MaximumPC 2004 06

Reviews

JUNE 2004 MAXIMUMPC 75

Best of the Best As of June, 2004

If you’re going to plunk down $400-plus for the fastest videocard in town, we recommend that you wait
another month. Why? It’s clear that upcoming videocards based on nVidia’s GeForce 6800 Ultra and ATI’s
Radeon X800 XT chip spank today’s cards, so it makes no sense to splurge now. Just wait one more
month. ATI still holds a spot with its AIW card and the Radeon 9800—now the top budget card. Because
Hitachi’s 400GB 7K400 comes in both SATA and parallel versions, it has supplanted the WD2500 JB. And
on the CRT front, the Budget category has been cut due to lack of interest, and we’re told Sony’s F520
display has been replaced by a newer model, the GDMC-520K. You can still buy the F520 so it stays in the
High-end slot, but expect an upcoming review to settle who makes the best CRT.

In December 2003, loyal reader Bob Somers sent

us a pic of himself planting the

Maximum PC^

flag atop Mt. Whitney. Thanks for the plug, Bob!

Maximum PC Reader

Photos!

Our current gaming favorites : Our current gaming favorites: Splinter Cell: Pandora

Tomorrow, Battlefield Vietnam, Unreal Tournament 2004, Planetside

High-end videocard:

Hold

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/

IBM 7K250

Parallel ATA hard drive:

Hitachi 7K400

CD-RW drive:

Plextor PlexWriter

Premium

DVD burner:

Plextor PX-708A

LCD monitor:

Dell 2001FP

High-end CRT monitor:

Sony F520

Budget CRT monitor:

Cornerstone P1750

P4 motherboard:

Chaintech 9CJS Zenith

Athlon XP motherboard:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2

Athlon FX motherboard:

Asus SK8V

Portable MP3 player:

Apple iPod 40GB

Photo printer:

Canon i900

Pocket PC PDA:

HP iPaq 5555

Palm OS PDA:

Palm Tungsten C

7.1 speakers:

Creative Labs 7.1

Gigaworks S750

5.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-680

4.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-560

2.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-2200

Meanwhile, over in Iraq, PFC Luciano Teboucas is

flying the Maximum PC colors along with the red,

white, and blue. Be careful over there, Luciano, and

thanks for reading!

�

A reader from Nevada recently sent us her three-

month ultrasound, and all we have to say is,

“Welcome aboard, unnamed fetus!”

Lately we’ve found ourselves inundated with reader

picture submissions. The common motif: people hold-

ing or reading Maximum PC in exotic locales.

MoodLogic

Easy, automated, and intuitive playlist building

If you’re like us, you have three
or four gigabytes of favorite MP3s
that only get heard when you
create a random playlist. MoodLogic
( http://www.moodlogic.com ) aims to
change that by automatically
creating playlists of songs that
share a similar “feel.” This
application, which has quickly
become a Maximum PC favorite,
scans all the songs in your music
directory, identifies each song
using information embedded in
its ID3 tag as well as MoodLogic’s
own database, and then creates
associations within your collection.
There are two ways to cre-
ate a new playlist: You can select a single track and press the Mix button,
which will fill it with tunes of a similar genre. Say, you pick a Red Hot Chili
Peppers song, your mix will include songs by 311, Audioslave, and the Foo
Fighters. Pick a Beck tune, and your mix will include They Might Be Giants
and the Ben Folds Five.
An alternate approach is to start with a particular genre, then choose
the mood you want represented—selections range from “Blue,” e.g. melan-
choly and slow, to the hyped-up and happy sounds of “Get Up.” Granted it
lacks the personal involvement of a traditional mix tape, but we appreciate
the interesting, off-beat CDs we can make with MoodLogic in seconds—as
opposed to the hours it takes to sift through thousands of songs.