Athlon X2 faces-off Phenom

ONE OF THOSE interesting “What If?” scenarios is put to the test at Tom’s Hardware Guide. In this case it’s pitting an Athlon X2 against a Phenom. Naturally you’ll be screaming “What?! Quad vs dual core?!”, but no... they did everything in single core (the other side of the room is screaming “What?! Phenom vs. Athlon on single core only?!”). Although Phenom does show some gains, it feels like little comfort for consumers willing to upgrade. Find out what they are saying right here.

Nvidia’s 8800GT – based on the reference design - has a diagnosed malady right from the get go. Albeit the performance you get out of the kit, it’s noisy and for some reason these cards keep on overheating. XFX and eVGA have acknowledged that they “have a BIOS to run the fan faster in 3D aps for better overclocking” – which you can get from their support sites. However HardOCP took this one step further and just got on with replacing the fan altogether. They’ve done a round-up of aftermarket 8800GT fans which you can read here. If your fan is getting to you... just do it.

Something completely different at Dragon Steel Mods – believe us – the 3^rd generation Space Gaming Vest is under scrutiny there. This is “force feedback” applied to a vest, so you can feel the impact of enemy fire when it hits you, albeit without the longer-lasting nasty side-effect (injury or death). DSM took the vest to a LAN event, subjected some players to the experience and got their feedback on video. Check it out here. Suggestion to the manufacturer: get a real Kevlar vest and replace the Kevlar padding with the pressure pads... it’ll make design simpler and add realism.

Have mate will travel. Acer, that is. ITReviews.co.uk has a review on the Acer Travelmate 6292. They call it ultra-portable, we call it 2.6Kg (6lbs.). They seem to like it well enough: it’s cheap, it’s compact (measuring a little over an A4 sheet of paper in perimeter). It even includes an integrated webcam on the LCD frame. Battery life is about 2 hours, they measured.

French site, Les Numeriques (Anglais ici), points out, and rightly so, that the average cost of the HDD gigabyte has bottomed out at about 20 €urocents. They face off 5 HDD contenders from Hitachi, Seagate and WD – with WD taking top place in this round-up. They also include some handy tips for putting the HDD into an external enclosure and have some tables on the cost of the GB (or Go for the francophones), broken down into capacities.

Antec has updated their Sonata III chassis which you can see at Burnout PC. This time it includes an EarthWatts 500 power supply which – says the author – is powerful enough to drive your components and makes very little noise. As is usual in Antec/Chieftec cases, HDD mounting is on sliding brackets perpendicular to the length of the case (get L-shaped SATA connectors otherwise it’s a close shave). According to the reviewer, the case is very silent, but not terribly spacious. They seem to be sold on the case.

Speaking of 500W, Paul at Froggytest (click hither for English) rounded-up a bunch of PSU’s ranging from 500W to 880W, including the aforementioned Earthwatts 500. The Hiper 4M630 and the PC Power and Cooling Silencer 610W come out on top, but if you have it in for a more silent solution they recommend you look at the Antec Phantom. µ