computer”, perfect being the do all machine, I stumbled upon a problem. Which TV tuner card would I get? At the time I had only heard of the ATI All-In-Wonder card. But then I stumbled upon the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP. I remember how I found it. While reading reviews and user feedback forums about the ATI cards, most of complaints were that the ATI’s were not Windows XP compatible, amongst other reasons why people were not happy with the card. With that information I set out to find a TV capture/tuner card that was XP compatible. Thus I found the Winfast TV2000 XP.

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Zephyr’, a long time reader of Beyond3D, has been pouring all over the documentation released by ATI and NVIDIA, and the Microsoft DirectX9 specifications, and has condensed them to produce a technical comparison of R300 and NV30 in relation to what is currently known about DirectX9. Zephyr details all the instruction, register and modifier details known about the Vertex and Pixel Shader pipelines and sums up a whole bunch of information on these two architectures.

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Being that the Koolance EXOS is self contained, the installation process is a snap. This means you will be up and running much faster than if you were to install individual pieces of a water cooler inside your case. However, this does not mean installing such a cooling device is easy and self explanatory. Installing a water cooler requires the highest attention to detail as there are no room for errors. As we all know, water and electronics do not mix. I think we all remember our parents telling us to not take a bath and use the hair dryer at the same time! The same concept applies here.

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[H]ard|OCP have also reviewed the EXOS, here's what they had to say :

Koolance is a name we've all come to associate with OEM style cooling on the cheap. Now, you can take that cooling on the road, from system to system and case to case...without a single modification to your current case.

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After months of downtime, the OCC Case Gallery is back online with a lot of exciting new features! As a registered member (which is free, btw) you can submit as many cases as you want. You can also submit up to six images per case entry, and a comment about each image! Other features include favorites, ratings, user comments, plus several other features. If you're already registered in our forums, you won't need to re-register. Just simply, login with the same username and password.

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