Ah, how convenient! Just hours after finding out that Samsung's NC10 netbook would one day be at home here in the United States of America, along comes a host of unboxing / in the wild photos and even a few benchmarks to get you ready for its arrival. Granted, the writeup is in translated German, but fortunately for us the photographs do most of the talking. For what it's worth, the 10-inch NC10 seemed to edge out the Eee PC 901 in most tests, but not by any wide margin. Also of note, the keyboard was praised for having keys that weren't bite-sized, though the trackpad beneath it was a touch on the small side. For a few more impressions and JPEGs penned in the universal language, give that read link a visit.

It's one thing to see a device unboxed in pictures, but we all know a video tells a million (give or take a few) words. HotHardware's Dave Altavilla has posted up a sub-5 minute clip detailing the ins and outs of ASUS' Eee Box B202, and even from an enthusiast of all things cutting-edge, he was pretty impressed by the Atom-powered machine. The most interesting bit is probably the video playback test; we won't spoil how it handled (or mishandled) 1080p playback for you -- jump on past the break and have a look for yourself.

Call to action: strap that skeptic hat on, and strap it down tight. Good to go? Good. Raon Digital's first big wave of marketing hoopla for its forthcoming Everun Note netbook includes a very useful specifications list, a number of press images and a few benchmark screenshots that boast remarkably high figures. The CrystalMark screens are pretty impressive at first glance, though it's hard to say how quickly your battery would drain if it were maxed out in order to achieve such goals. Couple that with the questionable legitimacy of the shots and you've got a perfect reason to wait for an independent hands-on review before falling too hard for this here device. But yeah, we're cautiously optimistic.

[Via SlashGear]

Read - Everun Note benchmark
Read - Everun Note marketing pack [PDF]

Looks like all the Cinema 2.0 fuss that AMD has been blustering about with its new RV770-based GPUs is fully warranted. The benchmarks are in and AMD's new $549 ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 -- what AMD calls the "world's fastest graphics card" -- is an out and out screamer, besting the best cooked up over at NVIDIA thanks to that RV770 GPU pair nuzzled up next to 2GB of GDDR5 memory. As noted by PC Perspective, the new champ, "is able to run away from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 1GB card handily. Our various game tests proved this - Crysis, Call of Duty 4 and GRID showed big gains for AMD's new card at resolutions 2,048 x 1,536 and 2,560 x 1,600," though performance gains are less dramatic as resolutions drop to 1,600 x 1,200. Not that any self-respecting gamer would push so few pixels. CrossFireX performance was disappointing, however, as the systems didn't scale well when going from 2 to 4 GPUs. In fact, Crysis seemed to barely notice the additional CrossFireX horsepower, something that should be corrected with future driver releases. Make no mistake though, as power-hungry, expensive, and hot-running as the new HD 4870 X2 may be, it's a big day for AMD as it retakes the graphics crown from NVIDIA, as short-lived as this victory may be.

Read -- HotHardware
Read -- PCPer
Read -- Tweaktown
Read -- CustomPC
Read -- TechGage
Read -- AMD press release

Do you cheer for the underdog? Would you love to see VIA unseat Intel in the battle for the hearts and minds of netbook market share just because Intel's, well, Intel? Good, then you'll love this highly emotive video produced by VIA showing its meager 1.3GHz Nano processor kicking Intel's 1.6GHz Atom to the curb in a 1080p HD video test. We'd be more suspect of the results had we not already seen VIA clean Intel's house in the head-to-head benchmarks. Now pull up a seat ringside and get ready to sputter along with the Atom-based netbook -- video after the break.

[Via UMPC Portal]

Looks like Tom's Hardware fessed up and apologized for their slip-up in that recent controversial power test, which found SSDs consuming more juice than their spinning-platter counterparts (or, well, not exactly). We're giving 'em a pass, not just because we've always had a fond place in our heart for Tom's, but because they did another comprehensive SSD test (this time under more consistent conditions) which basically confirms that many newer SSDs are, in fact, power savers in most usage scenarios. Not all drives and scenarios, but many. Tom's also namechecks OCZ's Core SATA II SSD (a Samsung in disguise) as the clear winner by a longshot, having "unmatched" power efficiency. Sold.

[Thanks, Chuckles and SNP]

Given that Gateway just pushed out a round of updates including the relatively ginormous P Series, we reckon it was only logical to expect a review shortly. To be frank, the P-6831FX critiqued over at HotHardware is far from being the most potent machine with a 17-inch panel, but unlike many of its luxurious competitors, this one is actually affordable. So, how much gaming joy can $1,349.99 bring you? Quite a bit when the 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS and 3GB of RAM are included. Reviewers found gaming performance to be downright remarkable, though the 1.67GHz CPU did hamper it a bit in other areas. It should be noted that the unit now arrives with a slightly faster CPU among other minor extras, so if it was good then, we're guessing it's a runaway winner now.

Western Digital's hasty VelociRaptor already got reviewed by its lonesome, but for those thinking of getting a RAID system into their rig, HotHardware has taken a trio of 'em, setup a RAID 5 array and put the drives through their collaborative paces. The configuration was made possible thanks to an Areca PCIe X8 hardware RAID card, and the results were rather impressive -- to no one's surprise, might we add. Across the entire volume, performance was generally linear save for a few small valleys along the way, burst speed was 598MB/sec and average read speed was 209.4MB/sec, which pretty much blew the doors off of everything that came before it. Number lovers, there's more where this came from in the read link below.

If you haven't heard of AMD's new RV770 graphics processor then you either haven't been paying attention or are simply too set in your ways to start calculating your GPU's performance using a 1.0 TFLOP base unit. For the rest, we bring you all the reviews that on-line advertising can buy in the link round-up below. We'll give HotHardware the honor of summarizing the performance of the sub-$200 Radeon HD 4850 and $299-ish 4870: "it appears AMD is back in the graphics game versus rival NVIDIA." Now put on your propeller caps and start clicking.

Read -- Hot Hardware
Read -- PC Perspective
Read -- Hardware Canucks (HD 4870 only)
Read -- AnandTech
Read -- TweakTown (4870 in Crossfire)

Who says you need a desktop chip packed within a 3-inch thick, 15-pound beast of a "laptop" to get decent FPS while at a LAN party? Intel's speedy Core 2 Extreme Mobile X9000 checks in at 2.8GHz (prior to overclocking, of course), and promises to punish today's latest games while sipping less power and generating less heat than the aforementioned alternatives. The gurus over at HotHardware were able to sit down with said chip and put it to the test; overall, the Mobile X9000 "proved itself to be as fast as its desktop counterparts in many scenarios, all the while consuming less power as a complete system in the Dell XPS M730 notebook testbed." If you're the type that gets all hot and bothered by benchmarks and graphs, there's plenty of those in the read link below.

Yeah, that bench. NVIDIA's just-announced-yesterday GeForce 9800 GTX+ has already been used and abused for your satisfaction, and the folks over at PC Perspective have the benchmarks to prove it. The 55nm-based card was pit against an 8800 GT and AMD's extraordinarily fresh Radeon HD 4850, but we're not going to insert any spoilers in this space (okay, so it fared well... really well). All the graphs and screen captures you crave are waiting just down there.

[Thanks, Ryan]

Everyone wants a new generation ultra-portable pumping the Atom processor right? After all, it's Intel's latest and greatest Centrino proc. Not so fast... literally. Impress got their hands on an unofficially released MSI Wind PC (the mini-PC, not the low-cost laptop) and subjected the 1.33GHz Atom processor to a suite of standard tests. While the source is in machine-translated Japanese, that table comparing the Atom with Eee PC 900's Celeron and a typical ULV Core 2 Duo found in a wide range of full-sized, ultra-portable laptops speaks for itself. Keep in mind though that Intel's Atom is supposed to be less power hungry than its peers and CPU benchmarking is hardly the last word when it comes to determining real-world laptop performance -- read/writes to disk, memory, and other system nuances must also be considered. Nevertheless, based on this table and other mounting evidence, first and second generation Eee PC owners shouldn't feel any compulsion to rush out and upgrade to Atom on day 1.

[Via Technophone and Notebook Italia]

Surely you remember that G600 that MSI showcased at CeBIT, right? We know you're sitting in stunned silence just thinking back, so we'll move forward anyway. The crew over at TweakTown managed to get ahold of the GX600X TurboBook, and rather than just frolicking in fields of flowers with it, they put this puppy to the test. Unlike the vast majority of MSI lappies, this particular one manages to stand out somewhat, with a relatively loud design and a fairly potent set of components to boot. Reviewers found it to be a "peak performer" with "excellent overclocking capabilities," and while the logos may catch a few eyes, these critics felt that those very decals may deter folks from buying an otherwise solid machine. Nevertheless, head on down to the full review -- you may find yourself surprisingly attracted to an MSI. Imagine that.

[Via I4U News]

Ooh, shiny! ASUS' CES-announced M50S has finally found its way out of whatever lair it has been tucked away in, and thankfully, the shutterbugs over at PC Perspective snapped a few shots for the world to see. Initial impressions are that it should handle most gaming needs with ease, yet won't destroy your back when toting it from LAN party to LAN party. The built-in Blu-ray burner and multi-function trackpad are quite nice, too. Hit up the read link for the full preview -- a bona fide review should be following shortly.

[Thanks, Ryan]

Look what arrived on our doorstep today! That's right -- the shiny, expensive new iMac that's now equipped with that funky custom and / or overclocked 3.06GHz CPU. Take a look at us wildly unboxing and handling the behemoth in the gallery below, and get a load of its fairly impressive Xbench scores after the break.