Mini Freeview Tuner tested

BELGIAN website Madshrimps lays its hands on an Opteron 165 and puts it in overdrive. What is surprising is the quality of their heatsink which comes with four heat pipes and a 80x25 fan. The reviewer barely achieved the 2.6Ghz though; there's a short list of quickfixes, mainly software based, if you happen to hit any major problems when running a dual core processor. Worth noting.

OCModshop tests a minute memory card, the San Disk 1GB miniSD, which is the size of a thumbnail. It comes with a special adapter and a five year warranty. Tests were done using different card readers, a digital camera and a couple of pocket PC. There is apparently no compatibility or corruption problems and speed is more than adequate for everyday tasks.

Last review of the day is from Xtreme Computing, the Yuan DVB-T mobility PD300 is a nice thumbdrive size external USB 2.0 TV Tuner. As you can guess, it is Freeview compatible, and it also comes with also comes with its own retractable antenna and one external one as well. The software is easy to understand and to work with. Reception is pretty nice andit even comes with a remote control.

Laptoplogic upgrades the MXM module on a Dell Precision M70 Laptop. There's a couple of disclaimers as well as this operation is not without risk. The workstation laptop that is the M70 is the perfect partner for the 7800GTX Go although it comes with only 256MB memory.

Look like US based outfit Polywell has start sending test machines in a bid to get some PR out there. AMDzone has a reviwe of their 939N4-SLI2 X2 machine which comes packed with a X2 4800+. Polywell generally performs well in workstation setup and even here, does not give up. With two 7800GTX cards, Dual GbE, 1GB memory and some more features, it produces some exceptional figures. Not exactly cheap but then, two 512MB 7800GTX never did come cheap.

Then there's the Minibox 939NP from Viperlair. It comes with the cheapest X2 around, the 3800+ and is build around the 430GE/6150 couple. The rest is pretty much standard and just what you would expect. The Media Center PC is actually housed in an Aspire X-Qpack case. You get an Nvidia based TV Tuner but no separate video card. Don't expect any overclocking but performance was what you could expect from a pre built system. The tuner seems to be the big let down. µ