FOLLOWING NEWS OF AMD’s imminent launch of Phenom X2s or Athlon X2 with Phenom cores (things are still a bit confusing, it seems), PC Games Hardware has come up with a way to demonstrate performance on this new processor. They knocked off two of the cores in an X4 and ran the tests as 6400-, 6500- and 6600 rated CPUs… and you know what? It wasn’t at all bad. PCGH says a 2.3GHz Phenom-based X2 will match the performance of the Athlon X2 6000+. You should take this with a grain of salt, as from what we’ve seen, the X2’s HT is lower than higher-end Phenom X4s (ie: 3600 vs 4000), so performance isn’t just cutting the cores in half and benching them. Read about it here.

A while ago Hardspell came up with a “review” of a Deneb marchitecture CPU. We didn’t mention at the time ‘cos it slipped under our radar (ie: we missed it). Still, it’s worth looking at, as the the review shows an unnamed Phenom X4 Deneb core running at the same clock as the X4 9650 and, toe for toe, the Deneb core has a 10% performance advantage (give or take). That looks pretty good, for just the added 6MB of L3 cache… The power consumption also drops considerably, especially under load. The die shrink cut power to the core (1.25v drops to 1.22v). Notice the HT link is set to 1800MHz, not 2000MHz as we’d like to see it… Read about it here.

Overclocker’s Club has a piece of kit that will spark some interest amongst the enthusiasts reading this, the Geil EvoOne DDR2-800 2x2GB. These use a massive heatsink that combines heatpipes and heatspreader. The memory boasts low latencies that give it some very respectable performance, but the real beaut is the overclocking. OCC took it all the way up to 1160MHz. The tall heatspreaders might pose a problem to those who don’t have much real-estate, or whose CPU cooler hangs over the RAM slots. Catch them here.

Lenovo has launched a new LCD, the ThinkVision L220X, an oddity on the market as it sports a native resolution of 1920x1200 (!) and it uses an S-PVA panel. It’s a veritable “LCD Panels for Dummies” as you’ve got the explanations to all major panel technologies, and why being S-PVA makes it so special. It’s also got great viewing angles and is priced below its 24-inch brethren, despite having the same resolution. The only problem Oleg finds in this monitor is a characteristic lack of sharpness… as surf boys would put it: bummer.

Hexus.net has updated their “What to pay for your desktop RAM” guide with September 2008 data. This not only includes reference pricing, but their own suggestions for buying RAM in the UK (sorry chaps). DDR2-800 takes the cake for value, while DDR3-1333 has seen the greatest price cuts in the past months. Page 3 of the article will give you your speed fix, as it’s reserved for the fastest things on the market. Read it here.

OCIA has a Rosewill VGA cooler on the bench, the RCX-V100. This is an almost universal VGA cooler (won’t work on -X2 or -GX2 type cards) that can be used passively or actively (by adding a 80mm or 120mm fan). The design is akin to many used by AIB partners like Sapphire to keep things hush-hush inside the case, but Rutledge didn’t get numbers in accordance with his past experiences. He doesn’t know what’s holding back his sample, or it could be just that. Doesn’t what to make of it, maybe you have some fine input for the scribbler.

Last Friday I said something totally rubbish, it slipped out in the middle of a sentence about RAID 1 and RAID 0. I mentioned that RAID 0 would give you added data security… of course I meant RAID 1 (as you can understand as the sentence later said “who cares about RAID 0 on a USB 2.0 connection?”). Just so you guys don’t think I’m a complete nimrod and don’t know my RAIDs. µ