Cheapo graphics cards, PVR+DVD.. and more

UK
Retekdirect has managed another fine catch. The clearance and refurbished specialist has managed to get some ATI Fire GL 8800 graphics card for only £19.99+VAT. The card is based on the ATI Radeon 8500 but comes with 128MB memory and is AGP4X compatible. The FireGL 8800 is geared towards professional solutions especially in 3DMax. The main advantage here that the card has pertains to the fact that the card has been hand-picked, its BIOS modified and special drivers provided so that it can achieve optimum performance when running those software. Optimum performance here means two to three times the perfomance of non optimised systems. The card would perfectly find its place in an entry level rig of any student in a Computer modelling class.

Don't want to do modelling, then you can even play DOOM III with this card and other high-level adrenaline games as well. The Radeon 8500 core which is used in that card still provides a load of performance. It is compatible with DirectX 8.1, same as the Radeon 9200 and has a full 256-bit memory bus. It is clocked at 250MHz/500MHz, which is slightly better than most Radeon 9200 and FX5200.

The GL8800 will probably score twice as much as the FX5200 or the R9200 in Aquamark for example. And the card again is dirty cheap, in fact, cheaper than what you get from Ebay, especially for one which comes wth a DVI port; and definitely cheaper than both GFX5200 and 9200SE's. Note however that the card comes bare without any driver, box or cables but does carry a 30 day RTB warranty. µ

USA
Want to have the functionality of a laptop without the price or the weight? For a limited period, buy a refurbished Sony Clie UX50 and a 1GB memory stick pro for only $553. The UX50 is a perfect example of what Sony can achieve in terms of innovation. It is packed with features like Wifi, Wireless Bluetooth, a VGA digital camera, thumb keyboard and a landscape oriented 320x480pixel secreen.

The UX50 presents itself as a super small sturdy laptop. It is not much larger than a pocket box of havanas cigarillos. The UX50 has a 8MB DRAM as well as an ARM processor and a DSP. Sony has even developped a SpeedStep equivalent to save energy and allow prolonged utilisation. All in all, the UX50 has 104MB of memory, 8MB for the CPU, 16MB for the user and 29MB as internal media.

The 1GB memory stick increases the latter by a factor of 33x the main benefit being allowing the use of the UX50 as a portable MP3 player or MPEG4 viewer. Perhaps what distinguish it most from the usual PDAs is the presence of an almost fully fledged keyboard as a well as a landscape TFT screen which although quite small at 3.5in, is bright and luminous.

Additionally, the screen can rotate to become a tablet. The UX50 runs a PalmOS and comes with load of applications including a PIM, a PDF viewer but strangely though, nothing like a spreadsheet. Anyway, since it is a PalmOS based system, you might as well explore other software alternatives that exist.

Last, the UX50 does not have a good battery life especially when you enable WiFi or bluetooth. The 1GB card is from Sandisk and features the Magic Gate technology, it is a Memory Stick Pro which means that it has fast data transfer - up to 15MBps and access control function. µ

France
Now that the VHS tape has finally put two feet in the grave, digital technology has now produced two heirs - DVD's and PVR. Now, they don't have to be competitors as you will see now. Grosbill is selling the Sigmatek PVR-800 for Eur 445. Now the PVR-800 is not only a PVR as you might guess from the name but it is also a fully blown DVD, MP3 and a DiVX player as well.

Although there are some compatibility issues, the Sigmatek removable hard drive caddy can accept any IDE hard disks, including the largest 400GB ones, which should allow you to record days of video. It also has an integrated PAL/NTSC/Secam tuner and supports DOLBY AC3 and DTS. Its supports a large variety of formats, MPEG4, Xvid, DiVX 3.11 to 5, OGG vorbis, MP3 etc. It also comes with a full IR remote control and the number of connection in front and behind the deck is very much impressive.

It offers four quality levels for your recordings with the lowest being 352x480, SVHS for some and the highest 720x480. Also in the list of specs, the presence of Time shifting and the possibility to communicate with a computer through the presence of a USB port. We obviously do know that some if not all of these functions can be achieved by a computer but rarely has so much been crammed so delicately and efficiently into a small space like this one. µ

Singapore
Chaintech is probably better known for its motherboards rather than its video cards. The Apogee motherboard brand for example is very famous for the quality of its components and the equipment delivered with it. We had already covered the Volari 3 graphic card that chaintech offers in USA through tigerdirect. In Singapore, they are selling their Geforce FX 5900XT, the SA5900X for only $323 which is cheaper than what you would normally pay for an ATI Radeon 9600XT.

The SA5900X features a rather smallish heat sink fan and two RAM sinks. It has a core clock speed of 390MHz and a memory speed of 350MHz with Madshrimps being able to overclock comfortably to 460Mhz/800Mhz, above the level of normal FX5900 and well beyond the reach of the 9600XT or the 5700 generation.

It does offer a whole set of connectors - DSub, TVO and DVI. The GPU cooler though is rather noisy and the SA5900X might block one adjascent PCI slot. Overall a good mid-range video card made even more interesting by its entry level price. Definite buy for those who want to upgrade from an oldey Geforce 3 Ti 500. µ