Hardware Roundup Soyo wanna mobo?

We're avoiding the temptation to link to countless reviews of 1GHz microprocessors this morning -- goodness knows there are enough of them. Instead, some more tranquilising news from around the hardware sites. At Hard OCP, there's a photograph of the X-Station. Well, it may not be Microsoft's X-Station, but it's definitely an X-Station of some kind... And Kyle, at the same site, has a review of some Soyo gear which is well worth a look. The 6VBA-133 features on his site. Here at Sharky Extreme, there's a review of some speakers from Video Logic. A review here at Anandtech of a Shuttle mobo using Via's Apollo Pro 133A chipset. ® 2 March 2000 Over at JC's pages there are some juicy bits and pieces about AMD's Itanium killer -- codenamed Sledgehammer. JC comments that the information comes from sources which are usually reliable. Fame at last for The Register, Dr Tom, Kyle Bennett of rocking HardOCP and Dr Ro-Ro of CeBIT. Over at Detonate, there's a 10 frame strip about the problems besetting online journalists at SnoBIT last week. Dr Tom looks like Dr Tom but Mad Mike Magee wishes he looked as young as this geezer in the strip, even though the words put into his mouth have more than a ring of truth about them... At Anandtech there's an in-depth piece about the marchitecture and architecture of Willamette (pronounced Wlamette in the US). At Ars Technica, there's a link to an interesting fact sheet on Intel's views about Web Appliances, which will run some flavour or other of the Linux operating system. ® 1 March 2000 Both AMD Zone and JC are reporting that the K6-2+ has mysteriously arisen from its canning and will intro in two weeks. We had the same information from the same source as these two sites. But it's all a bit strange, because we're sure that nice Steve Lapinski on the AMD stand at CeBIT said something to the contrary... More AMD news. Anandtech rolled round the mighty Halles at CeBIT and took a look at 20 different mobos for the Athlon. A new (to us) site to look at. PC Extremist has some AMD pricing up. German site Tech Channel is reporting that Sony is doing a worldwide recall of batteries for digicams, camcorders and the like. Tom's Hardware Guide has some interesting info on how to revive your old slocket cards to take Intel's famous flip chip technology. Firing Squad, which we haven't visited for a while, sorry lads, has a piece about Undercover Athlon mobos. ® 29 February 2000 A lengthy piece by Van Smith at Tom's Hardware Pages has outlined Intel's roadmap and at the same time made comments about the direction it is going compared to AMD. Much of the information here is tabulated, and as with our own Intel roadmap piece, shows prices for microprocessors up until the middle of the year. Van seems to think that Intel's finally lost it, and certainly AMD prices, which are now expected to be released today, will certainly jolt Chipzilla's composure. Jon Hou, over at Fullon3D has an interview with the Via folk, who make some comments about Willamette there. And Chris Pittman, at Doc Hardware" has a piece about Creative's WebCam3, where he puts it through its paces. After, in their own words, managing to get their hands on a Rambus RIMM, Hardware One has posted here a review of AOpen's AX6C i820 Camino motherboard. We missed this yesterday, but JC's pages had some interesting info on future Intel processors. It's not on the front page any more, but dig a little. And, as he points out, all Intel roadmaps did show the 866MHz, 850MHz roadmap as happening at the end of February. So what has caused Intel to change its mind? AMD? ® 28 February 2000 At Aces Hardware, there's an interesting SnoBIT report from Johan. He got Intel to contradict itself by saying there were no 3GHz ALUs in the Willamette, thus effectively thickening the plot. He also visited AMD and Via, like ourselves and got some snaps, unlike ourselves. He was also shown some AMD stuff, like ourselves, and presumably got the fisticuffs key-ring, like ourselves. And Tom's Hardware also has a report on the appalling conditions at SnoBIT and also some pix of the Thunderbird baby. Meanwhile, the lads and lasses over at c't have some more useful information including word that AMD will, just like Intel, go socket and slot (hammer and tongs) with future K7s. You can read our own CeBIT coverage here. Now Tweak 3D has updated its extensive guide to tweaking those pesky mobos and those even more pesky BIOSes. At Hard OCP there's information about an intriguing bit of widgetry-pokery called the Golden Orb, which you clamp onto your old Socket 370 part. An interesting piece over at Anandtech about the Via implementation of Apollo chipsets in motherboards. The site looks at 12 different boards, and suggests that it is very important to know how each performs. (This, incidentally, is probably nothing to do with yield problems which we have reported earlier -- we are still hearing complaints from PC vendors about similar difficulties with the KX133).®