Athlon 64 powers down to beat Atom

WHILE THIS MAY SOUND STRANGE, Tom’s Hardware has published an article facing-off the Intel Atom against an AMD Athlon 64. Now the Athlon 64 clocked as a 2000+, in other words, it is a 1GHz processor working at 0.9v and consuming just 8W. The interesting bit is that THG claims the overall power consumption on the 780G+Athlon 64 is lower than the Atom. Lots of worries and things to look at, right here.

Overclock 3D has tested the PowerColor HD 4850 PCS with 2GB of GDDR3. James finds the cards sporting a slower memory clock, but he thinks that was a requirement to keep the 2GB happy. Apart from that the card is identical in specs as its 1GB and 512MB brothers. Unfortunately the 2GB don’t come into their own at 1920x1200. Maybe some serious AA would trigger the advantage, but we need some numbers to look at… read the article here.

One of the greatest headaches with mobile computing is using your lappie in broad daylight. Pocketables has rounded up half a dozen of the most popular UMPCs and MIDs and tested them in direct sunlight. Needless to say, results were a bit dramatic. Panel makers need to come up with something quick, otherwise consumers are forced to remain indoors – this, of course, is not an issue in Blighty. The article photos say it all.

Fatal1ty must be knee deep in benjamins by now. For some reason we cannot grasp, this pro gamer has managed to get his handle stamped on bits of hardware from mice to soundcards to RAM. The latest company to market a Fatal1ty product is OCZ, in the DDR2-800 variety. OCIA has a review for you, so head on over here and find out if it’s just hype.

TweakTown is testing the Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition. This is an overclocked card with some tweaks: 800MHz core and 1100MHz memory (4.4GHz effective). This gave the card a clear advantage against its non-OC’d brethren, and even Nvidia’s GTX280 and GX2 saw the contender come closer in a bunch of benchmarks. Not for the faint of heart, this one. Shane was impressed. Get it here.

Hot Hardware has a four-way P45 shoot-out but they are all of the same brand: Gigabyte. These are the EP45-DS3L, the EP45-DQ6, the EP45T-DS3R and the EP45T Extreme. These models range in price from $100 to $270, with feature sets that vary widely. Chris points the EP45T-DS3R as the “winner”, if we can call it that, thanks to its DDR3 support and its decent pricing. Give it a look.

Think Computers also has a review on an OCZ kit, the SOE Urban Elite Edition DDR3-1600 2x1GB. This particular memory comes with an Urban Camo pattern on the heatspreaders. Frank found the kit to be particularly pleasing, to fire-and-forget enthusiasts in particular, and offered stable performance with a modicum of overclocking headroom. The best part is that DDR3 is finally getting into a decent price bracket. This kit goes for just $130. Read about it here.