Sunday, April 16, 2006

Win a Set of Spring Hardware from ATI. ATI Launches “Go Wild” Spring Contest

3:45 pm | Anton Shilov

This year ATI Technologies advises to “Go Wild” and participate in a contest. Among the prizes are a number of modern games, mainboards from Asus and as well as graphics cards from ATI and its partners: Connect3D, Power Color and Sapphire. 

In order to participate in this event you have to go to the ATI web-site and follow those simple steps:

• Fill out the form.
• Tell up to 5 friends about this contest.
• Cross your fingers and hope for the email informing you that you just won the ATI “Spring Loaded CrossFire Bundle” contest.

Additionally, those who invited their friends are automatically entered into ATI bonus draw to win an ATI Grab Bag. 

The event is been held from April 04, 2006 till May 15, 2006. 

Please note that ATI “Spring Loaded CrossFire Bundle” contest is opened only to residents of the United States (excluding Puerto Rico) and Canada (excluding Quebec). Entrants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of entry. 

• ATI.com: Spring’s Here... Go Wild! – Contest.

AMD Sempron and Intel Celeron D Microprocessors Compared. AMD Sempron and Intel Celeron D Microprocessors Compared

3:43 pm | Anton Shilov

Although it is interesting to follow all of the major events in be battle of the top-of-the-line offerings from AMD and Intel, the majority of end users are quite satisfied with budget microprocessors. If one is not into extreme gaming and does not require high CPU performance, then the obvious choice for them would be an AMD Sempron 64 or Intel Celeron D value processor. 

TweakTown compares AMD Sempron 64 3000+ and Intel Celeron 336 microprocessors in a number of contemporary benchmarks, including games, typical office tasks, media encoding and data compression. 

“Intel’s value market was unchallenged for some time with the demise of Duron, but now it’s starting to show again that AMD can put its muscle into both high-end and value segments, and still give the users what they want. Overall the Sempron proved itself to be the better CPU, while lagging behind in the encoding and synthetic segments, when it starts to put its K8 architecture behind games, it’s clearly the winner overall,” writes TweakTown. 

• TweakTown: Battle of the 64-bit Budget CPU - Sempron 64 vs. Celeron D 64.

Crucial Memory Modules: No Need to Buy, Just Win. Crucial’s Starts “Bad to the Bone” Sweepstakes

3:42 pm | Anton Shilov

Crucial Technology in cooperation with Logitech and Shuttle has started the “Bad to the Bone” desktop PC giveaway contest.

In order to become the participant you should go to the Crucial Technology web-site and correctly answer the multiple choice question set forth therein. Then complete the entry form. The limit is one entry per person, per household, and per e-mail address. The event is been held from April 04, 2006 till April 24, 2006.

Three winners will be selected in a random drawing on April 25, 2006, from among all eligible entries received. Each of the three winners will receive a prize consisting of: Shuttle XPC SD11G5 desktop barebones system, 2GB DDR2-533 memory module kit, Crucial Radeon X1600XT 256MB graphics card, Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 laser keyboard and mouse and a set of Logitech Z-2300 speakers.

Please note that this promotion is opened only to legal residents of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older at the time of entry.

• Crucial.com: Enter Crucial’s Shuttle Giveaway.

Ultra High-End Power Supply Unit Roundup. Web-Sites Tests High-Performance PSUs

3:41 pm | Anton Shilov

Purchasing an ATI CrossFire or Nvidia SLI multi-GPU graphics system is only the first stage in building an ultimate gaming machine. A powerful CPU should also be installed, so that it won’t become the performance bottleneck of the multi-GPU system. To provide enough power for such a system, a high-quality power supply unit (PSU) should be obtained.  

A number of modern PSU manufactures claim to provide end-users with 550W or even 600W of output. ByteSizedReviews web-site compares latest PSUs from Antec, Enermax, Hiper, OCZ, Seasonic and Tagan in order to determine the best in terms of power supplying stability under heavy loads. 

“The Seasonic was without a doubt the best PSU in the group test. Its rails were rock solid, it was extremely quiet and has all the right connectivity. It is also small enough to go in the most compact of PC cases, as unusually for a premium PSU actually follows the ATX size guidelines to the letter. Couple all of this to an ATX 2.01 spec and you have a winning combination,” writes the author. 

• OcPrices: Ultra High-End PSU Shoot Out.

How to Choose HDCP-Capable Generation LCD Display. Windows Vista Ready LCD Monitors Round-Up

3:39 pm | Anton Shilov

Displays for personal computers (PCs), as a rule, cost almost half of the computer itself. Because of this factor a monitor can outlive a couple of upgrades or even new system purchases. In order to cut future expenses, a special attention should be paid when choosing a display.  

In less than a year from now Microsoft is set to release a brand new operating system (OS) known as Windows Vista, which is expected to bring numerous new features, but in order to utilize the full potential of the OS, end-users will have to get some new hardware.  

For years computer monitors have been evolving without any considerable changes, except for transitions from CRT to LCD and from D-Sub to DVI. With the Vista arrival, DVI-I will have to step aside in favor of a new interconnection standard that supports high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) technology for video playback. FiringSquad have posted an article that explains some bacics about the HDCP and displays that support it. 

“Although a big deal has been made about the lack of HDCP support in graphics cards recently, monitor manufacturers have also been slow to adopt HDCP. Arguably, every monitor designed after summer 2005 should have implemented HDCP. The lack of HDCP support on a 17” or 19” 1280x1024 display means that you’re losing about half of the pixels that the monitor is capable of. The bigger issue is with the high resolution monitors capable of displaying 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. Without HDCP, these high-resolution resolution widescreen displays are only showing a 1/3 or 1/4 of the pixels available,” writes the author. 

The author also compares monitors with HDCP support manufactured by Gateway, HP, NEC, Viewsonic and Samsung in terms of contrast ratio, pixel response time and features richness.  

“The Samsung 244T is essentially a ‘dream’ monitor. It’s a huge 24 inches, has 1920x1080 resolution, is super-fast when it comes to games, has great out-of-the-box image quality, and even has a portrait mode rotation. The only weakness of this monitor besides its luxury pricing is that the USB hub is cumbersome to use and the poor component and S-Video input. Nonetheless, this is our favorite monitor in the round-up. The Dell 3007WFP might be bigger, but the 3007WFP is not going to have the same 1000:1 contrast ratio or the same high-speed pixel refresh. This is definitely our favorite monitor of the group,” concludes the round-up. 

• FiringSquad: Windows Vista Ready LCD Monitor Round-Up.

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