GamePC also has its own review of the Core Duo and the same motherboard. This time it is in English rather than in Chinese. It seems that Intel has finally come to terms to using the mobile processor in a desktop computer. It is no longer important after all and with fewer SKUs, everyone should be happy. The T2600 is compared to the Pentium D as well as to the FX60 and the X2 4800 and 4400. It was only overclocked to 2.6GHz, a full 10% slower than HKEPC. Aopen's board includes eSATA, GigE and Firewire. Impressive, very impressive.

Someone sent me that post on the Community Server for Rent a Coder where they tested the SQL Server 2005 performance with Hyperthreading enabled and MAX DOP. Unlike other news source which lambasted Hyperthreading. RAC's admin had disappointing results upgrading from 32 bit DP to 64 bit QP/dual core PC. The equipment they used was a Quad Processor Dual Machine Xeon with 16GB memory, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SQL Server 2005 64bit Edition. Turns out HT works for him.

Firingsquad reports on a water cooler based video card. The Sapphire Blizzard Radeon X1900XTX is one of the very few which uses this kind of cooling. This 48 PS monster has three times more horsepower than its predecessor and runs at 650MHz. The card uses a waterblock to remove excess heat with minimum noise. The card is overclocked by default from factory to give it the edge over other X1900XTX cards. It is not silent though but it is relatively cheap and available.

Hexus checks the OCZ Technology DDR2 PC2-8000 XTC Platinum Extreme Edition. A long name to qualify a high end component. With timings of 4-5-4-15 and brand new heatspreaders, this is one of the best PC8000 memory floating around. The days of PC10000 or PC10k can't be far ahead. It is very expensive and its price alone might buy you a complete computer. Hexus asks its reader to consider attentively whether they should use the memory given that not everyone might benefit from it.