Thursday Reviews
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on July 22, 2004 at 4:31:44 PM
I have this pile of products to review building up and stuff just keeps getting added to it. Expect a review out tonight or tomorrow and perhaps one or two over the weekend.
ATI X600 @ VR-Zone.
Albatron and Gainward midrange cards @ Hexus.
Leadtek 6800GT @ Bjorn3d.
Gigabyte K8NSNXP @ Gruntville.
Lite On Dual DVDRW @ aTR, Free stuff @ CTZ, Audio Trak Maya @ Shortmedia, Apex case @ HCW, Vantec external enclosure @ ClubOC, Everglide mousepad @ DVH.
ATI X600 @ VR-Zone.
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Overclockability has been a key selling point of the ATI Radeon 9600XT over the last 10 months. The card has a great amount of overclocking headroom, and since the Radeon X600 XT is essentially the same card under the hood, we expected it to be a decent overclocker as well. Our results weren't disappointing; we were able to get an overclock of 60MHz from the core and 50MHz from the memory of the Radeon X600 XT, giving us a final core speed of 560MHz and memory speed of 840MHz.
Albatron and Gainward midrange cards @ Hexus.
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If I learned anything from this article it's that it doesn't pay to take your eye off the mid-range sector, even just for a second. You do so, concentrating on all that's shiny and new and when you glance back you've got dual-DVI boards aplenty. It's a mini paradigm shift that the market has been waiting for for some time, so it's nice to see it finally taking effect, even if it's just from one or two vendors.
Leadtek 6800GT @ Bjorn3d.
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Leadtek is one of the oldest NVIDIA board partners around. They actually have been working with NVIDIA since the GeForce 256 back with their WinFast GeForce256 DDR. We at Bjorn3D are always excited when we get a board from Leadtek since they have always offered a good board with custom cooling and a decent bundle.
Gigabyte K8NSNXP @ Gruntville.
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While I would have liked to seen an integrated audio solution (like the Soundstorm system integrated into nForce2), we can't blame Gigabyte as NVIDIA did not include one in this round of chipsets. That's not to say the Realtek ALC850 audio controller is a slouch in the audio department. This 8-channel (7.1) audio codec is fully AC '97 2.3 compliant and features 16-bit, 8-channel audio with auto-jack sensing which basically auto detects the speakers/devices currently plugged in and adjusts output accordingly; no more guess work.
Lite On Dual DVDRW @ aTR, Free stuff @ CTZ, Audio Trak Maya @ Shortmedia, Apex case @ HCW, Vantec external enclosure @ ClubOC, Everglide mousepad @ DVH.