Everything you wanted to know about process nodes

IT'S THAT TIME of the year where Real World Technologies publishes some scary technical stuff about IT. David has updated the site’s “State of the Union” on fabrication technologies and process nodes, breaking down all the driving forces behind the process development and their manufacturing. Here you can compare who’s got the leading edge.

Legit Reviews checks out the AeroCool Touch-2000 LCD Fan Controller. The fan controller takes up some serious real-estate eating up two 5.25-inch bays, but doubles as eSATA, 2xUSB, Mic and Phones console while monitoring temps and fan speeds in your PC.

Hardware Canucks tests the Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 AM3/AM2+ motherboard. This is a simpler take on the 780 chipset which provides less PCIe lanes, no Crossfire, but adds a bunch of trademark Gigabyte features. Lots of value in $80.

Matthew at HardOCP tests the Asus EAH 4890 TOP. Asus plugged a non-stock shroud with dual fans and upped the core by 50MHz to 900MHz, and memory runs at 4GHz. Still, despite all this, the card draws a bit less power than a reference card.

Hexus.net has a go at the OCZ Summit 120GB drive. The OCZ kit has a very good price point and performs (out-of-the-box) as good as any other. Naturally the whole review business is holding its breath for Win7 TRIM.

Tom’s Hardware Emporium pubbed part 2 of its “How many CPU cores do you need?” article. While 4 cores are lost on most applications most of your work is multitasked through several applications. Don also thinks single cores really should be crossed off your shopping list.

Olin, from Benchmark Reviews also has some OCZ stuff in the lab. The OCZ Vertex Turbo MLC SATA SSD (120GB) shows off its strengths – mostly the massive read and write speeds – but you might make your excuses when you see the price.

While most of us are building cheap gaming rigs with AMD systems, Hardware Zone wrote up a DIY guide for building your own Core 2 gaming rig. Proof positive you can get cheap framerate without using AMD.

Alienware beamed their M17x dual-GPU gaming notebook to Hot Hardware for a round of testing. A cursory inspection of the graphics performance yields a respectable (Extreme) 4942 points in 3D Mark Vantage.

Averatec seems to have built a very neat ultraportable based on a Pentium Dual T3400 processor. The Averatec N3400 looks – and plays – the part, yet costs just $799. Doesn’t seem like a bad deal.

Kevin at Notebook Review looks at the Gateway NV5214u notebook. It’s a budget notebook with plenty of multimedia features. The tested version is priced at $529.99, reflecting the cheap Athlon QL-64 processor used.

Silent PC Review does one of those roundups that only it could do: low profile heatsinks. Well, if you’re into the DIY HTPC scene this is one of those article you really shouldn’t miss.

As world+dog hammers a netbook into existence, Hannspree also puts out a HANNSnote SN10E1 netbook. Yes, 10.1 inches, netbook, Atom, yada yada yada. The price point seems to be good, tho’, says Thrusted. µ