AMD AM2 technology tested

HKEPC has more than a few information on the new AM2 socket technology from AMD. New names like Brisbane and Sparta are popping up on the new roadmap displayed there, on top of Manila, Orleans and Windsor. 65nm is for 1H07 according to that roadmap. There's also plenty of information on the Live! platform, which is divided into PC and Entertainment PC, the latter being geared towards SFFs. Finally, there's a review of the X2 4800+ AM2 CPU.

IGN reviews the Alienware M7700 laptop, a $5000 laptop, a blue model with a FX60, 2GB memory, 256MB Geforce 7800GTX, two 80GB 7200-rpm in RAID-0, a DVD writer, a 17-inch 1440x900 LCD monitor and a design to die for. You can upgrade the LCD monitor if you want. It is one of the heaviest laptop around - probably to be called a luggable rather than a laptop. But it is by far the most powerful laptop out there.

Dave from Beyond3D the Leadtek Winfast PX7300GS TDH video card, a 128MB G72-based GPU. The 7300 is much better than the 6200TC it replaces for example, although both share Turbocache. The 7300GS was consistently better than the 6200 but would still fail to impress against other competitors for example, Nvidia's own 6600LE or ATI's cards. The 7300GS is widely available though.

Newcomer Epiacenter reviews, an Epia N800E Nano ITX board which holds very easily on one hand. That motherboard combo comes with a CoreFusion processor, HDTV encoder, loads of connectors, a SATA controller and much more. It is not powerful, think Pentium 3 600MHz to get a rough idea. Horrible driver support for Windows and a very high price makes it a very very elusive purchase. Only for those who like VIA or want an even smaller footprint than a nano-notebook.

Hothardware tests the Plextor PX-EH25L-NA NAS device. A NAS is a Network Attached Storage which is basically storage on demand, when you need it. With prices of hard disk drives coming down faster than gravity, there's no excuse not to have one, especially if you stream a lot of multimedia files. The Plextor model is a 250GB one with an integrated Print Server and is built like a external disk drive.

French website OvercleX reviews Cebit 2006 with many photos, with the Dual PCB/Dual GPU 7900GT top of the list. Twenty one pages with more than a few photos and some surprises from Asus like the Silent Square and the Silent Knight which resemble two orange cooler fans glued together. µ