Preview: DIRT 2 Demo--gameplay sample and benchmarks with Radeon HD 4770

The demo version of the highly anticipated game DiRT 2 recently became available and I just got the chance to try it out. It. Is. Awesome.

I just spent some time running benchmarks and trying out the races, and so far I am not disappointed. It will become available in less than two weeks but if you just can't wait anymore, help yourself to a free copy of the DiRT 2 demo.

But before you do that, check out a few screenshots and the results of the benchmarks I ran at three different resolutions with the highest graphics settings and 8x MSAA. Continue reading for more.

Intel's Gulftown Core i9 hexa-core CPU previewed with set of benchmarks and overclocking

The fabled Intel Core i9 processor, codenamed Gulftown with its six physical cores and support for multi-threading, sounds like a pretty promising piece of hardware, doesn't it? Polish hardware site PClab.pl has gone through the trouble of showing its potential through a series of benchmarks, as well as monitoring power consumption and performance when overclocking. The result? It is indeed something to watch out for. It's not going to be very useful for gamers with the limited multi-threading support in games these days, but for desktop servers and workstations, Intel's hexa-core 32nm Gulftown CPU should shine, able to overclock easily up to 4.3GHz and providing six additional virtual cores to go alongside the six physical ones it already has. Check out the full hands on review for more.

Read - Intel Core i9 (Gulftown) - 6 cores, 32 nm: hands-on review

Sources: [PCLab, NordicHardware]

Nokia X6 hands-on preview and first impressions

I recently got the chance to sample the upcoming Nokia X6 music phone. One word to describe it? Excellent. Or should I say, "Xcellent"? I was surprised in more ways than one after using it, primarily because I was rather disappointed with the last touchscreen Nokia music phone that I used, which was the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The Nokia X6 gave me no problems whatsoever during the few minutes that I tried to navigate through its menus and give its built-in features a spin. If you are currently looking forward to putting the Nokia X6 in one of your pockets, you may want to check out this hands-on preview to tide yourself over until "the big day" finally arrives.

The Nokia X6 was first announced back in September 2 during Nokia World 2009. Its official features include 32GB of on-board memory, up to 35 hours of music playback, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual-LED flash, and a 3.2-inch 16:9 nHD capacitive touchscreen display. It's the first device of its kind from Nokia to use a capacitive touchscreen display like many other popular touchscreen devices today, and I have to say, it does the job right, as expected.

I mentioned in the beginning of this post that the Nokia X6 gave me no problems at all during the short time that I used it. That doesn't mean I don't realize that a few minutes usage is not enough to give a final verdict on a handset that's not even scheduled to arrive here until early next year (if ever). And also, the Nokia X6 that I handled for this preview was only a prototype, though it seemed to function without any major hiccups at all, hardware or software-wise. So now that those are out of the way, let me tell you more about the phone itself.