New B3 Phenom comes under the hammer
28 Mar 2008 | 00:25 GMT
Daily Roundabout AMD springs 9850 surprise
THE NDA WRAPPER on some lucky fellows' sample B3 Phenoms has fallen and revealed a handful of reviews on the web. Yes, AMD has finally reached Nirvana and become one with the Universe, or at least given shareholders a sigh of relief, by releasing the said CPUs onto the world, in its TLB-free incarnation. All things considered, and reviews read, AMD’s biggest achievement wasn’t the performance; it was product segmentation and pricing. The new Phenom X4 9850 BE offers enthusiasts solid performance, it appears, although AMD’s timing is really aiming at the market gap between Kentsfields and Wolfdales. Power consumption is pretty high for a product like this, but then again, how would they have managed to keep clock rates up?
If you were waiting for the reviews, well, here they are:
If you’re a freak and want to get an OLPC running a little faster, you can actually find an overclocking guide at OLPCNews.com. Yes. That’s just what we needed, faster OLPCs. You can follow the discussion on the performance gains as the link itself is to a forum posting by a user named bdleonard and replies are a-plenty. Don’t miss out on this free 133MHz overclock for your OLPC. Catch the post here.
Phoronix has a review of Intel’s latest mobile CPU, a Penryn T9300. Now the interesting part isn’t the claim that this is a “wonderful processor”, but the fact that Linux is ahead of the game by supporting SSE4.1 and 4.2 in Ubuntu 8.04 out of the box. Some software developers should really take a deep long look at Linux… read the T9300 review here.
If you are one of those consumers who joined the Quad core generation with a Q6600 you might want to give this article a read. It’s a roundup of 12 coolers for that particular CPU from Dragon Steel Mods. These even include passive cooling – where the Scythe Ninja takes the prize (even beating some active coolers). Read the roundup.
Vizo is a big name in peripherals. XSReviews took a look at their Uranus – an external HDD enclosure that supports the usual humdrum of buses, like USB and eSATA. You’ll never want a USB drive again after you see the numbers. It’s slightly expensive for this kind of product, but it deserved a good score from XS.
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