Summer always ruins my overclock.

No, that's not the title of a techie-cum-songwriter's Bohemian campfire song: it's a simple fact that when winter arrives we rub our hands together in glee (and not just to keep them warm) at the prospect of being able to squeeze a few more MHz out of our hardware. Then, when the seasons change, we gloomily realise that our record-breaking overclocked rig was not as stable as we had previously imagined.

My point here is both with stability and benchmarking in general. I picked up the launch issue of your mag back in April, and although I'm thrilled to finally have a local enthusiast publication that actually tests hardware for enthusiasts (by pushing components to their absolute limit as well as by reviewing high-end kit), a lengthy read through the reviews and the article on overclocking led me to question what stability really is, and what it means (or should mean) to the overclocking community.

How do you guys test to ensure stability? In fact, how should any of us test to make sure our hardware is rock-solid? For some it seems that a quick run of 3DMark will confirm an overclock, while others vehemently maintain that the mere mention of anything less than 8 hours of stress testing is blasphemy.

My other concern is the aforementioned 3DMark scores: after an extensive search I couldn't find a single site or forum that mentioned what the universally accepted settings for a valid benchmarking run should be. Now, most people would assume that this should be the default settings, but opinions seem to differ from place to place. How are we to trust Joe Soap's results when he was surreptitiously running his benchies at a resolution intended for a cellphone?

Granted, an AMD vs. Intel processor shootout may yield synthetic benchmarks due to different RAM speeds, motherboards, etc.; heck, a benchmarking result (or a verdict of complete stability) on two seemingly identical hardware configurations could be comparable right up to the point when we realise that we used two different thermal pastes, or forgot some other mundane difference. However, although cross-platform benchmarking is always going to differ and be contested between the various camps (since there are always going to be fundamental differences in architecture between manufacturers, and so forth), I still think it's no excuse for varying benchmark and stability-testing practises.

I must stress (cue drum roll) that I'm not questioning the quality or the authenticity of your reviews here; rather, I'm wondering why there is no simple standard we can all adhere to. I know you run a custom benchmarking suite to determine your scores, but does a completed run signify a stable rig?

If your mag one day achieves world domination then there will be no issues regarding the final say as to who's stable and who's still a tad wobbly; until then though, I'm left waiting with fingers crossed for summer to return to test where my rig stands.

Congrats on a great publication and keep up the great work!

NEW YORK -- July 24, 2006 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) and ATI (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today announced plans to join forces in a transaction valued at approximately $5.4 billion. The combination will create a processing powerhouse by bringing AMD’s technology leadership in microprocessors together with ATI’s strengths in graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics. The result: A new and more formidable company, determined to drive growth, innovation and choice for its customers, particularly in the commercial and mobile computing segments and in the rapidly-growing consumer electronics market. Combining technologies, people, and complementary strengths, AMD plans to deliver in 2007 customer-centric platforms for the benefit of customers who want to collaborate in the development of differentiated solutions.

AMD’s acquisition of ATI will position the new company to deliver innovations that fulfill the increasing demand for more integrated solutions in key market segments while also continuing to develop “best-of-breed” discrete products that empower customers to choose the combination of technologies that best serves their needs. In 2008 and beyond, AMD aims to move beyond current technological configurations to transform processing technologies, with silicon-specific platforms that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to address the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance. Thus, the combined company intends to empower its customers to create their own unique products and solutions within an open-innovation ecosystem free from artificial barriers to customer success.

With the introduction of power hungry video setups like Crossfire and SLI, having a PSU that does what it says on the tin is more important than ever. A number of magazines and websites have conducted scientific tests of power supplies in recent months, measuring their peak loads and cut-off points, as well as their efficiency. Whilst this is quite useful data, I don’t believe it is an accurate representation of how a real PC works.

Instead, we have borrowed one of the most demanding PC configurations known to man to test our PSUs in a real-world environment – the Chillblast Fusion X4 workstation. Into this beast we have quad-opteron 275 cores, a Tyan K8WE motherboard, and 16GB of memory. After this the spec gets really interesting, as we also have dual Quadro FX 4500 (the workstation variant of the 7800 GTX 512MB) video cards and a RAID 5 array of ten (yes, TEN) 10,000 rpm drives. According to my handy PSU calculator, at peak load this machine actually requires somewhere in the region of 550W, so any of today’s competitors not delivering their advertised output are going to be in trouble.

Abit issued a press release this morning announcing a recall of motherboards in the AN932X line, including the Fatality series that uses the same model number. You should know however this problem does not affect all boards sold but only those using the serial numbers specified below:

Fatal1ty AN9 32X:
FAN93UDC000001 ~ FAN93UDC002713
FAN93UDD000001 ~ FAN93UDD001648

AN9 32X:
AN932UDC000001 ~ AN932UDC001407
AN932UDD000001 ~ AN932UDD001000

After a series of heavy testing programs, our Quality Control test department has found that a small number of units from the early manufacturing of the AN9 32X product line has a hardware issue caused by heatsink component displacement due to accidental rough handling during shipments. This will cause high temperatures and possible overheating. Therefore, Universal abit has chosen to recall those AN9 32X and Fatal1ty motherboards that have been affected by this accident. We wish to stress our Quality control is of the highest standard, and unfortunately accidents happen, and the moment we found out about the possibly damaged components being part of the line we have issued this callback. Please make sure that if your motherboard is within this consignment that you return it to be evaluated.

During Computex Taipei 2006, AMD had held a meeting with 1st tier mainboard manufacturers to announce their new strategy against the upcoming Intel price drop on Netburst CPUs, and Conroe. AMD decided to drop their CPU price on 24th July, the day after Intel's discount on Netburst.

Intel would announce their new architecture dual core processor "Conroe" on 23rd July. On the same day, the old Netburst based Pentium D prices will drop 40% to 60%. The performance of Conroe known to be better and the price drop has made the manufacturers a deeply concerned about adjusting the ratio of Intel to AMD product solutions.

Redmond - Microsoft founder Bill Gates said on Thursday that over the next two years he will ease out of a day-to-day role at the company he built into the world's biggest software maker.

His decision to step down immediately as chief software architect and to relinquish all managerial roles in July 2008 comes at a time when Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs an estimated 90% of the world's personal computers, is struggling to find new sources of growth.

Gates, 50, passed the technical mantle to Ray Ozzie, who joined Microsoft last year and is at the heart of Microsoft's push to maintain its dominance by transforming software into services that generate an ongoing stream of revenue instead of just a one-time sale.

Athlon 64 FX-62 is right now the most high-end CPU from AMD, incorporating dual-core technology, socket AM2 (i.e. DDR2 memory support), 2.8 GHz internal clock and 1 MB L2 memory cache for each core. We had the chance of reviewing this beast and compare it to other dual-core CPUs from AMD: Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (socket AM2, 2.6 GHz, 512 MB L2 memory cache), Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (socket 939, 2.4 GHz, 512 MB L2 memory cache) and Athlon FX-60 (socket 939, 2.6 GHz, 1 MB L2 memory cache). Let’s see how this new CPU performs.

With Toshiba's new HD-DVD player feeling like a late beta release with a scant list of available titles including such hits as Swordfish and Training Day, maybe you're not quite ready to jump on the bandwagon for your next-generation DVD format of choice just yet. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray burners are even more distant on the horizon, and that's not including the time it'll take for drive and media prices to come down from the stratosphere.

For now, your best bet for burning optical media to share and store movies, music, photos, and data is still our old friend, the garden-variety digital versatile disc. The new crop of burners are capable of writing dual-layer DVD+R discs at 8x for well under $100 and 10x for a bit more. With abundant choices in blank media (DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW, etc.), you'll have plenty of options for your specific

A True Review posted a review on SLi/Crossfire Ready PSUs

Back in the old days, for most people the power supply was an after thought when building a computer. Though having a good PSU has always been important, you really never had to worry about compatibility when it comes to power supplies. Power rating aside; as long as it was ATX and had plenty of Molex connections, you were good to go. Fast forward to today where RAID SATA drive setups and dual graphic cards are the staple of a premium computer system, choosing a PSU that supplies enough juice and is equipped with the latest standards is undeniably important to insure the compatibility and potential growth of your system. Of course, when I say the latest standards I am referring to the ATX 2.0 compliancy as well as being SLi/Crossfire ready.