(02/07) AMD 690G CHIPSET PLATFORMIZATION REVIEW AT TECHREPORT - "In acquiring ATI, AMD gained control over not only one of its more aggressive chipset partners, but also one of the big two in PC graphics. With that asset now in its pocket, it was only a matter of time before AMD rolled out a new chipset with integrated graphics for Athlon processors. Today that chipset arrives as the AMD 690G, which packs a familiar SB600 south bridge paired with a new Radeon X1250 graphics core with four DirectX 9-class pixel pipelines. How well does the 690G stack up against the competition? Read on to find out."
(02/07) AMD 690G/V SERIES CHIPSET REVIEW AT HOTHARDWARE - "Today, AMD is officially introducing their first new chipset since the ATI acquisition, the AMD 690G/V Series. Comprised of an RS690 Northbridge and SB600 Southbridge, the 690 series chipset's goal is to provide a full-featured motherboard backed by a solid integrated graphics solution, thanks to an integrated ATI Radeon x1250 with AVIVO support. What makes the 690G unique, at this point, is its support for VGA and DVI or HDMI, depending on the model, which enables the chipset to be attractive to both business and multimedia users looking for a quality video experience. With its integrated Radeon x1250 clocked at 400MHz and the ability to share up to 1GB of system memory, AMD looks to provide a versatile board that can fill a multitude of needs at a competitive price point."
(02/07) AMD GETS A NEW CHIPSET REVIEW AT PCPERSPECTIVE - "When ATI was purchased by AMD last year, we all knew that one of the main goals to was to offer a "complete solution" like Intel has with the Centrino platform. That will come later, but for now, AMD is able to offer their first product release from the new combined company in the form of a budget integrated-video chipset for their own AM2 platform."
(02/07) ASUS M2A-VM AMD 690 CHIPSET REVIEW AT MOTHERBOARD.ORG - "ATI has a long history of motherboard chipsets on the AMD platform starting with the RADEON 320 IGP way back when. A couple of years ago they released the RADEON Xpress 200 chipset with integrated graphics based upon the X300. Technically the features of the Xpress 200 meet the Vista Aero requirements but the performance isn't there. Today ATI is announcing the latest integrated graphics motherboard chipset the RADEON 1250 and the AMD 690 chipset. The board on the test bench today is the ASUS M2N-PV-VM DVI motherboard based upon AMD's new 690 chipset."
(02/07) CONNECT3D X1950 PRO REVIEW AT XSR - "Prepare your rig for the future of games with the Radeon™ X1950 series —the fastest consumer 3D graphics processor on the planet. With its ultra-threaded engine and unparalleled shader performance, the Radeon™ X1950 delivers maximum graphical detail at incredible frame rates. Then go beyond games with Avivo™ video and display technology and watch HD movies and digital photos come to life."
(02/07) ASUS RADEON X1950 PRO REVIEW AT VIPER LAIR - "Up on the test bench today is the Asus EAX1950 Pro. I won't be comparing it to another card, instead I'll be comparing Crossfire vs. no Crossfire, is the extra performance worth an extra $200. The EAX1950 Pro comes in two versions, one is the standard and one is the Crossfire edition, the only difference in the two is the Crossfire edition includes the two Crossfire bridges you will need to run in Crossfire mode, as far as the cards go they are identical, so if you only need a single card and don't plan on using crossfire, stick with the regular edition and save yourself a few bucks at the checkout."
(02/07) AMD RELEASE ATI CATALYST v7.2 DRIVER AT ATI-AMD - "Catalyst 7.2 introduces a brand new version of the Catalyst Control Center for Windows XP. The new Catalyst Control Center delivers a number of significant enhancements: Significant performance gains; Catalyst Control Center start-up time has been substantially reduced, and overall responsiveness has improved. Reduced system resource usage. New 3D preview which significantly improves the ability for users to understand the benefits of enabling the many Catalyst features of their ATI Radeon graphics accelerator. Windows Vista Open GL performance improves for all ATI Radeon X1000 series products. Gains of up to 25% in Doom 3, 48% in Quake 4 and 21% in Prey can be seen on a variety of ATI Radeon X1000 cards."
(02/07) ASUS RADEON X1950 PRO REVIEW AT VIPER LAIR - "Up on the test bench today is the Asus EAX1950 Pro. I won't be comparing it to another card, instead I'll be comparing Crossfire vs. no Crossfire, is the extra performance worth an extra $200. The EAX1950 Pro comes in two versions, one is the standard and one is the Crossfire edition, the only difference in the two is the Crossfire edition includes the two Crossfire bridges you will need to run in Crossfire mode, as far as the cards go they are identical, so if you only need a single card and don't plan on using crossfire, stick with the regular edition and save yourself a few bucks at the checkout."
(02/07) INNO3D GEFORCE 7900 GS REVIEW AT GURU3D - "Hey everybody, today we'll take a look at a GeForce 7900 GS, the iChill version. I'll spoil the beans immediately. To date this is the best GeForce 7900 GS we have had in our labs... ever !"
(02/07) AMD ATHLON64 X2 6000+ REVIEW AT AMD ZONE - "However, since July of 2006 they haven't been able to claim rights to the fastest processor on the market and in almost no time the industry has started to lean towards Intel again with most hardware enthusiasts and even some companies quickly turning their back. The fight is far from over and AMD is sure to come back strong this June with a new generation of processors but for now there is at least one more processor to come out of the excellent K8 generation and what might be its swan song, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+."
(02/07) ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G REVIEW AT TWEAKTOWN - "Today we are looking at one of the first culminations from ATI/AMD. While some of the older chips have been renamed, today’s contender is the first to be made since the merger occurred last year. Named the AMD 690 chipset series, it carries some new features. ECS have kindly sent us the first sample to us ahead of launch at the end of this month. It’s based on the AMD 690G chipset and comes with embedded ATI Radeon X1250 graphics with support for all Socket AM2 processors."
(02/07) GALAXY GEFORCE 7300GT PCI-E x1 REVIEW AT TWEAKTOWN - "Today we are checking out a GeForce 7300GT that utilizes DDR-3 memory and PCI-E x1 slot. We’re going to have a look at what environments this could work in before we have a closer look at the card itself."
(02/07) SEVEN GEFORCE 8800 GRAPHICS CARDS COMPARED AT TECHREPORT - "As daunting as the selection of GeForce 8800 series graphics cards may be, choice is a good thing. To help you wade through the options, we've rounded up a collection of GeForce 8800 series cards from BFG Tech, EVGA, Foxconn, MSI, OCZ, PNY, and XFX to see how they stack up. Read on to see which cards rise to the top and which get lost in the reference card shuffle."
(02/07) POWERCOLOR X1550 512MB REVIEW AT OVERCLOCKERS ONLINE - "PowerColor has been extremely quick to update and release the X1550 based cards in order to be Vista ready at time of Windows Vista release. The PowerColor X1550 512MB DDRII video card I have in my position sports the necessary changes to be fully Vista certified minting all the features of the previous X1300 offerings."
(02/07) GIGABYTE GEFORCE 7600 GS REVIEW AT MOTHERBOARDS ORG - "The 6800 series was NVIDIA's first generation Shader Model 3.0 architecture based upon what they codenamed NV40. The 6800, the 6600 and the 6200 series formed a high-medium-low mix that served NVIDIA well until 2005 when they launched their second SM 3.0 architecture, the 7xxx series. The high end of the 7xxx series consisted of the 7800GTX, the 7800GT, the 7900GTX, the 7900GT, the 7950GT and the 7950GX2 Dual card. The mid-range was represented by the 7600GT, and 7600GS. The mainstream/low-end is represented by the 7300GT. The card on the review bench today is the GIGABYTE 7600GS HDMI card."
(02/07) BIOSTAR GEFORCE 7600 GS V-RANGER REVIEW AT TECHPOWERUP - "NVIDIA's 7600 GS can be considered a low/midrange product. Of course it does not offer performance like the high-end video cards, but comes at a much smaller price. For people who are casual gamers and can live with lower resolutions or reduced details those cards can be a viable choice. What Biostar did to increase the attractivity of the 7600 GS is put better memory on the PCB and add a software voltage control circuit. This means that the memory can run at much higher clocks, in this case 700 MHz, which is 75% more than the 7600 GS's default memory clock of 400 MHz The voltage control gives you a greatly improved overclocking experience because you don't have to do risky voltmods to get more overclocking out of the card. Just use Biostar's own overclocking software and you can adjust the voltages by software."
(02/07) NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GTS 320MB REVIEW AT TECHREPORT - "The release of a 320MB version of the GeForce 8800 GTS. As you may know, the GeForce 8800 series first arrived in two flavors, the GTX version with 768MB of onboard memory and the GTS with 640MB. Neither card is what you'd call affordable, so Nvidia has fired up the favorite tool of chipmakers everywhere—the world's smallest chainsaw—and shaved off half of the GTS's memory in order to bring the price down. The result is the first DirectX 10-capable graphics card with a price tag of roughly three hundred bucks. 'taint cheap, but it may be the best value in the GeForce 8800 lineup."
(02/07) SAPPHIRE RADEON X1050 REVIEW AT TRUSTED REVIEWS - "Way back in September 2005 Spode reviewed the X550 from Sapphire. A budget card, it provided an alternative to integrated graphics, giving a nice boost to overall system performance. It also expanded your connectivity options allowing for dual-monitors and TV-out. Although claims of gaming performance enhancements were made on the packaging it was quite clear that this card struggled to keep up with any (then) current game at anything over 1,024 x 768, so it certainly wasn’t for even the casual gamer. Now, over a year later, ATI has renamed and refocused the X550 as a Vista compatible card that will enable even the lowliest of PCs to run the new Aero interface. The result is the X1050."
(02/07) XFX OVERCLOCKED 8800 GTX REVIEW AT PC PERSPECTIVE - "The XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition is based on the NVIDIA G80 GPU architecture, which you can get full and detailed information about by looking over my first review of the GPU itself. The main features of the G80 core are improved DX9 performance, DX10 support and the first unified shader architecture for consumer GPUs."
(02/07) I GOT MY OWN DVD-R COPY OF WINDOWS VISTA AT HARDWARE SECRETS - "Last Saturday I got my copy of Windows Vista, generously sent by Microsoft. The thing that immediately caught my eye was the “type” of copy they sent: a plain DVD-R. What is the message Microsoft is trying to send by shipping a DVD-R instead of an original copy to the press? It could be an OEM copy, I really don’t mind. But a DVD-R copy is really bad to their reputation. People say that a picture is worth than 1,000 words. See the picture below and take your own conclusions."
(02/07) DIAMOND VIPER ATI X1950PRO REVIEW AT GOTFRAG - "The Diamond Multimedia Viper X1950PRO is based on the R570 GPU which is an 80nm chip from ATI. The card was the replacement for the X1900GT which is now well past its prime. ATI was having supply issues of the R580 chip for the GT model, so they ushered in the X1950PRO as a new and more practical solution."
(02/07) HIS X1650 XT AND ISILENCE II REVIEW AT HOT HARDWARE - "we take another look at some products from HIS, this time focusing on the lower end of mainstream graphics with the Radeon X1650 XT iSilence II and Radeon X1650 XT IceQ Turbo. Each card comes with its own main selling points. The iSilence II, as its name suggests, is completely silent and devoid of any moving parts in its integrated cooling solution. The IceQ Turbo, on the other hand, sheds silence for speed, coming in with higher clock speeds on both GPU and RAM and a hefty HSF cooler to keep temperatures in check. In essence, we will be pitting these two cards against each other, but we've thrown in some other cards."
(02/07) ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB REVIEW AT SHARKY EXTREME - "The Radeon X1950 Pro is built around the same basic architecture as the Radeon X1900 GT, but this card upgrades to the smaller, faster 80nm RV570 graphics core. This is of the same generation as the 80nm RV560 that powers the Radeon X1650 XT, and it supports HDCP and "native" CrossFire using internal connectors. The RV570 features 12 pixel pipelines, 12 texture units, 8 vertex shaders, and 12 ROPs. This may seem rather sedate for a card that sits on the high-end of the mainstream scale, but of course, the Radeon X1950 Pro includes 3 pixel shaders per pipeline, for a total of 36, which can really make a performance difference, especially in SM3.0 games."
(02/07) ASUS VISTA EDITION MOTHERBOARD REVIEW AT TECH REPORT - "WINDOWS VISTA IS upon us, and hardware vendors are already taking advantage of the buzz surrounding Microsoft's latest operating system. There's no shortage of products claiming to be "Built for Vista," "Ready for Vista," or "Vista-Ready," but in most cases those labels denote little more than driver availability and support for core Vista features and functionality. Asus' new "Vista Edition" motherboards are different."
(02/07) AMD ATI RADEON X1650 XT REVIEW AT DRIVER HEAVEN - "ATI has recently announced a new entry for this price range, the X1650 XT, which comes to replace the X1600 XT as the company's leading card on that market segment. The cast is based on the new RV560 core, which is built on a 80nm architecture and features the third iteration of ATI's Crossfire."
(02/07) ASUS P5W64 WS PRO 975X EXPRESS REVIEW AT PCSTATS - "The Asus P5W64 WS Professional motherboard supports all Socket 775 processors on the market from the Celeron D to the Pentium 4/D/XE, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors no matter the FSB (533/800/1066 MHz inclusive). The ICH7R Southbridge natively supports four Serial ATA II hard drives along with RAID 0, 1, 5 and 0+1 support. If you require more hard drives, the P5W64 WS Professional bristles with a four port PCI Express Marvell 88SE6145 Serial ATA II controller. It adds three more SATA ports internally, and one eSATA port. The Marvel SATA controller handles RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 settings; great if you choose to play it safe with redundant drives."
(02/07) HIS RADEON X1950 PRO ICEQ3 TURBO REVIEW AT GURU3D - "Okay hear me out; one of my favorite ATI Radeon graphics cards at this very moment is the Radeon X1950 Pro. Not because it's the most intense performer of the product range, no .. because it offers really great value for the money that you have to pay. And although it's more expensive than the regular version, I was quite happy to hear that HiS released their ICEQ3 version of this graphics card, as that guarantees some great cooling performance versus low noise... all that on such a lovely looking graphics card. As you all know, we have been testing products from His for a long time now and we do that for a good reason. HiS deserves this kind of media attention. They deliver high-quality products based on graphics cards from ATI, which are all very stable and overclockable."
(02/07) ASUS EN8800GTX GEFORCE 8800 GTX REVIEW AT HOT HARDWARE - "Today, we are going to take a look at ASUS's take on the GeForce 8800GTX, the EN8800GTX. Following closely with NVIDIA's reference design, ASUS brings a potent graphics solution to market that is complemented with a well rounded retail package to help feed those insatiable gaming desires. In the pages ahead, we'll take a closer look at the EN8800GTX and evaluate its performance compared to a number of high-end cards currently available. We'll also take an approach to performance based on a system with a mid-range CPU to help the average user ascertain whether the purchase of a premium video card will pay full dividends in the end."
(02/07) ATHLON64 3600+ 65nm BRISBANE CORE REVIEW AT AMD ZONE - "As you can see we got some impressive speeds with the X2 3600+ using the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe. At first we were using an older BIOS, but with an upgrade to version 0903 we got a big boost. It just came out on the 17th of the month. We dropped the HyperTransport multiplier to 3X, and lowered the memory speed to DDR2 400 from DDR2 800MHz. As you can see we got a good 1.2GHz overclock out of a chip that costs just a big more than $100."
(02/07) SAPPHIRE RADEON X1950 GT 256MB REVIEW AT HARDWARE ZONE - "The Radeon X1950 series has probably been one of ATI's more successful product lines for the last six months. Spearheaded by ATI's flagship graphics card, the Radeon X1950 XTX, we have gradually seen the series expand, with ATI adding the Radeon X1950 PRO and the Radeon X1950 XT. Now, it seems that there is one last SKU left in this series for ATI has introduced (and added to the suffix overload) the Radeon X1950 GT. Based on a variant of the 80nm RV570 core found on the Radeon X1950 PRO, the Radeon X1950 GT uses a core dubbed RV570LE. But going by the specifications, there is little to distinguish between them. Both cores come with 12 rendering pipelines and 8 vertex engines and the same 36 pixel shaders. Other key features found on the Radeon X1950 PRO, like CrossFire are also present on the new Radeon X1950 GT."
(02/07) XFX GEFORCE 8800 GTX 768MB DDR3 REVIEW AT HEXUS - "XFX has now launched a couple of GeForce 8800 GTX SKUs that are pre-overclocked right out of the box. We've managed to get our grubby mitts on the fastest - a 630/2000-clocked version."
(02/07) FOXCONN 7950 GT OC 512MB PCI-E REVIEW AT TECHLOUNGE - "Up on the review block from Foxconn is their 7950 GT OC ("Over-Clocking Version"). We’ll compare it with a non-overclocked Leadtek 7950 GT along with 6 other cards. While this isn’t a new video card, with NVIDIA’s high-end 8 series already having launched a while ago, the low-end and mid-range 8 series cards aren’t out yet so it may still be worth considering."
(02/07) ASUS EAX1650XT REVIEW AT CDRINFO - "The X1650XT comes in two versions, XT and Crossfire, and features 256MB of GDDR3 memory. The core is clocked at 575MHz and the memory at 700MHz. The card is comparable to Nvidia's 7600GT series, in terms of single and dual card setups."
(02/07) EVGA GEFORCE 8800 GTS SLI REVIEW AT NVNEWS - "DirectX 10 is finally upon us and in order to power it, NVIDIA has given consumers the most powerful cards they have ever engineered. Codenamed G80, the GeForce 8800 Series is the most remarkable card in NVIDIA's long and storied history. Currently available in two flavors, the GeForce 8800 GTX and its little and only slightly-less-powerful brother, the GeForce 8800 GTS. For this review, EVGA was kind enough to send me one of their GeForce 8800 GTS cards to complete my SLI pair and see just how well the latest architecture stacked up in SLI."
(02/07) AMD ATHLON64 X2 BRISBANE REVIEW AT HOTHARDWARE - "With the change over to 65nm, AMD has also sharpened their focus on power consumption and energy efficiency, which translates to lower operating costs as well. What AMD has not worked into the transition are any core performance enhancements. The goal was instead a more energy efficient processor that consumes less power and produces less heat, while maintaining a similar performance level as their 90nm processors."
(02/07) GAINWARD BLISS 8800GTS 640MB GOLDEN SAMPLE REVIEW AT TWEAKTOWN - "Following a very standard review layout, we are going to see just what an overclocked GeForce 8800GTS is capable of when compared to a stock clocked version. We will also see what happens when we place ATI’s current top dog, the Radeon X1950XTX, into the mix and see just what kind improvement overall the overclocked Gainward Golden Sample does for us in terms of improvement in overall game play experience."
(02/07) DFI LANPARTY UT ICFX3200-T2R/G MAINBOARD ATI RD600 REVIEW AT XBITLABS - "Today we have to introduce to you a competitive solution for Intel processors from AMD/ATI – the RD600 chipset also known under the official name of CrossFire Xpress 3200."
(02/07) WIRELESS NETWORK WITHOUT BROADBAND ROUTER AT HARDWARE SECRETS - "A lot of people don’t know that if you run Windows XP or Windows Vista it is possible to build your own wireless network at home or office without using a wireless broadband router or a wireless access point, saving some bucks. In this tutorial we will show you step-by-step how to build this kind of wireless network, also known as ad-hoc."
