Best CPU Cooler Performance AMD Socket AM3 Preview

AMD Phenom II Black Edition CPU's have been a popular choice for enthusiasts and budget-conscious overclockers lately, and Benchmark Reviews decided it was time to focus on AMD in one of our Best CPU Cooler Performance series. In this preview article, Benchmark Reviews tests several CPU coolers on the AM3 socket for the AMD Phenom-II platform. An overclocked AMD Phenom II X4 965 "Black Edition" processor was used (original 125W version), and given a heart-warming 1.55 volts to the vCore so it...

Alienware Aurora ALX Gaming System Preview

The release of ATI's Radeon HD 5870 graphics card has caused quite a stir in the hardware industry. While enthusiasts scramble to find the coin to upgrade their systems, Alienware has provided an all inclusive option for those in the market for an entire rig, loaded with some of the fastest parts available. Yesterday, Alienware announced the launch of five new configurations, consisting of all new Area 51, Aurora, and M15x gaming systems. Although each option brings something new to the table,...

AMD Radeon HD 5800 series technology preview

Starting out with the basics, the Radeon HD 5800 series boasts a second-generation 40 nanometre GPU from AMD (with the Radeon HD 4770 their first 40 nanometre part) featuring a die size of 334 mm² against the 263 mm², 55 nanometre die used by RV770, a 1.27x size increase. This pales into comparison to the increase in transistor count however, with the Radeon HD 4870's 956 million transistors dwarfed by the 2.15 billion transistors employed by the Radeon HD 5800 series. Read...

GIGABYTE P55-UD6 Lynnfield Motherboard Video Unboxing and Preview

Last week when we visited the Taipei computer market, GIGABYTE’s P55-UD6 Lynnfield motherboard based on the unreleased Intel P55 Express chipset was one of the boards we saw up for sale, well ahead of the Intel launch next month on September 8th. GIGABYTE sent us this motherboard recently for review – we are under NDA, so we cannot show you any performance numbers of the new Lynnfield Socket LGA-1156 processors, but we can give you a preview and unboxing of the motherboard for an...

MSI P55-GD65 Lynnfield Motherboard Video Unboxing & Preview

Even though Intel isn’t officially launching its upcoming Core i5 and Core i5 Lynnfield core processors and P55 Express chipset until the second week of September, there is already much talk about the next generation mainstream performance platform around Taiwan. In the spirit of getting an early look at upcoming hardware, MSI sent us its P55-GD65 motherboard for an exclusive video unboxing and preview. Watch the video below for the full down-low of the new product. Read...