Phenom II X4 940 vs. the QX 9770 vs. the Core i7 965

THE UNQUESTIONABLE scoop of the day is at OCW. The site has a comparison review of the Phenom II X4 940 vs. the QX 9770 vs. the Core i7 940. The tests show the Phenom II to be very competent and, above all, it doesn't break the bank. In most games it'll equal the Core i7 940, but trail the QX 9770. Overclocking is also very good, as you can get some good overclocks (~800MHz) on air with this Phenom II. Considering it costs half of what costs the i7 and a quarter of a QX 9770, things might be looking up for AMD... we can 'ardly wait for those DDR3 versions of the Phenom II.

Click here.

Eliot at Fudzilla dropped us a line, we didn't pick up on their coverage of the Kuma processor, (nor did our spy network find the Tom's Hardware and EOC articles on the same matter). Although the processor is kicking the E7200 in its value groin, it'll become an expensive trade-off in the end, as the processor sucks a lot of power, adding to your electricity bill. Still, ‘tis the last of the 65nm processors...

Fudzilla

Tom's Hardware

Extreme Overclocking

Gskill, the enthusiast memory brand, is having its DDR3 tri-channel kit benched at Guru of 3D. This PC3-12800 memory is very much like one that A-Data announced just the other day, it also sports a very good price tag for 6 gigs-worth of DDR3. Read the review. Must say, someone's got very sharp photography skills over there at Guru.

TweakToon is testing a 1200W Ikonik Vulcan PSU. It's built to bear pretty much anything out there - tri-SLI, peltier cooling, etc... - it costs a stack of bills, but if you want 1200W that's the price to pay. Find the review, here.

Hot Hardware is delving into a bit of the pro hardware by taking on the Quadro FX 4800. It's a difficult business, this judging of pro graphics, but there are FireStream numbers on hand for a fair comparison. Performance is way up on "bang for buck" as the card launches cheaper than its FX 5600 brother and delivers more. If you're of the pro inclination, go here.

Still talking about professional computing, Anandtick has an article on Intel's Xeon 5570, the Xeon-derivative of Nehalem. Although it's supposed to be under wraps, HP and Fujitsu-Siemens pubbed the numbers and as far as we can see, the graphs are showing huge (and we mean warehouse-filling-with-old-parts huge) gains over the previous generations... get it here. µ