Overclocking on a budget

IS THERE SUCH A THING as “budget overclocking?” Well, Anandtech may have proof positive: an ASRock Penryn 1600SLI-110dB, a 650i-based mobo which can do it, but like so many things in the ASRock shipyards, it shouldn’t even exist. Gary plugged an E8400 and a QX9650 – both bred by the board’s namesake Penryn process and overclocked them with a great deal of success... you’d never tell you were playing around with a $100 mobo. Click here for budget overclocking.

NordicHardware looks into an odd piece of kit from BigfootNetworks – the KillerNIC. It’s odd, because we haven’t seen this kind of review take place in aeons... maybe because it’s hard work. Well, the KillerNIC promises to optimize your latency when gaming, whether in a LAN or online – and according to NH, don’t be misguided into thinking NICs only improve your latency – they also seem to do something (and we use this term very widely) for your framerate. Interesting piece.

Nvidia’s 9600GT got an outing at TweakTown, late Friday. The card has been dubbed by many, an ATI-killer and – for ATI’s sake – let’s hope it isn’t. The 9600GT performs a little under an Asus HD 3870. It’s really a matter of which colour you like best: red or green? Because apart from that they are both great performers for (what is to be expected) a decent price. If you’re aching to know what the fuss is all about, go here.

The iPaq name lives on, and has given birth to a series of small computing devices like this one here at Neowin forums. The HP iPaq 312 Travel Companion GPS is smallish and hi-res, which is surprising if you consider it integrates the GPS module. The Centrality Titan 600MHz CPU seems overwhelmed by the requir ements of the software. Zheng seems to be satisfied with the interface, though. The custom HP interface, looks great on the 800x480 screen. Look at the pretty pictures here.

We’re not really in the habit of talking about podcasts, but PCPerspective has put up its latest offering and seems to be getting somewhere with its “who’s the likely buyer for AMD?” The ‘cast has over an hour’s worth of material, and it’s quite the “state of the union” for the market right now. Lend them your ears.

We know tablets (not tablet PCs), have come up with a budget tablet range for your PC – the Wacom Bamboo Fun. Mikhail Tech spent some time poking their pen at it and thinks Wacom’s come up trumps. This particular tablet range is targeted at Windows Vista, so if you’ve shed your XP-self, you might want to read this article. Inexpensive, great design, Vista-oriented. Some minor faults, but still ok, it seems.

Last, but certainly not least, we mentioned that the Samsung 27-inch Synmcaster 275T monitor on Friday wasn’t HDCP compliant – but it is... silliness strikes us every now and then. Thank you for the five gazillion readers who reminded us of that.

We do think it makes for a very decent thing to buy if you’re looking for something in the full HD range that doesn’t break the bank. Apologeeks. µ