New SLI motherboard is great bargain

NOT EXACTLY the sexiest motherboard on earth but the ECS KN2SLI corrects the shortcomings of its predecessor and adds X16 to the existing SLI setup. It now supports SATA2 NCQ enabled, eSATA, GbE and Fast Ethernet, Top Hat Flash, Firewire and eight USB ports. Also, ECS included its own Scalable Dual Graphic Engines Architecture which ressembles ATI's and Nvidia's own dual card setup. One or two items to be resolved. You can be the KN3 SLI will be even better now that ULI is in Nvidia's womb.

AMDzone reviews the OCZ Platinum PC 2x1024 MB memory modules. They are PC4000 compliant and can run at 2.8v. Jeff, the reviewer used the proven DFI Lanparty motherboard for the test. There are cheaper options out there, but this one overclocks wonderfully and will be top of an overclocker's list for Christmas. At a maximum 281MHz FSB, DDR1 proves that it is still alive and kicking.

Canon has its Pixma iP8500 reviewed by BIOSmagazine. The new 8-ink cartridge, 147-milion droplets per second printer might be bigger than most inkjets and have no memory card, Wifi or LCD screen but it will still cost cheaper than most high end printers. It supports Pictbridge technology and as you can guess, quality is nothing short of stunning even if it is a bit slow.

Tweaktown has a review of the ULI 1697 reference motherboard. Now before continuing, ULI, like 3DFx, is now part of graphics giant Nvidia. Why Nvidia bought ULI is anyone's guess. Getting rid of a promising competitor or to annoy ATI rank amongst my favourite reasons though. Anyway, the motherboard itself is quite competitive even when compared to the Nforce 4 Ultra or to the best from ATI. I bet that Nvidia is looking to outsource its Chipset production to grab Intel's place. Anyway, ULI has the best chance to become what Nexgen was for AMD, a solid and reliable base.

Looking for the ultimate video card on the market. If you are ready to fork a substantial amount of money, then you might want to test that Leadtek Winfast PX7800 GTX TDH MyVivo, as tested by Bjorn. They test it together with a Gigabyte 7800GTX card and three other XFX 7800 generation cards. The card comes with 256MB GDDR3 memory and was able to overclock quite nicely even though that provided with a 5% increase in perfomrance. The card is pre-overclocked and comes with Quadro like cooler - fine for keeping the GPU in working condition.

Pocketlint has a nice review of the Pentax ist*DL DSLR camera. It is handy and fits well in the average and plus it is easy to use. But its auto settings could be much better and its menu ain't that much user friendly. Pocketlint considers that the camera is rather a lite version and given the investment, advises you to get your DSLR from the big two.