We've got something new for you today: our first head-to-head duel between two products.  The idea is simple: we've taken two of our current favourite products, both of them with our top score of five stars, and have compared them point by point.

We've got something new for you today: our first head-to-head duel between two products.  The idea is simple: we've taken two of our current favourite products, both of them with our top score of five stars, and have compared them point by point.

After so many years of loyalty, what motivated Dell to give up PVA technology?  Is Samsung's monitor still worth our original score after we found so many problems with it?  And can displays that cost half as much as their predecessors really be as good, if not better, if you believe the manufacturers?  There's nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get to the heart of the matter!

Dell U2410		Samsung F2380M
MARCHANDS €     Amazon.co.uk  339.59  Dell for bu...  389.00  Amazon mark...  399.99  Amazon mark...  475.44  Dell for home  483.60  Compare prices		MARCHANDS €     Amazon.co.uk  457.56  Compare prices
IPS		PVA
1920 x 1200 pixels		1920 x 1080 pixels
6 ms		8 ms
DP + HDMI + 2 DVI + VGA + Component		HDMI + DVI + VGA
178° / 178°		178° / 178°

> Duel : Dell U2410 vs Samsung F2380M

Last week, AMD and Intel both announced plans to release their first six-core processors in March.  Are these new processors necessarily any better than the current crop of quad-core CPUs?  Should you upgrade as soon as you can?  We're not entirely sure …

We'll be looking at the latest generation of CPUs in a lot more detail soon, but that doesn't mean we can't give you a brief outline of our thinking now.  In general, adding extra cores will be of most benefit to people who use heavyweight multimedia apps.

If you spend your time editing and encoding video or you're a professional musician or photographer, then moving to a six core processor certainly will speed things up for you.  If, on the other hand, you use your computer for a little browsing, listening to streaming radio and reading e-mails from your grandchildren, then it's not worth it.  A dual-core processor will be more than adequate for your needs.

That just leaves gamers.  Although more and more recent games are optimised to run better on multiple core processors, we've seen in our own tests that quad core CPUs aren't always faster than dual cores; you can check that by taking a look at over Face-Off: Processors.  So moving up to a six core CPU isn't necessarily the only way forward: remember that for a better gaming experience, there's nothing quite like a good graphics card.

> Product Survey: Processors

Find the best price

When we published our test of the 27'' iMac, we said that we didn't have any problems with the display.  Unfortunately, that isn't the case for everybody, and plenty of users have complained online about uneven colours and flickering.

If that affects you, then some good news arrived last week: Apple has released new firmware which designed to fix part of the problems.  You can find out more and download the update by visiting Apple's site.

Note that this new firmware only covers the problems with flickering, not the inaccurate colours.  Make sure you follow Apple's instructions carefully though, as one of the listed side effects is the risk that your screen will turn black and not switch on again …

> Test: Apple iMac 27'' 3.06 GHz

Give us a minimum and maximum size, click OK, and in an instant you'll see which TVs we've tested that meet your criteria.  Next to the filters is the option to create a permalink, allowing you to save the selection you just made. 

Here's my current favourite list:

• bigger than 46''
• less than £1200
• at least four stars
• starting with the cheapest

And that's exactly what you get … it works perfectly!