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Abit IC7-G Max3: a new move in overclocking technologies
20/06/2003 15:50,
Abit today is announcing a new motherboard for Intel Pentium 4 processor, this is Abit IC7-G Max3. The board is based on the i875P chipset, offers 2 Serial ATA RAID ports, 2 RAID ports, a Gigabit LAN controller, 8 USB ports, 2 Firewire ports etc.
Abit has always been notable for manufacturing motherboards of high overclocking potentials. With the release of this motherboard, Abit once again proved that - the IC7-G Max3 features an integrated cooling system that provides a more stable system overclocking. The system has inherited the OTES name, better known among the Abit video card owners.
In fact, it is a regular plastic case used as a wind tunnel. On the tube end, a bit above the PS/2 port there is a fan. According to the physics laws, the warmer air will always above the colder so will get into the airway and be expelled with a fan. In other words, the system won`t let the warmer air concentrate around the processor socket.
The idea behind it is very good, what`s left is to verify it live. Yesterday, we were holding this novelty in our hands and prepared a small preview:
 Abit IC7 MAX3. Preview
MSI and Gigabyte to merge?
29/05/2003 10:35,
A month ago, the omnipresent Inquirer informed of negotiations underway between MSI and Gigabyte on the matter of merge. At least, in the most preliminary and initial version, but nevertheless. Then MSI UK officially rejected these rumors, which can be a sign that something had been done nobody knew, so no reason to hype the topic. Today, both heroes of the rumors once again claimed at the exchange where their shares are circulating that those rumors had no grounds.
Yes, factual grounds (especially if no negotiations were held) - but who knows, it happens that in a couple of months after such official denials there appear press releases informing of the reverse. If we look at things in a broad sense basing only on pure facts :), then we can find more than enough grounds both for the merger itself and for the rumors.
First, both companies have pretty slight intersection of interests on the market. MSI is the world`s largest manufacturer of video cards and thus nVidia`s largest partner who uses solely its cards. Gigabyte has fairly recently switched to using ATI cards completely. Things with motherboards are of course somehow different, but anyway MSI indeed has more weight as an OEM supplier for such monsters like Median, whereas Gigabyte is more active on the retail market. Plus some more activities like notebooks or LCD monitors have not yet been mastered by MSI at all. All in all, the overlap is weak, so the minuses from the merger would have been not so great.
The Big Four has reduced to the Big Three, but all its participants would have been on the same level at sales volumes, and ASUS, not ECS would have been more vulnerable to threats. ECS uses quite an exotic business model, whereas Asus at its positioning and market operation methods is closer just to MSI and Gigabyte, so establishing a super-powerful player on their basis would have seriously affected Asus. The pace the computer market is growing is decelerating, and it`s getting increasingly difficult to survive on one`s own. Just recall the wave of resigns and acquisitions in the computer graphics sector for the past ten years. also recall the recent merger of Maxtor and Quantum as well as the PC Chips Elitegroup acquisition which has led it to today`s level (together with other bargains made by the company).
So the rumors of negotiations on the merger of MSI and Gigabyte, despite all the denials, look at least quite logical. Even though these are just rumors, then it makes sense for the company to think it over how to make them come true.
IT deadlock `2003
28/05/2003 12:32,
The fatigue that buyers are experiencing from the useless megahertz race is increasingly going up. Vast majority of everyday tasks at today`s PC do not require the power of Pentium 4 3.06 GHz or Athlon XP 3200+, but just the minimum that needs such performance... Chip manufacturers are not operating for such high sales volumes. Of course, they endeavor to invest much into marketing trying to explain that the buyer does need a new product that costs 1.5 times as much and provides a 10% performance boost as compared to the existing, although not so successfully.
Another proof of that is the fiasco of Intel`s recent plans in which the shipments of i865 chipsets in the second quarter will be as much as merely 15%, to all appearances. But originally it was expected to be up to 25%. We can of course bring in various versions including the notorious SARS explaining why that happened, but that won`t change the reality: the buyers still have no distinct vision as to where to spend these extra mega- and gigahertz. In these circumstances the demand is switching towards solutions offering more optimum price/performance ratio of the middle level.
For chipsets, that is about the i845PE level if we mean Intel, but if it`s AMD then it`s more clear-cut because the processors also fall within the same middle level. To all appearances, Longhorn won`t be able posing serious computational tasks (provided the code is well-written) - the novelties to be released are too unimportant, and more to that, it will emerge in no earlier than mid-2005.
Before then, we`ll be observing the manufacturers who froze in a pretty strange posture - on the one hand, the competition is growing fierce and forces them to produce more and more of powerful products , on the other hand, it`s increasingly lagging behind the potentials of most recent products - they are all aimed at the mainstream market where the performance growth pace for the average PC is increasingly getting slower.
The industry is gradually coming to the deadlock with the capital expenditures rising at geometric series (just recall the cost of modern factories), which is affordable to fewer players, while the results of all those multi-billion expenditures are increasingly less impressive. How much did it take TSMC to perform migration from 0.15 to 0.13 mk? Presumably, several hundred billion dollars. All for the sake of making the more thoroughly designed 0.15 mk R350 at least on par with the 0.13 mk NV35. All seems to be going in the wrong direction, and something has to be done about that :).
Epox 8RDA3+ In House
09/05/2003 14:30,
The review is coming soon ....
Intel to fine renegades
25/04/2003 09:12,
MSI has candidly infringed the NDA to launch sales of i865PE (Springdale) based motherboards and shipped its first lots of the boards to the distributors. The boards of MSI were noticed in France, Malaysia, China and Russia - wonder-struck buyers in Moscow could easily make the boards based on the "future" chipset available for two days at NIX company... By now they have been removed from the retail shelves of course ;-)
As a result, MSI now faces an embargo for chipset supplies until 21 May - the date this chipset is to be officially announced.
Elfian butterfly showing striptease...
10/04/2003 12:07,
For every new family of accelerators, nVidia traditionally prepares several demos showing the potentials of its produce. The symbol of the FX family thus becomes the demo reel with the dancing Elfian butterfly (the name of the reel is `Dawn`). That beautiful fabulous creature is flying over the branches of the magic tree ... The sight is really impressive - the gracious motions, lively mimics (let alone the winking or "giving the glad eye"), meticulously drawn hair, wings... Indeed, what better can be used to demonstrate the "cinematographic power" or "emotion"?
Immediately after the demo was released, there were numerous ideas as to how to modify or improve. Some said the Elfian would be better off if turned into a more or less realistic lady without wings, or to make all happy, without any attire on. To substantiate the idea, online screenshots few in numbers were brought in.
There is one thing though - the demo runs only on GeForceFX and most of the excited internet community members can`t try the novelty at all because of the lack of such cards in stores. Finally, ther online folks calmed down and arrived at a conclusion that it was a mere fake, and that the naked Elfian was no more than a fruit of the ill imagination.
No wonder, having received all the three FX cards on the same day we tested that widely hyped feature. Having installed the demo and a related patch, a second later we found ourselves admiring the stylish strip-tease show, still unable to believe our eyes!
 
 
Well, here is the workaround:
- Buy GeForce FX
- Download demo Dawn - 72 MB
- Install DX9
- Download the patch - 33 kb (Autor & idea: Corak, Uttar)
- Enjoy...
A really unconventional move from nVidia to conquer the market :-)
By the way, FX are coming to the retail stores in Moscow already next week. Video cards from Leadtek, Gainward and Daytona have also arrived.
On price reduction for AMD`s processors
26/02/2003 12:42,
Following Intel, a day later AMD also did a price reduction which outshadowed that of Intel`s in its comprehension. But hardly can it be regarded as steady since the prices have been going down in quite a wide range: between 1% and almost 50%.
Following the tradition, I am bringing in only the data for desktop PC chips and workstations leaving the the "mobile" Athlon and Duron chips off-screen (if interested, welcome to the page listing the prices for AMD`s notebook procesors on the manufacturer`s website).
| Processor |
New price |
Price reduction |
| Athlon XP |
|
|
| Athlon XP 2700+ |
$267 |
23% |
| Athlon XP 2600+ |
$241 |
20% |
| Athlon XP 2400+ |
$141 |
27% |
| Athlon XP 2200+ |
$107 |
31% |
| Athlon XP 2100+ |
$92 |
1% (a prize for smart novelty :) ) |
| Athlon XP 2000+ |
$81 |
2% |
| Athlon XP 1800+ |
$67 |
3% |
| Duron |
|
|
| Duron 1,3GHz |
$44 |
6% |
| Duron 1,2GHz |
$39 |
6% |
| Athlon MP |
|
|
| Athlon MP 2400+ |
$200 |
12% |
| Athlon MP 2200+ |
$174 |
16% |
| Athlon MP 2200+ |
$133 |
13% |
Intel to push down wholesale prices for Pentium 4 and Xeon processors
26/02/2003 12:38,
As expected, during these holidays Intel has finally introduced the long-awaited amendments to the official wholesale price list and pushed down prices for its processors. The price reductions related to the Pentium 4 chips as well as the Xeon server family proved to be impressive albeit not so striking in the amount - on the average, the prices have gone down by 16% to 20%.
| Processor |
New price |
Price reduction |
| Pentium 4 |
|
|
| Pentium 4 FSB 533 MHz 3GHz |
$589 |
8% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 533 MHz 2.8GHz |
$375 |
6% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 533 MHz 2.66GHz |
$241 |
21% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 533 MHz 2.53GHz |
$193 |
21% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 533 MHz 2.40GHz |
$163 |
16% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 533 MHz 2.26GHz |
$163 |
16% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 400 MHz 2.6GHz |
$241 |
21% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 400 MHz 2.5GHz |
$193 |
21% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 400 MHz 2.4GHz |
$163 |
16% |
| Pentium 4 FSB 400 MHz 2.2GHz |
$163 |
16% |
| Xeon |
|
|
| Xeon FSB 533MHz 2,66GHz |
$284 |
16% |
| Xeon FSB 533MHz 2,4GHz |
$209 |
10% |
| Xeon FSB 400MHz 2,6GHz |
$273 |
16% |
| Xeon FSB 400MHz 2,4GHz |
$198 |
12% |
| Xeon FSB 400MHz 2,2GHz |
$198 |
12% |
Mystify 5800 and Mystify 5800 Ultra: Videocards from TerraTec on Geforce FX Chips
10/02/2003 01:54,
Relatively young German company TerraTec (founded in 1994) known for its sound cards, MP3 players, webcams etc. provided information about their future videocards Mystify 5800 and Mystify 5800 Ultra on GeForce FX chips. Their clocks are standard: 500MHz GPU/1GHz memory for Mystify 5800 and 400MHz GPU/800MHz memory.
Both models are equipped with 128Mb DDRII memory and three connectors: VGA, DVI I and S Video.
It is expected that retail price of Mystify 5800 would be €580 ($630) and retail price of Mystify 5800 Ultra would be €650 ($700).
Radeon 9700 Pro Is Now Available for Mac G4
10/02/2003 01:53,
Not so long ago only Radeon 9000 among all Radeon cards could work on Power Mac G4 platforms. Recently, the situation has improved and ATI Technologies surprised Macintosh fans. The company announced that from now videocards based on Radeon 9700 Pro, known as the most productive solution for desktop PCs in ATI assortment, are available for Power Mac G4 platforms.
Videocards from Gainward on Geforce FX Chips
10/02/2003 01:51,
Gainward company announced two new videocards based on nVidia Geforce FX 5800, equipped with 128Mb of DDR2 memory, VIVO (VideoIn/VideoOut) and quietly working cooling system (7dB). The first model Gainward FX PowerPack Model Ultra/800 Plus “Golden Sample” is equipped with a processor operating on 400MHz clock with 800MHz memory. The second model Gainward FX PowerPack Model Ultra/1000 Plus “Golden Sample” is more productive in comparison with the first one (500MHz GPU clock and 1000MHz RAM).
Above all, when a customer buys the second model he receives FireWire controller (IEEE-1394), a soundcard of 5.1 standard and a set of games.
Ergodata presented new combo-player Digitex MP-309
10/02/2003 01:48,
Company Ergodata plans to begin supplying combo-players Digitex MP-309 12 Mb. It is multifunctional device involving MP3-player, dictaphone and flash-disk 128Mb. To write data it would be enough to plug Digitex MP-309 128 Mb to USB-port.
The device will automatically be detected as removable disk in all OS from Windows 2000 and it will be available for working. Digitx is equipped with information LCD-screen; usual AAA battery is used as power supply for 12 hours of working. The dimensions of player are 85x30x23mm and weight without battery is 36g. Digitex MP-309 will be on sale in the middle of February 2003.
The price will be about $175.
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