Eyefinity and beyond

A LOT OF INK has been spilled over AMD's recent GPU announcements, but the most neglected bit of the launch was the Eyefinity eyecandy.

Eyefinity is a total rework of AMD’s multi-monitor software support and will let you play around with your monitor setup as easy as 1-2-3, allowing for extreme resolution gaming or just work-related “stuff”. Guru of 3D gives readers the grand tour. Shame that Eyefinity has no simple POV setting to correct viewing angles in 3D gaming.

Question: will someone hack Eyefinity for 4xxx-series cards? Or will AMD keep it locked in RV870?

Tom’s Hardware updated their “System Builder’s Marathon” for the month of September, with a $2,500 rig. You can see the site’s recommendations and possibly apply to win the PC for yourself. Very tempting.

Despite the Core i7 remaining reassuringly expensive, you know you’d buy one if you could afford it. That also means you’d buy triple channel memory – so you’d also be interested in reading Xbit Labs’ roundup of 3x2GB DDR3-1600 memory kits.

The featherweights of the laptop world are the Intel CULV-driven kits out there. They pack a bit more of a punch than a netbook, yet remain affordable, compact and don’t take half-a-work-day to boot. Legit Reviews tests MSI’s X340 CULV notebook.

Our namesake “social media phone”, the INQ Mini 3G mobile, gets covered at Thrusted Reviews. It doesn’t fare as well as the original, but it is still a must-have for the social media-dependant, errr.. dependants.

iXBT Labs reviewed the Athlon II X4 620 CPU. The new Propus core offers low-cost quad-core computing for under $100, or so goes the story. iXBT Labs raises a valid point. If you’re upgrading your CPU, stick with an X3 710, if you’re getting a new quad-core system on a budget, you can go with a DDR3 platform as it’s is less cache dependant.

PC Mag reviews the Velocity Micro Edge Z30, a Lynnfield-based PC with oodles of power. The Core i7-860 comes factory overclocked, it seems, with enough GPU firepower to play just about any game out there. Despite PC Mag’s claims, we wouldn’t add another GTX 260 GPU for SLI on a 550W PSU, though.

Patriot’s top-of-the-range DDR3 is on display at Bjorn3D. The Patriot Viper 2 Sector 5 DDR3 2GHz 2x2GB kit comes with a lifetime warranty, low latencies and even a free copy of 3D Mark Vantage, to drive home the fact that these memories really are “performance”. You can even squeeze it up to 2133MHz.

Erm, why is CPU-Z reading “QPI Link” on a Lynnfield, eh?

Laptop Magazine started their Top Ten Notebooks weekly listing. You can read it and find yourself either reassured you bought the right one or amazingly disappointed that you didn’t. Give it a look.

iGadgetlife has a simple, straightforward and relevant comparison of HDD and SSD on a Acer Aspire One D250 netbook. Now, notebooks stand to win the most from SSDs, yet reviewers insist on testing them out on desktops. Give it a read-through and see just how different it is.

You’d think Shuttle would spearhead all-in-one PCs with their SFF expertise, but it’s taken them long enough to put out this little thing, the Shuttle X50 All-in-One PC.  It’s a nettop dual-core Atom system with a rather dull LCD attached to it. Shame about the lack of touch-screen specific controls.

Silent PC Review tests the Scythe Musashi. The Musashi falls into the VGA cooler category and fits two 100mm fans to most graphics cards out there (exception made to the shrouded Geforces). The VRM heatsinks aren’t really adequate for the high-end graphics cards, but the main heatsink does a great job of keeping your GPU cool. µ