Thomas Pabst

Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 9 with its huge set of new 3D specifications may still be months away. Still, the Canadian 3D chip maker ATi leaps forward to present the first product that doesn't only sport all those fancy DX9 features, but which is capable of crushing current 3D performance leaders in today's games just as well.

In the right platform, Intel's new Pentium 4 at 2533 MHz leaves AMD's Athlon XP 2100+ behind quite badly. We bring you a wealth of benchmarks from 29 processors.

Today NVIDIA launches two new graphics chips and 3 new cards for each, making it six new products. While the GeForce4 Ti series of cards will be using the new high-end chip with the code name 'NV25', the GeForce4 MX value series will be based on NVIDIA's new low-cost solution 'NV17'.

A week after ATi's announcement that claimed Radeon 8500 is shipping, final Radeon 8500 cards were all over a sudden rushed to the online press. Unfortunately the current state of the drivers is not as we would have liked it. Some things work fine, some don't work at all and others are significantly slower than the competition. Have a look yourself ...

The wait is finally over. Today AMD is releasing its first desktop processor based on the 'Palomino' core under the name AthlonXP. The launch of AthlonXP is also marking AMD's step away from the usual clock frequency rating of processors to a new rating system suggesting 'relative performance'. I consider this the real big deal about today's launch. It requires a lot of discussion.

Despite its history as a low-budget chipset maker, SiS had recently been able to prove its ability to provide high performance core logic with the introduction of the well-performing SiS735 Athlon chipset. Today SiS launches its first Pentium 4 chipset, dubbed 'SiS645', for DDR memory. SiS645 is not just a Pentium 4 DDR-chipset. It is also the first to support the new DDR333 memory, which provides 25% more bandwidth than DDR266 a.k.a. PC2100. The attractive SiS645 package is finally able to touch Intel's i850 ...

Another half year has passed since NVIDIA's last 3D chip launch in spring 2001. Following the old tradition, NVIDIA is now introducing a beefed up version of its spring release chip. The new GeForce3 Titanium 500 will from now on be NVIDIA's 3D chip flagship, while GeForce3 Titanium 200 is meant to provide GeForce3 performance at a more attractive price point. GeForce2 Titanium is meant to offer GeForce2 Ultra performance at a low price.

Heat sink reviews receive a lot of attention. People want to make sure that their microprocessors run cool and safe. However, certain conditions can lead to fan failure or even fallen off heat sinks. We checked out what happens to the CPU once this nightmare scenario occurs.

At 12:01 AM Taiwanese time and thus on Sunday noon East Coast time VIA launched the enhanced version of its Athlon DDR-chipset KT266. If you think that this news isn't really worth disturbing your Labor Day weekend, then you might be wrong. The 'A' stands for vastly improved performance.

Intel just released its new 2 GHz Pentium 4 while AMD dropped its processor pricing by more than half. That's what happened Monday, but what is waiting for us tomorrow? Will Intel continue the GHz-race with its new 'Northwood' chip and how? Will AMD be able to tackle the huge clock speed gap between Pentium 4 and Athlon? What are the microprocessor makers cooking right now? A huge pile of sizzling news just fell into our lap and we can't wait to share them with you.

Revenge is sweet. Today is marking an important day for the big chipmaker from Santa Clara. After losing the 1 GHz processor race last year, Intel is now ready to ship the first 2 GHz processor way ahead of its competition. We checked to see if there is more to it than just high clock speed.

Yesterday AMD launched today's launch of their value processor Duron at 1 GHz . To create at least a little excitement AMD didn't just release a faster version of the well-known Duron CPU, but equipped the new Giga Hertz version with a more advanced core known under the code name 'Morgan'. We are having a look to find out if this had any significant impact on Duron's performance.

Now that Intel is selling Pentium 4 at rather aggressive prices, all it takes to make the processor enter the mass market is a reasonably priced platform. The i850 chipset with its requirement of the expensive RDRAM is still unable to offer that. While Intel's upcoming value-chipset for Pentium 4 will initially only support the rather slow PC133 SDRAM, VIA's P4X266 is ready to bring fast DDR-support to Intel's flagship processor.

ATi's new Radeon 8500 is the toughest attack against NVIDIA since the days of Voodoo5. This time ATi went almost the whole way to make sure it beats NVIDIA's flagship GeForce3. Still NVIDIA was prepared. This preview will tell you if the Canadian chip and board maker was able to prevail.

Pentium 4 sales remain low, which is not entirely the fault of the price/performance of Intel's flagship processor. Current i850 platforms require Rambus' expensive and unpopular RDRAM, which reduces Pentium 4's appeal to the buyers even more. Soon Intel will come up with an alternative to i850 plus RDRAM. In a few weeks we will have the chance to spend our money for an even crazier solution. The i845 chipset will team up Pentium 4 with the slow and ageing PC133 memory. We tested this bizarre combination.

Somehow one of those new Pentium III (Tualatin or Coppermine-T?) processors with the famous clock speed 1.13 GHz happened to fall in our lap. We think that for historical reason it should be us and nobody else, who tests Intel's second attempt to manufacture a Pentium III at this clock speed, so we gave the still 'secret' chip a good test run. Now we understand why Intel doesn't know if it should release it or not. Once overclocked to more than 1.4 GHz it is able to threaten Intel's fastest Pentium 4 processors.

On Computex-Wednesday AMD released Athlon 1400 and Duron 950. This article contains extensive benchmark data to compare the new processors to previous AMD as well as Intel CPUs.

We had to wait a long time for the release of AMD's SMP platform, but now, almost 2 years after the first release of the Athlon processor, we can finally experience a system based on two Athlon processors. The processor for the AMD760MP chipset is also new, based on the long anticipated 'Palomino'-core and going by the name AthlonMP. This gives us the first chance to look at the improved performance of Palomino in comparison with its predecessor 'Thunderbird'.

Latest since Intel's Pentium 4 launch last year people were wondering when AMD would release its next processor design to stay ahead of Intel. The code name of "Thunderbird's" successor is already known for a long while. At last 'Palomino' was finally christened 'Athlon 4' and it debuts as AMD's new performance weapon in the notebook arena against Intel's aging Mobile Pentium III. 'Palomino' will soon be available for dual-CPU workstations and desktop computers too. We have a close look at this first version of Athlon 4.

It is still very difficult to find any Pentium 4 enhanced software titles that would show the benefits of P4's architecture. That is why nobody really expected to find the first meaningful Pentium4-optimization in an actual graphics card driver. NVIDIA's recently leaked reference driver revision 12.10 shows what difference P4-enhancements can actually make.

Today Intel starts shipping their processor flagship Pentium 4 in a version that runs at 1.7 GHz. The sales of the Pentium 4 processor haven't done too well lately, so that new price cuts and a faster version shall improve the situation. Is Pentium 4 1.7 GHz a worthy opponent to AMD's Athlon 1333?

Sometimes things take a bit longer, but finally we are able to provide you with our performance evaluation of NVIDIA's GeForce3 chip. Besides the usual batch of 3D-games, we threw in four 3D-gaming benchmarks that use the new fancy features of GeForce3, to give you the most complete picture of this 'GPU'.

Since our first tests of MSI's VIA Apollo KT266 platform last week there has been a new BIOS release. MSI as well as VIA had big hopes that this new BIOS would make KT266 perform better than in the initial test. Let's see if this wish has come true.

VIA doesn't like to rush things. The Taiwanese chipset maker always takes a bit longer to provide the latest technologies, especially for AMD processors. Finally VIA is able to provide a SocketA-platform with DDR-support. Now the long expected Apollo KT266 has to stick up against AMD's 760 DDR-platform. Is it a worthy competitor to AMD's product?

It was only a question of time until AMD would make the next logical step and launch the next fastest Duron processor, running at 900 MHz. The computing power of this new low-cost processor is getting impressively close to the performance leaders from a year ago, the Giga Hertz Pentium III and Athlon CPUs.