Dual-core renaissance chez AMD

THE DUAL-CORE Phenom/Athlon X2 has finally seen the light of day (or of someone’s flash, at least). Expreview scored one of these processors and has written up for the whirled wide wibble to see. Apparently the processor performs and overclocks very … adequately. 3GHz on air and some minor improvements over the equally-clocked-yet-ancient Athlon X2 5000+, Brisbane core. Jeff suggests this might be AMD’s best dual core ever. We think power consumption is going through the roof. Read on.

Qimonda is a big memory manufacturer. Really big. Strange as it might seem this is the first retail kit of theirs we’ve seen on review. These are 2 slices of 4GB DDR2-800 memory, unregistered, and ready to slot in your desktop machine. Considering they’re that high a density, they did a pretty good job for themselves in overclocking. Digit-Life has the premiere.

While AMD has been suffering a bit on the desktop it’s more or less held its own in the server business, but Intel’s Dunnington-born Xeons might finally knock the Opteron off its pedestal. Anandtech is doing the upgrade dance with the new six-cored processor, the X7460. It’s a monster processor that excels in a few departments (virtualization, for one), but Opteron is still giving Intel a run for its money. No-nonsense material, right here.

Xbitlabs has a go at DFI’s LANparty kit, the DK X48-T2RS mobo. The DK-series LANparty boards are built on a black PCB with almost everything else a shade of orange. Apart from the cool aesthetics, Xbit is looking at the overclocking features and the famed Auto Boost System. Manual overclocking was OK, ABS just wouldn’t co-operate. Read about it here.

We must confess, we’ve always enjoyed our Altec-Lansing kit… headphones, speakers, the lot. Think Computers has tested the T612, a Jesus Phone/iPod dock that’ll let everyone know you’re proud of your gadget, in stereo and with a bass like Isaac Hayes’ pipes. Unfortunately, like all Maccessories, it costs an arm and/or leg. Read aboot it.

Chieftec has a new HTPC case dubbed the HM-02B and someone, of course, is testing it… enter Tech Power Up. The Techies cracked open the case, set everything up and were really really happy with the results. The case looks good, has great build quality, includes lots of bonus features and is very quiet. Not only that, but it costs just $200. You’ll have to get a power supply that fits, of course… look at the nice little HTPC, here.

PC Games Hardware is yet another site to lay its hands on a retail Intel dual-core Atom mobo (contrary to the ECS flavour that’s been making the rounds). Although this is pretty much the smallest review we’ve seen to date, it does give you a price and a benchmark on the mobo (Cinebench). Again, at $70 there isn’t much to add… Read the tiny article, here.

We’d like VIA to tell us what they’re thinking on doing with their Nano, though… you hear Mr. Brown?