ABIT AV8Pro MoBo, I-Rock X-Slim Keyboards and More

Good morning friends, I am glad to see you are back :)  Things around the HH lab are shaping up to be a busy day.  With most of the team grinding away on their respective reviews I am sure the Mr. Coffee is going to get a through workout today.  Speaking of which, go grab a cup of joe and settle in.  Here is your AM shot...

 ABIT AV8Pro Motherboard Review @ HardOCP.com

"ABIT did a masterful job in designing and implementing the AV8, making a very solid foundational board with which to launch their socket 939 based offerings. The board's stability and performance was top notch across all the benchmarks, and it seemed to give a decent level of overclocking as well."

 I-Rocks X-Slim 6110 and 6120 Keyboards @ BigBruin.Com

"Many people simply use the keyboard that came with their system, the spare one they have laying around, or they go to the nearest superstore and buy the cheapest one they can find... Having fallen prey to the above mentioned keyboard neglect in the past myself, reviewing both the I-Rocks X-Slim 6110 and the 6120 keyboards has opened my eyes to the quality and variety of keyboards that are on the market."

 Intel Socket 775 LGA Take 2 @ LostCircuits

"In our last article we looked at the new Intel platforms with respect to their overall configuration as well as with regard to their memory performance. Briefly, some of the results came unexpectedly but most of what we did was concerned with theoretical memory benchmarks. Overall, the streaming performance was comparable with the older DDR(1) platform, whereas the latencies were higher, as expected. The write performance of the new platform was unexpectedly high, however, keep in mind that chipset buffering as well as the streaming algorithms used by AIDA32 may not paint an overall relevant picture."

 Gigabyte X800XT PE @ HardAvenue

"Gigabyte are a pretty unique company when it comes to videocards. In today's market, it isn't common to see one company produce videocards based on both Nvidia and ATi chipsets, but Gigabyte are one of the few that actively do it. Previous companies like Hercules tried to do this as well, however they shortly left Nvidia's add-in partner program and focused solely on ATi. So why is it companies are reluctant to use both Nvidia and ATi chips in their products? As shown in the Hercules case, both each chip maker have created a "us or them" mentality, they both want companies who are committed to their chips, and who can blame them, the videocard market is as close as ever, it's comparable to sport teams signing high priced athletes, Nvidia and ATi are signing companies to deliver their solutions to the masses, you can't play for both teams, right?"

 Crucial Ballistix 1GB (2x512MB) PC4000 DDR @ Extreme Overclocking

"Crucial Technology has always been known for their quality memory, great prices, and fast shipping. Recently Crucial has added a new "high performance" memory product line, called Ballistix. The Ballistix line of memory encompasses both DDR & DDR2 products, and emphasizes performance while still maintaining Crucial's high standards of quality."

 Fusion III QAM HDTV Tuner Card Review @ AMDPower.com

"It has been nearly three years since I reviewed one of the first HDTV Tuner cards to hit the market. At that time, the Access DTV card retailed for $400.00 and the only HDTV station available in my area was the local CBS. While the adoption of High Definition has improved greatly, I have to admit that it has been slower than I expected. Equally as surprising is the limited availability of HDTV tuner cards. Until recently, there were few players in this market. I am happy to say that this is starting to change. Manufacturers such as Hauppauge, ATI, and Dvico have developed affordable HDTV cards. Today, we are looking at one of these cards, the Dvico Fusion III Gold QAM. What makes this card unique are some very exciting features that others do not offer. Most notably is the reception of QAM modulated streams. What is QAM you ask? Simply put, DIGITAL CABLE."

 Wireless Security - How To Lock Down Your WLAN @ The Tech Zone

"How tightly you want to lock down your wireless network depends on your level of paranoia. To help you out we have prepared a step by step how to on locking down your network from unwanted attacks. To serve you better we rated the important of each security protocols on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most important. Doing all the steps listed here won't make your wireless network hacker proof but it will greatly reduce the risk of a security breach."

 Crucial Ballistix review @ ClubOC

"What us worry? That seemed to be Crucial's attitude not too long ago. For ClubOC to be located in the same vicinity as Crucial, it was somewhat disheartening to see them not partake in the high speed DDR wars of the last few years, and concentrating mostly on OEM and JEDEC minimum spec modules without a "CL 2" rating. It seemed to us like no fun, but that just is not the case anymore. The Ballistix memory lineup is very impressive, and given Crucial's excellent customer service, not to mention how easy it is to grab some of these fabulous sticks of memory, I cannot really see a downfall. At least it sounds good on paper, but is Crucial really taking a stand this time? Or are they merely trying to again give us just the bare minimum of overclocking overhead so we can have default speeds at high latencies?"

Time for me to get some work done friends, I will talk to you later :) - Cheers