E7300 and E5200 deliver a beating

INTEL INTRODUCED a couple of lightweights to the line-up a few weeks back: the E7300 and the E5200. They are respectively low end and low-low end of Intel’s computing, bar the Celeron. Still, they are nothing to be frowned upon. Although they can’t be compared to the E8000 series in overclocking, they still manage to squeeze out a lot of performance for next to nothing. Apparently the E5200 is a power saver, too. Get the review here.

The Acer Aspire One seems to be becoming quite a popular UMPC design. UMPC Portal is testing the XP flavour of the lappie and Ben gives us a little perspective on what this laptop is. His own Sony VAIO cost him over $1800 three years ago (also running XP), but has a lower benchmarketing score than this $450 Aspire One. Get some here.

A 65-inch screen might seem (and is) overkill, but you know it’s really just another record begging to be broken. Well, Mitsubishi gave the guys at Tech Lounge the opportunity to test their Laser Vue. It’s still ‘just’ a Full HD screen, but it consumes just one-third the power of other large panels. Cameron was quite impressed, but they want one in the office for proper testing. Get the big picture, here.

Hardware Zone has an Acer lappie based on the AMD Puma platform. Following some recent comparisons, the AMD solution turns out to be quite a decent performer. The combination chipset and GPU are producing some very good results for a cheapo price. Sure it won’t go toe-to-toe with Intel’s mobile offers, but the HD 3470 knocks the socks off Intel’s IGPs. Read about it here.

TechPowerUp is giving A-Data’s Vitesta Extreme Edition DDR2 800+ CL4 in 2x2GB densities a going over. No tricky heatspreader setup, no special cooling, the Extreme Edition DDR2 has ‘just’ very low latencies. It’ll get you all the way up to DDR2-1066 at CL5 if you want, but you’ll have to add a little juice to the mix. Since it sells for a paltry $75 (yes, 4GB!) TPU gave it a huge thumbs-up.

Laptop Mag is doing a review on what is arguably one of the coolest laptop designs around: the Voodoo Envy 133, the ultra-portable in this family of ne’er do well expensive lappies. It’s small (13.3-incher), thin (almost as thin as Air) but has crap battery life. Oh, and don’t expect to go on a gaming spree with its magnificent GMA X3100 IGP… Still, worth looking at the (very) pretty pictures.

NotebookCheck, a multilingual website focusing on … notebooks (no surprise there), is reviewing the Green Goblin’s GeForce 9800M GTX. Simon demonstrates how you can play some serious games on this GPU, even with AA/AF turned up. Only Crysis dented the GPU’s performance. If you want an apples to apples comparison, the 9800M GTX is pumping out 10 to 20 per cent more performance than its high-end predecessor, the 8800M GTX… which makes sense. µ