THE NDA IS OVER and hardware sites around the world are pumping out their reviews to crowds of hungry hardware enthusiasts, fanbois and curious goblins.

Apart from the odd feeling of deja vu you get going through the articles today, rest assured there is something worthy of your attention out there: the HD4870 launch (mixed up with the official 4850 launch). Strictly talking HD 4870, the 956 million tranny card sports 800 unified shaders, 40 texture units, 16 ROPs, 750MHz clock speed, 512MB of 900MHz GDDR5 with an effective 3.6Gbps data rate and a dual slot cooler, all squished into 190mm2 of silicon.

Graphzilla PR might need some Xanax today, as from the reviews we’ve seen so far there’s a lot going for the RV770 marchitecture – although it is clear that Nvidia won’t sit on its laurels for long. The GTX 280 still looks like the most powerful graphics card around, although it costs over twice as much as an HD4870...

We’ve gathered up whatever reviews we could find on the matter. You’ve got it all right here, CrossfireX, GTX280 face-offs, standalones and even unlucky Hilbert who’s been told by AMD that his 4870 is “in the mail”… c’mon guys…

Here they are, in no particular order:

Hot Hardware

PC Perspective

PCGames Hardware (German), or English

Ana ndtech

Golem.de

Fudzilla

The Tech Report

Tweak Town

Legit Reviews

Extremetech

Hexus.net

Ars Technica

ChileHardware

HardOCP

and

Guru 3d’s non-review (hey, let’s start a petition)

In other news:

Apart from being a manufacturer of quality cases, power supplies are at the top of the company’s product development.The Cooler Master Silent Pro M600 is a modular build with an 80Plus certification. It will support two graphics cards with 6- or 8-pin PCIe connections although we wouldn’t recommend 600W for a high-end configuration. Oh, it does live up to the “Silent” moniker, according to the site. Catch it here.

Noctua continues to make a name for itself, it seems, OCC is reviewing the Noctua NF-B9 CPU cooler. This cooler sports a new fan with Beveled Blade Tips that are supposed to reduce the noise the blades generate whilst slicing air, and Vortex-Control Notches, that are supposed to turn whatever noise is left into Beethoven’s 9th. Cool concept, but the end result is more of a Mojo Nixon hit parade… Read the review here.

HT4U has an article that’s been 6 months in the making. Honest. They’ve gathered up the whole AMD CPU range and benched them, X3 and X4 alike, and they even added some Intel quads for a bit of colour. You might be disappointed to see the fastest X4 (on OC) falling short of a Q9300. It’s in German, but you can resort to Googlenglish. µ