Click for info!
A small fraction past midday, making it Friday afternoon...
Friday, 31-August-2001 - 12:55:08 PM (GMT+10) by Manaz
Lots of news today - I'll get straight into it....
KngtRider pointed this out in the #overclockers IRC channel - a motherboard Northbridge controller with integrated RV200 graphics from ATi. It seem that nVidia weren't the only people with plans for motherboard chipsets with better than average integrated graphics - either that or everyone's just copied nVidia's idea. I'm still pretty keen to see what nVidia's nFORCE chipset can do though, especially with it's dual-bank DDR-RAM...
Andrew sent in some links to some photos that you may find interesting - this is a photo of the 0.13micron Northwood Pentium 4 (with and without heatspreader), and this is a photo of Intel's second generationa IA-64 CPU, currently codenamed McKinley. It's interesting to see that Intel appear to be moving back towards CPU packaging which includes a PCB with surface mounted components.
Cain spotted a new (dated 27/8/2001) BIOS for the EPoX 8K7A/+ motherboards (the link is for the EPoX FTP site, so you'd assume it's safe). Some of the fixes/inclusions include support for Athlon 4 SSE instructions, PCI Latency Timer setting, and a fix for problems with Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller cards.
DarkWing wrote in about a small (4000-user) LAN party he is involved in running. Yes, I said the word "small" sarcastically - 4000 users is seriously HUGE!
Freaek found a job that just about anyone could do. Gotta love it when people enter test data into a live database, and then forget to remove it...
MisterGrister found this error message on the MSI website rather, well, interesting - bad spelling and all...
Submariner sent us this link, featuring information (including a supposed nVidia internal memo in PDF format) about the next generation of nVidia graphic processor chips...
After reading the news the other night, in which alchemy mentioned a "PC on a PCI card" product, Tigger went and found this - a PC on a PCI card, but specific to Sun's PCI-based workgroup servers and workstations - allowing you to run PC software alongside native Solaris applications. I guess the Sun hardware needed for one of these is probably a bit out of the reach of most of us, but it doesn't hurt to dream, does it? :)
Now, I know quite a few of you contribute to the various distributed computing projects that exist today, and most of you are probably aware that Overclockers Australia has several distributed computing teams. These projects require that some client software is downloaded, installed and configured to obtain packets of information, process them, and then send them back to the server run by the project organisers. However, some researches at the University of Notre Dame have come up with a way do do distributed computing without any specific client software at all - don't worry though, this isn't as scary as it could be, or so the article says...
3DSpotlight felt the need to put together this page - it lists all the relevant updates that you need to apply to your PC to have it running completely stable, and as bug-free as possible. From OS updates, to vendor patches, I have to say, this is a VERY useful page - I know I'll be bookmarking it...
RatedPC, in conjunction with OpusWare, have put together a system stability testing application - it tests various aspects of your system, and also includes a benchmarking facility. RatedPC claim that it's "very popular", but I hadn't heard of it until now - then again, I'm not the be-all-and-end-all of computer system stability testing knowledge. You can read more about it here, on RatedPC's website.
Wokket, as only Wokket knows how, sent in the following links for our amusement: Firstly, a recipe for cooking rice (it may not be what you think), and some instructions on how to bet on English sport and still actually win money.
Reviews:
Philips MMS305 flat panel speakers on VyW.
Fujitsu DynaMO 1300SF Magneto-Optical drive review on Radeonic.
EPoX 8KTA-3 motherboard on AtlantaOC.
Swiftech MCX-370 heatsink review on Mikhailtech.
Samsung SD616 DVD drive review on PCStats.
Netgear RT314 cable/DSL sharing router review on Overclocker Cafe.
Purple anodised CPU/heatsink shim review on OCIA.
Hercules Game Theatre XP review on 3DSpotlight.
Fortis A102 HSF review on Overclocked Cafe.
Battlelamp review on Taconuts.
Philips 107P10 flatscreen CRT monitor review on OCMelbourne.
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 Platinum review on Hexus.net.
Friday Morning
Friday, 31-August-2001 - 11:49:45 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
Nice water-and-peltier cooled machine here from Hack100. I notice there's been a fair bit of voting going on the PCDB lately.. check out the current Top 10 for looks, functionality, effort and ingenuity. There's also the Overall Top 10 and unsurprisingly the GTRPC is dominating at the moment.
OCPrices compared a Kyro II based video card to a GF2 MX400 unit..
Will this be the next rage in case modding - personalised waterblock mounts..?
Tim noticed over on Tweak3D's news page (scroll down) a quick report on the recent Intel Developer Forum - including this snippet: Celeron 1.1GHz: Intel will soon be releasing a 1.1 and 1.0GHz Celeron processor. When asked about SMP capabilities, Intel didn't say that Celeron and Tualatin "won't" work but says that "we just won't support it but it does work". Get your dual Tualatin boards ready because 512KB Cache Tualatins and Celeron 1.1GHz will be the cream of the crop for cheap SMP action from Intel.
Leo sent in this review of the Tyan Thunder MP dual SocketA motherboard over on SocketA.com. This is the cheapy version of the server-class Thunder K7 we sneak-previewed ages ago, to the detriment of our webserver. Quite a few Australian vendors have the cheapy one on offer now, at about the $550-600 mark. The expensive one remains scarily so, roughly a grand more.
Wokket sent in this link about bystanders egging on and jeering at suicidal people. I'm sure he just meant it as an offtopic-but-interesting link, but it says some surprisingly relevant stuff. Given the insanity going on in our "The Pub" forum lately - and particularly yesterday evening - that link offers an insight into why people behave differently when in a crowd or some other situation that provides a level of anonymity.
Also from Wokket, MS associating alcohol with education and an ancient labyrinth turns out to be (yet another) relic from the 1970's..
On an even lighter note, Tony sent in this humour page, worth having a poke around in.. I've been sucked into the "Supposedly True Stories" section already. :)
Reviews:
Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 Kyro-II based video card on Guru3D.
Romtech HDD Selector on ExplosiveHardware.
Antec JetCool socket370 cooler on NeoSeeker.
Blue Orb chipset cooler on XtremeMods. These things are often not flat so lapping them helps.
VIA P4X266 Pentium 4 chipset on VR-Zone.
Gladiator round cables on Tweakmax. Our review of a similar product here, cheapy option here.
OCZ Titan overclocking-friendly GeForce3 video card on SharkyExtreme, thanks Chuppa.
Thursday Afternoon
Thursday, 30-August-2001 - 2:53:26 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
You've probably already heard from the mainstream media, but Graeme "Shirley" Strachan of Skyhooks and more recently "Our House" fame died yesterday in a helicopter accident. More info here and here.
I made www.overclockers.com.au/vendors an alias for that "Online Vendors" listing in the forums. Bit easier to remember, but of course you need to be a forum member to view it.
Special greets to Stromlo High, a school in the ACT who are using their spare cycles to help our folding @ home team and powering up the ranks.. which of course benefits mankind too, hopefully! Some info in this thread in our Team OCAU forum.
Wired have a guide to setting up a Linux firewall.. just the thing for that old PC you built from bits lying around the house. Another popular solution is SmoothWall. On a similar note, the book "Firewalls and Internet Security : Foiling the Wily Hacker" is now available for download as .pdf - there's a thread about it here in our Networking & Internet forum, thanks Pleb.
Flight noticed this mobile graphics comparison of NVIDIA's GeForce2GO and ATI's Mobility Radeon. There's another review of the Mobility Radeon here on ComputerSource.
Dan's checked out some P4 motherboards that suck, or so he says. In the review, I look into why SDR-memory i845 is a big step, um, in some direction other than forward, for Intel, and push the relevant numbers around.
More news about Gateway's financial woes here (thanks Fad) and here, thanks ejhelgeson.
0verload notes this site in Singapore listing 1.1GHz Celerons.. don't remember hearing about those. Funny if Intel's "value" chip clocks higher than their "performance desktop" (P3) chip.. I guess the P4 is going to eclipse the P3 on the desktop soon enough.
Some stuff from Germany - they're organising a 4000-person LAN party (thanks Thomas) and some info on new 333MHz FSB Athlons. All in German, so you might want to stick this fish in your ear. I said, you might want to haften Sie diesen Fisch in Ihrem Ohr. Das hat Recht.
Tim put up a website about his modded case project. In the PCDB, there's a nice new one here from imweazel and some big bong action here from Rampage101.
JimX noticed this funny page of gameshow answers..
Remember, send your news to news@overclockers.com.au not to any of the news posters directly, sometimes gets lost/delayed that way.
Reviews:
ELSA Gladiac 511 TwinView PCI and AGP video cards on XtremePC.UK.
Iwill KK266Plus socketA motherboard on AMDMB.
Lite-On LTR16101B IDE CDRW on HWExtreme.
PlexWriter 12/10/32S PX-W1210TS SCSI CDRW on G3D.
Tshirts back on sale!
Thursday, 30-August-2001 - 1:25:55 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
Alrighty, I know this has been a big demand from you guys, so they're back on sale. This is the remainder of the first batch and there's only a limited number of these left - so get your order in!
Wednesday Night
Wednesday, 29-August-2001 - 11:43:22 PM (GMT+10) by alchemy
Well, with a little last minute ass whipping in the #overclockers IRC channel, we managed to break the record of Most-Ever-Users-Online in the forums by quite a substantial amount.. it's now up to 244. We've also passed the 5,000 members flag recently as well as the 100,000 posts.. so all up it's been a record breaking week for the forums. Can't wait for some new hosting to come along and give odin some much needed relief.
Intel really seems to be turning up the heat on AMD, not only have they recently just fwopped us all with the 2GHz P4 part (that you can actually buy - makes for a change) as well as huge price cuts across the whole P4 range, they've also just demonstrated a 3.5GHz P4 Part.. sure, it's probably an excercise in extreme vapour phase cooling.. but that's a lot of Hz.
nVidia have released a " Personal Cinema " add-on for their range of current-model video cards.. and what it does is add all sorts of connectors ala ATI All-In-Wonder style, including one for watching TV on your PC. I've been down the TV-card-in-PC route before and must say that it really isn't that satisfying.. maybe now that my TV is closer to my bed it may be, but still.. it's a bit iffy. Sounds good in theory, but dosn't work out so well in practice.
Joseph pointed out that to celebrate Linux's 10th birthday there was an Install Fest held by the LinuxSA group in.. you guessed it, SA. Tech-Junkie was there, and have info about the event.
TacoNuts have updated their case mod gallery, whilst no doubt our PCDB has been updated within the last hour or so. We win, nyer! :)
A1-Electronics has taken a look at wireless networking as a standard, and as a new gizmo you can get down at your local retail computing store.. dubious benefit to us overclockers tho.
Walrek has been all the ball and noticed talk over on THG about the re-introduction of the PR for AMD CPU's to allow them to better compete with Intel counterparts in the uneducated retail market.. and while I can see weight to their argument (a lot of weight, in fact) I reckon it stinks. The aim of it is to allow customers a fair comparison.. but how can they do that when they are confused? Walrek started a thread in the forums to disccus it. Nicely picked.
Finally tonight, remember that pc-on-a-PCI-card firewall we linked to ages ago? It made it to market, and it made it into The Tech Zones review box as well.. quite extremely cool, if I must say so myself. I never get any of the cool toys. *whinge*.
Reviews:
GlobalWin CAK38 on DreddNews.
Abit Siluro MX400 on JSIHardware.
Hyundai PC133 256Mb SDRAM on ocNZ.
Abit TH7-II on OCWorkbench.
MSI 850 Pro2 i850 socket-423 P4 mobo on PCHardware.RO
Blizzard CPU Intercooler on GamersHQ.
Gateway Going!
Wednesday, 29-August-2001 - 10:12:28 AM (GMT+10) by alchemy
I was browsing the Gateway page about 10 minutes ago, looking for more 20%-of-full-retail-price specials when I noticed their page design had changed and this page was in it's place. Well, that explains the über cheap speakers and monitors a lot of us in the Swap and Shop forums have picked up.. It also explains the rather weary looking sales staff.
Yes, Gateway will cease actively promoting their products in the Australia/New Zealand market.. I'm guessing that means the stores will close and their website will stay in it's current support-but-no-sales state. They're not totally pulling out until they fulfil their warranty and support commitments, which I think is a nice gesture. That explains the 1yr warranty with the monitors.
I know a lot of people that got great deals (a 22" monitor for $900 delivered is nothing to sneeze at), and almost every man and his dog has picked up a pair of the $99 4.1 speakers.. so at least we all came out of it on top :)
Agg: There's an article here on Wired about Gateway cutting 25% of staff, thanks John. No doubt there is a serious reshuffling going on inside the company at the moment. Still no sign of my $99 speakers, though! :) (no sign of mine either, even though I ordered two hours after the special was released! - alchemy)
120mm Blowhole Guide
Wednesday, 29-August-2001 - 4:27:43 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
LoneWolf shared his experience putting a 120mm intake into the front of his fulltower. Lots of pics and info to help you do the same.. the perfect way to boost cold airflow through your system:
Late Tuesday evening
Wednesday, 29-August-2001 - 2:20:28 AM (GMT+10) by Manaz
Welcome to the OCAU news, late edition. Please take a seat, ensure that you're comfortable, and hang on tight. Yep, it's late. Too late. Never mind, on with the news.
Firstly, *LOTS* of people (too many to list individually) wrote in to let us know that Internet Explorer v6 has been officially released.
JimX, one of our forum and IRC regulars, as well as occasional article writer for OCAU, has come up with an interesting idea - the Overclockers Motorcycle Club. I've seen quite a few threads in the forums from readers who ride motorcycles of various descriptions, I know a few of our #Overclockers IRC regulars also ride, and even Agg's been known to get about on just two wheels occasionally, so it sounds to me like the idea might have some merit. If you're interested, why not go have a look!
Alchemy (who is also an IRC regular) posted this link in IRC today - it's a rather humorous take on the whole Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and ways to get around it, in the US.
Herbo wrote in to let us know that there's an updated version of the fan LED mod been posted - looks nice and clean to me, though I'd be careufl using it on a fan that's critical to your system's cooling. It does look rather cool when it's going though. :)
Edwardnott wrote in to say that he's spotted 1GHz Duron processors on the price lists of at least one Australian computer hardware dealer. Considering that the 1GHz Duron was only recently released worldwide, it seems that Australia may be catching up on computer hardware releases compared to the rest of the world - and not before time!
sabretooth found this rather interesting article, about an open-air hacking festival being held in Europe. Lots of people sitting in a field basically, with wireless links to a broadband Internet connection. And they say technology and the wilderness don't mix...
If you know why you should win a Power Cooler PCH 137 heatsink, why not tell the guys at M:6 and actually win one!
Reviews:
Plextor USB 2.0 CD-RW drive on Everything USB.
ATi Radeon VE review on NeoSeeker.
Lian-Li PC70 Extreme! (pre-modded PC70) case review on ClubOC.
Swiftech MCW462 Water-block review on Cool Hardwarez.
Modifying VIAMACH.INF
Wednesday, 29-August-2001 - 1:55:44 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
OLDMX sent in an interesting article about his efforts modifying VIAMACH.INF in order to get WinME to recognise all the devices in his motherboard chipset correctly - and get the 4-in-1 drivers to update correctly for those devices. It had a dramatic effect on his machine's stability..
Coupla pics..
Wednesday, 29-August-2001 - 12:58:35 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
Two pics that arrived recently but I forgot about. :) On the left we have a motherboard returned to VooDoo for not working.. looks like yet-another screwdriver slip claims yet-another motherboard victim. On the right we have a cartoon drawn by BlueSmurf, he of the GTR PC. He says: I found this cartoon I'd done back in 1989, on a 386SX-20 running Deluxe Paint II under DOS. To put it in perspective, I don't think the 486 was out of nappies. :)
Tuesday Afternoon
Tuesday, 28-August-2001 - 2:04:11 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
Loki, OCAU's second server, is now up and running in Brisbane. Thanks to Teredonn for hosting it for us. Loki will mostly function behind the scenes - the first thing you should notice is that the DNS is now fixed. Any of you who either couldn't access the forums.overclockers.com.au host or had to use an entry in your HOSTS file should now be able to connect fine. If you did add an entry to your HOSTS file you should remove it now, to avoid any problems when/if we move the forums to a new server in the future. Loki is a dual P2-450, nothing too amazing, but I'll make a proper PCDB entry for it soon. Thanks to Manaz and Alchemy for keeping the news flowing while I banged my head against my DNS manual. :)
There's an interesting poll here in The Pub forum, about the future of The Pub. It's not as serious as it seems so don't panic, but I was quite surprised by the balanced results so far and thought it deserved wider attention. So, go express your opinion!
leperMessiah sent along word from a distributor that AMD's 1GHz Duron should be available in Oz next week for about AUD$180. I presume that's the reseller price so maybe $200 for you and me? Either way, with 1GHz (Tbird) Athlons sitting at about the $200 mark also, I know which I'd be buying.. until all the 1GHz Athlons run out, that is. More info on AMD's price cutting here and here, thanks Leo.
Addicted to CS or some other high-adrenaline game? Might pay to take a break every now and then.. and avoid snuffing it for real. The suspicion in that case is that drugs slipped into the drinking water at the Internet Cafe may be to blame. Net access and free drugs? I bet that place's popularity takes a big jump. :)
GideonTech whacked a couple of big heater cores into their case to use as radiators..
Thanks to Dr Kildare for a TheInquirer link saying WinXP Activation may be dropped for Dell and other big OEM's - is this the first sign that MS are accepting what seems to be a general market feeling that XP Activation is Not Cool. Jeff McLuckie had a look at Win XP, including the "Activation" licence-enforcement system for us here on OCAU.
Chris noticed this new XHTML 1.0 tutorial. XHTML is the new standard for web authoring and addresses some important issues - this tutorial might be a good place to start if you're keen to learn it.
TechGamer have a guide to the poor man's case mod.. uh-oh. :) Actually didn't turn out too bad, but I wonder how many Poor Men have Dremels.
A couple more tricked out boxes from Guamy (go the fans!) and Carnage_cdl.
Some more carbon nanotube info from Shannon.. supposedly the Next Big Thing.. or is that the Next Next Big Thing, I keep losing track.
SysOpt have a few new things posted.. articles on case cooling, GeForce tweaking and P3 overclocking.
Daron noticed this service for finding old school chums.. providing they want to be found, that is.
ALI have announced their new P4 chipset which supports SDR and DDR memory.
Building a satellite on the cheap sounds almost like an oxymoron, but it's been done, thanks Paul.
Mort discovered that the SliMP3 device from yesterday's news should go for about $275.. USD presumably, but that's not too bad.
Interesting (old) article about scientists claiming to have broken the speed of light, thanks Brendan.
From Wokket: A church for dogs and blokes getting pregnant in ancient India.
Reviews:
Thermalright CB-6L socket cooler on CaseJunkiez.
Intel 2GHz Pentium4 processor on OCOnline.
Senfu Thermal Probe on PC-Critic.
IWill KK266-Plus KT133A-based SDR SocketA motherboard on PCStats.
Iwill KK266 plus-R KT133A-based SDR SocketA mobo with RAID on Radeonic.
NoiseControl 1888 Slot A cooler on ModdingZone. Our 6-way SlotA cooler roundup here.
Cyber Cooler P-5700 copper socket cooler on MikhailTech.
Abit TH7-II RAID and 2GHz P4 on Icrontic.
Enermax temp-controlled drive rack on TacoNuts.
Monday Night
Tuesday, 28-August-2001 - 12:15:25 AM (GMT+10) by alchemy
Well, the big news tonight is the release of the 2.0GHz P4.. and along with it comes a new interface, socket 478. That's right, all four of you that bought a socket 423 P4 mobo will need a new one to run Intel's latest and greatest. Most interesting thing about the new interface is probably the fact that even tho it has more pins, it is significantly smaller than the old design. Small packages now pack a big punch :) The 2 Gigahertz figure really rolls off the lips well tho.. Harvey Norman is running radio adds I've been told.. "you think your 200MHz machine is slow.. IT IS.. THIS IS 2000MHz". Indeed. The P4 platform will have a die shrink down to the 0.13um Northwood process soon, and that's when things will get exciting. For now it's just the same old P4 at an even bigger clock speed (and price). Incidently, I've noticed a few Aus retailers have new P4 S478 pricing out.. and it is rather competitive with the Athlon.
SourceMag have a review here, HardOCP here, AcidHardware here, HotHardware here, AnandTech here, ExtremeTech here, Tech Report here, Hardware Unlimited here, and CPU review here.
I'm sure a few of you would remember BladeRunner's quest for stealth cooling, which he took to the extreme by cooling the water thermally underground. Quite extreme indeed, and very well done, especially the waterblock on the video card. It was so well done, in fact, that the CEO of nVidia, Jensen Huang emailed BladeRunner asking for a sample or plans. For Real. Being the nice bloke he is, BladeRunner agreed, and received a fair swag of nVidia goodies for his trouble. Thanks to RaD and BladeRunner himself for pointing this out :)
Accelenation have reviewed some rather fancy looking Mushkin EMS High Performance DDR Memory.. so high performance it needs heatspreaders, apparently (?). Of course, if you've read this dansdata review you'd probably know what good heatspreaders are..
The latest issue of ZZZ is out as usual for Monday, with all sorts of small and wireless stuff from the world of science for you to read (and laugh) about..
RojakPot have updated their Win2K hints and tips guide, now at rev 3.7
VyW have a watercooling guide up, something we havn't seen for a while. Not so much a review of a specific kit, as a review of the import aspects you need to pay attention to when building your own system.
Paul pointed out this article on The Age which talks about the first Australian to be jailed under music copyright violation laws.. lucky for some of us, it wasn't for mp3-type violations, rather for CD's and Videos.. and he was selling them, not just using them for personal use.. Still, that's the first. No doubt there will be a second.
It appears the issues between the Sound Blaster Live and the 686B south bridge are still lurking around.. but ViaHardware reckon they have a fix for it, that should work.. and with a lot of people about to buy a SBLive! to use with their dirt-cheap Gateway BA7500G speakers it's just as well :)
Finally, on come.to/kewn I noticed this news.com article which talks about a US company allowing people to.. get this.. copyright their DNA. Because they made it, right? So cloning them now becomes a breach of copyright law..
Reviews:
PC133 Showdown on GamingIn3D.
Neng Tyi SN05 Copper-Based Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Epox 4T2A i850-based socket-423 mobo on OConline.
SkyHawk Media Ports on OCIA.
Nanocomposite Thermal Compound review on FrostyTech.
Matrox G550 on NeoSeeker.
ECS K75SA SiS735 DDR/SDR socket-a mobo on TweakMax.
Sunday night
Monday, 27-August-2001 - 12:39:12 AM (GMT+10) by Manaz
Two news posts in a single day - in fact, in less than half a day! Having said that, this post will be rather short (there's not a lot happened since my last post).
There's been a lot of noise about nVidia's upcoming nFORCE motherboard chipset lately - on one hand, people are hailing it as the best thing (yet to come) since sliced bread, while others say it's just a lot of hype. There's been rumours that nVidia are having problems with yield, that there will be missing components compared to the original published specifications, and that it is being delayed - and then there have been the denials by nVidia that there have been such problems. Then there's been the discussion (and arguments) about how the integrated Twinbank memory architecture works, and how many DIMMs you need to take advantage of it. The chipset is apparently slated for a September (this coming month) release, though naturally, motherboards featuring it won't be available for a short while after that while motherboard manufacturers start production runs and distribution takes place. Having said all that, FiringSquad have published an article on nFORCE, and what is known about it thus far. I for one am quite interested in what nFORCE *may* bring to the computer industry, and so I have read their article myself - if you'd like to know more about the nFORCE chipset, then it's worth a read. Thanks to Robert for the link.
Jekias from BFGLan, a LAN party run monthly down in Tasmania (nice cool climate down there, must be good for overclocking), sent in this link, featuring photos from their most recent LAN party. Their main page is here if you're interesting in finding out more about them.
Anyone who's looking for a commercially produced clear computer case should probably check these guys out. They don't have an Australian distributor (yet, it *could* happen), but if you check their page, they list their current distributors - one of them may be able to get one of their cases to you.
Vergs, V8R and Nigel all emailed me in response to my post earlier about 1GHz Celeron processors - there are at least two other Australian retailers (other than the one I mentioned in my previous post) who are also listing 1GHz (and 1.1GHz) Celerons, with pricing, on their websites. Considering the trouble Intel had getting the P3 much past 1GHz, it'll be interesting to see how the Celeron goes - it's smaller ondie L2 cache may actually help it reach higher clock speeds...
Azrael sent us this link. Yes, it's a flower. What's a picture of a flower doing on a computer hardware website you ask? Well, when you consider that it's actually *not* a photo, but is the result of some serious time with a graphics rendering program - it's pretty damned spectacular. He also thinks that if you're into MP3s at all, you should check this out. I tend to agree - it's definitely cool...
There's a couple of new & exciting PCs in the PCDB - Jekias' rig is here, featuring at least two windows and a modified keyboard, and waxling's rather green entry.
ChillBlast have a world exclusive first-look at the new Epox Aluminium PC case. It looks pretty good, I have to say - front ports, solid aluminium construction - for the rest, go read the review. Oh, and stay off whatever the guys at ChillBlast are on - seriously, I don't think the Surgeon General recommends it...
Hexus have grabbed a bunch of sticks of PC-150 SDRAM, and done some testing on them. Why's this important you ask? Well, not everyone is running DDR RAM yet, and RD-RAM (Rambus) is still expensive (and may have a limited product lifetime), so there are plenty of SDRAM setups still in existance. They've also had a look at the Gainward Golden Sample GeForce3 video card, which is yet another GF3 card based on nVidia's reference design - I'm sure that's not a bad thing, but I remember the days when Canopus designed their own cards, and generally got better performance out of them than reference based cards by other manufacturers. Though that does mean that reference drivers (ie Detonators) don't necessarily work...
Third attempt, Sunday afternoon...
Sunday, 26-August-2001 - 5:05:01 PM (GMT+10) by Manaz
Yes, that's right. This is my third attempt to get the news done today. I've had Internet Explorer crash on me twice now - here's hoping I'm luckier this time.
Firstly, in my last news post, I asked people to email me with what they thought it was in the news that day that was my "pet hate". BlueSmurf was the first to correctly identify misleading graphs - ones that don't start their scale at zero, in order to make small differences in results look a lot bigger than they really are - as my "pet hate". Quite a few other people also got the answer right - BigSteve, Roger, Hawk, Chammy and Robert all answered quickly and correctly. Special mention (for making me laugh) goes to CanEater and FlYiNg_BiRd for their answer - that work was my pet hate.
Elvis (I'm guessing we're not talking about the one from Graceland here) sent us a link to this page, featuring pictures of Creative's upcoming SoundBlaster Audigy sound card and some of it's accessories - including a new external "Live! Drive" (or Audigy Drive now I guess) unit.
Gaz has reported that he has now seen 2 seperate reports of 1GHz Celeron processors coming shortly - one in the Melbourne Green Guide, another on an Australian computer store website. Of course, with AMD having released (at least to the online computer press) the 1GHz Morgan-cored Duron, I think Intel's budget processor will still be well behind in performance...
Keltoi sent us this link, to a news item about some world-leading Australian research in the silicon microchip field.
It seems that some people are taking online gaming FAR too seriously. Thanks to Mat for the link.
Adrian's Rojak Pot are running a report (based on some old-fashioned detective work, and a little educated guessing) that nVidia's nFORCE chipset may be delayed.
BiT-Tech have posted a guide to building a virtually indestructable Rheobus.
RatedPC, being well aware that there is indeed competition to Microsoft's "Windows" operating system, have taken a look at six Linux web browser applications.
TweakTown have published a guide to tweaking your broadband Internet connection. I guess, if like most Australian broadband Internet subscribers, you're on a data-limited plan, you might as well reach your cap as quickly as possible, right? :)
VyW have apparently posted a guide to watercooling. I say apparently because I'm getting no response from their webserver at the moment...
Reviews:
Via Apollo P4X266 chipset review on LegionHardware.
Wicked3D EyeScream Light 3D glasses on AMDPower.
Intel D850GB P4 Motherboard review on PCStats.
NanoTherm Thermal Compound/Paste review on TweakTown.
NanoTherm Thermal Compound/Paste review on Gideontech. Some contrasting results here to TweakTown's review...
Speeze heatsinks reviewed on 3DSpotlight.
Senfu Digital Thermometer review on BlueSmoke.
CoolMax CBG-38 heatsink review on 8balls Hardware.
ECS K7S5A motherboard review on Amdmb.
ECS K7S5A motherboard review on Accelenation.
Zalman Graphics Card Chipset Cooler review on OCPrices.
Thermaltake Orange Orb chipset cooler review on PCStats.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Detonator 4 - 30% more performance/bandwidth? in the "Overclocking and Hardware Discussion" forum.
Potential Wireless Community Net - Brisbane in the "Networking and Internet" forum.
Force Feedback Steering Wheels in the "What/Where Should I Buy?" forum.
Painting a monitor in the "Case Mods & PCDB" forum.
A cubic mile of air in two minutes in the "Case Mods & PCDB" forum.
Thanks to Sciby and The Gibbon for sending in the forum links.
Asus GeForce2 - A Pro for the price of a GTS?
Saturday, 25-August-2001 - 7:01:44 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
Nick aka max223 sent in an interesting article about his experience with a particular Asus video card. It turned out to have a pleasant surprise for him..
Saturday Morning
Saturday, 25-August-2001 - 8:56:58 AM (GMT+10) by alchemy
Big news this morning seems to be that WinXP has gone gold, which means no more release candidates: just a full, finished (sort of) version ready to get boxed and sent out to your local software store... which means it should be on your friendly warez pub about *looks at watch* now.
Arsonist has pointed out that the Attorney General reckons that R-Rated computer games featuring sexually explicit and violent scenes are not harmful to children. He goes further to say that if the rating system is changed, these titles should still be available in Australia. Finally someone with some sense!
Chris McMahon has a thread in the Case Mods forum with a Mini-Review of the CoolPC Rainbow Neon. Quite a novel idea that too - writing a review in the forums. If it's good, I'm happy to link to it on the news page.. if your spelling is worse than mine (and that's saying something), then your chances drop somewhat.
TheTechZone have guide to building your own case, just like several members of our PCDB have done.
OZEight points out that the Federal Government has approved the proposed sale of C&W Optus to SingTel. It dosn't mean that Optus is sold, it just means SingTel can now make a bid and be confident the Government isn't going to tell them it's not on. Optus shares no doubt experienced a price hike. Of course, with C&W Optus now having a bigger brother the prices are only going to fall.. we hope.
Wokkett points out that the Genome@Home Team are racing up the ladder, now within the top 40. Now, you all know I want you to be running Folding (burn AusGamers burn!), but if you're on dialup that can be a little bit difficult.. so until the F@H client v2.0 comes out, you can go and run Genome. But you better come back now, ya'hear?
OverclockersOnline have been modding the Kyro2.. and modding it just a small amount. Like by adding a Tt Volcano2 Socket-A Heatsink to it's core.. yes, as I said. Small amount *cough*. Good read for all Kyro2 Owners tho, as the card is limited by heat somewhat so some good OC's can be had with proper cooling.
News over at RatedPC is that DDR333 has been revealed in Japan with support from Via, SiS and ALi. Mmmm, 166MHz DDR FSB.
TweakMax has an editorial about the Palomino and Morgan core AMD CPU's up.. in part of it they question why it has taken so long for them to be released.. and to me the answer to that is obvious: no need. Why release a new CPU onto a market that is already dominated by your old one, and faces no significant competition.
Finally this morning, Dan has checked out some cheap gigabit ethernet.. and while it's not something everyone needs (the exception being the attendees of large lans like QGL), at this price point it's rather decent. And fast.. very very fast.
Reviews:
CH Products Pro Throttle USB flight stick on SystemLogic.
FrozenCPU Blizzard 280 mid-tower ATX case on SystemLogic.
Compex 11Mbs Wireless Network Device on NeoSeeker.
EPoX 8KHA KT266 board on Noticias3D.
StreetGlow PC Neon Connector on GideonTech.
Leadtek 64Mb GF2Pro on Tech-Planet.
ThermoSonic ThermoEngine on HWextreme.
1GHz 'Morgan' Duron CPU on AMDmb.
VideoLogic Vivid!XS 32Mb Kyro2 card on TechJunkie.
Vantec 6035D on AMDZone.
Acorp GA815EPD Dual i815EP board on Accelenation.
ProLink PixelView GF2MX400 on Digit-Life.
Friday Afternoon
Friday, 24-August-2001 - 2:29:56 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
Jeff sees dead people.. they're everywhere.. and they like Microsoft..
Baker has taken the "OCAU Phone Logo" concept a step further with different designs in the forums.
Dan has taken a look at rounded IDE cables and he's not too keen on them. Our shorter review of a similar product is here and of course, the cheapy option (which Dan was kind enough to link to) is always here too.
VooDoo won the tshirt from the first quick joke thread. I've made another one here.. doesn't seem in any danger of being won yet. :)
SourceMagazine have an article about Linux in Education.
Komson over at Xoverclocker pushed a Tbird 1.33 to 1.81GHz.. impressive benchies, but hardly practical.. the iced-over socket is a dead giveaway. :)
There's a new BETA IDE driver for VIA chipsets.. for those who like living on the edge.. and who back up their data regularly.
The ArsMasters compared Windows XP Home and Professional versions. Our own look at the Professional version is here.
Apparently the ACC has denied Telstra's proposed line rental increase. Apparently Telstra has cheaper options but doesn't tell you about them.. reminds me of the HHGTTG episode one - they were stuck in a disused toilet with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".. ever thought of going into advertising?
Reviews:
Everglide mousing surface on 8balls.. our reviews here and here.. not forgetting the breast review here.
Soyo K7V Dragon SocketA DDR mobo on VR-Zone. Black and purple, very Phantom.
PNY VERTO Geforce 2MX-400 video card on MrPCPro.
Iwill KK266Plus on Accelenation.
Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical mouse on Radeonic.
XNTech Play Mouse II mouse on Rojakpot.
Evergreen Technologies RumbleFX 3D sound wotsit on AtlantaOC.
Iwill KK266-R kt133a-based socketa SDR motherboard on OCNZ.
Akasa Silver Mountain heatsink/fan on ClubOC.
Thursday Night..
Friday, 24-August-2001 - 1:12:07 AM (GMT+10) by alchemy
Possibly the coolest news tonight comes from Andys.. residents of Sydney can now order Pizza Hut Pizza online. Sure, it's probably easier to order it over the phone, and probably quicker too.. and then they give you an idea of how long. But it does rate right up there on the Geek scale.
BeachSideTech have a guide to building a Value PC.. the funny thing is, at the price point of what was considered a Value PC a year and half ago (even accounting for inflation) you will build yourself a high quality 1.4GHz Athlon.. which I would hardly class as a "budget" system :)
Ace's hardware is having a bit of a Dually Duel: 1.2GHz AthlonMP SMP vs 1.7GHz Xeon SMP. Just a limited amount of processing power there.. *cough*. What was that? Run Folding? For OCAU? Heh.. Anyway, I doubt most of us could afford either setup, but it's nice to dream. Incidently, I noticed that 1.2GHz AthlonMP prices are about the same as 1.4GHz T'Bird prices - is anyone buying these for single processor workstation use? How do they overclock? let me know :)
Jackal and Farrod pointed out that Creative now have a new range of Sound Cards out: the Audigy series. Most interesting thing to note is the inclusion of a Firewire hub as a part of the card.. sort of a two birds with one stone job. Anyone have pricing for these in aus? Once again - let me know :)
HardOCP have checked out the Asus 8200 Deluxe GeForce3 card.. and in classic Asus Deluxe style it goes right out and includes every little thing you could possibly think of.. including a rather large price tag.
vegeta points out this spoof site of counter-strike.net: counter-spoof.net.. if you've been playing CS for a while you'll find some of the jokes made there quite amusing.. if not, then there is always newgrounds.
sniper points out this article which talks about how in the future there may be an annoying animated voice bugging you while you drive your car.. sort of like the motoring version of popup adds. It's all for a good cause tho, that being to keep fatigued drivers awake.. I know on long trips an annoying passanger has actually been an assett to me.
Rik points out that the Victorian government has given permission to Telco's to use the railway corridors as routes for laying broadband cables. The advantage of this? lower costs to run pipes out west, so ~maybe~ more broadband for the bush. Or maybe the same amount of broadband at a lower cost to telco's. Bit of an either/or situation: which do reckon the telco's will choose?
Finally tonight, Hexus have checked out one of the Leadtek GeForce2 Pro cards.. best thing about these is they can be had for a rather low (~$330) price on the Australian market at the moment.. giving a good alternative for users who can afford a bit more than the standard MX.
Reviews:
Fortis A92 + A102 coolers on HardAvenue.
Logitech Cordless Freedom Optical mouse on G3D.
Soyo Dragon KT266 board on AMDmb.
GlowWire Case-Mod Kit on GideonTech.
ABIT KT7E cheapy socket-a board on OCcafe.
IWill BD133U universal socket-370 board on ClubOC.
Compaq 3650 PDA on NeoSeeker.
CH Pro Throttle USB joystick on Max3D.
DLink DI714 cable/dsl router on Electic.
Promise Fasttrak 100 TX2 IDE RAID controller on PCHardware.RO
Thursday Morning
Thursday, 23-August-2001 - 11:17:17 AM (GMT+10) by alchemy
Not much happening in the OC world this morning.. Manaz seems to of cleaned it all up last night. In case you missed it, I highly recomend you listen to vrod.mp3 which was originally a 2 stroke bike but could quite easily be a Honda Civic ;)
Wokket has found a pretty cool Babelfish Fun Toy.. it takes what you put it into the form, takes it off to the 'Fish and translates it through 12 languages and returns it to English.. a tad obscured. That's been a bored-past time of mine for a while now, you can get some quite funny results. This is just the lazy way of doing it :)
Electic has a small blurb up about ALi planning to use AMD's HyperTransport protocl in it's next line of chipsets. Via also said they where "looking into it" or words to that effect in an interview with Anand recently.. so it may become fairly wide spread. For those not in the know, HyperTransport is a method for the North Bridge and South Bridge to communicate.. at present it's done through the PCI bus or through standards like Via's V.Link.
Agg is going to give away a free OCAU shirt to the person with the best "how many overclockers does it take to change a light bulb" joke.. meanwhile if lightbulb jokes are your thing, and you went to a Brisbane or Sydney secondary school you might want to check this thread.
Martin wrote in about the nVidia image quality mod that has been discussed in the forums a bit.. he's performed it on his GF2 and then compared it to the 2D-Quality King - Matrox with some digital camera pics. Nice work :)
Getting to OCAU seems a bit slow at the moment from my O@H node, and other users on different ISP's tell me they are getting the same slow response.. As far as I can tell Odin is coping OK (we havn't been slashdotted again) so I'd say it's just an issue at our host. Should be fixed soon, not much to worry about. Forums seem ok tho, which is strange. *pokes Agg*
Reviews:
Xitel MD-PORT AN1 as on DansData yesterday on G3D.
Seagate Baracude ATA IV 80Gb Drive on SourceMagazine.
DiskOnKey USB Flash storage on HWDaily.
Samsung 170MP 17" LCD on NeoSeeker.
Easy USB flash storage device on RizeNet.
Palit Daytona GeForce3 on Digit-Life.
Wednesday night/Thursday morning
Thursday, 23-August-2001 - 1:00:04 AM (GMT+10) by Manaz
I have a cold, I've worked 12 hours a day for the past 3 days, and I feel like my head is going to explode. And yet, here I sit, doing the news for you guys. Is this dedication or what? As a bonus this evening, if you pick my pet hate from the newspost tonight, I'll mention your name in my next news post - email me. Dedication to the OCAU cause, and giving away the opportunity to be (relatively) famous - what more could you want from me? :)
Herbo, Hadamona and Dan all wrote in to tell us that version 4 of DivX has been released - all the details should be available over on the DivX website.
Firestone wrote in to say that AKIBA PC Hotline! have come across the EPoX EP-4B2A motherboard (based on the i845 chipset), and the first of the new Matrox G550 video cards ( direct link for the Matrox cards) in Japan. The fish is your friend (though he's a bit hard to understand at times)...
Ian pointed out this water-windowed case on Ebay Germany. You might want to throw a fish at it for some understanding (because it's in German, surprise surprise).
Xtreme PC UK attended the launch of Creative Lab's new Soundblaster product - called the "Sound Blaster Audigy". They've got a few teaser shots up at the moment, but promise more of the full story shortly.
Electic are reporting that there are new drivers available for the Matrox G400 and G450 graphic cards. You should be able to grab them from the Matrox website.
It seems that every man and their dog is doing a heatsink/fan roundup (we did ours ages ago). Bluesmoke have joined the club with their variation on the theme - a Copper HSF roundup.
TweakTown have published a Internet Security and Firewalls Guide. Like any guide on the Internet (especially one about security), read, learn, and adapt to suit your own particular circumstances and needs. And don't come crying to us (or TweakTown for that matter) if someone still gets into your PC - you're on the Internet, it's a risk you take unfortunately...
PCMag.com are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the PC. Some interesting reading there...
Australian scientists have discovered the "tasty steak" gene. Makes me proud to be an Aussie *wipes tear from eye*. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Though it is an interesting story if you'r at all interested in or concerned about genetic research and it's applications.
Do you feel like learning to fly a helicopter? If so, why not go all out and buy this, a (reportedly) genuine ex-US Army AH-1F Cobra. There's no point messing around, right?
Finally, tonight's Wokket report includes interesting stories such as the "scared shiftless" keyboard, and a US attack on the poor, defenceless bees of Cuba.
Reviews:
Cappuccino PC on FutureLooks - and no, it doesn't make coffee.
Antec Jet Cool HSF on TweakTown.
Soyo K7 Dragon motherboard on AwareMag.
NanoTherm Thermal Compound (and some of those sometimes misleading "Let's not start the scale at zero" graphs) on OverclockersClub.
Elsa Gladiac 920 GeForce3 video card on NewsForge. (Update: It's down at the moment, try again later).
Romtec Trios Multiple IDE Hard Drive Selector on Hardware Extreme.
ECS K7S5A motherboard on The TechZone.
Via C3 733MHz on OCWorkBench.
Wednesday Morning
Wednesday, 22-August-2001 - 10:01:29 AM (GMT+10) by alchemy
The 1GHz Morgan (Duron) reviews are still flowing in at a healthy rate, with NewsForge having one here, and SourceMag one here. Most interesting thing I've noticed from the reviews is that a Morgan Duron will keep up with a Thunderbird Athlon in a lot of benchmarks.. Which is pretty damn impressive. Take into account that a Spitfire Duron is almost a fair match of a P3 and you can see how much competition Intel has on their hands.. Can't wait until these things filter down to the retail market. With Duron 950's selling for about $170, and T'Bird 1GH'z for $200 from the more price competitive Australian online retailers I'm guessing a price point of about $185.. which isn't too shabby at all.
OCmod has an guide to modding your standard ATX PSU to get 17V out of it.. they're basically just joining the 12V and 5V lines together.. be good for those power hungry Peltiers. I'd be treading softly tho, of the things that can hurt you inside your PC, a faulty PSU is way up there with 80mm monster Delta fans.
I'm starting to wonder what it is with motherbords getting Ricey Names, like the IWill KK266 Plus R that VR-Zone has reviewed. This isn't the first 'R' motherboard I've seen, and I'm pretty sure there has been a 'Type-R' product as well.. if I see V-TEK I'll be scared, very scared.. Meanwhile in the Motoring forum, wazza has pointed out 9 easy ways to cook rice, which is incredibly amusing.. the sound effects are a killer.
Dan has reviewed the Xitel MD-Ports which are a fancy USB way of outputting audio to your MD recorder.. but they're not that special in that they're just a USB audio device and work in the same way as a sound card. So, if you've got a sound card (unless you need the TOSLINK output that one unit has), you won't need one.
PCHardware.RO has added a new chapter to their rather in-depth Mastering a Network series. This one is about OSI Layer 2 Data Link and covers MAC addresses, network topologies, standards, encapsulation, specifications and layer 2 devices like bridges and switch. See what I mean?
Finally this morning, TweakTown has taken a look at the upcomming WindowsXP. I think I've already mentioned this before, but the best thing about it for myself and a few other people is the support for Vortex2 sound cards and Via chipsets.. thanks to all those people that emailed me confirmation of this a while back!
Reviews:
CrazyPC Window Mod Kit on ClubOC.
Via C3 on PLE133 Chipset on Digit-Life.
TweakMonster Copper Ramsinks on BSOD.
DFI Ak76SN AMD761 board on Radeonic.
COOLPC Video-1-120 Graphics Card Cooler on RojakPot.
Early Wednesday Morning
Wednesday, 22-August-2001 - 2:07:59 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
Right, lets see if I can clear out the backlog in the news box.. been caught up in a bunch of other stuff these last few days.
A few reviews of the new AMD Morgan 1GHz.. this is, as mentioned earlier, the new Duron core. Info here on Tech-Report, here on Hexus, here on TomsHardware, here on FlingingSquids.. and no doubt more to come.
AnandTech surprisingly don't have a 1GHz Duron article up, but they do have a SocketA Chipset Roundup..
If you're after GeForce3 reviews you can find a heap here, thanks Mike.
Hellfire noticed this review that uses PC Neon stuff on light up a toilet.. no, really. If that's not bad enough, soon there may be even more flashy lights on your PC. Dan would be proud.
There's rumours flying around (here for example, thanks Troy), that the GF3U and GF3MX will be released soon (Friday 24), but NVIDIA are flatly denying it. The 3 places I've seen the rumours are all using the same text, so I guess it all came from the same place (wherever or whoever that was). Doesn't mean it's not true tho, of course.
Hmm, wonder if I can squeeze this radiator into my case.. from who else but The Riceman himself, Alchemy (update: apparently Spectral found it, okey dokey.)
Speaking of cars, Jeff has a guide on how NOT to paint one.. nice shirt btw. :)
Guru3D compared a couple of coolers, the Thermalright SK6 vs The Core.
DDRZone have an article up about one of their monster PC's.
Soc noticed this nonfree service which can send Windows alerts to your mobile via SMS..
Nice to see Abit giving up any pretense of not supporting overclocking. There are some goodies on the way here from Abit actually..
We've seen this before but it's not a bad little project, converting a filing cabinet into a file server.
Turns out hotmail has security holes.. who woulda thought. I guess you get what you pay for.. thanks Nigel.
Digit-Life have posted their monthly Storage Digest for July.
Some nicely tricked out boxes from Mikeling, Cascaman and Sunflower in the PCDB.
In a surprise move, Palm Inc has acquired BeOS. They are doing a survey of the community to gauge the need for support/development of BeOS - so if you're a fan of this "alternative" operating system, stand up and Be counted!
JimX points out this fix for fuzzy nvidia-based video cards. It's the RF filter mod we've seen before, but lots of info on this page. Newer cards down the bottom.
AOL are axing jobs too, thanks Sniper770.
Wokket notes that computers are turning us into zombies.. but he was just lulling us into a false sense of security before hitting us with the concept of a naked Bill Clinton picture book.. egad.
Reviews:
EPoX 8KHA KT266-based SocketA DDR motherboard on VR-Zone.
Zalman CNPS5000-AL socket cooler on Inside-Hardware.
Acorp 7KTA1 KT133A-based SocketA motherboard on MrPCPro.
AGP Airlift back-of-video cooler on BSOD.
ATI Radeon 8500 video card on SourceMagazine.
ColorCases Cybermirror case on Radeonic.
Samsung CD-YEPP MP3 player on PCStats.
Abit ST6-RAID Tualatin motherboard on HardwareUnlimited.
Windtunnel III case on OCOnline.
Vantec 6035D socket cooler on SystemLogic.
CompuNurse thermal probe (with mod) on ExtremeOC.
Palm M505 colour PDA on FutureLooks.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Legionnaires disease from bong coolers? in Extreme Cooling.
Motorcycle Noise Simulator (funny) in Motoring.
P3V4X Tips & Tweaks in VIA Hardware.
Attack of the Snails in Other Other Toys.
Tuesday Night
Wednesday, 22-August-2001 - 12:17:15 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
Firemoth pointed out these amazing crop circles that have been appearing lately. Regardless of how you feel about their origins, you have to be amazed by the creation of something like this in a single night. The mind boggles.
Digit-Life have a KT266 motherboard roundup.. DDR SocketA, of course.
A few people mentioned this article saying Excite@Home may be going under. Does this affect Optus@Home users in Australia? A quick jump over to our favourite broadband-info site whirlpool.net.au reveals this ZDNet article where Optus say they are not too worried about their future here. While on Whirlpool I noticed that due to the Telstra ADSL problems of the last few months, Primus ADSL will be free of charge for existing users in September. That's me, yay!
Some definitely uncool stuff going on with browser plugins that can hijack visitors away from websites.. more info here.
Aus3D wanna tell you all about TV Tuner cards.
Jeremy sent word that the 1GHz morgan-based Duron has been announced. I remember Andypoo having a minor rant about this a few months ago.. pretty hard for AMD to keep calling it a value chip, a chip for machines that don't need high-performance.. when it's steaming along at a gig. :)
RizeNet have a high-performance heatsink roundup posted.
RobsGT4 notes that the next person to join our SETI@HOME Team will be #300.. while VooDoo sent in some stats for the RC5 Team: Overclockers Australia completed 129,107 blocks yesterday at a sustained rate of 401,121 Kkeys/second! Overclockers Australia is ranked #36 for yesterday! The odds are 1 in 349 that this team will find the key before anyone else does. Cranking! Apparently we have a United Devices Team now too.
Get your weekly dose of the bizarre in the latest issue of ZZZ Online.
There is a HEAP more news to come..
*ahem* Monday Night
Tuesday, 21-August-2001 - 2:03:54 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
TweakMax have an article up about modern servers, focussing on a Dell rackmount jobbie.
How to make a floppy drive robot. Almost all the instructions needed (you can work out the rest) to turn a floppy drive into a little whizzing-around robot car thing. Too much spare time, some people.. thanks Lockturne.
Epoch sent in this funny story about spam..
Sniper770 sent word of Ozemail cutting staff.
Hardcore graphics on the move? KngtRider points out the Quadro2Go and says NVIDIA to crush (pun? -Agg) mobile market now ATI has mobile radeon and r200 parts on the way?. I dunno, the Quadro was never that exciting a variant of any of the previous chipsets.. some allegedly fancy features, but no greater performance. Remember the spate of mods for GF1 and GF2 cards? Once the benchmarks started flying people mostly put their soldering irons away.. that's not to say they won't dominate the market anyway.
Bezerk sent in this list of Online PC Vendors, so I put it into the What/Where forum and made it sticky. Very useful, thanks!
From Little Erve: This link shows new sis 735 chipset mobos set to come out - including one from Leadtek, Asus, Gigabyte. (note: there's no info about these boards on the manafacturers websites).
HardOCP have a heatsink roundup.. at 1.6GHz.
A1-Electronics have a heatsink roundup too, and some results from slapping deltas onto various heatsinks.
TheTechZone had some lan party action in Canada..
Courtesy of THX1138, take a peek into the exciting world of bread bag tags and the passionate folk who collect them. Well, that one guy.
SystemLogic have a few pictures of things gone horribly wrong.. PC-wise, that is.
Lokturne noticed this cool fanlight mod.. neato but a little fiddly to make.
Nice Gorb Fan Adapter idea in the forums from MadMax..
Dan's written a guide to being an Annoying Bastard in Tribes2. Grrrreat.
Reviews:
Asus A7M266 AMD760-based DDR SocketA mobo on RatedPC. We covered it in our 3-way roundup.
Soyo SY-TISU (bless you!) Tualatin motherboard on HotHardware.
PlanTronics Gaming Headset on Bit-Tech.
Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 on OCTools.
Golden Gate socket cooler on GideonTech.
Sunday Night #2
Sunday, 19-August-2001 - 11:08:04 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
Alchemy again..
Manaz has pointed out this easter egg for Mad Onion's 3D Mark 2001. You get to wage war against menacing flying cows! Excellent.
David points out this site where you can win an Acer FP581 Flat-Panel screen.. the best part about it? It's open to Australian residents only :)
Wolfy found this official MS site that will test your NT4/2K box for security holes and then patch them up for you.. rather usefull for newbies. However the idea of Microsoft patching bugs for you remotely? eh.. I wouldn't rely on it is probably what I'm trying to say :)
hendot has customized his Nokia 6110 operator logo - to an OCAU one! Looks rather cool, and it's possible to do it to almost all Nokia phones so long as you have a data cable or an IR on both your phone and a computer. Almost as good as the case badges :)
Finally tonight, Wokket keeps us entertained with 30 fun things to do in a lift, an unkillable cow and an American perspective on avoiding traffic fines.
Reviews:
Rounded IDE Cables on Tech-Planet, our similar review here.
Swiftech MCX370-0A monster hs/f on GideonTech.
ATI TV Wonder USB on Hardware-Extreme.
Noise Control Silverado hs/f on OCopolis.
LiteOn 16/10/40 CD-RW on RojakPot.
Sunday Night
Sunday, 19-August-2001 - 11:03:35 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
This news is actually by Alchemy, but NewsPro is having a tizzy fit so I'm having to spoonfeed it. No idea what's going on. Bloody computers. :)
AtlantaOC have a rather beastie raid-0 review happening.. they compare the performance of a pair of Maxtor DX540 80gig 5,400rpm drives to that of a pair of Maxtor DMP45 46gig 7,200rpm drives. Either way, it's one huge speedy array of drive space they have there.
OCWorkbench has a small blurb up on their news page about Socket-A DDR chipsets. They reckon that there is a new B0 stepping of the ALi MAGiK1 chipset due out soon that will crown it the performance king.. even above the upcomming SiS735. They've posted a heap of marketing material scans from a MSI K735 SiS735 board in their forums. They also reckon there is a rev2 of the Via KT266 chipset due out, but I've been well informed that there is no such thing, so who know's what to think? Apparently the new "revision" of the Via chipset involved changing the resistor/trace layout design on the boards, rather than an update to the chipset itself.
Meanwhile LegionHardware are trying to sort out the title holder for the current crop of chipsets with a SiS735 vs VIA KT266 showdown.
BeachsideTech is covering the story of Dave McOwen - the guy who is getting sued for running the distributed.net client on computers without proper permission. Bit of an American extreme story there - but a good point to be learnt: always make sure you have permission to use PC's.
>From the ever-growing PCDB comes this extreme purple dome case thing - the best way to find out what I mean is to view the pics. Quite unique isn't it? There is more info here (in Finnish) - nice work cape :)
CaseJunkiez have been busy whipping up new content for their readers: Lombers has checked out some CoolPC rounded IDE cables (while we reviewed a similar product here) and Junkz has looked into a PCCaseGear Dual Neon Light setup.
Digit-Life has a small article up regarding nVidia's release of the Quadro2 Go graphics chipset for portable PC's. It's really just an evolution of the existing GeForce2 Go chipset, but for users of graphics intensive programs in the field it's probably a quite crucial release. For us gamers tho, it means diddly squat.
DrClaw reminds us all of the IBM Drive Fitness Test, a tool for checking the health of your drive - it's also useful for repairing some minor damage and diagnosing errors. There is also an option to exercise your drive.. good for bringing errors to the surface I suppose. If you don't have an IBM drive there is no need to stress - WD have a similar tool here, Maxtor/Quantum has one here.
SiS635 spotted in Japan
Sunday, 19-August-2001 - 2:03:54 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
From Chainbolt: it seems the much expected SiS635 (for Intel socket 370) boards are now emerging in Japan. This is the ECS P6S5AT. A main vendor is displaying several boards now. They take orders, but don't tell, when the board is arriving or the price.
Saturday Evening
Saturday, 18-August-2001 - 5:42:47 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
From Wokket: Apparently there's a second moon in a U-shaped orbit around the earth - and there may be more. How to kill 70,000 phones with just one spanner.. bizarre alcohol laws from the USA.
IBM have made the world's fastest computer.. again.
Digit-Life have a roundup of Apollo Pro 266 motherboards. I checked out a couple of boards based on that Socket370 DDR chipset right here a few weeks ago. Fairly unexciting performance, sadly.
TheRegister seems to be down for me at the moment, but apparently on this page they say Intel are releasing their 2GHz P4 on Aug 27.
From Ashley: Majestic is different, a conspiracy-theory game that is dynamically tailored to each player. It is played through the web, by phone, fax and email. Sounds like paranoia city to me.
Mr Bill points out these sexy black IBM TFT widescreen monitors.. mmm, very droolworthy.
If you're into distributing pirate software and movies via Optus@Home your days may be numbered, according to this article on Whirlpool, thanks Daniel.
HWExtreme have a Gadget Showcase.. lots of interesting goodies there.
If your girlfriend says she's feeling horny, let's hope this isn't what she meant, thanks DarkP3.
Klif-e sent in this great flash anim of WindowsRG.. it's an interactive piss-take of Windows. Lots of little in jokes and things to play with. :)
NVIDIA have released 12.41 Detonator drivers for their range of video chipsets. Choose your O/S from the menu at left on that page.
LeperMessiah noticed this Intel CPU Stepping Codes chart.
For a trip down OCAU memory lane, check out oldnews.shtml, which is what we had before we started using NewsPro to manage the news on this site. It's a big file (250kb of text) but there is some funny stuff buried in there from way back in 1999 when the site first started and into early 2000.
Reviews::
2CoolPC Plus and Turbo system coolers on OCrCafe, our reviews here and here.
Compex LinkPort/UE202A USB Ethernet adaptor on 2FastCPU.
Koolance Liquid-Cooled Case on ComputerSource.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Planning two-stage watercooling in EC.
Peltier Lunacy in EC.
Pink Smiley PC Bits in Intel Hardware.
Tualatin - Not for Desktops in IH.
Volvo Cop Car?
Saturday, 18-August-2001 - 4:47:10 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
Sneaky.. this was spotted in Chatswood, NSW earlier this week, thanks Boky:
Saturday Afternoon
Saturday, 18-August-2001 - 4:43:18 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
Matt noticed this Linux Hardware Database which contains reader-submitted reviews of hardware with an emphasis on how well it works with Linux.
Apparently Intel are warning people away from VIA's P4X266 chipset, thanks Firemoth.
If you run an IIS4 or IIS5 webserver, you should upgrade to Apache.. err, sorry, no, you should install this security patch from Microsoft, thanks Alan.
John noticed this interesting thread over on AMDMB's forums about adjusting PSU output via dials inside the unit. Only some have them, but you could defray a PSU upgrade or make your machine more stable with a bit more juice on vital lines. Of course, playing around inside your PSU is a really good way to get yourself killed, so make sure it's turned off, left plugged in for an hour then unplugged and left for a good while too before you even think about opening it up.
Some info about Evil Smart Tags and how they're bad for websites.
ProCooling have a Radiator Roundup posted. We've reviewed a few radiators here in the past, including the Black Ice, Cool-Computers and Senfu units.
There's a quite surreal but strangely compelling article here on ARSTechnica. It's pretending to be a mouse review but it digresses a lot and is quite funny in parts.
Willmeister revealed the secret link between Calvin & Hobbes and Fight Club.
Samsung are apparently producing 333MHz DDR SDRAM.. that's 166x2, of course.
There's an article on a couple of IDE RAID cards on StorageReview as well as an IDE RAID vs SCSI RAID comparison on GamePC, thanks Nigel.
Reviews::
Abit TH7II-RAID Pentium4 motherboard on HotHardware.
Labtec Pulse424 speakers on G3D.
Dynatron heatsinks on VYW.
Samsung Baby Yepp MP3 player on IANAG.
DiskOnKey USB storage keyring on SystemLogic.
Netblaster II 802.11b wireless network kit on SystemLogic.
Thermalright CB-6L socket cooler on Bit-Tech.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Bong Cooling Tower in Extreme Cooling.
Home Made Waterblocks using old heatsinks and perspex in EC.
Monster Memory Bandwidth on KG7-Lite in AMD Hardware.
Enable 32-bit colour in CS in Software Stuff.
Do-It-Yourself Vapochill in EC.
What's wrong with this DVD? in Audio Visual.
Performance Boost and Theories about leaked Detonators in OC & HW.
RAM Drives and crunching in Team OCAU.
Home-made Monitor Cooler
Saturday, 18-August-2001 - 3:16:39 PM (GMT+10) by Agg
This from FourtyFive: I have all my computer stuff down here in my basement. Which is cooler than outside, but still kinda warm. I was dusting off my screen and saw a fair amount of lint and stuff on the back of the monitor. When I went to wipe it off, I found out just how hot a monitor can get. I have a few fans of different sorts laying around usually. So I rigged this on up to sit on the top rear of the monitor and blow into the case. It took about a day, mostly for the epoxy to dry. The total cost would be around US$25.
Saturday Morning
Saturday, 18-August-2001 - 2:25:29 AM (GMT+10) by Agg
The Folding@Home team keeps powering ahead, moving up a place into 15th overall today. However, fast approaching in our mirrors are the SAGoons from SomethingAwful.com (some strong language there, if you're bothered by that kinda thing). So if you've been thinking of joining Team OCAU's folding effort, here's how - it's easy.
Interesting water-cooled machine from GrunzWunz.
IANAG have a contest happening. No need to do anything too horrible, just populate their review database with links. It doesn't say whether or not it's open to international visitors, tho..
54Mbps wireless? It's apparently on the way, thanks Nigel.
Heatsink-Guide have some info on the new Kanie Wing cooler. Looks like a beefy copper version of the Super Dual we reviewed over a year ago.
Dan sent in Death Clock, a site that lets you track your own expiration date. :)
Reviews:
Intel P3-1GHz socket370 CPU on ClubOC.
AOpen CRW1232 Pro on 8balls.. our review of the non-Pro model here.
VideoLogic DigiTheatre speakers on ChicksHardware.
AMD Athlon 1.3GHz socketA CPU on ClubOC.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Team OCAU stats for various distributed computing projects.
JimX set us up the new AYBABTU Tbird stepping in AMD Hardware.
In praise of SMP and SCSI in SMP & Clustering.
Memory Bandwidth of P4X266 in OC & HW.
Friday Morning
Friday, 17-August-2001 - 11:06:40 AM (GMT+10) by alchemy
Top of the news box this morning is this interview with a Marketing Director from Via Technologies. Obviously, most of the talk centres around Via's new P4X266 chipset for the P4.. and just on that topic it appears me missed a P4X266 write up from a site new to the scene - TheDDRZone. You might want to head over and give their article a looksee and have a poke around their new site.. it looks good :)
Dave from Razor Prices points out that he has started a new section of his site called Razor Trader, a place where you can trade (duh) your surplus hardware. It's sort of like the Swap+Shop forum but a bit more regulated.. he's written a bit about it in the forums here.
EXHardware has a guide to cleaning all the dust out of your PC. Meanwhile Hexus have further explanation about the IBM hard drive issues that have been surfacing lately.
TheTechZone are continuing their How To Start A Tech Site guide with a look at their webserver's backend. Basically, the backend is where the webmaster/writers go to post articles to the site. Because they have had a professional ASP developer code up their site it is rather swanky.. but ASP = IIS = EWW.
Dan has found more shiny peripherals to review - this time a silver IR keyboard designed for sitting-on-the-couch operation. Good for people that are making DiVX boxes and the like.. it's down the bottom of his already-existing shiny stuff review.
If you're interesting in Peltier cooling OCprices has interviewed a US company, PelTEC who specialises in selling Peltier elements.. some handy information in there. You might also want to check out our original Peltier Experiment and a few other Peltier articles in the article list.
In the Off-Topic department this morning, Chris points out this flash-game version of Cricket on the BBC.uk site. It appears they've given up hope of beating us for real, and will have to settle for a bit of numeric keypad revenge. Meanwhile Dan points out that Sesame Street's Bert may be evil, and WardoG points out this amusing flash animation concering WindowsXP on flash-comedy site Newgrounds. inoshiro has found a all your base animation he reckons is finally worth watching, and Wokket has sent in a whole host of stuff including a site dedicated to Australia's worst cricketers, a how-to on becomming a human guinea pig, a list of weird and offensive foods from yesteryear, and finally news of Vancouver residents being terrorized by bullfrogs.. and I thought the Canadians wouldn't stand for terrorism.
RizeNet has updated their case mod gallery, meanwhile our PCDB is always in a state of change 24/7 with the users doing their own updating :)
TechExtreme has news that AMD will cease production of 486, 586 and K6 series processors ahead of the planned July 2003 date. Comes as a bit of a suprise to me that they where evn still producing them..
In case mod news PCHardware has a guide to giving our case paint a mirror finish, and Icrontic reckon they've found The Next Big Thing in spray painting your PCB's. Hmm, maybe the next big thing in warranty refusals?
Finally today, TechWatch has reviewed some of the Dual Neon Kits you can easily obtain in Australia.
Reviews:
AthlonMP shim on IANAG.
LinkSys EtherFast Cable/DSL Router on OCCafe.
Rioworks SDVIC-LAR SMP P3 DDR Board on 2CPU.
Chaintech SIS735 board on OCWorkbench.
EvergreenTech RumbleFX