• Chip designers feel bittersweet about ECS’s new graphics card business
• More suggestions that Dell wants Opterons
• New Intel 533 Xeons have extra pin
• Via claims five per cent of world CPU market
• Hitachi/Mitsubishi chip merger approved by EU
• Microsoft hires European Commission insider

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In the media briefing, Mark explains the need for serialATA as a faster more robust interface over the current Parallel ATA technology which is almost a 15 yrs old technology. As we know, in the current parallel HD architecture, we are always thinking of tidying up the PC as IDE cables are wide and blocks air flow in PC system. Furthermore, PATA has a high pin count, high voltage needs and non-scalable performance.

SATA is going to change all this as the interface is smaller and there is a lower pin count and voltage tolerance.

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As we saw in our last review of an Abit motherboard, they are not well known for shelling out incredible packages full of extras. Instead, Abit focuses on their slogan, Speed, Performance, Power. Today, we’ll be taking a look at Abit’s Intel i845GE based BG7E. If you’re looking for a new motherboard and you’re on a budget, stay tuned to find out if the BG7E should be on your list. Let’s start off by first taking a good look at the official specifications for the Abit BG7E.

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MSI, (Micro Star International), are synonymous with releasing products with extra features and large software bundles. I am reviewing the MSI Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200 X8 AGP, (NV28).

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The chipset design of the R300 looked very similar to NV30’s design, so ATI has indeed learned from their mistakes. The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is the first card on the market to fully support Direct X 9 and OpenGL functionality.

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The technology behind the HardCano 8 VR is extremely simple - simply supply power to each of the four 'red' 3-pin plugs, which in turn supply power to each fan that you connect to each of the 'white' 3-pin plugs. Controlling fan speed is a matter of turning the correct knob on the front panel, but an on/off option is not available.

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Many people consider anything over 60fps to be playable, and we can see with even the current/previous generation average graphics cards, they have no trouble reaching frame rates over 100fps for a card that was only about $100 (US). We can see even the more mainstream video cards today can easily play at 1600*1200, thus making Quake III a benchmark that really has no meaning with newer video cards.

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Layout wise the board is clean, with enough working room around key areas for the average user. The area around the CPU is relatively open, with a gap in the row of capacitors to allow easier access for installing and removing the CPU cooler. The main ATX power connector is easily accessed and faced away from the CPU slot. The RAM is not far from the AGP slot, and if you are using a regular sized AGP card, like an ATI 9700 PRO, you will just be able to add and remove RAM in all 3 DIMM slots. A longer card like the full sized 4600 cards obstructs the 3 slots though. So right now, the Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra is still the only KT400 board with enough clearance to allow RAM access with a full sized video card.

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As the noise by the fans in our systems continue to get louder, the more hair is pulled out of our heads for the mini-construction-site that we so hate, yet we keep adding more and more high-powered components in there to make it faster and hotter for our business and entertainment needs of today and tomorrow. Many companies such as Antec and Enermax have resorted to manufacturing "quiet" versions of their own fan products for a while, as most computer users have noticed. Continuing with the Zalman tradition of running a quiet system, today I will be looking at their super-quiet ZM300A-APF 300W switching power supply.

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recently neared completion on my project The Shark, but after getting some constructive critisism I realized that I didn't have enough interior lighting. I had a few red LED's lying around and figured I could probably make an interior light which would fit in with my colour scheme much cheaper than going out and spending $30-40 on a cold cathode or other pre-made solution. And heck, I always learn something new when going DIY (Do It Yourself) and this project was certainly no exception!

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