Review Round-up This week's no-holds barred product assessments from around the web focuses on the big announcement of the last few days: AMD's Socket AM2 processors and Nvidia's nForce 500 chipset series...

• "So far Socket AM2 seems to bring a bit of an increase in performance, and clearly that is helped by higher clocked 1066MHz DDR 2... Will AM2 be enough to beat off Conroe? Is the slight bump in gaming performance from DDR2 going to help enough?"

  AMDZone (http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=256&page=1)

• "Quite possibly the most unimpressive launch from AMD (from a performance perspective)..."

  AnandTech (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2762)

• "AM2 performance is looking healthy offsetting the higher latency of DDR 2 quite happily. However, if the hype is to be believed it won’t be fast enough to compete with Intel’s Core 2 Duo..."

  Trusted Reviews (http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?page=6820&head=0)

• "Keep in mind that AMD has not let all their cats out of the bag just quite yet. I would expect to see at least one more hardcore enthusiast trick up their sleeve before year’s end..."

  Hard OCP (http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA2NSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==)

• "The only thing holding us back from saying, 'yeah, AM2 rocks, jump, jump, jump!' is Conroe/Core 2 Duo in the near term, and K8L in the longer term..."

  Hexus.net (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5694)

• "Good energy efficiency, but bad value for money..."

  Tom's Hardware Guide (http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/05/23/amd_reinvents_itself_uk/)

• "If you're looking to build a system, it is probably wise to wait until the summer, as it is likely to be a very interesting second half of the year..."

  Bit-Tech (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/05/23/am2_athlon_64_fx-62_x2_5000/1.html)

• "The CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 and nForce 590 SLI really couldn't be more different. ATI's chipset is a rather simple affair, with a solid spec but few frills or extras, while Nvidia's latest nForce is jam-packed with peripherals and additional features, some of which are more gimmicky than others."

  The Tech Report (http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/am2-chipsets/index.x?pg=1)

Read our own judgement on AMD's Socket AM2 and nVidia's nForce 500 series chipsets here (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/05/23/review_amd_am2_athlon_64_fx-62/) and here (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/05/23/preview_nvidia_nforce_500-series/)

Want your review featured on Reg Hardware's Critical Mass? Send us your submissions by email (http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2006/04/13/review_roundup/).