Inno3D iChill 7300GT 256MB GDDR3 Graphics Card Review

Roughly around a month ago we reported that Inno3D plans to introduce separate overclocked cards’ range in their product line. Every other successful graphic card manufacturer has one and thus Inno3D brought one as well. Instead of just increasing the clocks and renaming the overclocked models, Inno3D opted for a different product line approach and brought ichill in to equation. Basically the concept behind ichill is a product line equipped with best of the best of graphic card cooling industry has to offer. Currently different models equipped with Zalman’s V series and Arctic Cooling’s Silencer and Accelero series have been introduced but it wouldn’t be long when they bring 8 series card with better cooling performance as well. Aside all the bells and whistles, the idea behind this is to offer cards pre-equipped with third party cooling devices saving customer's costs and efforts while reducing significant RMAs from overheating and so on. Inno3D, however, propogates the idea of producing cream of graphics cards through several enhancement over the lowend model, we'll see how that is achieved through this product here in this review.

We have a 7300GT model from the ichill to start with Inno3D, although this is our first Inno3D product review, we hope to work with them on future endeavors as well. The 7300GT here is equipped with arctic cooling’s Silencer 6. Inno3D offers 7300GT, 7600GT, 7600GST, 7900GS and 7950GT under ichill brand, we just happened to acquire the lowend model. However it is a fact that no one has reviewed iChill's lowend and mainstream series so its a good chance for those who want to see how these cards par up against your everyday off the shelf graphic card.

Just a quick comment - SLI is also supported on this card..

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Liebermann Olympus 20" Widescreen Notebook with SLI Announced

Just when you thought a 19" notebook was big, the Liebermann Olympus 20" gets rolled out. The Olympus 20" seems almost mythical based on the spec sheet. It supports Intel's Pentium-D Dual-Core and Extreme Edition processors, along with quad DVI-out, an integrated 3 megapixel camera, dual Blue-Ray and HD-DVD optical drives, and dual graphics cards with up to 1GB RAM each.....
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The Liebermann Olympus 20" sounds pretty hot right? The only down side is the machine sounds too good to be true, and may in fact be. There's no release date known and the company representative we talked with could offer no guidance on pricing either. Rest assured it will probably approach, if not surpass $10,000. If nothing else it acts as a nice proof of concept.

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I'm on my easter vacation

Hi readers!
Just one quick note I wanted to add before I go on my vacation
First of all happy easter to all of you and I hope that you'll spend it with your family and friends with tons of drinks and food :-)
Secondly, since I'm going to a trip I won't be able to update my SLI blog page regulary. So there won't be new posts for about 2/3 days.
But I'll catch up with the news in SLI world when I return.

MSI NX8800 GTX OC Liquid - compared to MSI 8800 GTX SLI and others..

Hi people

I've just saw on the internet one great review of MSI's NX8800 GTX OC Liquid card. The cool thing is that you can easily compare results to MSI 8800 GTX SLI cards which where review about two months ago... and also comparision with single 8800 GTX/S models, and Ati's X1950 XTX CrossFire

MSI uses a different water-cooling kit than the Thermaltake based one we saw on ASUS' AquaTank. We're not sure who makes this for MSI but basically, instead of taking up PCI slots, this one fits on the back of your chassis next to the CPU, where you generally install back fans. The good thing about it is that, unlike ASUS, you dont lose any PCI/PCI-E slots. However, the bad thing is that you need a chassis with enough room behind the CPU to install the large radiator/fan combo.

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MALIBAL Releases 20-inch Notebook Computer with NVIDIA SLI Technology

Las Vegas, Nev., April 5th, 2007 - MALIBAL, a world leader in innovative laptop design and development, today announced the release of its new Veda Series™ line of notebooks. Available immediately, the Veda Series features an extensive collection of high-end options, including: 20.1" widescreen display, two hard drive bays and RAID 0/1, dual GPU capabilities with NVIDIA® SLI™ technology and AMD dual-core mobile technology.

NVIDIA® SLI™ technology is a multi-GPU solution that increases graphical processing power by linking multiple NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) together to produce a single, high-performance output.
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New NVIDIA Drivers for GeForce 8-series - v97.94 Windows XP

There are new drivers on NVIDIA's website for it's GeForce 8-series GPUs for Windows XP and Vista.
Now at version 97.94, these drivers are said to fix the following:

Single-GPU Issues Resolved
• The media player hangs when playing MPEG2 HD video clips using overlay in 1080i and then switching to full-screen mode.
• Added application profile for "Titan Quest Demo.exe" to support the current demo version.
• The system crashes after four or more suspend/resume cycles.

SLI Mode Issues Resolved
• Company of Heroes, SLI: Screen corruption occurs when "Enhance the Application Setting" mode is set to 4x or 8x in the NVIDIA Control Panel
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Cool prize - a chance to win 1/2 EVGA nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard!!!!

This contest is really simple, just fill in your info and if you're chosen at the end of this month you could win, what else then top gamer board for those core 2 duo processors. What a great gift, don't you think? So head over there, and you could stand a chance to win

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CeBIT 2007 Modding Roundup

Just wanted to add one last thing from CeBit.. be sure to check out other mods.. this on is really cool SLI setup..


Let's have a look over some of the best mods from this year's show!


This mod it's solely constructed by Ediejo, and features similar lighting effects to those used in the CoolerMaster Stacker mod, but it also includes a more improved watercooling loop and lots of carbon fibre loving.

This results in a truly fantastic combination of crisp white metal and black carbon fibre lines, with the flowing green tubing of a heavily integrated watercooling solution. All the components except the power supply are watercooled, with the fluid being distributed by a manifold placed right by the window for optimum effect.

The watercooled hard drive racks look like they are floating and the combination of green LED uplighting with white internal LEDs provides a great overall effect. Overall, it's subtle, practical and still a fantastic piece of modern art! The machine inside the case is also eye wateringly powerful, breaking 15,400 3DMarks with an E6600, two watercooled Point Of View GeForce 8800 GTXs, two 150GB Western Digital Raptors, an EVGA nForce 680i SLI, a 1100W Tagan PSU and 2GB of Corsair Dominator 9136C5D memory.

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Alienware Aurora m9700 17-inch Laptop

The last time we took a look at an Alienware laptop it was the Area-51 m5550 15.4-inch laptop. The m5550 is more of a mid-range budget system. The Aurora m9700 is on high-end being Alienware's 2nd most expensive laptop they sell. This notebook is built for gaming with dual 256MB Nvidia Geforce Go 7900 GS video cards in SLI mode! This is the first and only 17" laptop with a dual graphics card system. Before I reveal anymore about this laptop let's get the review started!

Specs:
Processor: AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML44 2.4GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache
Display: 17" Wide Screen WUXGA 1920 x 1200 with Clearview
Motherboard: Alienware NVIDIA Mobile SLi Chipset
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR SO-DIMM at 400MHz - 2 x 1024MB
Hard Drive: 200GB Serial ATA 1.5Gb/s 4,200 RPM w/ 8MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW / 24X CD-RW
Video/Graphics Card: Dual 256MB NVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS - SLI Enabled

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Intel to support AMD Crossfire / Part 3

Intel blocks Nvidia from running SLI on Conroe platforms

We got some interesting input on Intel not supporting SLI on its Conroe-supporting motherboards. Up until now, we, and our, sources have blamed it all on Nvidia but it turns out we might be wrong about that. There is a big chance that Intel doesn't want to allow Nvidia to run SLI, as it doesn't want to make a big thing about SLI on its own Conroe machines.
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Geeks get Quad SLI to work on a 965 Conroe board

Abass from Tbreak - or someome from his gang - managed to run Quad SLI with two 7950 cards on an Intel 965 board with a Conroe CPU.
Not that Nvidia wants people to test Quad SLI but it is more important to see that SLI contept might run on Intel's board after all. Nvidia is under a lot of pressure to enable its marchitecture on the Intel platform and I don't think it has much choice.
The TBreak chap took a Gigabyte 965P motherboard, stuck in a Conroe E6600 that works at 2.4GHz and managed to make two 7950 GX2 cards work together.
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Intel to support AMD Crossfire / Part 2

Hi people!
I wanted to share some other information to you about Intel chipset support of SLI or (unforetunately) better to say Crossfire. I thought I've remember a moment a year ago, where Intel decided to push Crossfire technology over SLI. Again I was right, but I thought that Nvidia was to blame for that! Well I was wrong, and after google-ing around all night I found what I was looking for! It seems that because of some reason known to Intel, and good relationship with ATI, Intel decided to include support for Crossfire.

Intel could be the real culprit behind the incompatibility between NVIDIA SLI and the new Conroe platform. Earlier NVIDIA has been blaimed for SLI not working with Intel's 975/965-based motherboards, but now it seems that it could be Intel that is stopping NVIDIA.

Here's the link to entire story
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Geforce 8800 GTS 320 SLI report

Already with our Geforce 8800 GTS 320 report we briefly began to cut the topic SLI, since it interested us whether 8800 GTS 320 SLI system would be worthwhile itself and whether one could make the lost memory performance compared with the large 8800 models again. Today the day of the truth is, today goes we to the thing on the reason. We have 2. Geforce 8800 GTS 320 from BFG to the order posed get, so that we can answer these questions.

Already before the acquisition of a diagram map we considered 8800 whether we 8800 GTX, 640 MT 8800 GTS or nevertheless the 320 MT a variant to purchase to be supposed itself. The reason for long considering are apart from the different initial costs also the future use of the map. 8800 GTX under-demanded and bored GHz dual core system would be obviously with the today's Games in a 3. On other side 2 pieces would cost 8800 GTS 320 the same. But a SLI pays the system in this variant at all? Questions over questions, which one can answer only by measurements.

This article is translated from Austrian webpage, so some systax errors in this text can be easily found.

This is the link to translated page (google)

And here's the original link

Wrapping up on CeBIT 2007 - Intel P35 to support AMD Crossfire

Hi people

I was just surfing around the net, and thought that I've give you pretty much all details on SLI and news around it... but I've unforetunately read one article that dissapointed me! No it's not Nvidia it's Intel (again) :-(

I mean... why does Intel produces motherboards with Crossfire?! About 0.1% people use it! It's a waste of time and valuable pci/pci-e slots! Ah... I'm going home now, and this news really bothers me!

We expect AMD to announce Crossfire support for Intel P35 on the chipset's launch, if this Foxconn presentation slide is anything to go by at least.The Foxconn board we've snapped showing the Crossfire support looks suitably high-end, with support for up to 8GiB of DDR2-800, a 1333MHz front-side bus, Core 2 Quad and Fox One overclocking support.

We're not sure what IC they're using for IDE support, since the ICH9R I/O processor doesn't suppport any IDE channels (ICH8 was the first to drop it). Foxconn say pricing should be competitive with other boards with the same rough feature

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DFI Launches LANPARTY UT NF680i LT SLI-T2R Series

This is a good news for all of you core2duo enthusiasts out there. DFI has just release nForce 680i LT SLI motherboard!

It looks like that DFI Corp. has released new motherboard featuring NVIDIA's nForce 680i LT SLI chipset and NVIDIA MCP55P southbridge. The LANPARTY UT NF680i LT SLI-T2R mainboard supports all Intel Core2 Duo/Quad/Extreme, Pentium D and Intel Pentium 4 processors with 1333/1066/800MHz FSB. There are also 3x PCI Express x16 slots: two x16 slots for SLI and one x8 for future physics cards. Click for more details..

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Velocity Micro Gamers' Edge DualX Custom Gaming Computer

I know that you're probably tired of so many links and reviews of complete based systems (Alienware, Dell, Velocity Micro etc.) but it's just that there are so many reviews around the web, that it's a shame not to mention it....





When you are looking for an ultimate gaming PC there are not a lot of choices. It's not like you can go down to your local Best Buy or Circuit City and get a great gaming PC. At those retail stores you will find basic consumer systems, no hardcore gaming systems. So where do you turn if you want a top of the line gaming PC where you can choose the components inside and have it professionally built for you? Velocity Micro is one of the few companies out there that will do this for you. Today we will be taking a look at their Gamers' Edge DualX Custom Gaming PC. We will see how it performs against our test system and compare results to the price of each system.

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