The onward march of technology means sooner or later that fancy new chips will eventually come down in price for just about anyone to enjoy. Sadly that just means more processing power to be wasted away on rousing web-based games.

The AMD Athlon II X4 635 comes ready to tackle your computing tasks with four cores operating at 2.9GHz all at a reasonably low MSRP. TechwareLabs has the review:

The rest of you who are looking to squeeze the most out of a processor and are choosing between the 630 and the 635 will likely choose the 635 since we were able to over-clock the processor an additional 600MHz on air alone. Though overall we were looking for the Athlon II which was to follow the 630 to leave the 630 way behind, but the 635 at stock didn’t leave us speechless, but the 635 did make us smile while over-clocking.

In other words if you’re a tweaker on a budget this might just be your next chip.

When a new GPU lineup is rolled out you can expect to see quite a few variations on the design over the coming months as the chip designer wants to maximize their earning potentials, which also means you’re likely to find something within your budget as well.

AMD’s Radeon HD 5570 sports the same great core features the rest of the 5000 lineup is endowed with but its slimmed down processing capabilities means you won’t be paying as much for the advanced features.

Here’s a roundup of reviews from around the web:

• AMD’s Radeon HD 5570: Low Profile, Higher Performance – AnandTech
• AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5570 Video Card Review – HardOCP
• ATI Radeon HD 5570: Affordable DX11 GPU – Hot Hardware
• ATI Radeon HD 5450 & HD 5570 Graphics Cards – SilentPCReview
• ATI Radeon HD 5570 Review – TechSpot

The budget PC enthusiast seeks out the sort of hardware that might look like a less than appealing option for those with bigger budgets but can, with some coaxing, transform itself into a beast of a performer.

AnandTech has a look at the AMD Phenom II X2 555 which may or may not be able to unlock itself from a dual-core chip into a quad-core beast all with a very low price tag.:

The Phenom II X2 is nothing more than a Phenom II X4 with two cores disabled. Originally these cores were disabled because of low yields, but over time yields on quad-core Phenom IIs should be high enough to negate the need for a Phenom II X2. This is most likely why AMD removed the Phenom II X2 from its official price list. It’s also why the stranger Phenom II derivatives are also absent from AMD’s price list. All that’s left are Phenom II X4s pretty much.

As with anything enthusiast oriented it’s a case of buyer beware but if it works out you’re looking at some extremely fast chips at a low cost of entry.

Energy friendly computer hardware tends to cut out features or run things a bit slower in order to get their power usage in check. Then there are those cases where they cherry-pick the best of the best in order to make things run quickly and with less of a power load. This is one such case,

The AMD Phenom II X4 910e sports all of the great features the rest of the Phenom II lineup but operates in a 65Watt envelope. PCStats has the review:

The 65W TDP revision chip also lowers heat output, boding well for overclocking potential. While the Phenom II X4 910e is not one of AMD’s Black Edition processors, it’s still possible to overclock its core operating frequency. PCSTATS will see just how much we can crank up the Phenom II X4 910e processor a little later on in this review.

A powerful option for those small form factor PCs.

ATI’s Theater 200 chipset was a popular video-in/video-out choice for ATI-based graphics cards, unfortunately support for it has seemingly vanished in the latest driver releases from the company. Thankfully some digging around has lead to working drivers that support Windows 7 and Vista 32bit and 64bit versions.

The drivers support ATI T200 AVStream chips bearing the following device IDs:

ntativrv01, ntativrv02, ntativrv03

You can download the drivers below:

AMD ATI T200 AVStream Windows 7, Vista Driver Version 6.14.10.1095

While there’s a huge benefit to the top-end of the market once a new GPU hits the street there’s an equally large performance boost to the mid-range and low-end graphics cards based on the newest cores.

Testseek Labs has a look at the AMD Radeon HD 5670 graphics card which promises a good performance jump over last generation and an especially interesting feature set for the HTPC crowd:

The Radeon HD 5670 actually turns out to be even more powerful in the first batch of games that I had expected based on the results achieved in the benchmarking tests. I was actually somewhat surprised that this medium range card, at a price level below $100, could move these games with great fluidity.

A solid upgrade for those old power-hungry graphics cards.

Graphics cards tend to be very temperature sensitive which puts a bit of a crimp in the overclocking and tweaking plans of many of use out there, reference coolers just can’t seem to keep up.

TestSeek Labs has a look at the Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5750 which does away with the reference design in favor of their own finely tuned cooling solution:

The cooling solution occupies a double slot which may be a disadvantage because this card must be rated as a medium range card and many users prefer single slot cards in this segment. AMD/ATI sets the overall rules from which the manufacturers can build their cards and they often leave rather small margins which I guess must be the reason why I have yet to see a 5750 single slot card.

It’s not like you’ll be using any slot underneath a video card anyway, don’t want to preheat it with another card’s heat output…yes we’re a little obsessed with keeping stuff cool.

If you’re really into computing hardware you tend to seek out information on the top-end products that are available, unfortunately many of those high-end processors are cost-prohibitive for some…that doesn’t mean there aren’t speedy bargains to be found however.

X-bit labs tests some of the most inexpensive processors out there and comes up with a few impressive performers in the bunch, especially if you enjoy overclocking:

And our supposition proved totally right. The first CPU, AMD Athlon II X2 215 did very well during our overclocking tests. Without touching any voltages, we could easily push its frequency from the default 2.7 GHz to 3.6 GHz.

Plenty of performance to be found without breaking the bank on a snazzy new processor.

When a new graphics chip lineup is launched there’s usually quite a few chips that aren’t quite up to the task for running at the insanely high speeds of the top end so they do a bit of tinkering and make them suitable for the lower end of the market. It might seem a little deceptive but hey you’re getting quite a bit of performance from less expensive chips.

Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5750 won’t dent your pocket very much and, for the price, it features  speedy results in many of today’s latest and greatest gaming titles. Techgage runs it through its paces:

In addition, the HD 5750, though a “budget” offering, lacks nothing of what makes the HD 5000 series so great. That means there’s full support for DirectX 11, Eyefinity (multi-monitor), multiple video outputs and so forth. From a features standpoint, it’s all here. What’s lacking is of course the incredible performance of the larger cards. Both the HD 5750 and HD 5770 have had their memory bus downgraded to 128-bit, while at the same time, they lose a substantial number of shader cores (exactly half of the 58×0 for each respective model).

While there’s plenty of competition in its segment its lower power consumption and advanced feature set makes it the more intriguing choice.

The last few years have seen the high end of the graphics card market dedicated to multi-GPU solutions. While a single high-end GPU on a graphics card is quite speedy two chips on a single graphics card make things even more interesting, especially when they also offer up multiple GPU connections.

The AMD Radeon HD 5970 sports a pair of specially selected graphics chips clocked slightly lower than the 5870 GPU but the company fully expects you to overclock to your heart’s content…as long as you have a power supply capable of keeping up with the increased power requirements.

Here are a few of the reviews making their way around the web:

The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD’s Takeover of the High End GPU Market – AnandTech
AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 Video Card Review – HardOCP
AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB graphics card: usurper of the throne – Hexus
ATI Radeon HD 5970 Dual-GPU Powerhouse Review – HotHardware
ATI Radeon HD 5970 Dual-GPU Video Card Review – Legit Reviews
AMD Radeon HD 5970 2GB Review – PC Perspective