Super ULI1697 motherboard reviewed

TECH REPORT writes about chipset, SATA and RAID performance. I was confused and I think you will be as well. They compared Intel's ICH7R and Nvidia's SATA Raid controllers in a series of test using single drive, form RAID 0 to five, using from one to four drives. After several months of testing. Single user tasks favours the Nvidia chipset whereas the Intel's one shines in multi user loads.

Hexus tested the Asus EAX 1800 XL and the HIS Excalibur with the same GPU. A prominent Nvidia advert was on display over there. Surely coincidence. The cards though are absolute dynamite costing much less than the premium top of the range. Single slot, 256MB memory and a PCI express power adaptor plus dual DVI on both of them. Shame though no one came with a non reference card. Matches the 7800GT when SLI is not in the picture.

HKEPC checks a brand new ULI1697 motherboard and wonders how good that chipset is. The 1697 adds SATA2, HD Audio and more RAID option to the 1695. Have a look at the Dual PCIe Riser card which HKEPC hope will means that we'll be able to use SLI and Crossfire when they will be cracked. Englsh speaking OCworkbench also have a review of it here; which complements HKEPC's one.

After digitlife and Tomshardware, Xbitlabs comes with its own grand comparison of graphics cards which spans over a full 27 pages and six pages from $99 to $649. As stange as it may appear, it seems that ATI won in all three main categories. The best card is still Nvidia's 7800GTX 512MB.

VRzone pays tribute to the Asus A8N32-SLI deluxe motherboard as one of the best out there. The x16 SLI does not really help. With fanless chipset cooling and a host more of features, it is a stellar success - 8-phase power circutry, eSATA and other such sweeties justify its price. And you can overclock of course.

Ninjalane says hello to the Corsair TwinX4000 DDR 500 Dual Channel Memory. Comes with black heatsink and in pairs. Generally, there are not that much bad points. It is correctly priced for a two GB RAM module set and we get some heat spreadres that actually work. These modules are actually designed to work at 500MHz which means that it will work fine on most decently overclocked A64 rigs. µ