Asus makes laptop gaming ‘affordable’

ASUS HAS MADE AN EFFORT at creating an affordable gaming laptop. It’s called the G50V and Laptop Mag has one at the office for review. Not too big, not too expensive, great performance… it’s very good, but then again, there’s the Gateway P-7811FX, says Todd, which you can buy for about the same price and scores higher on gaming. There are a lot of neat Asus features in there too, it seems. Find out what’s up with the G50V.

Tom’s Shardware has compiled its latest VGA charts, now consisting of 101 configurations and spanning five generations-worth of hardware. These not only list performance but also show how a decent CPU removes bottlenecks from the overall system performance, particularly in the high-end. Tino Kreiss is making Intel’s case on this one… read it here.

Hardware Zone has a roundup of 8800GT’s… whoops… or is that ‘9800GTs’? The 9800GT is a slightly different class than the 8800GT as it offers performance for a lower buck, and – best of all – better temps (and no whiny fan). Kenny got Gigabyte, Palit, Asus and Zotac together and mixed them up. Some funny stuff going on with the Palit and Gigabyte cards, tho’… they have different coolers, but they’re drawing about 40W extra… deemed “worth looking into”, here.

Overclock 3D has some 2x2GB Ballistix kit from Crucial that they’re testing. It’s rated as DDR3-10600 (1333MHz), but does some great overclocking at 1600MHz where it hit its ceiling. The best part was that the memory performed well at install without having to manually set anything. The price isn’t what you’d want, the £206 seems a bit heavy, but then again it *is* DDR3. Read it here.

Eliot at Fudzilla tore Via a new one with their review of the Nano CPU. Although the review is harsh, comparing the CPU to things from a decade ago, it seems that the sample motherboard is to blame. This is the first review that’s really found the Nano to be lacking, but maybe it really is the motherboard… You can read it here.

Zaward isn’t a name you most likely know. Neither is Gyre, for that matter, but TweakTown has a Zaward Gyre CPU cooler in the lab today. As heat-pipe CPU coolers go, the Gyre does a decent job – and it looks like Zaward is on the right path – but some fine tuning is required for the brand to go head-on against the big boys. Availability? Well, try and find one yourself, ‘cos Chris just couldn’t guarantee it’d be on a shelf near you. Read about the Gyre, here.

XS Reviews also has a fairly unknown contender in the CPU cooler arena: the AMA Serac 770. AMA is a specialist manufacturer of watercooling systems, that happens to make this particular piece of kit. XS says it’s all very silent, efficient and fun to set up, but as water cooling goes it just barely outperforms high-end air-coolers. It’s dead quiet but no info on pricing has made this a judgement call. Read the quizzical article here.