Presler, Pentium 4 643 and 640 compared

THE LIBRETTO has had a faithful following since it was launched almost a decade ago. The P75 laptop is still sold for a premium on the net. Hardwarecentral has a review of the Toshiba Libretto U100, a fully featured, Centrino branded, laptop with a P-M processor, 512MB memory and a 60GB HDD. Pity though, the real estate offered by the laptop is not utilised wisely. The screen could have been much wider and the thickness trimmed by a fraction of an inch at least. Toshiba might learn one or two tricks from Sony on that.

Laptoplogic shows you in simple steps how to build a laptop, out of one of these white box laptops from MSI, the 1029. Laptoplogic goes through the disadvantages and advantages of building your own lappy. You also get the full details on how to do it the right way. No anti static bracelet, only a couple of screwdrivers and some free time should be enough.

HKEPC checks the new Gigabyte GA-G1975X motherboard with the Pentium XE 955 - Pressler - and the P4 643. The XE955, with a 1.066GHz FSB and twice the cache as the XE840 is around 5 to 10% more performing than the latter. HKEPC also gets to run Pressler on the on' grandad i865PE, still performing and vigourous. Also under scrutiny is the P4 643, the 640 and performance on the 975x and the 955x plus some tidbits on SLI.

Bluesmoke tests the AMD Sempron 3400+ processor. Unlike the Sempron 3300+ which sports 128KB cache, a step which brought make it slower than a Celeron, the 3400+ comes with 256KB L2 cache. Bluesmoke overclocks the baby to 2.7GHz up from 2GHz and it matches the Athlon 64 3700+ in most benchmarks.

Cluboverclocker tests one favourite of ours, the DFI NF4 SLI infinity motherboard. It basically looks like a mini-me of the Lan Party with less features and less colours. The board offers top notch performance and overclocking ability with a very good price tag. It might be quite light on features - no dual GbE, no flashing lights or passive heat sinks.. But the DFI wins downright when it comes to its price. Four thumbs up.

Bjorn3D has a review of the Albatron 6600GT both in single and SLI configuration. You've got a mini break out box, a smallish HSF for the GPU and passive heatsinks for the memory. In SLI mode, the card easily surpasses the X850XT and breathes down the neck of the X1800XL in 3Dmark 05. Two of those cards cost $248, $150 less than a X1800XL. As SLI matures, you can expect even more improvements with the forthcoming detonators. The bundle might seem to be a little bit thin, but at least it reflects in the price. µ