Bert Toepelt

Can AMD finally recapture its former market lead with the Phenom II? We tested their new 45-nm CPU, which is compatible with AM2 motherboards. How do things look from performance, energy consumption and overclocking perspectives?

Core i7 - previously referred to as Nehalem - requires new motherboards, coolers and memory. Its performance is compelling and means AMD is falling behind even further, but Intel is putting in some speed bumps that will impact overclocking enthusiasts.

Our German lab recently bought itself an AMD Athlon 64 2000+ processor, which only consumes 8 W of power. Clearly, this would make for a good face-off against Intel's energy-efficient Atom.

Originally developed for use in nettops, the Atom is now available for desktops. But how economical is the little platform, and is it powerful enough to handle daily work requirements?

We look at the power consumption and cost of running 35 AMD CPUs under varying conditions.

The 780G's northbridge chip has integrated Radeon HD3200 GPU. No graphics card or powerful CPU needed to build a hi-def HTPC. Crossfire supports added graphics card for very good gaming performance.

We compare the performance of the dual-socket Skulltrail system to that of Core 2 Extreme QX9770 and QX9650 CPUs. All three are Penryns and share identical features, but the test results were not what we expected.

How overclockable is the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 and quad channel D5400XS motherboard combination? And what about power consumption?