Hynix Semiconductor, and ST-Microelectronics have combined efforts to construct a $2-billion “front-end” Fab facility in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province, China. Concentrating on wafer’s for DRAM and NAND Flash, the plant will cover some 18,000 square meter’s of clean room manufacturing space, and employ approximately 1,500. The joint venture will  focus on high volume 8-inch wafer production beginning …more

Photo stitch programs similar to the one used to make this incredibly large digital photograph are really cool! My Cannon digital camera came with some stitch software and it is awesome! I was able to make a huge panoramic picture of a sunrise off the coast of Cancun, Mexico without the need of an actual …more

Just hours after it’s “real” (server activation) release, Half-Life 2 benchmarks have been published at The Inquirer. Early results indicate ATI’s core technology is the favored catalyst for the game’s graphic engine. In the high performance graphic card catagory between the X800 XT PE and 6800 Ultra, ATI clearly dominates. Comparing the X700 XT to nVidia’s 6600 GT in PCIe, results once again favor …more

I was making my rounds looking for updates to various software we use for testing and noticed that there is a brand new version of CPU-Z out: 1.25!! Grab it if you need it! Here’s a list of improvements: nVidia nForce4 chipset support. Intel Pentium 4 J support improved. New button to refresh memory timings. …more

Software giant Microsoft has told the industry that they are seeking hundreds more “high-level” engineers.  Great news for the the people at Redmond right?  Nope… These jobs are in Hyerabad, India… “HYDERABAD, India–Microsoft will hire several hundred new employees at its new Indian campus in the next year, its chief executive said on Monday–a move …more

This is pretty big news! SOYO has been a major motherboard provider for the past many years. The first system I build featured a SOYO motherboard for my Athlon 700MHz slot processor. SOYO tried to enter the enthusiast market with their Dragon Series of motherboards. Here’s what Digitimes has to say… “Second-tier motherboard maker Soyo …more

Per the Inquirer, the folks at Akiba PC Pricewatch have found the Intel 570J for sale in Japan. The processor will run at 3.80GHz, utilizing a 800MHz FSB (QDR) and a 1MB cache. This will be the last Pentium-4 based on the Prescott core, which was Intel’s foray into, and the world’s first Desktop CPU based on 90nm architecture. Although stopping short of …more

Since Valve and Vivendi have been in a legal tiff over the release of Half Life 2, it seems copies sold this past Tuesday may still be awaiting server authentication. As Charlie Demerjian of the Inquirer writes, Best Buy and Target stores whom sold copies three days early, apparently sold copies made by Vevindi, “blindsiding” Valve. In a ironic twist …more

Although ATI won’t say that this is the “special” driver for Half Life 2 we can say that it is and it has been released this afternoon!!  It’s officially known as the Beta 4.12 driver and weighs in at 21.7mb in size. As mentioned by my friend Fudo in the Inquirer, we would release this driver …more

Several Dell desktop models introduced in the third quarter of this year may have defective heat pipe thermal modules, which may cause the systems to run noisy or even shutdown, according to sources at Taiwan PC makers. The built-in thermal module has just two heat pipes, while most industry solutions use three, and therefore the …more

Bofra is out and spreading around the internet pretty quickly!  It was the first of several types of worms that appeared on November 10th. They exploit a Windows vulnerability that was discovered only a few days earlier.  Go figure huh… “Virus writers have begun using the power of the web to spread their malicious wares. A Windows virus called …more

PCPower&Cooling will be introducing two new PSU’s for 1st Quarter next year. The 700ETX, and 850ETX are designed primarily for dual video, dual processor environments. The latter will be introduced early in the 1st Quarter, with the 700ETX following soon after. Overclocker’s as well as PC-Enthusiast’s alike seeking a truly stable power source for their nForce-4 …more

“MICROSOFT HAS started implementing features in upgrades to Windows XP which specifically prevent users of pirated keys from upgrading parts of the operating system.” The Inquirer

“MEDIA CENTER PCs may promise yet another computing utopia but they are nothing more than a self-replicating virus that will wipe out a cherished way of life. You won’t see it in the marketing brochures but to those of us with more than teenage bum-fluff on our chins, they spell the end of a tradition …more