Friday News part 3

A company such as EPoX doesn't require any introduction at all. They have been quite famous for their line of motherboard that always comes with stong selling point that is reasonably priced. In fact, since with their introduction of 8KHA+, an AMD based motherboard, it has received tremendous response from reviewers and consumers alike, which was the best AMD board at it's time. However, in our today' review, we are going to look at their latest board, aimed for enthusiasts, 4PCA3+! How much is the improvement on the new Intel Canterwood over with the previous champ, the Intel Brookdale?

Having worked with Supermicro and Iwill motherboards over the last few months, it was exciting to get an opportunity to work with a board from another well known vendor - Tyan. This time we got our hands on the Tyan S2668 Tiger i7505 motherboard which places the E7505 chipset on an ATX form factor board. Having recently reviewed the Supermicro X5DAL-TG2, we were curious to see how the S2668 would perform against its ATX brethren

With the latest chipsets Canterwood and Springdale recently introduced by Intel, we are in desperate need of the super fast memory that will let us overclock the newer "C" stepping processors. Even stock these CPU's are running 200MHz so they'll need an absolute minimum of PC3200. If you plan on overclocking, you'll want some really good PC3500 or higher. And quite honestly, the hardcore overclocking crowd will be calling for PC4200 and higher very soon. Especially since the introduction of the new Intel P4 2.4C and 2.6C CPU's. The core of these chips seem to top out at just over 3500MHz. So the 2.4C will need roughly 290MHz and the 2.6C will need around 270MHz to reach the 3500MHz plateau. Currently there is no memory available that is sold guaranteed to run those speeds, but let’s hope companies begin to introduce these to the masses soon

By looking at the scores above, I find it hard to convince the consumers that FX5600 would give them a better gaming experience than a good old GF4 Ti. Generally speaking, Leadtek A310 (FX5600) is around 10~35% slower than a standard GF4 Ti-4800SE. The FX5600 may come out on top if FSAA is used but that is about it

As with many of our other technological advances, even computer cases have evolved quite a bit asthetically. From our dull, beige-coloured cases to multi-coloured ones complete with side windows, case manufacturers continue to improve on the quality of their appearance on the cases, fueling the pride of hardcore computer owners/users as well as making the computer appear to be more than "just a simple-looking machine". This time I am taking a look at the Verre V770 Black case, that also includes a side window for your viewing pleasure

Today, I will be taking a look at two sticks of 256MB Crucial PC3200 DDR modules. These differ from the previously reviewed Crucial PC3200 DDR RAM in that these are the final revisions that no longer use the Samsung DRAM chips, but Micron DRAM. The greatest advantage of not having a middleman in the manufacturing process is cost. These sticks are topped with 5ns DDR RAM stamped with the Micron logo and rated at CAS3