AMD FX-55 overclocked by 1GHz

Those cards will usually carry a premium - Asus products almost always do - and performance was on par or better than competition especially as overclocking kicked in. Digital Daily also tests the new MSI P4N Diamond nVidia nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition board.

The board does not support Dual Core as far as I know but do offer some serious firepower. Ten USB 2.0 port, onboard Creative Labs SB Live, three Firewire ports and six SATA II RAID connectors on top of the two ATA ones. Plus you have your SLI slots and two GbE ports. Unlike some of its competitors, the P4N has a digital bridge rather than a physical one to connect the video cards in SLI mode. Recommended by DDaily.

AMD Zone overclocks an Athlon 64 by 1GHz to 3.6GHz.

Hardwarezone takes the Sapphire Radeon X850XT PE AGP Version to the test. It is probably the fastest card in AGP mode. No AGP 7800GTX is planned for the near future. It has 256MB of 1.19GHz GDDR3 memory and the core is clocked at 540MHz as well as an onboard VIVO Rage Theatre chip. It is a two slot video card solution so plan ahead. Overclocking is more than impressive and pushes the limit of the AGP platform even more.

The second review is that of a killer board, the PCI-e based Leadtek Winfast PX7800GTX TDH MyVIVO. 475MHz core speed - overclocked out of the box - and 1.25GHz Memory speed. Add two DVI I connectors to that as well as the 7800GTX own set of features and you've got a real powerhouse. Like the X850XT above, this one comes with a Philips discrete video decoder as well as connections for S Video and Composite. One of the brighter aspects of the card is the software bundle that is worth some good money.

The last review from HWZ is that of the Samsung Q30 Centrino Ultra Slim Notebook. Its bordeaux colour differs from its competitors and give it a unique look. It uses a ULV Pentium M 753 clocked at 1.2GHz, 256MB memory, a 40GB HDD and a 12.1-inch WXGA screen. The optical drive is an external one but you still have an internal modem, wired/wireless LAN and loads of IO ports. At 1.1Kg and 1.8cm thick, it is a most enviable object and it comes with a very expensive price tag.

Hothardware covers the MSI NX6600GT-VTD128SP video card. Why do video cards have to carry such awkward names. Lately, there has been a revival of AGP cards. Perhaps manufacturers learnt that gamers after all are much more conservative on their purchase decisions - as proved by the Half Life 2 survey. The MSI graphics card uses the 6600GT chipset and includes the Chronicles of Riddick game. If you don't care about the bundle, you might better go for a X800. In their second review, two dual core ready motherboards featuring the i945P chipset are compared.

The Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 and the Gigabyte GA-8I945P-G go head to head. Their features are notably similar with the Foxconn having Firewire extra while Overclocking seems to favour Gigabyte. The prospect of having a cheap dual core platform should not be overlooked.

Finally, Bonafide reviews the Connect3D All in Wonder Radeon X800XT 256MB AGP version. Probably the best all rounder AGP card currently on sale. Given the wealth of features that comes with this card, it would make sense to consider the price premium paid in context. The AIW X800XT comes with GDDR3 memory and is clocked at 500/1000Mhz core/clock plus it takes onl one slot. It comes as a Multimedia/gamer card but do succeed in quenching both the gamers thirst for performance and the HTPC enthusiast for features. Anyway, there's no competition right now from Nvidia. µ