Illuminated Mousepad makes debut

THE ATI RADEON X1950XTX video card has been released and the NDA's have been removed. With a core clock of 650MHz and a memory clock of 2GHz, the card is a mammoth in terms of performance, power consumption and price. The X1950XTX uses GDDR4 memory and boosts a brand new kind of heatsink fan, which is completely red. Because the HSF is so big, the X1950XTX is a dual format model. The card beats the 7950 handily both in terms of pure performance and in terms of image quality.

GameApex tests the TurboFragPad mousepad. It is marketed as a low friction, very accurate, high performance mouse pad and surprisingly, it comes with a few accessories including - surprise surprise - a power adaptor. Now what kind of mousepad needs a power adaptor. One that lights up for example. It is expensive at nearly $50 but that's the price to pay if you want a mouse pad with custom engraving options, slide proof rubber mat and looks to kill.

Legithardware reports on the Asrock AM2V890-VSTA and K9A Platinum motherboards, both socket AM2 models. The first model is based on the K8T890CF Northbridge and proves to a tough nut to crack. The second one combines the Crossfire Xpress 3200 with the SB600 Chipset board. Both boards have their own selling points. The first one is cheap and cheerful and is readily available both in the US and throughout Europe. The second one is more expensive but comes with Crossfire compatibility.

Anandtech posts the fourth part of their review of AMD AM2 motherboards based on the ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200. There's actually two motherboards on the bench today, the ECS KA3 MVP and the MSI K9A Platinum models. There were a few more motherboards reviewed in the previous editions. Anandtech presented the Gold medal to the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe which has a 8-phase design with a passive cooler while the C51XEMAA is the second award winning mobo. Unfortunately for AMD fanbois, both are from the Nvidia stable.

Sharkyextreme reports on the Gigabyte 7600GT 256MB video card. The card is a dual slot model with a very impressive heatpipe heatsink by Zalman. The Silent Pipe II cooler as it is called is big and effective. SE overclocked it to 625MHz core and 1610MHz memory and in doing so grabbed the slot of top value card according to Sharky Extreme, especially when you account for its quietness.

Another Gigabyte component being reviewed is the GA-965P-DS3 motherboard, which is built around the P965 chipset. This mainstream motherboard supports up to seven PATA/SATA connectors and comes with HD Audio, Firewire and ten USB 2.0 ports. Chipset cooling is done passively and there are three PCIe x1 slots for some reasons. The board is fast and even faster when overclocking is involved. So good that it gets top gongs. µ