Source: Maximum PC – January 2004

Maximum PC, known as ‘boot’ in its earliest days, was my favorite PC specific magazine. It was also still around until a few years ago. The January 2004 issue includes:

Regulars

• In/Out – Letters from readers about using an AMD64-FX CPU with an Opteron motherboard dual-GPU cards, motherboard recommendations, the nForce3 chipset, the remaining life for EIDE drives, upgrading a Pentium 4 machine, and more.

• Quick Start – A look at a few pocket sized PCs including one by oqo that includes a 1 GHz Transmetta Crusoe CPU and 256 MB of RAM, a look at some new games including Madden 2004, Knights of the Old Republic, and Deus Ex, and more.

• Head2Head – Comparing online music services iTunes, MusicMatch, Rhapsody, and Napster.

• WatchDog – Poor OS X performance on G3s, Belkin router spam, and more.

• Ask the Doctor – Questions answered about Serial ATA power, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro clock speed, random pop-ups, upcoming Athlon 64 chips, overclocking, upgrading a Sony Vaio, and more.

• How To… – A Guide to improve your PC’s airflow.

• Rig of the Month – This month’s Rig of the Month features a computer designed to look like an old military radio. The hardware includes an Athlon XP 2700+ and an ATI Radeon 9200.

Reviews

• HyperSonic Sonic Boom desktop PC – This PC features a yellow case, 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition overclocked to 3.37 GHz, 1GB of DDR400, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT), two Western Digital WD360 10,000rpm SATA drives, and more for $3,384.

• Hewlett-Packard Pavilion ZD7000 laptop – This laptop features a Pentium 4C @ 3.2GHz, 1GB DDR333 dual channel RAM, nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 video, 40GB hard drive and more for $2700.

• ATI 4600 64Bit desktop PC – This PC features a Chieftec case, 430 watt power supply, an AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 CPU @ 2.2GHz, 1GB registered DDR333 RAM, 256MB nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra video card, two 36GB Western Digital Raptor drives, and more for $3650.

• PNY Verto GeForce FX 5950 Ultra video card – nVidia’s new top of the line card gets a positive review here.

• Serial ATA Drives – Several Serial ATA hard drives are reviewed including the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 250GB, Western Digital Caviar SE WD250JD, Hitachi Desktar 7K250 (the highest scoring in this review round-up), Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, and Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 16 300GB (the largest drive in this review round-up).

• Budget 3D Cards – Reviews of the Radeon 9800 XT and Asylum GeForce FX 5700. Neither is the clear winner.

• Empires: Dawn of the Modern World – An Age of Empires style game from Activision.

• Call of Duty – A review of the now classic first person shooter.

Features

• Hardcore Hardware – A look at hardware and technologies that will appear in PCs in 2004. These include Serial ATA 2.0, Intel’s Prescott Pentium 4 CPU, AMD’s Newcastle, DDR2 memory, BTX, dual layer DVD burners, 802.11n, nVidia NV40 based video cards, ATI R420 based video cards, and more.

• Meet the Mach L – An overdesigned PC featuring an 3.2 GHz Pentium 4, 2GB of PC4200 RAM, Raid 0 array of four 18GB 15,000rpm SCSHI drives, Radeon 9800 XT video card, Asetek’s Vapochill Case, and more.

• The Softies – Maximum PC’s 2nd annual software awards featuring the 10 best applications and utilities of 2003. These include Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP, DVD X Copy Platinum, Cakewalk Project 5 Soft Synth Workstation, JBuilder, Adobe InDesign 2.0, POPFile, Spybot Search and Destroy, iTunes, Trillian Pro 2.0, and Mozilla Firebird.

• The Maximum PC Challenge – A USB Key torture test that includes freezing, heating, crushing, drowning, and more.

…and more!