MaximumPC 2004 11

Reviews

NOVEMBER 2004 MA XIMUMPC 

Best of the Best As of November, 2004

November proved to be a ho-hum month with one exception—Logitech’s Z-680 speakers finally got

bumped from the top spot. Fortunately for Logitech, the system is being bumped by its own new

Z-5500 Digital. The redesigned control pod, wall-mountable sats, huge sub, and higher-quality DACs

for digital signals make it better than its sibling.

“Roger that, Houston, I’m turning the videocar... I mean

assembly TK421 left 90 degrees.”

The Most Unusual Places

Thanks to the recent release of Maximum PC books, everyone

is leaping on the PC building bandwagon. But don’t let your

passion for your custom rig get in the way of work!

Our current gaming favorites : Rome: Total War, Doom 3, Painkiller, Planetside, City of

Heroes, Desert Combat

Steve Jobs: “In honor of the 21st anniversary of

Macintosh, I’ve decided to finally build a real PC!”

“What do you mean you didn’t know setting up

RAID was that easy? We’re performing open

heart surgery here, Chad!”

“What do you mean you didn’t know setting up

High-end videocard:

nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra

Budget videocard:

ATI Radeon 9800

Do-everything videocard:

All-in-Wonder Radeon

9800 Pro

Soundcard:

Sound Blaster Audigy 2

ZS Platinum

Serial ATA hard drive:

Western Digital 740GD

Raptor

Parallel ATA hard drive:

Maxtor DiamondMax 10

DVD burner:

Sony DRU-700A

LCD monitor:

Dell 2001FP

High-end CRT monitor:

NEC FE2111 SB

Socket 478 Pentium 4

motherboard: Abit IC7-MAX3

Socket 939 Athlon 64

motherboard: Asus A8V

Deluxe

Athlon XP motherboard:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe

Rev. 2.0

Portable MP3 player:

Apple iPod 40GB

Photo printer:

Canon i9900

Pocket PC PDA:

Dell Axim X30

Palm OS PDA:

Palm Tungsten C

7.1 speakers:

Creative Labs 7.1

Gigaworks S750

5.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-5500 Digital

4.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-560

2.1 speakers:

Klipsch GMX A-21

Analog headset:

Sennheiser PC-150

USB headset:

Plantronic DSP-500

&

Marware SportSuit Convertible Case

Four drops from waist-high. Twice onto concrete. Once onto a gym

carpet. Once on stairs. That’s how many times one graceless, twitchy

boob of a Maximum PC editor has dropped his iPod. And yet it still

thrives, to which we credit the snug neoprene case from

Marware pictured at right. You might find slicker-looking

cases, but they won’t look so great holding a dead iPod.

We love the rubberized, sweat-proof grips on the

side, the pitbull-like grip of the belt clip, and the

rigid, detachable faceplate for rainy days. Now

all we need is a tiny car seat and a little sign that

says “iPod on Board.”

$40, http://www.marware.com

Whither Thee BIOS?

The BIOS will be replaced within

two years if Intel’s EFI takes hold

Intel has formally laid out its plans to replace

the BIOS in PCs by 2006. The giant chipmaker’s

alternative, called the extensible firmware

interface (EFI), will be an open source program

based on the C programming language that

will introduce a set of API’s between platforms

and operating systems.

The basic input output system (BIOS) that’s

responsible for booting a PC has remained

essentially unchanged since the original 8088

Intel CPU was introduced. Today’s PC BIOS can’t boot over complex networking topologies,

executes in real mode, is not protected, and is limited to 1MB in size. BIOS code is also

written in assembly, which slows down the process and makes it difficult to deal with com-

plex algorithms for RAM and initializing busses.

EFI is expected to appear in 2005 with a full transition planned for 2006.