Prior to the release of the Phenom II X2 550, $100 could get you either the Intel Pentium E6300 ($90) or the Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 ($120). The E7400 is an excellent processor, particularly at $120, but we can’t help having serious doubts as to how well it can perform against a dual-core Phenom II processor clocked at 3.1GHz. Looking at the specs, the Phenom II X2 550 would appear to have less L2 cache than the X4 processors because each core has its own dedicated 512KB....

Our last gaming test, Splinter Cell Conviction had the Radeon HD 6950 returning average performance. At 1920x1200 it was 5% slower than the Radeon HD 5870 and 10% slower than both the HD 6970 and GeForce GTX 570 graphics cards.

This 8% overclock allowed for an extra 7fps at 1920x1200 in Call of Duty: Black Ops, 3fps more in Crysis Warhead and 5fps more in Battlefield Bad Company 2.

When playing Dirt 3, the R9 290 averaged 92.8fps, which was 3% slower than the R9 290X yet 20% faster than the R9 280X and 12% faster than the HD 7970 GHz Edition. It also outpaced the GTX 780 and 770 by 8% and 29%. The R9 290 backed up its strong fps performance in Dirt 3 with a frame time result of just 12.7ms, behind the R9 290X and GTX Titan yet ahead of the R9 280X and GTX 780....

To get a fuller picture, it’s increasingly apparent that you need to factor in a card’s frame latency, which looks at how quickly each frame is delivered. Regardless of how many frames a graphics card produces on average in 60 seconds, if it can’t deliver them all at roughly the same speed, you might see more brief jittery points with one GPU over another – something we’ve witnessed but didn’t fully understand....

That simply left us to test and confirm this information in our day-one review… until about a week ago. In generating hype and announcing everything about the upcoming GPU, AMD essentially notified the competition and gave Nvidia two weeks notice to react and counter the 5600 XT. And that’s precisely what they did. Nvidia didn’t take long to drop the GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition down to $300, a 14% discount from the original $350 price....

Rumors of the Radeon RX 6000 desktop refresh come from prolific leaker Greymon55. They don’t have any details beyond speculation that the cards will feature 18 Gbps memory dies, as opposed to the 16 Gbps GDDR6 chips used in all but the upcoming RX 6500 XT and RX 6900 XT LC—a theory that sounds possible. The less likely claim made by some is that AMD will utilize the same 6nm process used in the Radeon RX 6500 XT for the refreshed RX 6000 line....

The R5 2600 is $30 cheaper than the 2600X we tested on 2nd-gen Ryzen’s launch day. That 13% saving sees operating clock speeds reduced by 6-7%, while the box cooler has been downgraded from the Wraith Spire to the dinky little Wraith Stealth. We’ll check out how that performs later on. The real competition though comes from the blue team’s Coffee Lake Core i5 range, in particular the Core i5-8400 which is a little more affordable at $179....

This is something we’ve done in the past. For example, after the release of Zen 2 we investigated AMD’s claim of a 15% IPC improvement and found they weren’t exaggerating the performance improvements. With cores and clock speeds at parity, the R7 3800X provided an 18% improvement over the 2700X in the Cinebench multi-core test and 13% for the single-core test. Then we saw a 13% improvement in V-Ray and Corona, while gaming performance was improved by 13% on average....

Both of these CPUs are capable of pushing package power up in excess of 25W, which is where most of today’s performance-oriented ultraportables are sitting. In fact, the default TDP for the Core i7-1260P is 28W, new for this generation is the P-series designation, while the 6800U is designed to run at a range of TDPs between 15 and 28W. In terms of specifications, the Ryzen 7 6800U is an 8-core, 16-thread processor using Zen 3+ cores....

Both SATA 6Gb/s and even USB 3.0 are not required by most right now, but they could prove to be valuable features in the months to come. We should add, getting those features is not guaranteed on every 8-series chipset motherboard, as was the case with the Asrock 880GMH/USB3 that lacks SATA 6Gb/s support. Just like in this round-up, you will find most motherboard manufacturers choosing between the AMD SB850 south bridge chip and the older and less feature-rich SB710 used by the Asrock board....

Using EVEREST Ultimate Edition to measure memory bandwidth performance we were surprised to find that the results were much closer to call than what we saw with SiSoftware Sandra. Moreover, the Gigabyte 870A-UD3 provided the weakest read performance but the best write result.

Just as we’ve seen with mice, keyboards range enormously in price these days. But they can be put into one of two very broad categories: membrane or mechanical. These terms refer to the system used to determine the key presses, and we’ll start with the first one. To clack or not to clack, that is the question Pictured below is a budget keyboard, similar to the countless used everyday in schools, offices, and homes....

At idle or under load, the Asrock Ion 330HT-BD used four times less power than our Core i5 system. These figures are what make the Ion 330HT-BD the ideal HTPC. The Gigabyte GA-GC230D was tested in a larger Mini-ITX case with larger fans, so we aren’t surprised to find that it operated at lower temperatures than the Asrock system. Still, when compared to your typical ATX desktop system, the operating temperatures of the Ion 330HT-BD fall in the normal ranges....

Some of its features are standard across all P55-based boards such as multi-GPU support using either CrossfireX or SLI technology. Also provided by the chipset are six SATA 3Gb/s ports, which is the bare minimum you will see on any P55 motherboard since it’s a stock characteristic. Accompanying the default six SATA 3Gb/s ports on the P55 Extreme4 are four SATA 6Gb/s connectors which are provided by a pair of Marvell controllers....

Unlike Just Cause 2, Far Cry 2 relies on both the GPU and CPU. Here the Asus Crosshair IV Extreme was a fraction quicker than the Formula. However, the Phenom II X4 1090T is considerably slower than the Core i5 and Core i7 processors in this game. When testing Resident Evil 5, we found the Crosshair IV Extreme to be slightly faster than the Formula.

The Z3740 isn’t the fastest Bay Trail SKU - that honor goes to the Z3770 with a 1.46 GHz CPU - but it should still be quite a capable SoC, especially as L2 cache (2 MB), GPU clock speeds, and memory bandwidth (17.1 GB/s) remain the same. The entire SoC is built on a 22nm process, and uses the same HD Graphics architecture as Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPUs, so I’m expecting significantly better graphics performance than the last generation Clover Trail chip....

The chip of choice is the Core i7-1165G7, which is set to become one of the most popular Tiger Lake offerings - it’s already appearing in loads of laptops, and the preceding i7-1065G7 was everywhere. We have a detailed review on this new laptop CPU, but in a nutshell, the new Core i7 promises improved performance thanks to an improved manufacturing process and more versatility when it comes to clock speeds - alongside support for new features like Thunderbolt 4, PCI-E 4....

While Kaby Lake is a 14nm part, it’s manufactured using an improved (14FF+) process that brings efficiency improvements at the same clock speeds as Skylake. While Kaby Lake has roughly the same IPC as Skylake, all Kaby Lake parts are clocked a few hundred MHz higher than their Skylake counterparts while still fitting into the same power consumption bracket. The ZenBook 3 is available in two configurations with differing processors, RAM and storage (although these may vary by region):...

The Radeon HD 5850 averaged 60fps, while the GeForce GTX 285 rendered just 54fps, making it only a fraction faster than the Radeon HD 5830. The GeForce GTX 275 was only slightly lower with an average of 52fps. The Radeon HD 4890 delivered 50fps, while the recommended graphics cards for this game, the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870, rendered 47 and 44fps respectively. We found it possible to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with an average of ~45fps, but at this rate there were still moments of laggy gameplay every now and then, generally when something was exploding, which was quite often in this game as you can imagine....