Even though it's not among the program specifications, it hasn't taken a lot of time to discover that it can be turned into a very interesting tool for the enthusiast as well as for the overclocker. Being so taxing on the system as it is, it could very well end up replacing other specialized stress software out there.

Case in question. A computer with a Phenom 9900 running on an Asus M3A32 MVP Deluxe may look sound at 2.8 GHz, but not be able to complete all the tests PCMark Vantage includes. The Inquirer found at almost the same voltage levels, they had to step it down to 2.7 GHz for the entire system to be stable. This is not a CPU burn application but one that burns your whole PC.

And things don't stop here. Not only does it show a small instability, if you look at the tests results, you will find out the hard drive guilty for getting a score 50 points lower with a 100 MHz higher CPU frequency. Your guess is as good as anybodys here.

Link: The Inquirer.

 

At Tom's Hardware, somebody wanted to check what any one of us, who has lived in more than one country, already suspected: hardware prices are not one and the same.

To obtain good data, they compared prices before taxes (no VAT, thank you) and verified that products with suspiciously low prices were in stock. With the intention of avoiding a great exchange impact, prices are given both in USD and Euros. The components chosen for the comparison were: an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850, a Zalman CNPS9700 cooler, an Asus P5E3 Deluxe motherboard, a Crucial Ballistix DDR3 kit, a Western Digital WD5000AAKS HDD, a Gigabyte GeForce GV-NX88S320H-B-RH graphics card, a Coolermaster RS850 EMBA power supply and a San Disk Extreme III 2 GB SD Card.

Conclusions, when it comes to countries, are not to be taken without surprise, even if they were expected. To explain. France is expensive (expected), but it is more so if compared to their neighbours the germans (who are cheap). The best prices are to be found in the United States (go figure). If we talk about products, a usual component (like a graphics card) will not vary more than a 10 to 30%. Differences are much bigger when you either want something special (an aftermarket heatsink or a good power supply) or basic consumer electronics accessories (for example, a memory card).

Link: Tom's Hardware.

Microsoft insisted on this: no XP SP3 before Vista's first service pack comes out. It looks like the delays on everything Vista-related hasn't translated into this last Windows XP upgrade to be postponed any more. "Last" here probably means there won't be any more service packs for this version of Windows, not surprising given the fact that they will stop selling it shortly.

The public beta will arrive in just a few days, but if you want to know NOW what it brings along, you can check at Tech ARP, where they cover the Technical Beta. After the betas we will have a couple of release candidates before the final build is made available in the first half of 2008. "First half"?, you may ask. Yes, that's a very vague timeframe and it will surely place the actual date of release AFTER Vista's SP1 comes out. As promised.

This doesn't mean you have to wait for the final build, since we're dealing with a recap of all the hot fixes and patches accumulated over the past few years, the last release candidate should be a good place to stop by. You could even try the public beta soon, if you feel a little bit adventurous.

"As we reported overnight, a recent court filing submitted by the Justice Department, state attorneys general and Microsoft revealed that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will be available later this year as a beta. Will that mean final delivery in 2007 or 2008?"

Link: microsoft-watch.

In case you are one of those customers that likes to wait for the first service pack to come out, before buying a new NT-based OS from Microsoft, this time you are not getting it very soon. Not long ago, Microsoft announced they would be phasing out Windows XP before 2008. It looks like technical arguments for selling Vista are running scarce.

The soon to be launched Nanobook is based mainly in this mini-ITX platform, so it's a good time for a review about it's performance. TweakTown has it.

They say it's a huge improvement over the old C3 and partner chipset, just don't get your hopes high. For example, against a Sempron 2800+ (Socket 754), looses by a score of 421 - 576 under WorldBench 5.0 (*). That's not very good news, considering the primary focus of this platform is productivity. Don't you even bother about gaming. Despite some improvement in the FPU and the use of the quad-pumped bus that even Intel still uses for Core 2, the CPU is slow.

But not everything is black. At 1.5 Ghz, it still delivers some performance, and with low power consumption the efficiency raises and heat and noise go down. Furthermore, the CX700M2 chipset works when it comes to hardware MEPG-2 (DVD), MPEG-4 (DivX) and WMV9 decoding.

(*) ACDSee PowerPack 5.0, Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3, Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (DirectX), Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (OpenGL), Microsoft Office XP with SP-2, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0, Mozilla 1.4, Musicmatch Jukebox 7.10, Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5 and WinZip Computing WinZip 8.1.

 

This picture from  LegitReviews shows what we would like to have at home: a system with no less than eight cores and 16 Gb of memory.

Intel is at Computex, and they only waited until day 2 for a private tech session where a group of selected individuals could see a pair of 3.00GHz Penryn processors running Cinebench release 10. If a score of 22,936 doesn't ring any bell, let's just say that people in the know stated that AMD is around 16,000 with a pair of Barcelonas on this same benchmark. If we take into consideration that the 45nm Penryn V8 system is underclocked, AMD will have to resort to other programs to back up their statements about Barcelona being so good.

As for comparison with other Intel processors, it scaled nicely against the dual-core and quad-core 3.33GHz Penryn as well at the Core 2 Extreme QX6800. The latter lags behind, maybe because de new CPU from the blue boys has a cache size of 12MB per processor!

Watercooling systems are one of the best solutions for modern processors. Improved cooling with quiet sounds levels make a convincing argument for any PC enthusiast.

SilverStone is best known for their exceptional, elegant and functional case products. The craftsmanship can now be found in the SilverStone Tundra TD01 external water cooling system. The styling fits very well with audio components and therefore would be an excellent option for a HTPC setup. It's performs very well, looks great, and is completely silent. 3dGameMan has a full review in video. Check out the bloopers at the end.

 

Just when you thought Quad core was the must have processor, Apple has unveiled a big upgrade for the Apple MacPro series. The new order options give the MacPro that ability to run two Quad-Core Intel Xeon Clovertown processors running at whopping 3.0GHz! The price has been upgraded too but at $4000 for the basic 8-core setup we reckon it's pretty good value.

Now that Mac are using Intel processors, they really ought to consider the Vista OS and the path to the dark side will be complete. Muhahaha. 

If you are looking for a Home Theater PC (HTPC) for your living room, check out this beauty. The Trinion L7 HTPC is the latest from the Korean outfit featuring an integrated touchscreen LCD.

The Trinion L7 is a well packed Home Theater PC with a nifty 800 x 480 resolution touch-screen LCD monitor that can be controlled by an IR remote. It features a bulit-in UI which provides access to easy playback of DVDs, photos, TV episodes etc and can even launch games and office applications.

This unit is based on the Intel T5500 Dual Core CPU running at 1.66GHz and houses a 250GB hard drive and 1GB of DDR II RAM. Other specs include: 8-channel onboard audio, gigabit Ethernet, a slot loading DVD combo drive. The L7 runs Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE).

The sexy L7 also features a flash card reader, USB, FireWire connectors, and Audio in/out ports. No release details are available and also its not known whether this will make its way to the West.

Full Specifications

• Silver Chassis
• 1.66GHz Intel T5500 Core 2 Duo Mobile processor
• 1GB of DDR II RAM
• 250GB hard drive
• 8-channel onboard audio
• Gigabit Ethernet
• DVD Combo drive
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• Front-panel flash card reader
• USB / FireWire connectors
• Audio in / out ports