CHILE HARDWARE HAS some red hot 9600GTs on test today – actually four of them (hence the “Poker” title): eVGA, Foxconn, Palit and ECS contributed with one each. This is one of those articles where everyone’s a winner, and gives you that warm comforting feeling when you come across any of them at a retail outlet somewhere. Foxconn is a powerful overclocker, while *gasp* ECS wins the overall challenge. Get your tarjetas right here, or read it in magical Googlenglish

Laptop Mag took some time, but they finally got round to testing the “terabyte laptop” from Asus, ie: the M70SA-C1. As you might have already heard, it’s the big honkin’ entertainment machine with the 1080p display and Blu-ray. Unfortunately, for the oddest of reasons, Asus ships this 4GB o’RAM machine with Vista 32-bit, meaning you lose a bit to the OS’ limitations. Battery life isn’t anything to write home about either, but then again, on a DTR machine how much of a difference will those extra minutes give you? Grab-a-laptop here.

Presence PC (TH France) has published a comparison of the current top tier chipsets on the market: the X48 and the nForce 790i Ultra SLI. Looking at the feature set, you’ll see they both have a lot in common – and the greatest difference being “only” the support for Crossfire and SLI. If you can pass up on dual+ graphics setups then you’re better off with Intel’s P45, sez the expert. Read it here in the original, or here in Googlenglish.

The slightly less muscular 9600 GSOs are flooding the market right now and they can be a cheap ticket to SLI. Neoseeker put a Palit through its paces and came up with some solid numbers (and overclocking value) for the right price: $139. That’s what the 9600GSO is all about... Read on.

Asus is expanding its display line with the MK241, an LCD that promises a great deal, but just how good is Asus at delivering on their promises? The vaunted 3000:1 contrast ratio might not be as straightforward as they claim, but the colour gamut seems to be true to the specs, making this a decent screen for graphics artists. The display has a couple of nice features, like an integrated webcam and a microphone, that’ll just save you a few bucks on separate devices. It’s a great HD screen for pros and gamers alike, thinks Extremetech.

Aselabs reviewed some Crucial Ballistix PC3-16000 2x1GB kit in a short article. This means 2GHz speeds on the RAM, even though Aron’s test system couldn’t keep up with the sticks. Aron reverted to 1960MHz – that was the closest he could get to the rated speed without an X48 mobo (err... someone send him one soon-ish?). The price is a bit outrageous, but Aselabs is sure you’ll leave everyone else eating dust. Go here, fast-ish, ‘fore his system crashes.

Virtual Hideout is the first English-language site we are aware of that has reviewed the brand new Asus Lion Square. Nevermind the silly name, once you’ve put your eyes on this cooler you won’t want anything else to adorn your PC. Oh, it cools your CPU, in case you’re wondering, and it does it quite well. OC’d and under load, the CPU jumped to 54 Celsius, just 13 degrees over the stock speed temp, and well within operating parameters. Pricing varies quite a lot, though, but maybe that’s just due to the coolers novelty. Read the VH review here.

Benchzone has a standalone review of Asus’ Striker II Extreme mobo – the newest of the new 790i Ultra SLI mobos. This is a fine piece of engineering, but if you want to squeeze every ounce of value out of it, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and dig in deep into the BIOS’ voltage settings. Funny, Benchzone draws exactly the same conclusion as the PC Presence article: if you don’t need SLI then you can just move on to a P45 mobo and have the same fun (and save your college fund). Wibble this way. µ