“Fantastic” E7200 amazes reviewer

“BUDGET SUPERSTAR” (amongst other things) that’s what Rob at Tech Gage is calling Intel’s E7200. This little piggy is dealing out an impressive amount of performance for a cheap-o price tag. Although most enthusiasts won’t consider a 31 per cent overclock worth their time, they might give it another look if you consider it’s a sub-$150 CPU that will easily overclock its 266MHz bus to 333MHz (ie: effectively putting it on the same level as an E8500, cache notwithstanding). We’d like to see some E7200 vs. 8600 numbers, Rob, if you please. Read the review.

We’ve all heard how performing the 780G chipset’s integrated graphics can be, now we’re reading how absolutely green and nice AMD’s 780G chippery is, or is it? Anandtech got to the bottom of this matter by comparing the current integrated chipsets on Intel, AMD and Nvidia technology. 780G, Gefore 8200 and G35 right here. Everything is a shade of green, some greener than others... care to guess who?

WD’s 300GB VelociRaptor is on the bench at a couple of sites today. The hard-drive actually looks like one giant heatsink (it’s actually called the IcePAK), and we can imagine that temps under the hood are similar to the sun’s core. Well, the innovative design here has pushed the 3.5-inch platters into a 2.5-inch design, leaving additional space for cooling. The drive also gets a SATA II upgrade over the previous Raptors. Truth be said, the slowest component in your PC has just become a whole lot faster. Wonder how insanely fast this kit is if its RAIDed... Catch HotHardware’s review here, and PCPer’s h ere.

The Hardware Canucks have found an interesting piece of kit that will, hopefully, bolster your system’s stability and life expectancy – the ThermalRight IFX-10 backside cooler, a CAD $30 upgrade that will suck some heat from the backside of the CPU, rather than from the top. Its most notable performance is precisely aiding stock coolers do their job, rather than improve the already high-end performance of aftermarket coolers, it’s also 100% silent. HC has some numbers we’re sure you’ll enjoy.

Give credit where credit is due – we’ve seen a ton of sites pointing linking to one site or another claiming it’s laid bare the performance numbers comparing Intel’s Atom to VIA’s Isaiah, but credit really has to go to these guys here. Eeepcnews.de has CrystalMark 2004r3 numbers up, quoting ALU and FPU performance.

Would it surprise you to see Isaiah giving Atom a good thrashing? No performance-per-watt numbers, though, but considering VIA’s track record, we’re inclined to say the balance weighs towards VIA. µ