The Inquirer

SAS storage still the king of performance Hardware Roundup Two Raptors can’t match one Cheetah GAMEPC COMBINES the best of both worlds in terms of on-line storage. A 15K Seagate Cheetah gets to meet a SAS – Serial Attached SCSI – 3Gbit controller from LSI Logic. They are the proof that SCSI still has a place in storage despite whatever SATA may achieve. SAS is to SCSI what SATA is to ATA. Furthermore SCSI is still top of the game as far as performance is concerned. Two Raptors are still lagging behind a single cheetah 15K in non-RAID configuration. You pay extra for the first class treatment although the LSI Logic SAS controller is not as impressive as it could be. Motherboards.org reviews the Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe motherboard. It is built around the Nforce4 SLI and coms with support for SLI, Firewire, HD Audio, SATA2 and LGA775 compatibility. Not much to complain about. It is expensive – you probably could guess it by the deluxe branding – it runs the X6800 Core2 Extreme pretty well and on top of that the six SATA ports and the other features like Linkboost, Dual Net and the silent heatpipes are nice addons. 3Davenue tests the Asus Geforce 7950GX2, which is rumored to be in great difficulties when compared with the X1950XTX. The dual slot card contains two cores running at 500MHz and with memory clocked at 1.2GHz. The card is relatively quiet, compared with a similar X1900XTX card which has only one GPU. As usual, Asus’s accessories and software bundle is opulent and includes Project Snowblind and King Kong. 3DAvenue did manage some overclocking and managed some very good figures. However, I was more than impressed by the figures of the X1900XTX bearing in mind that it has only one GPU. Xbitlabs reports on AMD’s next generation of microarchitecture. This native quad core processor looks like an evolution rather than a real revolution that stuck the Netburst family as Intel chose the CorexDuo strand. A very good piece of analysis for those who understand the underpinning technology behind processors – in the same vein as rwt or aceshardware. The writers give a few hint on how to get the K8L even faster. Digit-life talks on the Asus MyPal P525 GSM communicator. It weighs 160g, which is four times what some iPod-like MP3 players weigh. The P525 even has a 2MP digital camera with a flash and autofocus. Other features include a USB port and a audio socket plus a 2.8-inch LCD screen capable of displaying 320×240 pixels. Working under Windows Mobile 5.0, the MyPal P525 is not a bad PDA. Its weak spot is its plasticky quality, and Asus has some more work to do before it can compete with the likes of Samsung et al. Now, it’s not everyday that we review hardware like this. The Sumo’s Omni Bean Bag Chair is not as cheap as we would imagine. I wouldn’t usually fork out $149 for a bag of polystyrene, but TR knows how to sell a product. Two lovely ladies playing Xbox 360. Do we need benchmarks in this case? Well, probably not. There are eight colours in all from black to hot pink. A huge comfy seat, just make sure you have the right person to share it with. Related Link: The Inquirer

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