ATI Linux drivers dissected

GREG SMITH says his site, devcybiko.us is one of the last Cybiko websites on the internet. A long time developer of software for Cybiko (including B2C - the Basic compiler, and Miachat - wireless AIM for Cybiko), he's looking for some help to keep the breed alive. More info here.

HardOCP has tested a Radeon X800XL wwith 512MB of local video card memory. Apart from the additional 256MB memory, the X800XL comes with dual DVI outputs and Rage Theater for VIVO; as a deal to sweeten the pill. Even then, paying $200 additional for the memory is just not worth it according to them.

Bios has a test of the new low cost HP Color Laserjet 2600n which should cost less than £249. Not bad at all for a Colour laser printer. it has excellent price quality and is relatively priting. Just a little bit slow and under specced. But that's the price to pay for affordability. Who would have bet that Colour lasers would have come down so cheap.

Gognet has a review of the OCZ PC3200 Gold Edition, which is a 1GB Dual Channel memory kit. It features the Winbond UTT BH-5 chips and the famous Brainpower PCB plus it is covered by gold heatspreadders. Performance is top class even when overclocking and overvolting. Beware though not to void your warranty with something above 3.0v.

Phoronix, the site with too many reviews to count, has a short write-up on ATI's Display Driver v8.14.13 which now supports the X8XX family, Quad Buffer Stereo as well as addressing some flaws from the previous version.

The Elite bastards, on the other hand, check the ATI's Catalyst 5.6 drivers and try to predict what the future of ATI's catalyst drivers will be. No real benchmarks, rather a list of (pertinent) comments.

Everything USB has news that the first USB Smart Applications are going to tip up soon. Rather than desktop bound software moved to USB flash drives, expect specially designed software for flash drives. For example, the ARM-powered U3 flash drive/platform will have a dedicated launchpad, will use two-factor authentification.

PCPerspective checks the performance of the new Gigabyte 8i955X Royal which is a 955X based motherboard. It comes with a SATA II controller, Firewire and two GbE ethernet controllers. Plus you have literally dozens of IO connectors. Its not cheap at all and does not have as many tweaks as one would have expected but it literally crumbles under its loads of features. µ