Core2 Duo reviews inundate Interweb

The E6700 and the X6800 flex their muscles fro reviwers today. The E6700 runs at 2.66GHz and the Core2 Duo Extreme runs at 2.93GHz and both have 4MB cache. The new Conroe is a frightening animal, showing that speed is a very relative thing.

Designed by Intel's Israeli Team, the platform is aiming at the performance per watt crown and if benchmarks are to be believed, then they achieved it in a great manner. Temperatures are down while performance figures are up.

Using a 65nm die technology combined with an improved, up to date Pentium III architecture, Intel has managed to turn the tables and delivered a powerful product within a relatively short period of time.

Benchmarks speak for themselves and assuming that there is not a world-wide collusion amongst hardware websites to hide the truth, it looks like a winner.

GDHardware shows the FX62 and the FX57 being trounced under a number of gaming, synthetic and professional benchmarks and they even applaud the fact that AMD will eat some crow for a while.

The same conclusions are also reached elsewhere Tweaktown who also did some media encoding and threw in the Pentium 955 Extreme, the Pentium D 940 and the X2 3800+ for good measure, by PlanetX64 who brought in the X2 5000+ and also even by Chilehardware, a Chilean website with a fair number of benchmarks. This goes to show that the processor is available in numbers from day one.

Overclocking can be slightly problematic though. Some reached only 3.2GHz, a 227MHz overclock while others like Belgium site Madshrimps went all the way up to 4GHz using phase change cooling, 1.55v Vcore.

In other news, Gamepc reviews the Tyan Tempest 5000X and 5000V platforms. They are based around the new Xeon 5000 series and aimed squarely at the high end of the spectrum. Dual Independent busses, FB-DIMM memory, Serial Attached SCSI and PCI express means that the sheer value for money of the whole system is exceptional. With dual processors, support for up to 32GB memory and an ATX format, what could you ask for more. Plus at less than $500, it is a bargain for a workstation/server class motherboard.

Hi-techreviews tests the Logysis hard drive silencer. The name says itself; it is a drive silencer. It is supposed to reduce hard drive noise by over 9%. It is compatible with 1-inch high hard drives and fits in 5.25-inch drive bays plus it is made up of aluminium and comes with a number of accessories which makes it an all rounder. There's plenty of photos to help you decide whether the peripheral is worth it or not. No hint about the pricing though. µ