Genuine Core i7 review pops up

IT WAS GOING to happen sooner or later, someone has broken cover and posted their review of the Core i7 processor. Apparently the chaps at MyDrivers.com, a Chinese website, got their hands on the i7 940 (overclocked to 3.2GHz) and performed all manner of tests on it, comparing it to top performers in Intel’s 2-core and 4-core stable, the E8500 and QX9770 respectively. The results are looking good, although the i7 is clearly dealing with some buggery (oeeerr) in terms of performance in gaming, but pro apps zoom past the QX9770 with the greatest of ease. You’ll also notice that synthetic benchmarks favour the newcomer even more. Unless you read Chinese, you’ll need the appropriate translation. Try this one.

Tweak Town has completed its trial of Microsoft’s gaming peripherals with the Sidewinder X6 gaming keyboard. The first thing you’ll notice is the “hot-swappable” numeric keypad that you can attach to either side of the keyboard, effectively creating a bunch of macro-programmable keys for your games, or just something for the southpaws. The cool-looking keyboard is also back-lit and even features some special lighting for the WASD keys, making them easy to identify in the dark (although, in all honesty, if you have to look down during a firefight… you as good as dead). Read Andrew’s review, here.

Ryan at PC Perps is trying to figure out how much performance can you squeeze out of the sub $70 graphics card market. In order to do this he got hold of several cheapo cards like the HD 4550, HD 4350, the 9500GT (Galaxy) and even an S3 Chrome 440GTX. It’s hard to figure out who’s the winner, but you’ll see just which one sticks out like a sore thumb when it comes to driver issues (there, you know what we’re talking about). Get a load of budget cards, right here.

Laptop Mag had a Lenovo X200s ultraportable trying to beat some kind of battery life record. This one falls into the 12-inch category but weighs a very featherweight 2.6lbs, that’s slightly over 1.1Kg. It’s display features a 1440x900 matrix which is extraordinarly minute for that laptop size, but it’ll do wonders when resorting to big ol’ Vista icons. Quite the Stinkpad. Read Michael’s review, here.

While still in “fruity-loop” mode, we noticed that MacWorld is reviewing a couple of Apple’s precious peripherals, both keyboards, one full-size the other Blue-in-the-tooth. They’re done in aluminium see? They’re thing as a wafer, but if you hit someone over the head with them you’re likely to do more damage. Seriously, that wireless keyboard looks good, and works better. Dan’s the man. Here.

The cleverly named Liliputing (yes, that’s a website *and* a first for us) wrote up a Netbook nitpickers guide to the MSI Wind and the Asus Eeepc 1000H – yes, quite possibly the two ugliest Netbooks in existence if you look at the photos and videos. To make things weird(er) the machines have totally different specs (except the CPU), so it’s to be consumed with a huge grain of salt. Check out the deathmatch, right here.

Hot Hardware is taking a second look at Intel’s X25-M SSD drives only this time in RAID 0 mode. This time Dave managed to score two drives and finally sated his appetite when it came to HD Tach, HD Tune and Sandra… It’s a quickie. µ