Nvidia's Intel chipset tested

BIOS MAGAZINE reviews the Trust Predator GM-1200 USB Digital Gamepad. It is low cost and good quality gamepad. It is wired though and the ergonomy could be well improved. The GM 1200 does not cost the earth though at just over a tenner. You have the usual buttons plus a turbo button which helps you getting into auto mode. At least even without forcefeedback and programmable button, it is guaranteed to function with almost every system with a USB port.

The 955x motherboards are now two a penny and very much available everywhere. The Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal Motherboard is fully packed with features you would expect from high end motherboards. Universal Dual Power System, dual GbE LAN and Firewire, Gigaraid IDE RAID controller - six SATA II connectors welcome you, Intel Matrix Storage, HDA with Dolby Master Studio support, Dual BIOS. Of course, you get a huge number of accessories, more than twenty of them. Great performance, high price and nice overclocking. Top marks reward the board.

Lesnumeriques tests 14 - 24 with the variants - digital camcorders; from Canon, Samsung, JVC, Panasonic and Sony. A relatively detailed and well explained comparative review. There's the cheap Panasonic camcorder under £200 to the more expensive prosumre HD camcorder from Sony. You've got some DVD based recorders and of course some HDD based ones. You can even interactively compare the camcorders in face a face.

The latest nForce 4 SLI XE/Ultra chipset, just released has been tested by a number of websites including HKEPC here. It is very important to note that Intel has now taken over AMD with three SLI platform compared to AMD's two. The XE will target the entry level while the ultra aims at even lower. Both support 1066MHz FSB, up to 4GB memory and features like eight PATA/SATA ports, 10 USB ports, RAID5, RAID Morphing, GbE, HD Audio, Active Armor security items. HKEPC actually has the MSI P4N SLI v2.0 and the Gigabte 8N-775 motherboards. The 975x chipset has a very serious competitor while the intel platform catches up a little bit with AMD when it comes to gaming.

Trusted reviews has the Asus A8N-VM CSM mATX motherboard under the microscope. Comes with the Geforce 6150/430 chipset - this pair is actually the best value for money entry level system. It comes with TVO, support for HD Audiio, Firewire port, GbE controller and surprisingly four memory slots. Only two PCI are provided though. The integrated graphics is even less powerful thatn the 6200TC but the motherboard itself is as performing as most mid range motherboards

We've all heard about that story about that guy who burnt his ping pongs with a laptop. Might be an urban legend but when my laptop CPU regularly reached 78 degrees and then switched off, I was convinced of the use of a notebook cooling pad. A1 Electronics.net tests one of them, the Titan G3T Cooling Pad. There are two fans and a low noise level. It seems to work although I need to get more feedback first before committing to it. µ