ATI persists in selling AGP cards

TECH REPORT has an interesting article about the new AGP Radeons. Seems as if ATI has finally acknowledged that AGP is (still) not dead. Three cards are on review, the huge X800XL AGP card, the X850 XT PE AGP version - no dual DVI - and finally the X800XT "Where's nVidia's Personal Cinema" All in Wonder card. I'll place my bet on the latter, on sale for only $359. TR also has an interview/conversation with Bob Feldsten, VP of Engineering at ATI which coordinated the whole Xbox 360 GPU project. Some intriguing information is scattered all over the two page report.

Shortmedia runs two articles. First, there's one on Servers made simple for business owners and managers. Loads of reviews and a long article makes it interesting to people other than business owners and managers. Interestingly though, they compare a new Dual Opteron 850 server to an old Dell Poweredge 350 server with a single P3 1GHz. Intriguing. The other article is a review. The G-Power BL heatsink from Gigabyte is the best they've worked with. It has a copper+nickel coating based and a 2000rpm fan means that it will be silent and long lasting. It is compatible with all major sockets and its heatpipe technology guarantees that it will be much more efficient than not.

PCstats has a roundup of Geforce 6600 and 6600GT video cards both in PCI express and AGP versions. There's a truck load of them, from Gigabyte - inc. the GV3D1 dual GPU - from MSI, Albatron and Asus. The 6600GT seems to be the best low-to-midrange card on sale now while the 6600 could make a good bargain if overclocked.

Trusted reviews checks the All in Wonder X600 Pro which is a souped up, slightly brushed version of the All in Wonder 9600 Pro but in a PCIe version. Old technologies and outdated software package make this particular card a very dubious purchase particularly with stand alone tuners gaining in functionality and Firewire cards becoming cheaper and cheaper.

Cooltechzone reviews the Altec Lansing GT5051 speakers. They ressemble another system reviewed at CTZ some time back - from Logitech I think - which used the same kind of (sound) logic. Delivering surround sound common to 5.1 speakers using 2.1 technology. Here they get to use their own "Side Firing Dipole technique."

Xtremeresources reviews the Arctic NV Silencer 6 rev2. Watch out though for compatibility problems. This cooler actually sucks air from outside the casing to inside. The reviewer found a drop of 11oC in the temperature of the unit. The price point remains to be seen. µ