It's roadmap time at AMD and the big news is the promise of mobile chips that should give those snazzy new Ultrabooks powered by Intel processors a run for their money.

A little further out, AMD also hinted that ARM processor cores, currently the architecture of choice for smartphones and tablets, might find their way into its chips.

But first, Ultrabooks. A little like Intel's Centrino effort of the naughties, the Ultrabook is a simple but deceptively clever idea that has gained traction with astonishing speed. And jolly nice they are too, with their slim proportions, strong performance and excellent battery life, largely courtesy of Intel's latest Core-i-whatever mobile processors.

There's just one problem. Pricing. Intel's original pitch for Ultrabooks involved slick, super-slim computing for $1,000 or less. Just the thing to give Apple's pulchritudinous but pricey MacBook Air a beasting.

The reality for punter's wallets has been significantly less salubrious, especially in the UK. Retail stickers well above £1,000 have been common and to date only a handful have hit the shelves for under that figure.

Chip pricing to blame

Part of the problem, ironically enough, is Intel's chip pricing. AMD hasn't exactly been snapping at its heels of late. Whenever Intel's only significant competitor for PC processors falls behind, the same thing happens. Intel's prices go up and its thirst to innovate dries up.

Enter, therefore, the long awaited AMD Trinity chip. It's AMD's second performance-orientated APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) after last year's Llano model. And it looks rather promising. On the CPU side, it gets an updated version of AMD's new Bulldozer architecture, known as Piledriver.

As regular TechRadar readers will know, the Bulldozer architecture didn't deliver on the desktop. However, updated to Piledriver specification and inserted into an APU that also contains one of AMD's absolutely excellent graphics cores, now that's a different box of CPUs altogether.

We won't know for sure until we get our filthy mitts on Trinity-powered laptop PCs. But AMD recently showed off an early Trinity system developed in partnership with Compal. It's just 18mm thick and will allegedly sell for under $900.

Moreover, AMD is making some pretty startling claims for Trinity. For starters, it's said to pack double the performance per watt of the existing Llano APU along with 50 per cent better graphics performance. And Llano already has the fastest integrated graphics core of any PC chip.

But the real killer is that AMD claims Trinity will deliver all this along with better battery life than equivalent Intel mobile CPUs. What we're promised then, is a chip that goes harder and lasts longer than Intel but will also bring prices down on Ultrabooks.

Supernote, anybody?

Of course, any system powered by an AMD chip can't actually be called an Ultrabook. That's an Intel-only gig.

But if I was AMD, I'd be thinking hard for a snappy name for mouth-breathing PC shop salesmen to bandy about. Would sir prefer an Intel Ultrabook or an AMD Supernote?

Whatever, the arrival of Trinity will almost definitely be a good thing for everyone, even Ultrabook buyers. If it's any good, it'll bring down prices across the board.

But what of that tantalising prospect of an ARM-powered AMD chip? Well, AMD has been dropping bigger and better hints in recent months about its willingness to consider use ARM cores in its processors. And people have been getting excited.

In truth, there's really not much reason to do so. There's no shortage of competition and innovation in the ARM processor game. The addition of AMD to the battlefield won't make much difference. At most it'll force everyone to up their game in graphics a little. No, it's x86 why AMD can make the most impact. Fingers crossed for Trinity, folks.

A paper written by an ex-Apple intern who now works for the company has revealed secret plans to port Mac OS X to an ARM chipset.

Tristan Schaap did a 12-week internship with the Platform Technologies Group at Apple, and penned a thesis on the work he had been set, namely working to get the "lower half" of Mac OS X to boot onto an ARM processor.

The paper was submitted in 2010 but not published until some months ago due to the sensitive nature of its contents.

Peach Schaaps

But just because Schaap did work on this project and is now employed by the Core OS department doesn't mean we're definitely going to see ARM architecture in the next generation of Macs.

It may have been an experiment, it could have been a decoy or the project may have once been planned and since been pulled, who knows.

Apple's Mac range currently rocks Intel chipsets but rumours have been around for years that the company wants to try its hand at an ARM platform.

But as Apple Insider points out, Tim Cook seems reticent to take those plans further, telling analysts last week that the iPad should satisfy those who would want such a thing as an ARM-based MacBook Air.

If Intel is right about the high percentage of new PCs bought that will be Ultrabooks – and the $300 million it's putting behind the Ultrabook concept should help with that – AMD needs a processor to put in budget thin and light notebooks as well.

That's what the next-generation Trinity APU is designed for. We were first shown the chip at Computex 2011, but AMD showed us it running in a back room at CES 2012.

At first it looked like AMD was demonstrating a beefy desktop processor in a large gaming rig, playing a DirectX 11 game on one screen and transcoding video for iPad resolution on another.

But then AMD's Ron Myers cracked open the case to show the notebook that was actually doing the work, which was also playing HD video on its own screen.

Yes, Dirt3 was running in low detail rather than high and the media transcoding was using CPU rather than GPU, but the texture mapping in DirectX 11 made even low detail pretty impressive and all three tasks were running smoothly without any stuttering or glitching.

Despite being tucked inside a PC case, the notebook showed no signs of overheating (although the large fan on the case is probably responsible for that).

That's because AMD has halved the amount of power that Trinity requires compared to the current Llano APU, from 35W to 17W.

As well as a part designed for laptops (and a high-powered desktop chip), Trinity will also be available as a socket-less processor that will fit into ultra-thin notebooks (which is what AMD has to call Ultrabooks made with its chips, since Intel has copyright on the Ultrabook term) and Windows 8 tablets.

AMD is also promising a 25% improvement in compute performance from the Piledriver CPU that replaces Bulldozer and a 50% improvement from the GPU in Trinity.

TRINITY 2012: We first saw Trinity at last year's Computex

With Intel adding DirectX 11 support in Ivy Bridge, AMD will lose some of the GPU advantage it's had with Llano, so it needs that extra 50%. Of course, we don't know how good DirectX 11 on Ultrabooks will be.

Intel's Mooley Eden refused to put a specific number on the improved performance but promised it would be "a different experience" during CES.

What AMD should still have is lower prices, especially as Trinity ultra-thin systems won't have to have the expensive materials that Intel insists on for Ultrabooks. When Trinity comes out in Q2 this year, notebooks using it are likely to cost $500 or less – half the price Intel's partners are struggling to keep Ultrabooks down to.

With the lower TDP, Trinity should also improve on the already-good battery life of Llano. For comparison, the Llano-powered HP dm1 AMD had running in the corner of the meeting room was managing six hours of video playback. "That's true all-day battery life," Myers pointed out.

Can Intel take the smartphone fight to ARM?

Intel's 'Medfield' Atom chip has been a long time coming, and we first reported on its announcement back in February 2011 after Mobile World Congress.

Now we know it's called the Intel Atom Z2460, and is at the heart of the new Lenovo K800 smartphone released today at CES 2012.

After falling behind ARM in the chase for mobile supremacy, Medfield represents Intel's intention to challenge the market with a new kind of processor.

It's a single core chip based on the more familiar Atom processor, which is more commonly found on netbooks, and nettops, offering low power at a low cost. Medfield is an evolution of Penwell, sharing most of the architecture.

The processor market has thrived on the message that 'more cores equal more power' and with dual-core smartphones now the norm, and quad-core tablets being released throughout 2012, many will baulk at Medfield's single core announcement. However, there's more to Medfield than meets the eye.

Low power consumption is a huge part of Intel's intentions with the Atom Z2460, and the ability to deliver long battery life, without sacrificing performance, is a key factor in the success of any mobile processor.

By opting for a 32nm architecture - which is the world's first on a smartphone - Intel believes it can deliver the efficiencies its rivals can't. The company boasted that Medfield enjoys a 10x lower power leakage than its 45nm rivals, which include the ARM licensed Qualcomm MSM8x60 Snapdragon and Texas Instruments OMAP 4, but still larger than the forthcoming 28nm Cortex A7, which is slated for early 2013.

Power and battery life have been huge issues for mobile chip makers, and each has come up with different ways of managing what has become a major complaint for consumers. ARM's Cortex A7 processor uses a Big.LITTLE concept of running two chips - one powerful, one efficient - and switching smartly between them depending on the task undertaken by the handset.

Medfield uses a dynamic range of power states, throttles processor speeds as and when they're required, with fine grained steps at 100MHz increments. 1.6GHz speeds are only achieved in short 'burst modes' for the most demanding tasks.

Intel says this range of speeds enables it to keep power consumption lower than its rivals.

Being derived from a PC processor means that Medfield is the first x86 processor, which brings about a whole new set of challenges for Intel. The first challenge is app support, since the Dalvik and NDK apps found on the Android Market, for example, aren't designed to work on x86 chips.

Intel has promised 90% app support when Medfield phones hit the shelves, and have been busy turning apps into Medfield-compliant programs. The company promised that consumers wouldn't notice any difference, and that Medfield smartphones wouldn't have to be annexed to a separate x86 Marketplace.

Atom Z2460 specifications

The single-core Intel Atom Z2460 chip is clocked at 1.6GHz, with 512KB of L2 cache memory, which is far faster than the 1.2 GHz Cortex A9 found on many the hero devices of 2012, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2.

Intel deflected questions about Medfield's single-core architecture, pointing at other innovations, which help keep performance up with its rivals. Hyperthreading capability is found on Medfield, much like Intel's lauded full-form PC chip Sandy Bridge, which mimics a dual core chip by enabling the core to work on two processes simultaneously.

This speeds up the work done by each core, meaning that processes can be completed quicker, which is really noticeable during video encoding.

Any software must have threads written into the code for a processor to take advantage, and it will be interesting to see where Medfield can gain the biggest performance advantages. While Android's core apps could be engineered to make use of Hyperthreading, it's not clear whether third-party apps will be, and this is something to look for as the system develops.

One cause for concern, however, is that the Intel Atom Z2460 can only handle a maximum screen resolution of 1024 x 768. With an industry focusing on screen quality, this leaves very little headroom for growth. And as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus already features a screen at this resolution, don't expect to see Intel-based smartphones exceeding this.

Atom Z2460 performance

TechRadar was treated to an exclusive preview with a reference handset running the Medfield chip at Intel's Santa Clara headquarters, where the company ran benchmarks against leading handsets.

We'll be holding back judgement until we get the chance to review the Medfield platform ourselves, but Intel's boasts were backed up by an impressive showing in early tests.

The reference handset was 3x faster in BrowserMark than the Samsung Galaxy S2, which is exciting news for those looking to enjoy rich web experiences on their smartphones.

Intel's benchmarks also recorded its Medfield system to use 50% less power in 3G mode than the iPhone 4S, which has suffered from complaints over battery life.

Battery life seems promising, with Intel claiming 26 hours from the reference handset - a figure that's 10% better than the Samsung Galaxy S2.

One of the most exciting Intel demos, however, was the playback of 1080p media from the handset onto a large external display. While high-definition video is promised on many handsets, the reality can be playback with is jumpy at best, and impossible at worst. The Medfield reference phone played 1080p video back seamlessly, even while connected by HDMI.

Apple has decided to bring the making of its A5 chips to the US, with Samsung chosen to create the chips in one of its factories in Texas.

According to Reuters, the two companies have strengthened their flimsy relationship through the medium of processors.

There have been numerous courtroom battles between the Apple and Samsung over similarities between the iPad and iPhone and Samsung's smartphone and tablet line-up.

But, it seems the companies have put their differences aside and Apple is now using Samsung's chip manufacturing plant to create the A5 processor, which can be found in the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2.

According to Reuters, the production facility is the size of nine football pitches and was previously being used to create NAND Flash chips.

A5 production

Samsung had begun manufacturing the A5 chip earlier in the year but now the facility is "dedicated to producing Apple chips".

Both Apple and Samsung have decided to not to comment on their chip-based relationship but they have worked together in the past on the A4 chip.

It's unclear, however, if this relationship will continue for the A6. Back in August, it was reported that chip company Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) had kicked off a trial production run of the A6 processor.

CPUs: What you need to know

What CPU is the best for games? What is the best processor for productivity? What is just the hands-down best CPU?

Stick with us people, we've got all you need to know to find out what processor you should be dropping your cash on.

This year could have been one of the greatest ever for PC processing. After an awfully long wait for new high-end chips from AMD or Intel, verily they both delivered. The result could have been, and should have been, a titanic tussle for desktop supremacy.

Even for those who can't afford premium-priced chips – and let's be honest, that's most of us – the knock on effects would have been huge.

Competition not only improves the breed; it also tends to push down prices. Faster chips and cheaper prices for all, in other words.

As it turned out, neither AMD nor Intel's uber-processors were quite what we were expecting.

AMD's new Bulldozer-based FX processors, for instance, haven't exactly torn up the record books for raw computational grunt. Rumours of upcoming respins could translate into improved performance, of course.

For now, the FX is AMD's new top chip and at least offers an intriguing alternative at certain price points.

Intel's latest range topper, the chip known as Sandy Bridge E, has indeed emerged as the hands-down fastest PC processor you can buy, but it's still not the massive leap forward we had hoped for.

Worse than that, it very much looks like it's a case of Sandy by name, sand bagging by nature.

Put another way, we're convinced Sandy Bridge E could easily be much, much faster, if only Intel was facing stiffer competition. With AMD's Bulldozer not delivering, Sandy E's performance has been capped at a level that's merely good enough. Intel has plenty in reserve should AMD's form take an uptick.

If that seems like a grim assessment of the current state of CPUs, the reality isn't all that bad. New CPUs mean new platforms and in turn that makes now a great time to buy into a high-end system while maximising your long-term upgrade options.

Meanwhile, AMD's failure to take the high end by storm means Bulldozer has been dropped right into the heart of the mid-range melee. Since few of us can actually afford Intel's £820 monsters, maybe we only need AMD to keep Intel honest in the midrange. There's only one way to find out.

Is the PC in crisis?

Certainly the unleashing of new CPUs from AMD and Intel has left us all with a pair of crucial conundrums. Can AMD survive the failure of Bulldozer to sock it to Intel? And just how badly is Intel sand bagging with Sandy Bridge E?

If you reckon we're trying some scaremongering, well, think again.

Bulldozer is a big problem for AMD. Quite literally, the new FX processors sired by Bulldozer are very large. Clocking in somewhere between 1.2 and 2 billion transistors, they are twice as complex as any previous AMD desktop CPU.

That's fine if you're slapping the competition around with large benchmark results. If you've got the biggest performing processor, you can attach an equally large sticker price.

As it turns out, however, Bulldozer is struggling to match the performance of Intel chips with little more than a billion transistors.

Frankly, Bulldozer FX doesn't even compare all that well with some of AMD's own chips packing fewer than a billion transistors.

Bulldozer's problems become especially vexing when you dig down into the architectural details. The big idea with Bulldozer is beating Intel at the multi-threading game. Put simply, there are two ways you can add threads to a CPU.

Most obviously, you can drop in more cores, but you can also allow a single core to process more than one thread.

Playing with threads

The latter option is known as simultaneous multi-threading or SMT for short.

Intel has offered SMT for the better part of a decade, dating right back to the Northwood version of the Pentium 4. In fact, the very first Willamette P4 also had Hyper-Threading (HT) support, as Intel calls it, but it was never switched on.

The early P4 flavour of HT was never that impressive.

It duly disappeared around the same time Intel gave up on chasing high frequencies and changed its focus to power efficiency and multi-core processing with the introduction of the Core 2 family.

However, the basic idea was sound and Intel proved just that when it reintroduced Hyper-Threading with the Nehalem architecture in late 2008. Switching on Hyper-Threading boosted system performance by up to 25 per cent.

Critically, however, that performance increase comes at the cost of very few transistors. Intel's Hyper-Threading is all about using existing resources more efficiently, not bolting on more bits.

In that context, the challenge for AMD was to come up with a CPU architecture that met the dual challenge of increasing the thread count without ballooning the transistor count. And all the while it had to do so more effectively than Hyper-Threading.

AMD's solution is the Bulldozer module.

In simple terms, it's a halfway house between bunging in more cores and Intel's 'multithreading lite' in the form of Hyper-Threading.

A Bulldozer module has a pair of integer execution units, each with its own scheduler. But the rest it effectively shared. So, that's just one decode and fetch and a single floating point scheduler feeding a lone floating point engine, albeit composed of dual 128-bit FMACs.

Now, exactly how effective this would turn out in terms of actual multi-threading performance was pretty much impossible to predict. Predictably, AMD said the Bulldozer was SMT done right, inferring that Intel's HT was SMT on the cheap.

Bulldozer's modular design also threw into doubt the very notion of a CPU core. Did a Bulldozer module count as one seriously hefty core? Or is it a sort of dual-core processor lite? Again, only testing Bulldozer would give us the answer.

Bull-dozy

However, one thing that we were certain about was that a Bulldozer-based chip with four modules and therefore four or eight cores – depending on how you look at it – would end up being a lot smaller in size and transistor count than a conventional eight-core processor.

After all, if it wasn't, AMD may as well have produced a full-on eight-core chip without risking any performance losses associated with Bulldozer's shared resources.

So here's the bombshell.

AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 processor packs precisely 904 million transistors. A quad-module Bulldozer FX chip weighs in at a scarcely believable two billion transistors. Now, it's true that the Phenom II X6 has just 9MB of cache to the FX's 16MB, but that alone is not enough to account for all those extra transistors.

The problem for AMD really hits home when you postulate the kind of performance it might have achieved with a straight forward eight-core update to the Phenom II architecture.

Some simple maths suggests it would be both much faster across the board than a quad-module Bulldozer FX and also smaller and cheaper to manufacture. Meanwhile, hypothetical 10- or even 12-core Phenom IIs would probably fit inside Bulldozer's two billion transistor count and not only blow it away, but very possibly give Intel a run for its money, to boot.

Hell, even Intel's mighty Gulftown six-core chips only swallow up 1.17 billion transistors.

Exactly how AMD ended up with a two-billion transistor chip with at best eight cores and at worst just four, we may never know for sure.

However, one theory mooted by former AMD engineer Cliff Maier is that the explanation involves AMD abandoning hand-tuned circuit design. Instead, Maier claims, AMD has shifted to an entirely automated design process. He also says that circuits designed with automated tools are not only 20 per cent bigger than hand or human-tuned circuits, but 20 per cent slower, too.

Whatever the truth, the upshot is that AMD's FX chips measure 315mm2, which is 50 per cent larger than Intel's Gulftown, a chip that easily outperforms the FX and sells for as much as three to four times the price.

Middling AMD

How much this all matters to you and us depends on the time frame you are considering.

AMD has set FX prices that allow it to compete quite well against Intel's middle to higher performing LGA 1155 processors, such as the Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K.

That's all fine and dandy for now. We would advise anyone looking for a chip costing between £100 to £200 to give AMD FX a look.

But in the longer term, letting such a big and expensive chip go for comparatively pitiful prices (remember, Intel's top chips go for anywhere between £400 and £820) cannot possibly be sustainable.

Unfortunately, the fall out may already have begun.

AMD recently announced a round of 10 per cent redundancies affecting pretty much every part of its business. Whether AMD as we know it will survive has become a very real question.

In the meantime, what seems very clear is that another failed CPU design will very probably kill the company. From here on in, every significant product salvo must be on target.

If that's the state of play at AMD, it also provides the context for Intel's most recent CPU launches.

We speak of the new Core i7-2700K and the all-new Core i7-3000 series.

The former takes the tried and tested quad-core Sandy Bridge die and merely ups the nominal clockspeed from 3.4GHz for the 2600K up to (wait for it) 3.5GHz. Not terribly exciting, but easy enough to understand. Critically, the 2700K is only around £20 more expensive than the 2600K. So while you're not getting much more performance, you're not paying a lot extra for it, either.

It's therefore the new Core i7-3000 series that's most intriguing, both in terms of what it might do to high-end PC performance and what it says about Intel's current attitude. All Core i7-3000s are based on the new Sandy Bridge E core.

The first big surprise for us was a total core count – it maxes out at just six.

Not only has Intel already been offering six cores on the desktop for nearly two years. It's been flogging server CPUs with up to 10 cores for a while, too.

Okay, those chips sell for several thousand pounds a pop. But at the very least we were expecting Sandy Bridge E to bring eight cores to desktop computing for the first time.

Playing hide the cores

But the really big surprise came when we saw the die plot image provided by Intel.

Like any plot, it showed the functions of each block on the CPU die in broad brush terms. For Sandy Bridge E, that involves a large lump of cache in the middle, cores down each side and uncore kit including I/O and the memory controller above and below.

The difference, however, was a pair of unlabelled blocks, one each side of the cache memory pool. And it was very clear these blocks were disabled CPU cores.

Yup, It turns out that Sandy Bridge E is an eight-core chip after all. We've seen CPUs with disabled cores before, of course. It's one of AMD's favourite ruses, allowing additional processor models to fill niches, reducing the need to spin up multiple chips and minimising the number of processor dies that end up in the bin.

The thing is, Intel has always been a bit sneery about AMD's core-disabled chips, even inferring that it wouldn't lower itself to such cheap shenanigans. But here we are with an Intel chip with disabled cores.

What on earth is going on? Well, in our view, it's pretty straightforward – Sandy Bridge E isn't running in full eight-core mode because it doesn't need to.

AMD isn't even close to challenging Intel at the top of the performance tables.

Meanwhile, thanks to optimisations to Sandy Bridge cores compared with the previous Nehalem architecture, even with the same core count as Gulftown, the new i7-3000 chips have a modest but unmistakable performance advantage.

For Intel, therefore, it makes sense to ship today with six cores, allowing the use of processor dies with broken cores that would otherwise be thrown away.

Meanwhile, should AMD release a revised Bulldozer chip that unexpectedly raises the stakes, Intel can simply flip the switch on the hidden cores and open up the gap once again.

That's all pretty frustrating.

We'd much prefer to see Intel pushing the envelope, not dragging its feet. On the other hand, you could argue LGA 2011 in its entirety is pretty irrelevant to most desktop users, even to most enthusiasts.

However, in a parallel universe where AMD's Bulldozer was putting Intel under serious pressure, it's easy to imagine Intel releasing a six-core processor for the mainstream LGA 1155 socket and placing it at roughly the same £250 price point as existing LGA 1155 chips.

However you slice it, then, we're all paying a little ourselves for AMD's failure to take the fight to Intel.

In that context, now is definitely one of the trickier times to pick your next processor. The new FX chips are certainly competitive at the price points AMD has chosen. But do you really want to buy into a platform – and even a CPU manufacture – with such an uncertain future?

At the same time, the launch of Sandy Bridge E has just made Intel's LGA 1155 platform look a whole lot less attractive.

The problem, as ever, is that Intel's split socket strategy puts the kibosh on the upgrade path. As it stands, there's no significant upgrade path beyond four cores for LGA 1155. That's something that's not even set to change when Intel releases its 22nm Ivy Bridge processors next year.

Overall, then, it's not an ideal situation. There's not a perfect platform among AMD's AM3+ or Intel's LGA 2011 and LGA 1155 options. And as long as AMD struggles, all things chip-related will remain a little uncertain.

It's a complicated process then, buying a new CPU, so what processor is right for you?

We've checked out the best CPU technology available so there's no need to worry, come with us and find out where to put that hard-earned cash.

Processor Reviews

It's definitely not one of the easiest times in processor history to be choosing your next upgrade.

The best you can do is choose your budget carefully, peruse our reviews and benchmark results and choose the socket, platform and CPU that best meets your needs.

Today's PC processors aren't quite as quick or as affordable as they could be, but there are still some pretty effective chips out there in terms of bang for buck.

Intel Core i3-2100 - £95

Take a cheap chip. And clock the living bejesus out of it. This, friends, has long been the path to great PC performance for the pathologically penniless.

Enter, therefore, the Intel Core i3-2100. Like it or lump it, Intel has by far the best CPU architectures today and the feisty little 2100 is part of its latest generation of chips, known as Sandy Bridge.

With an unlocked multiplier, this thing could seriously rock. Without one, it's merely OK.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i3-2100 review

AMD FX 4100 Black Edition - £100

Consider the AMD FX 4100. We can't be absolutely sure about this without official confirmation, but we reckon it's based on the very same two-billion transistor processor die as the range-topping FX 8150.

The difference is that two of the 8150's four Bulldozer modules have been nuked from orbit.

The best that can be said about this dual-module Bulldozer is that it's not far behind its triple and quad-module brethren in games.

If only they weren't all off the pace.

Read TechRadar's AMD FX 4100 review

AMD FX 6100 - £140

When is a six-core PC processor not a six-core PC processor? When it's AMD's new FX 6100.

Long before AMD released its fancy new FX chips, we had a feeling a fisticuffs was brewing over the definition of what constitutes a processor core. Now the FX has arrived and the gloves are off.

At stock clocks and with the final module hidden, it's not terribly exciting. However, if it turns out that most of all 6100s will happily run with the final module enabled, it might just be worth a roll of the dice.

If that happens, we'll be more than happy to upgrade the 6100's status to buy.

Read TechRadar's AMD FX 6100 review

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T - £150

Little did we, or frankly AMD, know how good we had it with the Phenom II X6 1100T.

Only now, with the release of AMD's all-new Bulldozer architecture and the FX processors it powers, can we truly put what was once known as Hammer into full context.

It's not that far off when it comes to threading. But it also ponies up that little bit more per-core performance that could make the difference between smooth frames rates and the occasional chugging that really spoils the experience.

It's a bizarre thing to be asking, But please, AMD, have another go with the Hammer.

Read TechRadar's AMD Phenom II X6 1100T review

Intel Core i5-2500K - £170

Odd as it is for a CPU that's a year old to still offer the most advanced computing technology available, the Core i5-2500K feels like an old friend.

Of all Intel's CPUs it seems like the most honest, the most straight forward. If you're a keen gamer, it's probably still the fittest for purpose.

Only the higher clocked 2700K has it beaten. That's beyond impressive for a relatively elderly and affordable chip.

Chuck in the ability to go well beyond 4GHz on air cooling and you have an unbeatable package.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i5-2500K review

AMD FX 8150 - £225

Eight cores. Over 1 billion transistors. A radical modular architecture. 16MB of cache memory. And Turbo clockspeeds north of 4GHz. How could something that sounds so awesome end up so wrong?

One day, the full story of AMD's troubled new PC processor architecture will emerge. It should make for a fascinating tale. After all, the Bulldozer architecture that underpins the FX 8150 must have seemed like a great idea. It's all about balancing threads with cores with a view to delivering the most efficient and effective processor architecture possible.

However, that two billion transistor count makes it very expensive to manufacture, while its disappointing performance puts a limit on the price tag AMD can attach.

And more than anything else, it's just not a great chip for PC gaming.

Read TechRadar's AMD FX-8150 review

Intel Core i7-2700K - £250

The 2700K is the new de facto king of Intel's line of LGA1,155 models. For us, it's the LGA1,155 socket that's really relevant to PC enthusiasts and gamers, not the highfalutin', server-derived LGA2,011 platform and its quad-channel silliness.

The 2700K, then, is the fastest chip any mere mortal is likely to run in his PC any time soon.

Unfortunately, what it ain't is a big step forward over the existing Core i7-2600K.

What'll she do, mister? The answer during our testing and in the context of air cooling and a modicum of extra voltage is an overclocking speed of 4.8GHz.

A very good result, we think you'll agree. But not materially better than you can expect from most 2600K processors. Again, the game doesn't move on.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i7-2700K review

Intel Core i7-3930K - £499

The Intel Core i7-3960X is a positively preposterous processor. This is the Intel Core i7-3930K and it's not the same chip. Not precisely, anyway.

We've reviewed the 3960X elsewhere and deemed it disappointing, moderately sinister (it's prima facie evidence of Intel carpet bagging in response to AMD's failure to bring out a really quick chip) and largely irrelevant to human existence.

So, here's the best bit. The 3930K costs over £300 less.

OK, £500 is still a big ask. But the difference in price alone is enough to buy a half decent desktop PC or a cheap laptop.

The point, then, is that this cheaper Sandy Bridge E gives you everything the top chip delivers for a lot less money. There's absolutely no reason to spend any more.

We're not completely convinced even this truly means the 3930K is good value for money. But it's still a very fast processor and the chip we'd buy if we had a big budget.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i7-3930K review

And the best CPU is...

We'll be honest. This isn't quite the CPU super we'd been hoping to bring you.

That's not because we couldn't get hold of the right chips. Au contraire. We've all the latest and greatest from both Intel and AMD. That includes examples of epic new high-end architectures alongside much more modest chips and some old favourites in between.

No, the reason why it's not quite the test we were planning is simply because AMD and Intel's latest salvoes in silicon didn't turn out how we were expecting. Both disappoint but for very different reasons.

Ultimately, the biggest bummer is AMD's failure with the new Bulldozer FX chips.

They aren't entirely without merit. The two cheaper chips, the six-thread FX 6100 and quad-thread 4100, will be particularly interesting if it turns out that most buyers are having success re-enabling the hidden cores.

Instead, it's the FX's failure to put Intel under any meaningful pressure that's most damaging and in turn explains why Intel has been able to be so very conservative with its own processors.

The new six-core Core i7-3930K is undoubtedly a very fast CPU. But it would be even faster with the final two cores enabled. And we can't see any reason why Intel wouldn't do so.

Apart from the simple fact that the 3930K has no direct competition, that is.

We smell something similarly fishy wafting forth from the new Core i7-2700K. A clockspeed bump of 100MHz is barely worth the bother. But it's enough to give Intel a new product to sell and there's nothing AMD can do about that. It simply doesn't have a product capable of forcing Intel's hand.

All of which means the two most interesting processors here turn out to be the oldest, too.

More than anything, AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 1100T proves the folly that is Bulldozer. It's much quicker per core and it's not that far behind in multi-threading.

In the context of a transistor count that's half as big as Bulldozer, that's ridiculous. The 1100T is a chip that could always make an argument for itself, but we didn't expect Bulldozer's arrival to make it look even better.

Thus by process of elimination, you know what's coming next.

That's right, our winner once again is our old favourite, the Core i5-2500K. Like the Phenom II X6 1100T, the arrival of disappointing new products has only served to enhance the appeal of the 2500K.

It's not absolutely perfect. It would take Intel to flick the switch on Hyper-Threading for that to be true. We all know that's not going to happen.

It's therefore not the ideal chip for heavy multi-threaders including video encoding enthusiasts (with the possible exception of those who are happy with Quick Sync's restrictions).

For everyone else, and especially for gamers, the 2500K remains the champion chip it always was.

Buy one and we guarantee you won't regret it.

How Windows protects your PC

Your Windows computer should, if you're sensible, already have formidable defences in the form of advanced anti-malware.

However, we're now entering an age of cloud computing, filled with downloadable applets, at a time when we're also fighting an intense arms race against ever more ingenious malware writers.

Because of this, your PC's defences have to handle code from many sources and still protect you from outside threats.

How is this possible, and what ways have the bad guys already found to thwart these efforts? Most importantly, how can you be sure your computer only runs what you think it's running?

Signing in

Unlike applications purchased from trusted vendors, when you download applets or freeware made by individuals, there's no way the average user (or even the security professional) can be sure that the software they think is running isn't actually something else entirely.

With the arms race between developers and hackers now gathering pace, it could take more than just advanced antivirus software to match the state of the art in malicious programming. Luckily, Windows has an ingenious way to protect itself. This is Microsoft's Authenticode system.

You'll have seen evidence of Authenticode in action when you try to install software that hasn't been through a process known as signing. A warning popup appears, explaining that the installation program's publisher could not be verified and offering you a chance to stop it running.

Unique signature

Programs are signed using an encryption algorithm like RSA. This uses a publicly available encryption key to create a globally unique signature code that describes the program being verified. Being public, anyone can get the key used to sign the code.

The operating system obtains it, generates its own copy of the signature and compares it with the one supplied with the program. If they match, the code is what the supplier says it is, and it can be allowed to run.

These encryption keys are held by several large and trusted security companies (certificate authorities) in the form of publicly accessible digital certificates that contain the details of the company that issued the program your operating system is trying to verify, as well as the unique signature of the program itself.

If you're a developer, having a certification authority generate a digital certificate to show that you and your code can be trusted is usually a costly and involved process. Obtaining a commercial certificate for your company means proving beyond any doubt that you are who you claim to be.

According to Microsoft, your physical presence may be requested as a representative of your business to verify your identity against photo ID. The business itself must also have a suitable Dun and Bradstreet rating. This rating is a measure of your company's financial stability and indicates that among other things that the company is still in business. This prevents hackers from simply posing as a company that has quietly stopped trading in order to gain a false certificate for malicious purposes.

Finally, applicants must also pledge not to distribute malware. Whether this final measure is any more than lip service is up for debate.

Individual developers can also obtain a personal certificate to sign their products. In this case, no Dun and Bradstreet rating is required, but your credentials will be checked against consumer databases to make sure you are who you say you are. In both cases, obtaining a certificate will usually cost you a fair amount of money.

With so many certificate authorities, it pays to shop around for the best deal. A one-year Microsoft Authenticode certificate from VeriSign, for example, will cost you $499 (about £250). If you expect people to download and install your software beyond one year, you'll have to renew the certificate or your code will become unsigned again.

Public keys

Eagle-eyed readers might have spotted that the use of public keys is the same general mechanism used in encrypting email and SSH, where it's used to prove that the server to which you're trying to make a secure, encrypted connection is the real thing and not a dummy that's been set up to skim usernames and passwords.

The main problem with signing code is that the average user has no idea what the associated popup means when the code's publisher cannot be verified. There's a tendency to take a chance on becoming infected and to leave everything to the antivirus software, but what if this fails to spot malicious code?

Sandboxing explained

In the sand

One solution is to use a 'sandbox' to quarantine running code so that any attempt to make unauthorised changes to the system can be prevented caught before they are carried out. Some antivirus software (even free versions) now provides the facility to automatically run suspect or unsigned programs in a sandbox.

Perhaps more importantly, web browsers are also beginning to use sandboxes, which is another good reason to abandon that old version of Internet Explorer. The ability of malicious or hijacked sites to silently install code on your computer simply by surfing to them will be greatly reduced.

A sandbox operates a little like a virtual machine, in that it provides the running code with a virtual environment containing everything it needs to believe it's running on real hardware. However, it actually runs in a carefully crafted simulation with severe limits placed on it. Any changes to the actual operating system are never allowed to propagate beyond the sandbox.

The sandbox used in Google's Chrome browser is a good example of the concept in action. Rather than write a complete virtualisation product, the developers used Windows' own security model to help Chrome achieve its renowned speed.

Chrome's sandbox works because malware needs to write to unauthorised parts of RAM or to the hard disk to install itself so that it can run again after a reboot. In Windows, this can only be done using a system call to the kernel's I/O functions, all of which check the privileges of the process calling them. Chrome's sandbox is set up so that write operations never have the correct privileges and therefore fail. Return codes are faked, so the malware believes it's installing itself, but never does.

For developers, Chrome's sandbox is particularly useful because it isn't deeply embedded in the browser. Developers can use it to test their own programs and make sure that they don't try to do anything they shouldn't, or which could be construed as malicious.

Chrome tarnished

Chrome's sandbox is among the most secure. In the first three years since the browser's release, it resisted all attempts at subversion during the prestigious Pwn2Own hacking competition. Held during the annual CanSecWest security conference, the competition has seen IE8 and Firefox hacked wide open. However, Chrome's sandbox may have been breached, if the claims of one French security company are true.

Researchers at VUPEN Security recently issued a security advisory giving details of what it claims is a simple, two-step process for breaking out of Chrome's sandbox and making unauthorised changes to the operating system. The news of Chrome's 'pwning' via its sandbox has been met with concern in the online security community, not least because VUPEN Security has chosen not to share its findings with Google, which would be more usual.

When a security researcher finds an exploitable bug, he or she usually contacts the developer with the details and perhaps a suggested fix. Only when the developer has implemented a fix and issued new code does the researcher exercise their bragging rights by publishing full details of the bug online.

However, in a statement, VUPEN Security says that, "We did not alert Google as we only share our vulnerability research with our Government customers for defensive and offensive security". This stance hints at the commercialisation of so-called 'zero day' exploits – those not reported to the developer so that they can be fixed but instead kept for private exploitation or sale.

At a time when governments are talking openly about their preparations for cyber warfare, exploitable bugs, packaged and ready to use with exploit code, can command serious money. However, several pundits have questioned VUPEN Security's announcement. If, they ask, VUPEN is planning to sell its Chrome exploit to a government customer to use as a weapon, why publicise it and put potential adversaries on their guard?

Take the blue pill

We take the idea of virtualisation for granted as a cheap or free path to creating networks on a single physical computer, but it is far from being a software-only technique. Since the mid 2000s, Intel and AMD have included hardware virtualisation inside their chips.

Both companies aimed to make the creation of virtual machine software easier, but their technologies had an unexpected side effect. When you create and run a virtual computer in a package like Oracle's free VirtualBox, for example, the entire simulation runs under the control of a process known as a hypervisor.

The hypervisor (which is also referred to as a virtual machine manager) makes sure that the entire physical computer is apparently available to the virtual machine. It handles access to everything from the BIOS to the USB ports, and resolves any resource access conflicts with other virtual machines it may be controlling at the same time.

However, not long after AMD and Intel released chips supporting virtualisation, Polish security guru Joanna Rutkowska created an ingenious hacking technique that ensures that people can see anything the chips are doing, including everything you type in.

For this, Rutkowska created a simple hypervisor that tells the processor to run under its control. However, the chip itself and the operating system that's running on it have no way of knowing that it has been flipped into this malicious hypervisor. They simply continue running as if nothing had happened.

Rutkowska called her approach the Blue Pill after the concept of the same name in cult sci-fi movie The Matrix. Running the Blue Pill exploit puts the chip into a simulation of the computer, which is indistinguishable from the real thing. Once inside this simulation, everything the running operating system does is laid bare.

Because the simulation is indistinguishable from the real thing, malware using the same concept (like a rootkit, for example) can be created that, potentially, cannot be detected. Other researchers have pointed out flaws in Rutkowska's approach, but there's no doubting that the sheer convenience of virtualisation may ultimately prove the downfall of current processor protection measures, and lead to ever more ingenious defence mechanisms.

Forty years ago today, Intel introduced something amazing: the 4004, the first commercially available microprocessor.

A 4-bit, 1/10th-MHz chip doesn't sound like much today, but it was revolutionary: as Intel recalls, it "delivered the same computing power as the first electronic computer built in 1946, which filled an entire room."

The 4004 got off to an unimpressive start - a manufacturing error meant that the first batch didn't work, the 4004 itself was destined for an unglamorous life inside Japanese calculators and rivals didn't see anything worth getting excited about - but Intel's then-CEO Gordon Moore called it "one of the most revolutionary products in the history of mankind." He wasn't exaggerating. Without the microprocessor, the world as we know it today wouldn't exist.

Why Intel won

The 4004 was a direct ancestor of today's super-speedy, multi-core marvels: it begat the 8-bit 8008 processor, which in turn led to 1974's 8080 - the processor that laid the foundations for the X86 architecture that Intel still uses today.

Intel created the first commercial microprocessor, but it wasn't alone for long: then, as now, Intel soon had multiple competitors, some of whose products delivered superior performance.

Intel's success wasn't just about technology, though: it was about really smart negotiating too. The 4004 was designed on behalf of the calculator firm Busicom, and when Busicom demanded deep discounts Intel agreed - but in exchange, it got the right to sell 4004s in other markets.

Intel repeated the trick with the 8008: its customer, Computer Terminal Corporation, had designed both the chip and its instruction set - it was known at CTC as the 1201 - but when the chip didn't meet CTC's own performance goals, the firm decided to use a different processor in its terminals and signed over its designs to Intel.

The 8008 would soon power the world's first real microcomputer, the Sac State 8008, and the first commercial personal computers, the French Micral N and the US SCELBI-8H. Its descendant, the 8088, would become the heart of the IBM PC.

Like many tech triumphs, Intel's success was a mix of luck, clever negotiating, competitors' mis-steps and being in the right place at the right time, but that doesn't make it any less of a triumph: while lots of firms claim to have changed the world, Intel actually did it.

From smartphones to sat-navs, computers to cars, Xboxes to X-ray machines, the 4004's grandchildren make the world work.

Intel is celebrating the 40th birthday of the first commercially available microprocessor – with the fondly remembered Intel 4004 arriving on this day in 1971.

The microprocessor has fundamentally changed the world that we live in, and it has come a long way since its arrival, with the eerily accurate Moore's Law dictating that every two years will see processing power double.

Intel points out that this means today's second gen Intel Core processors offer up 350,000 times the performance, with each transistor using 5,000 times less energy.

Price drop

Fortunately the price of the transistor has dropped by a factor of about 50,000, allowing the microprocessor to proliferate in our everyday consumer electronics.

So what of the future? "The sheer number of advances in the next 40 years will equal or surpass all of the innovative activity that has taken place over the last 10,000 years of human history," said Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer.

The immediate future for Intel will see the adoption of the 22nm manufacturing process and the arrival of 3D Tri-Gate transistors.

But for now, we can celebrate 40 years of the commercially available microprocessor, and laugh about how unsophisticated things used to be in the 1970s.

The rankings of the top 500 supercomputers on the planet have been updated, with the University of Edinburgh's Cray the UK's only entry in the top 50 of a list topped by Japan's Fujitsu K computer.

The list – assembled by the University of Mannheim in Germany, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville – consists of the most powerful computers around.

Although Japan's Fujitsu K supercomputer housed in Japan's RIKEN research laboratories is in top spot, work is already underway on Titan – which will use Nvidia's chips (something that was given prominence in the chip giant's recent financial results) – and should overhaul it by some way.

UK entries

The UK has seven supercomputers that make the list, although those machines are across only four different sites.

They are the University of Edinburgh's impressive Cray XE6, Opteron 6276 16C 2.30 GHz, Cray Gemini interconnect, which sits proudly in 19th place in the rankings, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts which offers up the 55th ranking computer along with the 99th and the 100th, the UK's Met Office who provide the 62nd and 63rd ranking machines and the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) which holds 93rd spot.

Top five

China's Tianjin-based National Supercomputing Centre holds second spot, with the United States' Oak Ridge in third.

Another Chinese national Supercomputing Centre – this time in Shenzen – takes fourth spot and the top five is rounded out by Japan's GSIC Center Toky Institute of Technology.

The highest European entry is in ninth spot and is France's Commissariat à L'énergie Atomique (Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission).

This morning Intel launched its all-singing, all-number crunching Sandy Bridge E processors and brand-spanking new X79 motherboard chipset.

It's not messing around; these are the fastest desktop CPUs that have ever passed across our test benches.

The flagship CPU, the Intel Core i7 3960X, is right up there at the very top-end of processors, and all six-cores of its updated Sandy Bridge E architecture can be yours for nigh-on £750.

So it's no value proposition then.

There is not a little controversy surrounding it though as despite being sold as a straight six-core CPU the literature Intel has given reviewers clearly shows two dormant or dead CPU cores unused on the die.

We've gone into more depth about this in our full Intel Core i7 3960X review.

Still, it is a lightening-fast processor capable of the sort of raw computational prowess you wont see outside of the server environment. It's also no slouch in the overclocking department either, our review chip managed 4.8GHz in Asus's Sabertooth X79 motherboard.

It's not just the top chip that is an overclocking beast, and to demonstrate that we've been gleefully playing with YOYOTech's XDNA Platinum PC.

That's running the cheaper, mid-range Intel Core i7 3930K Sandy Bridge E running at 4.4GHz out of the box.

The other stand out feature of the new Sandy Bridge E processors and X79 chipset is the support for the next generation of memory; quad-channel DDR3.

Quite what improvements this gives, in real-world terms, over triple-channel DDR3 is rather intangible, and to be honest more indicative of the platform's server roots than any importance on the desktop.

If you want the full low-down on Intel's latest offerings, then look no further.

Check out our Sandy Bridge E reviews:

Intel Core i7 3960X:

If you want the fastest processor on the planet, look no further. Most impressive is the additional overclocking headroom Intel has delivered over the old six-core chip. Platform upgrades including more PCI-E lanes and SATA 6Gbps are welcome, too.

Asus Sabertooth X79:

Asus's RoG boards are all very well if money's no object. Back in the real world, the Sabertooth series offers a much more realistic compromise between performance, features and price. The chipset cooling and overclocking support look very solid. We certainly squeezed some great numbers out of the new Core i7-3960X.

YOYOTech XDNA Platinum:

With the XDNA Platinum sat on your desktop, purring away quietly as it does, with its cold-cathode tubes illuminating the clean lines of the immaculate interior, even £2,500 worth of buyer's remorse will have a hard job up against such an impressive machine.

Beginner's guide to overclocking

Back in the days when the average desktop PC was barely capable of running anything more demanding than a word processor, overclocking your CPU to get £1,000 performance from a £300 chip was almost as big a necessity as switching off the 'turbo' button to underclock and run non speed-limited software.

The world has changed. A modern multi-core CPU has a much longer shelf life than its ancestors, since performance today is as much a factor of the number of cores and microcode as it is raw clockspeed. An Intel Q6600 bought four years ago is unlikely to feel sluggish whatever the situation, and upgrading isn't expensive anyway.

For the reasonable outlay of £150, you can pick up anything from the latest Sandy Bridge chips through to an excessively powerful sixcore processor from AMD. The basics, though, remain the same: why buy a new chip when you can save money by overclocking the one you have?

The techniques used in CPU overclocking are largely unchanged since those early days: simply ask your processor's clock to run a little faster, do something to take care of the extra heat produced, and you're done.

It's true that most CPU architectures have a cap beyond which they simply won't perform, but the good news is that up to 5GHz is possible for new Intel processors, and you won't need any flashy coolants to make it happen. We'll talk a lot about clocks in this article, so here's a definition.

Your CPU's clock speed is calculated by taking the base clock (a signal supplied by the clock generator on the motherboard) and then applying a multiplier. On newer motherboards, the base clock will be 133MHz by default, whereas for Core 2 or older CPUs, the base clock varies between 100MHz and 166MHz.

The important thing to remember is that the CPU speed is always defined by this external influence from the motherboard. It doesn't just run; it needs to be told how.

Sometimes this is easy. If you own an Extreme Edition chip, one of the new K-series models, or any unlocked Intel CPU, then you'll be able to select the multiplier. So a Core i7 980X running at 3.33GHz (133MHz base clock, x25 multiplier) can be overclocked to 4GHz just by increasing the multiplier to 30.

If you don't have an unlocked chip the multiplier will be fixed at a set value or, in the case of the Core i7 and i5 CPUs we've seen, you'll be given a restricted set of options in the BIOS to set the multiplier or apply a very small overclock.

Base clock

If you can't increase the multiplier, you'll need to increase the base clock itself, and that's where your choice of motherboard is all-important - better boards give you more options.

A warning though: the base clock affects the other buses in your machine. This includes the PCI-e bus used by your graphics card, so either your GPU needs to be well cooled, or you'll need to be able to 'decouple' the CPU and GPU in the BIOS and leave your graphics card running at stock speed.

The other stalwart of overclocking is the CPU voltage setting - as you increase the processor speed, it's necessary to increase the voltage supplied to the processor in order to retain stability. This isn't a blunt instrument - increase the voltage too much and you'll actually introduce more instability.

Increased voltage also leads to greatly increased core temperatures, as we'll see later on.

Hardware choices

Are you thinking of building a system just for overclocking? We used an MSI P55-GD65 for our Intel-based tests. This is a solid board that costs less than £100 yet still offers a wide range of all-important BIOS settings.

In case you aren't confident with fiddling around too deeply in the BIOS, it also has broad options that increase clockspeeds across the board, and can automatically find a modest but stable overclock.

As far as the chip goes, any one of Intel's Core 2, Core i5 or Core i7 processors is a great place to start. We think the best choice right now is the Core i5 2500K, a 3.33GHz chip that will hit 4GHz reasonably easily. That processor leaves you a little scuppered when it comes to motherboards though - the Z68 chipset is yet to mature, so we're still looking for the perfect partner for this chip.

Instead, for the walkthrough below, we used an Intel Core i7 870 Quad Core Processor to show you how to get the most from an Intel-based system. The chip itself is pricey, but the socket-1156 motherboards are cheap enough, and you can decouple the memory timings while finding the fastest stable speed for your processor, which is very handy.

Remember, for stability, you need to balance the base clock, multiplier, and the voltage supplied to the CPU and the Quickpath Interconnect system interface. This is a strange, unpredictable science.

Every chip is different; a high base clock with a low multiplier may work better than a low base clock and a high multiplier, or vice versa.

Going AMD

Now we'll take a look at the other side of the equation. AMD may not hold the performance crown, but there's no doubt its chips still offer great value for money, and a great deal of flexibility too. Thanks to its high-end overclocking features, the Black Edition family more than makes up for any performance shortfall.

Retailing from as little as £88, the quad-core Phenom II X4 955 is one of the best quad-core chips on the market, and ships with its multiplier unlocked. We're going to overclock this chip to see how far we can push it, but the same process will work for any AMD processor.

You'll need a solid cooler and motherboard, and a good selection of settings to play with. We're using the Titan Fenrir EVO cooler, as it's a perfect example of a higher-end air cooler. To back this up, we have the incredible Asus Crosshair IV Formula motherboard: an overclocking-focused mainboard with every setting you could want.

In the bad old days you'd need to fiddle with motherboard jumpers. Not any more. BIOS settings remain a core technique, but they're getting outdated. Windows-based utilities on motherboards like the Crosshair offer as much flexibility, and they're much more convenient.

Start overclocking

The first important step here is to reduce the memory bus speed to the lowest setting - ideally 400MHz with basic latencies of 8-8-8-8-24. These will help eliminate memory-based errors, so you can be more certain that the processor has caused a lockup by throwing a wobbly.

Then it's time to turn things up a little. Increasing the base clock by 10MHz at a time is safe, but also incredibly boring. We prefer jumping in with both feet and assuming a free 10 per cent increase is a safe bet.

With the 3.2GHz Phenom II 955, that means an initial overclock to 3.5GHz or a Front Side Bus speed of 219GHz. This worked fine, so we started pushing a little harder. Eventually we hit 3,728MHz with the FSB at 233MHz before the Cinebench X264 benchmark fell over, though Windows itself remained stable.

We cranked the FSB back down, and eventually settled on 228MHz and 3,648MHz as being stable.

Of course, the Black Edition has its multiplier unlocked. This enables increases in the CPU speed without altering the system bus from its stock speed, which is better for everyone. We returned to the unstable level of 3,700MHz, using a 200MHz FSB and a multiplier of 18.5x and increased the voltage by a single step from the stock 1.350v until the system was stable again.

Then we returned to slowly increasing processor speed via the FSB until it became unstable again. In the end, we managed to achieve a maximum stable overclock of 3,904MHz with a 1.56v core voltage. That's a 205MHz FSB, 19x multiplier and a worryingly elevated core temperature of 60.5°C!

We did find this a little unstable though, so we went back a couple of steps to our best solid results: 3,838MHz with a 19x multiplier and a 202MHz FSB.

Step-by-step overclocking guide

Overclocking step-by-step

1. Use quality components

A decent motherboard and RAM are the foundations of easy overclocking. Without access to the right settings, there's little chance of getting a decent overclock going. Without access to the right kit, you won't get the settings. Ironically, you might need to upgrade before proceeding.

2. Keep everything cool

A heavy-duty cooler offers quieter running than stock coolers. One with a sturdy heatpiped copper base and 120mm fan is going to provide more efficient cooling than the standard block type. You can overclock on the stock cooler, of course, but we probably wouldn't.

3. Apply thermal paste

Remember, a good application of thermal paste is essential to help your cooling efforts. We've found that we get the best results by applying an tiny amount initially, spreading this around with the heatsink itself, then removing and cleaning the majority from just the cooler.

4. Consider water-cooling

You could, if you're looking to take your processor a long way, treat yourself to water-cooling like CoolIT's ECO ALC. These modern self-contained units are easy to use, run quieter than a lot of fans, and are covered by some all-encompassing warranties for peace of mind.

5. Grab some benchmarks

Seeing the difference is pretty important; you'll want to get hold of something you can run before and after overclocking. Many people use games like Far Cry 2 and Crysis, which include built-in benchmarks, or you could try Cinebench x264, a dedicated benchmark tool.

6. Get official tools

Intel's Desktop Control Center and AMD Overdrive are essential if you want to gain access to all your processor's features, although these will only really work with super high-end chips. You'll be stuck with the BIOS otherwise.

The dirty work: Ready to take your processor up a notch? It's easy…

1. Master the BIOS

The preferred way to overclock your processor is to use the BIOS. The best overclocking boards provide a dedicated section to adjust the settings for the memory, processor and system bus, along with automatic settings, preset options and recovery.

2. Bench then run

Run your benchmarks to get the base numbers for your PC. Once done, reboot and hit [Delete] to enter the BIOS. The MSI P55-GD6 lists its main tweaking options in the Cell menu - 'Adjust CPU base frequency', 'Adjust CPU ratio' and 'CPU voltage' are the main ones.

3. Multiplier boost

The Core i7 870 CPU Ratio can be raised from 22 to 24, so that's an easy place to start. Save the changes and exit the BIOS, and then see if you can boot into Windows at the higher clockspeeds. If that appears to be working fine, reboot and go back into the BIOS.

4. Base clock kick

Raise the CPU Base Frequency by 10MHz, save the changes and boot Windows to check for stability. If all is fine, return to the BIOS to repeat the process until you can no longer boot. Try increasing the CPU Voltage by 0.1V and test to see if this improves things.

5. Voltage tweak

If you're still facing problems, either increase the voltage a bit more, or try dropping the multiplier and increasing the base clock to go faster. You may need several attempts to balance the three settings. Intel chips are fairly robust, but watch your voltage.

6. Go third party

Most motherboard manufacturers provide their own overclocking utilities. The ASUS effort offers up a decent automatic mode, although it does err on the side of caution a little too much. In this instance it stopped at 1.4v, with a maximum CPU speed of 3.4GHz.

Intel is working on a new CPU line that is designed exclusively for tablets.

It looks as though Intel's upcoming mobile chip, codenamed Medfield, will be making its way to smartphones but steering clear of slates with this new tablet chip taking its place.

Digitimes is reporting that the new tablet processors will be particularly focused on thermal design power (TDP) and performance.

Digitimes, digital times

The occasionally-reliable Digitimes has heard the news from an anonymous source, so don't take any of this as gospel.

These mysterious sources also added that the company will launch 32nm Saltwell, 22nm Silvermont and 14nm Airmont chipsets over the course of the next three years.

Intel is also looking to reduce power consumption of its processors, with the Medfield chips and these unnamed tablet chips set to come down to 10W in the next two years.

ARM has announced the latest in its line of GPUs that will be integrated into the next generation of smartphones and smart TVs.

The ARM Mali-T658 is a chip that is packed with power. To put it into context, the new Mali chip has 10 times more performance than its predecessor – the Mali-400 MP GPU – which currently resides in devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2.

In short, it holds enough power to take on the likes of the PS3 and the Xbox 360, which is, frankly, a little scary.

With the new update ARM is hoping to "redefine heterogeneous computing for the embedded space" which essentially means its new GPUs are ideal to tackle the high-performance graphics we now crave from out low-powered gadgets.

In ARM's way

Not only can the ARM Mali-T658 tackle graphics, it has also been built to take on the likes of computational photography, image-processing and augmented reality.

According to ARM, the Mali-T658 is scalable up to eight cores and is compatible with the ARMv8 architecture – more specifically the ARM Corte-A15 and Cortex-A7 processors either in standalone modes or in big.LITTLE processing mode.

"Next generation consumer devices based on the Mali-T658 GPU will address the growing user expectation for slick user interfaces and desktop-class graphics," said Pete Hutton, general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM.

"Intuitive user interfaces will mean that consumers can access the full functionality of their connected devices, for richer user experiences. This includes HD gaming and new compute-intensive applications, such as augmented reality."

Just this week Nvidia unveiled its Tegra 3 chip, the world's first quadcore processor for mobile phones.

GFI has launched the latest version of its Vipre Internet Security suite in the UK.

The software uses a proprietary technology stack to protect against the latest malware issues and GFI claims it has a minimal impact on PC performance.

The new software has a streamlined installation process, as well as a refined detection technology to scan PCs quicker. In case of a major problem, the software also enables Vipre technicians to take control of PCs to solve problems more quickly.

This version of the software also introduces spam filtering technology and a smarter firewall.

"Much of the security industry ignores the fact that their products are the cause of so much frustration among PC users," said Mark Patton, general manager of the GFI software security unit.

"Vipre antivirus is 100% focused on providing users with best-in-class malware protection while conserving the speed and performance of their PCs.

Vipre also protects against email-borne viruses, supporting all desktop email clients using POP3 or SMTP, including Outlook. It is certified by AV-TEST, ICSA, Virus Bulletin (VB100) and West Coast Labs.

As well as Vipre Internet Security 2012, an alternative Antivirus 2012 suite is also available.

A one-time license purchase is good for the entire life of the PC on which it is first installed. Pricing for a single PC starts at £69.99 for Vipre Internet Security 2012. An annual purchase license for up to 10 PCs costs £40.

A single user license is £20 for Vipre Antivirus 2012 and £30 for Vipre Internet Security 2012.

Processor and graphics card manufacturer AMD has posted its Q3 2011 results, and things are looking up for the previously-troubled company.

Its total revenue for the quarter is $1.69 billion (£1.04 billion), up seven per cent on last quarter, with a 4.5 per cent increase in sales.

While Bulldozer might not have the clout to take on Intel, it seems that the company has found success in its Fusion APUs - which combine the processor and graphics card on a single chip.

This has led to a dramatic turnaround - whereas the company reported a loss of $118 million (£73 million) this time last year, the latest results indicate a profit of $97 million.

Cold Fusion

AMD notes that most major notebook manufacturers have jumped on the Fusion platform, including Acer, Asus, HP and Toshiba.

It also reports a 10 per cent sequential growth in its graphics card division, formerly known as ATI.

AMD has always played underdog to Intel, but it seems Intel's reluctance to get into the lucrative smartphone and tablet processor market has put it on shaky ground.

AMD, on the other hand, has less to lose by staying desktop and laptop-oriented.

Asus will be throwing its full weight behind the forthcoming Intel X79 chipset for performance desktop PCs.

The chipset will debut alongside the Intel's "second generation Core i7 family for high-end desktop" which will use the new, larger LGA2011 socket.

Interestingly, many of the forthcoming Asus boards will have a centrally located socket with four DIMM slots either side – yep, eight in total.

X79 boards will also lack video outputs – as they're designed for high end PCs, it's assumed they will be used with separate graphics hardware.

We're not allowed to tell you exactly what the new Intel processors are called as yet and neither can we let you know when they'll launch. Rest assured we'll be bringing you a review of the boards and processor as soon as we can here on TechRadar.

The Taiwanese manufacturer will have several series of boards - including Sabertooth – which will supplant the X58 – LGA1366 models at the top of the tree.

An X79-based ROG Rampage IV Extreme Motherboard was seen at BlizzCon 2011 over the weekend, while the P9X79 Deluxe has also been spied.

The boards will support CrossFireX and SLI in various configurations.

ARM shipped a whopping one billion chips in mobile devices in the last quarter, with profit before tax up 44 per cent year on year.

The British chip giant announced its A7 processor last week, but its older technology is still doing the business, and the Q3 figures paint a healthy picture.

On top of 1 billion chips in mobile devices, ARM declared that 900 million chips were shipped in consumer and embedded devices – a 40 per cent increase.

Driving Licenses

CEO Warren East said: "In the third quarter of 2011, we saw a continued high level of design activity with many new customers licensing ARM technology for the first time, driven by end market requirements for smarter, low-power chips.

"Demand for our technology has come from a broad range of applications, from sensors to computers.

"Over the last year we have seen strong growth in shipments of ARM technology-based chips, with a 50% increase of shipments into non-mobile markets such as digital TVs, microcontrollers and networking applications.

"Royalty revenues in Q3 have been impacted by the below seasonal growth in the semiconductor industry, but we continue to gain share.

"With customers looking to design ARM technology into a widening product portfolio, ARM is continuing to invest in the development of new products to drive long-term growth in our revenues, profits and cash."

With products sporting the Cortex A15 processor expected in 2012, and 2013 likely to see a raft of lower cost smartphones with ARM's A7 processor, it's certainly a positive time for ARM.

Retro computer enthusiast Amigakit has announced that its AmigaOne X1000 desktop will be with us for Christmas - with a whopping price tag of £2,000.

A labour of love for its creators, Trevor Dickinson, Anthony Moorley and Ben Hermans, it packs a custom-built motherboard running a semi-dual core processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 500GB hard drive and a Radeon HD4650 graphics card.

Those specs aren't all that alluring, especially given the whopping price tag, but it's still worth bearing in mind that the AmigaOne has been built from the ground up to run AmigaOS4. Which itself is an optional extra.

First-come only-served

The desktop will be built and sold on a first-come first-served basis, but we're not entirely sure who's going to buy it.

It's more intriguing as a proof of concept though - it shows that established chip architectures aren't the only way to go about building a PC, and that long-dead operating systems can still be resurrected.

We're interested in what AmigaKit does next, too - it's mentioned that the AmigaOS4 could be ported to netbooks.

Chip giant Intel has sneakily released an upgraded Sandy Bridge CPU - the Core i7 2700K - just weeks after AMD launched its supposedly Intel-challenging Bulldozer chip.

The chip isn't a huge upgrade over its predecessor, the 2600K, offering only a small increase of 100MHz to 3.5GHz in operating frequency. In turn, this lets the chip reach speeds for 3.9GHz in Turbo mode.

Otherwise the chip's much the same, with four cores, up to eight threaded Hyper-Threading and an 8MB cache.

Unlocked overclock

As before, the Core i7's multiplier is unlocked for easy overclocking.

Intel has also announced price drops for three of its lower-end chips. The Core i2-2120 and Pentium G630 and G850 will be priced at $117 (£73), $64 (£40) and $75 (£47) respectively.

The Core-i7 2700K is now in stock at Scan Computers for £287, £87 more than AMD's latest chip.

Quite why Intel hasn't made its usual song and dance about the new chip is unknown - it could be that it's such an incremental upgrade that it's not worth promoting, or that it's going to big up the processor once the wind disappears from AMD's Bulldozer sails.