Dual core Xeon tested

ADSL GUIDE has a nice review of the Solwise PL-85 PE 85Mbps Ethernet Homeplug Adapter. If you have tried wireless networking and you think that you've been fooled, then try Homeplug's solution which plugs in your main and allows PCs to communicate in between them. The adapter is not expensive but then, you can get up to 20Mbps of actual and constant throughput.

Tech Report reports on the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 line of hard disk drives. They actually tested the whole range. They support SATA 2.5 and NCQ of course. The 500GB version is the most affordable on the market and the five-year warranty comes handy. The 160GB single platter HDD is perfect for entry level power computers except that TR would be quite happy to see Seagate squeeze two of those in one drive and slap 16MB of cahe to it.

Legitreviews tests the DFI RDX200-CF-DR motherboard, the brand new competitor to Nvidia SLI chipset. Will Crossfire be able to beat SLI? It does have its cons but overall, it seems to be a performing and pretty much capable high end motherboard. BIOS options are plenty, eight SATA ports are provided, Dual GbE LAN, Karajan audio Module and the signature of a great brand. See what the conclusion says.

The new Dempsey Dual Core Xeon is under stressed at Anandtech. No longer is performance the main criteria upon which buying decisions are made. As power comsumption prices continue to rise, performance per watt becomes a crucial point. That's where AMD's Opteron currently holds the crown and this is more than evident when compared to the DC Dempsey Xeon. The reviewer finds out that even the new Xeon's power cost is around 80% more than AMD's Opteron.

Xbitlabs likes the Sapphire Radeon X1800XL video card but not enough to obsfuscate its shortcomings. It has a low performancce in OpenGL and generally slower than the 7800GT plus it shows poor overclockability. On the plus side, you can choose your own game bundle and it supports hardware decoding of some forthcoming HD codecs. A good buy if you can find it cheap.

Sysopt reviews the Corsair Twin 2X1024-5400C4 memory modules. Those DDR2 modules may be labelled as value but their unusual high performance destined them for something better as we will. They are rated at 675MHz and are everything but entry level. Excellent overclocking, absolute stability and lifetime warranty. Probably the best all rounder DDR2 memory out there. µ