Review: Asus Zenbook UX32VD

While the recent launch of Windows 8 has seen a range of exciting new laptops, tablets, hybrids and combinations of the three, the Intel-inspired Ultrabook category continues to expand.

The Zenbook UX32VD from Asus is perhaps one of the most striking examples of what the Ultrabook form factor can achieve.

The Zenbook's sleek metal body is lovely, with precision etched concentric circles on the cover and brushed lines when you open it up. The screen's hinge feels perfectly weighted, and opening the laptop one-handed feels natural.

At 18mm thick, it feels significantly chunkier than Apple's Macbook Air, despite the obvious similarities in design when you open the two machines up side-by-side. That could have something to do with the abundance of extra ports though, or the less tapered edges in the Asus machine.

With the focus on style, this machine is clearly targeted at the consumer market. Not only does it lack business-grade features like a fingerprint scanner, but the inclusion of the Bang and Olufsen branded ICEpower technology helps appeal to younger consumers wanting the most from their laptops.

There's also the inclusion of a discrete graphics card in this machine, making it the first Ultrabook to have one. Sure, it may not be a top of the line card, but it's still more than any other Ultrabook offers.

Disappointingly - although not unsurprisingly - the Zenbook is loaded with an abundance of Asus branded bloatware. While some of it creates nice little graphics for changing settings like volume and screen brightness, others play around with power options which can't be overrun by your Windows power management.

For power users wanting to get the most out of the machine, deleting these apps will be action number one after unboxing.

Priced at $1,299, the Zenbook sits at the affordable but not too cheap end of the Ultrabook market spectrum. On a price to specs basis, it's actually pretty decent value.

Underneath all that etched metal casing is a 1.7GHz Core i5 Intel 3317U processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GT 620M discrete graphics card, 4GB RAM and an abundance of connectivity options.

A 500GB HDD with 24GB SSD gives a good amount of storage, even if it does slightly pervert the notion of an Ultrabook.

Those specs certainly don't place the UX32VD into the most most powerful Ultrabook category, although there is a Core i7 option available to pick up online.

Still, compared to something like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, this macine doesn't have an overwhelming amount of grunt under the hood.

Weighing in at 1.45kg, the laptop feels heavier than it actually is, which probably has a lot to do with the premium metal finish.

The chiclet keyboard is nicely spaced and comfortable to type on, even though the italic font of the lettering on each key looks a little odd.

It does look exceptionally similar to the Macbook Air's keyboard in terms of spacing, althugh there are more function keys and the arrow buttons are smaller than Apple's laptop.

It's also backlit, making this an ideal companion for those working at night.

The trackpad is slightly smaller than the Air, although it does feature the same multi-touch capabilities. If anything, it can be a little too sensitive though.

Regularly while typing, the mouse pointer would be pushed to a different point on screen by an errant palm brush on the trackpad, resulting in paragraphs of misplaced words.

It's also way too keen to resize windows when you accidentally place your thumb on the trackpad as well as your forefinger.

The 1,366 x 768 16:9 display has a nice matte finish, which makes it nice and easy to see in many lighting conditions. It also tends to dull down the vibrancy of colours on screen, but not to a point we would complain about.

Three USB 3.0 ports on the sides of the laptop is a nice inclusion, especially as one of them will charge your gadgets even when the laptop is closed.

HDMI output, SD card slot and mini-VGA plug give plenty of connectivity options, although it certainly would have been nice if that mini-VGA port was a Thunderbolt connection.

There's no ethernet port on the machine itself, but hidden inside a small pouch in the box is a USB-to-ethernet adapter, as well as an adapter to convert that mini VGA port to a full sized VGA cable.

The Bang & Olufsen ICEpower audio technology sounds nice enough through the laptop's speakers, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it will ever perform as well as a set of external speakers or headphones will.

View the original article here

Review: Zalman CNPS14X

Good performance at idleQuietCan add two expandable 140mm fansVery largeDifficult to fitPricey

This is a serious bit of kit. Let's start with some of the highlights. Six copper heat pipes draw thermals from a polished copper cooling block and feed to two massive aluminium fin stacks. Nestled in between is a 140mm fan that draws air through one stack of fins and squirts it out via the other.

As you'd expect from a big fan, the quoted noise specs are very impressive and top out at just 21dBA. Zalman's idea with the CNPS14X, then, is good thermals combined with excellent noise levels.

If you want to tip the balance in the direction of thermals and performance, you have the option of strapping on one or two extra 140mm fans, giving mighty cooling potential, but our benchmarks show the CNPS14X with just the integrated 140mm blower.

For starters, it achieves the lowest idle temps at stock clocks of all the air coolers tested this month. Everywhere else, it shares equal top billing with the Enermax ETS-T40.

With the extra fans, this thing would be a beast. As it is, it's still very effective and awfully, awfully quiet to boot.

What it's not however is a particularly practical processor cooler. It's a pain to fit, partly thanks to the bitty design of the backing plate and clamp assembly, but also due to the size of those massive cooling stacks.

In fact, with our Asus Z77 test board, it wasn't possible to have a stick of memory in the nearest DIMM slot and fit the CNPS14X. You have been warned.

It's also something of a wallet buster by air-cooling standards.

See more cooling Add comment

All the parts for your PC

All reviewsGraphics cardsMotherboardsCPUs

Buying Guide We review the best CPU coolers on the market

Nvidia's latest makes Kepler even sweeter with a lower price tag

Kepler Finally Hits the Sweet Spot

View the original article here

Review: Altigen iFusion AP300 SmartStation

Call qualityHandset designEase of usemusic audio qualitySize could be an issue on cramped desksbright Bluetooth LED could be a distraction

The Altigen iFusion AP300 SmartStation is intended to turn your iPhone into a fully functioning desktop phone that looks stylish and fun.

The first thing you notice about the SmartStation is its size. It's actually quite large 200x224x56mm, so if you're working on a cramped desk then it may not be the best solution for you. Additionally the bright white plastic casing - there's a black version available - seems to make the SmartStation look twice as big as it actually is, and it dwarfs the iPhone when it's seated on the unit.

But lets' ignore the styling issues and get down to the nitty-gritty.

At the back of the device, hidden under a neat white removable panel are sockets for; the power supply (it powers the SmartStation and will recharge your iPhone), the handset connection, an 3.5mm audio out port to connect external speakers, and a micro USB for docking to a PC or Mac.

On the front there are five control buttons, two to adjust the volume, a speaker button to switch to hands-free mode, a microphone mute button, and a Bluetooth connection button.

The iFusion seems to dwarf the iPhone

Setting up is simple. Just plug in the power and then pair the phone and the device. To pair, switch on Bluetooth on the iPhone, press the Bluetooth button on the SmartStation and when the device appears on the iPhones' list of Bluetooth devices, select pairing and a second later it's paired and working.

The external handset was well designed and felt comfortable in the hand and even when grasped under the chin - the handset is a must for those long calls. The handset sound quality was clear and seemed to be as good as, and probably a little louder than the iPhone.

Once paired the iPhone and SmartStation work together. So when a call comes in the iPhone and the SmartStation both ring - the iPhone doesn't need to be on the dock for the SmartStation to ring just near enough for Bluetooth to connect. When a call comes in you have two options, you can choose to answer the call by touching the iPhone and the audio goes directly to the units' speaker, or you pick up the handset in which case it goes directly to the handset.

Sound quality on hands-free mode was good, and at a pinch the SmartStation could be used as a replacement for a conference system. However the audio quality when playing from your iTunes library was very tinny, if you want to play music then a set of external speakers would be recommended.

A nice touch was the auto mute for the external speakers on incoming calls, as the last thing you want' is to be listening to music and then to broadcast your incoming call to the rest of the office.

Once a call has been accepted it's possible to switch a call between the iPhone and the device, although it's not that straightforward to do. If the iPhone is docked, you need to remove it from the cradle, tap the iPhone audio source button and then select iPhone. To switch to the SmartStation while the IPhone is undocked, you need to tap the IPhone audio source button and select iFusion. You can then dock the phone or leave it undocked.

As well as just taking and making calls with the standard iPhone Phone app the iFusion will also work with Skype and FaceTime and most of the other major internet call services and is compatible with the iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, and 4S.

The SmartStation worked well, and did everything that was expected of it. The only minor nags were the internal speaker quality when playing music from your phone, and the Bluetooth connection LED is quite bright and can be quite distracting.

See more mobile phone accessories Add comment

View the original article here

Review: Intel Core i3-3225

The Intel Ivy Bridge technology is the finest desktop processor tech this side of Haswell, and for the PC build without severe budgetary constraints, it's the architecture we're telling you to stick into your gaming rig.

But what are those of you on a budget missing by dropping down the IvB stack to the i3 range, and would we still recommend Intel over AMD at this price point?

The current Core i3 range of CPUs is the real entry point for getting Ivy Bridge. At £100, this Core i3-3225 is at the budget end of the spectrum, though it isn't the cheapest on offer. You can pick up other i3 chips for less than a ton, but then you're dipping below the 3GHz mark and missing out on the top end of the Ivy Bridge HD graphics.

The i3-3225 comes with a decent 3.3GHz clock speed and the top HD 4000 graphics. As is the way with i3 chips, this is a dual-core CPU, but unlike the i5 range, Intel has turned HyperThreading back on.

What you don't get is any K series goodness at this unfashionable end of the Ivy Bridge table. That means you're stuck at 3.3GHz, so the legendary overclocking prowess of the Intel tech is completely lost on the i3 market.

That's a massive shame for the eager budget overclockers, but Intel obviously doesn't want anyone getting i5 performance out of an i3 chip, even if it has to introduce artificial barriers.

In this price range you can take your pick of the competition - AMD has three different options for around the £100 mark and that should give pause for thought for even the most ardent Intel fan.

First off there's last month's new AMD offering, the Trinity A10-5800K, which is the alternative for anyone who's looking for integrated graphics performance. The HD 7660D graphics in the Trinity chip outperforms the HD 4000 on the Intel side by a huge margin - we hit 27fps in Batman: Arkham City at 'v high' settings at 1080p. The i3-3225 barely managed 16fps.

In terms of CPU performance the i3 has the edge, but with a little overclocking of the AMD chip you can close the gap.

The i3-3225's general CPU performance is pretty good, but when you consider the similarly priced AMD chips - with access to overclocking - it starts to look a little off the pace. It will still keep a decent GPU filled in games though.

CPU rendering performance
Cinebench R11.5: Index score: Higher is better
INTEL CORE I3-3225: 3.25
AMD FX-6200: 4.32
AMD A10-5800K: 3.05

CPU encoding performance
X264 v4.0: FPS: Higher is better
INTEL CORE I3-3225: 18.82
AMD FX-6200: 27.81
AMD A10-5800K: 18.83

CPU gaming performance
Batman: AC: FPS: Higher is better
INTEL CORE I3-3225: 126
AMD FX-6200: 110
AMD A10-5800K: 74

For us, the real competition for this i3 chip is the six-core FX-6200. For the exact same price as the i3-3225 you get another two cores for your cash and that makes for much higher multi-threaded performance. Again, the AMD chip can be overclocked where the Intel can't, putting the 6200 almost on the same CPU level as an i5 at stock speeds.

So, the question I posited earlier regarding our recommendations at the budget level is actually an easy one to answer. There are really two options here, but neither of them is Intel-based.

If you're not going to let a discrete card anywhere near your PC then the Trinity chip will deliver almost gaming-capable performance on its own, and the FX-6200 will defeat the i3-3225 in most tests. It's close at stock speeds, but the Intel chip falls behind when you start to consider the impressive overclocking performance of the AMD chips.

View the original article here

Utah Is Key to Reforming Digital Privacy Law

CDT is joining a politically diverse coalition to launch VanishingRights.com, a campaign to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

ECPA was passed in 1986. It sets out rules for when the government can access our digital information – and it’s woefully out of date.

Under ECPA, the government says stored email, other information in the cloud, and location data generated by mobile devices does not receive full Fourth Amendment protection – meaning the government can access it without a warrant. Postal mail and phone calls, on the other hand, receive full Fourth Amendment protection. The distinction makes no sense.

On November 15, the Senate Judiciary Committee could take a big step toward bringing privacy law into the 21st Century when it votes on ECPA reform.

This is a critical vote. Bipartisan support in the Judiciary Committee is needed to advance ECPA reform in the Senate. The best hope for Republican support on the Judiciary Committee likely rests with Utah Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee. However, the Senators need to hear from their constituents – especially from those in the Utah tech community who are affected by this outdated law.

VanishingRights.com provides phone numbers for Members of the Judiciary Committee. If you care about digital privacy rights, please take a few moments before November 15 to call and ask your Senators to support strong ECPA reform and to oppose any weakening amendments.

View the original article here

Review: Microsoft Surface

In tablets, the big guns have big names. Apple has its iPad 4 and Google has the Nexus 10. And, if Microsoft is to take on the might of Apple and Google in the tablet space with Windows 8, it needs a big name of its own.

So welcome Microsoft Surface. The new tablet isn't just the big poster boy for Windows 8, but for Windows RT too, the brand-new version of Windows 8 designed for ARM.

Creating a flagship brand for Windows 8 is a clever move, no doubt a tactic learned from the success of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus that heralded Ice Cream Sandwich, the Google Nexus 7 for Jelly Bean, and more recently, the Nexus 10 for the completely anonymous Android 4.2.

However, there's no danger of Surface being branded as a clone of rival 10-inch tablets.

It boasts a distinctive design, helped by those unmistakable keyboard covers, enjoys a 10.6-inch widescreen display, and runs Windows 8, the most popular operating system on the planet. But there's a crippling caveat which might be its undoing.

Windows RT won't run old PC programs, so any trip to the internet to download legacy programs such as VLC Player, or even big-name offerings like Photoshop Elements, just won't work.

It has the potential to cause mass confusion and the power to sink Microsoft's figurehead before it's even taken off.

On picking up the Surface one single sentiment falls from the mouth of every man, woman or child without fail: "It's thicker than I thought."

That is factually nonsense. At 9.4mm thick, it's exactly the same thickness as the iPad 4, except that instead of masking its true girth with tapered edges, Surface's design looks as if it's been chiseled from a slab of slate.

It's square and boxy, but fresh looking and the magnesium 'VaporMg' coating gives it a cool finish.

At 690g Microsoft Surface is noticeably heavier than its rivals. The iPad 4 weighs 650g due to shedding an inch of screen, but Surface feels richer for the extra space.

The 16:9 screen is suited to Windows, it enables you to multitask apps and 'snap' them literally side by side. It feels like you're using a laptop and that's a big leap towards a genuine hybrid experience.

Of course, the rear kickstand is an iconic part of Surface. It's also made of metal, and does a good job of propping up your tablet - to an angle of 22 degrees - even when on your lap.

However, we'd have liked it to be more adjustable – at the moment it has just one position – and a button release would also be handy as you need nimble fingers to pull out the stand.

It's also larger than the iPad - the screen is a 10.6-inch 1366x768 IPS panel, which falls short of the full HD displays of the Sony VAIO Duo 11 and Asus Taichi, but still looks clear and crisp.

It's not going to win any awards for screen vibrancy, and certainly never going to challenge Retina, but it's good enough - and helps Microsoft keep the price down to a reasonable level.

A keyboard-less 32GB Surface costs £399, the same as an iPad 4 with half the storage.

Under the hood is an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, with the ARM technology that drives this new Windows RT operating system. It's the same you'll find in high flying Android tablets such as the Asus Transformer Prime and Google Nexus 7. There's also 2GB of RAM.

We'd love to say that it walked through every task that we threw at it, but in all honesty, we feel that Tegra struggles in Windows.

The system felt responsive to navigate but apps lingered on their splash screens for uncomfortable periods, seconds longer than they should.

There was no jerkiness or hangs, just a lethargy that frustrates when you're in a hurry.

We tested the 64GB Microsoft Surface, which offers plenty of storage, and even a Micro SDSX port hidden under the kickstand, which enables you to boost storage by another 64GB.

That makes Surface a great deal when you consider that you can get nearly 100GB of storage for the same price as the 16GB iPad. That's also not including the USB port for connecting USB storage, as well as traditional Windows peripherals.

Being able to plug in a memory stick in is especially refreshing, and makes Surface a genuine alternative to the iPad.

There's currently no 3G option for Surface, and with no dongles compatible with Windows RT at present, that's not an option right now.

Of course, one of the headline features is the Touch Cover, the clip-on keyboard that enables you to use your Surface as either a tablet or laptop. It feels shockingly light, as if it's made of cardboard.

Typing takes some getting used to, and the click sound that's used to denote a successful key press is essential to effective typing, as the lack of tactile feedback can be disorientating.

However, the keys are sensitive and speed typing is certainly possible with a few hours of practice.

What's more, despite the flat keyboard feeling like it's been hewn from old egg boxes, it features a multi-touch trackpad, should you want to use a mouse while in the traditional Windows interface.

The Touch Cover maybe a triumph of design but we would heartily recommend investing in the Type Cover for comfortable typing.

This offers a much more natural typing experience, and is one of the most spacious tablet keyboard accessories we've used.

It's much more comfortable and can easily be used for longer periods, but it does have an annoying flex in the middle, so the keys tend to bounce if you're a heavy typist.

We'd still recommend it, but it will cost you: the Type Cover costs an extra £110, rather than £80 for the Touch Cover.

View the original article here

Review: AMD FX-8350

When AMD was throwing around the specs of its first bulldozer chips we all sat up and took notice. After all, it was AMD's first new CPU technology redesign for an absolute age, and what it was planning on doing with the new bulldozer microarchitecture looked pretty darned revolutionary.

Sadly for AMD though, its top chip could barely keep pace with the second tier of Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs. Then it released the 22nm Ivy Bridge die-shrink and things got even more miserable for the Texan chip company.

But, as we've seen over the last few months, those AMD Bulldozer chips still have something to offer. Maybe not the top-end eight-core FX-8150, but the great value and overclocking capabilities of the six-core FX-6200 made it a tantalising prospect for anyone on a budget looking to put together a gaming rig.

Value is core to this arrangement, and being able to put together a decent AMD CPU/mobo combo for less than a Core i5 setup means that you get a good chunk of cash to spend on your graphics card. In fact, it's the difference between being able to pick up a HD 7950 or a HD 7870. And we know which we'd rather have humming away in our machine.

Now, with the Piledriver update to the Bulldozer architecture, we've got the latest FX chips hitting the market under yet another codename: Vishera. Can the revised architecture close the gap on the Intel Ivy Bridge rivals, and give its CPU range a performance shot in the arm to match its value credentials?

Strap in, I'm going to talk about architecture here. The original Bulldozer design was a pretty radical shift in terms of the change from the Stars architecture found in Phenom. It created Bulldozer modules with a pair of 'cores' in each, sharing some lower utilisation silicon such as level-2 cache, fetch and decode components, while the more vital, time-sensitive parts, such as the integer pipelines and level-1 cache were part of each 'core'.

In actual use though, this sharing of key components meant that while multi-threaded performance was improved, having so many more threads of processing available meant the single-threaded performance was slower even than the Phenom chips that preceded it. That also meant gaming performance was down the pecking order, and the competing Intel chips left AMD trailing in their collective wake.

To try to amend this, AMD has gone and done a little light restructuring of the Bulldozer modules via this Piledriver update. We've seen the first implementation of this new design in the recently released Trinity desktop chips, but this is the first time we've seen it in a dedicated desktop design.

Essentially this isn't a major overhaul - just a few serious engineer-pleasing improvements such as better branch prediction, better hardware prefetching and improved scheduling. There are some other under-the-hood enhancements, but all in all it's relatively low-level stuff.

For the real architectural improvements we're going to have to wait for the arrival of the Steamroller update some time next year. That's set to give the individual 'cores' more dedicated hardware to make them more like the traditional core design. Steamroller doubles up the decode engines in a module, and should make for improved single-threaded performance.

That's not to say the new Piledriver design doesn't add any extra performance for your cash. In fact, this top-end FX chip is hitting the ground running at 4GHz out of the box. Eight AMD cores running at 4GHz - not too shabby.

Sadly though, the single-threaded performance hasn't ramped up significantly, so don't get too excited about garnering any extra gaming performance from this new chip.

The multi-threaded performance doesn't see a huge change either - in both segments then we're looking at around 15 per cent extra processing speed. On the multi-threading side though, that slight return isn't as much of an issue thanks to the impressive showing of the original architecture.

When you consider that the new FX processors are going to be coming out at around the same sort of price as the Bulldozer chips, that's not a bad slice of extra speed. And with the resolutely quad-core i5 3570K coming in around £20 more expensive than this eight-thread, quad-module FX-8350, you're going to be getting a substantial chunk more CPU performance straight out of the box.

Throw any multi-threaded application at the two rival processors and the AMD chip will soon show its dominance in that arena. With the i5 getting around the same sort of figures in Cinebench as the old FX-8150, the new Piledriver chip is a little over 15 per cent quicker. That performance gap gets even bigger when you chuck the HD encoding benchmark of X264 v4.0 at the pair with the FX-8350 getting almost 25 per cent better results than the Intel i5.

In fact, if you take the FX-8350's multi-threaded performance in isolation, it's suddenly getting rather close to the performance of the similarly eight-threaded almighty Core i7 3770K. In Cinebench the AMD chip is only a little over 5 per cent slower, and in X264 there's less than a single per cent difference between them. It's impressive that AMD has managed to close the performance gap this much in the multi-threading stakes.

With so many modern productivity programs really taking advantage of the extra threads on offer in today's processors, there would be very little return on the extra £100 you'd spend on the 3770K versus the FX-8350.

Unfortunately for AMD, we simply can't take the multi-threaded performance of our chips in isolation. Single-threaded prowess still counts for a lot, not least in gaming. And in gaming the Intel CPUs still give a lot more - in our tests we were looking at an extra 10-15 per cent.

As you can see from the benchmark results, the i7-3770K is still the top desktop chip on pretty much all counts, but at £100 more than the latest FX-8350 you're paying through the nose for that extra performance.

Compared with the similarly priced Core i5, the FX-8350 looks more impressive, ably beating it in any multi-threaded test you give it. In fact it's actually rather close to the eight threads of the top Ivy Bridge CPU in those multi-threaded metrics. In gaming terms though the Intel chips still retain a healthy lead in raw CPU performance terms.

CPU rendering performance (single-thread)
Cinebench R11.5: Index score: higher is better
AMD FX-8350: 1.07
AMD FX-8150: 0.92
Intel Core i7 3770K: 1.63
Intel Core i5 3570K: 1.58

CPU rendering performance (multi-thread)
Cinebench: R11.5 Index score: Higher is better
AMD FX-8350: 6.71
AMD FX-8150: 5.71
Intel Core i7 3770K: 7.14
Intel Core i5 3570K: 5.70

CPU encoding performance
X264 v4.0: Frames Per Second: Higher is better
AMD FX-8350: 41
AMD FX-8150: 35
Intel Core i7 3770K: 41
Intel Core i5 3570K: 33

CPU gaming performance
Batman: AC: Frames per second: Higher is better
AMD FX-8350: 114
AMD FX-8150: 126
Intel Core i7 3770K: 177
Intel Core i5 3570K: 164

CPU gaming performance
Shogun 2: CPU Frames Per Second: Higher is better
AMD FX-8350: 25
AMD FX-8150: 22
Intel Core i7 3770K: 35
Intel Core i5 3570K: 34

Overclocking performance
Max OC: GHz: Higher is better
AMD FX-8350: 4.7
AMD FX-8150: 4.6
Intel Core i7 3770K: 4.7
Intel Core i5 3570K: 4.7

With cash of course being no object to any of us PC gaming types, we would always go for an Intel CPU to prop up the best graphics card available. But if you don't have the vast salary of a PC tech journo (cough) then value for money is absolutely vital.

The fact remains that an AMD platform is cheaper than an Intel one, and that gives you more money to spend on your GPU. With a better GPU, the gaming performance gains garnered by the Intel CPU architecture become practically irrelevant. Your graphics card is most responsible for your gaming experience, so it makes sense to drop the most cash on that.

Like the K Series Intel chips, the entire FX range is unlocked, so overclocking is definitely on the menu. Well, so long as you've got a decent, OC-friendly motherboard backing it up.

We did struggle a little going through the BIOS of our Asus RoG board, but with the Windows-based AMD Overdrive software we were able to hit 4.7GHz stably. We could boot via BIOS overclocking, but once we started stressing the chip it eventually fell over.

With the AMD software though, it remained happily numbercrunching away. It's not quite the 1GHz+ speed boost you can get out of Intel's architecture, but it does give you some impressive performance gains. Running at 4.7GHz the FX 8350 is significantly faster in multi-threaded applications than even the i7 3770K at stock speeds. Of course, the Intel chip can also be overclocked, but it gives you some idea of how competitive these AMD chips can be.

In a vacuum then, the Intel chips remain the only CPUs you'd want in your machines. They are the best at gaming, and the second-tier quad-core chips remain competitive with AMD's best in multi-threaded applications. But this Piledriver update has closed the gap a little, and in terms of platform value as a whole, the AMD setup just has the edge. Spend the difference in CPU price on a better graphics card and the performance difference in games between AMD and Intel chips will instantly melt away.

Like the Bulldozer release though, the top-tier FX chip is probably not the one that we'd really recommend. The £20 difference in price is negligible, and wont make a massive difference in what GPU you go for.

The hex-core FX-6300, on the other hand, could be a much more tantalising prospect. If pricing follows the previous generation then you're looking at around a £70 difference, and that could make for that bump up to a HD 7950. The hex-core chip will also overclock happily, so you'll still get decent multi-threaded performance - easily as capable as the i5, for a lot less cash.

An equivalently priced AMD hex-core machine then would make for a better gaming PC than an i5 3570K rig with a weaker GPU. We need AMD to be competitive to keep the PC market vibrant, and keep Intel honest.

These new Piledriver chips should be able to do that, especially at the value end of the market. And if that pushes Intel to make better chips - maybe even a mainstream six-core desktop CPU - then that's got to be good for everyone too.

View the original article here