There were already several differences between the Extreme Edition of the Core i7, the 965, and the midrange versions, the 920 and 940. The following were only meant to be accessible to the Core i7-965 EE: - Potential to unlock the multiplier - Potential to modify the Turbo mode ratio - Access to a QPI speed of 6.4 GT/s - Acces to DDR3-1333 / DDR3-1600 settings These were the differences between the Core i7-920 and the Core i7-965 as supplied to the press for the Core i7 tests. Maximum PC reports however that the Core i7-920 and 940 are not however limited! Indeed Intel has unlocked the last two functionalities on these processors, so that it is now possible to get a QPI at 6.4 GT/s or DDR3-1333 or 1600. The locks on the the multiplier are of course still there and you have to say that unlocking these functionalities doesn’t really change performance: in practice you don’t really notice the difference in performance between a QPI at 4.8 GT/x and a QPI at 6.4 GT/s, and the difference between DDR3-1600 and DDR3-1066 is not great. What’s more, if you overclock your Core i7 920/940 via the bus clock, you already have access to these QPI and DDR3 speeds that you get with a multiplier applied at this clock.

	Fusion-io has launched the ioDrive Duo, a new version of its PCI Express SSD that more than doubles performance in some cases up to 1.5 GB /s for read speeds and 1.4 GB /s for writes for the 320 GB version. To get these performances, the ioDrive Duo combines two ioDrives through RAID, and it should be noted that it is possible to get them to function in mirroring rather than stripping, with performances that will of course be halved. For now the ioDrive Duo is available in 160, 320 and 640 GB versions and a 1.28 TB version is planned for the second half of the year. Heaven knows how much it’ll cost!

	After the news on motherboard return rates, here are the figures for returns on power supplies given by a major online French retailer. These statistics conern power supplies sold from March to August 2008, or in other words 6 months to 1 year of functioning. The statistics per brand are based on a minimum sample of 500 units sold. - Fortron: 1.4% - Enermax: 1.5% - Antec: 1.6% - Corsair: 1.8% - Seasonic: 1.9% - Cooler Master: 2.0% - Thermaltake: 2.8% - Hiper: 4.6% In terms of the statistics published a year ago, Enermax and Corsair still have the best returns rates but are significantly up on the 1 and 1.1% scored then respectively. On the other hand, Antec and Seasonic are doing better, as is Hiper, which is nevertheless still in last place! If you look more closely at the least weak models with high sales rates (over 100 units), first place goes to the Antec TruePower Trio 550W (5.8%) followeed by the Hiper HPU-4S425-PU and HPU-4M530 with 4.8%, 4.4% and the CoolerMaster RealPower M1000W with 4.3%