Olympics and 802.11
Published: Monday, February 11, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
The International Olympic Committee decided to play it safe and will not be using 802.11 devices for their operations control. This does not surprise me in the least, 802.11 devices transmit data without wires similar to a cellular phone with a very weak encryption system. So until a reliable and easy to use means of encryption is enabled for 802.11 it will remain unsafe for high security purposes.
MSI KT3 Ultra Review @ t-break
Published: Monday, February 11, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
MSI has typically been one of the first companies to release new products so you can be rest assured that others will follow in short order.
Antec Mod Contest
Published: Monday, February 11, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Antec is holding a case mod contest in 6 categories. The winner gets to take home a Attaché Portable Color Scanner. I guess giving away an Antec case would be a little silly.
Entries must be received by Feb 28th 2002
Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack ! Ultra/750XP Golden Sample
Published: Sunday, February 10, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
This video card is what I would call "top of the line". On this card you have dual DVI outputs, Nvidia Ti4600 chipset, VIVO or Video in and Video out, EXPERTool (which is the Gainward tweaking utility that works like the "coolbits" hack.) and even comes with Tiny BGA ramsinks 
. Not sure on the price yet, though I'd imagine it will be more than $399.
SDRAM SiS645 Boards Hit the Market
Published: Saturday, February 09, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
The SiS645 is best known as a P4 chipset that supports DDR333 memory and is quite a performer. Though since it would appear that DDR memory prices are back on the rise motherboard manufactures feel it necessary to release a cheaper SDRAM motherboard based on this chipset. I would think that companies would like to move forward and not back but that is just my opinion.
Nvidia to phase out GeForce3
Published: Friday, February 08, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
It would appear that Nvidia doesn't think the GeForce3 is any good anymore. Frankly I would have to agree with them. Here is the scoop, The GeForce2 MX will become the low-end card for the masses. Next will be the GeForce4 MX (suped up GeForce2 Pro or Ultra) and covering the high end will be the 3 chips in the GeForce4 Ti series.
Personally I'm going to hold out upgrading until I can get a Dual-head GeForce4 Ti4600 with 128megs of ram. Once again I'll be able to play a decent game of Quake3 and still retain my dual monitor status. Oh, and the board will need to have a nice red PCB too. 
DRAM and Enron, Connection??
Published: Friday, February 08, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Ram is still cheap in comparison to previous years but prices have been on the rise lately despite no real increase in demand. Could the Enron company have been the cause?
STMicroelectronics Giving Up on PC Video
Published: Friday, February 08, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
This might be the last time we see the Kyro and Kyro II, that is depending on who buys the division. I can see it now the old 3Dfx guys sell off the SUV and start up a new company called KyroFx or PowerFx. 
Soltek SL-85DRS2 Review Posted
Published: Thursday, February 07, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Well it has been awhile since our last motherboard review but we are back and this time with a sexy red P4 board from Soltek. The Soltek SL-85DRS2 is a new and exciting P4 motherboard based on the SiS645 DDR333 chipset and contains the SiS645A2 Northbridge for enhanced memory performance.
GeForce4 Review @ Anandtech
Published: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Anand always has some very in-depth and detailed articles when it comes to new technology. The GeForce 4 review is no exception.
GeForce 4 Preview @ The Tech Report
Published: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Nvidia's NDA on the GeForce4 expired today so there will be quite a few reviews and previews on this subject today and for weeks to come. Some of the cool things about the new chip include a faster core and memory and finally Tiny BGA memory. As some of you might already know Tiny BGA memory chips are smaller, faster, and run cooler than TSOP formats.
PCI-X Spec. Introduced
Published: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
A much needed upgrade to the PCI bus was announced today and "is backwards compatible with previous PCI standards". 
Here is some numbers to chew on.
"The new spec uses double-data-rate and quad-data-rate techniques to dramatically increase the PCI bus bandwidth to 2.1 Gigabytes/second or 4.3 Gbytes/sec."
Soltek SL-85DRS2
Published: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
P4 and DDR333 what more can you ask for. Actually I've been putting the finishing touches on our review of this exciting motherboard and should have it posted soon. Shortly thereafter we will be posting our review of another new Soltek board the PurpleRay SL-75DRV4, so stay tuned. 
The Explosive Power of Silicon
Published: Monday, February 04, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Not completely related to burnt T-birds but close. It would appear that some researchers at UCSD have discovered how to make silicon explosive by simply adding "salt" to the silicon and for those of use that know how to make gunpowder, the discovery isn't really that far fetched. They have some pretty big plans for the discovery to find out more follow the link.
Soltek SL-85DRV3 Review @ Lost Circuits
Published: Monday, February 04, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Here is another DDR enabled P4 review complete with overclocking. I think if Intel doesn't do something soon VIA might have a market share of the P4+DDR platform with an unlicensed chipset.
Overclocking the XP1600+
Published: Monday, February 04, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Tweakers Australia has a pretty good article up on their quest to overclock the XP1600+. They also talk a little about how to use voltage to your advantage, check it out.
World News Broken
Published: Monday, February 04, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
It would appear that my worldnews source is now blocking my website from making any updates, so until further notice the worldnews section will be closed for repairs. It was fun while it lasted I guess 
AMD preparing for Hammer release
Published: Friday, February 01, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
Here is some news via our very own World News with Ninjalane section.
In case you didn't know the AMD Hammer line are 64-bit processors directed towards servers and high-end workstations. Though much like the Itanium I wouldn't expect to see one in your desktop PC any time soon. Then again with code names like ClawHammer and SledgeHammer I think they will be in high demand.
Inno3D Geforce 3 Ti-500 Tornado Review @ OcPrices
Published: Thursday, January 31, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
I've always liked Inno3D stuff; the price is comparable to the competitors and is made with the same if not better components. You can get a hint as to how well they do by reading this review. "268MHz on the Core and 600MHz on the memory"
VIA KT333, Why?
Published: Thursday, January 31, 2002 - By: DennisNews Source: Ninjalane
This is getting kind of annoying; there is only room enough for one "Microsoft". By this I am speaking of Via and their "practice" of releasing a chipset then later releasing another similar chipset with a Fancy "A" at the end that increases performance. Kind of silly if you ask me but I'm sure there is a reason for it.
I'm going to quote Kyle of [H]ard|OCP for a moment on the issue of the KT333. "The fact of the matter is that the 266MHz bus of the Athlon is getting saturated beyond 266MHz memory bus unless the CPU bus scales with it."
