TWEAKTOWN IS TOUCHED by a spot of the Green pandemic – now delivered to a desk in front of you thanks to AMD’s 780G+4850e combo. Plowing through the FUD compost, TweakTown tries to discover what savings are to be had in this platform. Power consumption and performance seem to be no issue to the combo. AMD seems to have hit the nail on the head with this one, thinks Cameron. Read the big thumbs-up here.

Those Elite Bastards have picked up XFX’s nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard and submitted it to all kinds of gruelling experiences at Bastards HQ. The performance numbers are up there, but so is the price (although clearly this isn’t the most expensive 790i Ultra SLI out there). In fact, you should only be reading this article if you have too much money in your pocket, or you’re the archetypical rubber-neck looking at the speedy cars (or accidents) whooshing by.

Other chappies at Bit-Tech also tested the same ‘board from XFX. They focused a bit more on the economics of the board (ie: what components go with it), and whether the feature sets of said components make a difference in real-world computing, ie: quad-core performance versus dual-core wolfdales, or DDR3 vs. DDR2. Well, like this is similar to EB’s review: if you have the money, then you can blow your wad on this one.

Here’s a nice piece of kit to couple with the 790i Ultra SLI mobos: the OCZ ReaperX HPC PC3-10666 EB 2x1GB sticks. APHNetworks got this high performance memory in the mail and took it for a spin in their X48-based Gigabyte mobo. APH got the mem all the way up to 1840MHz (that’s 507MHz over stock) – that’s pretty solid overclocking, but that’s also the premise of ReaperX HPC kit. Catch the speedy DDR3 here.

Corsair’s top DDR3 kit is also on test, at XBit, a 2x2GB DDR3 1800 Dominator Series. It’s got XMP profile to make your life easier’n’all. They tricked out the system and managed to pull an insane 11.2GB/s read speed from the mem, as well as bringing down latency to 46.3ns. Now, the downside continues to be the dreadful pricing on these things - $490 is no bargain, but if you have the money, XBit thinks it’s a better deal than 2x2x1GB kits. XBit also flashes a warning about motherboard compatibility, but doesn’t get into the details.

Despite the recent spate of fake DFI mobos caught in circulation, the company continues its march in the next-generation of chipsets from Intel. DFI’s LANParty X48 LT T2R mobo is the first X48-based DDR2 we’ve seen. You get some very good memory overclocking, but the overall performance isn’t as good as it could’ve been, thinks Rajinder. It is, however, a great board if you’re not yet ready to shuffle onwards to DDR3 *and* want to run a CrossFire setup. Read it here.

Without making puns about getting more head, Guru3D managed to review Matrox’s Triplehead2Go Digital Edition. Matrox has long stopped trying to compete in the discrete graphics, but still puts out the occasional valuable accessory that makes life easier in very specialised business environments. Matr ox’s TripleHead2Go will tell your system that your 3 LCD’s are actually one and the same with triple the horizontal resolution (3x1280x1024 max). This will create an ultra-wide resolution, but it does have some glitches, as Hilbert noted.

P35 mobos aren’t going away anytime soon, nor is this Green-thing that’s infecting mobo makers. In Asus’ case they’re pitching the P5K Pro and its EPU feature at Big Bruin. The EPU reduces energy consumption from the mobo if the CPU is cranked all the way up – similar to what’s been done in laptops for some time now. The mobo’s layout, however, is a big con, as connectors are poorly positioned – something that can be dealt with a modicum of patience. Read on. µ