Book Case Modding, PCMCIA Audigy 2, Latest DFI LANParty and More!

Good afternoon folks.  We have to apologize for the delay in news this morning.  We had some gremlins acting up on the server earlier that gave us some unscheduled downtime.  But now we're back and we've got some good reading to get you through your day.

LeadTek WinFast A400 Ultra/GT TDH 6800 Review @ Beyond3D:

"At a glance, the only noticeable difference between the two boards is the additional Molex connector visible on the 6800 Ultra-based card - aside from that, both boards use the same, near-silent two slot cooling solution. Despite its 'monster cooling' look, the fan noise from these boards is indeed reasonably quiet, and certainly not noticeably loud over the rest of the components in an average system, even in an open case."

How To Turn A Computer Into A Book Case @ The Tech Zone:

"Strip the old work horse down to the bones... and sell what you can on eBay (don't tell work though, they though this heap o junk was for the scrap heap!)"

Designtechnica Looks at the PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook:

"Owners of average notebooks (i.e. most of us) are generally happy with the Internet and office related functions our machines provide us. What about multimedia and gaming though? It tends to be the case that the audio we hope for is either at the mercy of highly inferior built-in speakers, or confined to limited stereo options through the headphone/portable speakers jack. To get around this, Creative thinks they've found a solution to get us the same high-end surround sound and dramatic audio quality we have on our souped-up desktops at home."

DFI LanParty UT 915P-T12 Motherboard review @ HardwareZoom:

"Since the layout of the IO panel is rather unique, you will need to replace the backplate on your casing with the one that comes with the package. It is pretty amazing that DFI engineers managed to squeeze 6 USB 2.0 ports, two Gigabit LAN ports, two PS/2 ports, eight audio jacks and an IEEE1394 firewire port in this little space."

3DMark05 - A closer look @ HEXUS.net

"Given that 3DMark05 is a benchmark where, ideally, repeatable, equivalent workloads should be performed providing cards are of equal capability, it's a shame to see DST acceleration make it into 3DMark05 as a default choice until such time as it's the case that the feature ships with a majority of hardware. PCF even more so, for visual output reasons too. Their inclusion in the default benchmark of the free download version of 05 means that non-equivalent work is being done when you're comparing cards where one or more of them don't have accelerated DST capability."

That's all for now, but we'll be back soon!