Wesley Fink
AnandTech
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Past articles by Wesley:
Shuttle XPC ST61G4: Tiny Computer with Big Integrated Video
Shuttle created what has become the SFF market with their first shipment of the SV24 in 2001. The current Shuttle SFF line has grown to some 16 models from those beginnings. In the last year, AnandTech has also received a huge number of review requests from many different manufacturers with a "new" SFF computer. Based on these developments, the SFF appears to be a huge and growing success story… → Read More
ECS' Newest EZ-Buddie: Ultimate Convergence
CES 2004 proved to be an excellent show this year, with final tallies putting attendance at over 120,000 people. For anyone who walked the show floor, it was apparent that even though there were techies and consumers wandering the campus, the majority of those 120,000 attendees were actual industry professionals. Although it is difficult to stand out in the computer industry, manufacturers make… → Read More
Athlon64 3400+: Part 2
The 3400+ was announced on January 6th - just in time for CES. On launch day, Anand published a detailed analysis of the 3400+. Since that article, readers have been asking if AnandTech could do a follow-up, benchmarking the Athlon64 series using our standard motherboard benchmarks on the top motherboards for the Athlon64, Athlon64FX, and Pentium 4. That is the purpose of this Part 2 follow-up,… → Read More
Intel 2004 CPU/Chipset Roadmap Update
Just recently we brought you a quick guide to AMD's 2004 CPU roadmap, citing that Intel's was already known and easier to understand in the first place thus necessitating the guide to AMD's roadmap. Since then, however, we have received countless requests for a similar guide to Intel's forthcoming CPUs so we went to task on preparing a similar article for Intel's roadmaps. After flipping through… → Read More
Dell Dimension XPS: Gaming with all the Trimmings
For several months, Dell had planned a computer that would bring all the latest features together in a new cutting-edge machine targeted at the Gamer. The result of that effort is the Dimension XPS, a 3.2GHz computer in an enhanced case with a 460-watt power supply. While you can order Dimension XPS in many configurations, our unit was equipped with every top-of-the-line option on the list —… → Read More
OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 2: The Universal Soldier
In the computer industry, Revision 2 or Revision B products are somewhat rare. Products that were not well received come back with improvements and a new name. In addition, the speed of innovation is amazing in the computer industry, with new chips, chipsets, sockets, memory types, and AGP standards constantly just around the corner. On the rare occasion where we do see a revision announced, it… → Read More
Consumer Electronics Show 2004 Day 1: Motherboards at CES
My first major tradeshow ever was Comdex, in 1998 to be exact, and back then the shows were quite exciting. Being a motherboard manufacturer didn't mean suffering financially back then, it meant that you had a ton of products that everyone wanted to see - myself included. I remember wading through crowds just to get a glimpse of motherboards that wouldn't be available for another 4 months, and… → Read More
ABIT KV8-MAX3: Athlon64 and µGuru
Abit has made quite a splash lately with their µGuru, or micro Guru, chip for system monitoring, on-the-fly overclocking and more. One of the boards launched with the µGuru features is Abit's top-of-the-line KV8-Max3. The KV8 is an Athlon64 board, which means, at least for now, that it will use either the VIA K8T800 chipset or the nVidia nForce3 150. “For now” only means that the SiS755 chipset… → Read More
OCZ PC3500 Platinum: A Return to the Fastest Timings
Corsair had started the ball rolling some time ago with their low-latency series. As our standard for benchmarking, we were always pleased to see Corsair 3200LL crank out 2-2-2-5 or 2-2-2-6 memory timings in our benchmarks. In recent months, with later revisions, things have been changing in the memory market. The newest memory revisions now could do only 2-2-3-6 at SPD, and it appeared that… → Read More
AMS eCube EG65D: Decent Performance, but Many Issues
AMS is primarily known as a manufacturer of enclosures. Recently, they have begun to diversify by adding Small Form Factor computers to their product line. The very attractive all-aluminum EG65D is their most recent SFF entry and features the Intel 865G chipset. While the eCube is about the same size as the Soltek and Biostar SFF systems, it adds a top handle to make transport easier. The… → Read More
Socket 940 Roundup: Motherboards for the Athlon64 FX
While the Athlon64 FX is clearly the fastest processor currently available, several developments have made finding motherboards to use with these FX chips something of a problem. First of all, the FX chip has had very limited availability until recently. Now, we are seeing greater quantities of the expensive FX chips, but even those few manufacturers producing Socket 940 boards have been caught… → Read More
Athlon64 3000+: 64-bit at Half the Price
Newcastle, the 512k cache version of Athlon64, is in the AMD Roadmap for the first half of 2004. Imagine the surprise when we stumbled across the 3000+ for sale at several sites this week. The specifications were wrong at most sites, and got changed several times without getting them completely right, but there was no mistake that the Athlon64 3000+ is for sale at just over $200 for the OEM… → Read More
SiS755 Reference Board: Athlon64 from SiS
The launch of Athlon 64 has brought us 2 chipsets thus far: the nVidia nForce3 150 and VIA K8T800. As we have discussed in reviews of boards based on these chipsets, neither one really meets the specifications that we would like to see in Athlon 64 chipsets. While VIA performs at the specified 800 Hyper Transport speed, it is hampered by lack of a real means to fix AGP/PCI lock. This severely… → Read More
Elite PC Titan FX: Setting New Standards in Gaming
Around the time of the Athlon64 and Athlon64 FX launch on September 23rd, we were talking with Elite PC about evaluating a full-blown gaming system that they were planning to build around the Athlon64 FX. There were several delays due to Elite PC's desire to use a Dual Socket 940 board and the new ATI Radeon XT. There were some difficulties with their early Dual boards and they wanted everything… → Read More
Asus P4S800D-E Deluxe & Gigabyte 8S655TX Ultra: SiS 655TX Challenges Intel's Best
In the months before Intel introduced the 800FSB Pentium 4 processors, the hottest boards on the market were not those based on Intel 845. They were motherboards based on the SiS 655 chipset. You may recall that one of these, the famous Gigabyte SINXP, was the first board at AnandTech to reach 800FSB before the 800FSB 'C' Pentium 4's were introduced. While it seems like ages since the SINXP was… → Read More
IBM Think Center S50: The Ideal Corporate Small Form Factor
IBM, Compaq/HP, and Dell are generally regarded as the “big three” in Corporate Computing. While there are other players, and delivery may be by a third party like EDS or Decision One, the battle for the Corporate desktop and mobile computing needs is most often played by the “Big 3”. It is for this market that the IBM Think Center is designed, and IBM has generally done a brilliant job in… → Read More
Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Built on Athlon64 FX51 Strengths
Things were quite strange in the month before the Athlon64 launch. That was about the time reviewers received first details of FX51 — the Enthusiast version of Athlon64. For those who had been following AMD's slow progress to A64 launch, it certainly looked like AMD was worried and wanted to make absolutely sure that A64 would outperform anything Intel could throw at the launch. Perhaps the EE… → Read More
OCZ 4200EL: Tops in Memory Performance
OCZ had been strangely absent from the last round of our memory reviews. They did not have a product that was really quite the same as the excellent “Universal” Corsair 4000 PRO or Mushkin 4000 High Performance. That did not, however, mean they were not working on products in the same category. We heard OCZ would release a DDR533 “Universal” memory, and today, OCZ announces that new product —… → Read More
Soltek Qbic EQ3401M: More Expansion & A New Standard in Quietness
While Shuttle pioneered the Small Form Factor computer, some of Shuttle’s competitors have been making real efforts to stand out from the SFF crowd. Soltek is one of those companies, and we were pleased to take a look at their latest offering — the Qbic EQ3401M. Soltek seems to have a thing with mirrored fronts, so they have extended this design from their earlier Qbic series. However, the big… → Read More
Biostar iDEQ 200T: Great Performance & Brilliant Design
Shuttle pioneered the Small Form Factor computer, and has remained the standard against which all others are measured. Biostar, however, has recently been a real challenger to Shuttle with brilliant SFF engineering and well-conceived SFF designs. The Biostar iDEQ 200T continues the recent evolution of the Biostar SFF. Early SFF designs were hampered by old technology and many compromises that… → Read More