Monday Hardware Reviews

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ABIT is one of those companies that people seem to continually expect a lot from. When so many enthusiasts flock towards ABIT's products, that's bound to happen. Enthusiasts expect and demand more, and ABIT delivers that time and time again with abundant tweaking options and innovative features. A company like ABIT is good for all of us really, as it makes other companies think about innovation and staying ahead of the game as well.

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The Albatron Mars PX915P-AGPe fills in the gap set forth by the socket 775 Intel Pentium 4 and Intel 915 chipset which require users to adopt PCI Express graphics solutions. Or course, this board will support a PCI Express x16 videocard (4GB/s bandwidth), but it also has a AGPe slot that is compatible with 8X AGP videocards. Furthermore, since the PX915P-AGPe is built around the Intel 915P core logic and ICH6 southbridge, it makes use of standard dual channel DDR memory, not DDR-2 RAM. Either type of videocard can be used, even at the same time. Although, we should point out that the AGPe (AGP extension) slot is not necessarily equal to that of an 8X AGP slot, as it runs through the PCI bus. The flexibility is nice, and makes it the major selling point of Albatron's PX915P-AGPe motherboard.

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The new Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 motherboard is based on the VIA K8T800 Pro chipset, and with a sticker price of $135CDN is quite a steal next to the competition. Like most Athlon64 motherboards these days, the SL-K8TPro-939 is very nicely equipped with IEEE 1394, 7.1-channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet, a Promise PDC20579 SATA/IDE RAID controller and the always useful Port 80 diagnostics card. There are five 32bit PCI slots, four 184-pin DDR slots, as well as a standard 8XAGP port. The Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 is probably a case modder's dream motherboard to work on. Its midnight black PCB and colourful expansion slots, IDE/Floppy connectors, DIMMs and CPU retention bracket give it a distinctive appearance.

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The X800 XT is based on the GPU chip R420. The GPU is equipped with 16 pipelines, 4 per quadrant. You may be asking what is the difference between the X800 SE, X800 Pro, and the X800 XT? Well there isn’t much difference in the GPU. Since there are 4 pipelines per quadrant, ATI simply deactivates defective ones and sells it as a lower model. The X800 Pro has “12” pipelines. What this means is that one of the quadrants of an X800 XT is deactivated due to defective pipelines. If you look at an X800 Pro and X800 XT both built by ATI they will be physically identical. ATI uses the same HSF, PCB, and component placement on both models. AMD and Intel both use this same method of marketing when they have a CPU with defective cache. They simply disable the cache and re brand the CPU. This is how we get Celeron, Sempron, and Duron.

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Built for Intel's new Socket 775 Pentium 4 'Prescott' processor (533/800MHz FSB), the ASRock 775V88 is a no frills motherboard and does not come with many features. With a retail price of just $76 CDN though, pretty much all can be forgiven. The only onboard components included are built-in 5.1 audio, two Serial ATA ports, and a VIA 10/100 Ethernet adaptor. Not a lot, but really quite perfect for building office PCs.

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When you look at the R480 part we've tested today and compare it to NVIDIA's current high end PCIe offerings, the winner is ATI on every front. With Catalyst A.I. enabled, the ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition is able to at least tie, but usually outperform the 6800GT in Doom 3 tests. In our other game tests, the results all swing in ATI's favor, with the ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition fastest in every other test.

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Can you believe the kind of power the newest offering from AMD delivers? A simple search over the internet can turn up multiple reviews of the socket 939 processor really churning out some FPU. The only problem that has really come around is the small offering of motherboards for this magnificent processor, but they are slowly coming out of the woodwork, although with a lot of glitches and not too much of what Overclockers really want. Nevertheless, it is nice to see such a great processor debut, and with the introduction of the slower speed 90nm Winchesters such as the 3000 and 3200, we Overclockers can rejoice as they become more and more affordable. I personally feel after reviewing both motherboards features and benchmarked in this review that motherboard manufacturers need to really go back to the drawing board, and come out with a board that make use of the features that a 939 processor has to offer instead of placing a 754 chipset and calling it compatible. Many Overclockers out there are having problems with them, yet when they run right they simply run, and they run fast... Even this little Foxconn board benched as equally as our old testbed, a Mach I cooled 3.0Ghz Prescott at 4.0Ghz with an x800 Pro from Visiontek massively overclocked. The socket 939 beats all our existing benchmark numbers without overclocking our system OR video card. That is very significant indeed, and it just simply points out the power of the AMD socket 939 interface. Although we would like to focus on the aspect, the Foxconn board is not an overclocking board, but is simply a board that is rich in features, and runs good and stable as a SIS chipset should.

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What will be going on your Christmas wish list to send to Santa Claus in the North Pole this year - ATI Radeon X700PRO or nVidia GeForce 6600GT? Today we are comparing both mainstream PCI Express graphics cards to work out which one should find its way into your stocking this year in our usual array of benchmarks. If you're on the market for a new graphics cards and Santa can't afford a high-end card, one of these cards is your next best bet!

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The 6600 or NV43 is basically a little sister version of the NV40 chips that are the basis for the GeForce 6800 cards. The 6600 has 8 pixel pipelines, 3 vertex shaders (v3.0), 1 pixel shader (v3.0), 128 MB of memory and roughly 143 million transistors. The 6600 runs @ a core speed of 300mhz, while the memory runs at about 550mhz. Compared to the 6800 which has 12 pixel pipelines and runs at a core speed of 325mhz. For $120 I would say the 6600 is a much better choice than the 6800 for around $300 when looking at the price/performance ratio. Not to mention when looking at the size of your pocket book.

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Today we will be taking a look at the Radeon X800 XT from ATI. The main differences that seperate the X800 XT from the X800 Pro are the clock speeds and pipelines. The X800 XT has 16 pixel pipelines and operates at 520 MHz core and 560 MHz (1120 GHz DDR) memory speeds while the X800 Pro has 12 pixel pipelines and operates at 475 MHz core and 450 MHz (900 MHz DDR) memory speeds. At present, the X800 XT is pretty much the best PCIE card on the market, as the X800 XT PE is hard to find, and the 6800s are nonexistent. So what sort of performance can you expect to get from the best money can buy? Well, I’m glad you asked, because that is just what we intend to find out!