ATi Drivers & Linux, OCZ DDR Memory Voltage Booster and More

Good evening friends, welcome back to HH :)  With some new products rolling into the Canadian portion of the labs, this News Jockey will surely be a busy for the next little while. However, just because I live a busy life doesn't mean that I don't like to kick back with a cold beverage and a good read.  Oh my, would you look at that, there just so happens to be a bottle of "cold beverage" right here... Oh, and look over there, some news.  I guess this is a sign that it is time for the HH nightcap... ;)

 ATi Drivers & Linux @ HardOCP.com

"ATI's Proprietary drivers are not Red Hat specific, they are currently packaged in RPMs for convenience for dominant market players. Distribution vendors including SuSE and Gentoo regularly simply repackage the drivers for the convenience of their distribution users. There are a large number of users covering SuSE, Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian and Mandrake. Careful examination of the documentation and download site will show only glibc and XFree requirements."

 OCZ DDR Memory Voltage Booster Review @ ClubOC

"Every once in a while a product comes along that has such a simple concept that you have to wonder why it wasn't thought of before.  Most great products make you feel this way.  It's so simple, yet so outside the normal realm of thinking.  Ideas like this one are the type of ideas that set a company above the rest.  OCZ has been known to the enthusiast crowd for a while, but mainly due to their outstanding memory and power supplies.  This product is going to keep them ahead of the competition for quite a while.  I have destroyed a motherboard before using a memory volt mod.  It was pretty obvious that I had soldered onto the motherboard and there was no chance of a RMA.  It's nice to know that I don't have to worry about that anymore.  The Booster fits into a standard 184-pin memory DIMM and leaves no evidence of tampering on your motherboard."

 HIS Excalibur AIW 9600 @ Bjorn3D

"A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the HIS Excalibur AIW 9600XT TURBO, a All In Wonder card based on the Radeon 9600XT with both FM and TV and good performance. But what if you don't need the speed and want an AIW-card that not only is cheaper but also quieter and which would fit perfectly into a SFF system? HIS has the answer for you with their HIS Excalibur AIW 9600, the card I am reviewing today."

 Aerocool VM-101 VGA Heatpipe Cooler Review @ 3DX

"Today 3DXtreme has the pleasure of reviewing a silent cooling system for VGA cards, the VM-101. The quest for a good, silent cooling solution has come a long way and with the need to cool just about every major component in a computer system the need for silent cooling becomes even more important. But can this large heat pipe really perform as well as a fan driven cooler? Let's find out..."

 PowerColor Radeon 9250 128MB Graphics Card @ SystemCooling

"In the recent months we've seen dozens of reviews showing the top of the line ATI and nVidia cards that can push your gaming experience to levels that were only dreamed of half a year ago. But these dream FPS pushers come with a heavy price tag, elevated noise levels and even PCI slot hogging sizes. Most of us have absolutely no problems with using and spending our hard earned money on these types of graphic cards. But what if you don't need the speed limit shattering FPS, don't have money tree in the back yard, can't deal with the extra noise and are limited by space. All you want is a quality, fanless, stable graphics card that will deliver superb image quality at a very affordable price. Well PowerColor might just have the perfect piece of hardware for you; enter the PowerColor 9250 graphics card powered by the ATI Radeon 9250."

 Crucial Ballistix PC4000 Memory Review @ GruntvillE.com

"With the Ram out of the static bags, you can see the cool Ballistix print that Crucial added to the heat spreaders. The black PCB looks cool from this view and is a nice added touch. Although most of these features are hidden when the RAM is tucked in the slots, at least you know Crucial went to all extremes to make this RAM appealing to the performance user."

 AMD and Strained Silicon Article @ PenStar Systems

"Last week several sources had stories out that AMD had transitioned to strained silicon manufacturing for its 90 nm and 130 nm lines of Athlon 64's.  While AMD has not officially confirmed this, the stories going around are most likely true.  IBM was one of the first to successfully integrate a strained silicon process into their design (PowerPC), and they were one of the pioneers in getting the technology to work.  Since then Intel has utilized strained silicon for their latest Pentium 4 processors.  It is only natural that AMD be several months behind the fabrication giant.  But what exactly does strained silicon bring to the table, and why hasn't it been a panacea for companies like Intel?"

That's all I have friends, my inbox is empty.  I will catch you back here in the AM :) - Cheers