<strong>FiringSquad, CDRLabs, Tweaknews, TrustedReviews, I4U, OCW, Hardware-Mag</strong>

FiringSquad article: Building a Basic Home Theater PC

"If you think HTPC means small form factor ATX,you haven´t learned anything from our previous articles. Our HTPC wasdesigned for 2 purposes only: high-definition upsampling of DVD video andpersonal video recording. The goal was to build a system that nocommercially available product could match, and to integrate it into thesystem as well as possible."

Read more at FiringSquad.

CDRLabs Review Announcement — OptoRite DD0401 8x DVD±RW

"Like most of the DVD writers we´ve looked at lately, the DD0401 features 8x DVD+R writing speeds. In our tests the drive was able to write 4GB of data in about 9 minutes. While this is a big improvement over OptoRite´s earlier DVD writers, it wasn´t enough to top the drives from Plextor and Lite-On. The DD0401 also has the ability to write to select 4x DVD+R media at 8x. This worked pretty well in our tests. However, the writing quality varied, depending on what media we used. The DD0401 was also fairly quick when writing to other types of recordable DVD media. Of course, it will be even faster once OptoRite adds support for 8x DVD-R and 4x DVD-RW writing speeds."

Read more at CDRLabs.

Corsair TwinX PC4400 DDR550 Dual Channel Memory Kit Review @ Tweaknews

"Boiling down my thoughts and impressions of Corsair´s PC4400 ram is no easy chore. The good and the not so good points have placed me in the uncomfortable position of being torn between two different, yet equally important factors. For one, DDR550 memory bandwidth to say the least is amazing. Having the ability to overclock my favorite 2.4C processor to 3.3Ghz while using a 1:1 divider does definitely give your system the performance boost expected from such high end memory. Observed performance increases were very impressive and anyone with a capable system will love the increase in gaming framerates and performance. But this leads me to the operative word in that last sentence, "capable".

Read more at Tweaknews.

Sapphire Axion RS300 @ TrustedReviews

"It has been a long wait since ATI announced its IGP9100 chipset for the Pentium 4 processor, but finally retail products have arrived, but not from the big boys and instead from a graphics card manufacturer. Sapphire is one of the biggest ATi graphics card partners and the Axion RS300-AA38FL is not its first motherboard."

Read more at TrustedReviews.

Mobility Radeon 9700 preview @ TrustedReviews

"The big news for the 9700 is that it utilises low-k dielectric technology, first seen in the Radeon 9600XT desktop part. The low-k technology addresses the problem of interference and cross talk between circuits which results in more power having to be fed through to ensure efficient transistor switching. Implementing low-k dielectrics improves the circuit insulation, resulting in less chance of interference and ultimately reducing the amount of power needed."

Read more at TrustedReviews.

I4U Review: MSN Direct Abacus Wrist Net Watch Review

"The idea of getting the latest news, stock ticker and appointment notifications on your wrist is definitely something that I am excited about. There are already a lot of reviews about the MSN Direct and Wrist Net watches available on the web and in the mainstream media (Feel the Microsoft Marketing Muscle), that is why I will be focusing on specific observations I made and not go through the whole product in detail. There is one really major design issue in the service."

Read more at I4U.

ECS KV2 Socket 939 Preview @ OCW

"The board has a Form Factor ATX Size (305mm*244mm), is a 6 layer design and is extremely clean and features a 3 phase design with a +12v connector to ensure stability. The CPU socket is Socket 939 and will support the newer yet to be released CPUs supporting dual channel DDR400. We can see 4 DIMM slots supporting up to 4 GB of memory running in Dual Channel DDR mode."

Read more at OCW.

Auf dem Prufstand: Prescott 2,8 bis 3,2 GHz @ Hardware-Mag

"Erst vor kurzem hatten wir die Möglichkeit einen Pentium 4 3,2 GHz Extreme Edition mit 2 MB Level 3 Cache zu begutachten. Hinzu kommt der ebenfalls heute veröffentlichte Test der 3,4 Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, welche wiederum ein wenig Mehrleistung offenbaren konnte. Hierbei zeigte sich schon, dass die Extreme Edition von Intel mehr oder weniger bewirken soll, den Anschluss an die Spitze nicht zu verlieren und im Prestigekampf nicht den Kürzeren zu ziehen. Vor allem AMD hat mit dem Athlon 64 schon bewiesen, dass man seine Hausaufgaben bei der Entwicklungsarbeit gemacht hat. Inwiefern allerdings mit 64 Bit Applikationen nochmals ein Leistungsschub erfolgt, lässt sich nur abschätzen. Wie sich der Nachfolger des Northwood-Kerns und direkte Konkurrent zum Athlon 64 schlägt, ist daher besonders interessant, da AMD mit der 64 Bit Erweiterung nach wie vor ein sehr heißes Eisen im Feuer hat, das aus Intel-Sicht gelöscht werden muss. Mehr zum Prescott und dessen Leistung, in unserem Artikel. Viel Spaß beim Lesen!"

Read more at Hardware-Mag.

Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3,4 GHz im Test @ Hardware-Mag

"Der heutige 1. Februar 2004 ist ein ganz großer Tag für das Unternehmen Intel: Insgesamt sieben verschiedene Prozessoren, welche auf drei unterschiedlichen Kernen basieren, präsentiert man der Öffentlichkeit. Neben einer 3,4 GHz Northwood CPU (ohne L3-Cache) und den fünf neuen Prescott-Prozessoren, stellt man ebenfalls eine weitere Pentium 4 Extreme Edition vor. Die neue, ebenfalls mit 3.400 MHz getaktete, CPU soll sowohl preislich, als auch im Bereich der Leistung das bisherige 3,2 GHz Modell ablösen. Wie stark sich die zusätzlichen 200 MHz Taktfrequenz auf die letztlich resultierende Performance auswirken und wie sich mit dieser Neuerscheinung die Preise bisherigen Prozessoren geändert haben, erfahren sie auf den Seiten dieses Artikels. Viel Spaß beim Lesen!"

Read more at Hardware-Mag.