125GB platters appear in hard disks

HAVE A GO at the Athlon X2 3800+ CPU, that's what AMDboard did which I see as the second best next to the Opteron 165 processor. This dual core 2GHz processor is compared to a Dual Opteron as well as a number of other competing processors including a Pentium M model. You will probably love those extensive benchmarks which covers almost everything from Roxio Video creator to 3DMark 05. The article is actually penned by Lost Circuits' Michael Schuette.

SFFtech has an interesting editorial about the whereabouts of Soltek. Apparently, this promising tier-2/3 motherboard manufacturer is slowly sinking into oblivion. Whether Soltek will be snapped up or be forgotten soon by everyone is something only time will tell. Any news on the subject is welcomed though.

The Epox 5LDA+GLI, Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2, and Asus P5LD2 Deluxe are being tested in a roundup like article by Anandtech. The i945P chipset at the centre of those motherboards gets used in a number of ways. Anandtech's reviewer acknowledged that the i945p chipset might be unimpressive, but at the end, they do compare it to the 440BX chipset which speaks volume about the stability and the performancne of that particular chipset.

Another Epox motherboard is the 8NPA SLI analysed by AMDzone. This socket 754 motherboard comes with SLI but only two DDR slots. Th rest of its features compare positively with the socket 939 mid level competition. Now you can easily place two 6800GS, one of those Semprons above, 1GB memory and you'd have a pretty damn good gaming rig. Now we're talking.

It appears as if this year's sweet darling, the best thing since the 5900XT is the new Geforce 6800S, which is selling at around $199. Neoseeker has reviewed the EVGA version of this card. It overclocks mightily well thanks to a 11nm core and ATI has nothing to counteract this little baby right now. The card itself is quite long with the additional power connector with a large heat sink fan. Ferrari for the price of a Ford says neoseeker.

Samsung uses a 125GB platter in a new Spinpoint P120 250GB hard disk drive. With NCQ, SATA2 interface and 7200rpm, but a smallish a 8MB buffer, you could rightly expect that performance would suffer. It lags behind the rest of the competition in most scenarii. But the Spinpoint will probably appeal much more to those looking to build a near silent HTPC. It not only dissipates less heat but also does not cost that much at all. µ