Futuremark has released a hot fix for 3DMark03/05/06 and PCMark05 which should bring the benchmarks up to date with new graphics cards and processors. The problem is that none of the benchmarks behave properly unless they detect the hardware in the system correctly and as a result some tests might not run properly or at all.

There was a workaround for this, but it meant that you couldn't post the results on the Futuremark website as the results couldn't be verified. The download only consists of three files and it works with all four benchmarks. A new version of 3DMark 06 will be made available with the hot fix included.

You can download the hot fix from here

Abit is a day late with their announcement, but the company also has an X38 board ready to go and it's the IX38 QuadGT. Abit has managed to implement a few interesting features into this board and some rather odd ones too. It's a DDR2 board and it supports memory speeds of 800 and 1,066MHz as well as CPU bus speeds of 1,600MHz.

Abit has gone with a digital PWM design and this seems to have been something of a fad and many of the motherboard manufacturers we've talked to aren't too keen on using this type of PWM as they claim it's not great for overclocking. However, it does reduce the component count on the motherboard and allows for a much cleaner area around the CPU socket.

Abit on the other hand seems to claim that it only has advantages, such as lower noise interference, longer component life span and lower heat output. The IX38 QuadGT has a rather interesting cooling design as well, with the digital WPM being cooled by a separate heatsink which ducts the heat out through the I/O shield. The chipset on the other hand is cooled by a heatpipe solution which goes from the ICH9R to the X38 chipset and then onwards to a small heatsink which is parallel with the memory slots.

AMD have kicked off their new set of Catalyst 7.10 drivers today, these to suit both 32 and 64-bit XP/Vista operating systems.

Nicknamed the 'shoot'em up' driver, FPS gamers with ATI Radeon graphics cards will be excited to know that these latest drivers bring some significant performance gains across a whole host of popular gaming titles, with the biggest performance increases noticed in a Crossfire configuration.

Supermicro might not be the first brand you think about when it comes to buying a new motherboard, but the company has an extensive range of workstation and server boards. The company is as far as we know the second manufacturer to have a workstation board based on the X38 chipset, the first one being Asus.

The C2SBX, as Supermicro calls it's X38 board, features two x16 PCI Express 2.0 slots, one x1 slot, two standard PCI slots and finally a pair of 64-bit PCI-X slots. This should appeal to those looking at getting a relatively low cost workstation system with a quad core CPU.

With the support for ECC memory in the X38 chipset, it's not strange to see companies such as Supermicro creating motherboards based around it. The C2SBX supports up toe 8GB of DDR3 memory at speed of up to 1,333MHz. Other features include six SATA ports, six rear USB 2.0 ports, two FireWire ports via a bracket, Intel Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audio, as well as what can only be described as retro features these days, a parallel and serial port.

Dell has already launched these two new models in Japan, although we're expecting them to arrive worldwide shortly. First up is the new 22-inch SP2208WFP which has a native resolution of 1,680x1,050, pretty much the norm in this segment, with a 2ms response time and a dynamic contrast ratio of 2,000:1. It also has the ability to reproduce 92 percent of the NTSC colour gamut.

But what makes it stand out from most other 22-inch LCD monitors is not only the built in 2 Megapixel webcam and the built in microphone, as it also sports a D-sub, DVI-D with HDCP and no less than three HDMI connectors. It also has a built in four port USB 2.0 hub with two side mounted ports.

Sony Ericsson has just announced their latest addition, the K630i which is a mid-range 3G handset with a wide range of features. The handset measures 103 x 47 x 15.5 mm (HxWxD) and it weighs in at 97 grams, all of which makes it quite a nice and pocketable phone. It comes in either what Sony Ericsson calles Quick Black or Havana Gold.

The K630i has a 2-inch display which can display 262,144 colours at a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels. Not that impressive considering that more and more phones today features higher resolutions than this. It supports GSM/GPRS and EDGE at 900/1800 and 1900MHz as well as 3G (UMTS) and HSDPA at 2100MHz. It also has support for Bluetooth 2.0 and there's also a built in FM radio.

As many of you would now be aware, Microsoft are working on a third Service Pack to further support Windows XP and keep it in good health for a while to come. Though it's been mentioned that upon release, SP3 will be Microsoft's final installment before they pull the plug on support from XP and focus entirely on getting Vista right.

Some details have come to light about the progress of SP3 and what we can expect from it once it reaches final status. A massive 1,073 patches and hotfixes will be embedded into the new Service Pack as well as four completely new features which have been backported from Vista; these being as follows :-

- New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product key during setup