Maxxing out the HD 4890
TAKING IT to the limit, Derek at Anandtech overclocked the HD 4890 core to 1GHz and the memory to 1.2GHz. That provided a massive 20% leap in performance throughout the benchmark suite and still comes in at $100 less than the green goblin's flagship single-GPU card. Seems AMD is all about "value" these days...
UMPC Portal has a review of the nice little UMID Mbook M1. It uses the Z520 Atom processor, comes with 512MB (enough for XP or Linux) and fits snuggly into the palm of your hand. It's a pretty hi-res screen too, considering it's just 4.8-inches.
Xbit Labs is toying with a couple of Mini-ITX boards from Intel and Zotac. Powered by very different graphics silicon, the Zotac 9300-based chippery smashes any inkling of Intel performance.
XS Reviews has some new thermal paste, the Tuniq-TX3. Runny enough to spread, solid enough to remain stuck on the metal plate. Conducts heat like a champ and doesn't cost much.
TweakTown is testing the Foxconn Quantum Flaming Blade X58 motherboard. The most remarkable thing about it is probably its $200 price tag that should send some other mobo makers into a price-slashing frenzy.
Tom's Hardware Emporium tells us how many cores we actually need. The Don offed the Q6600 cores one by one and came up with odd results, where tri-cores offer better performance than quads... now if only he pulled out a Phenom II and a Core i7...
Notebook Review has an HP Pavilion dv6z lap warmer. Using the 16-inch format, the dv6z delivers Athlon X2 processing, HD 4530 graphics and a fairly low price tag. It won't get you far if you're a road warrior. It is, otherwise, a cheap DTR.
Droolworthy is the quaint term that Jeffrey at Laptop Mag used to describe Asus' W90Vp-A1 behemoth notebook. Quad-core CPU, dual GPUs and Blu-ray on a 18.4-inch monster, this is likely one of the most powerful laptops on the market.
Modders Inc. is testing Thermaltake's Element S PC case. We must say it is one of the coolest, minimalistic cases we've seen, and the sound-proofing features (rubber seals, noise-absorbing materials) should make it a fave with people who actually work with it.
Fudzilla's Nermin has been looking into the Acer/eMachines E725 notebook. This is a budget notebook with a Penryn (Pentium T4200) in its innards and all the build quality you'd expect from a €479 lappie. Worth it, it seems.
CNet has a review of an AVADirect Custom Gaming PC (sic). For $2,900 it delivers a highly-overclocked (@3,88GHz ) i7 920-based machine that zooms past the competition.
Bit Tech is looking into some dastardly HD 4770 overclocking. A little tweaking, says Tim, will completly negate the HD 4850 stock performance advantage.
Big Bruin has a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB review. It looks a little behind in terms of specs, but the numbers show it's a worthy competitor to WD (that's us. BB compared it to a SATA I 2.5-inch HDD).
Benchmark Reviews is testing that ever-more ubiquitous Asus M4A79T Deluxe motherboard that drives around AMD's Phenom II AM3 processors. Expensive as hell, but mad on overclocking and tweaking. µ
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No, Paul, the most remarkable thing about that board is it's name: Flaming Blade.
Ought to go down large with guys that like to play games together.
Agree that Name Sells More than Specs. What are Specs for, AnyWay?
When I saw:Foxconn Quantum Flaming Blade X58 motherboard I knew Indians Where On Rise Again. Save Your Confederate Bonds, South Will Rise Again. so Did Foxconn, Thru MSRP on Top Chipper. drashek
If Drashek really is a bot, the algorithms seem to be improving. Either way, the poster is learning to write English better.
Whether you're a real person or a computer, Drashek, congratulations on your improvement.
@Jason
:agreed:
The improvement has been good to see.
Whether it's a real person or not, the term "artificial intelligence" still stands I think! ~8-P
(no offence meant, Drashek!)
I read that Toms Hardware article about the multicore CPU performance. The thing I thought was interesting was, in reference to the 3 cores showing the most improvement and 4 cores not so much is that, it is in the benchmark that stands out probably the most to people looking at benchmarks, gaming. The part I thought was odd that was completely not mentioned is that the Xbox 360 has 3 cores. So, it wouldn't be to ridiculous to think that game programmers are optimizing their code for 360's with 3 cores, and just using the same code both ways for quad core PC's. While I know the architectures aren't COMPLETELY identical, the general processing of the 360 is not too unlike that of a PC, if I'm correct, the biggest difference is the system bus limitation isn't a factor (or not much of one) on the 360, but the coding is still relatively similar. Why break your neck coding for 4 CPU's when you can code for 3 and support both platforms. Which leads me to believe the real problem in parallel CPU coding is the coders don't (and not to suggest it's easy) throw in scalability. I mean, they should be programming it to utilize every idle CPU that is available. So if you have Dual Quad Cores, you gain instant performance. However, I'd be willing to bet, if they ran a Quad QUAD-CORE test config, you'd only see 3 CPU's optimized. Unless it's all about MULTIPLES of 3, in which case, you wouldn't get a big increase until you scaled to 4 quads (12 cores, essentially). Regardless, it sounds like parallel processing is getting better, but still isn't a factor. At least multi-cores are pretty much becoming the norm, so it should only get better from here on out.