All that HD 4870X2 coverage in full

TODAY THE WHIRLED WIDE WIBBLE is chock full of HD 4870X2 reviews. That’s no surprise tho’ as the NDA ended today and hordes of editors primed once more the “post” buttons in their CMS’, and bugger me sideways, even Hilbert got an AMD sample on time for once.

Seriously, the DAAMIT-spawn is pumping out the highest framerate known to Geekdom and leaving the GTX280 a blubbering whiner in the dirt. We got you everything we could find on the card – a meagre 21 reviews of pure fps delight - and don’t mind that the test systems were invariably Intel’s.

The list, in no particular order, here’s what we found:

Hardware Canucks

TweakTown

Guru3D

AMDZone

Madshrimps

Tom’s Hardware

TechPowerUp

Anandtech

PC Perps

OCC

Tech Report

ComputerBase.de

Hot Hardware

Hexus.net

Neoseeker

Elite Bastards

Driver Heaven

Club Overclocker

PC Games Hardware

Firing Squad

and...

Phoronix (Hell yeah!)

But all is not DAAMIT’s X2 devil card today, there’s more than that for you to go through.

First off, XBit Labs is looking at three high-priced CPU coolers. Aptly named “Expensive but...”, Noctua, Thermalright and Zalman duke it out to take the CPU cooling elite crown. The article was supposed to bring three coolers from the mainstream range into focus, but it turned out they were a bit more expensive than anticipated. Still, they do make for good cooling devices and you always want to know where the best bang-for-your-buck is. Get it here.

Biostar doesn’t make many headlines, but this one at PC Stats we thought you shouldn’t miss out on. The motherboard known as the TPower I45 is a monster overclocker in a league of its own, leaving many a first-tier brand in its wake. How about a 575MHz FSB on an Intel E8400? That’s pretty damn good for a company who has very little OC-cred. Read about the TPower, here.

If you think the 9600GT has given all its got and it can now go silently into the night, well...you’re wrong. Asus has come up with an eighth (yeah, eighth) variant on the 9600GT, dubbed the Asus ROG Extreme N9600GT Matrix. But what does it all mean? Well, Legion Hardware shows you the the best 9600GT to date (cooling-wise) and adds total control over the power and performance settings. Pricing is the downside, tho’. Get it here.

Trusted Reviews is looking at a new trigger-happy digital camera from Samsung. Well, Samsung isn’t really known for its great cameras, but this one has a twist. It’s called the i8 and it looks like a light-blue bar of soap – what it does is it plays MP3s and movies on the big LCD on the back – which is cool. You can get it for just £100 which sounds pretty reasonable if you ask us. Read about it, here.

Tweaktown is testing Trendnet’s powerline 200Mbps kit. We’re a bit cautious when looking at these things as the results usually vary wildly, but in this case there was a baseline for comparison: CAT6. Yes, we know it isn’t fair, but considering the alternative (wireless 802.11n, in this case), powerline does seem to hold its own at mid-range distances (about 75m). It’s OK if you don’t have a wired-up environment and need to get the signal across longer distances and multiple floors. Get yo’ networking stuff here. µ