[H]ardNews 1st Edition

VIA PT800 Chipset:

Hexus has the VIA PT800 chipset in house for a little review action. For those of you who don’t know, the PT800 boasts an 800MHz FSB, Hyper-Threading Technology and VIA’s advanced FastStream64 DDR400 Memory Controller. You can see our review here of the PT800 for comparison.

VIA is back on track with a single-channel design that impresses on both the performance and feature counts. We just hope that it's not a case of too little, too late. Overall judgement is reserved until we have a number of retail boards in for testing. The bottom line is that VIA is a player in the P4 market.

MSI 865PE Neo2 FIS2R:

While we are on the subject of Intel boards, UKGamer has the MSI 865PE Neo2 FIS2R Springdale based board on the review block. The fellas seem to really like the board and all the extras that came with it. Here is a clip:

The MSI 865PE Neo2-FIS2R is a motherboard for those wanting a little more than just raw performance. That said, this unit has proved to have great performance but the extras that are present provides a great incentive for consumers, especially in the mainstream market segment.

Killer Gaming Rig:

Every so often I put together a complete top of the line computer and then give it away to one of you guys. I call this little project the “Killer Gaming Rig”, this is the ninth time we have done it over the last few years. Head on over to my alter-ego site, Hypothermia, and throw your name in the hat. Check out the specs of the system so far:

The Killer Gaming Rig #9 is now officially OPEN!!! You gotta get in it to win it...simply drop your name in the hat once a day and try to win this awesome machine. We are still getting everything together, but we are off to a great start with a BFG Tech Asylum GeForceFX 5900Ultra 256MB, and a 3GHz Pentium4 800MHz FSB part, cooling will be handled by a DangerDen Maze4 Watercooling kit.