Apparently the HD-DVD has lost the "battle" against the Blu-ray standard. Many of the movie production studios from Hollywood have chosed Blu-ray as an exclusive movie distribution method. The Blu-ray ROM units have been available for a while already on the market and recently even the blu-ray burners have gained popularity due to the increased storage capacity (up to 5 times more than a regular DVD). Philips has launched the SPD7000BD Blu-ray DVD Burner some time ago and it has pleased a lot of customers so far. It supports Blu-ray HD videos reading, but it requires a HDCP video card and monitor. The DVD and CD-ROM access time is the same, 150ms and the cache is 8mb. However it is just one of the first Blu-ray Burner models, and it is not so advanced in its functions yet: the write-speed of a BD-R media is 2X maximum, the ReWrite-speed for BD-RE is 2X maximum and the access time for the entire Blu-ray discs is 350ms. Overall, the price isn't really justified, about $440, unless the customer will buy it and use it intensively within an environment where storing large amounts of data (like more than 10-20GB at once) is done very often.

 

Keeping the cool temperature for CPU overclockers is an important thing and thus such procedures require good cooling systems. There are various systems on the hardware market, some more expensive than others, some based on water, some based on freon. ASUS is a well known PC hardware manufacturer, with a good reputation among PC enthusiasts. Here's a solution that does not require water or freon, is quite acceptable as price (around $55): the ASUS Arctic Square Cooler. This cooler works with both AMD and Intel CPUs, and the compatibility list is the following: AMD Sempron, AMD Athlon 64 X2 series, AMD Athlon FX, Intel Pentium 4 HT, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Extreme, Intel Core 2 Quad. The basic idea behind this CPU cooler is to offer great thermal environment for the processor without making irritating and noticeable noise. However, if you plan to buy it and install it on your CPU, you need to take out the motherboard from the computer case in order to mount the back-plate. After the plate and the cooler have been properly mounted, the motherboard is to be placed carefully back into the case - the next step is to check the new temperatures of the CPU both in idle mode and during intensive processing. According to various testers, this cooler should reduce the heat with about 20 Celsius degrees extra than the average standard coolers.

 This CPU is a very good choice for the mainstream market users who cannot aford to pay too much for their hardware. The 5000+ Black Edition has its multiplier unlocked and so this means that anyone with some hardware knowledge will definitely try the overclocking capabilities - since it does not require any aditional special cooling system (it handles the processing with the cooler from the retail box). The specs are 2,600GHz, HT2000, L1-128KB x2, L2-512KB x2 and it was built under the  65nm (65W) design which shows why this CPU will not generate so much heat. This CPU is capable of leaving behind other CPUs which have bigger frequencies by default and have bigger prices - and that is possible if the X2 5000+ Black Edition is clocked at 3.3 GHz. The video encoding processing power is truly amasing once that frequency core is achieved, without having to raise either the FSB or the memory frequency, making it a safe choice for any AM2 motherboard. Yes, it is capable to beat the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400in video encoding matches and it does all that at "only" $99.

 

A lot of Radeon fans are waiting for this "hottie" to arrive on the market. The reference board is longer than a 2900XT card and thus would require quite a big computer case. It is said that it tops out in performance any 3870 CrossFire setup and that it has both GPUs (2 rv670 chips) running at 750MHz each (probably some more MHz at the official launch). What about the rest? Expect to see everything going on the double - 512MB of DDR4 x2, 2 DVi-to-HDMI ports. Performancewise - more than double - hardware specialists assume that if it does better than a CrossFire setup with 2 cards that have a single core each, obviously the performance will be quite satisfactory for most gamers. And that reminds me  - the developers at Crytek said that Crysis was a game which needs to be played on the next-gen computers in order for the gamer to be able to see all details in high resolution - this might happen a lot sooner than expected actually - due to the increasing speed of development in the PC hardware industry. The estimated price of this card presented at CES 2008 will range around $499.

 A team of computer geeks have set up a PC system equiped with one of the fastest CPUs on the market today - the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - in order to see the top frequency that can be reached. While the price for such a CPU is around $1300, the benefits are quite obvious when the respective platform will be used for applications which require a very strong processor. The QX9650 was built using the new Yorkfield architecture, which means that it is the first Intel processor to reach the 45nm design process. QX9650 is also the first quad-core processor to sport a 12MB L2 cache while it matches the 3GHz operating frequency of the QX6850. While the 3GHz frequency is rather something "normal" for QX9650, the 45nm building process makes it possible to require 25% less power and to be 26% cooler than QX6850. And that's what made the PC builder team wonder what the frequencies would be this CPU able to reach if overclocked. And, without any water-cooling system they managed to reach 4GHz - and easily too: the CPU was mounted on an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe, with a normal cooler and with the change of 10% in performance increase only! The Bios setting was changed from 9x to 10x CPU multiplier and a change in power consumption - 1.450v. Only on thsese settings did the QX9650 reach the 4GHz but also it was running as hot as QX6850 at 3GHz. The conclusion is that in the case of QX9650, the 4GHz frequency is not a problem and it doesn't require any special cooling.