Crosshair motherboards are the best AM2 around

AMD ZONE tests the latest Asus Crosshair motherboard. It is officially produced for the Republic of Gamers. The board comes with a fairly complete set of accessories including an Array Microphone, a SupremeFX sound card and a set of IOs to match any top of the range motherboard. There's even a LCD as well as a massive heatpipe to cool the relatively warm nVidia chipset. Asus even threw in an impressive number of quality software.

PC Perspective also has a review of the Asus Crosshair nForce 590 SLI AM2 mobo. I would have expect the Crosshair name to be paired with Crossfire but it was not the case. PC Perspective found out that it was difficult to dissociate Crossfire with Crosshair as it got entangled once in the conclusion. The board is really a killer, a top of the range motherboard that performs and overclocks well with the ability to over-volt to 3.2v. It is even slightly better BIOSwise than the DFI board based on the same chipset. BTW, yesterday's correct URL for PC Perspective review is here.

Speaking of Asus, an eagle-eyed reader browsed their site and sent us comparative photos of AM2 Crossfire boards photos and nForce 5x0 SLI ones. Now one thing that jumps to you is the fact at that ATI uses passive heatsinks. No fans here whereas Nvidia chipset seems to need a massive amount of cooling to dissipate the heat. Our reader concluded that it would be interesting to see how AM2 Athlons & Crossfire 3200 stand from the power consumption perspective. That would be a very interesting contest indeed. I wonder how much a Crossfire coupled with a x2 3800+ EE consume.

BIOS Magazine tests the Canon Digital IXUS 800 IS digital camera. It oozes class and quality. It has a large display, produces top-notch images and puts back fun in photography according to BIOS. But you will have to pay premium prices for that and there's no carry case. Many will give their blessings to the image stabiliser and to the SD/MMC compatibility - no xD card here. The IXUS 800 is deal for the trendy prosumer it seems.

HardOCP reports on the Sapphire Toxic Liquid Cooled X1900XTX which in some benchmarks matches the performance of a 7950GX2 video card which has two GPUs onboard. What is unique with it is that it has a self contained liquid cooling unit and is therefore slightly overclocked. It also means that it is more silent than others. ATI is wise here to use water cooling. nVidia can't use that on their GX2 or SLI cards because of cost and space constraints.

Trusted Reviews, er, reviews the Relisys RLT26AG 26-inch HDTV screen. Not that much expensive and readily available. It consumes a fraction of the power used by plasma screens and cathode ray tube models. It is also compatible with HDTV signals. Now Relisys is a bit of a jack of all trade when it comes to multimedia. Still, that does not mean that it is perfect, far from that. The panel used is apparently substandard and the contrast is poor plus colours patchy at most. Better buy a more expensive model and get value for money.

If you want to send in reviews, hardware or software, don't hesitate, just bring them in. I am particularly fond of exotic hardware that you won't find elsewhere. Even if the review is not in English, as long as it is interesting and entertaining. Send it in. Also I would be glad if someone could point me to a recent directory of hardware websites. µ