G45 dressed up in mini-ITX

CHIPZILLA MIGHT’VE TRIPPED ITSELF up with its first Atom-based Mini-ITX boards which featured too little uhm… features, even though the price was dirt cheap. But now they’ve gone all “Core 2 Duo” on the mini-ITX factor and sent off some samples to Silent PC Review and Thrusting Reviews. It’s called the DG45FC and it uses the Intel G45 chippery to good effect, actually featuring most if not all the specs on the chipset (dual channel memory, Core 2 Duo processors, X4500HD IGP, gigabit Ethernet). It isn’t very expensive either and should make a really great appliance or, who knows, an Auto PC… ?

Hardspell has posted an article based on stuff published on Maxsun.com.cn. It’s a complete benchmark of what you get when you cross several Nvidia GPUs doing physics with the ATI HD 4850 doing the GPU bit. If you’re thinking of using one of the new 9400/9500 cards for Physics, then the 9500GT is the way to go. If you want the best, match the HD 4850 with a 9600GT. Give it a look, plenty of screenshots.

Intel’s new E8600 and Q8200 have been marked for testing at Generation 3D, the Q8200 being the very affordable albeit cache-strapped (geddit?!) little brother of the quad family, and the E8600 the very-expensive-yet-still-cheaper-than-most-quads top performer of the dual-core family… and yes… the reviewer signs under the name “fifi86”. The test shows off some impressive muscle on the E8600, but we guess it’s the apps’ fault for not being quad-optimised. Read the review here, or here in Googlenglish.

Obfuscated by the launch of the Iphone-like Omnia, many have forgotten Samsung’s other foray into PDA-touchscreen-land, the Samsung Glyde (honestly, it looks like HTC’s original Tytn). It’s a touchscreen interface with a QWERTY keyboard that slides from underneath, and is actually quite usable, thinks Joe. The poor image quality is a let-down, but it isn’t expensive for what you’re getting. Read on…

If you’re on the market for a new HTPC case, you’d be interested in knowing Zalman has a new goodie over at Tweak News. It’s called the HD160XT Plus, and the name sounds familiar ‘cos there’s an older non-Plus version. The cooler company is flogging a very silent and cool case for your living room with an integrated 7-inch LCD and remote – which most HTPC cases do already – but Joe thinks the implementation, features and build quality are second to none. Costs $600 though, so you’d better have really deep pockets. Read the review.

Although this isn’t strictly a hardware review, Anandtech has been able to play around with AMD’s Fusion software and found that it’s got a bit more to it than just the “Overclocking for Dummies” feature. It also lets you create software profiles whereby your system knocks out all the processes that are taking up memory during gaming, that *aren’t* related to the game itself. Interesting stuff that you can find here.