ULI chipset is nForce 4 killer

TOM'S HARDWARE has yet another instalment of its VGA comparison charts wholly dedicated to PCI-Express graphic cards. AGP have been pushed out of the list. Hopefully, they will come in the future. Top of the list are SLI versions while under most tests, the first single cards are XT PE from ATI or 6800 Ultras.

Clubic.com has an interesting article about how the Processors (at least from Intel's side) are manufactured, right from the sand from Maroc, down to Fab 24 in Dublin Ireland. Apparently their fab is 1000 times cleaner than most hospitals; must probably be MRSA ridden UK hospitals then. French article but with a lot of photos. They also review the Pentium M using three separate platforms, one from DFI, another one from Aopen and the last one from Asus. They also throw in an AMD 64 3500+ and a P4 3.4GHz for comparison. The price though remains the weakness in the armour.

Hardware.fr has two reviews, the first one is an eight-way comparison involvinga 4ms TN AU Optronics panel in the form of a Viewsonic VX924. Prices of 19-inch LCD monitors have fallen so much that they almost match that of 21-inch monitors by now. They also has a comparison of 25 heatsink fans from all the major manufacturers and covering LGA775 platform. 31 pages of pure pleasure. Thermalright maintains its leadership.

TT-hardware dissected the Alienware Area-51M notebook, a desktop replacement giant including a 17-inch LCD monitor, a P4 3.4GHz with a Geforce Go 6800. Plus you do have two 60GB 7200RPM RAID 0 hard disks. Other goodies include a DVD writer, HD Azalia sound, four speakers and a subwoofer. They also have a head to head comparison of two entry level graphic cards. The Palit Geforce 6200TC 16/128 as well as the Mediamax X300SE with 128MB 64-bit DDR memory are tested.They are very good overclockers with 25% increases.

Last of our articles is an exclusive article from OCW about the forthcoming ULI M1595/1567 chipset. ULI, ex ALI, is having a remarkable comeback on the chipset front and hopefully, they will be able to match their past performance. Their M1595 chipset allows both AGP and PCI express to be used simultaneously in native mode. If you can live with the pop ups, have a look at the figures and be surprised.