Hasta La Gadget!

The white MacBook may look a little out of place among Apple’s current laptop offerings, but those looking for the best bang for the buck may want to give the newly-updated model some serious consideration, as it actually outperforms its more expensive unibody counterpart. That word comes from the folks at MacWorld, who ran some benchmarks and found that 2.13GHz white MacBook was about five percent faster than the 2GHz unibody MacBook on average. That’s obviously largely attributable to the faster processor, but the speedier 800MHz DDR2 memory didn’t hurt things either, even if it still lags a bit behind the unibody’s 1,066MHz DDR3 RAM. For comparison’s sake, Macworld also found that the 1.8GHz MacBook Air was a full 12 percent slower than the white MacBook, while the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro offered a 10.5 percent performance gain, and displayed an even bigger advantage when its higher-end graphics came into play.

Filed under: Laptops

Updated white MacBook gets benchmarked, outperforms unibody counterpart originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just when you though you’d had your fill of insanely detailed benchmarks of processors you may or may not have ever heard of, AMD’s new Phenom II X4 955 and 945 hit the scene to get those overclockers all in a tizzy. The top of the line is the 955 “Black Edition” at 3.2GHz, while the 945 plays with a petty 3GHz. And the verdict? They’re clearly AMD’s fastest so far, but that might not be fast enough. AMD offers great value, but only really matches Intel’s Core 2 offerings on performance — Core i7 is still out in front. There is the fact that Phenom II offers a nice upgrade path for certain people who already do the AMD thing and are looking to upgrade, along with “enthusiasts” who are “enthused” by easy-access overclocking, but overall it looks like AMD is still playing catch-up with Intel.

Read – HotHardware
Read – Neoseeker
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Tech Report
Read – TechSpot
Read – EXTREME Overclocking

Filed under: Desktops

AMD Phenom II X4 955 and 945 benchmarked to high heaven originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yeah, we already heard that Dell’s Phenom II-equipped XPS 625 was a solid value, but what does that really mean? The testing fiends over at HotHardware sought to find out, and after putting this gaming beast through more tests than it ever wanted to endure, they mirrored most of the earlier (positive) sentiments. In fact, it was found to boast one of the best price-to-performance ratios out there, and the “minimalist” software installation definitely earned brownie points in our book. One thing that bothered critics, however, was the excessive amount of noise. We too have noticed that Dell’s ginormous XPS towers — which, by the way, reviewers also found to be unnecessarily heavy and unwieldy — can emit some serious decibels under heavy loads, but you’d think the engineers in Round Rock would’ve figured out a solution by now. Still, those quirks are probably small hassles to deal with given the savings compared to similar rigs, but we’d highly recommend digging into the read link just to be sure.

Filed under: Desktops

Dell’s Phenom II-equipped XPS 625 benchmarked to the hilt originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just a month after AMD launched its Phenom II CPUs and Dragon desktop platform, the chip maker is hitting back with five new processors in the quickly expanding line. The newcomers include the planet’s first 45nm triple-core CPU and three more quad-core siblings, all of which can operate in either AM2+ or AM3 sockets. As for performance? We hope your expectations haven’t been set too high, as the chips were generally found to be just “a logical extension of [the company’s] piecemeal upgrade plan and a fill in [the] gap to its lineup.” Reviewers across the web were generally pleased but underwhelmed by test results, with HotHardware noting that “overall, Intel still has the performance edge clock-for-clock and core-for-core.” In fairness, these chips were found to be good for overclocking, and for the right price, we could certainly see a few gamers giving them a go. For the full spill, dive on into the deep, intricate reviews below.

Read – Official AMD announcement
Read – HotHardware benchmarks
Read – PCPerspective benchmarks
Read – DesktopReview’s review

Filed under: Desktops

AMD ushers in five new Phenom II CPUs, benchmarking ensues originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenovo’s 15.4-inch IdeaPad Y530 has been around the block a time or two, but if you’ve been putting off a buy as you wait for someone to test this puppy out good-fashion, your day has arrived. The benchmarking fiends over at HotHardware have abused (in a good way, of course) the Y530 in pretty much every way possible, even straining the Core 2 Duo CPU and the NVIDIA GeForce 9300M to see how they fared in gaming scenarios. Critics were particularly wowed by the display’s crispness and overall stability of the machine — not once during the gauntlet of tests did this bugger crash or weep under pressure. Of course, serious gamers should probably look elsewhere, but those scouting a do-it-all laptop at a sub-$1,000 price point should definitely dive into the read link below.

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 tested in every way imaginable originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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