Hasta La Gadget!

How’s this for unexpected: you can now pop over to Walmart.com and build yourself a custom gaming rig from iBuyPower. Systems start at $599 (though they’re currently on sale for $578), come in a choice of five different cases and can be equipped with up to 8GB of RAM and a 2TB hard drive. Both Intel and AMD fans will find CPUs to make them happy, including Core i5 and i7 K-series chips, which have unlocked multipliers for all you thrift-happy overclockers out there. You can also choose from nine different AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards, all the way up to a 1.5GB GeForce GTX480. You won’t find seriously heavy-duty hardware like Extreme Edition processors or three-way SLI setups, but you can pick up a pair of $3 flipflops to wear while you lounge around playing Portal 2.

[Thanks, Mark]

Continue reading Walmart offers custom gaming PCs from iBuyPower, tube socks still only L or XL

Walmart offers custom gaming PCs from iBuyPower, tube socks still only L or XL originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Since we first peeked the new Sandy Bridge-equipped Dell Precision M4600 and M6600 back in February we haven’t heard much about these mobile workstations. We still don’t have prices or a release date, but a leaked manual has finally delivered some specs — and CAD enthusiasts won’t be disappointed. Both the 15.6-inch M4600 and the 17-inch M6600 can be configured with up to a Core i7 Quad Extreme 2920XM and 32GB of RAM. The smaller, 6.3-pound M4600 comes standard with a 1GB AMD FirePro M5950 and can be upgraded to an NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB. The more beastly 7.5-pound M6600 starts with a 2GB FirePro M8900 and has options ranging all the way up to a 4GB Quadro 5010M. Both machines also come packing two USB 3.0 ports, a pair of USB 2.0 connectors, an eSATA jack, and an IEEE 1394 port, giving you plenty of room to plug in all the external drives, cameras, scientific instruments, and cat-shaped mouse cozies your little heart desires.

[Thanks, Wolf]

Dell Precision M4600 and M6600 specs spotted in leaked manual originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Graphics card companies don’t live and die by the enthusiast market alone. That may be where the glory is, but it’s the budget cards that really bring in the bacon. For the entry level, AMD just unleashed a trio of sub-$100 cards, the Radeon HD 6670, 6570, and 6450. How do they perform? Well, let’s just say you get what you pay for. Reaction from reviewers has been one of mild indifference. Depending on manufacturer, fan noise does appear to be an issue, possibly precluding the cards from being a viable HTPC choice. Otherwise, even the lowly, $55 6450 is a worthy upgrade over an integrated graphics chip or a two-year-old discrete card, but it can’t match the performance of NVIDIA’s GT 430, which can be had for only a few dollars more. Consensus was that, with prices of the older 5000 series being slashed, purchasers can get more bang for their GPU buck by sticking with last generation cards (like the Radeon HD 5750) if they’re looking for pure gaming prowess. That said, the GDDR5 flavors of the 6670 provide perfectly playable performance on most modern games (it averaged 45 FPS in Call of Duty: Black Ops) for just $99 (the 6570 runs about $79). Just beware those models shipping with GDDR3. Benchmarks galore below.

Read – Hexus
Read – techPowerUp 6450
Read – techPowerUp 6670
Read – Guru3D
Read – Tech Report
Read – Tom’s Hardware 6670 and 6570
Read – Tom’s Hardware 6450
Read – TweakTown
Read – AnandTech
Read – HotHardware

AMD elevates the low-end with trio of sub-$100 cards: Radeon HD 6670, 6570, and 6450 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD is looking to give the Vision brand a new lease on life, which means new chips are to be released under the brand new Vision line. The new chipsets will include Fusion Accelerated Processing Units that will be used in new desktops, along with laptops later on this year.

With the new chipset line, AMD is updating the stickers that clearly mark what processing unit your system uses. Two new stickers are being released, which include an eye-catching red, and fun patterns on the two stickers. One will be for the GPU, while the other will be for the actual CPU unit.

AMD hopes that the news stickers will bring brand awareness. AMD has not given any info about when the stickers, and, computers, will debut later on this year.

Via Xbit Labs

We’ve been hearing rumors of an 18-inch addition to the Alienware line for some time, and now its big-eyed visage is making an appearance — in Canada. The M18x configuration page has gone live on Dell‘s Canadian site, though curiously it’s displaying what looks to be a picture of the M17x. The system starts at just over $2,000 CAD with a 2.8GHz Core i7 processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 320GB of storage, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics. But, our more well-heeled neighbors to the north can step up to a 3.4GHz processor, 8GB of memory, 750GB of storage, and dual AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics cards, pushing the price up nearly another $1,000. The 18.4-inch display manages a full 1080p resolution and you can have any operating system you like — so long as its Windows 7 Home Premium. The estimated ship date has this thing leaving the factory in early May, which means it should start hitting the domestic configurator soon enough.

Update: Daniel wrote in to let us know that the M14x is there as well — though it looks to be in the process of being taken down.

[Thanks, Nicklas]

Alienware M18x appears on Dell’s Canadian site, glares at you from afar originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 07:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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