X1650 card gives some hope to ATI

ELITEBASTARDS tests the Powercolor Radeon X1650 Pro. It's a RV535-based video card with a GPU clocked at 600MHz and GDDR3 memory running at 700MHz. It has twin DVI ports and a nicely design HSF with some of its perspex. The card is compared with the Geforce 7600GS, its direct competitor - it beats it across the board, even using an older version of ATI's Catalyst. Overclocking yielded a further 10% increase.

German website PC-Treiber.net - Google Translation needed - reviews some memory modules from GoodRam which are manufactured guess where... In Poland. The GoodRam Pro DDR2 800 CL5 (GP800D264L5/2GDC) 2GB Kit comes with blue heat sinks. Got a few benchmarks from Everest for you. The brand is not an exceptional overclocker but the price seems to be good. Reached DDR912 at CL5-5-5-15.

I would strongly advise you to have a look at this Tweak Guides tweaking companion, a PDF document that is the the complete system optimization guide for Windows XP users. It contains an enormous amount of detailed descriptions and resources together in one free 175 page downlodable PDF file. Above all, it is absolutely and totally free.

Ever wondered what it would feel to have a mini television in the palm of your hand? Then it might be worth trying the Netac A200. It is very small but comes with an impressively large colour screen and an included FM transmitter, 1GB memory and just about everything else excluding the kitchen sink. FM Radio, sound recorder, video player, ebook viewer, file browser etc. It is somewhat bulging and slightly expensive but for listening to music and watching movies, there's nothing better, and as ITreviews puts it, the competitors are in its very generous wake.

It's grouptest time at sister magazine Personal Computer World. There's IP phones costing less than £100 now. IP phones are taking the world by storm as telcos are going IP full steam ahead. The models tested are all designed to be used without a PC having its own DHCP server. You can plug it straight into the network. The editor's choice this time was the Grandstream Budgetone 101 with a large clear display and large buttons, always handy on a crammed desktop surface.

Three motherboards on the table at Techreport, all from Asus. The P5B, P5N32-SLI, and P5W DH all support the Core2 Duo processor and are all high end models. They are all based on different chipsets. The nForce4, a 975x chipset and a P965. The rest is pretty much standard. 8-channel audio, four DIMM sockets, eight to ten SATA/PATA ports, Firewire, USB ports and much more. But that's not what separates those boards from boys. One of them supports SLI, another one has dual GbE and Wifi support and the last one has a remote control.

If you want to send in reviews, hardware or software, don't hesitate, just bring them in. I am particularly fond of exotic hardware that you won't find elsewhere. Even if the review is not in English, as long as it is interesting and entertaining. Send it in. Also I would be glad if someone could point me to a recent directory of hardware websites. µ