Seems some PCs are going into endless reboot loops after installing Windows XP SP3. Both issues seem to affect AMD-based machines, unfortunately. One involves HP machines which, apparently, also run Intel's power management driver by default. The other issue centers around the BIOS, and may be limited to ASUS' A8N32-SLi Deluxe.

Hit the link for Jesper Johannsen's blog. He's a Microsoft MVP, & has posted details of both issues, along with workarounds.

If the guys at ExpReview are correct, then Intel's X58 chipset, with an ICH10 southbridge, will be the first chipset to support Nehalem. They'e got a roadmap posted, along with a photo of a board they believe to be X58-based.

"he biggest point of the board will be the odd lay out, dual channel, Triple channel DD3 supporting and Dual PCIe 2.0 X16 or Quad PCIe 2.0 X8."

The guys at the Tech Report have posted a ton of pretty scatter graphs, which, to me, anyway, say that the 9800GTX is one hell of a value. If you're into the whole dual-card setup, the 9600GT SLi is apparently the way to go.

"Thanks to our latest round of graphics card reviews, which culminated with the massive GeForce 9 series multi-GPU extravaganza last month, we've ended up with enough benchmark data to paint a fairly complete picture of today's mid- to high-end GPU market."

Video Cards

Foxconn 9600GT-512NOC @ Futurelooks

Diamond Viper HD 3650 1GB @ OverclockersOnline

RAM

Patriot Viper DDR3-1866 2GB Kit @ TweakTown

Audio

ASUS Xonar DX PCI Express 7.1 @ HotHardware

XtremeMac Tango X2 @ DigitalTrends

Cooling

Coolermaster Z600 @ ChileHardware

Coolermaster LED Silent Fan @ XSReviews

Etc.

Opera 9.27: Part II @ OSWeekly

Enermax PRO82+ 525W PSU @ HardwareSecrets

I couldn't agree more. nVidia certainly has flooded the market with parts lately. Not that it's ever a bad thing to have a SKU for each market segment, but I think nVidia's heading more towards two or three per segment. I disagree on the Inq's posit about model numbers, though; I'm thinking more about GT vs GS (each SKU having three different amounts of memory to choose from).

"Given that Nvidia so desperately wants to become a big boy chip firm like Intel, expect the revamp of the naming scheme to produce an utterly incomprehensible numerology that can only be understood by scholars of ancient mathematics. Soon."

It's been nearly three months since the release of the ETQW 1.5 Beta, and though the update hasn't been officially released, there's now a devblog post that details the changes in 1.5. I'd say the beta stage is nearing its end.

Meanwhile, the maps from the flash-based version of Valve's extremely popular Portal puzzle game have been ported to an unofficial map pack for the retail game. I've personally played through several user-created Portal maps, & a few of them are excellent additions.

You can win a pair of 8800GS SLi cards over at Motherboards.org just for filling out their contest form. Two XFX GeForce 8800 GS 384MB DDR3 XXX cards, to be precise.

Or, if you're more in the market for a shiny new case, you could win an NZXT Tempest over at OCIA. This is the case that really resembles Antec's 900 - plenty of blue fans and airflow. This contest is forums-based; you need to be a member, & post a pic of your case or work area, and the crappiest submission wins. Hah.