TWKR reviewed

INSIDE HW scored a double-whammy by upping reviews on two high-profile processors - one of which isn’t for sale and the other isn’t even supposed to be out yet. Ahem.

A Phenom II TWKR Black Edition CPU gets 6.7GHz squeezed out of its 45nm silicon. Now that’s mileage. Sure they went with Liquid Nitrogen. But hey, that’s what it’s expected to take, right?

On the other side Inside HW also reviewed Intel’s Core i7 870 CPU. The 2.93GHz HT-enabled quad-core puts up a good fight, just shy of the i7 920.

Frosty Tech has broken in a new Top 5 Heatsinks charts so you can look up what you’re buying next. Of course they actually list a Top 10 Heatsink chart broken down in AMD/Intel camps and by performance/silence.

Xbit Labs looks at Samsung’s new panels based on C-PVA technology, the SyncmasterF2080 and the F2380. C-PVA is supposed to bring PVA prices all the way down, and if they can deliver, it seems like they’re winners.

Thrusted Reviews has an HP Pavilion dv6-1210sa, 15.6-inch laptop on test today. For a sub-£500 laptop it's a good effort, if you can do with poor battery life.

Tom’s Hardware does its monthly “Best Gaming CPU” dance. There’s a bit for everyone, broken down in four categories. AMD dominates the low-end, but Intel really doesn’t have anyone to compete with in the obscenely expensive end of the pool.

PC Perps checks ECS’ first attempt with a 785G chipset, the ECS A785GM-M. Despite it not being a very innovative chipset, AMD did manage to reduce power consumption considerably, about 11W less than a 790GX motherboard.

It’s always interesting to look back at what’s behind us, CPU-wise. We get a bit of perspective on things and can see the rate at which things have evolved. PC World has written a “11 most influential microprocessors of all time”. Some surprises there…

The rare Asus MARS GTX 295 graphics card is benchmarked at PC Games Hardware. It's an impressive beast, seen only once before. It's expensive, it's loud and it's an absolute killer. However, for $1,000 you can Tri-SLI some GTX 285s and get away with a better system.

Small Net Builder has something for you to bolt onto your 19-inch rack: the Sans Digital EliteNAS, (dual-core) Atom-based NAS. It fails to impress the hardened SNB crowd, as Sans Digital doesn't seem to be getting the message.

Eliot at Fudzilla has some low-voltage OCZ Blade DDR2 chips in the lab. The OCZ Blade is rated PC2-9200 (ie: DDR2-1200) at just 1.8V, and it does make a serious difference in your PC’s power output (3-4W). Very expensive for DDR2, though. µ