THE SCREECHIN’ EEEPC from Asus has all but cornered the media coverage on UMPCs lately, and it seems that the remainder of Taiwan is waking up to this fact.

MSI recently announced its own EeePC-like UMPC, named “Wind”, and Chile Hardware is breaking it to ya today. They’ve got an exclusive on the Wind which you can find right here (Spinach) or here (English). Yes, it does look like a little plastic toy, just like an EeePC, only a bit rounder... and you know what? It’s an Atom running at 1.6GHz and apparently SpeedStep has some serious problems here. Chile adds but one thing to the review: “The MSI Wind Notebook is everything that the Eee PC isn’t, and more.” Wow. That’s pretty strong wording. Hope Asus doesn’t have a fit.

While it may seem odd that there are “new” 8600GT cards around, if you understand what Nvidia does, you’ll notice that there isn’t much difference between these almost-end-of-life products and the “brand new” budget 9600 GSOs. So Asus went along and launched a TOP version of the 8600GT (duly named 8600GT TOP) and overclocked it a bit for no-frills gaming. The results are more than adequate, it seems. It might be a good option for a cheap-o HTPC. Read the Tech Lounge review here.

Overclock3D has taken a ride on the 9800GTX express. This particular choo-choo is of the XFX stable and is branded “Black edition” - slightly overclocked and with a killer bundle (ie: Assassin’s Creed). The fact that it’s Black Edition, gives you the extra support and warranty that guarantees you won’t have . The card carries a hefty price tag, but still much lower than X2 varieties – “just” £246. Ride the dragon, here.

Anandtech has a sneak-peek at Asus’ P5Q3 Deluxe mobo. Being the P45-based beast that it is, Kris has a very detailed break-down of the chipset’s features and performance figures. DDR3, of course, will enter the mainstream with this chipset, as long as they don’t get the pricing wrong. Also, we can’t remember a webpage taking this long to open since we tried using a 3G connection to check CNN’s US elections mini-site... *gah*, but hey, page 2 is loaded with detailed pics of the nifty Asus kit. Read it here.

Talking full-blown PCs in a world of cherry-picking enthusiasts isn’t really that common this day and age, but Acer sent off an Aspire M3200 quad-core to APCMag for some breaking-in. This is a Phenom X4 machine in micro-ATX format, ideal for your parents (gawd, is that where AMD is relegated to?). Although nothing of the bomb-shell sort, the M3200 sports 4GB o’RAM and a 500GB HDD, running on what seems to be a 780G chipset (ok, Phenom X4+780G spells trouble, unless they’ve got those trendy 4-phase power circuits to the CPU). Well, catch it here, if your parents need a quad-core.

It’s Benchmark Reviews’ turn to take a look at some new SSD material from OCZ. OCZ has been a staunch advocate of no-holds-barred performance SSDs, but the resulting price ends up breaking the bank. The new OCZSSD2-1S32G (SATA II, 32GB, in case you’re wondering) is on the bench but it appears that HDTach continues to bang its head on that odd Intel bug that limits performance on SSD drives. Well BR is re-doing the HDTach tests with a JMicron SATA Controller). You can buy one of these, or pay your mortgage, your choice. µ