|
High Tech Gear for Spring
Hello,
Spring
is near, and as the weather gets warmer it will be time to bring out those
PDA's, MP3 players and laptops and hit the patio for some serious
recreational fun. Armed with the Crusoe-powered Fujistu P2000 I
use for work, traveling, and play (nothing better than a DVD
player on a long flight) and a hefty Wi-Fi connection I can tell you
I'm pretty much ready and waiting to go find a good
patio and knock back a dozen coffee's one sunny Sunday afternoon.
In any case, spring is also a good time of the year to clean out the computer and
back up all your files once and for all. This week we've been RMA'ing hard drives
left and right in the PCstats.com labs which I guess just goes to show you that hard
drive failure is a universal truth.
This weeks PCstats.com
newsletter starts off with a look at a widescreen 17" LCD display from Samsung; perfect for watching DVD's, this monitor could be just what every DivX
movie buff needs. Colin takes a look at the ABit IT7-Max2 V2 and proclaims
to the wired world that the "IT7 MAX2 Rev2 is one of the best overclocking
boards on the market." Moving on to a board which is actually brand new, Albatron celebrate their
first year anniversary with the release of an autographed commemorative version
motherboard based on the i845PE chipset. The board is
even supposed to be set up to run 800MHz Pentium 4 processors
if you happen to have one on hand. There is tones more in
this weeks edition, but you'll have to read on to find out! Remember, after
you read the Abit IT7-Max2 review, send in your comments -
we'd like some feedback about how we can improve the quality of PCstats.com reviews. Your opinions are important. If
you have any comments or suggestions about how we can improve
PCstats.com in general, feel free to let me know too.
Retailing for a little over $600USD, the
Samsung Syncmaster 172W is a pretty slim 17" widescreen LCD that packs in a
pair of integrated speakers and even headphone jack. The screen conforms to a 16:9
aspect ratio making it ideally suited for watching DVD's full screen, although there is no
way of inputting a signal
directly from a DVD player. To improve visual display quality, a special feature
called "Magic Bright" lets you increase the brightness of the screen all the
way up to 400 nits - substantial considering most LCD monitors are capped
off at 280 nit brightness ratings. Small stereo speakers are included the in
stand, and if you don't want to listen to internet streamed radio over them,
a headphone jack and volume wheel will let you use a set of headphones for music.
Read the
Rest...
 Abit stunned the world in March of 2002 when
it announced the "To the MAX" line of motherboards. Manufacturers have
been talking about getting rid of the legacy ports on motherboards for a
long time but it was Abit which took the initiative and
actually did, well just that. Their original AT7 MAX (KT333) and IT7
MAX (i845E) were quite revolutionary boards. Gone were
the Serial, Parallel and PS/2 ports, instead replaced by small army of high speed
USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 jacks. It seems that Abit may have
been moving a bit too fast for most consumers though as many in the hardware
community complained about the removal of the legacy PS/2 ports. Abit has always
been a company to listen to the end user and they did indeed
rehash the MAX-series to create
the AT7 MAX2 (KT400) and IT7 MAX2 (i845E) with PS/2
ports (but still without serial and parallel). I'm going to be a spoiler here, the IT7
MAX2 Rev2 is easily the best i845 based motherboard I have used!
=)
Albatron recently celebrated their very
first anniversary, and looking back it has been quite
a year for this upstart motherboard and videocard maker. Since January 2002 this
Taiwanese company have really taken the hardware community by storm. If someone asks about
a high quality, good overclocking motherboard or videocard, Albatron's name invariably
pops up. For a new company in a highly competitive market such as
mainboards this says a lot. With the guidance of Jack Ko,
Albatron's CEO (and former head of Gigabyte) the company has achieved
quick rapport with major players like Intel, nVidia and AMD. To commemorate this anniversary, Albatron have created
the "Anniversary Special Edition" PX845PEV-800 i845PE Motherboard. This is
more than just another i845PE based motherboard though; Albatron
have made the bold claim that this model will run at up to 200 MHz
FSB and support PC3200
DDR memory!
Read the Rest...
Visit the PCstats.com
ShoppingList Page for the March 2003 Budget
$599 System, $1500 Mainstream System and
$2500 High-End Performance System hardware
recommendations. Coming next week - the April 2003 Edition.
 |
| Asus A7N8X nForce2-SPP
Motherboard Review |
|
AMDs Move To a 400MHz Bus
Speed |
| Ask anyone in the computer industry to
name who they think is the best manufacturer and Asus will always be
one of the first companies to come to mind. Asus have been producing
motherboards, videocards, and countless other OEM components since
1989, and today we're going to be examining their extremely popular
Asus A7N8X nForce2 SPP motherboard. Based on the nVIDIA nForce2 SPP
chipset, the A7N8X was one of the first nForce2 motherboards on the
market and the board caught on like a wild fire. Being first always
has its advantages. Asus offer the A7N8X in two versions; there's
the deluxe model which is probably the most well equipped
motherboard on the market (with Ethernet, firewire, Serial ATA) and
the plain "no frills" version which is what we're reviewing
today. The Asus A7N8X motherboard has support
for any 200/266/333 MHz based Athlon/Duron socket A processor,
including the newly released Barton core. Read
the
Rest...
|
|
While AMD just recently increased the AthlonXP
bus speed from 266MHz to 333MHz in October 2002, there has been a
lot of talk lately about the AthlonXP moving to a 400MHz bus speed
as early as the third quarter of 2003. As most overclockers already
know, FSB (Front Side Bus) speed is very important to overall system
performance. As we have seen in the past with the Intel Celeron line
of processors, a low FSB can severely limit the overall system
performance of a processor regardless of what the CPU clock speed
actually is. With this upcoming FSB change on the
horizon for AMD, many consumers will soon confront the eternal
"should I buy now or wait" question. To illuminate some of the
potential differences, we're going to take a look forward and
compare an AthlonXP 3000+ running at 333MHz bus speed to the same
chip running at a 400MHz bus speed (while keeping CPU clock speed
approximately the same).
| |
|
|
Colin's Weekly Tech Tips |
By:
Colin
Sun |
Today: Nix the Auto-resizing in IE6 |
Automatic resizing of large images is a feature Microsoft built into IE6 to make things easier for the end user. In my opinion, when large images are scaled to fit the screen it can make them a little to distorted. Most of the time I find I end up just clicking the little box in the lower right hand corner to display the image as it was meant to be seen. Luckily this is one feature which is easy to turn off in Internet Explorer 6. To do this you need to open up Internet
Explorer and go to Tools menu, from there select Internet Options.
Click on the Advanced tab and you should see a window with a lot of
radio and check boxes. Scroll down to the Multimedia Section and
from there uncheck the Enable Automatic Image Resizing box. Click
the Ok button and now you're set. Images will no longer resize to
fit in the IE 6 window. [Was this tip useful to
you?] |
| Colin's Tips Archives | PCStats.com Forums |
The Last Word:
Tell your friends to sign up for their own weekly
PCstats.com Newsletter
here! It's Free, it's informative, and it
arrives in your mailbox weekly.
|
 |
PCstats Issue
No.81
Circulation: 192,153
|
|
The High Tech Low Down |
| By: Chris
Angelini |
|
A small form-factor revolution is sweeping the industry. It seems that the compact, highly integrated boxes are designed to prove that in some instances, less is more. But is a minimalist approach necessarily the best?
I recently had the chance to review a pre-built small form-factor system based on the nForce2 platform. A marvelous machine by all accounts, the primary weakness I found was its 200-watt power supply. Along the same lines, FIC recently released its Ice-Cube system with a 150-watt unit. And MSI has a Slim PC with 180-watts backing it. Admittedly, I didn't encounter any problems with the Athlon XP 3000+ and RADEON 9700 Pro combination, but I can only wonder how long a configuration like that will operate reliably. I'm not saying that the latest hardware isn't going to work in one of these small form-factor systems, but there has to be a reason ATI recommends a 300-watt power supply in its retail packaging. I'm not trying to warn you away from a SFF chassis, either. They make great platforms for convergence devices and even LAN gaming systems. However, if you do decide to build a cutting edge system using a small form-factor box, be cognizant of thermal issues, as cooling is one of the most important points to take into consideration.
[Was this column useful to you?]
|
|
PCstats Polls! |
|
PCstats News Poll:
How often do you read PCstats News?
|
Submit a product for Review
Ad Enquiries |
RSS Newsletter
