(08/04) Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro review by FiringSquad - "Sapphire has targeted their efforts on the enthusiast segment that not only wants a high performing graphics card, but one that operates silently or near silently. This started with the Sapphire RADEON 9700 PRO ULTIMATE Edition. Sapphire paired their RADEON 9700 PRO card with a Zalman ZM80A heatpipe cooler. By relying solely on the card’s heatpipe to keep the graphics card cool, the board emits no noise, making it perfect for use in quiet PCs. The card’s RADEON 9700 PRO VPU also made it perfectly suited for gaming."
(08/04) HiS Radeon X600XT PCIe review by Guru3D - "This is the HiS Excalibur X600 XT Limited Edition, a 220-230 EUR mid-range product targeted at the mainstream user. It is in fact a PCI Express model. What is PCI-Express you ask? A new slot that will slowly start to replace the AGP port. The AGP port is coming to the end of it's life cycle. As you know AGP is now at 8x (2GB/sec) and I know I shouldn't say it like that, but think of PCI-Express in terms of AGP 16x. It's effectively doubling bandwidth from 2 GB/sec towards a bi-directional 4 GB/sec. ATI has a native solution for PCI-Express where NVIDIA will use it's High Speed Interconnect bridged solution to handle the translation from the multiple serial busses to the card's native AGP interface. More on that later."
(08/04) BFGTech GeForce 6800 OC review by HardOCP - "Moving down the product line a level we have also evaluated the BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC which has a higher core clock speed than a regular GeForce 6800GT. We found that the only difference between the 6800GT and 6800Ultra is simply core and memory clock speeds, as they both have 16 fully functioning pixel pipelines and exactly the same features, but at one hundred dollars difference. Because of the clock speeds being the only difference between the BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC and BFGTech GeForce 6800Ultra OC we found performance in games to remain very competitive. We were also impressed with the fact that BFGTech GeForce 6800GT OC is a single slot video card requiring only one Molex connector."
(08/04) MSI K8T Neo2-FIR VIA K8T800 Pro review by PCStats - "Because of all this impending socket change, many enthusiasts and manufacturers stayed away from the Athlon64 for the first little while, instead deciding to lay in wait for a more stable Socket 939 platform to emerge. Now that AMDs Socket 939 is upon us, I expect there will be much more Athlon64 action in the coming months! The motherboard PCstats is testing today is made by MSI Computer, and based on the second generation VIA K8T800 Pro chipset. MSI's K8T Neo2-FIR motherboard follows through where its successful K8T Neo board left off, and proves to be a compelling option for a little over $140 USD."
(08/04) Albatron GeForcePCX 5900 PCIe review by PCStats - "In this review we'll see the part of the GPU being played by nVIDIA's GeForcePCX 5900. The videocard in question is the Albatron Trinity PC5900, which is obviously based on the GeForcePCX 5900 GPU. The Trinity PC5900 videocard is powered with 128MB of DDR RAM, and supports both analog and DVI monitors. There is also an S-Video out. Albatron includes everything you'll need to connect your PC to the TV, but it seems they forgot the DVI to analog converter for those of you who want to use dual analog monitors. In terms of software, the Trinity PC5900 card comes with WinDVD/WinDVD Creator, Duke Nukem: MP and a five game demo CD."
(08/04) Radeon X800 Pro vs GeForce 6800GT by Elite - "Thus, today we'll be looking at how some of the current generation cards perform in this Stress Test - While the focus of many eyes is on performance at the very high-end, in the form of the hard to get hold of Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition and GeForce 6800 Ultra, we'll be staying away from those dizzy heights and instead focus on the cards that most people who'll be playing Half-Life 2 actually already own - ATIs Radeon X800 Pro and nVidia's GeForce 6800GT. As a small taster of the high life, we'll also see how the 6800GT fares when clocked at 6800 Ultra speeds. "
(08/04) ASrock K8 Combo-Z ULi M1689 review by OCW - "In the past, we have seen many kinds of hybrid solutions and they are very popular among end users who wish to upgrade their board. We have seen such boards like Slot 1/Socket 370 and DDR/SDR combos. ASrock takes it one step further and stunned the world with the introduction of the third combo board. - K8 Combo Z. K8 Combo Z supports both Socket 754 (single channel) and Socket 939 (dual channel) for future upgrades. The major difference is the chipset used. K8 Combo Z uses the ULi M1689 single chipset. This single chipset supports AGP 8X, Serial ATA, Integrated LAN for Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Sempron CPUs."
(08/04) Galaxy GeForce 6800 review by Guru3D - "Today we'll be dealing with another Galaxy Technology graphics card review. Galaxy Technology is a certified NVIDIA Board Partner and is stationed in Hong Kong, they are now starting to retail their products to other parts of the world. Galaxy Technology is manufacturing low to high-end performance graphic cards. They carry the brand names 3G Graphics and Zeus and have branches in the Europe and Asia regions, so they provide global channel coverage. They offer products with a reputation, products that set themselves aside from the competition. As a close partner of NVIDIA, Galaxy is a reputable company with a keen insight on what the end-user would like to see in their product: quality and unique designs. They offer GeForce based graphics cards from low to high-end. Today's review is of a high-end product."
(08/04) Abit AV8 VIA K8T800 Pro review by HardOCP - "The AV8 is ABIT’s foundational member for their socket 939 based line-up. ABIT mates the socket 939 technology with the VIA K8T800 Pro chipset. The K8T800 chipset is a well rounded solution, offering native support for all socket 939 compliant Athlon64 and AthlonFX CPUs, as well as Dual Channel DDR memory. ABIT made the AV8 a feature complete solution, with only an AMD based socket 939 processor, DDR RAM, an AGP video card, and drives required for a complete working system. The following components are included on-board with the AV8: 2 IDE ATA-133 ports; 2 RAID capable SATA-150 ports; 8 USB 2.0 capable ports (4 in rear panel, and 2 onboard headers supporting 2 ports each); 3 IEEE 1394 capable ports (1 in rear panel, 2 onboard headers supporting 1 port each); 1 VIA Gigabit Ethernet port; Realtek 5.1 channel audio codec featuring S/PDIF."
(08/04) eVGA GeForceFX 5700 review by Anandtech - "While NVIDIA somewhat has ForceWare Multimedia out the door, it is only being shipped with one Personal Cinema, with which we take issue; that "one Personal Cinema" being eVGA's GeForce FX 5700 Personal Cinema. Granted, a public web-posting is scheduled for later in the summer, and most people still won't be able to get a hold of FWM unless they buy eVGA's newest Personal Cinema card. We did a GeForce FX Personal Cinema Roundup a while back, which at that time included Asus, Chaintech, MSI, and eVGA. The latter of the four would probably be the only one who can be called a consistent Personal Cinema board partner of NVIDIA's, since they started out with the GeForce4 MX440 Personal Cinema. The first three mentioned (Asus, Chaintech, and MSI) have only joined the ranks of NVIDIA's Personal Cinema board partners for GeForce FX 5200 and 5600."
(08/04) HIS Radeon 9600 review by Hexus - "Today marks the final part in a two part series, focussing on some of the more quirky options available in the mainstream graphics card market. The first article looked at a pair of somewhat unique cards; Albatron's 5700P Turbo that ignores NVIDIA's recommendations on clock speeds, and Gainward's Ultra/980 SilentFX Professional, a card that integrates the decently performing NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 with dual-DVI and completely silent passive cooling."
(08/04) Leadtek GeForce 6800 GT review by TBreak - "Although nVidia announced the 6800 GPU some time back, we’ve only just recently started looking at retail cards by most of the manufacturers. Today, we take a look at two cards from Leadtek- the standard 6800 as well as the 6800GT based A400 and A400GT cards. While we can respect the fact that all manufacturers have their naming conventions, we think it would be a good idea to base model numbers upon the GPU models as it would avoid any confusion to the end-user."
(08/04) HIS Radeon X800 XT review by Bjorn3D - "The X800 chips use the R420 core. While not revolutionary compared to the R320 and RV360 cores, it still has enough improvements to make it more than a minor update. Just as the RV360 core that we found in the Radeon 9600 XT, the R420 is based on a 0.13 micron low-k process. It has approximately double the transistor count compared to the Radeon 9800 XT but actually still draws a bit less power."
