[H]ardNews 4th Edition - Tech Stuff

AMD 3800+ X2:

If you are thinking about moving up to a dual core processor, and love AMD products like we do, then the boys over at HardwareLogic have this review that is right up your alley.

I honestly feel the AMD 3800+ X2 is the best processor on the market when you take into consideration the price versus the performance. While you can go out and buy a 4800+ X2 for $650, the 3800+ X2 is easily overclocked to 4800+ levels for more than $300 less, meaning even those on a budget can enjoy outstanding performance. That's not to say the 4800+ X2 is not a great processor, it very much is, but if you can save $300 and have almost the same performance, why wouldn't you save that money and put it toward an upgraded video card, memory, or motherboard?

Corsair 2GB XMS 4000PT:

Are your games sluggish? Does it take you forever to load a map in Battlefield? If you answered yes then you need MOAR RAM!! The good people over at Virtual-Hideout have a great read on this 2 gig solution from Corsair. Once again, Corsair is a name that has been essential to all of our boxes for quite some time.

Compared to the Value ram, Corsairs XMS 4000PT is definitely a lot faster. The ability to reliably go to 250mhz speeds (when paired with a motherboard capable of it) means that you don’t need to sacrifice speed for capacity.

Anand’s Mobo Price Guide:

We have a brand spankin’ new chip and ram, now we need a good motherboard to run it! Our friends at Anand have their motherboard price guide updated for your viewing pleasure.

Welcome to our latest motherboard price guide. We are seeing the newly released i975X chipset based motherboards have begun to slowly roll into the market, while we expect the i955X based boards to be gradually phased out. While some deals on certain pieces of hardware are made even sweeter by including mail-in rebates, there aren't too many available this week. We are also expecting the new 945GM based boards to be released some time during Q1 '06. These boards will support both the Yonah and Conroe processors.