 Unreal Tournament 2003 |
Source: Epic |
|
Unreal Tournament 2003 is the sequel to 1999's
multiple 'Game of the Year' award winner. It uses the very latest Unreal Engine
technology - where graphics, sound and game play are taken beyond the bleeding
edge. Unreal Tournament 2003 employs the use of Vertex as well as Pixel Shaders
and it's recommended that you use a DirectX 8 videocard to get the most out of
the game.
There's
no question, the Athlon64 3200+/K8T Neo simply
owns the competition.
Now that the Athlon64 has arrived
Now that the Athlon64 3200+ and Athlon64 FX51 processors are available to the public, the next few months
will be very exciting! You should expect a plethora of
reviews; from CPU coolers to motherboards and processors, from every major hardware
publication.
While I'm sure this is one of
many upcoming socket 754 Athlon64 motherboards that we're going to be reviewing, I don't think
it is too early to say that VIA has done a very good job
on the K8T800 chipset.
The K8T800 chipset has basically enabled the Athlon64 3200+ to reclaim the performance crown from
the Intel 3.2GHz processor.
MSI has always been eager to jump on the bandwagon of new technology and it's
clear that their K8T Neo-FIS2R is a good motherboard. It's loaded with features such
as IEEE 1394, Serial ATA/Serial ATA RAID, an additional Ultra/133 IDE channel,
5.1 audio and a Gigabit LAN controller. If that's not good enough for you the
board still has five PCI slots which should keep you happy.
Layout and design of the motherboard is excellent and I have nothing
to complain about. It's obvious that MSI were thinking about the end user when
they placed all the ports at the edge of the board. The users manual is
extremely detailed, and can easily guide the most novice computer users. I guess
the only thing I would have liked to see was an active cooler for the K8T800, and
perhaps dual BIOS' for redundancy.
Performance of the motherboard was very good as the
benchmarks have shown. Overclocking was an interesting experience. With the K8T Neo-FIS2R
alone (no CPU) priced in the range of $215 CDN ($160 US) it's not really
that expensive, especially when you consider how many integrated peripherals are included.
MSI also offer couple package deals; the K8T
Neo-FIS2R and an Athlon64 3000+ for about $620 CDN ($460 US), or the K8T
Neo-FIS2R and an Athlon64 3200+ for about $916 CDN ($680 US). So long as
the brand new, 64-bit Athlon64 processor is in short supply, expect MSI, and
the other Tier 1 mainboard manufacturers to continue offering their new Athlon64
motherboards with bundled in processors. In early 2004 when AMD moves to 0.09micron manufacturing
process you can expect the supply of the Athlon64 to improve.
So,
what do I think of the 64-bit* Athlon64 3200+ running under a 32-bit WindowsXP
OS, in 32-it mode on the MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R? I like it!
*Footnote: the Athlon64 3200+ is 32-bit/64-bit
compatible. No 64-bit WindowsXP operating systems are publicly available at
the time of this review, therefore, the Athlon64 3200+ processor was operating
under a 32-bit OS, as a 32-bit processor.
Find out about this and many other reviews by
joining the Weekly PCstats.com Newsletter today!
Related
Articles
Here are a few other articles that you might enjoy
as well...
1. Massive nVidia
nForce2 Motherboard Roundup
RSS Newsletter
