Since my latest Daily Comment on Slockets and their uses, a few readers have asked exactly which Slockets I would recommend and why. Choosing the right Slocket adapter is an important factor for any system, especially when overclocking. The first thing I would recommend is to stay away from most generic brands, since they may not have all the features needed in a high-end overclocked system. The second thing would be to absolutely ensure that that Slocket you are buying is FC-PGA (Flip-Chip) compatible. This may sound like a no-brainer, but there are still plenty of PPGA (older Celeron) adapters floating around, and you don't want to get caught with one. Even if you plan to use one of the older Celeron 366-533 CPUs, the newer ones are also backwards compatible and a much better buy if you plan on upgrading later.

The next statement is a universal truth when it comes to motherboards and Slockets: You will always be better off when using Motherboard/Slocket combos from the same manufacturer. I've noticed that while mixing brands almost always work perfectly, there is just an added safety (and sometimes stability) factor when using like brands. Technical support on your motherboard will also be much better if you're using a Slocket designed and manufactured by the same company.

Now there is a very high probability that your motherboard vendor does not produce Slocket adapters, so what do you do then? I've worked and tested five different FC-PGA Slocket boards and here are my Top 3 selections in order of their features, quality and compatibility:

1) Abit Slocket III: There is absolutely no question that the Abit Slocket III is my top pick for a Slocket adapter. It has worked perfectly in all motherboards tested and comes with all the tweaks (voltage, FSB, dual-CPU) you've come to expect from Abit. It's most innovative feature is the full-color jumper legend on the back of the Slocket III itself. I've lost a few of those little pieces of paper that come with most Slockets, but unless you lose the Slocket III itself, you'll always have access to the settings.

2) MSI MS-6905 Master: The MS-6905 from Micro-Star is an excellent Slocket adapter and is the same model as I use in my business PC. The main reason? I also use a MSI motherboard and this Slocket offers me the best compatibility and overclocking I can get. There are jumper settings for voltage control, FSB speeds and CPU type. It's also the only Slocket I've tested with the open space (ie. no jumper, capacitors in the way) to allow some of the larger FC-PGA coolers to fit in there. There are also a few revisions of this board, with the newest being 2.1 (I use rev 2.0 with no troubles).

3) Iwill Slocket II: If your motherboard vendor does not produce a Slocket adapter, then the Iwill Slocket II would be a good bet. It is a fully-featured board, with options for voltage, FSB and CPU on-board, and best of all, it's ain't met a motherboard it didn't like. The only possible issue with the Slocket II are the four capacitors around the CPU socket, which do not interfere with standard heatsinks, but can give you problems with the larger ones.

Web News
Check out the news on the GeForce 2 GTS Ultra from Nvidia. Breaking one billion pixels per second, baby!

Need a closer look? Then check out the preview over at AnandTech, where the new GeForce 2 Ultra takes the competition (including the Radeon) out behind the woodshed for a sound beating.

Since it's the weekend, I figured I'd handle a gaming topic that's been on my mind recently. With all the focus in the sound card industry falling on 3D sound, it is easy to overlook the importance of good music in games. After all, as long as one can accurately place all the sounds in a gaming environment, it must be an enjoyable game right? Well, no. Far too often, gaming music is thrown in as an afterthought, when it's really a critical element.

Music in and of itself is a great tool for building emotion and drawing an audience into a game or a film. Take the epic Titanic for example. Had it not been for James Horner's excellent musical score, Titanic would not have been nearly as powerful as it was. Likewise, in the gaming industry, music can be equally powerful. Just ask any Mechwarrior fan. Some of my favorite memories of Mechwarrior 1 and 2 were of being stranded on a deserted, cold planet getting scared silly by the ominous music as I scanned the horizon for enemy mechs. In fact, I still listen to the Mechwarrior 2 Mercinaries soundtrack at times. Even low-quality midi sound, such as the music of Monkey Island 1 and 2, can help propel an otherwise good game from the ordinary to the extraordinary. 

With the latest DirectMusic and DirectSound advancements in DirectX 8, it looks as if the quality of gaming music will increase. As it gets easier and easier to implement dynamic and varied music, I feel that we'll see a wealth of good music in gaming titles. I'd even be willing to argue that this good music has the potential to improve the impressiveness of a game as much as 3D sound can.

Web News
Club Overclocker has done a nice piece on the GPack III Xtreme, a complete video card cooling solution, including ram heatsinks.

Anand has taken a closer look at Abit's KT7-RAID.

While testing out a new motherboard, I ran into a very interesting problem. The board was of the FC-PGA variety and I was attempting to overclock a Celeron processor to the 100 MHz FSB. I would start the Celeron off at 66 MHz, ensure the core voltage was set high enough, then reset the jumpers to 100 MHz and restart. Each and every time I did this, the PC would not boot up at all, even though this CPU easily booted at the same speed on other motherboards. The only difference was the fact that these previous boards were Slot 1 and I used a Slocket adapter with them. Hmmmm...

So I then did some additional testing and discovered that when changes are performed to certain portions of the board (jumpers, removing CPU, etc.) the board then tries to "re-sense" the processor, along with it's voltage. Since the Celeron in question has a voltage of 1.5V, it apparently reverted to this level, rather than the higher one previously selected in the system BIOS. Now I have had this happen with a lot of motherboards when upgrading CPUs, and you will notice that some settings revert right back to "Safe Mode".

In previous Celeron overclocking, I had always relied on a Slocket adapter to automatically increase the core voltage on boot, and any additional voltage sensing did not affect my tests. With FC-PGA (or even true Slot 1 processors) this can really be a problem when trying to go between 66-100, or 100-133 MHz, especially for those boards that feature hardware jumpers for these selections. Having the control of your CPU's initial settings (like voltage, FSB, etc.) through a Slocket adapter is a very powerful tool, and I didn't realize until now some of the negatives that can result in allowing the motherboard to have that control back. Just goes to show that not all new technology is a good thing.

Web News
Hardware-One has posted a shoot-out between the Intel 440X, i815 and VIA Apollo Pro 133A to determine a winner.

Guru3D has reviewed the ELSA Gladiac MX video card and 3D GameForce checks out the Xitel MD-Port AN1.

If you're interested in what CPUs are going to appearing in the near future, then check out these future CPU articles at Hexus.net and TweakMax.

As a hardware reviewer, I've run through literally thousands of benchmarks in my time. I've even memorized most Quake timedemos and my Windows 98 serial number, not that I'm proud of it. Since the average gamer usually hears reviewers just talk about how long and boring testing can be (it's really not that bad), most gamers shy away from it. After all, if you've already purchased your system, why bother? Believe it or not, benchmarking can be a fairly painless way to improve your gaming experience, and is something that I'd strongly recommend. 

Being a competitive gamer, I'm usually conservative when choosing my resolution and detail settings. Although a higher resolution might look a little prettier, I'm deathly scared of a slow frame rate at the wrong time. The problem with this attitude is that it doesn't account for CPU-limitations. Most modern graphics cards experience some sort of CPU-limitation at lower resolutions that makes bumping up the resolution a notch or two a free image quality boost. For example, I've seen Pentium-II 450 systems with a GeForce board get 40-45fps in 800x600 and in 1152x864. If I hadn't seen these benchmarks, I would have never ventured past 800x600, but with this knowledge, I can safely play at 1152x864. And to top it off, casual benchmarking rarely takes more than a few minutes. 

So how do you benchmark? Since the list of game benchmarks is fairly long, it's beyond the scope of this update to cover all benchmarks, but we will be posting an updated Test Lab shortly with benchmark instructions for all the titles that we test with. For now, here are some instructions for Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament:

Quake III Arena
1. Bring up the console by hitting tilde (~)
2. Type "timedemo 1" 
3. Type "demo demo001" (or demo002). Also, it is very useful to pick up some of Reverend's worst-situation timedemos, which give a better indication of real-world framerate.
4. Sit back and watch the demo. At the end, an average framerate should appear. Ideally in Quake 3, 40-60 fps should be aimed for, if at all possible.

Unreal Tournament
1. Place the eh1.dem file in UT's /system directory
2. Run UT, and bring up the console by hitting Escape (to clear the desktop) and then tilde (~).
3. Type "timedemo 1"
4. Hit escape to close the console
5. Hit "t" (or the corresponding key you have programmed for talk)
6. Erase "Say " and type "demoplay eh1?noframecap"
7. After the demo plays, pull up the console to check the framerate. In UT, I would shoot for nothing below 30fps average, and hopefully nothing below 20fps low score.  

Web News
APU's Hardware has put up an excellent article on how to convert a card cooler into a case filtering system.

Gamewire has thrown up some amusing/realistic Quakecon coverage.

GotApex has interviewed 3dfx's Bubba Wolford.

Anand has done a nice Socket-A motherboard roundup.

Today we've posted our review of ACT Labs Gun System. As the first major lightgun system to coem to the PC, the GS definitely has some potential, and ACT Labs deserves quite a lot of credit for developing a PC lightgun. Overall the GS was fairly accurate and worked well, although its game support is questionable. For the full report, check out the review.

Web News
CPU Review has an excellent piece up on AMD's new 64-bit architecture..

Following up on Vince's post yesterday, I wanted to reiterate how much DVD's high prices have hurt its implementation. Everyone has been talking about DVDs on the PC for years now, but we've yet to see anything more than DVD movies, and an occasional DVD encyclopedia. The simple explanation for this is the high prices of DVD-ROM drives. Until DVD drives are standard on all PCs, we won't see any significant shift to DVD titles. We saw the same issue with CDs several years ago. Not until CD-ROM drives were standard did manufacturers start to move to CD-only distributions. 

For DVD drives to reach every computer, their OEM price has to fall below $50 USD. The sad fact is that DVD drives were right at this level before the cellular phone crisis hit and DVD prices skyrocketed. Now we'd be lucky to find a low-end DVD drive (5-8x by today's standards) for $70 USD. Thus, until prices fall anoth 30%, we're not going to see a widespread use of DVDs outside of the movie industry.

While it is arguable that modern games don't really need the storage capacity DVD offers, this shouldn't be the case for much longer. I have trouble believing that every game that ships on an 80-minute CD (which a good number of games do now) couldn't use more storage space. Even if it was for more high quality music, a DVD would be well used. 

Web News
Systemlogic has posted a interesting little piece on how to increase your luck overclocking an AGP video card.

Ars Technica has reviewed Fong Kai's new impessive mid-tower: the 320ATX.

BX Boards has reviewed both Gigabyte's GA-7ZM and Abit's K7T Raid.

The latest rumor at The Register reports big AMD price cuts on August 14th that will bring gigahertz chips down to $500.

Now, as many of you may remember, we covered the high price of DVD-ROM units quite some time ago, and the situation hasn't seemed to change. DVD-ROM players are still extremely expensive, with no signs of decreasing in the near future. My first DVD unit, the Panasonic 5X, was purchased for the bargain basement price of $73 CAD (or app. $51 USD) and I later bought a Pioneer 6X (which is now DOA) for $100 CAD (or app. $70 USD). The drives then jumped to over $200 CAD almost overnight, with almost non-existent supplies of certain models. This initial price jump was reportedly due to shortages of certain electronic components, also found in cellular telephones. The high prices were also supposed to only last until May-June 2000, when some of the contracts came up for bid and component supplies would match demand.

So what do we have in the late Summer of 2000? DVD-ROM prices of name brand models are still near $200 CAD, and although speeds are higher (10X on average), prices are still very high. I own a cel phone and have been in the market for a new one, and I haven't noticed a doubling in the price of a new model. In fact, some companies are even more brazen in their marketing techniques, making the cost actually cheaper than it was. DVD-ROMs seem to be stuck in their high-price stratosphere; which is common for goods that experience a price hike (like say, gasoline). It's much easier to jack the price than it is to lower it to previous levels, once the reason for the price increase has gone. Maybe the DVD manufacturers are making more money at double the price than they would at under $100 CAD?

So what's so important about high prices for DVD-ROM units? Like high memory prices, this affects the base model PC, as well as defining what sort of products we all see in the coming years. When DVD-ROMs were lower priced, we saw them being included in many of the lowest end PCs, since for a few bucks more, why not upgrade to a DVD-ROM? With prices hovering somewhere in the outer stratosphere, I can peruse several pages of "New PC" ads without seeing any outfitted with a DVD-ROM. Like the "32 MB PCs" we see everytime memory prices spike, these DVD-less machines will simply further stunt the growth of home computer technology. If PCs ain't got it, then developers aren't going to produce for it.

Web News
T-Break has reviewed the Creative Nomad II MP3 player

VIA Hardware checks out the Inno3D GeForce2 GTS/64 card, and Chick's Hardware has another review of that same card.

Hardware-One has a review of the portable 2.2 GB Castlewood Orb drive.

3D Gameforce has a head-to-head review of the Creative Labs Sblive MP3+ and the Sblive X-Gamer.

I'm running a little short on time today, so I just have time for a quick EH and web news update. On the EH review front, the ACT Labs PC Gun System review should be online sometime this week. We should have a GeForce2 MX piece shortly after that, as well as a look at Altex Lansing's ADA800R speaker system.

Web News
There's a new issue of ZZZ Online today. Of note this week: A mind controlled TV remote and how to use your computer to distil alcohol.

GA-Hardware has posted an interview with Turtle Beach about their upcoming Santa Cruz sound card (expected mid-August).

TweakPC has thrown up a good review of Abit's Siluro GeForce2 GTS 64mb board.

iXBT Labs has reviewed VIA's long-lost Cyrix III 533. Despite Cyrix's claims of increased performance, it lookst like yet another slow offering...

Hardware Central has posted a review of Quantum's latest 7200rpm scorcher, the Fireball Plus LM.

After seeing all the attention the new Pentium III 1.13 GHz processor is getting at EH, I thought I'd check out the Intel website to see what's up. You see, the previous cB0 core (also used on the new Celerons) had a maximum core speed of 1 GHz, and I was interested to see if Intel had either a) developed a whole new core stepping, or b) just racked voltage up to make a 1 GHz hit 1.13 GHz.  I'm glad to say that it's the latter, with Intel rolling out a new cC0 core for their highest-end CPU. So, considering the difficulty in even buying this new CPU, how does this new affect you?

For starters, whenever Intel fully changes to a new core stepping, expect the lower-end CPUs that are still being produced to also move to the new stepping. Since the P3-1.13 GHz is being produced in very small quantities, this isn't going to happen overnight, but it is something to keep an eye on. After all, the new 1.13 GHz Pentium III is actually running at 8.5x133 MHz, or what some enterprising individuals might try to overclock a standard Pentium III 850 (8.5x100 MHz) to. If Intel starting releasing the Pentium III 800-850 using the new cC0 cores, I could well imagine a buying frenzy occurring. I'll keep an eye on Intel, and will let you now of any changes to their product line.

Web News

TweakMax has reviewed the Hercules 3D Prophet II GF2, Cole 3D takes a look at the Voodoo5 5500, and Overclockers Australia checks out the Creative 3DBlaster GeForce2 GTS.

AnandTech has provided a great look at the Voodoo5 5500 PCI, for all you guys who intend to go the non-AGP route, and Sharky Extreme has updated their Weekly CPU Prices.