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Gateway brings ZX4300 and ZX6900 all-in-one touchscreen PCs into a world of fingers
We've still yet to find a great reason to eschew our tried-and-true mouse / keyboard tandem in favor of using our desktop with just our fingers, but if you know better, Gateway has a new duo it'd sure love for you to check out. The ZX4300 line, which is the lower-end of the two, gets served AMD's Athlon II X2 CPU, Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), a 20-inch touchpanel (1,600 x 900 resolution), integrated ATI Radeon HD 4270 graphics, 4GB of DDR3 memory a 640GB hard drive, 8x SuperMulti drive, a bundled wireless keyboard and mouse, inbuilt WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, six USB 2.0 sockets and a pair of five-watt speakers. The Gateway One ZX6900 family sports a 23-inch LCD (1,920 x 1,080), and while the vast majority of the specs mimic the others we've mentioned, the Core i3 power plant is a notable reason for paying extra. Speaking of which, the ZX4300-01e is slated to first hit stores next month for $749.99, while the ZX6900-01e lands alongside of it for $1,019.99. %Gallery-93320%
Pentium 4 takes on modern CPUs in a benchmarking showdown, suffers ignominious defeat
If there's one thing that bugs us about desktop component reviews, it's that they tend to compare the latest hardware against the stuff immediately preceding it. Everyone wants to know what the improvements between generations are, but for many it's also equally useful to know how 2010's freshness compares to their own computers, which might have been bought or built a few years back. For those precious prospective upgraders, Tech Report have put together an extremely thorough benchmarking session which compares the venerable Pentium 4 670 and its silly 3.8GHz clock speed to a pair of new budget parts: the Core i3-530 from Intel and quad-core Athlon II X4 635 from AMD. Naturally, they've also included other contemporary parts like the high-end Core i7s and Phenoms, as well as a Core 2 Quad Q6600 from a couple of years ago to bridge the gap between the ancient 90nm Prescott and the 32nm young pretenders. It's all quite fascinating in the geekiest (and therefore best) of ways, so why not hit that source link and get reading.
AMD 's new Athlon II processors aim to go easy on the power, your wallet
AMD has just outed a selection of new Athlon II procs, which do little to help it reclaim the performance crown, but will be of interest to anyone who likes to keep things minimal -- whether we're talking about prices or temperatures. Starting at $69 per chip (when bought in bulk) with the 2.7GHz dual-core X2 235e and topping out at $143 for the 2.3GHz quad-core X4 605e, AMD's new e-tagged processors operate within a 45W thermal envelope, as opposed to the relatively standard 65W TDP. The Sunnyvale outfit makes some ill-advised claims of "up to 75 percent" better performance versus comparable Intel CPUs -- the small print tells us that number is derived from 3DMark Vantage while testing with different GPUs -- but we suppose until the Thuban six-core shows up, AMD will have to take performance gains from wherever it can get 'em, including its own imagination.
