DX10.1 performance tested

WADING THROUGH an ocean of 3870X2 reviews, we did manage to find some other interesting stuff to mention in our daily roundup. For example, DirectX 10.1 seems to be the current domain of ATI and the 3800 series cards. XBit Labs has decided to put that “advantage” to the test with a comprehensive benchmarking of the HD 3850 and HD 3870 – another 30 pages worth of material here. Things aren't looking as good as marketeers claimed when it comes to DX10.1 gaming, so be careful where you tread – this might not be the deciding purchase factor at this point in time. Read all about it here.

Cases on wheels, or in this case, a SwordM VD5000BNA Super Tower Chassis, from Thermaltake. Every little aspect of this case reminds you of a supercar, with everything popping open for your camera’s delight. “Hand built”, they said, “hydraulics up the wazoo”, they gasped. Good ideas, new and old, all round, but a price tag to match the enormity: at least $450, so you better read it before you buy it.

Anandtech tries and explain the finer details of the ASUS ROG Rampage Formula. This means the BIOS explained through-and-through and some nice details about each setting that’ll let you understand your BIOS and overclock your PC better than ever. This is more of a guide to new ASUS BIOS’ than an actual review of the hardware. Hey! Everyone! Look at the BIOS here.

CustomPC.co.uk has a look at the screamin’ new 4G eeePC Linux-based laptop. Clive considers the advantages and disadvantages of owning such a piece of tech, but thinks users might be stuck on their Windows addiction. The inevitable comparison is there, and they think Windows users will grope around in the dark if they want to change anything on this particular machine. Get your review here.

Hardspell has gone out of its way to write a 30-page review of the 3600 series cards from ATI. The 3650 and 3690 were on the bench begging for some gaming punishment and HardSpell happily obliged. Although filled with lots of enigmatic English, you can understand where they’re getting at – for the mainstream and low-end graphics processing, this family of cards will satisfy your needs. They do face them off with an 8800GS and 8600GTS, which would be their immediate counterparts on the market. You can get the results here.

Legit Reviews has an encounter with a Diamond Radeon HD3850 – of the 512MB sort. This is the first review we’ve actually seen a 512MB 3850 – as most configs are restricted to 256MB. Diamond dropped the stock heatsink fan combo and replaced it by a two-slot config – which seems to be more and more the rule of thumb with graphics cooling. The 512MB seems to help quite a bit when we get to games like World in Conflict, but this becomes irrelevant when they go DX10.

If you’re as curious as we are about the Via CN processor (aka Isaiah) you can read about it at ChileHardware (or here if your Spanish sucks). For years, VIA CPU’s have been the object of jokes about its puny FPU ‘cause, way into the 21st century, it presented performance levels worthy of the early Pentium III’s. Well, the new FPU, out of order execution and L2 cache seem to bring some perspective to things. “Promising” seems to be the keyword for this CPU... maybe they can pick up where Transmeta left off. µ