TWEAKTOWN IS EVALUATING the goodness of Intel’s Core 2 Duo E7200, the lowliest Penryn of the bunch. To provide readers with something to measure by, Cameron used a Phenom X3 8750 as a comparison in tests. In case you were wondering, it does have all the architecture advantages of other Penryns, only slightly capped – less cache, slower FSB – but nothing that will hold it back against the Phenom, show the numbers. The E7200 systematically beats the X3 8750, right here.

DDR2-1200 is within the grasp of the most hardcore (and cash-laden) enthusiasts. Gary at Anandtechies has picked up a couple of OCZ Flex II DIMMs and produced some benchmarks, proving that their greatest virtue is to offer flexible memory timings for a wider range of boards, or plain ol’ kickass performance at 1200MHz. That’s pretty much a fact of life these days, you have to pick your memory carefully, making sure it’s SPD ratings will be more or less in sync with your CPU's requirements, or your own operating settings. Catch it here.

Yesterday we talked about Legion Hardware’s review of the Asus HD 3850 X2 graphics card. Well, it seems the PR boys were on overtime last week, as PC Perspective has published its own review of the card. Stripped bare, you can look at a few more details, like the heatsink and PCB layout, which mimics the HD 3870 X2. It also looks like the benchmarks are putting the HD 3850 X2 on a level playing field with the 9800GTX – the only serious difference being, naturally, the (about) 80 bucks extra the 3850X2 costs over the 9800GTX. If you’re building a system the 3850 X2 looks like a decent candidate, if you’re just upgrading, bear in mind that you’re stuck on the chipset you already have and need to pick wisely. Read the review here.

Slotting hard drives like USB pens is quite possible, especially if you’re using Vantec’s Nexstar eSATA/USB HD Dock. Just plug this little peripheral into your computer’s eSATA or USB 2.0 port and your SATA HD becomes a removable drive on the spot. Good for us geeks who have a pile of HDs hanging around and need to check them for content every so often (we imagine you won’t carry this around on a trip abroad). You can find the review at Future Looks.

Bit-Tech has a review of Jetway’s JNC62K mobo. It’s a mini-ITX sized, Geforce 8200-based mobo that targets low power/HTPC builds. It really is a nice piece of work, especially in the power-consumption department and IGP performance takes the lead over 780G. Since this is mini-ITX, space constraints have limited expansion capacity, especially PCI and DIMM slots (limiting memory to one slot and therefore, one channel). You can read about it here. µ