WE KNEW THIS WAS COMING sooner or later. In the ongoing debate between Nvidia and Intel about which somethingPU is more relevant to your computing experience, Nvidia has gone off and found itself a bride (or is that a groom?): VIA. To further its view of the role of GPU, the newly-weds have demoed a Nano processor and mobo with Nvidia’s big ol’ graphics cards, showing that CPU isn’t everything.

PC Perspective wrote the story, posted the benchmarks and it’s the first we know of where you can compare the Nano to the Atom. You can read Episode Two here, but stay tuned for the third instalment of the saga (The Revenge of Atom).

Call it a Computex side-effect, but this week editors have posted an extra quota of memory reviews. Well Computex is there to show off the latest and greatest, we know that already, and these reviews just come to prove that point.

First off, Red & Blackness is testing GSkill’s F3-12800 – a middle-classe labourer for your upper-middle class income. These break in a new heatsink model for G.Skill which requires a bit of overhead clearance, but nothing shocking, just make sure your CPU’s cooler isn’t thiiiisssssss big. We don’t think a “lifetime warranty” covers breaking the sticks tho’, but we could be wrong. Get your RAM right here.

Second, OCC is mucking around with a bit o’ DDR2 from A-Data. 2x2GB sticks are becoming more and more common, and if you know what’s good for you, you can snap up 4GB quite cheap today and profit on it tomorrow as apps get more and more resource hungry. Sure there’s DDR3 around, but just how much money are you willing to spend on memory? A-Data’s kit, for example can get you DDR2-1000 performance with decent latencies and at a very low 1.9v. That’s pretty good in our book. Read the OCC critique.

Thirdly, Corsair’s SLI-certified XMS3 DHX DDR3-1600 EPP 2.0 (that’s a mouthful), are on test at Think Computers. Frank is checking is Corsair keeps up with its traditional memory flexibility –that usually allows you to squeeze a few more MHz out of the kit while keeping the timings low. Again this is a 2x2GB which is a slightly bigger challenge than the usual 2x1s, but the coolers do a good job of keeping the memory chilled (and combing your hair) and allowed him to get an extra 218MHz out of it. Now, if he got his price right, then this 4GB DDR3-1600 kit is one of the best and cheapest DDR3 kits around (in this speed &capacity) – “just” $350. Not bad at all...

XS Reviews is doing its first foray into the world of Quad SLI – with a couple of XFX 9800GX2s. You can’t help but leer at the review since this is pretty much the biggest baddest most annoyingly enviable graphics configuration around today. We don’t think people are paying too much attention to the software bundle that comes with the cards – you just get two of everything – but performance at insanely high resolutions in highly addictive games like Crysis. However testing didn’t go as they wished, but you do get a feel for the Quad-SLI power. Read on.

Surely not for the consumer graphics market but one of those few professional graphics cards round-ups – that’s what Xbit has done. Plugging 7 pro graphics cards (one at a time, we hope) and 1 high-end gaming card, you can get a full view of how the mainstream squares it out. Quadros seem to be leading in power consumption (by sucking the lowest), whilst Fire GL have an overall performance advantage. Wow, we never imagined a 9800GTX sucked so much in pro apps. Read it here. µ