Thursday, March 10, 2005

Cooler, Lighter and Cheaper Mobile PC. Notebook Powered by Transmeta Efficeon CPU Reviewed

4:39 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

HardwareZone has reviewed an unusual notebook. This mobile PC is powered by Transmeta Efficeon TM-8600 microprocessor clocked at 1.00GHz with 1MB of L2 cache supported by 1024MB of DDR memory. See what alternative there is to the Intel’s Centrino brand in the value segment of the mobile PC market.

“As for the ECS532 notebook, it demonstrated low power consumption with decent performance as proven in our suite of benchmarks. Office applications ran well and with its discrete XGI Volari-XP5 video controller, the notebook could even satisfy the light appetite of occasional gamers. Available for less than S$1,400 (depending on configurations), the notebook’s lack of Bluetooth, Infrared and PCMCIA slots can easily be forgiven. As bare to the bone it may be, the unit does not shortchange in the usual set of connectivity ports. Potential owners of the ECS 532 will get four high-speed USB 2.0 ports, two video output ports, a parallel printer port, Gigabit LAN and 802.11b/g WiFi. In addition to these, the notebook still boasts of a generous 15-inch LCD screen and a Combo drive. Together with the video output options and S/PDIF audio, the ECS 532 is an extremely affordable entertainment deck to own.” concludes the article.

• HardwareZone: ECS 532 15-inch Notebook (Transmeta Efficeon)

Choosing the Best Graphics Card for Your Money. AGP/PCI-E Graphics Card Group Test

3:35 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Spode’s Abode has posted a roundup of modern AGP as well as PCI Express x16 graphics cards. Thirteen graphics cards from different manufacturers, starting from mainstream solutions and climbing right up to ultra high-end products, have been compared in terms of price-to-performance criteria.

“If you like your computer games, the graphics card is quite possibly the most important component in your system and naturally one of the hardest decisions to make when upgrading or building a new machine. Inferior processor, motherboard and memory sub-systems may throw a 30% performance swing into the equation. This means that saving money by buying cheaper equipment, and investing the money into a better graphics card can often give much better overall performance for your money.” says the review.

“By covering the complete range of cards from the oldest and cheapest mid range models that can still keep pace with the latest games, up to the very latest high end cards, we hope to give a useful perspective on the issues of relative performance and value for money.” adds Peter Bernard, the author of the article at Spode's Abode.

• Spode’s Abode: AGP/PCI-E Graphics Card Group Test

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