What's happened here lately? Tom's used to be my main source of hardware reviews, but the quality just isn't here anymore.
Case in point is on Monday: Several other review sites had posted Barcelona reviews, Toms had a slideshow of the best IFA Booth Babe. Yesterday Tom's posted that the Barcelona has officially unveiled the Barcelona - a day late and a dollar short from where I'm sitting.
Others: Foxicon only "review" that read more like a paid promotion of their 8800 linup with no new information, a laptop gaming comparison with one machine running XP the other running Vista (saying that's what came pre-installed isn't justification IMHO). Then there is the beer cooling comparison - yes I know it was for a laugh, but spend the effort on improving CPU/other charts before spending time on stuff like that.
On the topic of the charts, half the time I'm looking for a product that isn't there and have no idea of how to compare it to what it is on the charts. Specifically mobile CPU's: I was recently looking at an AMD TM5x CPU and couldn't find any info on Tom's saying how it compares to the 2 AMD chips that are on the charts, a blurb saying that a core 2 duo CPU not shown is best compared by clock speed to the ones that are, and the AMD's TM or other TL processors are best compared by .... (?)
What about mobile graphics? I understand that it is virtually impossible to make a chart like with the desktop graphic cards, but a list of the cards by power (or a tier-type table) would be VERY helpful, even as a rough starting point. Laptops are the fastest growing computer market after all.
This review:
Page 2: "Knowing about the multipliers, it becomes obvious that such a processor can only be overclocked by increasing the other multiplier, which is the system clock speed. The only exceptions are the Extreme Edition processors, which come totally unlocked to allow users flexible overclocking. "
Umm... where to start... what are you trying to say here? Do the extreme editions of CPU's have other ways to increase speed (besides multi/FSB)? What I think you meant was: only the Extreme editions have an unlocked multiplier, the rest of Intel's Core 2 product line is limited and can only be overclocked by increasing the FSB. The "knowing this" at the start was about the CPU being limited to a 9x multiplier - saying it can be operated lower than 9x doesn't mean it can't be run higher. Note: Most will say this CPU has a locked multiplier, but since it can be reduced I prefer saying limited to 9x.
Page 3: "we discovered a pretty interesting detail. If you do not change the CPU voltage when overclocking and set this item to "auto", the P35-DS3P will automatically increase the CPU voltage, which helped to run the processor at up 3 GHz without manual fine-tuning."
<sarcasm> You DISCOVERED it? what's next... you will stumble across the auto memory settings? </sarcasm> Maybe you need to discover the EXCELLENT overclocking guide in the overclocking forum here. Most guides, including that one, I've seen say to first overclock your processor with voltage set to auto because it's easier, BUT be warned that the auto setting always over-supplies power to the CPU. So what is usually recommended is to use auto until your running a speed your happy with, then switch to manual voltage and lower it to the lowest one that keeps the system stable - this way it produces less heat which may lengthen the lifespan of the processor (along with consuming less power, and may keep the fans operating at a lower RPM/quieter)
Summary of the conclusion: This is a very nice processor for $89, but in winrar or gaming it cannot compete clock for clock it with the 4MB of cache on the e6750.
In July you showed the e4300 with a price of $120, this is virtually the same processor but with 2MB cache, it should now be found for less than two months ago. Why not suggest it as a better option for a gamer-friendly budget overclock?