G965, 1946G Nextgen Intel chipsets exposed

HKEPC has some very saucy information about forthcoming Intel Technology. First the next IGP from Intel. the G965 - not i965G - will be SM3.0 compatible, bringing it to the same level as the X300. Other stuff will include MPEG2 hardware acceleration and a HDMI interface. There's also plenty on the ICH8 south bridge and the i946G MCH which will support the 800MHz Conroe family and is probably aimed at the entry level rather than top end.

Realworldtech has yet another tidbit from ISSCC2006, this time it is some details about the new 90nm dual core Opteron from AMD. This one has been build using SOI process and integrated DDR2 memory controller. One photo of the F-stepping processor is posted there as well as the fact that it will be a 2.6GHz part, 95W and 1.35V model.

Matbe tests the HD160, an HTPC case from Zalman, the Korean manufacturer of cooling equipment, renowned for its quality and perfomance. The aluminium made casing is one of the better out there. Even if it is a little bit bigger than its counterparts, this is not a disadvantage since you can therefore install all sorts of components without restrictions. Oh, and you have a remote control and an integrated card reader.

Techreport has a roundup of 2.5-inch SATA hard disk drives which seem to be the new kids in town. There are two pair of Seagate and Hitachi HDDs. The former beats the second one in many tests even if Travelstar spins at 7200rpm. Seagate has five years warranty and a 8MB cache. No perpendicular technology right now and the Momentus 7200.1 would even be better value for money. As for size, well both are 100+GB monsters.

Digitlife checks the Gigabyte K8N51PVMT-9 maATX motherboard which uses the 6150/430 couple, the best combination for entry level IGP performance currently available. The board is targetted at HTPC manufacturers looking for a small yet powerful/complete model. For complete it is complete. You get a break out box with it, Norton Internet Security 2005, audio from the ALC880, GbE, Firewire, HDTV support but alas, no overclocking options.

The HP Pavilion S7220N is a cute small micro computer. It uses a Celeron M 370, which is kinda weird for a desktop computer but still very affordable. On top of that you get a dual layer DVD writer, 512MB memory and a 200GB HDD. But there's no graphic card to play around - it uses a i915GV. I would still buy it though since it is relative cheap and comes with add ons like memory card slot and a stylish keyboard combo. µ