Cheapest 64-bit CPU tested

ANANDTECH DOES a roundup of the best AMD Athlon 64 nForce 4 Ultra on the market. They actually name this one "mainstream" - which might not give you the right view of the awesome power that some of those boards encompass. Seven motherboards are scrutinized. Epox and DFI are right on target. You can even get a $90 Epox nForce which has to be the best value mobo right now. The Aspire X-Qpack is tagged by Anandtech as the Lanpartyer Dream. It has excellent layout, a 120mm fan, a removable motherboard tray and a LCD temperature monitor plus a 420w PSU. It is a microATX casing btw, sandwiched between a pure SFF and a midi case. And it is cheap, very cheap at $90 and don't forget the included PSU. A last article from Anandtech was the Battlefield 2 GPU performance analysis, battlefield can be played on budget video cards - nVidia cards preferably though at very low resolutions. A draw at midrange and the top is completely 0wn5d by nVidia with the 7800GTX especially in SLI.

Tweaktown checks the Gigabyte K8VT890-9 which is situated just below the nForce4 Ultra in terms of pricing. Based on VIA's K8T890, it is long and welcomed attempt from VIA's to reclaim its title of preferred AMD platform from nVidia. The reviewer is still shouting for an updated VIA southbridge - come on guys, give us a SATA II, GbE and a 7.1 audio chipset.

When enthusiasts want to buy the most powerful CPU, they usually get the most expensive one. What about motherboards? Your safest bet is to get the most feature ladden one. The Asus P5WD2 Premium Wifi TV edition is near the top of your list. Based on the 955X express, it has more features than you can list. Five SATA cables, Firewire, WiFI TV PCI card, IR remote controller, FM antenna, AV cables, six SATA II controllers, twin GbE ports and much more. A fabulous motherboard let down by memory compatibility and divider problems. The second review, they come up with is the Pioneer DVR-A09XLA - based on the firmware 1.55. Writing nine pages on an optical drive where most technologies have already matured is a feat in itself. DVD writing can be done at 16x with a 2MB cache. Performance is up to expectattion, especially from a premium brand like Pioneer. But its price and some nagging problems might put some people off.

AMDzone has taken a Sempron 3100+ - Palermo Core - and pushed played a little with it. Main difference with the Paris core it replaces is the 64-bitness it introduces. Not much difference in performance. You can now bet that by the time Longhorn will be launch, a substantial number of computers will be 64-bit ready. Oh, and the price of the is quite good at only $78.

Nowadays, Acer is one of those huge manufacturers which delves into much more than mere components. They manufacture almost everything from Servers to laptops to LCD monitors, optical drives and mice. Phoronix checks the L1714-CB8, a 17-inch LCD monitor from them which has a recommended resolution of 1280x1024 pixels and a superb response time of 8ms. It comes with an external adapter - which is a bad thing I believe since integrated ones usually stabilise the monitor. Overall the monitor's performance is on par with the industry's average while its price will earn it much more buyers. No DVI here though.

* Question to you all. What is the quickest non volatile method to improve on Windows Swapfile. Hardcore SCSI solution or RAID zeroing. My excuses for yesterday's mistake about the Epson PMP2000. Yes it does support MP3, MP4, video and RAW format - though not any RAW. Had to re-read the article to make sure I did no mistake. Here it is again. Thank you to those eagle eyed readers. µ