Trickle of FX60 reviews begins

NOW that's tasty, thanks to Chris Tom for this one. Not only does it appear that Dell Opteron Servers do really exist - Dell is already making it a bad habit of using non Intel chipsets on some PCs. But he also finds time to sit down and write a review of the FX60. That part is the ultimate gamers' wet dream that it readily available on the market. It comes with two 2.6GHz core with 1MB L2 per core. A slihgt bump of 200MHz compared to the 4800+, plus you get that unlocked clock multiplier which makes it an overclocker's paradise. Benchmarks show that it is still the top champ, although that comes at a steep price.

NGOHQ checks the Arctic Cooling Accelero X2 VGA cooler. Definitely not your usual cooler and probably one of the largest coolers ever to have landed on a video card. It comes with an array of features that leaves no doubt as to where you should put it. It hass a voltage converter cooling, patented vibration absorption, six heat pipes, six years warranty and a 2krpm cooler. The X2 is compatible with the X1800 series as well as the X1900. The SRP is quite low in my opinion and given the excellent performance it put, it rightly deserved the NGOHQ editor's choice award.

Bjorn Loves reviewing graphic cards it seems. Anyway, Rafal Zak tested the Powercolor X1600XT and the X1300Pro, two mid-range/entry level cards. Powercolor is the front end for TUL corporation which is amongst one of the preferred ATI partners out there. The difference between the X1600XT and the X1300Pro are important enough for the price gap to be that large. Bjorn3D also gives us a useful guide where other ATI GPU are also compared to the existing ones. The X1600Pro's is roughly equivalent to the X800XL in terms of perforamnce while the X1300Pro is ahead of the X700. Both of course come with H264 compatibility and AVIVO. No words though concerning Crossfire compatibility. Note though that the X1300Pro comes with two DVI ports, which is not bad at all. Hardwarezoom, Singapore's other HWZ, has tested the Planex Communication GWUS54 Pro which is a Wireless Access Point. When in operation, it looks like a blue, phosphorescent erected dolmen or Darth Vader's sabre. It is damn simple to install plus it supports quite a lot of OSes but transfer performance and its looks might not appeal to everyone.

ATI's Powerplay is benchmarked and commented at PyroCPU. Powerplay is a Linux based software which allows the user to set various frequencies at which the video card operates, a little bit like settings laptop allow to increase autonomy or performance. A surprisingly good tool for Linux users wishing to get the best out of their portable systems in any situation.

Michael Larabel - who is the author of the above article - wrote a test of the OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 1GB - two 512MB modules - Golf GX XTC memory modules. They come with that XTC gold layered Heatspreader - some kind of special, honey comb designed dissipator. Specs are 533MHz, CL4, Lifetime warranty and extended voltage protection built in. Phoronix says that it was one of the best overclockers ever to have graced their labs even if they had to increase the voltage by some amount. With some chance, the 667MHz parts might even shatter the 1GHz barrier. µ