Intel forces vendors to buy 915
January. 11, 2005 @ 02:45PM GMT +10 |
MOTHERBOARD VENDORS are saying that Intel makes them buy 915 and 925 chipsets whether they like it or like it not. Each time when they want to place an order for 875 or 865 chipsets, Intel kindly asks them to get some 915 or 925 chipset of their choice.
Everybody keep saying that 915 and 925 motherboard sales were not that great and that most motherboard companies have a huge stock of those boards sitting in some warehouses in Asia. You just cannot sell enough since the demand is still not there, is the plaint.
Motherboard manufacturers actually do want to buy many 875s and especially 865s as there is still strong demand for those boards. But there is a trick. Intel and its blue suited men and women made motherboard vendors buy 875 and 865 chipset only if they commit to buy 915 or 925 chips with it.
It's kind of forcing your sales like an enormous radish in a nightmare grow bag but if you are the boss you kind of can do it. It's called monopolism last time I checked. Not to blame Intel, of course. Its chip division has as its mission in the boulevard to sell as many of these chips as it possibly can. You can't blame it. And the INQ doesn't blame it.
Still this gives you a picture of the market acceptance of PCIe chipsets, especially Intel ones. It's a slow and painful artefaction, especially in the upgrade market. On the other hand, OEMs are doing fine with it as you, as a customer, buy a complete system that a company makes from scratch.
Source: The Inquirer |
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GT4 sells 635,000 in first week
January. 11, 2005 @ 11:08AM GMT +10 |
Gran Turismo 4 has squeezed out its ancestor GT3 in the sales records by moving 635,000 units in its first week in Japan. As well as a simultaneous release in China, Sony made a million units available for the Japanese launch as the US version was postponed till 2005.
GT3 sold 620,000 units in the same period.
Source: GamePlanet.co.nz |
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The Windows XP Tweaking Companion
January. 11, 2005 @ 09:41AM GMT +10 |
TweakGuides have thrown up their 170 page Windows XP Tweaking Companion (XPTC) version 1.02!
The Windows XP Tweaking Companion (XPTC) is the complete Windows XP and system optimization guide. No longer do you have to put up with so-called XP Tweak Guides which have a handful of Registry tweaks and some vague optimization advice - the XPTC brings an enormous range of detailed descriptions and resources together in one free 170 page downloadable PDF file. Everything from the correct installation of Windows and critical software and drivers, through to recommendations for every significant setting in XP, all the major performance, visual and convenience tweaks, and descriptions of XP's functionality.
The Windows XP Tweaking Companion V1.02 |
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New AtiTool Release!
January. 11, 2005 @ 09:36AM GMT +10 |
ATITool is an overclocking utility designed for ATI video cards.
Design target is to write a light-weight application for the enthusiast - so no questionable registry tweaks. Sorry.
Main features are:
* No limits overclocking.
* Finding maximum core and memory overclock by rendering into a Direct3D window and scanning the output for visual artifacts.
* Temperature monitoring and fan speed control (on supported cards)
* Removal of Catalyst overclocking lock for 9000/9200/9550/9600 series.
* Artifact scanning mode for non-ATI cards - use together with a 3rd party overclocking utility.
* Loading a predefined clock profile on Application/Windows startup.
* Hotkeys that can be used any time to load clocks from a profile.
* 3D application detection (Direct3D 8, Direct3D 9,L) to overclock your video card only when required.
* Gamma control
Download AtiTool here. |
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World of WarCraft: 600k sold
January. 11, 2005 @ 09:34AM GMT +10 |
Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that World of Warcraft® has sold through more than 600,000* units to customers in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The fastest-growing massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) has also shattered all previous concurrency records in North America, achieving over 200,000 simultaneous players during the holiday period.
"The public’s response to World of Warcraft has been simply amazing," said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "We are very proud and excited to see such an overwhelming demand for the game, and we hope that the enthusiasm continues to build as we further enhance our online service."
Read more
Source: FiringSquad |
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Nvidia to finally ship 6800 U's PCI
January. 11, 2005 @ 09:32AM GMT +10 |
NINE MONTHS after its NV40 introduction, Nvidia is still struggling to ship most of its PCIe high end parts based on this core.
NV45, 6800 GT or Ultra PCIe series are nothing more than an NV40 chip with BR2 bridge chip and specially PCB,but so far, Nvidia has hardly shipped any of the NV45s.
To be precise, Nvidia shipped some quantities of Geforce 6800GT PCIe but hardly any 6800Ultra PCIe. Luckily we heard from several sources that the first batch of NV45 based 6800 Ultra PCIe card is scheduled for end of the January. You can imagine our excitement when we heard that company can actually ship a chip announced nine months ago.
Read more
Souce: TheInquirer |
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ATI's SB400 south bridge ready
January. 11, 2005 @ 09:31AM GMT +10 |
IT'S HARD TO build a south bridge but ATI finally managed to finish its SB400 Southbridge chip. ATI told us that it was talking with its customers and learned that its customers wanted both ATI and ULI south bridge support for ATI boards.
Customers can buy ATI Southbridge chips if they want to, but at the same time they can go and use ULI chipset.
ULI is company that we all used to know under the ALI name and its south bridge has one huge advantage. Right now, it is the only chip that can work on the AMD platform and have Azalia audio support. Therefore some of the ATI partners would rather go for ULI than to ATI's own chipset.
Read more
Source: TheInquirer |
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Monday Night Video Card Reviews
January. 10, 2005 @ 10:49PM GMT +10 |
Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH PCI-E by TheTechLounge.
V-Mod Sapphire Radeon 9550 by OC-Service.
ATi Radeon X850 XT-PE PCIe review by Bjorn3D
HIS Radeon X700 256MB review by BonaFideReviews
MSI GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP review by RBMods
ATi Radeon X800 XL PCIe review by Hexus
Gigabyte Dual GeForce 6600 GT PCIe review by Anandtech
Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT PCIe review by Hi-TechReviews |
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nForce 5 Screenies
January. 10, 2005 @ 08:05AM GMT +10 |
Check out Hot Hardware for screenies of a intel based nForce 5 setup.
That's right people you're looking at dual PCI Express slots in a standard desktop board and we were told in a private session that these slots specifically support a dual X16 lane graphics configuration. We weren't able to pull the heatsink off the Northbridge but we are fairly certain (and it was noted to us by rep we met with) that this is an nForce based motherboards in pre-production status. The Southbridge looks to be an Intel ICH6 but we can't be too sure since it has engineering brandings on it. Regardless we thought you'd like to take a look at this up close and personal. nForce 5 for the P4 with SLI (if that is in fact what this board is) looks to be right around the corner! |
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Get your hotmail account to 250mb
January. 10, 2005 @ 08:02AM GMT +10 |
If your still sitting on 2mb and wondering how & why your not at 250mb check out this article on DV Hardware. |
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ATI to finish Rialto in February
January. 10, 2005 @ 07:45AM GMT +10 |
JUST LIKE WE previously reported, ATI will have its bridge chip ready sometime in February.
There is no rush as ATI still has some 9800PRO left to fill the AGP sub $200 mainstream market but stock won't last forever. Still, at some point, ATI has to start bridging its native PCIe chips and to make AGP cards from them.
We were told that X700 might be the first runner up for such a task but we don’t expect to see any of the bridged cards until sometime in March. There might be a good possibility that we might see such cards at CeBIT but no one is yet sure about that.
Read more @ TheInquirer |
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Leadtek Forceware 70.24/67.03
January. 10, 2005 @ 07:44AM GMT +10 |
Leadtek has released a two forceware sets for the Winfast series.
Grab it from Station-Drivers.com |
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Intel Pentium 4 660
January. 10, 2005 @ 07:43AM GMT +10 |
The chinese website HKEPC have snagged some details and slides of Intel's Pentium 4 660 series which could support EM64T!
From CPU-Z Version in 1.26, we may arrive the formula not to be able correctly to demonstrate the processor name, is treated as is by mistake Intel Pentium 4,558, moreover the core is Prescott but non- Prescott 2M, similarly uses 90 奈 metric systems regulations, the voltage demonstration is 1.334v, looked like P4 6 are the processor or can use Mutil VID, the voltage can by 1.25V to 1.4V, simultaneously we may see in Instructions demonstrated it supports the x86-64 instruction, namely has the EM64T technology. When arteries aspect Pentium 4 660P is 3.6GHz, outside the frequency is 800MHz FSB, has 16K+12K L1 Cache and 2MB L2 Cache.
Source: Read more |
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Affordable RAID-5, X850 vs X800XL showdo
January. 09, 2005 @ 05:25PM GMT +10 |
ONLYNEWZ compares five ATI X800XT PE cards. Apart from long names and distribution problems, those cards share all the good things from ATI X800 GPU. Gigabyte, Asus, Visiontek, Sapphire and Connect3D are present. Reviewing video cards using the same chipset is bound to produce the same result : boredom. All cards are within 2% of each other in most cases.
Read more |
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ATI RS400 puts Intel 915 to shame
January. 09, 2005 @ 05:25PM GMT +10 |
AT THE SHOW we manage to see still the unannounced ATI RS400 motherboard. That is the Intel based motherboard with IGP core inside. It was funny to see motherboard with integrated graphic running some proper Shaders in medium quality and to be able to run game such as Far Cry.
We saw this system side by side with Intel's 915G installed, and it was literally killing it in both performance and quality wise. The folks didn’t want to tell that it's testing it against 915G but we did the math.
Read more
Source: TheInquirer |
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