More GTX 260 Core 216 versus HD 4870

HILBERT MUST BE going through Nvidia’s reviewer’s manual, as other sites have, and is retesting the GTX 260 Core 216 versus the HD 4870 1GB. The new drivers really give the GTX 260 Core 216 a boost, that’s for sure, although Guru 3D’s tests don’t show a clear enough advantage for a person to make a pick (possibly due to the Core i7 processor used). Check the testing, here.

Anandticks took the high-road and instead of gulping down a big dose of green, wrote up an interesting break-down of Forceware 180 features (you know, those that Big Bang II was delivered). No top five NV games tweaking here, so you’ll notice that 180 actually loses a bit compared to 178... funny, that.

Tweak Town is looking at the Asus Rampage II Extreme X58 motherboard. We guess Asus is running out of hyperboles to describe its mobos... The Rampage II Extreme goes hand in hand with the Core i7 processor, but neither are cheap, which make them good companions. Performance goes through the roof... right here.

Hardware Canucks got round to doing some Far Cry 2 tests. The game – now developed by Ubisoft Montreal – has great graphics as we all know and it runs well even on the lower-end of the high-end cards, meaning you needn’t buy the top performing cards to get it running well. Also, quad- and tri-core processors actually make good use of the extra cores over dual-cores. Very complete article, here.

Bit-Tech is doing part two of its DDR3 4GB memory roundup. As Core i7 comes into sight, memory makers are turning out high-performance memory at strict JEDEC-compliant voltages – 1.5V, as is this case. There’s an Elixir (Nanya) kit running a native DDR3-1600 part that powers on at 1.5V thrown in together with G.Skill, Patriot, Corsair and even some random DDR2-1066 for measure. You can read both parts here (Part 1) and here (Part 2)

The Atom is no great performer, we already knew that, but is it really worth taking into a desktop computer? Tom’s Shardware looks at the small-ish processor and compares it to an E7200 in a desktop computing environment. Apparently Atom is only good for devices that really need to save power, otherwise it struggles. Read the analysis here.

PlayReaction is back to the hardware review path. Today they’re testing a Creative Zen X-Fi. This model includes some simple additions that add a bit more value to the proposal. The wireless networking features, despite useful, need a little bit of polish. Apart from that, audio is great, says Christian.

Now that Core i7 is pushing DDR3 to the fore (the DRAMurai thank Intel) prices are coming down a teeny bit. XS Reviews took the opportunity to test out the Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC3-10600. It’s got LEDs for a bit of the flashy modder look and they perform adequately. Price is the clincher here: £82 for 2x1GB... not too bad... Read it here. µ