AMD Phenom X3 8750

Manufacturer:AMD
UK Price (as reviewed):£128.08 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed:$195.00 (ex. Tax)

Today AMD is releasing its first triple-core processors to the retail market after initially announcing them on the eve of IDF Fall 2007 in an attempt to steal away some of the limelight from Intel’s twice yearly shindig.

Don’t be fooled though, these aren’t the first ever triple-core processors AMD has released, we’d spotted several Mesh machines using triple-core Phenom 8400 and 8600 processors long before AMD officially announced them late last month.

Early Look: Gigabyte GA-P45-DS5

Manufacturer:Gigabyte

A Brief Introduction to P45

The P45 chipset is a replacement for the current P35, and like the P35 it supports both DDR2 and DDR3, however this time around it's specifically tuned towards DDR3 instead. As we'd expected, the chipset also provides better support for quad-core and 45nm processors and is also built on a 65nm process instead of the 90nm previous chipsets used, although Gigabyte did tell us that the overclocking of both should be very similar.

Asus Eee PC 900

Manufacturer: Asus
UK Price (as reviewed): £329 .00 (inc. VAT) MSRP
US Price (as reviewed): TBC

Let's assume you've been sat under a rock for the last year and you've completely missed out on the Eee PC hype. We'll start from the top.

Launched at the end of last year, the Eee PC was designed to be the messiah of the portable computing audience, measuring in at roughly 225x165x35 (DxWxH) and weighing less than 1kg. It was also low-power to make the battery last longer, housing only an underclocked 900MHz CPU and 512 MB of RAM – both powerful enough to run a custom OS based on the Xandros Linux distro.

Silverstone Treasure TS01B 2.5" Enclosure

Manufacturer:Silverstone
UK Price (as reviewed):£27.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$45.99 (excl. Tax)

Let’s be honest and open, shall we – hard drive enclosures aren’t all that fascinating to most people. They are essentially just boxes with ports, aren’t they? They aren’t all the valuable themselves most of the time, they just hold the stuff that is valuable and important – the thing that holds your data.

ViewSonic VX1940w 19" widescreen

Manufacturer:ViewSonic
UK Price (as reviewed):£146.88 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$217.99 (ex. Tax)

With pixel response, contrast ratio, screen diagonal and viewing angles being some of the most important considerations when you're buying a new LCD monitor, it's fair to say that the list of popularly scrutinised monitor specifications is long. But pixel pitch conspicuously isn't one of them.

That partly explains the rising popularity of 22-inch widescreen LCDs over 20-inch models and the similar shift from 23-inch to 24-inch that took place a few years ago. In both cases, the larger form factor doesn't bring an increase in native resolution, which in turn results in coarser pixel pitches. And if sales figures are anything to go by, not many are particularly bothered by it.

AMD Phenom X4 9850, 9750 and 9550

Manufacturer:AMD

Phenom has had a difficult birth and was a troublesome child, but now AMD’s native quad-core processors have reached their highly anticipated B3 stepping it seems the CPUs have matured for the better. The well documented TLB (Translation Look-aside Buffer) erratum on the original B2 steppings hindered their mass acceptance, but it was widely blown out of proportion for the majority of users who will never see an issue.