IF YOU’RE ACHING TO FIND OUT just how powerful the Intel Nehalem is, Tom’s Hardware in Taiwan has given it to the world masked as a review of Gainward’s HD4850. In other words, they picked up the most “reference” of graphics cards from a flashy brand that just turned coats on Nvidia, and ran their tests on a 2.93GHz Nehalem processor / Foxconn X58 (Renaissance) mobo – which kind of trumps the review of the Gainward graphics card, don’t you think? Since world+dog has had a look at what kind of numbers a HD4850 produces, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to read the test results and extrapolate the CPU performance. We’re looking at QX9770 performance, at the moment… Pull out the calculator and do some maffs.

InsideHW has some interesting info on AMD’s upcoming Puma notebook platform. Actually, a couple of sample laptops based on the platform: an MSI PR211 and an Asus F5Z. Battery life and performance seem quite decent (although it all boils down to pricing), but the Asus kit comes with dual-channel memory, that significantly improves 3D performance in real-life apps. Still, the MSI has more complete coverage. Catch Sasa’s review, here.

Michael at Phoronix has two goodies on the bench: one from Asrock (K10N78FullHD-hSLI), the other from ECS (GF8200A), both build around the GF8200 chipset. We’ve been waiting to see this kind of test ever since the GF8200 reached the market and particularly under the Linux flag as these platforms are cost-effective. Unfortunately the 8200 hasn’t matured enough for Linux, so there are still a lot of features missing on that particular platform, but performance and price-wise these offer unbeatable solutions. Maybe in time they’ll actually develop into something bigger. Phoronix has it.

Hardware Secrets is on a quest to find the best $70 CPU. Out of the Celeron, Pentium Dual Core and Athlon (64) X2, there’s a lot of choice you know? First off, Gabriel tried leveling the playing field between the two CPU makers by setting everything they could to the same settings (memory speed, timings, graphics card, etc…) making this a clock-for-clock comparison of the CPU’s performance. Athlon X2 4600+ beats the Intel low-end competition, but there’s more to it than meets the eye, thinks Gabriel.

TweakTown’s Steve Dougherty has been fiddling a bit with the Aeneon Xtune DDR2-1142. This kit seems to have some limited overclocking potential, but it’ll be hard to find a motherboard that keeps up with DDR-1161 speeds. Aeneon matched the best TT had in the house (Geil), but some tests to seem to be CPU limited, somehow. In the end DDR2 is still a great buy, in particular this kit, it seems. AMD might become DDR2’s best friend, as Phenoms and Athlons sell DDR2 in droves due to the integrated memory controller. Read it here.

Finally, Bit-Tech has a duel between two AMD 770X motherboards: an Abit AX78 and a Sapphire AM2RX780. Although Harry had some problems with older drivers and the chipsets, it seems he got rid of them with the latest batch of Catalysts. When it came down to overclocking, neither of the boards had much headroom, but we guess that’s a CPU limitation, rather than the opposite. Feature-wise the Sapphire kit doesn’t pass muster, while the Abit fares a little better… Still, they’re available at P43-challenging price/performance. Read the review. µ