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We kick off our long overdue focus on AMD with an in-depth review of ASRock's 890FX Deluxe 4. Landing with an MSRP of 0, the Deluxe 4 slots in between the very best 890GX motherboards and the enthusiast 890FX based offerings. Have ASRock done enough to draw our attention away from the cheaper 890GX based ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 (circa 0)? It's a close call; the M4A89GTD Pro is the better clocker, while the Deluxe 4 proves to be the more versatile workhorse…

Late last week we pulled back the covers on Intel's next-generation Core architecture update: Sandy Bridge. Due out in Q1 2011, we learned a lot about Sandy Bridge's performance in our preview. Sandy Bridge will be the first high performance monolithic CPU/GPU from Intel. Its performance was generally noticeably better than the present generation of processors, both on the CPU and GPU side. If you haven't read the preview by now, I'd encourage you to do so.

One of the questions we got in response to the article was: what about Sandy Bridge for notebooks? While Sandy Bridge is pretty significant for mainstream quad-core desktops, it's even more tailored to the notebook space. I've put together some spec and roadmap information for those of you who might be looking for a new notebook early next year.

Every two years Intel is committed to introducing a new microprocessor architecture. It's a part of the whole tick-tock strategy that Intel hatched back in 2005 – 2006. Thus far, every tock has been a knockout – with no competitor able to touch it. It started with Conroe in 2006, continued with Nehalem in 2008 and early next year we'll meet Sandy Bridge – the third tock in Intel's cadence. Correction, you'll be able to buy it next year, but you'll get to meet her today.

Sandy Bridge is a unique part for Intel. Not only does it address the neglected quad-core CPU market by moving it to 32nm and giving it a healthy performance boost (10%+ clock per clock, 23%+ compared to similarly priced parts) but it also brings Intel's integrated graphics on die. And I hate to ruin surprises, but it's actually not half bad.

For the first time, Intel's integrated graphics is actually performance competitive with low end discrete GPUs. You're not going to want to throw away your GTX 460, but if you were going to spend – on a GPU before, you may not need to after Sandy Bridge.

Want to see how it performs?

Last week we had our first (and unfortunately only) 6GB memory kit giveaway. Today I'm happy to announce the winner: khaydin. Check your email

Today we have two prizes from our good friends at PowerColor. I've got two PowerColor PCS Radeon HD 5770 1GB cards here and I'm giving them both away. I'm giving away one per winner, so we'll crown two winners this time around.

Read on for entry details!

Usually when we get to the 17"-class notebooks here, we're dealing with machines designed almost exclusively for gaming. The problem is that these machines also tend to be prohibitively expensive, owing in no small part to the healthy premiums their gaming graphics often command. So what about the users for whom gaming isn't the biggest priority, the ones major manufacturers like HP and Dell tend to target? In Dell's case, there's the Studio 17 offering targeted to media enthusiasts, and that's what we're here to investigate.

NVIDIA’s ION brought a tremendous appeal to mini-ITX last year, but over the past six months Clarkdale has established itself as the natural and more capable choice for small form factor builds. ZOTAC are today attempting to reinvigorate appeal for ION by teaming up Intel’s CULV processors with NVIDIA’s aging GF9400 chipset.  We take a look at the IONITX-P-E, and aim to find out how it fits into the HTPC landscape.

With the recent rise in the number of triple-slot cards, we have a few different cards in-house that we’re going to be looking at over the next few weeks. But to kick things off, we decided to start small, looking at an interesting product from PowerColor that takes an interesting direction with the triple-slot concept.

The PowerColor Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ Vortex Edition is a factory overclocked Radeon HD 5770 with a unique feature: an adjustable height fan. By default the fan sits flush against the heatsink of this double-slot card, but with a twist of the fan it can be raised roughly 9mm. PowerColor says that doing can improve the cooling beyond what a pure double-slot card can achieve by reducing backflow, and today we set to find out if that's the case.

Almost all CE devices sold in the market today have some sort of connection to the Internet as well as the home network. The consumers' need to transfer data back and forth between various locations in their residences has led to wireless routers becoming ubiquitous in every home connected to the Internet. However, wireless networking is not a worry-free solution for everyone. The real world performance of wireless networks heavily depends on the layout and construction of the house, as well as the nature of other CE devices operating simultaneously. Running an Ethernet cable around the house is a very good option, but is not worth the hassle and cost for many. Given this situation, the electrical network inside the house looks like an unexploited part of the equation. The HomePlug AV standard aims to take advantage of the electrical wiring inside the house to network various computers and various CE products.

In today's review, we will look at Western Digital's first foray into the HomePlug AV market, the WD Livewire. The company claims that the intent of the product is to deliver the Internet to various locations in your house, including the place where the TV and devices like the WDTV Live are placed. Does the WD Livewire succeed in this respect? Read on to find out.

Seagate recently announced the world's first 3TB 3.5" HDD. There's just one catch: it's external only. The FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3TB arrived in our labs over a week ago and we've put in a lot of hours testing this thing. Not only did we try it as an external drive but we cracked open the case and played around with it as an internal SATA drive to explore breaking the 2TB limit on present day PCs.

Read on for our full review!

For the first time since its introduction in 2005 Apple has significantly updated the design of the Mac mini. The new model is thinner, although it requires a bit more surface area. Basically a 13-inch MacBook Pro without the display, this new 9 Mac promises to be the most energy efficient desktop on the market. We look at its performance, power consumption and even compare it to a five year old Power Mac G5 to see how well Apple's mini update holds up.

Read on for the full review.