Sun's new AMD server will rock Dell, HP

ITALIAN website Hardware Upgrade tests another reference board from ULI with the M1695 grafted on it. Use google to translate to the required language. With the prospect of up to six monitors connected, native AGP 8x and PCIe 16x support, cheap price and a heap of manufacturers promising to bring the best out of this chipset, ULI cannot let customers down.

Anandtech unveils Sun's new Sunfire X2100 server. Sun is banking the whole house on AMD's Opteron family. No more proprietary architecture and a simplified chassis package called Aquarius. The cheapest one will cost only $745 which is a bargain even if it has no SATA HDD or drives. Impressive stuff given the pedigree of Sun.

TThardware meanwhile tests the M1689 which is the older version. The Asrock 939A8X-M is one of the cheaper socket 939 in France. This mATX format motherboard comes with a network card and a 7.1 sound module. You even get the SATA driver on floppy and SATA to Molex adapter. Not an exceptional overclocker but a very good value for money product.

Firingsquad gives a try at the Sapphire PI-A9RX480 motherboard, the only white PCB component in nature. It is fast, very fast, ver silent with 100% passive cooling and very much enthusiast oriented with cleverly placed ports and sockets but lacks some overclocking features as well as basic accessories found on other high end parts.

Hardwarecentral tests the Sony Vaio T350P laptop which can connect not only to WIFI networks but is also compatible with EDGE and Bluetooth. Of course, it bears the usual trademarks of Sony traditions. With a Pentium M 753, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD, a DVD writer and a host of ports. Pity though you have to rely on an integrated graphics card.

The iRam from Gigabyte is back at Tomshardware. This pioneering technology gives us an insight of what to expect from hybrid drives in the future. With the addition of NCQ, TH speculates on how RAM could eventually end up playing the same role as onboard cache does for processors. Prepare yourself for some benchmarks and even the iRam in RAID mode. µ