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Gigabyte 9600 GT

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Recently, NVIDIA has gone into manufacturing overdrive, releasing a slew of new graphics cards in a bid to bury the competition.

We've seen the excellent 8800GT arrive, quickly followed by weaker iterations of the same card at lower prices. Now we have the Gigabyte 9600GT, a relatively low-budget graphics card that makes the others in the sub-£200 market all but redundant.

NVIDIA's latest budget graphics card

The gaming performance is on a par with the G92-based 8800GT, dropping a few frames per second here and there, but never enough to really make a difference to the naked eye at standard resolutions.

Of course, if you're driving a very hi-res panel at 2,560 x 1,600 then you're going to have trouble getting smooth framerates at the native resolution, but if you're willing to pay out for such a mammoth screen then you'll be able to afford at least two of these, or the upcoming 9800GTX, to boost performance.

Tramples the competition

Compared to NVIDIA's 8800GS and the awful 8800GT 256MB version - both of which are still retailing at well above the cost of the 9600GT - this card walks all over them.

This is due in no small part to the 512MB of GDDR3 memory, but also because of the new GPU core beating at the heart of the 9600GT.

If you look hard enough you can find these cards retailing for nearer the £100 mark, making this the budget gamer's card of choice at the moment - that is, if they want to get games featuring Vista's new graphics showcase, DirectX 10, working at playable framerates.

Impressive performance

We're finally seeing performance at this price bracket that previously we were having to shell out at least double for barely three months ago. Such is the march of progress in the graphics world of late.

If you're looking at getting hold of a low-price PC gaming rig you can now pick up some real bargains shaped around the 9600GT for around £500, and if you're just looking to upgrade an existing PCI-E machine then you'll be hard pushed to find another way to boost your gaming experience this much for £100.

MSI X48 Platinum

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Intel has a nasty habit of killing off relatively new chipsets and leaving buyers in the lurch.

So it was with the X48 chipset, which appeared within months of the X38. Given that the X48 is largely the same silicon, we can't quite fathom why Intel didn't make a single release that combined the features of both.

Gaming prowess

Nevertheless, the X48 is certainly offers comprehensive support for the very latest Intel 45nm chips.

That includes the near-mythical Core 2 Extreme QX9770 and its currently unique 1,600MHz front side bus. Of course, the X48 also supports Intel's CrossFire multi-GPU graphics technology, making it the obvious foil to NVIDIA's latest 790i SLI mobos.

In general performance terms and overclocking prowess, there is little to choose between the two.

Asus Striker II Extreme

Tech staff — 1209915060

Some of NVIDIA's recent mobo chipsets haven't been that clever.

The nForce 780i is a case in point. Despite the 7 Series moniker, it was little more than a rehash of the 680i chipset with PCI Express 2.0 unconvincingly glued on.

An enticing package

The 780i also carried over the 680i's hot-running silicon. The result was pants overclocking, particularly for a high-end chipset. But that's all history with the 790i.

Its C73 northbridge packs native PCI-e 2.0, runs much cooler, while overclocking headroom is much improved.

As for Asus' take on the 790i, it's the total solution, complete with triple-way SLI support, exceptionally high-quality digital audio and a northbridge heatsink that comes pre-plumbed for water cooling.

Nice, but just look at the price!

OCZ Vendetta 2

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The Vendetta 2 is, inevitably, very similar to its predecessor.

They have kept the three copper pipes in contact with the CPU to ensure rapid heat removal, and kept it ultra silent. The biggest difference between the two is that the Vendetta 2 has a full 120mm fan bundled with it.

Frustrating setup

The main problem with installing a new cooler has to be taking your rig apart to do the deed.

Fortunately, the Vendetta doesn't have this problem as, unlike some of its heavier counterparts, it uses just the ordinary Intel clips and AMD's bracket.

Assembling the Vendetta can be frustrating experience though, as the rubber connectors are tough to fit; you can find yourself cursing for half-an-hour while you get it on and in.

Great performer

Once the trauma of installation is over the Vendetta is practically silent, and a great performer. Using a P4 3.2 Extreme it idles at 40°C and at full whack tops out at around 55°C.

The Vendetta 2 isn't without a few shortcomings, however. I have found that it sticks out of some smaller cases due to its height, but all-in-all the new Vendetta is a great performer and with OCZ keeping the price around the £20 mark - like the previous model - it makes it a worthy purchase.

Zerotherm Nirvana NV120 Premium

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Zerotherm have missed a trick with their Nirvana cooler - it could have at least come in a heart-shaped box. Or smelt like teen spirit.

They may be referring to the Buddhist concept of nirvana and not the 90s grunge band, but 'nirvana' literally translates as 'to cease blowing', which is exactly what you hope your CPU cooler won't do.

A monster cooler

First impressions are: it's huge. It's the Humvee of CPU coolers, and you'll need a capacious case to hold it.

Fitting it isn't exactly easy - the metal backing plate can only be installed by completely removing your motherboard. It's fiddly, but feels far more secure than those hideous plastic clips we've had to endure.

And, smartly, the cooler is compatible with both AMD and Intel CPUs, so if AMD finally release some killer processors you won't have any problems upgrading your cooler at least.

Cool and calm

It's definitely worth all the hassle of installation though. The Nirvana is one of the quietest coolers we've come across, thanks in no small part to its whopping 120mm fan. It comes with an unsightly, but infinitely handy fan speed adjustment unit, which can be mounted outside your case.

Results on the lowest fan speed are equally impressive - a 12°C drop over a stock Intel cooler. Setting the fan on high results in a further drop, which is potentially handy for overclockers looking to eek a little more performance from their CPU.

This CPU cooler may be a shade more expensive than your average one, but you're getting a versatile, rock-solid and future-proof fan that performs well. It's not quite Nirvana: but it does blow instead of suck.

MSI P35 Platinum

Tech staff — 1209742500

The Intel P35 chipset's status as the weapon of choice for overclocking slaps on it perilously lofty expectations.

It's easy to forget that it's a mainstream chipset. The same logic applies to MSI's P35 Platinum board.

Cheap and cheerful

This is a sub £100 mobo that nevertheless packs quite a solid feature set, including support for the latest 1,333MHz Intel processors and quality copper cooling for the chipset.

Notably, MSI has also plumped for the DDR2 rather than DDR3 memory support, which arguably makes more sense at this price point.

The existence of Asus's P5K3, flattens the P35 Platinum for raw overclockability, though.

Granted, a bus speed of 475MHz is far from poor. But the extra 50MHz the Asus achieves crucially maximises the performance of Intel's cheaper Core 2 chips.

Asus EAH3850 OCGear

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Whatever happened to that 1950s science-fiction dream of computers as huge cabinets stacked wall-to-wall, with thousands of blinking lights and adjustable dials?

All those optimistic scientists would probably be quite depressed to see what computers have become: mostly dull-grey, metal boxes with a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Asus is obviously planning to set the record straight with the EAH3850 OCgear, which features - a knob. A lovely, shiny, round knob, and we'll stop before we go down a route that wouldn't fit this review at all.

Control your graphics

The knob itself sits on a 5.25-inch panel on the front of your PC, and connects to the internal USB headers on your motherboard.

It's quite possibly the handiest thing ever, enabling control of the graphics card's core, memory and fan speeds, as well as volume control for system sound.

We can't remember the last time we used a dial to adjust volume, but by great Zeus' beard, it feels mighty fine. No more squinting at millimetre adjustments of a little slidey thing in the taskbar, just proper, tactile volume adjustment.

The display also lights up and handily shows the current frame rate of your system, as well as the temperature of the graphics card's core. It's all together a great idea, and one that's very simple to set up and easy to use.

Importantly, it also seems to work as it was intended: during a game we pushed up the core and memory, and experienced a noticeable rise in the game's frame rates, but we were able to also drop them when errors occurred.

Disappointing performance

I have to admit that the card itself is a bit of a let down in comparison. It's a 3850, so you can't really expect hugely satisfying performance.

However, results in Crysis and Company of Heroes were solid, if unspectacular, and that overclocking knob definitely works. Asus have got a real winner on their hands with the OCgear front panel, it puts all the features you want in one easy-to-use format.

It's just a shame they haven't matched it to a decent graphics card. Once Asus release the all-encompassing notebook version though - the XGStation - we may see improved support on the OCGear.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500

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The new dual-core variants of Intel's 45nm Penryn CPU family look like a no-brainer. For the most part, that's how how it turns out.

The top E8500 model is clocked at an impressive 3.16GHz, which translates into single and dual-threaded performance to match any processor on the planet. It's also impressively efficient compared to the outgoing 65nm generation of Core 2 Duo CPUs from Intel.

Improved performance

Despite running a few hundred MHz faster than the old 2.93GHz X6850 dual-core chip, the E8500 consumes 30 watts less under full load.

It's also significantly quicker in every benchmark than the X6850. Part of that is no doubt thanks to the faster frequency, but the addition of 2MB of cache memory, now a borderline-silly total of 6MB, doesn't hurt. The same goes for the faster 1,333MHz bus. It's all gravy.

Of course, Intel would also claim that the various tweaks made to the Penryn architecture boost the clock-for-clock performance of its latest cores, too. You know, the new Radix 16 divider, enhanced SuperShuffle Engine and all that jazz.

In practice, it's effectively impossible to isolate each of the upgrades and deduce exactly how much benefit they bring.

Power at an attractive price

What we can say, however, is that the overall performance advantage of the E8500 over the X6850 is always above 10 per cent and sometimes as much as 20 per cent.

That's despite the clock speed differential of just eight per cent. And remember, the E8500 is less than £200. At launch a little over 18 months ago, the X6850 was the world's fastest PC chip and cost a cool £600. That's progress for you.

The good news doesn't end there. We can also report that the E8500 is every bit as good an overclocking chip as you would hope; hitting 4GHz on air cooling is a cinch. Up the volts a bit, and even higher speeds are possible.

All of which just leaves one lingering doubt. The full-fat, 12MB cache Q9450 quad-core chip can be had for just £30 more. Sure it's clocked a little lower at 2.6GHz. But for any system that's remotely multi-purpose, the Q9450 is probably a better all-round bet.

Gigabyte 9600GT

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It's time to look at Gigabyte's entry, a bog-standard 9600GT. And while it doesn't quite match some rival cards in terms of performance, it's still a contender.

The GPU clock is only 50MHz lower than the overclocked Palit 9600GT Sonic offering, but it's the memory speed that really takes a hit - dropping from 2GHz down to 1.8GHz.

Crysis and 3DMark06 both clocked impressive results, but couldn't match other rival card's raw performance, with 3DMark06 dropping significantly, and inevitably a low frame rate in Crysis. The price tag is roughly the same on both cards, and while there's only a few quid in it, it's still bad news for Gigabyte's card.

Competitive price

However, it does have a single-slot design, and comes with a phono and S-Video outbox, making it ideal for media centre setups. Although the performance is slightly poorer than most of the competition, it still stays ahead of AMD's similarly-priced budget hero, the HD3850, and thus is a better option for real gamers.

If the price dropped under £100, the Gigabyte 9600GT would be worth considering, and still may prove useful for media centre builders. At the current pricing the overclocked Palit 9600GT Sonic beats it hands down.

CoolIT Boreas MTEC

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Prices for the Boreas MTEC chassis do vary depending on how many CPU and GPU heatsinks you want - they start at around £550.

Essentially, this is water-cooling for the lazy. In the box is a Silverstone Temjin chassis with CoolIT's most powerful TEC cooler installed and all piping ready filled and completely sealed.

Effective cooling

Attaching the cooling blocks to CPUs is relatively straightforward, while connecting to graphics cards is just a little trickier.

It's a tad disappointing that there's no power supply included in the astronomical price, mind, but the theory is clearly that if you're designing this kind of system, you'll probably want to choose your own PSU anyway.

The case itself is excellent - a very roomy design and with plenty of fans. Placing the hard drive mounts in a closed, individually cooled compartment at the bottom of the case is particularly innovative. The TEC unit sits where you'd normally expect drives to be, and plugs into a control unit which itself can be mounted anywhere inside the case.

Lack of control

It's a little disappointing that the control unit is a fairly dumb affair, and all cooling must be controlled via a driver interface. Having no manual controls on the physical unit means sacrificing a USB header for wiring it up.

Worse, when we booted into Windows, something confused the sensors which decided to send cooling into overdrive. Instead of heading for a target of 25°C, the Boreas unit almost managed to send a QX6850 CPU under load into the single digit temperature range. Needless to say, that's some impressive cooling.

With the driver problem sorted out things were certainly a lot quieter - as quiet as six case fans and two blowers on the TEC unit can be expected to be - and the Boreas almost won our hearts.

Almost, because for some reason northbridge coolers don't come as standard with the unit, and to make the most of the enormous overclocking potential here, they will be mandatory.

Despite that, what we have here is a straight-out-of-the-box kit that will give your processor and graphics card the mother of all ice cream headaches. It's not perfect, it doesn't come with a PSU and it's pricy - but damn is it frosty.