More 4870 X2 puh-reviews tip up

SO IT’S COME DOWN to this, then. Daamit seems to have hand-picked its lot of “blessed ones” and provided them with advance samples of the HD 4870 X2s. Advance enough for the regular reviewing folk to be a bit more than annoyed, like we wrote here. The sneak peeks are actually full blown reviews, albeit with some caveats: drivers and clock speeds aren’t all they’re supposed to be until the official launch sometime soon-ish.

Anandtech, Golem.de and PC Perspective are also part of the lucky few, those chosen few, who trump the NDA-bound reviewers. Yes, Daamit PR seems to be doing it’s very best to infuriate everyone. What’s the point of an NDA if some sites get to play with card and write about it before you do? Expect some noise in the next few days.

Anandtech

Golem.de (Googlenglish, here)

PC Perspective

Legion Hardware has posted a “complete crossfire chipset comparison”, or C4 for the chums. Steve compares the feature sets and performance on Intel’s four most visible chipsets, P35, X38, P45 and X48, to be precise. Now, to be complete, it would have to include AMD’s own chipsets, but what the heck… if you want performance you go with Intel right now. Did you know that a P45 chipset running 2 PCIe x8 slots provides better scaling than an X38 board with 2 Gen1 PCIe x16 slots? Geekfest, this way.

Thermaltake’s Xaser line-up has spawned a new member (not that kind). The Xaser VI Mx VH9000BWS is under scrutiny at OCC. This case is a fairly inexpensive box with some quality cooling in mind (ie: holes for watercooling cabling). OCC is blown away by the looks, we guess, but the tool-free design has always been our personal fave. You won’t pull out the mobo tray, tho’. At $115 it seems quite a bargain, but we’ll leave that up to you.

Tom’s Hardware has recanted - sort of – on its initial claim that SSDs actually draw more power from your system than HDD. Actually Patrick&Co. admit to having done something wrong, but that their new conclusions support their old ones. Indeed, the apology is masked as a make-up article. It’s a bit of a mess, yessiree, as readers will be quick to crucify this new article at the slightest hint of subjectivity.

So what’ll it be, SSD or HDD? Beats us, but it still makes for entertaining reading.

XS Reviews in Blighty has a powerplant to test, the Tuniq Miniplant 950W, in fact. It’s an SLI-proof, high-efficiency (80plus rated) PSU that touts Japanese-built ripple capacitors. Although XS agreed with the power& efficiency claims, they just couldn’t shout out the screaming fan or ignore the non-modular design of the unit. Price is another matter… £115… not too high for a 950W supply, but for that price you’d those flaws to disappear… Get your ‘plant, here. µ