More Turion 64 X2 testing arrives

CLUB OVERCLOCKER tests the PC2-8000 Platinum XTC DDR2 memory from OCZ. Been there seen that. The OCZ breaches the 1GHz barrier and the XTC moniker qualifies the special heatspreader that is used. It comes with a lifetime warranty, is unbuffered and has a 2.2v extented voltage protection. You sacrifice latency, and the review actually tells you whether you did it right or not. Bear in mind that you are paying some extra premium for those 2GB memory. The lad reviewing this model did not max the module out and stopped at a paltry 67MHz.

Xbitlabs checks the Intel Core Duo under new light. They overclock it to its maximum - well almost. The Aopen i975Xa-YDG mainboard is used to achieve that with full overclocking control. Other features include a 975x chipset, Firewire, SATA300 channel, Matrix RAID support, Integrated Sound and Network etc. They managed to overclock the T2600 to 3GHz, a 40% increase. The overclocked T2600 is tabula rasa. It is faster than anything that Intel and AMD have been churning out in the last few months. While the Aopen and the T2600 are not available right now, by the time they come out, you can guess that it will be the fastest solution money can buy.

IT-review has more information on the new Microstar range of AM2 based motherboards. As Vedran, the webmaster points to the fact that they all have passive cooling, some of the motherboards come with Dual VGA outputs and all come in either red or black colour. There are nine photos in all. It might pay to view the full sized photos of these motherboards. You can get some very good surprises. Chipsets included are the Nforce 5x0 model and the RD580/SB600-based one.

Hardwarezone reports on the AMD Turion 64 X2 through the pins of an MSI S271 laptop which is squarely aiming at the Acer Ferrari range with some funky designs, a black colour and a few graphics. After a few introducting paragrahs and some words on the laptop itself, the test results were revealed. A few things to be noted. The new Turion 64 still has 1MB cache in total meaning that each core receives half of it. While the benchmarks show that the new Turion holds it own against some other processors, one has to wonder why no Pentium M or Core Duo were included and why only Futuremark products were used.

XYZcomputing reviews the Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000KS 500GB Hard disk drive, which makes mine seems puny. While Seagate's latest 750GB dwarfs even this one, the SE16 has an attractive price and comes with 16MB cache. Granted it does not perform as well as some half terabyte hard disk drives out there - it gets compared with a Raptor and a Seagate drive, but it is still a very potent competitor and one to watch as price tumbles.

The Antec Laptop Cooler is reviewed at the Overclockers Club. Makes your hot laptop works cool on your table or on your lap. With the new generation of processors, that might well become obsolete quickly. No software or special arrangement is needed. You still need a free USB port and the cooling is done by two 80mm fans and four rubber feet. You get the now almost indispensable blue LED as well which cools the laptop pretty effectively.It is very quiet when in use and does not require an external power source. Nothing much to say on top of that. µ